Chicago Food Coma (The long awaited edition)

I have been weirdly busy with all my many jobs the last couple weeks and have therefore not been able to chronicle my food adventures from my recent trip to Chicago. So, finally, I will attempt to remember all the fabulous things I ate while adventuring around the city.

 Andrew, my dear, long time friend, took it upon himself to make sure that my visit to Chicago was as fun filled and likely to convince me to move there as possible. And what better way to show off the joys of a city, to me, than to take me on a whirlwind food tour of all that Chicago had to offer. By the end of this adventure, I was so full that I didn't want to eat for about a day and a half (unheard of for hobbit-y me).

The first day of my visit Andrew made wonderfully spicy breakfast Chilaquiles. A dish I had never had before but that involved tortilla chips, egg, hot sauce, onions, a couple types of salsa, and was a fabulous kick to start the day. His chef roommate also generously shared some flat break that she had made topped with honey from her brother's farm.

Then we began to wander; Andrew showing me the landmarks of the city and beginning the best food tour that I have ever taken. Entirely of his own devising and showing off the delightfully diverse food cultures within Chicago, his food tour was an inspiration. I have already talked about the various beverages that we sampled in the last post (feel free to read that one as well, especially if you are looking for new and delicious beer varieties to try).

 We began the food adventure with the Chicago favorite, Deep Dish Pizza. Oh the joys of dough, cheese, and sausage in a soup of delicious red pizza sauce. A lovely snack (I kid you not. That was our snack). Do not ask me to choose between Chicago Deep Dish and New York Thin Crust Pizza. As far as I am concerned, they are two completely separate foods, both delicious, I do not need to compare them; just eat them.

Andrew with Deep Dish Pizza

Next, Andrew and I spent a lovely time walking around the city, enjoying The Art Institute of Chicago, and public art by Picasso. All of our wandering began to make us a little hungry so Andrew led the way to Big Star, a quirky bar and restaurant specializing in little bites. Oh the tacos! We got the Taco de Panza and the Taco de Pollo. The first being a lovely bite of crunchy braised pork belly, with queso fresco, cilantro, onion, and guajillo sauce. The second an easy addition to our mini menu with roasted chicken thigh, black bean crema, salsa negra, cotija cheese, crispy fried unions and cilantro. Oh goodness, my mouth is watering as I reminisce and my spell check is lighting up like crazy because it doesn't know what the heck I am talking about. But I digress. Because we are foodies, and because we had a charming waitress who reminded us of Rosie the Riveter, we also got one of the specials that was going on then. 

It was glorious. A chorizo scotch quail egg- Whaaaat? Ok, let me explain. A scotch egg is a hard boiled (ish) egg that has been wrapped in sausage. Chorizo is a Spanish sausage that is spicy and wonderful. Therefore, scotch quail egg equals brilliance. With a spicy mole (chilies and chocolate sauce, but savory not sweet) and red cabbage with Greek yogurt slaw. If licking plates was considered somewhat more normal, I would have done so. So beautiful. Just the right amount of spicy, beautiful tiny egg, and oh that lovely lovely sauce. Chicago being so far away could be a sad thing just for the sauce.

The loveliness in question.

For more info on Big Star's menu (because it is awesome) go to their website!  http://bigstarchicago.com/#

Following this joyful stop, Andrew coined the term roaming tapas (little bites), and we made our way to our next stop for delightful eats at Bangers and Lace! Another bar with an amazing kitchen. This place has more of a speak easy feel and serves up some wicked good sausages. We had the rabbit sausage with baby carrots, oyster mushrooms, black current, and cream, as well as 8 beer tasters to really explore the huge variety of brews that they have there (I wrote about them in my Chicago Beer and other Intoxications post). I could have cried this place made such deliciousness. So much good food and getting to spend quality time with one of my best friends, how much better could it possibly get?

