So on the last day of our Chicago trip, V and I headed to

Table 52 for brunch before our flight back home.  This restaurant is known for their chicken and waffles.  I started with a mimosa

and the server gave us house made sweet potato bread with cinnamon butter. 

Wow.  This was really moist and delicious.  The cinnamon butter was also really good.  (I even asked to bring a little loaf home and they packed one up for me!)

The textured ceiling was interesting:

We ordered mac and cheese as a starter

and decided to share the chicken and waffles.  (By this time, V was feeling eating-overload from the past few days.) 

I have to say, the chicken and waffles were a little disappointing!  This place has been on the Food Network show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” for the fried foods episode, so I really expected it to be fried chicken heaven.  I LOVE fried chicken.  Or fried anything for that matter.  I actually think Roscoe’s in LA is better, though.  The fried batter on the outside was just not crispy enough and the chicken was a bit dry.  I guess I just expected more.  The little syrup container was really cute though.  :)

We enjoyed the mac and cheese more than the chicken.

After our meal, we walked back to our hotel and gathered our luggage from the concierge.  Then the “house car” took us to the train stop so we could take the train to the airport.  As we were leaving, we saw this new Bugatti

in the parking lot.  When I saw it, I couldn’t help but exclaim aloud to no one in particular, “Is that a Bugatti!?”  Apparently, the doorman was just as excited as me because he quickly responded, “Yes!  One of our residents JUST bought it today!!”  All I could say is, “Wow…” and the doorman also had that look on his face.  :)  Cool ending to our trip.  I have to say, Chicagoans loves their cars!  2 skylines, at  least 6 Porsche Panameras, and a host of other nice cars.

Thanks Chicago!  It’s been fun!  Hope to come back and visit you again soon!  :)

So, since we didn’t get to have it the day before,

we decided to wake up earlier to try Doughnut Vault again on Saturday morning (even though we went to sleep late again).  When we walked the mile there (hot and sunny again) we saw a really long line. 

Again, I didn’t expect this long of a line, especially for a doughnut place.   You can see the stop sign in the distance… that’s where you turn the corner and still have around 10-15 more people ahead of you:

By the time we turned the corner, one person and a couple directly ahead of us left.  I guess only the strong will survive… to taste one of these doughnuts.  haha  We waited over an hour for these bad boys too.  When we finally got to the entrance, we were surprised to see that it was a super small place.  I mean, we’re talking like a closet or hallway.  We were really scared that they would run out, especially because people kept leaving with boxes (sometimes 2) in their hands. 

The two couples ahead of us bought 10 total too.  There was only one lady taking the orders and money- no wonder it took so long!  We ordered and were so tired from waiting in line in the sun that we decided to take it back to eat in the comfort of out hotel.  (I know, you would think after all that we’d just want to eat it fresh right there, right?  But no, that’s how tired we were).

I bought a vanilla glazed, pistachio glazed (special), and a buttermilk old fashioned. 

V got the old fashioned and a gingerbread stack.  We both got iced coffees, but we finished them before we got back to the hotel.

The doughnuts were all pretty good, but I don’t know about waiting an hour for them.  I felt like the vanilla glazed was my least favorite. 

I actually thought the glaze could be a little stronger and sweeter, and while I could see the little vanilla bean specks, I couldn’t really taste the vanilla taste as strongly.  And the doughnut tasted a little sour to me, which I didn’t really like.  It was huge.  Like the size of my head.

The pistachio was good,

although I think it could have had a little more pistachio flavor.  At first I thought there were pistachio bits on top, but then it tasted more like  toasted coconut, which I’m not a huge fan of.  It was a good doughnut overall though. 

I’m trying to show how big the pistachio doughnut is next to my head, but I think it looks bigger in person.  (And the vanilla doughnut was even bigger!!)

The old fashioned was good.

I didn’t think I would like it that much, but it surprised me.  Good texture and taste.

V said the gingerbread stack was good,

but tasted more like a doughnut cake.

So, I would go back if I didn’t have to wait in a long line, but probably wouldn’t go back if I had to wait more than 10-15 minutes.

