yeah. my week in reverse. or, a short survey of some of my very favorite places to eat:

in the [hopefully] very near future: cuban sandwich from La Unica. spinach pie and saganaki from greektown.

today
[highly anticipated] dinner tonight: alice and friends with one of my favorite friends who is leaving town on monday. what is she thinking, bailing on me like that??
lunch: leftover "focaccia" with grilled vegetables, cheese and tomato sauce, otherwise known as a "pizza" from the italian place down the street on dearborn. pretty tasty, even cold out of the styrofoam box. in fact, maybe tastier that way.
breakfast: eggs overhard (new favorite!) with hashbrowns extra crispy and buttered wheat toast from standees, the local dive. i walk by every day and see the same faces every day (even do the nod with the bald guy in the orange shirt) so sometimes i gotta go in for a fix. the coffee is awful, but all the food is smothered in melted butter which is such a good thing. i make a little egg sandwich with the toast. and lean forward so i don't drip butter, grease or yolk on myself.

yesterday
dinner: lula cafe, god bless. i'm pretty sure the stomach ache i got after dinner was entirely unrelated. a dirty martini with blue cheese stuffed olives, the lula house salad, a greek salad for my dining buddy, orzo with artichoke hearts, fennel, tomato and parmesan, orchiette with onions, morel mushrooms and feta. next time i'll save room for dessert and get flourless chocolate cake with chocolate chili ice cream. i'd move to logan square just to be closer to lula its so good and the folks who work there are so cute!
lunch: the focaccia, round one. rootbeer, salad and lots of bread drenched in olive oil. followed by a birthday party dessert of rice crackers with jalapeno pineapple jelly and brownies without nuts.
breakfast: oops. none.

two whole days ago
dinner: er. rockstar roommate comes thru! fried eggplant stuffed with some sort of peanut coconut cilantro thing, curried rice and beans, basmati rice with dill and carrots, na'an. and wine.
lunch: greek salad at corner bakery downtown. pleh.
[late] breakfast: victory's banner, everyone's weirdly enlightened breakfast spot, complete with sari'd waitresses, photos of elderly gurus squatting 1300 lbs and robins egg blue walls. the bagel sandwich with scrambled eggs, veggie cream cheese and soy sausage almost achieves the brilliance that was the pesto egg biscuit at No Way Cafe in seattle which is, from what i've heard, tragically tragically closed. sigh. man. but victory's banner is a spectacular second choice and much closer to my apartment on the far north side of chicago anyways. good coffee, too.

three days ago
dinner: ethiopian diamond and their new okra dish which was, much to my friend's relief, not slimy. everytime i go there, i get halfway through the meal and begin to worry that we haven't ordered enough and by the end of dinner, i'm so stuffed i can hardly move. i wonder if its hard to make injera because, i mean, what will i do next year?
lunch: leftover veggie tagine. sometimes couscous is pretty tasty when it clumps together into a giant, well, cous.
breakfast: slice of bernie's bread. thank you sara (and bernie, too).

just got an email about the salt&pepper squid at hong min. oh man!