Chicago, Days 6-7

(August 16th-17th)  This is a tale of two meals.  It was the most vegan of meals, and the most carnivorous of meals.  And at that I shall stop the paraphrasing of Dickens.  The last two days spent in Chicago fully reminded me that I was spending time with a large group of engineers.  I love engineers, don't get me wrong.  After all, I am one.  But put five of them in a room together and tell them to come to consensus on something like picking a restaurant, or paying a bill, and I'd much rather be playing Russian Roulette than take part in that discussion.

August 16th was one of those times.  Following the conclusion of work for the day, a group of us decided to get dinner together.  Thanks to Yelp, I had a large number of seemingly good restaurants at my disposal to offer as suggestions.  Each one, though, kept on being shot down, one after another.  And by the time we finally started to arrive at a consensus, another group of engineers met up with us and the process needed to start over again.  In exasperation, I let my colleague Mike Starr choose the restaurant.  I knew what he was going to choose, but that didn't stop me from turning over the reigns.  This also served to cut the group size in half as most people prefer to stay away from vegan restaurants.

And so, we headed off to Karyn's On Green.  For a vegan restaurant, it was very trendy...not at all like you'd imagine the typical 'save the world' vegan food shack to be.  The one complaint that I had about it was that they tried too hard to make fake meat.  Concepts like the Tofurkey, or vegan drumsticks (which Rob ended up ordering...), just don't sit well with me.  Vegans have a large range of ingredients to work with, so I just don't get the concept of trying to take those ingredients, which can be fantastic in and of themselves, and trying to make them imitate the ingredients (such as a chicken leg) that they choose not to work with.  Yes, I get that some people might miss that type of food, but if you're committed to being a vegan, you need to get over that longing for meat!  It's not sustainable in the long run.

That being said, the meal was fairly good.  They did a wonderful job with the ingredients at their disposal, considering that it was completely vegan (i.e. no dairy even). 

Happy Ginger!

To start, I couldn't resist a drink called Happy Ginger: Fresh ginger, fresh lemon juice, agave nectar, topped with Karyn’s Rejuvelac.  That set the right tone for the evening (healthy, but good tasting).

Assorted appetizers.

There were too many good things on the menu, so I ordered a pair of appetizers for the table.  In the upper right, wild mushrooms with nectarine, lambs lettuce, smoked cipollini onion, black garlic.  This was, by far, my favorite dish of the night.  Lambs lettuce, by coincidence, is called lambs breath in England, and has quickly become one of my favorite greens to eat!  In the lower right, elotes with cherry chipotle aioli, cilantro butter.  Mmmm, elotes, i.e. Mexican grilled corn.  Again, the New Mexican in me drove this decision.  The most glaringly obvious appetizer in the picture, and the next picture for that matter too, were not things that I would have ordered...in the above picture, sausage and broccoli pizza with white beans, red chili.  Just to remind you, when it says sausage on their menu, they mean vegan sausage...you can tell that the cheese is a vegan cheese by its refusal to melt properly...

Raw Maki Roll

And that brings us to the last appetizer, the raw maki roll, with red pepper almond pâté, summer vegetables.  This one, especially, perplexed me.  Japanese cuisine is about so much more than just wrapping fish in seafood and rice, in fact, there're dozens of delicious rolls that are vegan themselves...but instead of going with one of those, they tried to imitate fish?  I just don't get decisions like this...For all of my complaining here, the food was still passably good.  Not fantastically delicious, but good enough for me to be content with.  So, on to the main course...

Coconut Tarragon Tagliatelle

Every time I look back to my pictures of the main course, I'm convinced that it's trying to crawl out of the bowl.  Just look at those two arms of tagliatelle that are pulling the mass towards the edge of the plate.  Inching ever closer to freedom and resuming its role as the tagliatelle monster that lives under the table in some dark corner of the restaurant.  Holding the tagliatelle back from reprising that role, though, was a ladling of green tomato marinar.  The coconut flavor wasn't too pronounced, so it was a pleasant, mellow dish, monster references aside.

And of course, dessert.

Last but not least (and here, unfortunately, we must rely upon my memory), are bourbon poached peaches, served with vegan vanilla ice cream.  I'll say that it tasted better than it looks, and leave it at that.  All in all, if I were a vegan, I'd probably consider visiting again, but it won't be on my list of places in Chicago that I must go back to. 

On the sixth day of the conference, the restaurant that I went to was the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant (for some reason, I sang that bit to the tune of the twelve days of Christmas...).  Similar to the previous evening, we had a group of engineers together trying to figure out where to go for food.  Different from the previous evening, I no longer cared about trying to build a consensus.  Instead, I said that I was walking to the Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, and anyone that wished to join me was certainly welcome to!  As you can guess, the people who came with me were almost all completely different than from the previous night. 

Celebrating the end of the conference.  From left: Laura, me, Randy (all from New Mexico), Pascal, Rob, Hugh, Jenny, and Dan (all from points across Europe).  Hugh and Rob also attended Karyn's with Mike, me, and others...

Much like the name implies, this restaurant was carved into an old Firehouse, with even the poles still in place.  A ton of character, and the perfect setting for a last meal in Chicago.

Not a dancing pole, but a real fire pole!  Unfortunately, they were boarded up from the top, so I couldn't take the quick way down after visiting the restroom upstairs...sigh.

Since we were there for lunch, nothing too fancy.  A nice salad to start, followed by a steak sandwich.  Oh, so good.  This type of American cuisine (perhaps I mean good steak here more than anything else) I miss dearly at times while abroad.  Most of the rest of us went with one of the two specials...a ridiculously large steak for a small amount of money (which, unlike most places that offer a deal like that, was extremely delicious), or three small steaks each with a different seasoning.

Steak sandwich.  Roasted peppers, onions, mushrooms, and cheese.  Yummmm.

And so, after enjoying this meal, I took one last trip through Chicago to the places I had visited while running in order to take a few pictures, then it was off to the airport.

Chicago skyline from Northerly Island Park

Fair the well Chicago.  My recommendations for when you visit there, in case this hasn't been obvious, Hot Chocolate, the Little Branch Cafe, Giordano's, Millenium Park, and the Lakeside bike path for those of you that like to jog.

The next few posts will require information off of my computer, so it'll be a bit of time before I can post them...