So, on the weekend of October 1 I was off to see my brother Jay, who lives in downtown Chicago. The event was Jay’s birthday, and as such I we were going to eat at an expensive German restaurant. Granted, eating at expensive restaurants with Jay is nothing new. I think an integral part of the Jay Experience is going out to eat with him. More often than not, you will be taken to a Chicago restaurant which you have never heard of, but has some measure of notoriety. The notoriety may or may not come from the price. In the time that I have visited Jay and Natalie, I have been to a couple ethnic restaurants I had no idea existed, such as the Pegausus, a Greek restaurant that offers all sorts of dishes the average person would have no idea existed. In contrast, the most expensive Greek restaurant I had eaten before the Pegausus is Mac’s Café and Restaurant in Rochester, which serves Gyros to go. Also a Greek omelet.
I arrived late in Chicago on a Friday night, which meant getting an early train into downtown Chicago from the suburbs. After the train had pulled into the station, I got coffee and an egg folded between a small tortilla shell at the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts and listened to two twentysomething businesspeople fawn over a fiftysomething businessman about the presentation they had done on Friday, what they would be working on during the weekend and who they would and would not be inviting back to their presentation based on several different returns on investment. I’m pretty sure they outearned me, but I was going literally across the street to spend a couple days with my brothers, and here they were being much more cheerful about a presentation than a human being should be on Saturday morning at seven-thirty a.m. There is something to be said for spending time with people who you actually want to spend time with.
Jay lives on the xteenth floor of an apartment building with at least forty floors. And that’s just one of its towers. I could tell you the exact tower, floor and apartment number and still be confident Jay and Natalie would be unbothered. This is because the apartment complex has its own security. In order to get into the complex if you are not a guest, you need to fill out a form, present them with valid identification and have the tenant’s permission to let you in. I’m sure at some point they asked me for my Facebook account, shoe size and sexual orientation. So if you’re trying to get in, and you aren’t invited, good luck. I’m not sure what would happen to you. It probably involves rabid dingoes, if they are permitted in the Chicago residential and rabid animal zoning area.
One great thing about Jay’s apartment is the people who live there. I’ve visited three times now, and I have rarely seen a suit. The people who are walking around seem to be either college students or successful hipsters. You’ll see some person in jeans, a vest and a t-shirt, sipping on a coffee and reading something on his Macbook, and you’ll think “Hey, that person lives here! In these apartments! Which are in the middle of downtown Chicago!” Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe living in downtown Chicago is cheaper and hipper than I thought.
When I got to Jay’s apartment, my brother Andy and his girlfriend were there. Hugs were exchanged, greetings were exchanged, and as everyone was in the process of waking up, we decided to head to a restaurant called Lou Mitchell’s for breakfast. Andy had been there the previous day, and apparently he had selected the Maitre’d as his ultimate nemesis for the trip. So off to Lou Mitchell’s we went.
Lou Mitchell’s is apparently located at the beginning of the famous Route 66. It’s also world-renowned, adored by not only celebrities, but food critics as well. Two days before we dined there, Henry Winkler had apparently shown up and had something to eat.
I’ve got to be honest—I liked Lou Mitchell’s, but it didn’t strike me as a place that I absolutely must visit again. The restaurant décor is your typical greasy spoon, with various relics of yesteryear plastered on the walls. On the bright side, it does feel as though you are walking back in time to, say, the 1960s. And with the line that forms in the restaurant and winds its way down the street, you have plenty of time to admire the decorations. Fortunately, a very nice man walked down the line, offering everyone doughnut holes. It didn’t make the line move any faster, but it was a fun distraction. When we had finally gotten in, I discovered that Lou Mitchell’s doesn’t accept credit cards/debit cards/anything other than cold, hard cash. Fortunately, they do have an ATM inside the front door that only has an ungodly surcharge fee. Still, whoever heard of a modern restaurant that doesn’t accept credit cards?
