The Dells Tradition Continues!

For 4th of July 2008, disc0 and I decided to head back up to the Wisconsin Dells (this is our third year running), but this time we made it a real family vacation. My sister ("SB") and her girlfriend ("T-shirt C") came along. We had some FUN TIMES!!! Those times are probably best explained in pictures, but first I'll give a little synopsis. On the way to the Dells, we stopped at a place called Mars' Cheese Castle in Kenosha; the MCC is an extremely amazing and overwhelming place where one can buy all sorts of Wisconsin based (and also European imported) food products. As you can plainly see, their logo seems to indicate that some non-Martian, ringed planet is also involved in their business (thanks to flickr.com usuer "romkey" for this sharable image):

While in the Dells, we spent most of our time and money at the various Old Timey Portrait studios that pepper the Dells boardwalk. We also took a duck tour to look at the actual dells and the effects of the major flood a couple weeks ago that destroyed Lake Delton, went to a really terrible water park (I won't name names, but it has a really poorly executed ancient theme, which can't decide if it is Roman, Greek, or Mayan) and a really wonderful teppanyaki dinner at Ginza of Tokyo. Neither Disc0 nor T-shirt C had ever been to a teppanyaki restaurant before, so SB and I had to show them the ropes. The delicious, iron griddle ropes. There was an onion volcano.

But I know what you really want to see is pictures of our time traveling exploits.

We started from the earliest time period that made any logical sense. Meaning of course, that we went back to pirate times. Luckily we brought a camaarrrrra (ha!). For the pictures, I'm going to point you to this album, because blogger isn't necessarily the most cooperative when it comes to amazing photographic compilations:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58643578@N00/sets/72157606061620086/

So, modeling for old-timey photography studios took up much of our time. While SB and T-shirt C were here in the Midwest, we also made cupcakes and cupcake toppers which were tiny imitation cheeseburgers made of icing and mini cookies, ate a Uncommon Ground twice, watched a few episodes of All-American Girl and generally had a great time together like always! Yay for sisters!

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

Disc0 and I are still committed to exploring Chicago, so that we have our favorite places all over the city. TBF, we're still limited in this exploration to north of the loop - southside is coming, though!

Today we took the Red Line up to Rogers Park. I've never been there even though one of my besties went to college up in them there parts. I love Rogers Park! Its a little bit funky, a little bit rock n' roll, a little artsy fartsy, and a lot more integrated than our neighborhood. I found my DREAM HOUSE up there on W. Jarvis, y'all. TBF, I find my dream house in every neighborhood. Last one was in Uptown.

We walked up Sheridan, right by the lake, to the Lake Side Cafe. It was like a smaller, sweeter version of the Chicago Diner. I love that Chicago has one vegan diner that's all "corporate" and "the man" against which the smaller, scrappier vegan diners have to fight.
Anyway, it was yummy and friendly and I had a delish chai tea with my quinoa salad. Disc0 had a vegan Chicago-style polish sausage. As he said, encased meats are often so processed anyway, at some point your enjoyment of the meal doesn't even depend on whether the stuff inside the casing is actually made of meat.

The plan was to walk down Sheridan to Loyola after lunch, but then it got really cold and windy so we just hopped down Howard to the el and went back home. I really like Rogers Park and want to spend more time exploring. There is gorgeous architecture all over the place.

There were tons of crazy/drunk Cubs fans on the el. They are so cute.

I'm trying now to decide what to make for dinner. This week I've done curried turkey burger sliders on tiny challah buns, cheese enchiladas on whole wheat tortillas, curried chicken salad, and pizza with caramelized onions. Common law housewifery!

i think it's about cheekbones

There is a movie filming in our neighborhood again. I know, yawn, it happens all the time. Seriously, a number of movies have been filmed around here, but, in the words of Garth Holladay, this is a big one - not just a few moments of stock footage of the el. It's a Michael Mann piece! About a Chicago infamo-legend...



The film is actually about John Dillinger;
cheekbones are merely a silent theme, as Johnny Depp and Christian Bale
are starring. This evening, we joined the unwashed masses gathered around the set, and felt kinda dorky, but it was really fun and interesting. They created a very cool looking 30's set, covering the whole street with fake cobblestones, putting up streetlamps and fake billboards, and dressing all the extries in fedoras and fancy overcoats.

