Lady T

If savory: Cold pizza. Leftover roast chicken most any way: formal in an omelet or informally scrambled, plunked on toast for a sandwich, diced for fast hash, eaten cold off the bone on its own recognizance. No convenient sources for Japanese breakfast immediately in 'hood; occasional miso soup at home, however. If sweet: Yogurt with berries. For company: raised pancake with peach or apple or pear slices, cinnamon and sugar and butter melted over. Toast with marmalade (or Guajolote's superb blueberry jam). Juice: not often; more likely whole fruit. Coffee: Kona with cinnamon sugar and half-and-half. Thereafter: Face the day. Take no prisoners. Edited to ask: do we in fact know that natto is nonlethal?

Leek and potato soup. Fall's coming.

No conflict. Onions go fine with bacon.

I'm in. I'll bring the lock-picks, Nero.

*Inhales deeply, tries to smell simmering turkey stock from Chicago office.*

I would bet a pretty good bottle of wine that you earned Bonnie's undying gratitude and appreciation that day, Vogelap.

Are you volunteering to wash it afterward?

Heh. Pick up a bottle and a couple of glasses, and meet me back where it's air-conditioned...

Is that a complaint, Enthusiast?

"...we'll easily overtake the 'Dinner' thread." Can't have that, FG. I'll desist. Or eat more neatly.

Oh, dear. This won't do. A tip for you, then, for whenever you come back: come (with a jacket) to Chicago in October, when the weather and the pace alike are brisker. We do sometimes dawdle a bit in high summer, and visitors who are used to charging around at New York speeds might be a touch unnerved. Come when the locust trees on Boul Mich have turned gold, and admire the view along the Drive and such -- then get away from the window, make sure you have computer access, and talk to us here at eGullet Midwest. You sound like an excellent excuse to throw a party, and if all you got to eat this time out was gunch, then we will make it our business to see that your next visit rocks!

Gracious. Nearly qualifies as food porn, this does.

Update: Lunch today. Chili. *Phone rings* Splat. *Sigh.* Dab.

All the Midwestern eGulls know that I can't get through a dinner with them (or a lunch either, for that matter) without wearing some of it once I get up. It might be wine, it might be adobado, it might be chocolate -- it doesn't matter. Some of it inevitably comes home on my (respectable size/no details, thank you, Tommy) front. Ah, souvenirs. I should buy stock in Spray 'n' Wash.

Yum.

Welcome, sieve. I've been boiling a couple ears of sweet corn and cutting up a tomato with some salt/pepper/chiffonaded basil on the hottest days...real light and simple. A slightly chilled Pinot Gris goes well.

Just keep taking pictures, Matthew. Post 'em early and often.

So spoke the first restaurant sanitation inspector, I have no doubt.

Possibly what five as well. Tommy's simply ticked off because he missed a lap-dance reference. Elyse: Ask all the questions you'd like (this is eGullet, after all!). Watch out for some of them answers, though.

Hm? What? Does Tommy know about this?

So stick around then. If you liked what we did on this thread, you should see the feeding frenzies we pull when the newspaper food sections come out!

I like it a lot, for melting on quesadillas and mixing (grated) into white sauce for pasta sometimes. It's fun. But I'm with Jinmyo as far as liking the great old classics better. You might see pepper jack in my fridge once a month or so -- but there will always, always be a chunk of three-year Parmigiano and a wedge of Gorgonzola or Stilton, plus a sizable piece of Emmenthaler.

Hm. Campagnola, on Chicago Avenue, does damn fine Italian. I can never keep it straight from visit to visit whether that's the pricier of the two restaurants, or whether that's Campagnola Cafe upstairs. Good eating in any case. SOMEBODY remind me of that Nepali or Tibetan place's name on Church Street, west of Whole Foods! Something Garden? Dang! Beautiful $7 dollar or so buffet on weekends -- I'll look it up and have that for you Monday if no one else comes up with it by then. Lupita's, on Main Street just west of the Metra tracks, comes up with real interesting Mexican -- the trick is to watch for the good stuff on the different-every-day specials list; the rest of the regular printed menu is the standard-issue Tex-Mex routine. Lupita goes back to Mexico for a visit every year, and every year she brings some neat ideas back. That should get you started.

More stuff there than you'd think, actually. A brief sampler, starting from the top down, would start with Trio, $$$$ home of the cutting-edge chef Grant Achatz (known here on eGullet as 'chefg'). Jacky's Bistro is exactly that -- and very good value for the $$. Around a corner and a few steps east of Jacky's is Bluestone Cafe, somewhat of a young-yuppie hangout in the evenings, with a hemisemidecent wine list and a shifting menu of noshers, burgers, and pastas. Across the street from Bluestone is Symphony's, a neighborhood cafe trying really hard to do better quality, and managing oftener than one would think. If their servers ever get it together... Around a corner and half a block down from Jacky's is Prairie Joe's: quirky, eclectic, and astonishingly cheap (but don't go there if you feel contemplative; half the North Shore brings their uncontrolled brats there on weeknights. Ugh.) Here's the punch line: Jacky's, Bluestone, Symphony's and Prairie Joe's are all within two blocks of each other. I didn't mention the Starbuck's, the Subway, and the China Cafe either -- still on those same two blocks. (Edited to get my bolds and italics straight!)

Welcome, Tim. Not to sidetrack the thread (or not too far, anyhow) -- but are you and your two colleagues now safely re-employed? Preferably with people who have their business $hit together?