Hop Leaf - Restaurant 39, Beers 36; Fun Fact 33

People have been telling us about Hopleaf pretty much since we arrived in Chicago. We finally visited this bar / restaurant in the nearby Andersonville neighborhood on a freezing cold night recently, to meet our friends Sandy and Trish for dinner. These girls are elite rowers and continue to coach in the sport at the college and high school levels. Fun Fact: We were virtually introduced to them through our friends Helena and Wayne, who live in Pennsylvania.

After all the hype, Hopleaf did not disappoint. It offers a truly amazing array of beers (pages and pages on the menu -- we could complete the 40 beer category here and then some!) along with a good selection of excellent comfort food items (perfect for a subzero temp night if you're a meat eater). We started with a Cain and Abel beer -- a nice dark amber with a touch of spice, not unlike the Maudite previously mentioned in these pages, but not quite as strong alcoholically speaking. Susan had a beef stew entree with mashed potatoes mixed in, yum! Kate had a ham and cheese sandwich that was also quite good. We also shared mac and cheese on the side -- delicious!

During the course of conversation attention turned to 10x40 and Trish wanted to know why we don't have a category for 40 new people. For a while we were entertaining the possibility of swapping out the rather anemic recipe category for people, but we decided there were too many logistical difficulties in doing so at this point. Sorry Trish! Great idea, but the execution was lacking on our end!