Day 14: The Snail

From now on I am never going to say that I am going to Old Town because whenever I say that I am going, I jinx it. Eventually I will go and have a fantastic dinner and get back in the running in the friendship competition, and everyone will be pleasantly surprised.

Today was the last day of my official May Project because I presented this lovely blog to a group of very nice eighth graders. However, since I was in Hyde Park anyway, I decided to use the opportunity to eat lunch in Hyde Park again. Although, sadly I do not have any crazy bus-people stories to tell because I came to Hyde Park in a car. You know, I kind of miss my friends from the bus. I wonder where Jeremiah and Bald Hitler are right now... Anyway, my mom, my mom's friend Robin, and I ate at a Thai restaurant in Hyde Park called The Snail:

The Snail is located at 1649 E. 55th Street and is a favorite of many Hyde Park residents, although I really do not know why it is called The Snail, because snails are not particularly Thai. And other than a few drawings of snails, the restaurant is not really snail-themed:

In fact, I think that was the only snail in the restaurant. In fact, most of the other decorations are sort of random:

Do you see the flying cow in the upper right-hand corner? Why is there a flying cow in a Thai restaurant called "The Snail?" And unless I am very wrong, I don't think Thailand is famous for its cacti:

But I suppose the food made up for it the bizarre atmosphere. The menu is quite large, so even though there were three of us ordering, and three people ordering allows me to try a lot more food than when I eat all by my lonesome, we still did not cover all the types of food that I wanted to eat. For example, we did not order Pad Thai and I was sad. Look at how sexy Pad Thai is:

But I am not complaining. We ate a lot of good food. When we sat down, we were greeted with what looked, smelled, and tasted, like Mexican corn tortilla chips. In fact, they probably were Mexican corn tortilla chips:



If nothing else, I suppose this puts the picture of the cacti into perspective.

First, we ordered a side Cucumber Salad:

This was basically cucumber and a few onions with a sweet and sour sauce dressing. Then, after we had eaten a few bites of the cucumber salad, our waitress came over with our entrees and knocked an entire pitcher of water onto my mother:

She had a puddle sitting at the bottom of her purse, she looked like she peed herself, our cucumber salad had drowned in the deluge, and worst of all, our waitress did not even give us free sexy Pad Thai!

After we were all dried off, we started to eat our food. Even though we shared everything, each of us ordered our own dish. I ordered the Yellow Curry with chicken:

The term "curry" usually refers to a variety of spiced dishes. "Curry" is a Tamil word, usually understood to mean "gravy," not "spices," although typically curry dishes are spiced with cumin, turmeric, coriander, or red pepper. Curry is in many types of Thai cuisine, although curry has become popular in other places like Japan and even Britain. Thai curry comes in three color-coordinated flavors. The curry pictured above is yellow curry, but red and green also exist:

Thai red curry is usually made with coconut milk and/or fish sauce and red curry paste. Green curry typically has coconut milk and/or fish sauce, green curry paste, and pea aubergine. Yellow curry, on the other hand, is usually creamier because it contains both coconut milk and coconut cream in addition to the yellow curry.

My moist mother ordered pork Pad See Ew:

Anybody who is on the Lab School math team has eaten my body weight in this stuff. It is a Chinese-influenced noodle stir-fry dish served with meat (in this case pork), egg, and broccoli. Pad See Ew is typically a street food served in Thailand. Now, don't get me wrong. Noodles, etc. has a special place in my heart. But this pad see ew was the best that I have ever had. I ate about half of this dish by myself, and it was a big dish.

Robin ordered Bamee:

Bamee is the Thai name for a type of noodle called Lo Mian. Lo Mian (not to be confused with lo mein) is a type of hand-made or hand-pulled noodle. This is the type of wheat flour based noodle from which ramen is derived. This bamee contained chicken, garlic, peppers, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, bean sprouts, cilantro, and crushed peanuts. It was a lot less soupy than I have seen in the past and it was really, really good. But I think the highlight was still the pad see ew.

Because the only thing snail-y about this restaurant is the speed of the service (except when they are spilling water on your mother) by the time we had eaten our lunch it was already 1:00 and I had to be at school to discuss this lovely blog to the nice eighth graders that I met today at 1:15, so we did not have time for dessert. But if we had I probably would have tried some sweet taro root with ginkgo nuts. Seriously, doesn't that make me sound super-Asian?

So we had to leave without dessert, but that saved us like $4.00, so I guess it is okay. Our bill totaled to about $33 for three people. Plus, we took home enough food for at least one more dinner. I am beginning to notice a pattern... I think I bring home more food than I actually eat.

I'm not going to even pretend like I am going to have time to post again until this weekend, and maybe not even then. And since May Project is officially over and real life is starting again, my posts will become more and more sporadic. I don't think I will stop posting any time soon because I have received so many recommendations from my gazillions of fans that I will need to at least continue through the summer. And like I always say, I have to eat anyway, I might as well write about it! But there will no longer be a strict schedule for posts. So, keep checking back here every few days to update yourself. OR if you want to make things easier, you can become a follower of my blog, or you can even friend me on facebook (if we are not already friends) and you can receive updates about my blog in your newsfeed. Until next time... happy eating!

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 12: Lincoln Square

I have been looking forward to this day for a long time, and finally I had plans that did not fall through. Everything went exactly as I had planned it, or rather, as close to the plan as one could hope for. Today was the day that I went out to Korean Barbecue in Lincoln Square, and it was probably the most interesting restaurant that I have been to thus far. Maybe Cuban food was better, maybe the atmosphere at Oak Tree is swankier, but this was such a unique experience. The restaurant is called San Soo Gab San, located at 5247 N. Western Ave, and I am going to guess that translated into English that means "delicious awesome barbecue delicious."

