Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Day 5: Wicker Park

Today I ate lunch in Wicker Park with my grandparents. The best part about going out with grandparents, besides the fabulous company of course, is that grandparents are programmed to spoil and flatter grandchildren. My ego has grown sevenfold since my last blogpost, and my wallet (or rather my parents' wallet) has remained the same size as it was on Friday.

Getting to Wicker Park was fairly easy. First, I took the number 8 bus down Halsted for about 20 minutes until I reached the Milwaukee/Grand stop. At Milwaukee/Grand I transferred to the Blue Line train headed towards O'Hare, which was four stops away from Western, which was where I exited and walked about three blocks to get to today's restaurant. Sidenote: It should have been this easy but one stop before Western our train decided it was going to become an express train and there was a mad rush to get out of the train before it departed. Children were crying! Men were trampling over women! Bums were losing limbs! I managed to push through the pitchforks and torches and escaped just in time and to wait for the next train. One more sidenote: Remind me not to wear a tanktop on the train ever again , even when it is three million degrees outside. When I was on my first train, this guy with a skull tattooed on his left arm and a hammer and sickle tattooed on his right was staring at me. Then an old woman next to him nudged him and the tattooed man looks at her and says, "sorry ma..." and then looked down until right before he was about to get off. When his "ma's" back was turned, he raised his pierced eyebrows at me a few times and then walked off, his mullet billowing in the Blue Line-enduced breeze. I have named him Jeremiah because he looked kind of like a bullfrog.

Finally, I arrived in Wicker Park. Wicker Park is located in West Town, immediately south of Bucktown, which is a neighborhood that is usually associated with Wicker Park. Wicker Park was initially developed in the year 1871, immediately after the Great Chicago Fire, in order to provide houses for the newly homeless Chicagoans. Today, the area is typically home to young professionals and college students who shop at artsy boutiques and eat at nice restaurants such as this:


Cafe Bolero is a Cuban restaurant located at 2252 N. Western Avenue. It is a typical Wicker Park restaurant in that it serves good food and that it is very swanky-looking inside, however it is a mixture of many Wicker Park cultures, both past and present. After World War II, Wicker Park became home to many Puerto Rican immigrants, who, due to urban renewal projects and general gentrification, have since been forced out of the area. This restaurant, however, serves Cuban food, which is very similar to Puerto Rican food, at a reasonable price. So even though it feels like modern Wicker Park in terms of ambiance, the culture of the restaurant is very much like past Wicker Park.

The modern Wicker Park aspects of the restaurant are apparent in the feel of the restaurant. The walls of the restaurant are lined with beautiful and colorful murals:


Upon being seated, we were served with Cuban bread and a really delicious butter:


Cuban bread typically has a very thin, flaky, almost papery crust, and a moist and soft center. It is usually sold in long loafs, although here we only see a piece of it, and the cross-sections are usually rectangular, which you can sort of see from the picture. The butter we were given with the bread was made fresh in the restaurant. It was not only very soft and easy to spread, but it was mixed with garlic and thyme (but, sadly, not parsley, sage, or rosemary). I probably could have eaten much more bread than I did, had we not ordered a bunch of other appetizers. First, we ordered the "Bolero combo platter" for a "tapa" which, roughly translated, means appetizer in Spanish:


Starting on the left, we have one tamal (plural: tamales) which is steam-cooked corn dough mixed with pieces of corn and other spices wrapped in a corn husk (I did not eat the corn husk, and I did not even have to ask the waitress!):


This was pretty good, if a little bland, but usually tamales are a little bland, considering they are really just corn. However, when I added a little hotsauce (located in the plastic cup) the tamal actually tasted much better. Proceeding to the right, the little brown hotdog-shaped things are ham croquettes:


These were my favorite things on the plate. Croquettes are mashed potatoes, minced meat, and spices, all encased in a bread crumb batter, and then fried. These croquettes were absolutely delicious. The outside was crunchy, which contrasted beautifully with the mushy, but immensely flavorful inside. If you are planning on eating at Cafe Bolero, order the croquettes. Immediately to the right of the croquettes are stuffed plantains:


Plantains look like big bananas, although they taste very different. They are not sweet like bananas are, and they are more starchy than bananas. They are sort of a mixture of a banana and a potato:

The stuffed plantains that we ate were mashed patties of plantains, mixed with spices, fried, and then stuffed with a shredded barbecue chicken. They were very good. But not as good as the croquettes. Finally, at the far right of the plate, are papas rellenas:

