Food Maker, Chef, and Traveling Diner
I love all different types of food, the kind that’s interesting, witty, and playful as well as the type that is just straight forward and tastes delicious. But what I like the most about eating other peoples food is the guessing game of what’s inside. …
Lots of love as always to the talented and wonderful people participating in Your Best Recipe for details please check out spiciefoodie.blogspot.com ! This month I chose to have my Pozole featured The round up with every ones choices will appear on the 30th at …
My trip to Chicago is more than words could ever really put together. Just as my trips to Tokyo, Seattle, North Carolina, and Vegas, my whole world is always centered on food. Maybe that makes me a lush, maybe it makes gluttony my number one on my list of seven deadly sins but I adore it. I adore seeing what other like minded or even ill minded people care to do with the foods of their city, culture, art, and love and here just like in many cities food is at the utmost center of the universe.
I’m from a large city so seeing other ones is a different experience than those people who are from small towns. I’ve seen high rises and sky scrapers, I’ve dogged traffic, and road subways but everywhere in the world is somewhere that is unique but has some of the same old things going on.
I stayed in three places over the course of about 7 days in Chicago. My flight was simple and quick O’Hare is a monster of an airport and I was lucky enough to meet someone nice enough to give me a couple pointers on how to get around the city at approximately 2 am while I was trying to find my hostel and one of the subway lines i was going to take had just stopped running. Smart move? I think not but it worked out for the best, lucky for me. After hoisting my ridiculous luggage up and down flights of stairs and through pee scented elevator shafts (welcome to Chicago) I traveled a couple of blocks to a small neighborhood and stayed at Chicago Getaway Hostel for about 35 bucks for the night. I “slept” (well not really) then packed up, got a quick shower and headed over to store my luggage. A hostel is a truly funny thing like a not so organized barracks with crazy people sharing the same space. I like my own space just fine but for a couple of hours I couldn’t complain too much. Welcome to 8 women sleeping in a chaotic clammy basement, oh joy.
I decided to get a quick breakfast and coffee I headed to north Clark street a lovely little row of restaurants,shops, and such in Lincoln Park and had breakfast in an Austrian Bakery called Österreichische
I had a quick coffee and a really delicious egg, swiss, homemade sausage, and spinach filled croissant. The croissant was one of the best I’ve eaten. It was so buttery and delicious that I couldn’t finish all the eggs I chose to eat the pastry and sausage instead. The German sausage was very tender and wonderful you could tell that it was homemade pressed pork with different spices in it than a regular traditional breakfast sausage. This place is also adorable because they sell a plethora of different regional pastries, cakes, cookies, and homemade breads, as well as Austrian specialties. If you’re ever up there check it out. The strudel looked to die for. The waitress here was also amongst the best servers I’ve had. Sweet and attentive but not overbearing.
After my quick breakfast/lunch I continued on about a 10 mile hike around Lincoln Park. I saw the conservatory of amazing flowers and plants, the Lincoln Park Zoo which was fun and free and I hadn’t been to a zoo in ages, walked through Bucktown and down Lincoln Avenue and essentially got lost for 4 hours. I love roaming places so it didn’t bother me. Finally my co captain for my trip Michelle called me and I had managed to get back towards the hostel and find where our other hotel was going to be and we made it. The Belden Stratford is where we stayed it is an older building facing Lake Michigan, with a gorgeous view and just the right amenities. after we got settled we were on our way to our 1st dinner in Lincoln Park. On my little afternoon of getting lost I found a place that my brother and his friends has talked about called Lou Malnati’s. Lou Malnati’s is a chain of deep dish pizza restaurants that even delivers to other states by mail. The atmosphere in the restaurant is fun and family oriented just as a pizza place should be. The middle of the dining room was even centered with a couple of couches and a big screen TV with the baseball game on. The dining room was packed and for good reason. The pizza here is awesome. What we also agreed on was that the place was filled with people from Chicago and not just tourists. I love eating at places that are good enough for anyone to go to whenever they want something good to eat. This was just that kind of place.
We started with a Malnati Salad
Romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, black olives, sliced mushrooms, crumbled Volpi salami and gorgonzola cheese. Tossed with Lou’s famous dressing with a touch of romano cheese.
The salad was a good combo of sweet and salty, with the hungry people that we were if we hadn’t gotten the salad we could of eaten each other, since pizzas take 30 35 minutes to prepare, which was perfectly fine for us to eat and hang out talking about our flights in and my little day packed of getting lost.
