Ah memories of Chicago. Last night my friends and I went to see an AMAZING band from Chicago, Company of Thieves. Genevieve Schatz, the lead singer, has such a wonderful voice. And recently a college buddy invited me to her wedding in Chicago. Chicago Chicago Chicago. So I couldn’t help but think about The Windy City and my first ever trip there few years ago. My friend had pointed me to a GREAT spot for brunch, Orange. I ordered the Chai Tea French Toast, not expecting anything out of the ordinary or life changing experiences. Also back then I never really had a good cup of chai tea before. So you can imagine when a big bowl of goodness (see left) sat in front of me. Here’s the description from the menu, “baked, chai tea-infused French toast, stuffed with Ricotta cheese, served over a chai tea latte reduction & topped with honey & caramelized apples.” It’s been 4 years since I been to Chicago and I’m STILL dreaming about this bowl of wonderfulness. This is my all time favorite French toast ever. There’s just no words to describe how good this was besides a letting out a big sigh. *SIGH

- Orange there are 4 other locations check their website for the addresses

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After an uninspiring (but free!) morning at the Field Museum (I guess growing up with the Smithsonian in driving distance spoiled me for other museums), my family piled into a cab and my father asked the driver to take us to Chinatown.

The cabbie was taken aback. “I just want to warn you,” he said, “Chinatown here is not like Chinatown in New York. It’s only a couple of blocks.” My father told him that was fine, and asked the driver if he knew any good places to eat there. The cabbie looked at him like he was crazy. “Ok,” said my dad, “we’ll find a place when we get there.”

The driver let us out on an unassuming corner, though there was a chinese restaurant nearby. We looked around, walked a block up, and seemed to be out of Chinatown. “Is this it?” my father wondered aloud. We could see some more promising looking blocks across a pedestrian bridge, so we headed that way. It was a good thing we did.

This was Chinatown proper — lots of restaurants, buildings topped with padoga-style spires, and even an honest-to-goodness Chinatown gate. We asked some police officers if they had any recommendations for a place to eat, and they directed us toward the gate.

Just past the gate was a restaurant called Three Happiness. We figured it was a good omen, since there were three of us, and we went inside. We went up a set of stairs to find a relatively large, wide open space with lots of tables and women wheeling carts around — Sunday dim sum! I was cautiously excited, because although I enjoy dim sum it’s not easy to find vegetarian dim sum. We were seated and my parents asked for menus. “I don’t care for dim sum,” said my father, which seems like a fairly ridiculous thing to say since dim sum is not one particular dish, but I ordered a dish of vegetables with rice noodles just in case I couldn’t get any vegetarian dim sum.

One of the dim sum ladies came by with my favorite kind of dim sum, the wide rice noodle wraps, and I asked her if it was vegetarian. One of the waiters told me that they did not make this dish without meat, even though it was on their dim sum menu, and she confirmed it was full of meat. “I’ll bring some,” she said, and disappeared.

We waited for a long while, and then they brought out the “small” soup my mother had ordered — it was a huge bowl that could feed maybe six people. Then, the dim sum lady brought out a vegetarian version of my dim sum! She had gone to the kitchen and had it made especially for me. The dim sum lady is my hero.

I was so excited that I ate half of the top one before realizing that I hadn’t taken a photo of it. As I started eating, they brought out the food we had ordered from the menu. My father’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the size of the portions. The vegetables were pretty good, and the rice noodles were extremely fat and thick, which I liked. I did not care much for the soup. My dim sum was pretty good, though some of the vegetables tasted canned.

We couldn’t finish all of the food, so we took some home. When I opened the containers later they had added an order of sauteed chinese broccoli with garlic at no extra charge! Can’t complain about that.

During the afternoon I was wandering the north Loop and I got hungry. I passed by Wow Bao, specializing in “hot asian buns.” They only had one vegetarian bao, though they also had dumplings and noodles. I got two of them, whole wheat with an edamame filling. After paying the manager came over and apologized, because they had to steam a fresh batch of edamame bao. I told him it was no problem, but he was very concerned and offered me a cup of coffee while I waited. It was very nice of him but unnecessary. I waited about seven minutes total for my bao.

The bun itself was surprisingly good, though the filling was unremarkable — it tasted precisely like a filling from some frozen Trader Joe’s concoction, but that’s not such a bad thing. It certainly hit the spot as an afternoon snack.
Three Happiness — 2130 S Wentworth Ave
Wow Bao — 1 West Wacker Blvd

But what about Day 1 and Day 2?

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After an inspiring morning at the Art Institute of Chicago (click here to read what I have to say about the wonderful Edward Hopper show), my sister and I decided to walk through the city up to Second City, where we would meet our parents. Around lunch time we started looking for places to eat, and before long we came across The Original Pancake House. As a New Yorker I am usually suspicious of anything calling itself “original” — is it Original Famous Ray’s or Famous Original Ray’s? — but I knew we had to eat at the Original Pacake House.

It was pretty busy (lunch time on Saturday) but we were seated almost immediately. The menu is huge, but I knew I wanted pancakes. As amazing as the original apple pancake looked, it also looked like about five pounds of sugar, so I took the safe route and ordered what they call the “Two by Four,” which is two eggs and four pancakes. My sister went a more savory route, and ordered a crepe filled with spinach and served with potato pancakes.