Papas rellenas are stuffed potatoes (on the menu they are called "stuffed potato balls"). Papas rellenas are traditionally Peruvian. They are mashed potatoes seasoned with a little bit of ground meat, and then fried in a bread crumb batter. These are different from croquettes in both the texture of the potato, and in the potato-to-meat ratio. Croquettes are mainly meat with a little bit of very mushy potato surrounding it. Papas rellenas are mainly firm potatoes, with just a little bit of meat for seasoning. Usually, papas rellenas are not fried in the same way that croquettes are, however, at this restaurant they were. In addition, we ordered a side dish of yuca (pronounced yoo-ka) for another appetizer:


Yucas are like stringy potatoes:

In Peru, yuca is typically served fried at the beginning of the meal, in the same way that we eat bread at the beginning of a meal. At Cafe Bolero, however, the yuca is served boiled, and covered in oil and garlic and lime juice, although, I think you can order it fried. It was not exactly an exciting dish, but it had a nice texture and was very comforting to eat.

As if we were still hungry, we ordered entrees. I ordered "chuletas de puerco," which is "pork chops" in Spanish:


On the left is white rice that I later covered with black beans that came on the side. The weird-looking brown things next to the rice are sweet plantains. These were the best things that I have eaten since my May Project started. It was like a large, thick slice of banana had been roasted so that the outside tasted like roasted squash, but sweeter. That is the best way that I can describe it. They were absolutely amazing, and it is a shame that there were not more of those on my plate. The pork chops were very good too, although not as good as the plantains. The pork chops had a texture just like any pork chops that we are used to, but the flavor was delicious. It was peppery, but not too spicy. The sauce was kind of like a barbecue sauce, but it was not quite as sweet. Again, it is impossible to describe, but it was very good.

My grandmother ordered "Camarones a la Criolla," which I am going to assume was good. I did not try it because it is shrimp, and shrimp comes from the ocean, and things that come from the ocean scare me. Probably because they can swim faster than I can and I'm jealous. That's why I don't eat things named Caroline:


My grandfather ordered "Chilindron de Chivo" which is actually stewed goat meat:

Goats can't swim, so I tried some of this. It was much better than I expected it to be, especially because I don't usually like stewed things. The meat was very flavorful and very tender, although I guess you could stew a leather shoe and it would be tender. But still, this dish was very good.

None of us finished our meal because we had ordered an exorbitant amount of food. Our total bill was $72.81, which sounds like a lot, but there were three of us eating, and we ordered way too much food. We each took home over half of our entrees. Item-by-item analysis would show that it was actually very reasonably priced, especially considering both the quantity and quality of the food we ordered.

Also in Wicker Park there is an ice cream shop called iCream, not "eye cream." I would not have said anything, but this ambiguity led to a really confusing phone conversation with my mother:


This ice cream place is NOTHING COMPARED TO COLDSTONE but it is actually very good. And it is a really cool concept. You select what type of dessert you want, either ice cream, frozen yogurt, hot pudding, or sorbet (if you want you can order it organic or with soy instead of milk for an additional fee). Then you choose what flavors you want. You can choose up to two, which is nice because there are a lot to choose from. There is grape, strawberry, chocolate, white chocolate, caramal, etc. You can even choose to add a color, although I did not do that. You can also add mix-ins, but that costs extra. Then, they use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream. This part is awesome:

I ordered a small ice cream with caramel and white chocolate flavors and chocolate chips mixed in. The people who worked there were really friendly, and they complimented my flavor-mixing abilities. Apparently a lot of people will order something like honey and caramel, grape and bubble-gum, tomato and earwax... But I brag. Also, if you are a U of C student, you can get a 10% discount because the person who founded iCream was a graduate of the business school. Trust me, you get a discount even if the lady behind the counter sneers at you for asking if you get a discount if you are a U of C student. With the discount the price was only $3.60, so it was pretty reasonable, considering I got to see smoke!

Tomorrow I am going to eat downtown, and I am looking for company. I think I may go to the Grand Lux Cafe for breakfast because a few people have told me that they have really good breakfast food there. So let me know if you want to eat with me!

1 comment:

  1. Sorry for the late comment, my dear. Jeremiah was probably my favorite part of this post, considering I'm still sitting here giggling to myself. Do you remember the reality show creating the "new Partridges"? One of the songs they used to audition was Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog (da da da) he was a good friend of mine (da da da)... I'm also glad you don't eat Caroline.
    Bottom line, I love your blog because it's informative and YOU CRACK ME UP.

    ReplyDelete