Two Hits and a Miss on Birthday Week

For my birthday last week, I enjoyed two lovely meals and one that was sadly, though not surprisingly, lacking. On my actual birthday my husband took the day off and we wanted to go out for a fairly quick, but nice, lunch so we could run some other errands. After some thought we ended up at The Noodle in Wilmette – it’s close to where we live, but I think I’ve only been once before. I suppose that’s because I usually prefer to go into the city for meals out, to avoid looking at a room full of folks who look pretty much just like me. But The Noodle, which is a very small establishment with a nice menu emphasizing fresh pasta, turned out to be a great choice – I had a great creamy tomato basil soup; we split a salad with an excellent garlicky-parmesan dressing; and I had a plate of fresh linguine with the house specialty creamy tarragon-asparagus sauce. Because I felt entitled to indulge, I also had a slice of the key lime pie, which was very nice – heavy on the whipped cream, and it could have been a bit more tart, but I happily finished all of it. Having had such a nice experience there we plan to go back more often – we’ll just have to put it into the rotation with all the Chicago dining spots.

But dinner that night provided the disappointment – we went downtown with the kids to take in that evening’s taping of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” – great fun, by the way. We again needed someplace close to the 1st National Bank Building (or now the Chase Center, I guess) and as we’d never taken the kids to the Walnut Room in Fields, we thought that might be a good bet, at least for historic interest (I can’t put up with the Xmas crowds so we’ve never gone then.) And to be fair the kids were quite taken with the room, and they liked the food well enough. But then again my daughters actually enjoy the food at their school cafeteria, which is what this meal most brought to mind – salad dressing made mostly of corn syrup, “pot pie” that wasn’t a pie, of course, and that looked like it came straight from a chafing dish, and meat loaf with some sort of sweet sauce that looked something like cough syrup. (I did have some crab bisque to start with that wasn’t bad, though I suspect it might have been previously frozen.) There were probably only twenty people in that enormous room, and we couldn’t help but wonder what it would take to make it bustle – perhaps that’s an impossible task at this juncture (unless maybe they left up the big tree all year round), but the quality of the food certainly isn’t luring anyone in. It did come quickly, though, and the waiter was pleasant enough.

All that bad food was forgotten on Saturday night when we journeyed down to Bucktown and to a superlative dinner at Hot Chocolate. This place has already received much good notice on this board and it obviously doesn’t need more publicity, but we had such a lovely meal there I felt compelled to write it up, especially because I’ve often been underwhelmed by meals at other places that feature “upscale American food,” if that’s the proper characterization. We started with the excellent mussels and a tasty antipasto plate, accompanied by a fine Belgian beer –La Moneuse Saison. My entrée was an excellent Tasmanian trout (though it looked and tasted like salmon, so I wonder if some Tasmanian fishermen aren’t putting something over on someone) in a mustard sauce with perfectly cooked brussel sprouts, which I love. The mustardy elements in all three of these items complemented each other so well, and went so nicely with the beer. (My husband had the steak, which he liked very much, but I didn’t taste.) Then there was dessert, of course – I had the carrot creation, which consisted of alternating layers of carrot cake and carrot cheesecake, and included on the plate was a delicious bit of pineapple sorbet sandwiched in a tiny cookie – just sublime. We both had hot chocolate, too – we found the “black and tan” too sweet but the dark chocolate was out of this world, and far too rich to finish. But, in keeping with the excellent, friendly service we had received all night, our waiter not only packed up the hot chocolate for us to take along, he filled up our take-home mug for us and provided extra marshmallows as well when we said we were taking it home for our kids. And, to make a great evening complete, The Clash was featured on the restaurant soundtrack that evening. Just a swell experience – highly recommended for a special evening out.

The Noodle
708 Twelfth St.
Wilmette

Hot Chocolate
1747 Damen
Chicago

that evening’s taping of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” – great fun, by the way.

Those tapings are great. I'm going next week, I think.

Oh, something food.
Um.
I bet Peter Segal makes a mean slab of ribs.
Carry on.

whiskeybent wrote:

that evening’s taping of NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me” – great fun, by the way.

Those tapings are great. I'm going next week, I think.

Oh, something food.
Um.
I bet Peter Segal makes a mean slab of ribs.
Carry on.

Last time we went to a "Wait, Wait" taping, we went across the street to Italian Village for dinner afterwards. A couple minutes later, Peter Segal and the gang came in and ate two tables down from ours.

Italian Village would have been a far better choice, with or without the NPR cast. We learned at the show that Amy Dickinson, of "Ask Amy" fame (whom my kids were excited to see, because they read her column) was one of the original panelists on "Wait, Wait..." Who knew?