Day 13: The Grind

You know how my plans tend to fall through a lot? Well yesterday I was so exhausted from prom that I fell asleep on my couch around 6:00 PM and I woke up in my bed at 9:30 this morning with no recollection of how I got there. That is my way of saying I slept through Old Town yesterday. My sincerest apologies, especially to Liz because right now I'm dead last in the friendship competition. I will visit you eventually, I promise.

Going to Avondale may seem like a cop-out since I ate Polish food in Avondale last week, but I'm going to tell you why it isn't. The Polish part of Avondale is sometimes considered a separate neighborhood from Avondale, sometimes called The Polish Village, and sometimes called Waclawowo. Or at least I think that it is separate. Please don't be mad at me if that was misinformation, and today really was a cop-out. So, because I needed to go to actual Avondale I went to a cafe there called The Grind (not to be confused with the show on MTV that was previously hosted by a shirtless Eric Nies, who was also on "The Real World" and "Confessions of A Teen Idol. That last bit was just in case you are ever questioned about MTV mini-celebrities when you are a contestant on Jeopardy) located at 4613 N. Lincoln Avenue:

Erica and Caroline (my dates for the day) told me that this was where we were going to meet our future husbands because apparently one of the women who wrote a review online met her husband here, so I was totally pumped to meet the man I would spend the rest of my life with! The food was good, but sadly I did not make any romantic connections...

To get to The Grind, I took the number 8 bus north until the Lincoln/Fullerton stop, and then I took the number 11 bus north on Lincoln until the Wilson stop. Sidenote: the Halsted bus was completely empty when I got on, but within about three blocks it got uncharacteristically crowded. But, since I was seated towards the front I got a first-row seat to the people-entering-the-bus show. This family-- a mom, dad, and a kid in a stroller--entered the bus about a mile after I did. The mom had about four teeth and the dad was carrying a toddler in his arms, but pushing an empty stroller, which I thought was sort of weird. So, the dad has the stroller sitting in the middle of the aisle so no one can walk through, but he lets the kid stand on this counter-like thing in the front of the bus. The dad lets go at some point just as the bus is lurching to a stop. The kid falls off of the counter-thing and directly into a woman in a wheelchair's lap. The dad picks up the kid (does not apologize because he is rude) and laughs as the kid bites one of the plastic handles that people hold onto when the bus is moving, which is disgusting in at least two ways. Then, he lets her walk on the ground. The kid proceeds to walk up to the lady across the aisle from the woman in a wheelchair and pulls up her skirt. The mom notices this, picks up the kid (does not apologize because she is rude) and puts the kid back in the stroller, just as a man with a practically no hair and a Hitler-looking mustache walks on the bus. As the mom is putting the kid into the stroller (finally, because the stroller is taking up room anyway) she bumps into the Bald Hitler. Then a brief fight breaks out between the dad and the Bald Hitler because the Bald Hitler "intentionally" bumped into the mom because she and her four teeth were so good-looking that the Bald Hitler could not control himself. The bus driver then kicks the mom, the dad, the kid, and Bald Hitler off of the bus, as they yell and curse. As the doors close the spectators starts to applaud, and the bus driver takes a bow and continues driving. Next time I'm bringing popcorn.

Even though none of us met our soul mates there, The Grind was a really great little cafe. It is very artsy and cute inside. The walls are covered with pictures of punk-rock people:


But of course, my favorite part of the decor was the dessert and pastry bar that is the focus of attention (or at least the focus of my attention) when you walk in:


It looks so delicious...

The food is mainly vegetarian, with the exception of a tuna sandwich. I was sort of surprised at this, and possibly a little disappointed, however when I actually ate my sandwich I could hardly tell. It was so flavorful and yummy that I did not notice:


It was tomato, lettuce, smoked mozzarella, and this pesto sauce that was really good, probably because they make it fresh there, all on ciabatta bread. The salad came with all of the sandwiches, and it is just a simple lettuce and cucumber salad, but you get to choose from three dressings. The one pictured here is balsamic. I think it was the pesto that made me not care that there was no meat on the sandwich. It was really good pesto.

Erica ordered Sue's Bagel, which is similar to what I had, but it was on a bagel. Actually, reading the description on their menu, I kind of wished that I ordered Sue's Bagel instead of what I ordered... but no matter:


The bagel contained the pesto from my sandwich that made me swear off men and switch to loving garnishes, but it also contained baked goat cheese which is awesome. Also, this salad had a raspberry dressing. Or at least, I think it does. The online menu does not mention dressing types for side salads. Also, Erica ordered a Red Smoothie:


The Red Smoothie contains raspberry, yogurt, honey, and orange juice. I did not taste the smoothie because I am a moron, however the reviews, and Erica, tell me that it was very good.

