Chicken and beef patties, one each, from the Caribbean American Bakery on Howard. Dizamn, that's some fine snackin', takes me back to Brooklyn.

I don't eat them as often as I should.

Caribbean American Baking Co.
1539 West Howard Street
Chicago, IL 60626
(773) 761-0700

First trip to Spring World yesterday, and I truly have a new "go to."
The Spicy Pig's Tongue, Shredded Chicken with Spicy Vinegar, and Yunannese style ribs rocked our world big time. BIG TIME!

"Smoked salmon" salad at Sweets & Savories with fennel and orange. The salmon is cured in house and flavored with lavender and clove. Some of the best salmon I've had in a while...right up there with ronnie_suburban's.

Nãem khâo thâwt at Spoon. Still kicking myself for never ordering this dish until this weekend--crunchy, fatty, utterly lemongrass-y. May be one of the best dishes in Chicago, period.

last week I ate the bacon cured sweetbreads at blackbird and I am still thinking about them. That was definitely the highlight of my meal there.

I finally followed the board's recommendation, and visited Deta's Cafe on Ridge in Rodgers Park, just over the Evanston border.

Wow! Just WOW! This is the essence of a GNR!!!!

The spouse and I split two Bureks, a meat/onion Burek and a spinach/feta Burek, and the spouse downed a total max-caffeine dose in thick Turkish coffee.

This was home cooking at its very best. We saw our lunch come from the oven. It was hot, it was fresh, and Oh Lord, it was TASTY!!!!! Although Deta uses canola oil, the pastry tasted like pure butter, fragrant and crisp/tender the way that only perfect pastry ever tastes.

And Deta - she reminded me of my own old-world Grandmother. She fussed over us like we were her kids!

This was a delight, and I'll be back soon.

Grilled up some veal brats from Bobby Nelson's Cheese Shop. Very yummy and quite deserving of a better mustard than I had!

Cauliflower soup at the Gage as the daily soup special on Saturday night - very good on its own, but the garnishes of fresh black figs & lightly pickled jalapeno slices were a surprising but lovely combination & lifted this out of the ordinary.

Kung pao chicken and szechuan tofu at Spring World for lunch today.

Kolacky from Brookhaven in Darien via Europa Bakery and Brookhaven's own Kolacz. Will post photos once I figure out how.

The ham club sandwich at Patty's Diner. Generous serving of ham, topped with - you guessed it - bacon, slices of tomato, lettuce, aand dollop of mayo on one of the homemade buns! Oh, so tasty! How can you go wrong with cured pork topped with cured pork?

A large sausage, onion and garlic deep-dish pizza at Pequods. Nothing that hasn't been rightfully lauded on here before, but it's so good that every time I eat it, I have the urge to tell everyone how good it is. Sometimes while making gutteral noises that attempt a visceral display of the level of pleasure it brings, causing total gluttony that almost bridges the gap to its sister sin, lust. Thankfully the keyboard saves you all from such an animalistic display. This pizza makes me feel like the ape who discovered the tool in 2001: A Space Odyssey. THIS is what pizza is!

Inspired by so many comments on LTH lately. we decided to go to Wells Brothers in Racine, WI last Saturday for lunch.
We did not have a pizza there since the summer of 1968.
But it turned out that the pizza was even better than I remembered it.
The crust was almost pastry-quality like: flaky with a buttery taste and perfect texture all over.
Too bad the co-owner would not tell us the secret behind that dough.
The in house made sausage was so tasty with the right amount of fennel seeds and not overcooked.
And the whole pie was baked just the right time to give the edges a touch of burn and melt the perfectly blended and spiced cheese top a very attractive hue.
The pizza remained warm a very long time.
Cannot wait to get back there for more.

The Led Zeppelin from Kuma's Korner... Our waitress was fairly rude but I wasn't exactly expecting stellar service and the burger more than made up for it, even with the 2.5 hrs wait...

chocolate croissant from Le Flour.