Our pizza came which I ordered
The “Malnati Chicago Classic”
House made specialty sausage, a very thick richly ripe tomato sauce and thick melted fatty mozzarella cheese and a deep dish butter crust
You can taste the butter in the crust it flakey and rich with very little salt. But the salt from the thick perfectly melted cheese and the sausage is a really perfect balance. I love that the tomatoes are on top which leaves the crust to have a crisp texture with the wonderful flavor of tomato.
A really awesome pizza and salad for my 1st dinner in Chicago. Michelle had The Lou spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes covered with mozzarella, romano and cheddar cheese. Good pizza!
So that was my 1st day in Chicago you got 5 more to go. Fair warning. I took over 1200 pictures, they wont all be here but it does take a lot of work to get through them all. I hope you enjoy this adventure as much as I did.
Keep checking back
Cheers
Unrivaledkitch
An Early Father’s Day Wish… What does a father really need on father’s day? My dad likes peace and quiet, maybe a couple of packs of pro v golf balls, or these days to pitch in on his latest eBay find, some food, and a …
I have a small little charcoal grill for now, if i had it my way I’d have a much bigger one but this does the trick for the moment. It gives enough constant heat that cooks meat evenly and keeps vegetables from turning black too …
As our evening progressed and I departed from my CARNEVINO experience I walked the rest of the way back to my hotel where I was to meet the ladies for our evening out amongst adults. I got back to an empty hotel room and was met by my friends, we drank mixed cocktails with more vodka than mix and got out on our way. We stopped and said hello to my friend Michelle who was also in Vegas with some of her friends and then went off to the Cosmopolitan Hotel to the Chandelier Bar We decided that it wasn’t probably the best suited for our dire need to dance, so we went back to our hotel and up to Chateau nightclub and garden . We danced the night away. After that Katie and I ventured out for early morning junk food and slots. People watching and hiking the Vegas strip finally around 530 in the morning we were back and in bed for the sun rise.
Michelle and I
Me, Katie, and Hollee
Dance Party!
Still full and probably a little tipsy, we woke up and checked out of the Paris Hotel. Slipped on some bathing suits and headed to the pool for a while. During which time Katie’s cousin went to visit with her uncle and grandfather after we took in enough sun and popped in the pool a couple of times, we decided to walk over to Ceasers Palace for lunch.
We walked around for a while trying to decide where a good place to eat would be and finally we came to Max Brenner a cute little crazy candy shop which also serves food from brunch to dinner. The menu covered a wide range of things from salads to pizzas burgers and sandwiches which were perfect for lunch. The menu is pretty extensive with lush desserts and any kind of coffee/sweet drink you could imagine. But most of all the restaurant itself was adorable. Beautiful crazy decor everywhere with accents of fresh chili pods, cocoa beans, coffee, and chocolate everywhere. Think Modern day stylish Willy Wonka.
Look at this salt and pepper! adorable
We decided on
Greek Style Cucumber Salad which included
Feta, red onions, tomatoes, olives, hummus crustini and red-wine vinaigrette
This salad was simple and presented well. The dressing was tangy and delicious and the pile of cucumbers on top was seeded and crunchy in a spinach based salad, basic and done well.
We also had Sliced & Diced Steak “Pillow” Panini certified angus beef
char gilled & thin sliced skirt steak tossed with diced caramelized onions on a bed of asiago cheese crisps. baby spinach, roasted tomatoes, red pepper aioli
This steak sandwich was very good. The meat was chopped very fine but still tender and as it melted in your mouth. The aioli as well as the tomatoes left a very sharp spicy roasted flavor that the meat played well with and the asiago cheese crisp gave a crunch to the sandwich that just made it better than I thought. I also really enjoyed the bread homemade pickles on the side and waffle fries. Presentation on the plate was really cute served on a cutting board with the fries in a glass.
The service was sweet and to the point.
I wanted dessert badly but too much of a good thing is always the case; I’ll definitely have to go back for a latte and dessert sometime.
Katie and I then played some slots in Ceasers and waited for her cousin. We roamed around Vegas for an hour or so visiting the Bellagio which is gorgeous and then the girls were off back to the valley by that evening.
I met up with some other friends who were visiting in Vegas as well, Jeff, Jabari and Valinda, and spent the rest of the evening with them.
After relaxing in the condo with friends having a couple of beers and hanging out we finally got out to the strip. Valinda was in search for french onion soup so we went back to Paris Hotel only to be disappointed because it was so late that no one was really open. So we decided to give up the search and head down to Excalibur and then walk over to New York New York to see what they had to eat. So after circling the casinos a couple of times and the angst of hungry people we finally found a restaurant that was open.