We left before any documented Bale/Depp sitings actually occurred, because we didn't really want to be around for the weird, starstuck, entitled people to start yelling at the actors as they tried to do their jobs. Not that I am above thinking it would be cool to see them actually shooting a scene - I'm so totally not. But I did get a little uncomfortable at a couple of antsy teens who wanted to yell at non-famous people to get out of the way so they could take pictures of other, possibly famous people who were sitting inside (very cool, period) cars and who definitely seemed to wish not to be photographed.

There was also an OLD SCHOOL el train going by every few minutes, with be-hatted men inside. Quite cool.

We also had a lovely dinner at Deleece, where they have a $20, 3-course, fixed price menu on Mondays and Tuesdays. I had a delicious squash tortilla soup, and disc0 had a ridiculously good set of short ribs with some kind of ranch sauce that I wanted to drink with a straw. We will be back!

Bored at work?

I changed my whole layout - I like big stars on things. I was going to make it a blue star to match my tatt, but there's something I like about the pink. Also the blue they had was the wrong color and I don't know html, so pink it is. Yay.

That means I lost some of my links - if I you're not on my links list any more, it's cause I'm naughty by nature* not cause I hate ya. Just remind me if you don't mind!

On to the business at hand - talking about food.

I made my first trek over to Devon Ave. last night for an Indo-Pakistani feast set up by a couple of people who work where I work. We ate at Bhabi's Kitchen, and I probably can't do justice to the food with my mere, clumsy words. It was out of this world. I didn't catch the names of most of the dishes because there were 20 of us, so it was just a fixed price feast where they brought out giant bowls of food and told us "eggplant" or "chicken" or "beef with three types of lentils." It was all amazing (I didn't try the beef, because of my no beef eating thing; but I did try the sauce on the beef, because I am a charlatan, and it was delicious too). The best part (and it's hard to choose a best part) was probably the pistachio bread, topped with powdered sugar. It tasted like ungreasy funnel cake, and was absolutely divine when smothered in the savory coconut-peanut sauce in which the eggplant dish was served. The samosas were the best I've ever had, and the tamarind chutney (arguably my favorite part of many Indian meals) was just wonderful.

Bhabi's, like many of Chicago's best restaurants, is BYOB. The price was really good for the quality and amount of food.

I will be back to Bhabi's ASAP! Expect to be brought here if you like Indian food and come visit me!

*which here means ditzier than a gnat

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.

You've come to tell me somethin' you say I oughtta know

We have had quite the weekend! Friday and Saturday were both awesome, in very different ways, but both in ways that were very CHICAGO......

Friday night Disc0 and I had my (rescheduled, due to an unfortunate influx of work last weekend) romantic birthday night on the town...we stayed at the Peninsula hotel (oh so fancy, even though we were a few levels down from the suite last graced by Brangelina) and dined at Avenues, stuffing ourselves on Chef Graham Elliot Bowle's 10 course palate menu. There was only one dish that both of us agreed was "just good." Everything else was absolutely amazing and lived up to all the hype: the wine, the service, the view, and the FOOD. It was also very unpretentious, which was most welcome. The Peninsula also gave us a lovely bottle of champagne since it was my birthday, which aided in my falling dead asleep in a well-fed stupor.






Saturday was the 40th birthday celebration of one of Disc0's good friends from his days working in advertising. The birthday boy is a musician, so his band had a reunion show and he also hosted sets by two Chicago-based country bands. His band was super cute, playing lots of angsty songs he wrote 15 years ago, and they're all really good musicians. Can I just tell you that I am possibly more into country music now than I was living all around it in Atlanta? At the party, I was exposed to the band that I think will fill the empty space in my life where Atlanta bands Hot August Knights, Kingsized, and Amy Pike and the Last Cold Beer used to be: Fulton County Line. That is, I will follow them around and go to their shows and learn their set list and be a weekend groupie again. I'm pretty sure the lead singer is a bona fide cowboy, and if not he sure dresses the part from his boots to his beard to his hat to his full length duster coat. And he does a pretty kickass shimmy while he croons and yodels (you heard me!) They have a standup bass, a pedal steel guitar, and electric banjo and I love them.

Now we're spending the day doing some prep work for our first time hosting Thanksgiving! We are sooo excited to see our families! Yay!

