The second time Lois and I were just bumming around Andersonville, checking out some little antique stores, when the hunger struck us. Again, we tried the Hopleaf, but it wasn’t 3 yet so we headed down to Mary’s. This time around I ordered the Barbara-Q Bacon Burger. Again, they failed to disappoint. Lois ordered the Philly Cheesesteak burger and she too was satisfied beyond belief.

Both times, we were seated right away – no line, no wait. The service is always prompt, and the order usually delivers within about 10 minutes. The wait staff is flamboyant, and alert to who they are waiting on. They’re also super sincere, and concerned about how to make my meal better, but not in a creepy stalker way. They know how to give you space, and still manage to make sure things are going smoothly.

Bonus — you get your check in a high heel shoe – classy. Both times I got the ruby red slipper, which must be just where we were sitting both times.

No complaints on this place. We will return and bring back new-comers.

This place, which is part of Big Chicks, is cool. The restaurant is several rooms cobbled together with all types of awesome work by local artists on the walls. The crowd is eclectic and there are some pretty enormous, delicious looking cakes under glass by the cash register.

They basically had Lois sold when the hostess gave us two complimentary slices of some kind of breakfast cake (think spice cake with a dash of some kind of fruit…we’re still trying to figure out what it was) when she seated us and made good, strong coffee appear in less than a minute.

Lois had her heart set on French toast and sausage links, but breakfast selection was more of an ordeal for me.  I wanted a breakfast burrito, but there were so many other interesting things on the menu. After a lot of deliberation, I ordered the Portland omelet (I’ve heard of the Denver omelet, but never knew Portland had a signature breakfast dish). I was intrigued.

But before you get to the main course, you get the option of compote or fresh fruit to start; I ordered the fresh fruit, Lois ordered the compote. These little fruit dishes just looked wonderful, and made me feel like I was at some sort of upscale restaurant. The fresh fruit cup had  banana slices, orange wedges, pineapple, raspberries, strawberries, black berries, blueberries, and cantaloupe. And the compote had a delicious apple taste. Seriously, this was where it was at. And it’s not like they gave you a whole boat load of fruit — they were the perfect size to hold you over until your main dish arrived (which only took about 10 minutes, by the way).

The Portland omelet and I fell in love at first sight. I don’t think Lois felt threatened by this new found love, because she would be around after this meal and the omelet would not, so she let me bask in this love the same way a wife would let her husband join his friends at a strip club.

This omelet consisted of eggs, bacon, chives, and tomatoes, with cream cheese slathered in the middle of the omelet and also smothered across the top. This thing was the bomb. Seriously. I’m so used to having cream cheese on carb-based breakfast items that I was blown away as to what other things we can spread cream cheese on. And although this omelet was bigger than my head (I had no problem finishing it), but it also came with fried hash browns, which were good but were too crunchy as a unit; I like my hash browns loose so I can pick at them, not fried on one side so I have to cut them into squares. It doesn’t matter, because I had this giant omelet to fill me up.

While I was loving on my omelet, Lois was going to town on her French toast and sausage links.  The first good sign…a good old fashioned mini ice cream scoop of real butter on top of the three large French bread slices of French toast.  These huge slices of toast came with some fresh fruit on the side and real maple syrup, so you had a choice of toppings. Lois went for the syrup while I not so discretely took all of her fruit piece by piece.  Too bad this dish kicked Lois’ ass — she managed about two slices (ok one and a half…I ate part of her French toast too) and all three sausage links and that was it.

We loved Tweet…let’s eat but we’re going to have to put it into the “treat” category, but a very, very worthwhile “treat”.  We spent almost $35, including tip, which coming from two people who usually spend under $20 for breakfast is kind of extravagant.

Actually in high school I took a cooking class called “Today’s Foods” and we had to cook an ethnic dish from the name of the country that we picked from a set of random cards. My group got the Ethiopia card. Since I was the only one of the group of degenerates they stick you with who actually half cared about doing well in class, I took on preparing this meal basically from scratch. Bottom line, after going to this restaurant, I’m pretty sure my high school recipe wasn’t authentic – just an Americanized textbook version.

