Friday
Nothing says Chicago like....California Pizza Kitchen. It was close to the hotel (we still got lost though). And it was good! So good that the French ladies sitting next to us stared intently at our food and drinks and based their order on ours (Note to restaurant owners out there. We would definitely be open to being "plants" in restaurant. You know, give us the most expensive food, we make a show out of enjoying it, others will order. People really do seem to order what we do. It's weird.) I also had sangria. It tasted like bananas. I decided that I liked sangria.
Saturday
We made our "neighborhood" Starbucks our morning hangout. Have you tried their vanilla bean mini scones? SO good!
We met our friend Jessica (we all used to work together) and her boyfriend Patrick for dinner at Quartino! GREAT Italian restaurant! It's loud and kind of chaotic but it's kind of fun that way. Anyway, the food as served as it is ready (not in courses) so there is a chance that half of your table will have all of their food right away and the other half will have nothing (I fell into the latter group). But eventually all of the food is served and it is SO good. Sharing is encouraged...so I had gnocchi with pesto and green beans, crispy polenta fries, and some fettuccine. I think the little kid sitting behind us also want to share our crispy polenta fries. And I had sangria. It did NOT taste like bananas. I decided I preferred the banana-flavored sangria.
Jessica, Erin, and I at Quartino. (We really do like each other...I have no idea why we are sitting so far apart in this picture.)
Sunday
We had heard about this vegetarian restaurant called The Chicago Diner. Erin's a vegetarian; I am only an occasional chicken/turkey eater (Is this called flexitarianism?). We read good reviews; Everyone in my Pilates class raved about it. So we ventured there for brunch. What no one prepared us for is the X-rated neighborhood shops that surround The Diner. My jaw kind of hit the sidewalk; I guess I am still pretty much a small-town girl. I would imagine if anyone brought their kids to eat there, they might have to answer some interesting questions.
Anyway, the food was good; I don't know that I would eat there again but it was an interesting experience. I had pancakes that had an interesting spice in it that I still cannot identify. And the homestyle potatoes were really good. But the fake bacon looked scary. Well, it looked disgusting actually. (Also, it smelled like incense in the restaurant. If you are like me and get a headache from even the faintest whiff of incense, this is valuable information.)
There seems to be a lack of Mexican restaurants in Chicago (at least in the Magnificent Mile/River North neighborhoods). Anyone know why? But we wanted Mexican for dinner on Sunday so we ended up at Lalo's. To paraphrase Erin, "Um, this looks like a bad spring break restaurant." HA! Anyway, Erin was SO excited for queso. And what we got was not so much queso as melted mozzarella cheese in a fancy pan. Erin was so sad.
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