Displaced.

Proof that I've actually left the house to go walk around. 

Yesterday I went on Facebook and saw pictures of Bing's birthday dinner.  It's super weird to see pictures of people going on with their lives when I'm not there, not that I would expect otherwise but in the sense that it feels surreal to see the pics.  I don't know why I started this post when I don't feel like writing.  BYE.

Chi-town misadventures: productive procrastination, ill-judged parking decisions, and lots of eating

We're smiling because we have no idea what's about to happen in about... four hours. 

A word of advice: don't park in an empty lot in Chinatown at 10:40pm.  Because THAT'S how you get your car towed.

Warren and Cindy visited recently. We ate, we drank, we karaoked like true Asians, we ate and drank more, and then we parked in an empty lot in Chinatown at 10:40pm.  There's an impound lot next to our apartment building in downtown Chicago, but of course the towing company took my car to this place instead:

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The six of us trudged to the nearest L station back to our apartment.  We piled into a Zipcar and got on the freeway.  After missing our exit, Mike, Connie, Skyler and I end up driving through Oak Park in a red Toyota Matrix.  By the way, I don't know if you understand the absurdity of this situation, so go back and read that last sentence one more time. Connie keeps pointing out the windows that have steel bars on them, while I occasionally pick out potential drug dealers based on the exhaustive knowledge base I've built about drug dealing by watching The Wire.  It's all fun and games until we pull up behind a Lincoln Continental that slows to a crawl next to a small knot of hoodlums (Connie's words, not mine).  The rear right door of the Lincoln Continental opens and Connie shrieks "DRIVE BY! DRIVE BY!"


Yeah, Asians aren't racist at all.


Warren and Skyler at Smoque before the fiasco.  They are deep in discussion about.... 2k10 probably.

All six of us eating on the bbq:

Cindy and Connie.  Connie is blissfully unaware of the approaching misadventure.

A quick plug for my new favorite restaurant avec.
Overall: 9.5/10.0; easily the best restaurant I've been to in Chicago, probably top 5 favorite ever, including Michelin-starred restaurants in LA and Vegas.  This place is ridiculous.  We went here with W&C when they were here and then went back a week later with Ernest because it's that good. 

avec's best dish: chorizo-stuffed medjool dates with smoked bacon & piquillo pepper-tomato sauce


In other news.... Skyler introduced me to Rainmeter, which allows you to trick out your desktop with applets and also as a side benefit provides hours upon hours of distraction from anything actually useful you might want to do.  My desktop now looks like this:

Why do I need to monitor my CPU usage, my WiFi network connection or my D drive capacity at all times, you ask?  I don't.  In fact, I don't even care about those things.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Cheese, swine, and wine - what's not to like?

Purple Pig - 4.2.10
Overall: 8.0/10.0
Wine
Guigal Cote du Rhone (2005?)
Dishes
- Salt-roasted beets with whipped goat cheese and pistachio vinaigrette: The best dish of the night.  Beets were perfectly cooked, whipped goat cheese & pistachio provided textural contrast as well as great flavor pairings.  A perfect bite of all three tasted like spring.
- Charred ramps & scallions with romesco sauce: Rich and buttery, and romesco was excellent - both nutty and flavorful.
- Sardines with lemon vinaigrette: Tasty but not memorable.
- Deviled egg with arugula & caper berries: We heard that this dish is often sold out.  Two halfs of the deviled egg are reassembled then battered and deep-fried.  I didn't think the arugula and caper berries were natural pairings for the egg, which was good but I think a tad overrated.  Also, very hard to share.
- Pork liver pate:  Pate was nicely flavored.  The texture was a bit loose and spreadlike.  I would get this again, but I think we ordered too much cheese (we picked 5, including 2 triple-creme varieties).  As a result, I think I found the pate a bit too rich as part of our meal.
- Milk-braised pork shoulder with mashed potatoes:  Pork shoulder was perfectly cooked, mashed potatoes were nothing special.  It was nice to have a leaner bit of pork with our fatfest.
- Cheese plate: Robiola Rochetta, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, Podda, Delice de Bourgogne, Capriole O'Bannon.  Robiola was the standout.  Excellent selection of cheeses, but I've seen cheese boards that are better put together by way of accoutrements.

Check was ~$150, 4 of us were full and we had a bottle of pretty nice wine (~$40).  If this place blows up, it will be annoying to go there because they have limited seating, most of which is communal, i.e. not my steeze.  Other than that I liked both the vibe & service - both were lively and laid-back.  All in all, I would totally recommend a visit to anyone who likes the wine-bar vibe and the tapas drill.

Note: These are not pictured because I hate taking pictures of dishes in restaurants and refuse to do it.  Not to mention that I am not equipped to take pictures in dark restaurants because the iPhone has a shitty camera.  In fact, the picture above was taken the next day because I happened to be walking down Mag Mile on my way to Ernest's.

in transition...

New city, new life, new blog.

Wait for it.