Me with a couple of beer tasters and the delightful sausage plate, or bowl I suppose. Check out the Bangers and Lace menu at http://bangersandlacechicago.com/edibles

Rosy from the lovely libations and with the warmth of food still in our mouths we walked the block over to The Bedford. A classy restaurant that used to be a bank, where we ate at in the vault. This section of the restaurant was literally the vault for the former bank, it still has the safety deposit boxes lining the walls (some of the boxes even have things in them so check it out!). There we met up with Andrew's very sweet chef roommate and her boyfriend to eat oysters and drink champagne. This was my very first raw oyster experience EVER. How did this happen with me being such a foodie and having had oysters be one of my favorite foods since childhood? I have no idea but I'm glad it happened. I, not so surprisingly, loved them. Andrew knew I would, and I was glad to have one more food experience under my belt.

That's me, about to try my first raw oyster ever. Note the number of oysters in front of me. When we were done there were not so many left...

And this, my dear ladies and gentlemen was only the very first day of my trip to Chicago. Next day in next blog installment, because writing this is making me too hungry so I need to go have a snack. Stay tuned for the next one! 

Chicago- Beer and Other Intoxications

Chicago is a heck of a beer town. In the time that I was there (3 days) I tried more than 10 different beers as well as multiple types of champagne and wine. Before you become extremely concerned about my drinking habits, let me say this is not a usual experience for me, but rather an adventure of alcoholic proportions! This post will be about what I drank, where, and what I thought of it, so that if you are curious you too can seek out these tasty creations. 

I began my Chicago booze adventure at Big Star, an artsy bar and taco joint at 1531 N Damen. This place was awesome, fabulous small bites, epic menus both for food and various alcoholic beverages, and a spunky waitress who looked like a mod version of Rosie the Riveter. The food was great, but that is a different post (don't worry, I will get to that one later). At Big Star my wonderful friend and guide for the Chicago Adventure, Andrew, and I ordered an incredible beer by Firestone Walker, it is their 16th Anniversary beer and is a blend of 8 of their other beers. The beverages in question are aged in a variety of barrel types, including barrels that had brewed brandy and bourbon, before being combined into the gloriousness that was the 16th Anniversary. This beer was beautiful; dark, rich, balanced, and deep, with an overall rating that far outranks most competitors on all of the beer rating sites I found. It also has quite a high alcohol percentage at 13%. For more information on this particular beer you can look on the following website-

 http://thebeerheads.com/2012/11/28/firestone-walker-16th-anniversary/  

For more info on Big Star, visit their website-

  http://bigstarchicago.com/

Above: Andrew, sadly wondering why this delicious beer is in such a tiny glass. 

Next, Andrew and I continued our wander around Chicago, and eventually found our way to Bangers and Lace, an upscale bar and food joint, with a vaguely speak easy feel. The food, amazing. The beverage lists, extensive. If you are a fan of beer, bourbon, or other libations this is a great stop in Chicago. While contemplating our beer choices, I noticed that the folks at Bangers and Lace have a $2 taster option, meaning you can get a 2.5oz taster rather than committing to a whole beer that you have never tried before. This is a wonderful idea. All it took was mentioning this to Andrew for us to decide that we would create our own flight of tasters. With a beer list as varied as the one at Bangers and Lace, it was pretty hard to choose. We ended up with 8 of them, though I have actually very few pictures (Andrew thought my photographing every item that we went to eat and drink was absurd. In the future I will photograph despite any possible criticism.) 

We tried:

Porter House Oyster Stout

Hitachino Nest Red Rice

My Blueberry Nightmare

Dieu Du Ciel! Peche Mortel 2011

Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen

Timmermans Lambicus Blanche

Liefermans Goudenband

Jolly Pumpkin Noel de Calabaza

Please note that these are only a few of the beers that this delightful location offered and that we were picking random things that appealed to either of us. They ranged from very light Timmermans Lambicus Blanche to the very dark Dieu Du Ciel! Peche Mortel 2011, with a wide variety of flavors and region of origin. For that reason, this flight makes a ton of sense if what you are wanting is a true range of beer options. Had I been more sound of mind and had there been any kind of logic in our ordering I would have kept better notes, and wish that I had. However, I did not, and so this is to the best of my recollection, what each beer was like. 

Porter House Oyster Stout- A good standard stout, fairly dark. While this beer is brewed with oysters, the fish, sea, flavors that you might expect are minimal. The oysters balanced out the beer and gave it depth but were not strong nor overpowering. 