Caroline ordered the Italian Med sandwich:



Actually, reading the ingredients of this sandwich makes me kind of want to cheat on my sandwich and Erica's sandwich. The Italian Med contains hummus, feta, artichoke salad, cucumber, and lettuce on the same ciabatta bread that my sandwich was on. If only this sandwich had a little bit of pesto...

Caroline also ordered a drink:


The drink is not on the online menu, so I can not be certain about the name of the drink, but if I remember correctly, it is called a Lemon Fizzy. I think it is basically just lemon juice with sparkling water, but I think you can order it sweetened. Caroline not order it sweetened, which I think she regretted, but I tasted it and it tasted pretty good. Very refreshing, but not as sweet as lemonade or as a lemon-flavored soda. Not that I've ever tasted lemon-flavored soda. Why don't they sell lemon-flavored soda?

Remember how I said that the dessert bar drew my attention from the second I walked into the cafe? Well, this chocolate chip cheesecake dessert kept calling my name throughout all of lunch. So I felt like I owed it to the cheesecake to buy it:


So, I did. The cheesecake part was really good. Very rich in flavor, if not exactly creamy. But the crust was sort of weird. In theory it was a regular crushed graham cracker crust, but it tasted kind of like granola. Maybe it was granola... but it was not a very good crust. Maybe I would have liked it better if I knew what it was.

I do not know exactly how much we spent as a group because we all ordered separately. However I know that my meal, between the sandwich and the cheesecake was about $13.

After lunch, we still weren't sick of each other! So, to celebrate this achievement, we went to the stores across the street from the restaurant. My favorite was this comic book store. I wish I remembered the name. I'm going to guess that its name was "Comic Book Store." So, we walked into Comic Book Store and immediately, I knew what it felt like to be Leonard from The Big Bang Theory:


Although, I guess Leonard would never have taken the action figures out of the boxes. Anyway, this store had some pretty ridiculous collectables. Some of the highlights were The Chocolate Mpire:


But my personal favorite had to be P.J. Sparkles. If you hug her, she lights up with LOVE! Only a few people can do that:


Oooh! And her party dress becomes a nightie! I don't know anyone who can do that!

So went my day in Avondale: sandwich and cheesecake, P.J. Sparkles, and 45 minutes of playing 20 questions in the Old Town School of Folk Music while listening to a 20-something year old try to play "A Whole New World" on what I can only assume was a dying cat. It was a good day.

Considering how unreliable I am, I may or may not have a post tomorrow. May Project is winding down and there a few... um... requirements... that may need to be tweaked just a little bit. If I do go out for food tomorrow, it may finally be to Old Town. But now that I said that, I totally just jinxed myself...

One more thing: I have decided that I will continue this blog after May Project is officially over. Whenever I go out to dinner or lunch or some place interesting, I will tell you all about it. So, keep checking back, or even subscribe to my RSS feed or become a follower of my blog. That way you can passively stalk me instead of actively stalking me. Trust me, passive stalking is way more fun. Until next time, happy eating!

Day 9: Avondale/"Polish Village"

So, apparently yesterday was some sort of holiday? I was going to eat dinner in Old Town, but because of this alleged "holiday" my family thought it would be nice if we ate dinner together. I agreed with this sentiment and thought that we should go out for barbecue in Old Town. But, my parents said no because apparently we are in some sort of recession? Bottom line: I did not go out to eat yesterday. Sorry to disappoint.

Today's neighborhood was the Polish Village, also known as "Jackowo," located inside of Avondale. Jackowo is one of Chicago's most vibrant "Polish Patches." The street is covered in Polish restaurants, Polish laundromats, and even Polish dollar stores:

Like many of Chicago's ethnic patches, Jackowo is currently experiencing gentrification, however it has managed to retain enough of its culture to feed me today.

Due to a last-minute cancellation of my plans with Chris Pine, I had no date for lunch today until 10:00 this morning. Luckily, my grandparents found time in between their many doctor's appointments to eat lunch with me at The Red Apple, also known as Czerwone Jabluszko, located at 3121 N. Milwaukee Ave:


In order to get there, I took my favorite bus, the number 8, north until the Milwaukee/Grand stop where I took the Blue Line towards O'Hare, and got off at Belmont. Once at Belmont I walked west for about 6 blocks to reach the Milwaukee/Belmont intersection. Then I turned onto Milwaukee and walked south for half a block until I reached today's restaurant. Sidenote: I lied to a busdriver! When we were waiting at a red light right before the Milwaukee/Grand stop, I saw two entrances to the Blue Line, one on either side of the street. Because I'm kind of an moron, I asked the bus driver, "Which entrance leads to the train heading towards O'Hare?" The bus driver looked at me, smirked, and said, "They both lead to the same place," his voice dripping with disdain. I smirked back at him and said, "Well, I'm from New York, and in New York, the trains on either side of the street head in different directions," with identical disdain. He looked shocked, appologized, and said, "Did you just move here?" and I said "No, I'm going to the University of Chicago next year and I'm just here visiting." Then the light turned green, we pulled through the intersection, and I exited the bus. That man will never mess with people from New York again!