The restaurant was large and we sat on a type of patio. Wouldn’t you know it the only place open is Italian. I knew off the bat pretty much what I wanted from a place like this. Il fornaio is a chain of restaurants open in a lot of different parts of California and other states. The atmosphere was nice with linen on the tables and balsamic and oil with our bread. I ordered a Calzone. I love Calzone’s this one was very nicely done with ricotta cheese, mozzarella, ham and mushroom and tomato sauce. For what we were up against in our late night battle for dinner this was perfectly fine by me.
A last my final meal in Vegas. What an amazing trip. I’m so glad I got to be with such awesome people and that we were all together at some point in time. I can’t wait till my next visit. I hope this inspires you to go out and try something else.
After I finished putting the last punctuation on my last blog I took off to a dear friend of mines house as we prepared to go to Las Vegas. Our trip was filled with lavish drinks, dancing for hours, roaming the neon lights by the …
I hope everyone’s having a marvelous weekend. I’m at my volunteer yoga studio gig trying to speed up time till I get in the car and am headed for Sin City. I haven’t been to Vegas in maybe 9 months or something like that but …
Have you ever seen a pile of books you know you’ll never get through but the possibility of so many words just amazes your mind? I felt that way going into this book shop with Stephanie called Movie World quite the contrary name for such a massive book store. We have so many fun adventures together that I love being able to document these precious moments in time. We all take advantage of our daily grind. Getting to know people sometimes gets pushed to the back of our thought process I’m glad to say that this wasn’t the case last Wednesday. I love California, now much more than ever before. Spring is amazing here and theres so much life just in the air its really wonderful. Last Wednesday Stephanie and I headed out to Burbank for some food, fashion, and furnishing fun. Ikea, Urban Outfitters, Movie World, Chadka Thai, and Tony’s Darts Away were our destinations on a beautiful spring afternoon.
I love Burbank, it really has everything in a small radius of an area and venturing out a little further will get you even more for what you’re looking for. We set out to go to two places and ended up stopping at much more than that. Take Movie World
Here’s Stephanie Rummaging through to find a healthy hand full of books to grace her coffee table at extremely affordable prices. I also bought the rest of my Harry Potter Books 1-3 in great condition for 10 dollars.
We went to Ikea and just the color pallets and Kitchens alone make my heart soon. Oh the imagination that takes place in drawing up my dream kitchen and then realizing that its more than I’ll make for a long time so i can keep dreaming for a bit.
After our browsing about we decided that we would enjoy something to eat, I was thinking about just having a Vegan sausage at Tony’s Darts Away but with all the options around we decided to have lunch out where we were. Thai had sounded nice to Stephanie so we decided on a place with a seemingly interesting menu as well as a happy hour and thought why not. I love Thai Food but I wasn’t extremely hungry for curry or pad Thai or anything that I would normally order at a Thai restaurant. But for a three dollar beer and a 5 dollar appetizer I felt sold and they had what Stephanie wanted on the menu too. The place is called Chadaka Thai The style I believe their going for is contemporary, the lighting in side is very dark but it was a beautiful day so we opted to eat on the small patio. I ordered Tom Kha with tofu which was seasoned well and pretty good, I’d eat it again. As well as Thai egg rolls that tasted like peppery cabbage the sauce was good and the shells were fried nicely but were nothing to really write home about. I’d say go for happy hour with good company,have a drink, and enjoy California sunshine. My beer was good, my soup was awesome, my company was better.
The memory card on my camera was a bit off so I only have a couple of pictures.
I know that my preference is darker stout beers with bitter notes and lovely espresso essence. Coffee and beer in one you have my heart. I ordered a flight because I like doing that. It gives me for 8 bucks the chance to explore flavor and change it up if one beer is too heavy, another is lighter, and then compare and contrast.
Thanks for sharing our journey.
P.S. It’s the end of the month so you know what that means. Head over to the spiciefoodie.blogspot.com and check out this months YBR. Your Best Recipe is a awesome way to share your food with a multitude of culinary writters. So if you’re a food blogger please keep up to date with Nancy and here’s a link to a little more information. My entry this month is Spring Rolls. I hope you’ve seen them if you haven’t please check them out by clicking this banner and visit Nancy at the spiciefoodie for all the other awesome entries.
I’d like to introduce you all to my little brother Kyle. He’s a little brother/fireman/married/ condo owner/foodie/wearer of plaid. But those are just a couple of little things about him. Most of all he’s my little brother who likes to think I’m his little sister …