Superdawg: Restaurant 40; Fun Fact 38

How great is it that our 40th restaurant is the fabulous Superdawg?! Located at the northern edge of the city on Milwaukee, Nagel, and Devon, this drive-in / walk-up stand features enormous Chicago style hot dogs and greasy accordian fries. Susan occasionally visited this place as a kid, so it was only fitting that we stopped in on the way to visit her aunt's grave a few weeks ago. Kate highly recommends the cheeseburger, while Susan stuck with the traditional Chicago dog. Fun fact: those weiners at the top of the building are representations of Maurie and Flo, who opened Superdawg in 1948 after Maurie came home from the war and married Flo, his high school sweetheart.

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!

Moxie - Restaurant 38, Dead Guy Ale - Beer 35

A few days ago we went to a restaurant down the street from Wrigley Field called Moxie. We had been planning on stopping in there for a while, at a time when our friend Marissa would be there cooking. We went on a freezing cold night and were immediately warmed by the friendly atmosphere, great drinks, and fantastic food. We started out with a few beers from the bar, including a new one, Dead Guy Ale a fine pale ale from the Rogue line. Sure, it was a bit cold out for a beer, but when you're committed to completing 10x40 you can't let a few low tempatures get in the way! As for food, the whole table began with hummus and pita with a twist -- a bit of red pepper flake or something along those lines -- which made a usually routine appetizer much more interesting and tasty. We then split a Carribean salad, followed by portabello and goat cheese in a wonderful sauce and skewered shrimp in an excellent pesto sauce. Friends at the table let us try their crab cakes and gnocchi which were also quite good. Great company, great food, and it was fun to see our friend happily cooking away in Moxie's kitchen -- what more could you ask for?

Pie Hole: Restaurant 37

Our favorite pizza place so far in Chicago is Pie Hole located right here in our Lakeview neighborhood. Pie hole offers a variety of delicious pizzas with gourmet toppings. Portabella mushroom is our standby at this point. Delivery service is not always great -- we once waited almost two hours after which the manager arrived in a cab with the pizza -- but this kind of time keeping is not unheard of in the gay community. Perhaps as compensation, Pie Hole offers delivery by drag queens on Tuesdays. On a cold and windy Chicago night such as this one, you really can't go wrong with a Pie Hole delivery.

Glenn's Diner: Restaurant 36

Glenn's Diner has a great city feel. Located under the El tracks at the Montrose stop, it appears to be just one of zillions of diners strewn across the city. But once you're in, you realize that this is anything but a greasy spoon diner. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Glenn's features seafood, ribs, and steak entrees and provides a great city feel. We went on a freezing cold snowy night and were immediately warmed by the friendly atmosphere, the great music, and the excellent ribs which featured a unique tasting vinegar (?) based sauce. The night we went (Wednesday) was all you can eat ribs night, but we'd like to go back and try out some of the many tempting seafood options. As an added bonus, being right there on the El line, there are no worries about having to drive home after imbibing. I don't know if Glenn's lives up to its billing ("best food in the world") but it was pretty good food and a great atmosphere. We'll be back to check out the fish soon!

T's: Restaurant 35 / Poker Redux

Last Saturday we went to T's, a gay bar and restaurant in the Andersonville neighborhood, to watch the Notre Dame v. Tennessee women's basketball game with our friends Patti, Terri, Cyndy, and Kathy. Unfortunately, ND was never really in the game and they wound up losing by over 20 points. However, the food at T's was quite good. We shared a delicious 1/2 burger and a huge basket of fries and onion rings which kept us happy for quite a while! Later on, Susan went to play poker with the girls way the heck out in Lockport (pretty near to Joliet). She didn't win, but the group was a lot of fun and it looks like a regular poker league will be getting started soon. Should be good practice for the World Series of Poker, which Susan is considering entering this summer!

North Pond - Restaurant 34

Before taking off for Athens, we had a lovely pre-Christmas dinner last Tuesday at North Pond Restaurant. The restaurant is housed in a beautiful craftsman building in Chicago's Lincoln Park. They feature dishes made from organic (but not vegetarian) ingredients and the food is delicious. We stared off with a visually attractive and tasty amuse bouche with smoked fish and goat cheese, which was on the house. Appetizers featuring scallops and shrimp followed, and then salads featuring beets and pate. Finally we had mixed winter vegtables and skate for dinner. Our favs were the amuse bouche and the shrimp appetizer, but it was all very, very good. This is a great place to come for a special dinner -- but be forewarned: if you go, be prepared to lay down some serious cash at the end of the night.