So anyway, this was different. We made it in on a Sunday for a late lunch. Just as it started to rain, we were seated near the windows, giving us a decent view of the Uptown Theatre and the activity shakin’ on the streets.

What’s nice about this place is that they don’t expect everyone who comes in to know exactly what they are ordering, so they include a short glossary at the beginning of the menu to help you out. Between that and looking around to see what other people are doing, you quickly learn that you eat traditional family style Ethiopian food without utensils, using instead big hunks of bread or your fingers to dine.

We didn’t want to commit to any one dish, so we ordered a family style dinner – vegetarian/meat Messob – which allowed us to try small portions of six things (three meat dishes/three veggie dishes). The food is arranged on a deep, circular metal pan lined with a thick spongey sourdough flat bread, Injera, that has an awesome texture, and quite a strong sour taste to it. You also get a basket of this bread on the side to help you scoop up your food and a salad in the middle of your messob. It’s pretty cool.

Some of the menu items were a little hit or miss for us, so I guess that’s why they offer them in groups – something for everyone.  For our veggies, we tried the gomen (chopped collard greens sautéed with onions, garlic and ginger then lightly mixed with sliced jalapeños); ye-dnichena carrot alicha (potatoes and carrots cooked with onions, garlic, ginger and turmeric); and shiro (mixed legumes prepared with ginger root,rue seed, bishops weed and garlic, cooked in berbere sauce).

For our meat, we went with doro wot (a chicken drumstick marinated in lemon then stewed in a delicious berbere sauce with onions, garlic and ginger root, served with hardboiled egg and home-made cottage cheese); ye-siga wot (beef stewed with berbere sauce, flavored with onions, garlic and ginger root; and ye-siga alicha (beef cooked in mild sauce of onions, garlic, ginger root and turmeric).

It was definitely a little overwhelming when the waitress first put the platter down but we got the hang of this. And it was interesting as we ate, to see how dishes grew on you.  So while we fell in love with one dish immediately, we proclaimed another our favorite by the end of the meal.

One important thing about this place — do not go unless you can devote a few hours to dining.  This is meant to be an experience…it took us more than two hours to work our way through the platter and some coffee (a whole other experience — try it!).

Dearest El Palmer,
Hi this is Clark. Your food was “alright”.
-Clark

That’s how the letter would go if I were to write it. Basically there was nothing special – and I even tried something new. I steered away from the same old burrito, super burtio, fajita burrito or burrito suizo, and went with a steak torta. I never had a torta before and thought, “hey! let’s try something new!” so I did. I mean tortas are cool and all, but it isn’t exactly a burrito. It’s a giant
piece of bread, with chopped steak, lettuce, tomatos, avocado, cheese… basically the same as a burrito, except with bread. I mean, it was good and all, but really who wants a burrito sandwich when you can have a burrito?

Anyway, it was good except for the giant hunks of fat in the grilled steak that I kept having to scoop out of my mouth with my napkin. That was probably my biggest complaint about this place – the excess fat being overlooked when this steak was chopped. But it did have good flavor and the sandwich was hearty. The chips and salsa were better than the torta, but nonetheless I ate the whole thing.

The torta also came with rice and beans, which  I’m not gonna lie, were quite excellent. The beans were nice and smooth and creamy, and the rice was packed with flavor. Oh yeah the horchata was dang good.

Lois on the other hand stuck to the same old, same old – a cheese (shocking!) enchilada dinner, which also came with beans, rice and a salad.  You can’t mess up cheese enchiladas, even when you drench them in salsa, which this place did, so we won’t even bother to go into the details. Tortilla, cheese, sauce, end of story. And we’ve already covered the bean and rice quality, so let’s get down to the two most important factors in Lois’ meal: 1. her Coke came in a real glass bottle and 2. her morbidly obese plate provided enough food for two meals.  The Coke is key – it just tastes better in glass (and yes, Lois is old enough to remember when all pop came in cool glass bottles you recycled at the grocery store); it was a refreshing treat. And as far as portions go, a second day meal is the best indicator of a dining bargain.  We spent about $20 and got three meals out of it.  Not bad.

Of all the choices on the menu, I opted for the most simple, most boring selection on the list, a turkey and Swiss sandwich with lettuce, tomato, onion and mustard. Yeah. Told you, boring. But I’m not complaining. For the state that I was in and the amount of time that I had, it seemed like the most reasonable choice at the time. Little did I know that I was going to be waiting for a sandwich for 15 minutes when I was the only person in line! Ok, that’s not exactly true; my friend Eddie was in line behind me (he ordered the chicken quesadilla).

The sandwich was pretty good. All the veggies on it were very fresh, cold, crispy and crunchy. The turkey was thick, and stringy, like they cut the slices off of a Thanksgiving turkey, so that was a plus. The bread was super thick and soft, and the cheese was also very flavorful. Like I said, boring. But it’s me, not this place.

I also had some of Eddie’s quesadilla, which were excellent. They hooked him up with about eight quarters of a quesadilla (two small tortilla wraps, cut in quarters), and some mild, flavorful pico de gallo. The chicken  was excellent; it seemed like it was pulled off the bone, but I think it was the bagged version of that.

My sammy was about $5 after taxes, and the quesadilla was close to $7. Good fresh food, convenient location, but long prep time. I’d go back, maybe for something a little more exciting, when I’m not in a hurry

This place is very new, very modern, very minimalist, and very clean looking; it seemed from our first impression Falafill is to Middle Eastern Food what Chipotle is to Mexican food.

When going to places that serve Middle Eastern food, I usually go with the same thing, a falafel and grape-leaf wrap, so it wasn’t hard to choose what to get here – pretty standard. There isn’t a crazy amount of choice, but you do get into an internal debate — falafill sandwich (served in a white or whole wheat pita)…falaroll…falafill bowl…or a sandwich combo, which comes with fries(regular or sweet potato)and a drink?  We both decided to get the combo, which we would later regret, but not for a bad reason.

Falafill’s unique selling point is that you get to customize your meal.  Once you get your dish, you head over to the salad and topping bar where there are about 10 different trays of nicely labeled goodies from basic garlic and yogurt sauces to fresh veggie garnishes and hot red pepper sauces. This is where it gets interesting. I had no idea what any of this stuff was and I was making decisions based on the name. I think I put some garlic stuff in there, some green stuff, some other stuff, and some more stuff after that. Lois did the same but she was a little more restrained, adding a little garnish (the parsley, radish and red onion) and the yogurt sauce.

We got back to the counter where we had set up camp and started chowing down. Surprisingly, we didn’t do half bad. I wish I could tell you what I put in mine, but when it comes to a buffet style setup, there’s no way I ever remember. But the bottom line, I think they create the falafel and mixers so you can’t go wrong. A little bit of dill stuff, a little bit of hot stuff, and a little bit of garlic stuff — beautiful. It’s a win-win. Not to mention that they stuff the pitas with four nice-sized falafel balls, making this a very hearty portion. If you are going with someone else, save the extra cash, and order one meal and an extra sandwich. They hook you up with a ton of fries. My sweet potato fries were to die for, crispy on the outside but super soft and sweet in the middle — but I couldn’t finish them by myself. Lois ate most of her fries but couldn’t finish her falafel sandwich. Seriously folks, choose wisely here because they hook it up.

This place is so good. We are actually seasoned professionals here – we’ve had it all, the sandwiches, appetizers, pizzas, pasta. So when we come to Dag’s in search of some comfort food after a long day, we go for what we think is the best thing on the menu — a deep dish cheese pizza with Italian beef, a side of teriyaki buffalo wings, and some times the fried ravioli. On this particular trip we skipped the ravioli – it just seemed excessive given that we planned a cupcake run to Sensational Bites after dinner.

Dag’s pizza is phenomenal; the sauce, which is sweeter than most, definitely sets it apart. Our favorite pie includes hunks of Italian beef submerged in the sauce, a generous pile of cheese and a lighter deep dish crust than other spots serve. You’ll go all types of ga-ga over it. The beef is tender and soft, the cheese is sweet and stringy, and the sauce, aside from being nice and mildly sweet, has big chunks of fresh tomato. The crust is soft and chewy and not tough on the teeth when you get to the pie’s edge.

And the wings – let’s not forget about the wings. A large meaty variety of drumsticks and wings make up this 12 piece appetizer, which is drenched in your choice of sauce. For us, it’s teriyaki. (Side note: at Panino’s on Waveland and Broadway, if you want some really good wings, ask for the hot wings covered in teriyaki sauce). The sauce is sticky, sweet and tangy. Finger lick’in!

This place, which is pretty reasonably priced, also gave us a nice discount ($3 off a bill of $20 or more) because it just launched a text coupon system.  If you frequent Dag’s, check it out.

Roong Petch is a Thai restaurant/sushi bar that offers a good selection of both cuisines, including some Japanese standards like tempura shrimp and chicken teriyaki.  We both struggled over whether to order the Japanese (Clark was thinking sushi and I was tempted by the teriyaki), but in the end we both went for Thai.

Because Roong Petch is really affordable, we decided to treat ourselves to an appetizer to start.  Along with the standard appetizers you usually see in a Thai and Japanese restaurant, we noticed a few interesting variations and ended up trying the honey pork — five grilled honey marinated pork skewers served with house dipping sauce.  We both loved the pork — it was tender and well marinated, not to mention plentiful…these weren’t  tiny skewers.  The house dipping sauce, while good in its own right, didn’t seem to be the right match for these skewers; it was almost too overpowering for the pork.

I went for one of my favorites, pad see eiw with chicken, and wasn’t disappointed.  The  noodles, veggies (especially the broccoli), meat and sweet soy sauce were all delicious, and the portion was the perfect size (meaning I could finish most of it without feeling over-stuffed).

Clark ordered the spicy basil noodles with chicken, a nice stir fried dish consisting of chicken, wide rice noodles, basil leaves, sliced carrots, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and chili peppers. They give you the option of spicy or regular. Being a fan of the spicy, he sided with the spicy — but this may have been a huge mistake because they made it so darn spicy, he couldn’t even enjoy it or finish it. Next time he may just go with the regular spice.

All in all, Rootch Petch was a great find.  Good food, nice atmosphere and a really affordable price. And the bonus – it’s just across the street from Margie’s Candies so if you still have room left after dinner, a sweet treat isn’t far away.

Title card photo taken by Elaine Chernov. Thanks

First, hats off to our new love grubhub.com, which let me place my order and pay for everything on my card (even the tip…actually it even calculated my tip) so that all the delivery guy had to do was hand me a bag of warm BBQ.

So back to the food part.  We decided to try Smoke Shack because I was waking down Halsted one day and was struck by a strong BBQ smell, which led me to investigate…and right to the Smoke Shack’s doors, which conveniently have carry out menus right by them.  Of course, we love BBQ and it seemed like a perfect meal for a night when the temps were supposed to dip to two degrees.

We each got a main dish and split a few sides –- cornbread, cole slaw, and Parmesan crusted mac and cheese. But let’s start with the BBQ. I had my standard, a pulled pork sandwich, which was delicious — just the right balance of sauce (which Clark described as “tangy” but in a good way) and meat so that the sandwich wasn’t soggy but it wasn’t too dry either.  It was also a refreshingly good-sized portion for me; I feel like a lot of BBQ joints try to slop on as much meat as they can but this place got it right.

Clark had ordered the rib tips sandwich, which sounded too good to be true, and he was eager to see how you make a sandwich consisting of meat, bone, cartilage and fat. But upon delivery, we had learned that they messed up on his order and gave him plain old rib tips instead. If you follow Clark’s eating trends, this was a mistake on their part, but Clark came out the winner. They even charged us for the rib tips sandwich, not the rib tip dinner, giving him a bigger, more expensive meal for the price of a sandwich. Cha-ching.

The tips were excellent. The quality of meat was good. The slow cooking and the tips themselves made it very easy to separate the fat and bone from the meat. There were some really good portions that had the tough meaty muscle parts; those are always the best. The only complaint is the sauce. Clark is not a big fan of the super tangy sauces. It’s not a life or death thing, just personal preference. Also, more sauce on the tips would have been nice, but in this case because, he didn’t like the sauce that much, it was ok.

The side dishes were each pretty good in their own way.  The one we were most curious about – the Parmesan crusted mac and cheese – was probably the most rewarding. According to Clark, it was the highlight of this meal. It was quite delicious, not overwhelmingly cheesy, and the bread crumb crust topping made it feel really comforting. Not much to say about the cornbread, except two thumbs up, although I could have used some real butter for it (which may or may not go against all BBQ rules, but who knows….I’m Polish). We were divided on the slaw; while I really enjoyed the flavor and texture and Clark proclaimed it too soggy but then ended up scarfing the leftovers down later that evening.

Clark thinks Smoque and Smoking Woodies are by far better if  you’re looking for BBQ on the northside of Chicago. For a place that calls itself the Smoke Shack, the food didn’t really seem like it had that smoky taste, other than some “liquid smoke” type stuff, and maybe that would explain the over tanginess of the sauce.

However, despite this “tangy vs. smoky” debate Smoke Shack was a good find at a good price ($25, including delivery fee and tip).  We’ll be back.

We’re  greeted by the sounds of Donna Summer playing overhead and a very polite man who offers us samples of the turkey chili. We try the chili. My heart melts. I look at Lois, and she’s savoring it as well, which is surprising because Lois isn’t really a huge chili fan. The turkey chili was out of this world. Creamy, chunky, with ground turkey, kidney, and pinto beans. Not too spicy, very tasty. Very.

We take a moment – a long moment – to take the whole menu in. The sandwich list (cold and hot) seems to go on forever and we just don’t know what to choose. Lois steps up to bat, and orders a half of the Super Cheese Sandwich, a warm 6-inch concoction of melty swiss, brick, provolone, muenster, and American with a little lettuce, onion and mayo thrown in for good measure. I order the cold beef and cheese (toasted bread and Swiss cheese), which is served with cold roast beef, onions, tomato, lettuce, and the capt’n’s secret sauce (which we don’t know anything about, at this point). So we order, and the sandwich maker starts to make the sandwiches, but stops midway to tear off some little bread samples and squirt some of the capt’n’s secret sauce (CSS) on them so we can let him know if we want it on our sandwiches. I went with it, thinking it can only add to the sandwich; Lois, however, skipped it, fearing it would overpower the cheesy-ness of her sandy. The sauce is pretty awesome, and Lois even agrees that it’s a beautiful blend of different vinegar, spices, and sugar. I broke down, and ordered a small cup of the turky chilie that the gentleman let me sample. It really was delicious, no joke.

After we place our order, we head over to the dining area and stand in awe. Tho booths seemed somewhat retro, with headboards featuring hand-painted with cartoon characters sporting Nemo’s products. One-eyed aliens, with forks and knives, goofy looking kids playing with their food (reminded me of the Goonies), The Blues Brothers getting their ears pinched by a stern looking nun. This place would be super fun if I were a little kid — or Lois, who was standing by the claw machine asking me if I had any quarters. She started to pout after I told her I had none for the third time.

The sandwiches were excellent — a little slice of deli heaven. Mine was very well balanced thanks to the toasted-ness of the bread and the cold meat, fresh toppings,  and tangy, sweet sauce — which seemed to add even more flavor to the thick slices of beef and bread. Lois’s on the other hand….whoa, I finished the last few bites of her sandwich, and they really were not, messing around, compiling all these cheeses. And once they all melted together, they formed a United Nations of cheeses, where everyone was getting along and making the right decisions. It was glorious. I actually looked up at Lois, and said out loud (hence the title), ” I don”t want this sandwich to end!”

the united nations of cheese

This all adds up to a delicious lunch and a cool atmosphere for less than $15 — what more could you ask for?