Chicago: Day One

so far i'm doing my best to hit my list of restaurants, which means some serious hauling of my parents all over the city. my marathon tour of chicago's restaurants began with a bleu burger and fries at moody's, not with them but with long lost friends. my chicago roommate was in town from west virginia for about two seconds so i basically drove from ann arbor to moody's. i wasn't hungry, since i'd stopped and gotten a bite to eat on the way, but when i got to moody's and saw three buddies digging into their bleu burgers, well, what's a girl to do? so i ordered one. they heap enough bleu cheese onto the burger that you can scoop about 3/4 of it off to use as dip for the fries, either with or in lieu of the ketchup. people claim that moody's has the best burger in chicago and i don't know about that, but it sure was good. medium-rare, nice and juicy. good with a pint of beer. unfortunately, i still felt it five hours later and had to skip dinner altogether which was a big waste of a meal, given the brevity of my stay combined with the lengthy dining list. but, well, shit that burger was good.

for lunch today i had sushi at kamahachi in one of those northern suburbs (highland park or northbrook or deerfield? they all kinda run together.) which, while it wasn't on the list, seemed appropriate. after all, what else would i do with my mom on a saturday in the 'burbs when my sushi-hating father is out running errands but go get sushi somewhere nearby. we got peculiar rolls, edamame and an ikura. and, of course since we were dining out in the north shore, we ran into people we knew--a girl i grew up with who i haven't seen since high school. she's in med school, leaning towards practicing internal medicine. geez. fancy.

and then for dinner, instead of seeing "De-Lovely," my mother's suggestion, i got the folks to drive in to the city for dinner at Udupi Palace on Devon. it was way more de-lovely than sitting in a movie theater would've been. we, in the Breakstone spirit, ordered enormous quantities of food that could barely be finished: masala dosai, the appetizer combo plate (somosa, vadha, deep fried green chili, etc.), channa poori, mattar paneer, aloo masala, chapati and a fancy stuffed bread. i got a plain lassi to wash it all down. i could barely roll myself out of that place by the time we finished. i simply had to have the two jim beam and soda's at spin to help settle the stomach. they're a sippin' drink.