Murphy's Red Hots - Restaurant 33

Here I am out in front of Murphy's Red Hots, just around the corner from our apartment on Belmont and Racine. This place features dogs of all sorts from Chicago to Polish to Italian, as well as excellent crispy french fries. It's great to have a reliable hot dog stand nearby -- you never know when you might get the urge. (I've already succumbed several times!)

Suzanne Westenhoeffer - Performance 12; My Pie - Restaurant 32; Park West - Place 27

Last Saturday we went out with a group of the girls to see famed lesbian comic Suzanne Westenhoeffer at the Park West, where she was doing a benefit for a local non-profit, the Lesbian Community Cancer Project (the LCCP). The evening started with some delicious pizza and drinks at My Pie, around Clark and Fullerton. This place features deep dish pizza and maybe the best pizza crust we have encountered while here in Chicago. After adequate food and drink were had we walked over the Park West, a few blocks south on Clark and Armitage. We had really good seats in this very comfortable venue where we proceeded to laugh pretty continuously for the next hour and a half. Westenhoeffer's show is a combination of set pieces interspersed with banter from the audience. And really, when all is said and done what's better than laughing at and with your own kind?

Amitabul and Selmarie- Restaurants 30 & 31; Fun Fact 28

Last Friday we joined a couple of friends after work and headed over to Amitabul, a restaurant featuring vegan Korean food. This is a great place that is very different from the vegan restaurant we visited a couple weeks ago. Whereas Karyn's cooked tried to replicate meat based comfort foods with vegan ingredients, Amitabul centralized a wide variety of really tastily prepared vegtables. We each ordered a dish and then shared, and they ran the gamut from mildly to wildly spicy, from salty to fruity sauces, with mushrooms, peppers, rice, noodles, etc etc. The servers were very friendly and the atmosphere very cozy and warm. To top it off, this restaurant is very low priced. We had a meal for 4 with an appetizer for under $60. The only possible drawback is that it's located on the NW corner of the city, near the Superdog on Milwaukee and Devon, so it's a little bit of a haul -- but well worth it!

After dinner we stopped in at the Cafe Selmarie for dessert. I had a truly amazing chocolate mousse cake. Kate had orange chocolate decadence which was good, but not as good as the aforementioned mousse. Our friends had cherry pie.

Fun fact: In the middle of our desserts two strange women came up to me and one asked if I knew who she was. Of course I didn't initially, not having a context in which to place her. But then I realized it was my old friend Margie, who I went to high school with here in Chicago roughly 30 years ago! She currently lives in Oregon and was just in town visiting her family for the weekend. What are the chances that the two of us would meet up and recognize each other in this huge city? Amazing!

Jin Ju - Restaurant 29; OB - Beer 25; LaShondra Barnett - Performance 11

Last Sunday I went to a discussion led by LaShondra Barnett about her new book, I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters and Their Craft at Women and Children First bookstore on Clark and Foster. This is a great book filled with interviews of black women songwriters ranging from Nina Simone to Alicia Keys. About 25 people turned out to hear Prof. Barnett (she's in Amereican Studies at Sarah Lawrence) talk about the accomplishments of these women as well as the way that they are usually diminished through a focus on the personal. Afterwards, I met up with Kate and we had dinner at Jin Ju, a Korean restaurant just down the street. We had a delicious scallion pancake and a tasty seaweed roll for appetizers. We each also had an OB beer (Oriental Brewery) which was a pretty unintersting lite beer. For dinner, Kate had Bi Bim Bop (a variety of mixed vegtables mixed together in a hot stone bowl right there at the table) and I had tilapia with eggplant and mushrooms. Both had excellent sauces with just the right amount of kick to make them interesting. The atmosphere was pretty quiet, it being early Sunday evening, but I'm sure the place jumps during the weekend! I've been told that there are cheaper places to get this quality of Korean food, so stay tuned for more soon!

