Hash House A Go Go

One of my best friends celebrated her birthday a couple weeks ago with a Saturday brunch at the newly opened Hash House A Go Go in the Gold Coast. This restaurant has been around for about a decade in San Diego and has expanded only to Las Vegas and Chicago. Its forte is "twisted farm food," except nowhere in the restaurant or on the menu is it explained exactly which farms this food comes from. In a city teeming with farm to table restaurants detailing exactly where each component to a dish is sourced, it's hard to believe the people who run this restaurant are anything but poseurs. But, I digress. I arrived at this place before anyone else did, so I did what any normal person would do, settled in at the bar and asked for this:

A meal in itself, this is the BLT Bloody Mary (that set me back 13 bucks), and comes with a slice of bacon, tomato, lettuce, and a piece of bread. But, as amazing as this looks, I've had better Bloody Marys (hello, Joe's Stone Crab). The bacon was obviously made ahead of time, the bread also toasted ahead of time, and the Mary itself? Bland, watered down, one dimensional flavor. Looks can be deceiving.

They are famous for their sage fried chicken so I knew I had to get that. I ended up ordering the fried chicken with maple reduction, 2 eggs, bacon mashed potatoes, and biscuit.

And this is what arrived. Glutton! Party of one! An explosion of food on a plate - portions that could easily feed a family of four. I will admit the flavor of maple syrup over chicken is kind of awesome but I couldn't taste any sage in the chicken itself and the "bacon" mashed potatoes were merely mashed potatoes with two strips of bacon laid on top. The biscuit was overworked and too floury and I'm still not quite sure what the watery tomatoes (in peak tomato season no less) were supposed to add. The flavors of the dish just weren't quite there - no zing.

The birthday girl, Becky, ordered the S'more Mocha, which came with grilled marshmallows and a shot of espresso. She loved it.

Nina ordered the smoked salmon hash, which literally came in one of those Lodge cast iron skillets - yes this is for one person!

This place is also known for their fried chicken and waffles, which comes with frizzled leeks and is piled as high as it can be without tipping over. Every dish is impaled with a tall stalk of rosemary. Yes, this place is twisted.

Mars Cheese Castle

Dear readers, please forgive me for my lengthy absence. I've been spending a lot of my free time decorating and improving things in my apartment and that has led to not getting out much over the past couple of weeks. I've been sitting on this Mars Cheese Castle post for nearly two weeks now and it's time to share with you this awesome cheese shop that has become a tradition among my group of friends. 

I was probably in junior high or high school the first time I stopped at the Mars Cheese Castle - 15 years ago it was a divey time warp that didn't look all that much like a castle but within it was contained a cornucopia of cheese that would cause any average cheese-loving American to swoon. Now, it is a legitimate brick castle complete with faux moat and pointy roof thanks to a complete rebuild of the shop a couple of years ago. Don't be fooled, dear reader, because cheese is not the only treasure you will find here. There are a myriad of other Wisconsin made treats ranging from whole apple pies (baked in a brown bag by Wisconsin's own Elegant Farmer), New Glarus beer, Door County wine, to jellies, local honeys and a whole wall of hot sauce. The store is ginormous and really exciting for food lovers - I was able to find white truffle honey, which I've been looking for for years (and which tastes amazing drizzled over goat cheese flatbread).

Somehow, day tripping to the castle has become an annual (sometimes biannual) tradition for me and my gal pals. Located about an hour north of Chicago in Kenosha, Wisconsin, it is something most Chicagoans visiting Wisconsin have seen driving up the 94 expressway. Our personal tradition dictates that breakfast must be had at the Cracker Barrel down the road from the castle and cheese drenched apple pie (brown bag) must be devoured after procuring our cheese and other miscellaneous comestibles.

If you like the combination of sweet and salty flavors you
have got to try putting sharp cheddar cheese on your pie.

You can get many combinations including chocolate cheddar and blue cheese cheddar.

When you see this sign you have got to stop for some cheese and pie.

Exploring Chicago: Lincoln Square

Last night I met up with Becky and Nina for some dinner in Lincoln Square, which is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Chicago and also really close to where I live. It's heavily influenced by its German roots and features a lot German bars, restaurants, and shops and has a couple German festivals a year, which are a lot of fun. We went to one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Cafe Selmarie, which is located right on Giddings Square, which is the center of the Lincoln Square business district.

When we arrived the band, The Stingers, was already playing.

Cafe Selmarie has great dinner but serves the best brunch in the city on the weekends. If you ever go there for brunch I highly recommend ordering their chilaquiles (which is a Mexican egg and tortilla casserole) or their corned beef hash. You really can't go wrong no matter what.

There's a bakery at the front of the restaurant packed with goodies. My favorite treat is their cherry streusel pie, which, unfortunately, they didn't have last night.

Every Thursday night they feature a prix fixe three course menu for $22.

