Eating at Cafe Penelope is a lot like eating at my Grandma's house. For starters, it just looks like Grandma's: a rickety old room with plain wooden chairs and tables, faded peach walls and antiques haphazardly shoved into the corners. And just like Grandma's, you won't taste any cutting-edge culinary masterpieces at this cafe (sorry, Gram), but you will get a great, big filling of food at its most basic.

Located on a busy strip of Ashland (just three blocks from the United Center), Cafe Penelope is a convenient stop for those looking for a quick bite...or just looking to save some dollars. The extremely affordable lunch menu offers soups, salads and sandwiches, as well as daily specials and pizza-by-the-slice.

From its recently added dinner menu, you can choose from a selection of meatloaf, chicken, steak, fish and pasta meals, all at curiously low prices. Head over on the weekends to check-out the brunch menu (8 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday), which features a surprisingly innovative crab cakes benedict, served with a roasted red pepper hollandaise sauce. The rest of the brunch menu falls to the traditional samplings of omelets, pancakes and steak and eggs.

Aside from the crab cakes benedict, Cafe Penelope has a few things that you'll never find at Grandma's: free wi-fi, a well-stocked bar and live blues music on the final Friday of each month. It also boasts a catering service that could be the perfect option for an office meeting or any other time you need to serve your standard nuts-and-bolts meal.

Centerstage Reviewer: Ashley Hamilton