Macy’s and the Walnut Room

Every year at Christmastime we visit downtown Chicago to see the decorations. One of our annual stops is the Walnut Room at Macy’s where a giant tree is set up in the middle of the dining room (a tradition left over from when the store was Marshall Fields). We stand by the railing and look down on all the people eating in the restaurant.

Last year I decided that this year I would take my wife to the Walnut Room to eat. On five or six occasions over the past 10 months, I tried to make reservations but kept getting the message that it wasn’t time yet. Finally, in September I think, I got in, only to discover that there were very few slots remaining. I settled for 2:45 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t find much information, but based on what I could discover from past years, I thought the tree would be up by that time.

We headed downtown on the train and walked to Macy’s, arriving about an hour before our reservations. This gave us time to view the Christmas window displays outside. The theme this year had something vaguely to do with planets.

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And two on the end that featured Peanuts.

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As we rode the escalator up through Macy’s, I saw a sign for Santa’s Wonderland. We hesitated before going in, but the woman at the entrance assured us it was OK. Once we got in, they tried, halfheartedly, to get us to have our picture taken with Santa, but we declined.

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We got to the Walnut Room about 15 minutes early and saw that it was perhaps 25% full. We were seated immediately, in the main section about 20 feet from the tree. In other words, there was no reason to make reservations on this day.

The light patterns on the ceiling and walls moved, and the theme changed through four designs while we ate.

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We ordered a cheese plate and chicken pot pies (the specialty). Both were OK, nothing special.

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The Frango Mint cheesecake we shared for dessert was very good.

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Three young women dressed as fairies were walking around the dining room visiting tables. One came up to us and gave us her fairy name and a long, involved story about how she works for Santa’s P.R. department and got him the role in Miracle on 34th Street. She seemed to be expecting us to be really impressed by this. She told us to watch for her name in the credits next time we watched the movie.

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She waved her wand over my wife’s head to grant a wish and then went her fairy way.

Another fairy who frequently broke out in song came by a few minutes later, but when we told her we’d already been visited, she went away. A third one then stopped by. I told her we’d already had our wishes granted and didn’t want to be greedy.

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She complimented us on this, but then launched into her fairy story — something about being Jack Frost’s daughter — but I distracted her by talking about the writing on the ceiling and she soon left.

It was a bit bizarre. I suppose they’re there to interact with kids, and when there are no tables with kids, they visit people like us. But I wasn’t really sure what the purpose was. My wife saw diners at another table put some money in a bag the singing fairy was carrying. But none of them was carrying a bag when they visited us, and I didn’t pick up any hints of wanting money. Nor am I sure what, exactly, I would have been giving them money for.

We went up a floor and looked down on the dining room from the balcony. As you can see, it was empty by this time. I asked and was told that reservations aren’t really needed before Thanksgiving.

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 We stopped at the Frango store and bought some mints.

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And wandered about the store. It’s all crass consumerism, of course, but they do it well.

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And that was it. We walked back to the station and caught the train home. We had a very good time, and will probably do it again, but without the reservations and without the cheese plate.

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