LTH planned my son's birthday party!

So in honor of the completion of my son's first year of life, family and friends from New York and California converged on Chicago for the festivities. Not really wanting to cook for 25; I decided to get 2 full slabs of ribs, tips and links from Honey 1 and 3 roasted chickens with sides from Pico Rico. Just to assure overkill, we also made a red cabbage salad(recipe from AnneVdV here) a bean salad and an orange and onion salad from the Silver Palate cookbook, some guacamole and my father's favorite, pigs in a blanket. We ended up with leftovers I am still eating (the party was on Saturday). The quote of the day came from my dad, regarding how it was that Robert Adams could make such an amazing rib. I told him that he just smoked them, fresh for the consumer. Dad said: "A lot of people smoke a lot of things but none of them taste like this." New York doesn't have anything worthy of being called barbecue, not like Chicago. The chickens and sides from Pico Rico were exceptional. We ordered the fried sweet plantains, the tostones, the red beans and the yellow rice. Everyone loved the food, if I had to do it again, I'd get more ribs and less chicken. I underestimated the broad appeal of the best ribs people had ever tasted. The point of this post is a broad thank you to everyone who posts with great places to get food around town. I live in Hyde Park but the party was held at a gracious friend's much larger apartment, and without being able to read about great places in other parts of town, I'd never have known about either Honey 1 or Pico Rico, being content to eat around the south side. The icing on the cake was the fact that the bills at both places left me change from the hundred. That's 4 dollars a person, maybe 7 if you add in the salads and liquor. (Kenwood liquors-89th and Stony Island, prices have gone up lately, but there are still a dozen bourbons for under 15 dollars) So, hats off to you LTH, for saving me the trouble of cooking for 25 people.

Thanks for the nice story. Happy birthday!