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I used to think the egg roll was fine (still no Lin's) but this last time was sad.

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I want to have a good body, but not as much as I want dessert. ~ Jason Love
There is no pie in Nighthawks, which is why it's such a desolate image. ~ Happy Stomach
I can't go to Hollywood. I got biscuits to make. ~ Dwight Henry

Late-Nite Eats Database

Putting in a preemptive post; I'm headed to a market research tasting study for prepared deli salads with mayonnaise...expectations are











low

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I used to think the brain was the most important part of the body. Then I realized who was telling me that.

Ba Le Shrimp and Pork Spring rolls. Super thick rice paper, chewy and flavorless with cloyingly sweet hoisin dipping sauce.

Salt and pepper shrimp from China Chop Suey on North Ave. in Oak Park.

Un-called-for thick breading, golden on the outside and so raw under the crust it's actually a gummy paste. And yet the shrimp are overcooked and rubbery – that is Talent!
No taste of either salt or pepper (on the 2 I managed to eat) and honestly 4 thin slices of jalapeno for 15 shrimp.

It's not even worth bothering over - I'm gonna go make some kimchee ramen...

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The cake is a lie

Barbecue chicken pizza from Kinderhook Tap in Oak Park.

Stale flour tortillas with ketchup, liquid smoke, flavorless mozzarella, and rubbery post-chicken. Served already cut and separated into haphazard brown islands (almost like individual nachos). In a life of dining, I have never been served anything less ready for primetime than this plate. Then something plastic caught fire in the kitchen and the place was inundated with acrid chemical smoke. Beers were good.

At Claim Jumper in California, about a mile outside the Temecula wine region. Of course, no Temecula wines, because they weren't corporate-approved. Ordered a blackened-chicken pasta - the blackening rub was almost pure salt. I sent it back, asking them to re-make the rub with less salt. I even offered to show them how to make a decent blackening rub, but they declined. They sent back a perfectly inedible version of blackened chicken with virtually no blackening spice. I barely touched the re-made dish. Waitress: "We made a whole 'nuther one for you. But, yeah, we've gotten a lot of complaints about the blackened chicken."

Did they take it off the bill? Take a guess.

I doubt I'll venture into another Landry's restaurant again.

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Chicago Craft Beer Week!

Just about everything we bought at Goddess & Grocer yesterday afternoon:

A very disappointing "Italian snack box" comprised of too-thick, dry prosciutto wrapped around overcooked asparagus, bland penne & artichoke heart salad, and a weak olive sampler that looked & tasted like it had been cut with food service giardiniera. The caprese salad wasn't terrible - little balls of decent fresh mozzarella, surprisingly good halved grape tomatoes, and green, not-wilted basil chiffonade. Didn't taste like there was much in the way of vinegar or olive oil in it though.

An awful key lime pie bar - unpleasantly dense, so sweet it made my teeth hurt, the bottom of the crust slick with grease that tasted like old ghee. We each ate a bite, then wadded the rest up in its wrapper and crammed it into the remnants of the snack box.

They gave me two samples of their yellow cake cupcake with chocolate frosting while I was paying. The cake was dry and tasteless, and the frosting tasted exactly like canned Pillsbury or Duncan Hines. I watched one of the guys take the cupcake out of the case and cut the cupcake into quarters, so I know the dryness wasn't due to the samples sitting out.

Coffee was pretty good though.

goddess sucks. ugh.

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Ed Fisher
my chicago food photos

RIP LTH.

Stone Bowl Rice (Dolsot Bibim Bap) and Vietnamese Plate at Eng's

Eng's used to be our go-to quick-fix Asian food with lots of veg, but the food has become increasingly gloppy-sweet-salty and today was the capper. The Bibim Bap was primarily meat and shittakes drowned in some kind of sticky-gloppy hoisin-based sauce that soaked all the way through to the bottom of the rice and prevented a lot of it from sticking. There were some stir-fried-to-death bok choy bits, and some mushrooms but no fresh vegetables at all; the egg did nothing to help.

The "Vietnamese Plate" was nothing like the one pictured, which looked like a bunch of stuff to make lettuce wraps with. It came with some sort of sauce I ignored completely, a greasy fried roll, a wedge of sliced iceberg topped with sticky-sweet dressed carrots and radishes in unpleasantly thick batons. There was shrimp and some kind of indefinable meat (pork? beef? chicken? all three?) fried and then drowned in a similarly sticky-sweet-salty-goo sauce. The one saving grace of the whole platter was a pile of cold rice noodles which had been nicely dressed with a touch of fish sauce.

Oog.

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No guts, no glory.
http://www.chicagonow.com/quips-travails-braised-oxtails
http://quipstravailsandbraisedoxtails.blogspot.com/

Roots Pizza, in Ukrainian Village.

I was dumb enough to order a sandwhich instead of the pizza. It was honestly one of the worst sandwhiches I've ever eaten, and I'm not incredibly picky. It was Ham, Proscuitto and Pepperoni. It's hard for me to not devour a meat-packed sandwhich no matter what quality, but the thing was practically inedible. I was chewing the meat for about 3 minutes before I realized it wasn't going down. Every bite was the same. For $12, I expected better. I would have taken a sloppy and unorganized mess of a sandwhich from a thousand other mom and pop joints over that hunk of junk. Only got a few bites in before I had to abandon it.

On the flipside, I like their beer selection and I tried one of their sausages and have no complaints. I just know that next time I head back to Roots, I'm getting a pizza or just grabbing a beer.

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--- some things taste good with some sauces. ---

Overall, I had a wonderful meal last week at Ing Restaurant but one dish unfortunately stood out for being awful.

Under the "Cooling" menu the item is described as "Oyster. Foie gras, smoke, and beer."

The dish was a piece of foie gras on an oyster. It was served with an upside down glass. When the glass was turned over, a smokey smell game out. Beer was them poured into the glass. The result was painful. The smoke completely overwhelmed everything and destroyed any flavor of the beer. The oyster and foie could not stand up to the other flavors. The smoke was not some of the wonderful cooking smells (think barbeque) that you get. It was like a building was on fire. I took a bite or two and a sip and I could finish neither the dish nor the beer.

We had some amazing dishes that night (a full report is posted on the Ing Restaurant thread) but if you to Ing (and I recommend that you do) avoid that dish.

Edited to add: Late in the meal, I did talk to the chef about the dish (a very pleasant conversation overall which was mostly my wife and I telling him how much we loved most of the meal). He advised because of some extreme weather on the east coast, he had to find a new source for his oyster in the short term. Perhaps different oysters would have made the difference.

Chicken BBQ Sandwich and Fries at The Patio in Lombard (or Downer's Grove?). The sauce is so sweet....and the fried were mushy and without any flavor at all. Supposed to be famous since they have the sauce for sale all over the store, but....I didn't taste that.

I always wondered what that place was, and now I do - and I will not be going back.

I knew this sounded familiar. Phil Vettel picked it as one of his four favorite appetizers in Chicago in the 8/11/11 Tribune Dining section. He wrote, "You're supposed to inhale the smoke, then enjoy the oyster with beer that's poured into the smoky glass. It's nuts. But I thought the flavors went together marvelously."
So perhaps the oysters were the culprit....

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"Life is a combination of magic and pasta." -- Federico Fellini

On the Ing Restaurant thread, I note that somebody else liked the dish too. I find the contrast in opinions on the dish really interesting. My wife and I both had the identical reaction to it but others liked it a lot.

This an easy one: the doughnuts Pucca and I had at the West Town Bleeding Heart last night. Offensive on several levels.

First, I don't need purely descriptive names for foods, but I just can't for the life of me remember the names of any BH doughnuts, despite having them repeated to me several times. This doughnut had some name that included the word "princess." I can't see any connection between the name and the fact that this was a hibiscus doughnut filled with lemon custard.



I liked the hint of hibiscus, and the lemon custard was indeed creamy and lemon-y. However, the doughnut was bready, Pucca said like brioche. Really off-putting, such a texture does not a doughnut make. Also, the custard was very runny, like yolk. Glad we had plates.

Pucca ordered this doughnut, which was supposed to have a pecan custard filling and dulce de leche glaze.



This doughnut was actually disgusting and, well, repulsive. The "custard" had the appearance of a taro mash and contained chopped pecans--extremely unpleasant to find in a doughnut. Furthermore, the custard was bizarrely citrusy and overwhelmed any dulce de leche flavor there might have been from the glaze. Pucca and I had both been craving doughnuts all day (actually, since we scheduled our outing more than a month ago)--we couldn't stomach more than a bite of this thing.

I've given the West Town BH three earnest tries now. After last night's visit, Pucca scolded me, "Don't give any more money to this place!" I may have learned my lesson, finally.

happy_stomach, I'm so glad you appropriately posted our experience to this thread. I found the names of our doughnuts on this thread.
I've made custard many times for a fruit tart, cake fillings, and as a base for homemade ice cream. The filling in the Machete had no resemblance of what I know to be custard. It was such a disappointment after the person behind the counter raved about it being one of his favorites. I will give the night staff props for great service after hearing the horror stories of happy_stomach's previous experiences.

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Chocolate cake from a friend. It looked and tasted like a sponge, with an odd waxy texture. I don't know what could have caused that. The frosting and filling were okay though.

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I want to have a good body, but not as much as I want dessert. ~ Jason Love
There is no pie in Nighthawks, which is why it's such a desolate image. ~ Happy Stomach
I can't go to Hollywood. I got biscuits to make. ~ Dwight Henry

Late-Nite Eats Database

Technically, not the worst thing I've eaten lately, because I didn't actually taste it, but anyway: a Target brand veggie masala bowl. I had bought a bunch of these because our kitchen is still packed up and I was getting sick of frozen pizza. The smell when cooking was not promising - kind of rubbery - but when I opened it up it was a thousand times worse. Think: boiling soap. I tossed it without an attempt to eat it.

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As a mattra-fact, Pie Face, you are beginning to look almost human. - Barbara Bennett

Posole verde at a small storefront Mexican near Naples, FL. La Fogata.

Everything looked right: out of the way stripmall location, rave reviews from local "foodie" sites, mom and pop owners/cooks from Guerrero, filled with Mexican families, wide ranging menu including many items that remain largely unknown in FL. Hand made tortillas, even. (Despite a huge itinerant (but increasingly permanent) Mexican population in FL, the Mexican restaurant food there is uniformly poor -- a widely accepted truth that is consistent with my experience. It's puzzling: similar places in the South (eg, Atlanta, Charlotte) have developed vibrant Mexican scenes in the past decade.)

Everything was bad, but my posole (a Sunday special) took the prize: a greasy, vaguely rancid mess of fat and pork bone chips with canned mushy hominy dumped in at the end. Crap accoutrements too. Wilted lettuce, no dried chiles, buy dry, browning limes. The tortillas, while hand made, tasted like the powdered Maseca (crap to begin with) had been on the shelf for years. Lastly (GWiv will appreciate this) the prices were high and the portions small. Not that I ate it, but it was insult added to injury that my $14 pozole came in a bowl that would be considered comically small by any legitimate taqueria. I also ordered a "huarache" made from the same horrid masa. It had no beans, no salsa, no nothing. Just some Goya Sazon-laden beef on a clumsily made oval the dize of a playing card (!). I actually laughed when the nice lady brought it out.

This was an extreme example of authenticity in no way presaging quality, flavor, value or anything good. It also underscored my longtime position that it's more important to have good, fresh, local masa and good tortilla factories than it is to have a humble masa-mama hand-forming tortillas de caca from a powdery mix. Also, "foodie-ism" is now making some pretty shitty places into local darlings if they push the right buttons.

Having learned my lesson, next dinner we skipped the local consensus "best, most authentic Thai in SW Florida" one stripmall down for my 3rd grouper sandwich in 4 days. As she said on Seinfeld, real and spectacular.

Ok. Unlike JeffB who took all the right precautions in the post above, I SHOULD have known better. But, in the interests of science, I try to keep an open mind, especially when I have no recent experience (hell, no experience in 30 years) in a place. So, urged in another thread to try Arby's Angus sandwich, and stranded temporarily at an exit with no other fast food options, I decided to try Arby's Angus. Inedible. A one bite only departure from reason. And I don't like to throw food out.

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Man : I can't understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.
T. S. Eliot: Ah, but you're not a poet.

Tacos del Norte. Lake in the Hills, Algonquin Road.
They used to be a great Mexican restaurant.
Recently ownership has changed and they went real cheap.
Homemade chips replaced by stale bagged chips.
Homemade salsa and pico de gallo replaced by commercial food service products.
Homemade guacamole replaced by packaged product.
Taco platter did not look well, parts might have been microwaved.

I suspect they microwave a lot.

Right now they are worse than Taco Smell.

Buena Vista Restaurant on Harrison Street in Algonquin has excellent food but has limited number of tables.

Mr. KajmacJohnson and I recently went over to North Park Village Pizza because we just wanted a simple slice of pizza and we could not figure out where else to go that was nearby in that area. I work down the street and we have actually gone quite a few times before but had not been since January. I always thought their pizza was actually pretty nice and flaky and the quality always good. It was not always just an ordinary slice sitting under a lamp. They would take a minute or two to heat it up in the oven so when you would sit down to devour it always tasted freshly baked. In my mind that always set it apart from many places I have been to that don't even bother and just hand to you cold, grimy and disgustingly unappetizing.

So we hopped in and first thing we notice is the furniture is different as well as the staff. The guy taking our order was nice and polite and said sausage slices would be coming out in about ten minutes. My husband ordered his with a side of fries. We got our slices and we could barely lift it up. Crust was not strong enough to support the topping of sausage and cheese. It all seemed caked in sloppy grease with no taste whatsoever. Eating it was another messy and disgusting matter. My husband had to fold his over like a piece of paper so everything would not drip off. His fries, oddly enough, actually seemed tolerable because they appeared to be fresh cut but they were so heavily caked in salt that potato flavor seemed to be hiding. I found out later on Yelp that management appears to be different from the folks who were there prior.

Next time you want a good slice in that area, head about a mile east to Jimmy's, located at the corner of Lincoln and Foster.

Been a long time since I have been down that way, I rarely venture down Foster east of California anymore but when my father worked in the area years ago I used to have everything photographically memorized because we were always passing that intersection. Is Jimmy's right on the southeast corner? Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, southeast corner.

Famous Dave's brisket. No bark, no bite, tasted like braised brisket without all the onions, plus added liquid smoke.
That being said, the rest of the meal was pretty good: their sides (Wilbur's Beans and a mac'n'cheese with jalpeno) were quite good, and SueF's pulled pork sandwich was significantly better.

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What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang

Siam Thai restaurant, Park Ridge

I had a hankering for Thai the other night, and had a hazy memory of a decent meal here a few years ago, so decided to order take-out and see if they were still a good dining choice. Short answer: Nope.

Soup: Chicken/won-ton (this seemed like the best selection from an uninspiring list). Bland, bland, bland, but as DH (also known as 007) noted, "they at least didn't skimp on the chicken." I took his point, but added the thought, "true, but it's just a bunch of giant pieces of boiled white meat." I ended up doctoring mine with copious amounts of soy sauce just to add some flavor, while 007 actually took a bottle of Frank's Hot Sauce to his portion!

Pot stickers: In a word, blech. I opened the container and after we viewed the contents, we looked at each other and went "hmmm." These didn't look like any pot stickers we'd had before, either Thai or Chinese versions. I think what happened was that they were cooked in oil that wasn't hot enough, so they were very pale with a chewy texture. The filling was dominated by a spice I couldn't identify, so was definitely one note in flavor, and not in a good way.

Garlic shrimp: Unappealing in looks (muddy brown with no color accents), the portion size was also extremely small (I think there were four shrimp total in the container), so I told 007 he could have the whole thing if he wanted. His only comment after finishing it was that it was "OK."

Pork fried rice, hot and spicy style: If the soup was bland, this went so far in the opposite direction that it was almost inedible. (And I like hot and spicy dishes.) Whatever variety of pepper was used was chopped so finely that you couldn't moderate the heat level by working around whole peppers.

After we finished eating, 007 opined that he guessed he just didn't care for Thai food. I reassured him there was a major difference between what we had just consumed and good Thai food (I used to get to eat Thai fairly frequently for lunch before I started working from home). Once the memory of Siam Thai's food has faded from his mind, I will suggest a trip to Spoon, I think, with a list of LTH-recommended dishes in hand.

Sharon

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"When I'm born I'm a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I'm a Tar Heel dead."

Autumn scene....Next restaurant.

Mrs. Grass' soup. It was great until I got about 90% of the way through; then I wondered how those grains of rice got in there. They weren't rice. That's what I get for not checking dates!

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I want to have a good body, but not as much as I want dessert. ~ Jason Love
There is no pie in Nighthawks, which is why it's such a desolate image. ~ Happy Stomach
I can't go to Hollywood. I got biscuits to make. ~ Dwight Henry

Late-Nite Eats Database

Good god pie lady. I just dry heaved at my desk. That is the worst! I think you win.