Day 11: Downtown

It looks like I have more plans that fall through than I have that are successful. Due to two of my favorite people deciding that they should actually do their May Projects, I had to rearrange my schedule. Which should never happen, because my May Project should take priority over everyone else's May Projects. This is obviously not the general consensus, so, instead of eating Indian food today, I ate breakfast downtown at a restaurant called Oak Tree, located at 900 North Michigan Avenue. It is on the sixth floor of the North Michigan Avenue shops:


To get to 900 N. Michigan Avenue, I took my favorite bus, the number 8, north until the Chicago stop. From there, I transferred to the number 66 heading east until the Michigan stop. From there, I walked to 900 N. Michigan and then rode the elevator up to the 6th floor to meet Erica.

I think I am learning to love the bus, mainly because I meet such great people. I was riding north on the number 8 bus when a man walked on. The man was 30-something, attractive, and was holding a pink Nintendo DS. He sat down, turned the game on, and started to play Pokemon. I kid you not. Then a woman walks onto the bus right behind the man. She was 50-something, large, bug-eyed, and kept sticking her tongue out, as if she were a snake smelling the bus, although I do not know why she would want to smell a city bus... Anyway, a few stops later, The man with the pink DS and the snake woman exited the bus, one right after the other, and they started walking down the road side-by-side. They then turned and sat down together next to a building, and started making out! Why would anybody take a bus to a random place in the city to make out?

Then, I was riding east on the number 66 bus when I heard a siren. The bus pulled over and a blue, unmarked car pulled over directly in front of us and a man jumped out and walked on the bus. The man sat down directly behind me, pulls out his phone, and calls a friend. The entire bus listened as the man had a very loud conversation: "You'll never guess what just happened to me! I was on my way to work and I was running late. I was about a block away from the bus stop, and I was running to try and catch the bus. Suddenly this blue, unmarked car pulls up and two cops run out and say to me, 'Sir, hand us your backpack and put your hands on the vehicle. We're looking for a man with a gun, and you match the description.' So I got searched, and they obviously did not find a gun, and I was like, 'Great, now I have missed my bus. Can you at least drive me to work?' They're like, 'No, we can't take you all the way there, but we did make you late, so hop in the car.' They then turned the siren on, raced through traffic, cut people off, and then pulled in front of the bus that I had just missed. They let me off, and I turned around and ran directly into my bus." This must be why people take the bus; there are so many adventures to be had!

Finally, I made it to the restaurant. The place was very swanky and modern-looking inside:


This was not always how the restaurant looked. Oak Tree used to look like an oak tree. The old furniture was made to look like tree trunks and there were bird cages and stuff like that. But this is nice too, except it is not quite as thematic as it once was, although I guess the Rainforest Cafe has that covered. Although, the restaurant is still open, kind of like a treehouse. The first thing you see when you enter the 6th floor is the bakery of Oak Tree. Since there are no doors or windows in the restaurant, this is the view from outside of the restaurant:


Oak Tree still has maintained a bit of its former cutesy theme by displaying animal-shaped bread loaves in its bakery:


But that was the end of anything even slightly themed. The food was very traditional, but very tasty, breakfast food. Well, they serve lunch too, but we ordered breakfast food. So as far as you are concerned, they only serve breakfast food. I ordered the Brioche French Toast:


This was served with sauteed bananas and mascarpone. When you sautee bananas, you caramelize the sugar on the outside of the banana. The oil that it is cooked in makes the banana kind of slimy, but not in a bad way. This method of cooking the banana enhances the sweetness of the original food and gives it a different texture. Mascarpone was new to me. It is a sweet cream cheese that is easily melted and spread. It is usually served in desserts, like tiramisu. Although, if that is true then I probably have eaten mascarpone before, although never on French Toast. The meal also came with butter and syrup, but the french toast was so sweet anyway that it did not need anything else.

Erica ordered a Glazed Ham, Cheddar, and Scallion Omelet:


The french fry-looking things are hash browns. Actually, these look a lot like the fries that I could not take a picture of yesterday because of the specters that ate my camera. So, mentally copy and paste these hash browns into yesterday's post. Also, Erica's omelet came with toast.

I always assume that everyone knows exactly the amount of information that I know, which means, no one knows what scallions are! Turns out, scallions are green onions. They are more mild than regular onions, and they are often used in many Asian recipes. Also, scallions can be silly:


That was the first hit on Google Image Search for "scallion." I just thought I would show you.

Erica also ordered a strawberry smoothie:


Purely for the sake of research, I tasted her smoothie. It was delicious, and the fruit tasted very fresh.

It was a very good breakfast totaling to $37 for the two of us, and I brought home one of my french toast slices, so I can eat it for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow I will be going to Korean barbecue with Linnea. I WILL be going to Korean barbecue with Linnea. If I say it emphatically enough, I will not relive history and the plans will not fall through. Until next time, happy eating!

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!