Andersonville: Revisited

I know I've talked about Andersonville before, which is just a northbound hop, skip, and a busride from my hood. I love it because it evokes my Swedish and lesbian heritages, etcetera. But I've only really been there during festivals, of which Andersonville host many. So disc0 and I decided to take a little vacay and spend the afternoon there yesterday.

It was delightful.

We rediscovered the feminist bookstore Women & Children First, where I became immediately ashamed of the fact that I had just the day before ordered Alison Bechdel's memoir from Amazon.com. Am a moron?! Not only is there a great feminist bookstore not so far from me, but they have a website from which you can buy any book in print!! I will not let this happen again. The sales clerk was very kind when I had to admit the indiscretion (because I was buying another Alison Bechdel graphic novel--the one in which the bookstore at the center of the story line has to close because of online and big box bookstores!!--and she recommended the memoir).
Then we had delicious coffee at Sweet Occassions
, an adorable bakery/sandwich shop/coffee shop. It didn't even make me mad (very much) that they already had Christmas decorations up (wait until after Thanksgiving, dudes! WOW!) because they were so friendly and the coffee was so good. I'm more of an espresso drink gal when I have coffee at all, but when I ordered a latte they told me they were not allowed to make espresso drinks! Because there is a Starbucks in the same set of buildings, and so their lease says no espresso drinks! As evil corporations go, Starbucks generally gets pass from me, and in this case the Starbucks was there first...but damn, let the Mom n' Pops make their lattes! Sheesh. But as I said, their non-espresso coffee was fantastic, and the same can not be said for Starbucks.

Then this morning we went back and had a Viking Breakfast (well disc0 did, and I had Swedish pancakes with lingonberries). It was delicious and presh--you know I love a place where the sign says Valkommen or Vilkommen and they serve limpa bread...

Double Entendres

Well, disc0 and I have started work, so updates may be a little more sparse. Also winter is coming, which means we won't be able to go "outside" for a couple of months. But that shouldn't really start until November or December. In the meantime, we had a great dinner tonight with friends at the Schoolyard Tavern a few blocks away; $5 entrees on Wednesdays, including my ginormous black bean burger. AND A SKILLET COOKIE. My goodness, but I love Chicago. They will fry and skillet anything edible and make it better.

Also last week, we say Gayco's new show, I-hole! It was fabulous, maybe the best Gayco show I've seen. They have a really tight cast. We saw their final preview show, but there were still very few bugs in the system. I think we'll probably go see the for-real show at some point during its run since we liked it so much!

Fancy Pants

So it turns out chicago can be super fancy as well as super fun, convenient, and friendly. You just have to leave our neighborhood. Disc0's mom is in town, and last night and today were full of glam.

Last night disc0's mom really wanted to go somewhere with delicious desserts, so we did a little research and headed to Marche. It's part of the KDK family of restaurants, which are made of fance (my noun form of fancy). We had an amazing late-ish dinner, actually just ordering appetizers instead of entrees (which were huge and delicious, and the waitstaff was very pleasantly unsnooty about it) and then had fantastic desserts (sorbet; banana bread pudding; praline pineapple cake--YUM. )

Then today we went ahead and had afternoon tea at the Drake Hotel, oh yes we did. I'm pretty sure when they said "nectar of the gods" they meant Devonshire cream. With strawberry jam. On scones. I did this with my own Mom last summer, and it was just as gilded as I remembered; the Palm Court and ESPECIALLY the Powder Room made me feel very Great Gatsby. Quite the luxurious afternoon.

So tonight we made organic deviled eggs, salad, and broiled potato chips from our farm share stuff. Simple but luxurious in a different way...

Flash Flood, Schmash Schmood

My Dad is in town, and tonight we went on a little trek to try to find food. Sadly, it seems that Orange (despite a semi-misleading voicemail recording) is no longer serving dinner. Which is terrible, because their dinners might have been even better than their brunch. We walked to Cooper's, another exciting choice--but the insane weather from yesterday caused them to lose power and close today (get well soon, Cooper's! We love you!)

