yet again, a bakery saves the day

i'm going to do a quick rundown of restaurants i've been to in chicago. none of them have been particularly memorable, though thai food has a way of pushing all of the right buttons (pad thai and pad see eiw in particular) with regards to food cravings. the reason why you haven’t seen better food experiences this summer is because first i was getting oriented in the city, then i ran out of money because the government couldn’t get their act together to pay us, and now i am trying to save up so i can afford dinner with my sister when she comes to visit me this week. although it’s not really about taking my sister out (sorry, nora) as much as it is feeling guilty about booking such expensive restaurants that i happened to want to go to – not everyone is as willing as i am to be a spendthrift at really good restaurants.

so i have been to reza’s in the northern part of the loop, in the middle of nowhere seemingly (the inconsistency of density in the downtown is baffling to me). as the name suggests it’s lebanese, or i think it was technically iranian but everything on the menu was either persian or lebanese. it was a lot of food, but merely standard in quality - i have had better at lmf (notably that chicken thing with the pita bits that waseem makes every year). nina and george, your hummous/hummus/chickpea-and-tahini-paste is better.

last thursday i went to dunlay’s on clark, which is just a regular upscale bar/american eatery type place in lincoln park (owned by the uncle of one of the other interns). it was pretty good, and a welcome change from the lame stuff i’ve been eating at home because i don’t like to cook in the heat. perfectly serviceable stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, but it was my first time having blue cheese (or bleu cheese if you’re pretending to be well bred) on a burger so it was also a sufficiently horizon-expanding eating experience, in conjunction with my first manhattan. a few days later, i am not quite sure if i enjoy manhattans more than martinis (real martinis - anything that contains more than vodka/gin, vermouth, and olives is not a real martini), but i am excited to have found another cocktail that i actually like.

finally, on sunday i went to TAC quick, which is this tiny thai place outside the sheridan stop on the red line that features white walls, blue glass crate and barrel candle votives, and lots of pulsing electronica. it was pretty good thai food, although i have had better in cambridge (brighton, to be specific, at bamboo, which is my favorite thai restaurant). i think the thing i've missed at thai restaurants in chicago is thai basil, which is one of my favorite herbs. regardless, TAC quick is a fun place, in an area that has a bunch of small restaurants - so it seemed out of the ordinary that more people weren’t around. on the other hand, it was sunday evening and the area, while it has nice restaurants, is a little rundown. (a quick commentary on the el: i appreciate that it exists, and the fact that it’s elevated is akin to riding a bus facing backwards - you get a view you wouldn’t normally get - but it’s slow, and ugly. i generally prefer the T, which has wider platforms, and occasional art in the stations - something that the el seriously lacks. the nicest light rail system i've seen is the one in lisbon, although new york city definitely wins for system coverage.)

there is also a thai restaurant - or, more specifically, a pan-asian restaurant that runs the gamut - a block from my apartment that’s pretty good. one can’t actually call its pad thai “pad thai” because they added a very peanut-y sauce to the noodles, but it’s darn good anyway. i must say that i was put off by the view of the guy in the kitchen who was cutting up chicken - he was sitting on a plastic pickle barrel, cutting it up on a huuuuge plastic cutting board, and pushing it into a bowl that was on the floor in between his legs. but the “pad thai” is so good that i'm willing to overlook that; besides, i've never gotten sick…

on the way to TAC quick, we discovered a mexican bakery. this is how it went down (to use a lauren-ism) : jazmin, mimi and i walk to the pizza place to check out the menu. we pass a bakery on the way. we decide to go to the thai place so we pass the bakery again, and if you’ve seen the way that i look at bakeries, well, this was no exception. i don’t think it’s in me to pass up a bakery, wherever i am. most of the time i don’t even want anything; i just like bakeries. i would like to live above a bakery…anyway, this bakery turned out to be mexican, which thrilled mimi, who is cuban. it was charming in its spareness - or, not quite charming, but somehow it felt like home even though the bakery part was a bunch of tall wooden cabinets with glass doors, and behind the cabinets was the actual bakery area, and the floors were concrete. maybe it was just because i have been so starved for things that will make this city seem like home to me - a bakery was exactly the right thing. chicago still doesn’t feel like home, but i feel a lot better having been inside a bakery for the first time since i got here. i will most certainly have to check out the scandinavian bakery i saw on my way to dunlay’s.