Karyn's Cooked - Restaurant 28; Beer 24

This is a catch-up post: About a week before Thanksgiving, our friend Kathleen came to Chicago from Athens for a conference and we were lucky enough to be able to arrange a dinner with her on the one (chilly!) night she was in town. Kathleen's a vegetarian, so we thought we'd try Karyn's Cooked, Conscious Comfort Foods, located two blocks away from the Chicago stop on the Brown line. This is a place that makes traditional comfort foods, with only vegan ingredients. (There is also a Karyn's Raw which serves only uncooked foods, located on Clybourn and pictured here).

We decided to share three dishes. Kathleen ordered the ribs, Kate ordered a Buddha bowl (mixed vegtables and rice), and I had polenta with mushrooms. They were all very good, but I think that anyone of them on their own might have been a bit much for us. Combining the entrees seemed to really add to their flavor. We also each had a Scarecrow organic beer, a flavorful light amber. We then decided to split a piece of coconut cake which was the largest piece of cake I have ever received in a restaurant! Despite it being very tasty, even the three of us together could not finish it off.

Karen's Cooked was a nice treat, but an even greater treat was having dinner with Kathleen and catching up on all the comings and goings in Athens!

Ras Dashen - Restaurant 27; Beers 22 & 23

On Saturday we went to Ras Dashen an Ethiopian restaurant on Broadway north of Hollywood to celebrate our friend Aileen's birthday. Although we were still feeling the effects of several days of big eating, we thoroughly enjoyed the food here. We had excellent appetizers - a much lighter version of something like a vegtable pakora. This was followed by a platter that included a wide variety of tasty vegetarian treats served on top of the traditional spongy Ethiopian bread. Our favorites were the specials --a mushroom based and a pumpkin based dish, as well as a lentil based dish off the regular menu. We also had a Windhoek beer (a tasty lager) and a Harar (which was also very good - it had a little more bite too it.) For dessert, we had a really good coconut creme brulee -- very light and flavorful. Some friends had coffee too, but that stuff was so strong I wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink! Great meal! We plan to return soon.

Gale Street Inn - Restaurant 26; Fun Fact 19

Let the birthday celebrations begin -- with ribs! Sunday is Susan's 46th birthday and we got the party started with some excellent ribs at the Gale Street Inn on the northwest side of Chicago. Fall of the bone meat topped with excellent sauce, cooked just right. Yum! The place was packed, even though it was only Thursday night. We'll definitely be visiting Gale Street again. Fun Fact: The Gale Street Inn is not an inn, nor is it on Gale Street. Go figure!

Red Light - Restaurant 25; Tiger - Beer 21

Last weekend our Athens friends Margie and David Barba were in Chicago visiting their daugher Emma who recently moved to town. We met them for dinner on Sunday night at a great west loop Asian fusion restaurant called Red Light. We started out with an excellent crab cake appetizer as well as some yummy sweet potato fries. Susan had scallops on polenta and Kate had "Shrimp 99", both of which were very good. But as so often happens, we really liked the appetizers the best. Susan also had a Tiger beer, which was pretty tasty for a lager. We were all so stuffed from dinner that there was no room for dessert! However, the very best part of dinner was catching up with the Barba's and getting all the latest dish from Athens. Hope they come to visit the city again soon!

iHole - Performance 8; Las Mananitas - Restaurant 24; Fun Fact 15

Last week we joined a bunch of the girls at a Gayco production of iHole at a theatre in the (LGBT) Center on Halsted. We started out with a fantastic margarita and pretty good fajitas at Las Mananitas. I've heard margaritas called truth serum and having tasted this powerful version I can certainly understand why! After dinner we staggered over to the Center for a great comedy show by a local gay themed troupe whose skits (the titles of which were presented on a giant iPod screen) addressed everything from Jane Addams' sexuality to the trails and tribulations of dealing with aging parents. Great company, tasty drink, fun performance. All in all, a pretty good night!

Fun Fact: according to the Urban Dictionary, an iHole is someone who ignores you pretending not to hear you because they have ear buds in, or somewho who thinks they're a bad ass on line. Hmm. Wonder which one they were thinking of when they named the show?

Rose Angelis - Restaurant 23

Right before the Cubs clinched the division last Friday, we were out eating dinner at an excellent Italian restaurant with our friend Ellen. It was a beautiful night, so we walked the mile and half or so that it is from our apartment. Located in Lincoln Park, Rose Angelis looks deceptively small from the outside. But once you enter, it feels like the eating space is about a block long! We arrived at about 6 on a Friday and were amongst the first there, but by 7 the place was packed! (They don't take reservations.) The atmosphere was very comfortable, the food was fresh and excellent tasting and the portions were enormous.

