Three, three, three posts in one

There are so many fabu restaurants I've been to in the last few weeks, but I have not been good about reviewing! How do I expect all of you, my friends and family and loyal blog readers, to move to Chicago to be my neighbors if I don't sell it hardcore?

FIRST: Home Bistro! They have two starters that I tend to always make my meal. Houloumi cheese (much like saganaki), and OMG almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon and baked with brown sugar. This is what, in fact, we ate tonight (Disc0 ordered some wild boar snausages - yummo). HB is our favorite restaurant of the moment. They also have amazing desserts, including cupcake flights and bread pudding. Nom nom nom nom...

NEXT: Joey's Brickhouse! We never used to go here because it is just slightly farther west on Belmont from our house than Cooper's. I mean like half a block farther west. But Cooper's is so good that we just never went past it. Well one night Cooper's was full, and Joey's was there to save us (it was after we caught a Gayco show at the annual Sketch Comedy festival...yeah, that happens in our neighborhood. No big deal.) Anyway, they have the cutest, quirkiest menu I've seen yet. (Hey, I love cute n' quirky - I LOL'd when Juno said "thanks a heap coyote ugly but this saguaro stings worse than your abandonment." anyway.) The food is also awesome (duh) and they have the best cocktail list ever - I had something with all of my favorite sugary treats in it such as bailey's, frangelico, kahlua, probably some caramel sauce, I don't know - it was fantastic - and there were a bunch of theater people from the sketchfest eating there too!

THEN: Hamburger Mary's! This Andersonville spot is where I come for all my red meat (Buffalo burgers)! Everything else on the menu, including the fatty fat salads, look great, but so far we've only gone for the burgers. And they are damn fine. The whole vibe is super kitschy, e.g. they give you your check in a giant high heeled shoe, and there is always a cute movie playing on the TVs (last time it was the Wizard of Oz). They have karaoke on Thursdays and I have to check it out as soon as possible (though my "HAVE to check out their Thursday karaoke night" list is growing longer by the day.)

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: Fiddlehead Cafe! This is an amazing wine and cheese joint in southern Lincoln Square; it's so good at wine and cheese that it has no business making such delicious entrees and desserts, too. Each of us had a different red wine flight (delicious and well-matched) and shared the Spanish cheese flight. Seriously, FYI you guys, I shouldn't type, talk, or think about the cheese flight right now or I might get in the car, drive to Fiddlehead, and force them to sell it to me. And that's not safe because the driveway is icy and I will almost certainly hit one or more of my neighbor's cars. By the way, I also just went ahead and ordered a hunk of cheese for dessert because the cheeses were so delicious.

All four of these places have EXTREMELY friendly and helpful servers. HB is the homiest, Joey's is the quirkiest, Mary's is the kitschiest, and Fiddlehead is the most refined and cheesiest (in a very, very good way). I didn't want you to think the cold has kept us from enjoying the country's best restaurant scene (i.e. Near North Chicago).

Speaking of cold, it was 36 degrees today, and it felt balmy. I took a bit of a walk to meet a friend for a movie, and I had to take off my hat and unzip my jacket to stave off uncomfortable warmth. I am now...a seasoned midwesterner! There are rumblings that there may be two weeks of snow storms in our future, and I hope it's true. It's been quite a snowy winter and I absolutely love it. It makes the cold so much more bearable when all that pretty is just falling from the sky.