I was feeling unhealthy and knowing I was gaining weight so I didn’t finish all of the doughnuts.

We hung out in the room a bit and decided to hit the spa facilities.  We relaxed in the hot tub, the steam room,

the sauna, and of course, the relaxation room.

Afterwards, we went to see the Bean:

a different perspective of the skyline:

our reflections in the fingerprints-made-dirty surface (gross!):

sun peeking out from behind a skyscraper:

and Crown Fountain:

Then we decided to go to Merchandise Mart.  We got on the L and- it was so weird- I saw someone from my old church that I haven’t seen in years!  How random is that?  We just happened to be in the same city, at the same time, on the same train car, getting off at the same stop.  This actually happened to me in Paris too, when I saw my friends randomly- TWICE- even though I had no idea what their schedule was like or anything.  Just bumped into them.  So weird.

Anyway, so we got to Merchandise Mart, but everything was closed for the weekend except the tradeshows.  We wandered around a bit, then decided to see if we could go to our dinner reservation early (we were hungry!).

We went across the street to:


We ordered the burrata

to start with and it was delicious.  The pea sprouts, not so much.  I could have done with more basil and mint instead.

I got the ribeye,

but I felt like the outside was too charred.  I just kept tasting burned char with each bite.  They had a house made steak salt that used Maldon salt, but the steak was already salty enough so I didn’t use it more than once.

We also ordered the string beans

(I was like, we need to eat SOME veggies!!) because one of the waitstaff said it was her fave.  It was not our fave.  It seemed kind of mushy, but I ate it because we hadn’t really been eating greens.

V got the mussels,

which were tasty.  The sauce was yummy, and we liked dipping our bread in it.

For dessert we had pistachio ice cream:

and a huge slice of lemon meringue pie:

They were both pretty solid.  I had to pretty much eat all of it because V only ate like one bite, and I don’t like to waste.  (This seems like a pattern… No wonder I’m gaining weight!)  But I just couldn’t eat more than a few bites of the pie.

After dinner we walked back to our hotel, but kind of took a detour by accident.  We took a wrong street, but we got to see the Trump Tower and Hotel.

V also got another caldo from Xoco to go on our way home.

By the time we got home, we decided to stay in and enjoy our last night at our nice hotel.  It’s great to sightsee and eat, but it’s also nice to relax and enjoy your hotel if it’s as pretty and awesome as ours.  (example: we didn’t have a fork to eat our leftovers so we called up the front desk for them to bring us one.  at like midnight.  :)  they brought up a set of plastic utensils wrapped all nice with a napkin.  with a smile.  oh yeah, and they don’t accept tips.  we tried.)  This is definitely one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed in, mostly because their customer service is impeccable!

(All pics are in really poor lighting)

We had dinner at :

We seriously are eating so much and walking to many of our meals, oftentimes a mile to the restaurant and a mile back (though I still don’t think it’s enough to cover the massive amount of caloric intake we are consuming.  And… the scale agrees with me too.  Weighed myself in the hotel and it said I gained more weight!!!)

“Flavorful” was the theme of this trip it seemed.  (and “sample” haha  ;P ).  Most of the foods we tried were really flavorful and somewhat intense.  Some might call it too salty or too much for their palette, but we like strong flavors.  Nacional 27 fit right in to our theme.  I started with:

a sangria, and they gave us chips and house made salsa.

Then we had the ceviche tasting:

which included tuna w/watermelon (bottom left), salmon, shrimp, tuna, avocado and tomato (top left), scallop and shrimp (top right), and smoked salmon with jicama and roasted corn (bottom right).  V and I both liked them in that order too.  The watermelon was different, refreshing, and light.  I liked the avocado in the second one, the third was a pretty traditional ceviche, but I actually wasn’t a  huge fan of the scallops.  I usually love scallops, but they tasted a little raw still and the texture of that is a little slimy for me.  The last one really didn’t do it for me… The smoky flavor of the salmon really did not go with the refreshing taste that I feel like ceviche should have.  There were also gazpacho-like palette cleanser shots in the middle that were strong, yet tasty.

