I've written recently about my love of traveling. One of the reasons I built my business to be in other cities was to have the opportunity to make travel a part of my everyday business life. I especially enjoy getting to know a place better and better. This has been the case with Chicago.
I am especially blessed because in Chicago I have one of my daughters and her family living there plus two great partners. Not only are these wonderful people with great values but all of them share a love of life and share an enjoyment of eating, drinking, and being together with friends. And what better city for this than Chicago (maybe New York or San Francisco). Chicago has so many wonderful independent places to eat that each trip is an experience.
We're only halfway thru this month's trip. Partner Ricardo has organized a full schedule which has included two great dinners. Monday night we went to a French place called La Sardine. It had pretty good classic French Bistro fare but the real attraction was half-price bottle night. Any bottle of wine was 50% off...and this place had a great menu of French wines. I like I am particularly partial to French wines and was like a kid in a candy shop. I settled for a 2005 Givrey from Burgundy. List price $60 - our price $30. The food was mixed with some dishes quite good and others missing an element. For example my steamed mussels were rather tasteless but the sauce was excellent and the cassoulet (a bean and cured meat dish) had great flavor with really excellent beans but the meats were only so-so.
On Tuesday we had dinner with lawyers at West Town Tavern. This place specializes in 'contemporary comfort food'. They have a philosophy of keeping prices in the range of reasonableness. Thus virtually all the wines listed were under $40 a bottle - which did not mean that they were junk or just mass production wines. Some of the food was spectacular. A couple of us had a salad of shaved fennel and radishes dressed with truffle oil and lemon juice. Somehow that doesn't strike me as being 'comfort' food but it was really good if you are a lover of simple dishes and truffles (ME!). There was also a skate wing (think fish like sting rays) special that was top notch. I had some smoked lamb which unfortunately was way over sauced for my taste with twice as much polenta underneath it as I thought necessary. Our waitress recommended an Australian Shiraz as a wine that would cross over between the lamb and the skate wing. However, it was like a lot of these wines, very, very fruit forward, and was not to my liking. We did, however, at the request of one of the lawyers get a white burgundy for the first course and that was really good.
More Chicago eats next post
4 comments:
We did...urrrrrp....eat quite a bit. Nice observation on the amount of polenta underneath that lamb. I felt exactly the same and didn't even come close to finishing the polenta even after a concerted effort.
Next time make a reservation at Weaselville for home cooking, great company, wonderful hospitality and potent potables. We'd love to have you.
I swear, I have GOT to get out more. There are so many, many foods I have never even tried. And you make them all sound spectacular.
Ya know... Chicago is only a few hours away from where I live. I suppose me and the gf will have to road trip up there one day. While I generally don't eat anything I can't pronounce, I may have to make some exceptions after reading this post.
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