So we were getting really hungry and decided that we were in the mood for Indian food, because we happened to be standing in front of Radhuni Indian Kitchen
It was a lucky choice, and now we have a wonderful neighborhood Indian joint to brag on. The naan and roti were perfect, the samosas light and delicious, and the chicken tikkia masala was some of the best and most tender I've ever had. I was a little wary of the place because it always looked empty when I walked by, and because we had the bad taste (ha ha) to try a different Indian restaurant in our neighborhood first and the experience was ... unfortunate. Certainly not blog-worthy. So I was afraid this neighborhood was an Indian food-free zone. Phew--I was wrong.

He said I wore to much Moscow-a

Tonight at Lollapalooza we saw The Hold Steady, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Spoon.

Oh my gosh, The Hold Steady was adorable. The lead singer is from Minneapolis and he's very midwest-like, ya'll. He was EXTREMELY EARNEST**, thanking the crowd for all the joy being in the band brings to them, and just professing how very grateful he is for his awesome job. Our friend Z, who is a huge fan and was front and center during their set, said that the singer was close to tears of joy while rocking out. He also would often repeat lines he'd just sung sans mic directly to the fans who could hear him because of their close proximity to the stage--very closely connected to the fans. Presh.

Then we finally had dinner at Sushi Toro!!! The chef and co-owner is a friend of disc0's and we visited often last summer. The place is always packed and is tiny, so as per usual we put down our names at the restaurant, went for a glass of wine at the nearby wine bar ****, and finished just in time to sit down for dinner. Absolutely delicious. The menu has a whole page of rolls the chef has invented, many of them named for friends and customers. We had the MJ (fried tempura flakes and spicy tuna goodness), the Park West (with shrimp tempura, grilled and topped with cheese, thank you Chicago for allowing even sushi to be fried and smothered in cheese), and the California Twist (a yummy California roll with special fresh crab salad and avocado). I'm so glad we finally made it there this summer and hope we can be there more regularly in the future (along with guests, as always...)


**this reminds me of a cute line from the lead singer of LCD Soundsystem during their set yesterday at Lolla: he noticed that the group of fans dancing closest to the stage was started to get a bit rowdy and apparently kept his eye on them, and after finishing a song thanked them for not being too rough and implored them to keep it that way, so that violent and/or handsy dancing would not make that area a "girl bummer." It was nice that the lead singer was watching out for violence and handsiness.

****I have redacted the name of the wine bar because I forgot to mention earlier that I straight up found drug paraphernalia in the comfy little upholstered chair in which I was, until that point, enjoying my wine! WTF, Lincoln Park neighborhood! Now I can add the "pointless rivalries" tag to this post, because although there may be snow bunnies in my neighborhood, I have never found evidence of them, because they do not carelessly fling their dirty tools around wine bars for unsuspecting gals to find, when all these unsuspecting gals want to do is wait in peace for their seat at the sushi bar. I felt bad for the waiter to whose attention I had to bring the offending length of straw. For shame, Lincoln Park; for shame.

So We're Really Full Again....

Times are lean around my household because the bar stuff has gotten, and will remain, pretty intense from here on out. But tonight disc0 and I finished our assigned essays and decided to go out to dinner with J & A for a break. I'm SO GLAD WE DID.

Before he started staying with us, J lived very close to Terragusto and always wanted to try it, but reservations are often a must. This meant they never got a chance to go until this weekend, when A made 'em and invited us along. Terragusta is a small italian restaurant that serves organic and mostly local food, including homemade pasta. We ordered from the two course menu, which is basically family style. Holy crap!

That means we shared three antipasti: a huge antipasto platter (organic salami?! Balsamic soaked garlic that doesn't cause garlic breath?? Who knew?!), the best polenta ever, and a lovely green salad. The pasta course was absolutely amazing as well--the pasta bolognese was especially awesome. I never eat beef unless it's naturally raised so it's like an extra treat for me, and it totally lived up to expectations. YUM. And it's BYOB, so we had some $3 Trader Joe's wine to go with.

After all that deliciousness we had to try dessert, which of course included the most delicious panna cotta I've ever had and a flourless chocolate cake like WHOA. We almost had to ask the manager to roll us out the door. We went ahead and walked the mile and a half home just to try to work the dinner through. It wasn't the most comfortable walk (OK, OK--it is effing hot in Chicago right now, I'll admit it) but the full bellies were totally worth it. I can't wait to bring guests to Terragusto...with reservations, of course.