We also ordered a fundido:

which was roasted corn, cheese, lime and cilantro dip.  To be honest, it looked better than it tasted.  We thought it would be more melty-cheesy-goodness, but it actually wasn’t.  I felt like the corn was so roasted that I couldn’t taste the sweetness that I love in corn.

I also ordered a “tiny taco”

that had shrimp, scallop, avocado, and lime wrapped in lettuce.  It basically tasted like the ceviche so I kind of wished I hadn’t gotten it.

V ordered the hearts of palm salad

and said that it was ok.  It had avocado, olives, and papaya in it.

I ordered the “cubano”

which was roasted suckling pig with onions, mashed sweet potatoes, eggplant with spicy tomatoes, rice, beans, and pork rinds.  I never had pork rinds before, but they tasted pretty much like what I’d expect.  The sweet potatoes and eggplant were tasty, but I wasn’t blown away by the pork.  Maybe I was too full already, but it wasn’t as great as I thought it would be, considering it was the 10th anniversary of this dish at the restaurant.

It was cool because the restaurant was hosting a summer salsa competition so we got to see three amateur couples competing in it while we ate.  The restaurant turns into a club after dinner, but we didn’t stay.  Instead, we headed to the Hancock Observatory to get dessert and check out the view.  The lounge is on the 96th floor.  We got seated right away, right next to the window!  This is the view from out table:

I ordered some bubbly and coffee and we shared a vanilla bean cheesecake with caramel and strawberry topping. 

None of them were good; I’m not even posting the cheesecake picture.  (It was too dark anyway.)

The next three pictures are from the women’s bathroom, which is said to have the best view!  (One whole wall is all just a glass window).

Pretty!!

So we did one sightseeing kind of thing today, relaxed, and of course, ate.  :)

We woke up late on Friday because we were up so late the night before… as we were walking in our area, we saw some window washers up pretty high.

It’s kind of hard to see them, but look for the 2 little black spots and you might see them.  Scary job.

We were very sad when we walked a mile to Doughnut Vault and they were SOLD OUT!!  It opens at 8:30am and closes whenever they run out… by the time we got there at 11:30am, they were out.  Boo.  :(  If you ever want to go there, try to get there early and check their tweets because they update how many doughnuts they have left.  We failed to do either of these things and therefore paid for it with empty hands and stomachs.  So we decided to go to the next stop on our list:

It’s a little ways out so we hopped on a bus and headed over.  We expected a long line, but I wasn’t expecting to see this around the corner:

It was really sunny (totally different than the day before when the sun only started to appear when we walked to Spacca Napoli, which is on Sunnyside Ave. too, of course.  :) ) so we were burning!  It was so hot.  Hot, a long line, and hungry… not the best combo.  So we were hoping that the hot dog’s would be worth it, yet also trying not to overhype them in our minds.  V had been here before, and she hates waiting in line, but she thought I should experience Hot Doug’s.  What a good friend, huh?  :) So….. an hour and a half later… we finally made it inside. 

Even though V said she tried it and didn’t like it before, I opted for the:

foie gras dog (on the right) and the swiss-filled knockwurst with smoked gouda (on the left) .  I love me some gouda.  :)  Of course we had to get the duck fat fries too! 

I’ve definitely had better duck fat fries though.  The texture of these just weren’t crispy enough and the taste was a little lacking.

The foie gras dog though…

was pretty darn tasty.  It’s made with duck sausage and has a truffle aioli with foie gras mousse and fleur de sel sprinkled on top.  Duck sausage, truffle aioli, foie gras, and fleur de sel??  What’s not to love about this hot dog??  All those ingredients are scrumdiddlyumptious!  So together… a symphony of flavors making beautiful music in my mouth.  :)  (Ok, this does not always work though because I had foie gras macarons in France and was very excited to try them… but they were pretty gross, IMO.)  So, this was good.  However, it was very rich, as I’m sure you could guess.  I don’t usually like to waste food, but I had to leave the last bite, even though we waited an hour and a half for it.  That’s how rich it tasted (oh yeah, and I still had another hot dog to eat.  haha)

The swiss, knockwurst and gouda hot dog was ok.  It had a little heat to it from a chili-garlic mayo sauce.  Maybe I was just too stuffed after the foie gras dog because I only had a few bites.  The smoked gouda was good-a though.  hehe.

After eating Hot Doug’s, we did a little shopping on North Michigan, then headed back to our hotel for some rest and relaxation (waiting in line in the sun, eating, and shopping take a lot of energy!  haha)

This Bentley was parked at our hotel and I had seen another Skyline in the morning.  Wow.  Seriously, people like nice cars here.  And we also noticed that people seem to work out here A LOT.  There are a lot of runners in the morning and after work time.   I looked it up and found that Chicago is the 28th “Fittest” City in America for 2011, according to American College of Sports Medicine.  That takes into account a lot of factors, but if you just look at downtown Chicago and just look at working out…  It’s probably pretty high on the list. 

This is a picture of the pretty chandelier in the lobby. 

We decided to check out the facilities in our hotel since we hadn’t done that yet.  We wanted to see the pool and spa area.  We had tried to check it out the first night, but it was already closed so we couldn’t even access the area at all from the elevator or stairs.  So this day, we went to the fourth floor and this is what awaits you when the elevator opens.   Warning: a lot of info and gushing about the spa is coming up next.  If you are not interested in spas, skip ahead.  :) 

(Sorry, not the best picture.)  I love that hanging light fixture.  Actually, we loved everything about the spa.  It was better than many other stand alone spas we’ve seen.  There weren’t really any spa patrons around so V and I decided to explore a bit and take pictures.  We were really excited and slightly giddy at all the prettiness.  Every new room or additional amenity we found was like finding a new treasure.

There were little alcoves that were really nicely decorated:

There was a gym with exercise machines and another room full of pilates machines:

And then there was the lap pool:

This water installment was in front of the women’s locker room:

It’s really cool.  It’s actually a tile mosaic of a statue of a woman with water coming down from the top.  The men’s locker room had a similar water installment but with a male statue instead.

I was just saying it would be nice if there was a hot tub and what did we find inside the women’s locker area?

and steam room (right) and sauna (left).  Check out the tile work on the hot tub walls and the scrolled black gates… nice details.

The shower areas

were very large and nice.  Each Individual shower had a little area before the actual shower area (left side) with a towel and toiletries for guests to use, and the shower head was above on the ceiling.  There were also sinks and counter areas for people to get ready after showering.  There were flip flops, hair dryers, razors, etc. for people to freely use.  V and I really wanted to “sample” the flip flops (as in, take them home), but we didn’t.

There were 4 areas of lockers,

and each locker had slippers, a robe, and ample space to put anything you might have brought with you.  V and I really wanted to get massages here, but they were bank!  But we still made use of their facilities…  ;)  We wanted to “sample the robe and slippers too, but we resisted.  >:)

There was a resting room:

that was GORgeous.  Love the hanging glass ball light fixture.  It was very warm, classy, and inviting.  As you can see, V accepted the invitation.  :)  This room was used as a waiting and relaxing room for the spa patrons and hotel guests.

There was also a little refreshments area:

with water with orange slices, coconut water, bottled water, and dried fruit.  How cool is that spoon holder?  We did “sample” the dried fruit and a coconut water.  The dried strawberries were especially tasty.

Beyond this room is where all the treatment rooms were. 

I was amazed at how big this area was, especially because it didn’t seem like there were many spa patrons this day.  So, V and I decided to check out a room (and hope no one was inside!) 

We found a lovely couples massage room with its own shower area. 

We decided not to look in any more rooms, just in case there were people in them (ok, also because we were scared we’d get caught snooping around, taking pictures). 

There was also another little outside area that had about 10-12 lounge chairs for people who wanted to sun bathe but I didn’t get a picture of that.  We went back to our hotel room and got ready for dinner, agreeing that we would definitely have to come back and actually take advantage of the spa area the following day. 

More about dinner later!

Ok so the rest of the day, what did we do?  Oh yeah.  We ate.  And ate more.  And did not go sightseeing anywhere.  Haha  After Spacca Napoli, we headed to get hot dogs at:

I had the:

chardog polish sausage with “the works.”  It was pretty good!  I didn’t think I’d like the relish, but it was actually really good.