The Red Apple is a buffet-style restaurant that serves massive amounts of food. For $9.49 a lunch, and $9.99 a dinner, you get all the pierogis and schnitzel you can force down your throat. The restaurant itself looks like any buffet-style restaurant, with generic-looking tables and chairs, but a few Polish adornments:


This is actually an enlargement of the coat-of-arms that is pictured on the Polish flag:


The food at the Red Apple was very good. The buffet was huge, filling up one whole room and spilling over into the next room:


Polish food is very interesting because it is a mixture of many different cultures. Since Poland was passed around from country to country throughout much of the last 200 years of history, Polish food tends to contain a lot of German or Russian dishes like schnitzel and borscht.

The first thing you hit in the buffet are salads and fruits, and other icky stuff like that. Some of the foods in this section included fermented roots like shredded cabbage known as sauerkraut:


Then the next section held the meat and potato entrees. Due to the weird heat lamps above the buffet, the pictures that I took look sort of discolored, so most of the pictures posted are courtesy of Google Image Search. *Thank you Google Image Search!*:

The next section held the most delicious stuff, with these delicious apple pancakes, potato pancakes, cheese blintzes, meat pierogis, potato and cheese pierogis... everything was fantastic and super greasy. One of the highlights was the schnitzel:


Schnitzel is typically a German or Austrian dish, although it can also be Polish. Schnitzel is a thin slice of veal coated in breadcrumbs and then fried. Polish schnitzel is very similar to the Austrian schnitzel, which, when it is not served in a buffet, is usually served with potatoes and a lemon slice. This schnitzel was sort of weird because it was very circular, and schnitzel is usually very flat. But it tasted good, so no matter. The best part about eating schnitzel was that I finally understood the part in that song: "Schnitzel with noodles and whiskers on kittens, something and hayballs and something with mittens... la la la something, and poodles with strings..." Real schnitzel looks like this:

When the schnitzel is made with pork instead of veal, it is called kotlet schabowy, or pork cutlet. This was the traditional Polish dish before the German influences kicked in.

Another highlight of my meal were the pierogis. Oh. My. Pierogi. These were fantastic. There were two types, meat-filled and cheese and potato-filled. The cheese and potato-filled ones were so tasty I wanted to cry:


Pierogis are kind of like Chinese potstickers. They have dumpling wrappings on the outside and various types of filling on the inside. There is a restaurant called "Pierogi Place" that I considered going to today that served 15 different types of pierogi! Some of the more delicious-sounding flavors were cherry, sweet cheese, blueberry, and some of the more traditional ones contained spinach, mushrooms, meat, or potatoes. I decided not to go to that restaurant because there did not seem like much variety, but I kind of regret it now because pierogis are so fantastic.

They were not serving borscht today, which I was sad about because I would have loved to taste it:


Borscht is a cold beet soup that is also served in Russia. I have always been slightly afraid of the thought of a cold beet soup, and I was eager to conquer that fear today... I guess that is one reason to go back...

The apple pancakes were another highlight:


These are much denser than typical American pancakes. It is a very thick and heavy dish that is sometimes served with sour cream or applesauce. They usually contain a fruit like apples or peaches, but sometimes they contain cheese. These cheese-filled pancakes are similar to cheese blintzes. The blintzes that we ate today were boiled, but sometimes they are fried:

There was a section of the buffet dedicated to dessert, but only a few of them were traditional Polish desserts. One of the traditional ones is called kolaczki:

These are jam-filled cookies typically served at Christmastime. Another dessert that is only served once a week at The Red Apple is called a ponczki:

Ponczkis are jam- or custard-filled Polish donuts that are heavier than our American donuts. They are usually eaten on Fat Thursday in Poland, which is the last Thursday before Lent. These were not served today at The Red Apple, but, again, it will give me a reason to go back.

It was a very good and inexpensive lunch, and I ate so much that I will most likely not be hungry for dinner, or for breakfast tomorrow. Lunch was about $40 for the three of us, and we had a great time, so it was worth it. Tomorrow I will be eating in Hyde Park, perhaps at Cedar's. However, I am up for suggestions for tomorrow because all I really know in Hyde Park is the Medici and the Subway on 57th street, and the cafeteria at the business school.