So, after we got seated, we ordered meals, and then ate. I’ve got to be honest—I don’t know why food critics adore this place. The food was not bad, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it didn’t make my taste buds sing, and there was no flourish that made me think, “Hey, I gotta try this in MY cooking!” Okay, they did serve an orange slice and a prune for an appetizer, they did give us a little plastic cup of soft-serve ice cream afterwards and Natalie and Andy’s girlfriend got boxes of Milk Duds, but other than that the food wasn’t anything that would make me run into the streets. It was just good food to have while we all talked and Andy occasionally glared at the Maitre’d, daring her to come over and try something.
I can’t really see why celebrities would come to Lou Mitchell’s. On the other hand, I can definitely see why politicians and anyone who needed to get in touch with the common man would. The place is routinely packed, has a very blue collar feel among the clientele, and if you came here you would get the feeling that this is Main Street America, and these are typical Americans. It would also make a great photo op.
Afterwards, we took a bus out to the Navy Pier, where the Chicago version of Oktoberfest was going on. Jay is extremely interested in his family history, and our family has deep roots in Scotland and Germany. Given that Jay’s birthday is on October 1, while Oktoberfest is going on, I can safely say that when Jay gets to heaven, he’s going to be disappointed.
To be honest, the Navy Pier is something to see once. It’s essentially a mall with boat rides, which is neat if you’re into that sort of thing, but other than that the big event was the Oktoberfest tent. There were a lot of people there, most of them over 21 and ready to put down some serious alcohol. As you might expect, almost everyone there was in a great mood. I am constantly amazed at how happier people get after a mug or two of beer. Personally, I had a diet soda and a small-size large pretzel and was extremely happy listening to the German band play such classic German hits as “Country Roads” and “Ring of Fire.”
For dinner, we went to the Edelweiss restaurant, one of the only German restaurants I know. I could make a joke about the waiters marching in lock-step or the server giving a Nazi-salute and saying “Heil” when he delivered our food, but the truth is Germany gets a bad enough rap for that anyway. It’s kind of unfortunate. The USSR had Stalin, China has Mao Tse-Tung, the United States had the Bush Administration…pretty much every country on Earth has gotten a leader that, if not an incompetent egotistic cretin, is out and out evil. (By the way, I do not want my readers to think I consider George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to be as bad as Stalin and Chairman Mao. It’s just that I sincerely believe George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were terrible leaders. ) My point is, Hitler and the Nazis were bad in all sorts of ways, and ever since World War II, Germany has borne that stain on their reputation about as well as a country that has given rise to a genocidal dictator could. So before I launch into depth about the Edelweiss, I want to say that a lot more attention was paid to imbibing good beer and having good food, and nary a thought was given to the Third Reich. That being said, the first thing we were told when we sat down was that everyone had to be on one bill, and there was absolutely no way we could split up the tab. Which was a problem since we were expecting around 20 people for dinner. They claimed it was due to the increased business. Seriously.
So I would like to take this opportunity to say to the management of the Edelweiss—Screw you. You were not ridiculously busy, you didn’t inform Jay about this when he made the reservation beforehand, and you could have easily ran our credit cards instead of making everyone walk two blocks to the nearest convenience store to get absolutely raped by the ATM machine surcharge fees. At least the waiter felt the need to explain over and over again as he served us that the restaurant needed to do this and that he was” just following orders,” which has so many levels of irony it’s almost funny.
Now, I will say that the food was extremely good, and I need to find out how to make Katzenspatzle for myself one of these days. I also got to have another giant pretzel, this one with melted Gruyere on it, and I was extremely happy. We talked for hours on hours, and it was very late when we finally got a cab back to Jay’s apartment. Jay has some very nice friends, and when you have nice friends at a nice(ish) restaurant, you really can’t go wrong.
I had to leave the next afternoon, going back to northeast Iowa to get back in the weekday groove, but we did have time to stop at Lou Mitchell’s again, if only so Andy could go another round in his inscrutable combat with the Maitre’d. We met some friends of Andy’s there, and we met some friends of Andy’s girlfriend. Natalie was busy working at a fair for her boss, so Jay and I basically kept Andy’s friend’s wife occupied. When we were done, I took the train back to the suburbs, and began the drive home. I have to admit, I don’t like the drive home after I see my family. I have to be alone with my thoughts, and they’re always how great a time I’ve had, and when I’ll be able to do it again. Still, having family you love to be around provides incentive to be around them as much as possible. That’s not a bad thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment