TLDR Spoiler Alert: We ate a lot of your delicious food and were spoiled by your lovely hospitality TYSM Chicago
My wife and I are from Richmond, Virginia and spent four lovely days in your city. We camped out at a Courtyard Inn in River North and had excellent and easy access to public transport, the lake, river walk, etc.
Granted we had a pretty brief and specific (and privileged) insight into the city, but I was blown away by Chicago’s city planning and overall sense of livability. I’m sure if we came back in January or February my enthusiasm would diminish, but for this trip it ranked towards the very top of our “dang, we should move here” scale.
On to the important stuff, the food! FWIW we’re both pescatarian, so we missed out on some of your famous classics, but I think we ended up doing pretty well for ourselves.
We landed at a weird in-between time and needed something quick that could tide us over before dinner without filling us up. Devil Dogs had a veggie dog, we got ‘em Chicago style, they were cheap and great and served their purpose.
Dinner was Bungalow by Middle Brow for tavern Tuesday. We’ve seen this spot in a bunch of “best of” lists recently and were psyched the timing worked out for tavern pies. We got cheese and veggie, that crust was nuts, so good and their strawberry IPA ripped. Good wine too.
On Wednesday we bopped around Chinatown for a bit before the White Sox game. Got a few bites from Chiu Quon Bakery, wished we had an extra day just to eat our way through Chinatown.
Side note, it lives in the shadow of Wrigley and the team isn’t doing so hot this year, but Guaranteed Rate Stadium is rad and we had a blast at the game.
Dinner was at Monteverde. It reminded me of my first time eating at Peche in New Orleans. You walk in and the restaurant is way too big and busy and borderline bland looking to serve the food its reputation promises. And then the first course comes out and you realize you’re a dummy for ever thinking that.
We got the sheep’s milk raviolo, pomodoro, and fish arancini, all of which were solid. The lemon blueberry sundae was spectacular, legit insane.
Started Wednesday at Hendrix Belgian Bread Crafter for croissants, which was great. Rented bikes and went up to Montrose and then over to Chicago Diner in Lakeview. Reuben and Cuban were rad, vegetarian junk food.
After lunch we did the Architecture Boat Tour. I was perfectly stoned from some gummies and listened to a darling old man talk buildings with Terra Cotta for 1.5 hours. Spectacular, 10/10 experience.
For dinner at HaiSous we had chopped clams, snow crabs, crab noodles, and fried rice. Just fucking bonkers good, we sat at the chefs counter and really did it up and had a blast. After that we popped over to Pilsen Yards for a nightcap. The patio was enchanting, everyone who worked there was probably on cocaine, but in an endearing way.
On our last day we walked up to North Ave Beach and hung for a few hours, The edibles and last day “fucks its” combined and we needed another thin crust before leaving. Ranalli’s was a quick walk away and did the trick, nothing great but can’t complain sitting on a patio and having pizza and beer for lunch. My body did resent this decision for a few hours though.
Finally we went back to Logan Square, met an old buddy for some drinks at Longman and Eagle before dinner at Mi Tocaya. Crab tetela was the standout, fish with mole was really good too.
by 1905band