After the hot dogs (oh yeah, without the verbal abuse this hot dog shop is known for), we went back to our hotel and soaked our worn toesies in our pretty tub.  The bath tub and water are so pretty!

Oh and I love this tile work in our bathroom!  Totally goes with the rest of the hotel.


So, then after resting a bit, we decided to head out to

another 2011 Michelin Guide Chicago Bib Gourmand Winner.  But, mother nature decided to make our journey there a little interesting…  As you know from yesterday, there was a thunderstorm that was a little crazy.  Well, it decided to storm about halfway through our walk to Purple Pig.

It poured.  Hard.  Our little umbrellas didn’t really even help.  The pictures don’t do it justice.

So we finally got to the restaurant and got seated right away.  Whew!  Thank goodness, because we were hungry and wet from the rain.   Here are the yummy things we ate:

Pig ear with kale, banana peppers, and fried egg on top.

Sopressata

Beets with whipped goat cheese and pistachio vinaigrette

And the amazing bone marrow.  YUM! 

Everything was delicious.  SO good.  Each dish was SUPER flavorful though, so you couldn’t eat a lot of any one for very long.  V was not a fan of the bone marrow even before it made it to our table. 

I guess it IS kind of weird and different if you haven’t grown up with a family that likes to pick and chew on bones and stuff more than eating the actual meat… ;)  In any case, I thought it was really tasty.  V had like one taste and didn’t want anymore… SCORE!  I get more!  I ended up eating mine and half of hers.  :D  It was too much of a good thing to eat all of both.

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel and luckily the rain let up for most of the walk back.  It started to rain again just as we got to our hotel.  Then I took like 10,000 hours to write my first post about the Chicago trip and stayed up till like 3:30am.  :D

We woke up leisurely on Thursday and headed out to:

for breakfast.   V and I both ordered

(eggs benedict), which the menu claims is the best around.  I ordered mine with smoked salmon, and V ordered the “South of the Border”- eggs benedict with chorizo. 

They were really yummy!   We both couldn’t finish all of it though.  I ate half (one) and packed the other.  Then we headed to:

(Renegade Handmade), which was pretty far from where we were.  It’s the brick and mortar store of the Renegade Craft Fairs that happen in different cities around the country.  We were really excited to check it out.  When we got there, it was a lot smaller than we expected it to be.  I thought I would spend a lot of time in there, but ended up only being in there for about 15 minutes.  I also found that the items sold there all seemed to be very vintage looking.  I’ve thought about participating in the Renegade Craft Fair in San Franciso, but I’m not sure if my stuff would do well there. I think I’ll go to the holiday one in December to check it out!  I bought a little something for my friend and then we left.

Afterward, we walked around the area.  There were many other little shops and boutiques- lots of organic, green, eco-friendly stores.  :)  V and I both bought some gifts for people. 

After that we headed to:

Even though the restaurant was technically supposed to be closed at the time, they let us come in to eat.  Yay!   This is a Neapolitan Pizzeria, one of the only Vera Pizza Napoletana certified restaurants in the city.  It’s also a 2011 Michelin Guide Chicago Bib Gourmand Winner.  It didn’t disappoint.  First they gave us complimentary rose:

Ok, it wasn’t very good, but it was a nice touch.

We ordered one of the daily special appetizers:

Fried zucchini blossoms with ricotta, peppers, and anchovies.  It was tasty.  :)  (Although smaller and not as tasty as the ones I had in Europe.) 

For our pizza, we ordered a simple Bufulina- thin crust pizza with tomato sauce, basil, and buffalo mozzarella.  It was really good.  Simple, pure, and delicious. 

Yes, we are definitely thin-crust gals. 

It’s been proved.  Today.  (Ok, we always knew, but it was re-confirmed again today.)

There was more deliciousness that went on, but I will post about the rest of the day tomorrow!  Oh, and a cool video of the Spacca Napoli guys making the pizza for us!  Isn’t the suspense killing you?!!  :P