Hitachino Nest Red Rice- Light in color with pleasant tanginess, this was one of the more tart beers in the flight, with nice rice notes. If you have ever had Genmai Cha (Green tea with toasted rice), there is something of that rice flavor to this beer. If you have not had Genmai Cha, you really should try it.

My Blueberry Nightmare- Once of the more memorable beer choices that we made, and as a result one of Andrews favorites. My blueberry nightmare has, as one would guess, blueberries in it, the nightmare in the name comes from the fact that this beer is brewed with hot chilies. The result is a beer unlike any I have tried before. Super tart and acidic, fruity, with a hint of the chili spice, it is an adventure for sure. There really isn't sweetness that you might expect from a fruit beer. It has a very aggressive flavor profile for sure and I found myself wanting to pour it over a salad as dressing with olive oil. 

Dieu Du Ciel! Peche Mortel 2011- One of my two favorites of the evening. This beer is super dark, chocolaty, and smooth. Dessert for sure and just plain yummy. 

Aecht Schlenkerla Marzen- Very odd but tasty. This dark beer tastes of smoke, bacon or ham, and has that distinctive aroma as well. It was well rounded and exciting. 

Timmermans Lambicus Blanche- This was my other favorite beer of the evening. It was delightful. Brewed with Coriander and Orange peel this was the lightest beer of the flight. It was gentle, sweet, floral, and generally pretty glorious. Leave it to me to have my favorites be the darkest and lightest beers of the night. This one was a surprise to me though, as I usually prefer porters, stouts, or other darker beers over lighter varieties.

Liefermans Goudenband- This was one of our later selections and as a result, is a little lost in my mind.  My scribbled notes tell me that it was light and sour, though it did not stick out in my mind the way that some of the others did. Also, I enjoyed each of the beers that we tried even though not all of them stuck out in my mind or were my particular favorites.

Jolly Pumpkin Noel de Calabaza- Also one of our later selections, this dark beer was had more of a hop flavor than our other selections. It also tasted like Christmas, as one might imagine from its name, with a fruity, sweet, and spiced flavor that while less memorable than other varieties in the flight, was still well balanced and tasty.

And for one final trick, Andrew ordered a couple of shots of Malort, the Chicago right of passage liquor. Google searching Marlort will find you many pictures of people looking shocked and disturbed, grimacing, at their first taste of the strong liquor. Apparently, I am made of stronger stuff. I thought it wasn't too bad actually. A bit licorice like, similar but perhaps more powerful than Ouzo, which I grew up cooking with, Malort is a good thing to try at least for the cultural aspect of it. Also, be warned, the stuff burns even after you have swallowed it, you can feel it in your chest and stomach long after the taste is out of your mouth. I found this nice actually, especially with the chilling winds of the city. Try it for yourself! 

For more information about Bangers and Lace (and to see their menu!) visit their website- http://bangersandlacechicago.com/

Six of the 8 beer varieties from our flight at Bangers and Lace

We followed our meal (Which I will talk about in a different post) and beer tasting with oyster and two varieties of champagne elsewhere. Champagne and food will be another post and so I will skip on to the last day that I was in Chicago when I had lunch with Andrew and a dear friend of mine Amanda. We ate like nobody's business, and tried several beer varieties at Hopleaf, a funky bar with delightful food. At this point I had been eating non stop for three days, my notes, like my appetite were getting less enthusiastic. And so I really have no idea what I drank there with the exception of the fact that I ordered the Kwak. A beer served in a unique glass (pictured below), with an orange color, and an overall non especially memorable flavor for me, it was fun, but I preferred Amanda's choice of Dieu Du Ciel! Routes des Epices. Which I only just now realized was by the same brewers as my other favorite at Bangers and Lace. It had really nice peppery notes and was a tasty, well rounded beer.

Kwak in it's fancy glass.

"Hey! Let's do this whole beer tasting thing more often! Also, let's eat oysters, rabbit, duck, Mexican food, quail egg, pork, baklava, pizza, and tons of other things within a couple of days! We should do this all the time!"

Chicago- A Food Tour

Flying to Chicago was an adventure. It began with a greyhound bus where I was snored on by the fellow next to me and was followed by being smelled by police drug dogs, getting patted down by TSA, and having lost a button. The dog and police officers were kind and the security woman was apologetic about having to pat me down.

                For the first leg of the flight the captain made his greeting announcement over the intercom and kindly asked “that everyone stay in their seats with their seat belts fastened for the flight,” to which a two year old a row up from me piped up “OK!” Which was pretty cute. 

               I got to catch up with one of my best friends from high school and what I originally thought would just be hanging out and catching up turned into the most delicious, intoxicating, and exhausting food tour of my life. We of course got to do the standard Chicago things- The Art Institute of Chicago,  The Bean, Picasso sculptures, seeing Wrigley Field, etc, but the majority of the trip was really about food. I was only in Chicago for 3 days, but in that time I sampled more types of alcoholic beverages than I have in probably the last three years combined. 

              While in Chicago I also ate more types of food in that small time slot than I could ever hope to find in restaurants here at home. It was a blast. More info to come about what I ate, where you can find it, and what I thought!

Uncertainty and Sorting

I keep starting posts and then discarding them. The problem is, I have so many stories now; so many suggestions, hints, and travel tips, so many experiences to share that it is overwhelming to begin. I wish I could dump my memories and ideas onto the floor like old printed photographs and shuffle them around into a more logical layout. I am so visual, so tactile, that sometimes words are difficult. How can I share all the beautiful, crazy, haphazard adventures when I cannot show them to you? To some extent I can; photos are ever helpful but I need to figure out how to organize them and how to make the stories come to life. Connor, my unbelievably helpful, calm, and technology competent boyfriend, would say that I am doing it again. Stressing out, and getting myself confused, and scared when what I really should be doing is jumping in fearlessly and figuring it out as I go. The funny thing about this is that the fearless jumping is a closer representation to how I travel. I make reservations as I go, not far before, I never know where I will end up. I pack a carry on, that's all, make no schedules, bring no watch and use the sky and people around me to gauge the time. However, when it comes to putting the results out for people to see, I get stuck.

Therefor, to break this habit of allowing myself to get scared and stuck, I will just jump and keep on jumping until it becomes a habit in my every day life and not just in my travel life. Now, not to worry, I will still think my decisions out carefully and not do anything too crazy, I just wont let being scared of failing at things keep me from doing them. I will also be better at laying out goals and actually accomplishing them. Exciting things currently happening or happening in the very near future are as follows-

I am learning French and German! (I am just starting, so please don't ask me to say anything for a bit...)

I am going to Chicago next week. This is rather spur of the moment, but a couple of my teaching contracts have been delayed slightly and so I have a glorious bit of completely commitment free time to go visit a close friend from high school who shares a love for art, theater, good food, and adventure.

And, as often happens, there will be many mini trips to Portland and Eugene in the near future for dancing and exploring.

This blog will see a couple additions, (if I can figure out how to do what I want to do) including a list of things that I like to bring traveling with me with links to stories involving those items, a photo story section, and of course, the actual information from my Chicago trip.

So, with that, travel blog entry numbero dos is yours!

Jess

The First One

Happy New Year and Happy New Blog!

Through my many adventures I have had people say to me, "why don't you keep a travel blog?" many many times. Like the stubborn, sometimes silly person that I can be, I would shirk the question, mumble about my incompetence with technology, or laugh at the prospect that anyone would want to hear about my random and sometimes moderately ill fated adventures. So here I am, many wanders later, wondering, why the heck didn't I start this thing sooner?

This year will therefor see a new level of dedication placed towards organizing the multitudes of photos, journals, and stories that I have amassed. No, this is not a new years resolution, I hate them. Instead, it is a strangely timed push towards making the wonderful things that I do in my life accessible, so that when people ask me what I have been up to I can calmly and gracefully direct them to my blogs, lay out an organized verbal rendition of one of my adventures, or show them a nice categorized photo rather than getting really excited, beginning to ramble, and then becoming confused and trailing off awkwardly as I try to remember what I was talking about.

So, look forward to photos (with stories attached, as some of you have requested), Do's and Do Nots, and watching me find my way through this beautiful crazy world we live in. Ciao for now.

Jess