Of duck tongues and corn fungus

June 11, 2014 / Greg / 2 Comments

On this recent trip to Chicago, my eating out was pretty even split between some delicious downmarket staples and a couple of higher end meals. Chicago is a truly great eating and drinking town, and on this visit I booked restaurant reservations at a couple of places where the menus and reputations for inventive food excited me. So excited in fact, that for my first night in the city I opted for the allure of a delicious meal over a Blackhawks – Canadiens hockey game. That’s right – I chose eating over sports. Maybe I’m becoming more refined as I age…

Night one: The moment the reservation window opened for the Girl & the Goat (I think it was three months before my planned visit), I grabbed one and started scouting the menu. The idea of sampling a number of small plates was high on my list, and the restaurant’s ability to scale down dishes to suit a solo diner looking to try multiple things made me very excited. One item that was personally recommended to me by Chef Stephanie Izard on Twitter was the duck tongues. I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t even know ducks had tongues. What a delicious discovery! Here’s what will probably be the best thing I eat all year – duck tongues with crispy wontons, black beans and piri piri:

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Public art in the Loop

May 31, 2014 / Greg / 2 Comments

On an almost unbelievably perfect early April day in Chicago (clear skies, temperature over 20C), I strapped on my super comfy walking shoes for an urban hike to explore public art near and inside “the Loop”. That’s an area in downtown that’s contained within the elevated train that runs through the heart of Chicago. In the city’s wisdom, there’s an abundance of public art to give life to an area rife with office buildings and miles upon miles of concrete.

Just east of the loop is Millennium Park, home to some of the most iconic of Chicago’s public art, and the first stop on my self-guided tour. The first piece I took in was “Crown Fountain”. It consists of two large skyscraper shaped structures with images of Chicago natives projected on them. Sadly, the fountains spewing from the mouths of the projected images weren’t operational on my visit, but the art is striking nonetheless:

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A night on the south side

May 22, 2014 / Greg / 4 Comments

I’ll admit something that may not be kosher with traditional baseball fans. I greatly preferred the experience of watching baseball on the south side of Chicago in the home of the White Sox compared to taking in a game at Wrigley. Not that Wrigley is without its charms – far from it. But a game at Wrigley is a bit like watching baseball in a theme park dedicated to what it was like to watch baseball fifty years ago.

The White Sox play at the much more modern and comfortable US Cellular Field about a fifteen minute train ride south of downtown Chicago. Given the relative lack of popularity of the White Sox, I was able to snag a prime seat right behind home for the game. I made a beeline to my seat to get a sense of how good I’d have it for the night. I was pretty happy with my selection:

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Chicago’s delicious iconic foods

May 17, 2014 / Greg / 3 Comments

By any measure, Chicago is a great food city. I’ve been there two times now, and have barely scratched the surface of what’s available. On this last trip, I made a point of rounding out my dance card of Chicago favourites. First stop shortly after touching down: the Billy Goat Tavern for a “cheezborger”

Drawing its fame jointly as the backdrop to a famous SNL skit as well as the source of the curse that has kept the Cubs out of the World Series, it’s a great humble bar tucked on the lower level of Michigan Avenue. The cheeseburger (I ordered a triple) was a perfect old fashioned delight and I enjoyed sitting at the bar and talking baseball with the bartender.

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Cloud Gate

May 6, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

Favourite 2014 travel photos. Chicago, IL. April 2014

Feeling like Ferris Bueller

April 30, 2014 / Greg / 6 Comments

I didn’t have a Ferrari at my disposal, and wouldn’t make it to the Art Institute until later in the trip, but spending a midweek afternoon at Wrigley Field had me feeling at least a little bit like Ferris on his famous day off. Ferris certainly had a much nicer day to take in a ballgame than I ended up with. But I was on vacation, the rain mostly held off, and in all honesty, it’s pretty hard to have a bad time taking in a game at the virtually 100 year old Wrigley Field.

Shortly after the gates opened on a very blustery and damp early April day, I took a seat to catch a bit of Pittsburgh’s batting practice:

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Early bird gets the craft beer

April 22, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

I’m blessed with a very robust body clock. When I travel, it can take me days to shake off even a small timezone adjustment. On this recent trip to Chicago, I found myself waking around 4:30am each day and patiently awaiting the time when I could venture out of the hotel to find breakfast. Even on my third morning, I was still operating on Atlantic Time. Why am I telling you this?… To justify a story of me wandering up to the Bucktown neighbourhood northwest of downtown Chicago on a Saturday morning in search of a craft beer bar called the Map Room.

There’s something about being on vacation that makes it relatively acceptable to partake in a drink before the crisp hour of noon. It’s even more justifiable if that drink at 11:30am “feels” like it’s been had at 1:30pm. By the third day of this solo trip, I was in an indulgent mood. The idea of a great beer (or two) in an outstanding neighbourhood bar while reading a book was what I wanted. After pouring over an outstanding draught list, I choose the most local beer available, a 3 Floyds Brewing “Live a Rich Life” double IPA (from Munster, Indiana). It was a hoppy, Belgian style double. At 9.5% ABV, I was glad to have a few of these delicious bread sticks to help mop up the alcohol:

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Back from the Second City

April 14, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

I’m back from four fun and relaxing days in Chicago. If you haven’t been, I can’t recommend it enough. A “second city” only in name, I can truly say that I prefer Chicago over the Big Apple for the quintessential American big city experience. Chicago has everything New York has. You get all of the shopping, entertainment, food, sports, art and history that New York has to offer, but wrapped in a more beautiful and friendly mid-western package.

What did these past four days in Chicago look like? I got to a Cubs game and a White Sox game and have to admit that I preferred the atmosphere on the south side to that at Wrigley. I spent a morning touring public art installations inside the loop downtown followed by an afternoon at the Art Institute. I wandered through interesting neighbourhoods to the west and north of the city. I ate incredibly upscale food the first couple of days, then ate downmarket for the last two days and honestly don’t know which I enjoyed more. I tried some great craft beers, hung out in a late night blues club and then shook off the ringing in my ears the next morning by walking along Lake Michigan and taking a place on the seawall to just stare at the Chicago skyline in the distance.

All in all, it was a great trip and a revitalizing short vacation. More to come on Chicago and my experiences in the weeks ahead….

Behind the scenes at Wrigley

March 26, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

As I get ready for my upcoming trip to Chicago in a couple of weeks, one of the things I’m really looking forward to is (weather permitting) getting to my second Cubs game at Wrigley field. Four years ago, my wife and I snagged upper deck seats for a late season afternoon game against the Cardinals and had a great time. We also carved out some time to do a tour of Wrigley Field to see it in a quieter setting and to get a bit of a behind the scenes peek.

The morning tour started in the famed bleachers, and from here, you can fairly easily feel the history of the place:

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Tailgating with the Bears

March 17, 2014 / Greg / Leave a comment

I’ve been to a few NFL games now, and as much as I enjoy the simple act of watching the sport live, it’s also quite an American cultural experience. Nowhere is that cultural experience on display more than in pregame tailgating.

Four years ago, my wife and I traveled to Chicago to see an early season Bears-Packers match up. With a wee bit of research, we found a tailgating group who welcomed us to hang out before kickoff. If you’re not familiar with tailgating, it’s basically a group of people who meet up in the parking lot prior to a football game, usually to grill some food, have a few drinks and talk some football before heading into the stadium. In Chicago, it looked like this:

This tailgating lot for Bears games is located about a 20 minute walk south of the stadium and, as you can see, it is cars and grills and plumes of delicious barbeque smoke as far as the eye can see. Through this maze, we found our specific spot nestled over to the side of the parking lot: