Sugar, Brasserie Jo, La Rincon de Michoacan, breakfast

Note: another repost from old LTH list-serve, see herefor further explanation...

Random notes from random meals (January 12, 2004)

1) Had a babysitter Saturday night, couldn't think of anyplace I badly needed to go that wouldn't be packed, looking over the unpacked places on Opentable.com I saw a name made famous on Chowhound: Sugar. Well of course a dessert place would be easy to get into early in the evening. But it was also a drink place, why not go and blow the kids' college fund on $16 Gibsons before dinner somewhere else. At least we could check out the scene before amusing crossed the line into desperately overcrowded.

Well... apparently no one goes for drinks, either, before late late. We had the MOD-like interior and the Eminem-dressed waiter to ourselves the entire time until we left about 8:30. Now I realize some of the people who go to these places are just waking up at 8:30, and I expected it to be a shadow of its late-night self, but absolutely empty? Just shows I'll never be trendy again, I go to bed too early. Anyway, had a not-bad, not-too-sweet drink-- ice wine cut with Estonian vodka, not sure why Estonian but the vodka did bring the sweetness down to where you could drink a largish one; and a lime souffle which was quite tasty; and managed not to say anything insulting when the waiter described the menu's absurd literary-pretentious names and floridly overwritten copy as "Shakespearean" ("You mean everybody dies at the end?")

And it was only $60 or $70 for a couple of drinks and dessert! A bargain!

One more amusing note-- the decor is a wild riot of colors and patterns, suggesting a psychedelic breakdown in a thrift shop, but amid all the ultrahip stripes and camos and Op Art, one table near us had an unfortunate, utterly counter-hip association for me-- the thick red and white stripes on it screamed "TGI Friday's!"

2) Afterwards, started walking figuring we'd find somewhere to eat dinner before we froze to death. Brasserie Jo loomed over us and we said what the hell, hadn't been there in many years. For some reason my one dinner there didn't do much for me ten years ago-- I remember at the time liking Bistrot Zinc much better, which was too bad because Susan had spent a fair amount of time in Alsace and liked the food. I no longer remember why I felt that way but I was considerably more impressed this time. Tarte flambee was just okay, mainly due to a rather too generic crust that didn't strike me as the best a LEYE place was capable of, but Tarte a l'oignon (not sure why we had to have both of those-- well, yes I am, Alsatian nostalgia) was really perfect, oniony and delicately eggy. A carrot soup with aioli was pungent, and Beef Bordelaise was as comfy as an old leather chair. Not revelatory or innovative food, but totally satisfying-- and it, unlike Sugar, was packed before 10. Gee, maybe I shoulda gone back one time in the last ten years and given it another shot.

3) The kids and I, making up for the depletion of their college fund, went to La Rincon de Michoacan, the former Los Mogotes, but so far as I remembered identical to when I went there a couple of years ago (and a mysterious man all in black with goatee sat at a table nearby and I almost thought-- that guy looks like a chowhound, too, maybe I should ask him if he is. But I didn't and so a few more weeks would pass before I actually met Gary at Maxwell Street.)

Anyway, it still strikes me as a pretty good, but not quite great place that I wish had just a little more ambition. I wish there was more flavor to the beans, because the bean huarache is simple and beautiful but would be that much more beautiful if the beans had that much more depth of chicharron or whatever, like Dona Lolis'. I loved it when I tried it the first time, now it doesn't quite equal the huaraches at Rico's. A gordita with chorizo and potato was a little heavy on the sour cream but, as big gloppy messes go, pretty scarfable.

4) You think there are no more breakfast joints to be discovered on the north side but there is always another. The corner of Bryn Mawr and Kimball. No name, just "Open 24 Hours." Every pane of glass painted to advertise something else-- Pancakes, Julienned Salad, Tacos & Burritos. I go in and smoke is the dominant flavor, 70s brown naugahyde the theme. The regulars cluster at one end of the tiny bar watching daytime TV. The backroom, darkened, glows with video poker (the last place I knew of that was open 24 hours and devoted that much space to video poker was eventually shut down by the cops for gambling). I order biscuits and gravy. The biscuits could be a little better. The gravy could not, it was sublime.

Followup: someone asked how the breakfast place in #4 compared to Jeri's Grill, Montrose and Western; my reply:

Jeri's is very similar, actually the ham on the bone maybe lifts it a notch up overall. To my mind no 24 hour joint in Chicago is for people with a cleanliness fetish, however.

The other one you're mentioning is I think called the Cozy Corner, and it has a large Closed by the City sign pasted on the door just now. (May just be not paying the water bill, though-- don't assume health dept. right off the bat...) Have not been there.

One other note on "Open 24 Hours"-- while the hash browns were that chunky kind (I don't get that, it's like making pancakes an inch thick, you're just messing with the fundamentals), at least they were well browned. Still, is there any place in this city besides Gary's Edgebrook Diner that makes real hash browns, the thin little grated sticks of potato? Why hasn't the Hash Brown Institute launched an education campaign?