Chicago is a cool city

We went to Chicago a couple of weeks ago and had a great time exploring the area. My college roommate is from there and is super proud of her city so we went several days before the wedding and stayed with her and her fiance. We checked out all the big touristy things and ate our way through the city (Chicago has so many great restaurants!). It also helped our enjoyment of the city that it was 70-something degrees every day we were there! Somehow I don't think it'll be that nice when I go back to Chicago in January for roomie's wedding :)

I've done a few of the tourist things while visiting my friend once before, but Willy hadn't checked out much of that stuff so our first stop was the well-known architecture river cruise offered by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. It's a relaxing way to see some of the great architecture that Chicago is famous for, but even though it always comes highly recommended it's more of a B in my book than an A+.

After the architecture tour we hit Millennium Park, this amazing public park opened in 2004. Saw the famous bean sculpture, which was super cool. The outdoor amphitheater is also awesome; they must have amazing events there. You can't see the sprawling lawn that extends to the right of this picture, but it's slightly sloped for stadium-style seating and it's just great. I also really liked this water feature thing they have. A couple of tall video screens displays the faces of Chicagoans and water spurts from their mouths into a shallow, long, rectangular pool that kids can run through. It's totally fun :)

The next day we hit a couple more big sites, Sears Tower (its new name, Willis Tower, sounds so lame) and Navy Pier. The new glass platforms that extend out from the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower are awesome! I spent a little too much time out on them looking down and got a bit of vertigo :P But it was very worth it. It was funny seeing the people who were afraid to go out on the platforms--including this big dude whose girlfriend was trying to coax him out to check out the view. Navy Pier was also a nice place to just walk around and check out the view of the lake. People knock it as a horrible tourist trap but I liked it, I just didn't buy any overpriced tchotchkes :)

Oh, we even got to see one of our old SF friends while we were in Chicago. Edwin spent a couple of months at his family's place before starting on an adventure living in China. We caught him right in the nick of time, the day before he was scheduled to fly out to China. Had lunch at Portillo's with him (mmm, hot dogs!) and then hung out together at Navy Pier. It was great to see him since it's been about a year since the last time we were able to get together.

The last big thing we hit was one of Chicago's famous comedy clubs, Second City. I had no idea the city was so known for this, but some big comedians came out of Second City, like Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Dan Castellaneta, John Candy, Dan Akroyd, Jim Belushi, and more. The show we saw was called Studs Terkel's Not Working. The first half was pretty funny, the second half was pretty lame. All in all, a good time.

Now for the eats...

Alinea: The big splurge meal. This is a very high-end restaurant with a tasting menu (12 courses) and a tour menu (25 courses). It has a completely non-descript big, gray door for an entrance and once inside you walk down a narrow, dimly lit hallway. Right when you get to the end and aren't sure if you're hitting a dead end or if there's a sharp turn to the right, a door on your left magically slides open and the hostess greets you. It's much larger inside than it looked from the street and the decor was classy and upscale without being too stuffy. The same could be said of the staff. There was one server
("waiter" doesn't seem like the right word for someone

who's wearing a suit that undoubtedly cost multiples of what I gave as a wedding gift to the couple we were in town for) who was a bit stiffer than the others, but in general everyone was very friendly and willing to chat and joke with us. There was a whole team of people involved in presenting the food, explaining how to eat it, cleaning up between courses, etc. so we didn't have just one server.

The dinner itself was certainly an experience, though I'm not sure molecular gastronomy (re: food with super fancy garnishes and presentation) is totally my cup of tea. I did appreciate the intense flavors and the sudden bursts and changes of tastes in my mouth, but some of the dishes came off as a bit salty to me (e.g. the truffle ravioli--which they gave us twice for some reason! Willy had joked that he ate his so fast that he thought it was actually missing and he needed another, and they actually brought us both another one!) That said, wagyu beef--a.ma.zing. It might as well have melted in my mouth, and I would definitely have taken another serving of that instead of the truffle ravioli! And you see that little black lopsided thing under the picture of the wagyu beef? Well it was a prop that went with that particular dish. They wanted to bring the grill experience to the dining room so since they don't cook the beef tableside they fill that little topsy-turvy contraption with some kind of essence of the beef, some dry ice, and then fill it with water when they serve you the dish so that smoke covers your table and the smell of grilled beef surrounds you while you eat. Those crazy fancy restaurants with their crazy fancy props! The last dish pictured is described on the menu as scallop, shellfish, and honeydew, the latter of which if memory serves was the foam portion of the dish. It was excellent.

I was sooooo stuffed at the end of the twelve courses that I have no idea how I'd ever do the 25-course tour. A couple of the servers kept insisting it was totally do-able, but I'm not convinced. Plus at $225 I think I'll wait to go to French Laundry. I will say that the tasting menu was probably priced pretty accurately at $145, but I've decided I'm more of a traditional cooking technique kinda gal and I'd go back to Blue Ginger's $85 tasting menu over this. Don't regret trying it one bit though.

Art of Pizza: One of my online resources recommended this place for its pizza over the Big Three usually recommended in Chi-town, those being Lou Malnatti's, Giordano's, and Gino's East. The stuffed (i.e. super deep dish) veggie pizza I got was delicious. I only managed to eat one slice, which is very unusual for me and my rather large appetite. Next time I'll have to try one of the other places to compare.

Lou Mitchell's: Went to this diner for breakfast based on another online rec. It's a well-known institution in Chicago and I guess lines get pretty long on the weekends (though probably not as long as the line at Hot Doug's--holy crap that was crazy. More on that later). While you're waiting you get a fresh-made donut hole that's very yummy and not too sweet, and the ladies also get a trick-or-treat-sized box of Milk Duds :) Since we went on a Thursday morning we didn't wait at all. Willy's pancakes and my french toast were both very good, and they make a bunch of different baked goods fresh daily that you can take home with you (though some of them were pretty pricey).

Wishbone: Willy had been to this place years and years ago when he had been through Chicago and wanted to go back again for these corncakes (corn pancakes) he remembered. I have to say, they were really good and better than what we had at Lou Mitchell's.

Phoenix Restaurant (dim sum): Not as good as dim sum in Boston or the bay area, but decent overall. On weekdays they offer a picture menu that you can order off of instead of pushing carts around, which probably helps non-Chinese diners. I'm sure they do this because of the lower volume of diners on weekdays so they can cook to order instead of risking putting a bunch of stuff out on carts that might or might not get picked up.

The only place I wanted to go to that we didn't squeeze in was Frontera Grill. The chef there, Rick Bayless, just won Top Chef Masters and his cuisine is upscale Mexican. Willy really likes Mexican food and we haven't found great options for that in Boston. Unfortunately, I didn't account for needing reservations even for lunch so we didn't get in. He also has a slightly higher end restaurant attached to Frontera called Topolobampo that I really want to try too, but figured with Alinea on the agenda I better not spend all our money eating :) Frontera does have a fast casual place in the food court of the old Marshall Field's (now Macy's) downtown so Willy did at least get to try that and he gave it a thumbs up.

A quick note on the wedding we were actually in town for: we were honored to be invited to the small, 50ish-guest event of my college friend and his now wife. It was really nice to attend a smaller wedding for once. I only wish we hadn't gotten lost and missed the ceremony itself :( We gave ourselves an hour to get to the venue which should have been only 25 mins. away but we overshot a turn and spent too much time getting back on track. *sigh* totally embarrassing, but at least we got to spend some time with the couple at the reception and the afterparty. Congrats, Ed & Min Jung!