   

We started with the goat cheese, which was different from how I've normally had it there. It had sundried tomatoes, caramelized red onion, mushroom, red pepper, and goat cheese in it. My friends and I are huge fans of goat cheese so we were a little underwhelmed by the amount of goat cheese but the flavors were still really good.

I ordered the mixed green salad to start.

Nina and Becky ordered the special - Salmon Oscar - which came with crab, asparagus, and mashed potatoes, with a dill cream sauce on top. I tasted it and the salmon was a little overcooked but the dill sauce was not overtly dilly and the mashed potatoes were heavenly - I am pretty sure they use Yukon golds.

I ordered the chicken pot pie, which I pretty much always order for dinner when I am there. It comes with this giant pastry crust on top that flakes into a million pieces when you crush it.

The anchor of the neighborhood, Chicago Brauhaus, which is an old German restaurant, sets up a food booth on Thursday nights. You can order their freshly made Bavarian pretzels, brats and sausages, and German beer like Hofbrauhaus. I came to the Brauhaus for my 28th birthday with my family and my friends and we had a blast. They have a dance floor and a polka band that plays every single night of the week. It's like a time warp in there.

Since Cafe Selmarie didn't have the desserts we wanted we decided to walk across the square to have gelato at Paciugo.

They have so many different flavors but are eager to let you try however many you want. I tried the olive oil and black pepper because it sounded intriguing, but it didn't really taste like olive oil or black pepper! I also tried the chocolate jalapeno and I could definitely taste the jalapeno.

Their coffee gelato is very strong, almost espresso like, but it is the closest thing to coffee I've ever had in an ice cream or gelato.

There's seating outside Paciugo, so we relaxed for a little bit and enjoyed the band, which played covers of rock and roll classics. Kids were running amok everywhere.

At the edge of the square next to Lincoln is the Giddings Plaza Fountain - dedicated in 1999 by Mayor Daley.

Open Books

About to share my love of books with Chicago volunteering nights and weekends at the Open Books used bookstore at Chicago and Franklin. I volunteered as a high school student mentor here in 2009 but haven't found a program that works with my hours until now.  Pretty stoked about it because I share their passion in spreading the power of reading and books.

"Open Books is a nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond."

Exploring Chicago: Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park

We have been blessed this week with some really beautiful weather in Chicago. To talk about Chicago is to talk about its weather. Every day you are in for something new, be it cool breezes and clear skies, 100% humidity and 105 degrees, or 40 degrees and rainy, all of these can happen in the span of one week. The weather was cool at the beginning of the week but started to get hotter yesterday, but it was still breezy, clear, and not too hot - perfect weather in my humble opinion. 

During the summer Millennium Park hosts a large number of events. There is something to do there every single day from yoga at sunrise, lunchtime concerts, to movies and the Grant Park Music Festival and all free! Every Monday is the Downtown Sound series, which began a few years ago and brings in all sorts of bands. In recent years, I've seen The Head and the Heart, Iron & Wine, and even She & Him (so awesome). Pritzker Pavilion is one of the best places to go in the summer. 

So last night, my friend Jessie and I decided to head down to the Pavilion for a picnic and a simulcast of the Paris Opera Ballet's opening night production of Giselle. It is "the nation’s first-ever free, outdoor simulcast of a live ballet performance by a major international company." Giselle has never before been produced in the United States. We arrived at about 5:30 (the lawn fills up really quickly and you don't want to be one of those people who arrives as the show is starting only to have to weave through the maze-like crowd to find a 2x2 patch of grass to sit on). There was a small part of the lawn to the west that was shaded so we hunkered down and unpacked our food. At 9:30, the Navy Pier fireworks started blasting directly east of the Pavilion. We could see them through the trees and it just reminded me how awesome this city is. There are always countless options on how to spend your night. If you are bored in this city, you are doing something wrong.

Jessie had gone to Big Jones in Andersonville for lunch earlier in the day and had their Boarding House lunch, which includes biscuits, cornbread, fried chicken, mashed potatoes (and gumbo gravy), greens, red beans and rice, and snickerdoodles, all for the low price of $16. She went with a friend and they had this much chicken left over! So she brought this and let me say it was really good, even cold. I could not stop eating it. She also made homemade sweet tea and brought that. A perfect summer picnic!

This is Jessie. During the show she asked me what the name was of that one opera where the sad clown sings (her words)? So we Googled sad clown opera and, what do you know, it came up. It's Pagliacci. People are funny.

This is the lawn when we arrived. I cannot say how much I appreciate the city of Chicago for commissioning Frank Gehry's first building in this city. It is a major draw for out of towners and city dwellers alike.

The architecture of the Pavilion makes for awesome pictures.

Suddenly the lawn is packed! Everyone looks so cute in their summer clothes and their picnicking gear.

This is my attempt at getting a close up of the screen - cell phone cameras are not too good for this sort of thing, but you get the idea.