To get there took me over and hour and a half of buses, trains, and buses. I took the number 8 bus north on Halsted until Milwaukee and Grand, took the Blue Line train (which once again decided to become an express train right before my stop...) to Western, and then I took the number 49 bus north on Western until Foster, which dropped me off about half a block away from delicious awesome barbecue delicious:


Sidenote: You know those guys that hang out in front of stores or wherever else and ask for money because their made-up school's basketball team needs money to fund a trip to somewhere random because they made their fake league's playoffs? Well, there were two of those guys on the train today and a CTA employee was on my train car and he asked to see a flier. He read it and then said to the two guys, "Look, I know this is a scam." Blank looks. "Seriously, I know this is not real. I'm from this suburb and there's no school by this name. I know you're lying. So why don't you just get off the train at the next stop and I will pretend like nothing happened." The two kids left at the next stop. Sometimes there is justice in the world.

The only other experience I have ever had with Korean food was actually in Korea, so I consider myself quite the expert on Korean food. From what I could tell, this restaurant was very authentic, which was backed up by the fact that none of the waitstaff and the minority of the people in the restaurant spoke any English.

The restaurant is not elaborately decorated, but there are a few decorations that seem very Korean to me:


But the true Korean experience comes at the tables. In the back of the restaurant is one long table that seats large parties. This is exactly how it is in Korea:

In these large tables you sit on the floor, but in the smaller two- or four-person tables you sit in a regular booth, but the table has a giant hole in the middle:


The waitstaff then puts a pot of hot coals in the hole:


And then covers it with a grill and gives you a plate of meat that you had ordered before. Warning: they make you order at least two types of meat, and each meat can feed one person, and costs enough for one person. So, when you go to delicious awesome barbecue delicious, make sure that your eating-mate is not a vegetarian because your half of the bill will be very, very expensive. I learned that the hard way:


That's $40 of meat right there. Get a good look:


If I am not mistaken, the pinker meat on the right is beef ribs and the browner meat on the left is seasoned beef. Then, you cook the meat on the grill in your table:


Plus, you don't just get meat. The barbecue comes with about twenty tiny bowls of weird and colorful and aromatic ingredients:


I did not take a picture of the full table, but I think three to five more little bowls were added to the table after this picture was taken. Inside the little silver bowl on the right-hand corner was steamed rice, and a little later, the waitress brought me miso soup:


This miso soup contained zucchini, tofu, and onions inside the dashi stock. The rice bowl can go into the soup as well. Also, the twenty-something little bowls of ingredients can go in the soup or in the rice bowl:


Many of these ingredients are different types of kimchee. There are kimchee potatoes, kimchee cabbage, kimchee spinach, basically anything orange is kimchee-related. The row of greenish things behind the stacks of dishes are different types of seaweed. The thing that looks like potato salad is in fact potato salad. Other things that maybe cannot be seen very clearly are lentils, various anonymous roots, pickled things, and this weird black bean thing that was very strange but oddly delicious. All of this stuff, including the rice and the cooked meat can be dipped in the miso soup. That is what I did and it was really good.

Because of how much food you are given, and because of how much fun it is to grill meat, I strongly recommend ordering the barbecue. However, go with a large group because the amount of meat can feed at least two or three people, unless you are me and eat 2/3 of the meat yourself. And, like I said earlier, make sure that at least one person with whom you go to San Soo Gab San is an omnivore. Vegetarians make things expensive!

Because Linnea, today's eating buddy, is a vegetarian, it gives me the very expensive opportunity to tell you about Bibimbap. Which is totally worth the price because Linnea is an awesome eating buddy who has great taste in earrings. Oh, and it is also worth it because I was watching Iron Chef America the other day and Iron Chef Batali cooked Bibimbap, and now I know what it is, so this gives me an opportunity to brag about how much food stuff I know:


Bibimbap is a traditional Korean dish that literally translated means "mixed dish." It contains rice, seasoned and sauteed vegetables, and is usually topped with some sort of fried egg. In this case, the bibimbap contained zucchini, carrots, soy bean sprouts, mushrooms, some green leafy things, onions, and a fried egg. There is another type of bibimbap (which I know about because Iron Chef Batali made it on TV) which is served with a raw egg inside of of a hot stone bowl. The raw egg is then cooked on the sides of this bowl.

By the end of the meal, we felt completely stuffed and we had hardly made a dent in our food. At least, it looked that way. I suppose I ate most of the meat and Linnea ate most of the bibimbap, but there was so much food in the small dishes that we maybe ate 40% of what was on our table. Our total bill came to $50 which is humongous and is mainly coming out of my allowance. $10 of that was Linnea's and the other $40 was mine, which makes me sound like a pig. I brought home maybe 1/3 of the meat, and I really should have only had to order half of what I ordered... but whatever. I'm not bitter...

Tomorrow I will be nearly-fasting because, true to my gender stereotype, I want to look super sexy for prom. However, Sunday I will be going to Old Town for either an awesome burger or for (American) barbecue. Actually, I have not done real Italian food yet, so if there is an Italian place in Old Town I would like to know about it. I do need suggestions for restaurants because I am not native to Old Town. And I only accept suggestions for awesome burgers. Be they less then awesome, I be angry. Anyway, until next time, happy eating!

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!