The food came out pretty fast despite the lunch rush. The eggs were fairly standard for a pancake house, but the pancakes themselves were in a league all their own. They were surprisingly light and fluffy, almost melting in my mouth. My sister’s crepe was very good as well, smothered in Hollandaise, and the potato pancakes seemed homemade, as opposed to the frozen ones you see in most restaurants.After lunch we saw a surprisingly funny show at Second City, and then returned to out hotel. My parents had made reservations at the House of Blues, but I couldn’t bear the thought of eating there. My sister called her friend who writes freelance for Time Out Chicago , who volunteered to meet us and take us to Chicago’s Little India neighborhood. This was much more agreeable to me than the House of Blues, even though it meant a long ride on the El.

Little India reminded me a lot of Jackson Heights in Queens, with Indian video stores, Indian clothing stores, and block after block of Indian restaurants, all busy late on a Saturday night. My sister’s friend took us to Tiffin, an Indian restaurant she’d been to a few times before and loved. We didn’t have a reservation, but someone who did have a reservation was late so we got their table. As the manager said, “these people are here, we’ll seat them.” I was impressed with this policy; I don’t think any restaurant in New York would be so accomodating.

The menu had a huge vegetarian section, and I ordered a vegetarian thali. Partly because it embodies the idea of tiffin, but mostly because it offered so much variety that I wouldn’t have to decide on just one dish.

I can’t describe everything on the plate, but it was almost all excellent — creamy curried vegetables, spicy dhaal, lemony pickles, and more. The only disappointment was the soup, which had what tasted like canned veegtables, and the rice was a little salty. The thali also came with a large puffy chapati bread, which I used in place of a fork and spoon.I would highly recommend visiting any of the restaurants in the Little India neighborhood over eating at a place like the House of Blues (my parents described it as “fine”), no matter what city you are in. It will give you the opportunity to see new parts of the city (the House of Blues was literally next door to our hotel) and also to get some truly great food.

The Original Pancake House — 22 East Bellvue Pl
Tiffin — 2536 W Devon Ave

Click here to read my report on Day One.

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The food most widely connected with Chicago is probably deep dish pizza, and everyone I spoke to from Chicago recommended Lou Malnati’s for the best deep dish pizza in Chicago. There was a branch of Lou Malnati’s just a few blocks from our hotel, so it was a no-brainer for our first Chicago meal.

We were ushered to their “very nice” upstairs, which turned out to be just an ordinary room as you’d see in any pizza parlor across the country. The menu boasted about a signature stuffed spinach bread appetizer, so we ordered that and a family-portion of house salad (which was incredibly well-priced for the enormous bowl that came out) as well as a large deep dish cheese pizza.

The spinach bread was a pretty boring affair, though it came with a side of very good tomato sauce. The salad was nice and fresh, but I was ready for the pizza.

Our server brought out the huge steaming pan and cut the first slices for us. I have to admit, I was unprepared for just how much pizza there was sitting there, though I eagerly tucked in to my overflowing slice.

You may be able to see from the photo that the sauce was rather watery and the cheese was too gooey, but the crust… my goodness that crust. Buttery and crisp, this was the essence of Chicago deep dish pizza. According to the menu they would be happy to make the pizza with less sauce or less cheese, and if I ate there again I would be sure to do so. As it is I ate two slices before I got too full. Skip the spinach bread and go for the pizza.Afterwards my sister and I wanted to experience some of Chicago’s night life, but our guide book was not very helpful. Nightclubs are not really our scene, and I was not really in the mod for a blues club. The only thing that sounded up our alley was the Billy Goat Tavern, which was described as low key and popular among local journalists.

It was not until we arrived there that I realized that the Billy Goat Tavern was the inspiration for the Saturday Night Live skit about “cheezborgers.” As we entered I was prepared for the worst, a tourist trap along the lines of the Hard Rock Cafe.

I was immediately put at ease. The Billy Goat Tavern is a real dive bar that just happens t also sell greasy burgers. They also have their own brews, a lager and a dark beer. The lager was fine, but the dark was great. We were surrounded by real Chicagoans, not tourists, and the whole place was surprisingly clean and quiet. This was a real neighborhood bar. As a vegetarian I can’t speak to the quality of the above-mentioned “cheezborgers,” but as a bar the Billy Goat Tavern is great.

Lou Malnati’s Pizza — 439 North Wells Street
Billy Goat Tavern — 430 N. Michigan Ave at Lower Level

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Over the long weekend I met my family in Chicago, and I will be blogging about the food in the days to come. While in Chicago I had the opportunity to visit the fabulous Art Institute, which was having an Edward Hopper exhibit. In addition to “Nighthawks,” his most well-known work (which is even better in person), I was struck by a few other paintings which capture the mood of restaurants perfectly.

“Nighthawks” brings us into the world of lonely late-night diners, but a few other paintings elicit much different feelings.



The first, “Chop Suey,” I was already familiar with as my college roommate had a print of it hanging in our room. It’s a great painting and I was happy to be able to see it in person. Despite the bright colors and surfeit of light in “Chop Suey,” there is an undercurrent of tension and sensuality that is missing from the darker “Nighthawks.”



“The New York Restaurant” is a painting I was not familiar with, and the reproduction here doesn’t really do it justice. It so perfectly evokes a moment in time and place that I was dumbstruck for a few moments. The excitment and energy in the painting is a thing to behold.



“Tables for Ladies” reminds me of Balthazar, and the ideal of French restaurants from the 1930’s. Hopper obviously had a great affinity for the restaurant world, and it comes through spectacularly in his art.Posted by Howard

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