To the Window...to the Wall

This is been a pretty productive weekend. On Friday, disc0 and I tried out a new restaurant that we found in a pullout from this week's Reader which named tons of cool places to eat on patios or otherwise outdoors. Outdoor eating is huge in Chicago in the summer. The place was called Coopers, A Neighborhood Eatery* and it is, of course, walking distance from our condo, in a bit of a theater district. Across the street is the theater where I first saw Gayco.

The food was AWESOME as expected. I got an amazing vegetable panini that didn't contain anything I don't like! That never happens with veggie sandwiches. It was arugala, caramelized onions, goat cheese, and roasted red peppers. And disc0 got a half rack of baby back ribs which were amazing. This place makes all of their food fresh, except for the bread--which means the ice cream we had for dessert was made there, as were the marshmallows mixed into it. Just another amazing neighborhood restaurant with a giant beer list and pathologically friendly servers. Hooray.

Last night we had dinner with our friends J and A. I can't say the restaurant was the greatest (I think our server was having a rough night) but that's OK because it was in the neighborhood where we almost did but then decided NOT to buy a condo. And the company was fab. They can't ALL be the best restaurant ever.

Then J & A got tired, but disc0 and I wanted to view the insanity that is Saturday night in Wrigleyville after a Cubs game. We called another friend, AM, and headed to the heart of it. We got a window seat at a fairly authentic Irish pub (our server was even Irish) and did some great people watching for a couple of hours. Then we wanted to really see the disasters happening, and suggested a trip to Hi Tops**, the skeeziest hook up den in Wrigleyville. AM refused, and suggested Redmans, which in her opinion was more of a neighborhood pub. Ha!

Hi Tops could not have beat the Redmans people watching scene. On a cool note, it was an awesomely diverse crowd and there were folks having a great time dancing with their friends. But the piece de resistance was the Make Out Couple. They were going AT IT on the dance floor for a long time; then they moved to a booth that was already inhabited to get a little more comfortable. Chicago bar-goers were too polite to elbow them or say anything harsh, and so they began to get a wide berth and a dedicated audience. The DJ tried to talk them down over the sound system, to no avail. The waitress dutifully bussed the table where they were violating the booths (although their "neighbor" gave up and left after a few moments). Finally, a group of stranger women seemed to decide that the woman in the Make Out Couple was sorely lacking, and therefore needed, some girlfriends (this is Chicago after all), especially to tell her that her pants were hitting half-mast much of the time thereby exposing faded white granny panties. At first I was also concerned, and took this to mean that she wore said grannies b/c she was planning not to hook up, and then got drunker than expected and was embarrassing herself with some skeezy bar guy. As we continued to observe, it became evident that she was WITH the guy. So maybe they were just "we've been together a long time and he doesn't care about my underpants" underpants. Lord knows I have some of those. In any case, the stranger women had to give up and leave as well, because these two were not in the mood to quit. It also turned out that Make Out Couple WAS with a rather large group of friends, one of whom somehow found an industrial strength flashlight and shined it in their faces in an attempt to stop the carnage. It worked for only half a second. Part of me thinks these people just do this whenever they go out, and though I tired of it eventually, I hope we cross paths again. It was enormously entertaining while it lasted.

*I also love this place because the name and cat eye sign remind me of my Boodles' kitty

**For example, MTV recently did their Chicago casting of something called "Dismissed Again" at Hi Tops

WINDY CITY SWEETS

Hold on: have I not talked about Windy City Sweets yet on this blog?! Inconceivable.

This is possibly my favorite place in Chicago and walkable from my doorstep. It is a giant, old-fashioned style candy store and ice cream parlor in the heart of Boystown. They have a wall of bin candy up to the ceiling. They have delicious freshly made fudge. They have every old candy you could hope to imagine (the Squirrel Nut Zippers aren't even slightly difficult to find--they are right there in front of you).

The ice cream is delicious. The ice cream scooper guys are friendly and adorable. There are always people walking their dogs past the big windows. You can go there after you get a little tipsy on BYOB wine next door at Ping Pong, and get a huge bag of candy and an ice cream cup or cone or a milkshake, because they are open every night until 11:00.

Speaking of which: every other restaurant here is BYOB, with no (or minimal) corkage fees. It's pretty awesome.