We started out by sharing a really creative and tasty special salad of the day which had all kinds of unusual vegtables in it, along with a beautiful presentation. Even though three of us shared it, we still couldn't finish it all. Susan had spinach and mushroom ravioli half moons which were drenched in a really great tasting brown butter. Kate had a spinach fettucine with chicken and vegtables which was fine, but the real star of the show was the half moons. We all shared something that was billed as tiramisu for dessert (and again were unable to finish it - it was huge). Why is it that anything that has a foamy top and a suggestion of rum is automatically called tiramisu? This was good, but it was more like cheesecake than tiramisu. Nevertheless, the dining experience at Rose Angelis was excellent. We'd go back for the moons alone!

Yes, Thai! - Restaurant 22; Fun Fact 12

On Wednesday we met our friends Paula and Peggy for dinner at a restaurant in their Andersonville neighborhood called Yes, Thai. You should definitely click on the site for the restaurant, as it has a rather interesting graphical presentation (that is completely out of sync with the traditional style on display at the actual restaurant.) This is the best Thai food we've had here in Chicago so far. The ingredients are incredibly fresh and the vegtables used in the dishes are much more varied than is usually the case in most Thai restaurants we've been too. But the prices are still extremely reasonable and the portions are huge. To top it off, the company was excellent too! All in all, this was a great dining experience.

Kate had basil chicken and Susan had veggie pad thai -- both were unusually tasty. We'll definitely return to Yes, Thai sometime soon. There's no liquor license at Yes Thai, so if you like a drink with dinner be sure to bring your own. Fun Fact about Yes, Thai: Word is that the girl on the web site used to also adorn the menus, but the owners received so many complaints that they took her off there.

Raj Darbar - Restaurant 20 (and Indian Garden - Restaurant 21)

After golfing at beautiful Lake Opeka (see below), we had planned to meet some friends up in Evanston at the Blind Faith Cafe for dinner. Unfortunately, Susan got stuck in such an enormous traffic jam on the way home from golf (welcome to city life :^) that we weren't able to make it on time. So we decided to walk down and try out an Indian restaurant called Raj Darbar not too far from where we live, near Diversey and Halsted. This is the best Indian food we've had here yet. (Earlier in the blog we mentioned Standard Indian. We had also visited Indian Garden on Devon which was better than Standard Indian, but still probably not a restaurant we'll be returning to soon.) At Raj Darbar, Susan had chicken shahi kurma and Kate had saag paneer. They were both quite good, but we both agreed that Susan's was the better of the two. The atomsphere was also quite pleasant and the prices were very reasonalbe. All in all it was pretty good compensation for missing our date for dinner in Evanston. We're looking forward to stopping in at Raj Darbar again and checking out some of the other entrees!

Fiddlehead - Restaurant 18; Two Brothers Beer 18; Ann Sathers - Restaurant 19

Fiddlehead is a restaurant in the Lincoln Square neighborhood that uses (mostly) organice ingredients in their dishes. The place has a great feel, with the space including a full bar and tables with a good view of the street. The wait staff are very helpful and friendly. This is a great place to come and relax, have a drink, and take your time eating dinner.

We started out with an excellent grilled shrimp, mushroom, and tomato appetizer (doesn't sound good on paper, but it was delicious) along with some very good bread. Susan had a Two Brothers beer, from a local brewery in the western suburbs of Chicago which was very good. Kate had a 312, another local beer brewed by Goose Island, mentioned earlier here in the blog. For dinner, Susan had an excellent chicken dish with mashed potatoes and mushrooms while Kate had a goat cheese in phyllo dish.

We had to scoot right out of there to get to the movie on time, but then we returned afterwards (to the staff's amusement) for a truly remarkable piece of banana creme pie before we braved the 40 degree weather to get home to welcome Athens friends Jonathan and Barry into town for a food show, to sell Jonathan's most excellent Vino de Milo products, such as the ones shown above. If you haven't tried them yet, check out the website for a store near you! It was great to see them both to catch up on all the Athens gossip and to visit Ann Sather's for breakfast, a place in the neighborhood that Susan used to go to for breakfast with her Aunt. And who knew Jonathan was such a crack puzzler? With him on the team we were able to finish a Friday NYT puzzle, no mean feat!