(pardon the phone quality picture)

The top was crisp, the inside soft and flakey, and the chocolate of the highest (and most delicious) quality

So glad to have found a great bakery about 5 minutes from home.

Le Flour
6701 N. Olmsted Ave
Chicago, IL 60631

I went to Big Jones on Clark on April 19th. The GP and I shared their House Burger and the Shrimp and Grits. We have been there a few times before. Big Jones has always been a great experience for us. We both enjoyed our cocktails and the Fried Green Tomatoes to start. The best thing I had that night was the house burger. It was as outstanding! The description from the menu is: Niman Ranch sirloin, grilled mushroom, onion, Gruyere, garlic aioli with Cajun frites.The marriage of flavors on the toasted bun were grand. The meal was made more memorable by knowledgeable and engaging staff.

Mr X

Mr X wrote:The GP and I shared their House Burger and the Shrimp and Grits.

You sound much closer to your
General Practitioner than I.
I'm lucky to get a curt 15 minutes!

I placed a massive order from Sticky Rice to cover all of my meals for the day...I had some work to get done at home.

The order was a little hit and miss, with the pad thai woon sen (yes, that's a thing there) coming up short on flavor...but I should have know better than ordering something so pedestrian. The chive dumplings had good flavor, but 2/4 were undercooked and as a result, were mushy by the time they were delivered...not bad though. I also ordered the northern Thai sausage...very good but a little too dry.

However, the start of the show as the Gang Hung Lay. Sweet lord. The stew was the perfect combination of curry, ginger, and garlic, and no skimping on the pork. I was a little worried at first because a lot of the pieces looked like they had too much fat left on, but everything was cooked to the point where each bite completely melted in your mouth. To go with this, I ordered a side of sticky rice. Now, maybe I am on the only one, but I had never actually had the sticky rice from....Sticky Rice. Is this what sticky rice really is?? All these years, all these mediocre Chinese meals with rice...I never knew. The rice had an amazing chew to it without seeming overcooked and was the perfect accompaniment to cut all this porky goodness.

And the cost for a massive 2.5 meals? $27. Yes.

Last night's trio of ice cream at Lula. Lemon Creme Fraiche! Lemon is my favorite flavor of ice cream. The raspberry cheesecake & graham cracker were also lovely.

This is my sweet tooth talking, but Bongo Room changed their menu for the Spring Season and the carrot-coconut flapjacks give me the much needed sugar boost after the gym.

Jimmy Jamm's sweet potato pies. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of sweet potato pie (too stringy and too sweet), but these had a smooth texture and subtle sweetness that did not mask the very vegetable from which they were made. The regular sweet potato pie had a deeply caramelized flavor; the honey cream cheese and banana rum versions were also stellar -- the former tasted as if it was sweetened entirely by honey, and the latter tasted like a perfectly balanced mashup between a banana rum cream and sweet potato pie. A Sunday visit had them pulling fried chicken out of the fryer that looked amazing (I think they were doing some catering, otherwise I would have tried a wing) . The owners couldn't be nicer, giving us a taste of their non-dairy sweet potato ice cream, which was redolent of pumpkin pie spices. When you're down there, be sure to drive around the surrounding stately Beverly neighborhood -- you won't feel like you're in Chicago at all.

Here's a little culinary mash-up for ya LTH: Romanian Kosher salami, fresh (still warm) Iraqi/Assyrian samoon, Palestinian green olives from family orchards in the West Bank. Peace in the Middle East? Hardly. Just a sunny afternoon in Rogers Park.

Made a little sandwich with the samoon, salami and some great deli mustard I picked up at Romanian. What a great lunch; I love working from home.

I brought about 5 kilos of different kinds of olives home with me after a recent visit to Palestine. Word on the street is that customs won't allow preserved goods with liquid on them enter the states, so a day before I left, we dumped all of the brine on the olives. When I got to Chicago, I re-brined the batch in these pictures with water, salt, lemons, garlic, onions, hot pepper and a touch of rice wine vinegar to give it that je ne sais quoi. Some of the other olives I brought through are preserved in oil, which customs doesn't seem to have a problem with.

For some reason, I almost feel shamed to admit this, but then I thought to myself, "Self, since when have you ever cared about what ppl think about you most of the time?" Plus, this is the honest truth:

Impulse buy when picking up a cheap anniversary flower bouquet for the Mrs. at <gulp> Jewel yesterday.

Jewel bakery Sour cream donut holes. They were on sale. A container that had prolly 2 dozen in it for a buck fitty. WAAAAAAAY better than I thought they would be for the price. Not gut bombs, either. Guarantee you I'll buy more if I step into a Jewel before the sale is over.

Ultra-fresh, first-of-the-season asparagus from Genesis Growers, which I received in my CSA box this week. I coated it lightly in olive oil, hit it with some sea salt and cracked black pepper, and grilled it on my Weber kettle over lump charcoal. Unbelievably delicious. Just a few weeks into this year's box, I've already had something better than anything I had in my box last year (from another source).

=R=

Smoked salmon from Calumet Fisheries on a toasted roll with cream cheese and cucumber. Eaten in my kitchen, not al trunko by the river, but still damn tasty.

jesteinf wrote:Smoked salmon from Calumet Fisheries on a toasted roll with cream cheese and cucumber. Eaten in my kitchen, not al trunko by the river, but still damn tasty.

I just finished off my hunk of salmon by throwing some hunks of skin into the toaster oven until they were nice and crispy. Hot, oily, crispy...pure heaven.

Cbot wrote:

Cbot wrote:Chicken gumbo, dirty rice and a nice size filet of Tilapia. The fish was one of THE BEST I have EVER had!! It had great breading on it with a little spice. The thing I liked best was it tasted like it was baked, not greasy at all or fried out thick batter crust. In fact there was not a spot of grease on my hands or in the little box/wrapper it came with....man I had to ask myself....how do they do this?? Will be back to find out SOON.
The hot sauce that came with it was good to NICE heat N flavor.
The chicken gumbo and rice were great also.This place is a must try.

http://louisianafriedchicken-chicago.com/default.aspx
13653 S. Cicero Ave.
Crestwood, IL 60445
p: (708) 371-8212

Bummed out looks like there are going to be closed till 4/15/10...posted on there web site.
http://louisianafriedchicken-chicago.com/default.aspx

I HOPE i dont have to delete this post and move it to the Opening/Closing post after 4/15/10 !

As of the beginning of May, Louisiana Fried Chicken is still closed but the owner hopes to reopen within the month. Disappointed that we couldn't sample the World's Greatest Tilapia we instead went across the street to Nonna's for the World's Largest Pizza Slice.





Nonna's really doesn't belong in this thread but at least you can't complain about the portions.

Nonna's Pizza (multiple locations)
13636 S Cicero Av
Crestwood IL
708-239-4200

crawfish boil @ Toons last night, some of the best of the season so far.

seebee wrote:For some reason, I almost feel shamed to admit this, but then I thought to myself, "Self, since when have you ever cared about what ppl think about you most of the time?" Plus, this is the honest truth:

Impulse buy when picking up a cheap anniversary flower bouquet for the Mrs. at <gulp> Jewel yesterday.

Jewel bakery Sour cream donut holes. They were on sale. A container that had prolly 2 dozen in it for a buck fitty. WAAAAAAAY better than I thought they would be for the price. Not gut bombs, either. Guarantee you I'll buy more if I step into a Jewel before the sale is over.

Ha! Those are even allowed in my front door, a one bite treat that easily makes it to thirty plus 2 pounds weight gain.

Jamon serrano with asparagus and a duck egg on top of grilled bread at The Purple Pig. Sorry egg-haters, but it really worked with this one.