Day 6: Southloop

Slight change of plans... A power greater than I deemed the Grand Lux Cafe to be too expensive, so instead of eating there, my Pa & I ate at a Thai/Japanese fusion restaurant called "Ma & I" located at 1234 South Michigan Avenue:


This is very accessible from public transportation because it is about three blocks away from the Roosevelt stop for the red/green/orange line trains. However, I got there going east for about 6 minutes on the number 12 bus. The best thing about this restaurant is how open it is. Whenever the weather is nice, they open up the windows and you can enjoy your Thai-ponese food while watching men use dogs to attract women and women use running to attract men. Or, if you don't like to observe the mating patterns of 20-something humans, you can climb in and out of the restaurant using the windows, a la Sam from "Clarissa Explains It All." OR, if you don't like classic 90's Nickelodeon, you can count the number of people that illegally park in the tow zone directly in front of the window (2).

The restaurant itself is very nice, but not exactly elaborately decorated. There are a few simple decorations:
The only part of the restaurant that is exciting is the back where there is a sushi bar:


Again, I do not eat things that can swim faster than I can, so I took a picture of the sushi that the man next to me was eating:

I hope that man isn't one of my trillions of readers. He was in the bathroom when I took this... Actually, from the looks of it, this is sashimi not sushi. Sashimi is just sliced raw fish alone, and sushi is served inside of rice with seaweed wrapped around it. Sashimi is a traditionally served as the first dish in a Japanese meal. There are forms of sashimi other than fish. For example, some people eat basashi, which is a raw horse meat:


Ma & I has separate lunch and dinner menus, although you can order off of both when you eat there for lunch. The portions are slightly smaller at lunch, which means that the prices are lower. Even so, the portions still end up being really big. So, I recommend eating lunch there instead of dinner. The lunch menu is divided up into Thai food and Japanese food, so my I ordered something from the Thai menu and my dad ordered from the Japanese menu. My father ordered chicken teriyaki:


This is actually not what the chicken teriyaki looks like at Ma & I. See, I learned something today: cameras have batteries. My camera died right before I was able to take a picture of my father's chicken teriyaki. So, this is image is brought to you courtesy of Good Image Search. *Thank you Google Image Search!*

Anyway, terikyaki is a cooking technique used in Japanese cuisine involving broiling or grilling food, in this case, chicken, in a sweet soy sauce marinde. Usually sake, a Japanese rice wine, is added to the terikyaki sauce, as well as sugar to add sweetness and to thicken the sauce.

Another good thing about eating lunch at Ma & I instead of dinner is that the entrees come with appetizers. My dad's chicken teriyaki came with miso soup:


Miso soup is a Japanese soup that consists of a miso paste that is mixed into a stock called "dashi." The dashi can be made up of anything from dried baby sardines (called "niboshi") or shiitake mushrooms. Usually, solid ingredients are added to the miso soup as well. In this soup there were onions and tofu. Sometimes seaweed or shrimp is added as well.

My dad ordered off of the Japanese portion of the menu, and I ordered off of the Thai portion. I ordered Spicy Thai Fried Rice:


Fried rice is usually considered a Chinese dish. However, Thai fried rice is cooked differently than Chinese fried rice is. Chinese fried rice is made with regular long-grained rice. Thai fried rice, on the other hand, is made with Thai Jasmine rice. Most fried rice is cooked with a meat; mine contained beef. What else is in the fried rice varies from chef to chef. They usually contain some form of spices, like coriander, and other ingredients, like onions, eggs, and mushrooms. This one contained cucumbers, lime, green onions, green peppers, and egg. This is some of the best fried rice that I have ever had.

Just like with my father's meal, my meal also came with an appetizer. I ordered crab rangoon. I don't care what you say, there is absolutely NO bite mark taken out of that crab rangoon on the bottom. And I can eat crabs because even though they can swim faster than I can, they walk sideways so I would beat them in a footrace so it's okay and I'm not a hyporcrite:


Anyway, the inside of crab rangoon is a mixture of crabmeat, (sometimes it's fake anyway, so there!) cream cheese, garlic, and generally something like celery or cucumber. The mixture is then placed inside of a wanton, which is then wrapped and deep-fried. The dipping sauce you see is a sweet and sour sauce. Crab rangoon is also sometimes dipped in soy sauce.

One bad thing about Ma & I is that there is no dessert menu, so that was a disappointment. I was feeling sad about this, so I went back home and ate a bunch of peanut butter ice cream. Problem solved:

Mmmm.... Food porn... Now I'm food horny.

The total cost of our meal was $32, and I took home about 3/4 of my meal because if I had eaten all of it then I would not fit into my prom dress. It was very good, and I would certainly go back again sometime.

Tomorrow is sort of a complicated day, so if I do end up going out for lunch it will be in Hyde Park. Although, I may just end up doing a segment on Subway... eat fresh!