To Mecca

Or so I'd refer to the experience that is the "new" Whole Foods in Lincoln Park. We needed groceries, dinner and to leave the house yesterday, hence the 5 p.m. trek to one of the busiest stores on a Sunday evening.

We managed to get a parking spot on the third floor next to a giant snowbank. The Boy's fear of heights is contagious, affecting The Girl on this trip. The Dad and The Boy took the escalators while The Girl, The Tot and I waited forever for the single elevator, while DINKs in black Northface jackets gave us the stink eye as they hurried past with their gourmet cheeses and bouquets of freshcut flowers (in a single brown paper bag).

We headed straight for the Riverview lunch counter for Whole Foods' take on the Woolworth counters of old: burgers, fries, dogs, shakes and rootbeer floats. The Dad, The Boy and I ordered cheeseburgers, which reminded me of In & Out - right down to the iceberg lettuce on the freshly baked buns. The Girl had a grilled cheese and The Tot nibbled fries and sucked down his dad's vanilla malt. Not bad for $30 -- far less than a similar meal at Johnny Rockets.

After dinner, we got our shopping done as quickly as was possible with 3 kids and the St. Valentine's Day gourmet foodie/yuppie crowd.

Flashback with a Twist

With the work-holiday, today was like a flashback to November 2008 -- plus two. After staying up way too late last night to work on my first Oliver + S project, I slept in a bit this morning. Then The Boy, The Girl, The Tot, and I headed out to Aurora to visit Cara and her ever-growing brood (the plus two since last year are Kenley and Tillie).

Cara and I had an an old-fashioned mom-visit, complete with tea and toys and kids running around all over the house. The Girl and Gracie, and The Boy and Johnny started back where they left off, playing Barbies and dolls, and battlefield-stars, respectively. The Tot eventually warmed up to the toys in the living room, and was quite upset when we left around 2:30 because Tillie had to go to the pediatrician's office. 

All three kids fell asleep in the car on the way home (w00t!). When we got home, The Boy and The Tot went on the L with The Dad, while I took The Girl to the Treasure Store. We picked up Aunt Sam, who is visiting from Texas this week for the holiday, along the way.  I love the Treasure Store: this cabinet (in white) for $20, plus the usual clothing deals. The Girl drove our departure from the store, but I want to go back for the mod cabinet and about half a dozen other pieces.

We had planned to go to CBA for dinner, but discovered after we parked and paid our LAX fee that it was closed for the holiday (or maybe it closes at 3 p.m.? I can't remember a time that I went there for anything other than lunch). I was quite surprised, but most of Lincoln Park-DuPaul seemed to be buttoned up for the day, actually.  With rumbling bellies, we trekked up Armitage to Halsted to see what sort of food we could procure that would be as suitable for me, Aunt Sam, and an adventurous-but-messily-attired 4-year-old

...and ended up at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba! I've been there only once before, in 2003, for a moms' night out with our playgroup. On that occasion, we waited for 20 minutes for our reservation. Tonight, we walked in and were seated immediately. Cafe Ba Ba Reeba is definitely tapas for an American (Chicago, Lincoln Park) palate, but it suited The Girl just fine. We ordered a few pintxos, potato salad, baked goat cheese with tomato sauce, artisanal cheese plate, chicken empanada, and fried green peppers. Plus mango sorbet and caramel-almond cake. The Girl is, and always has been, a fantastic dining companion, especially outside the negative influence of her brothers. She eats everything, is willing to try almost anything, and can be entertained with a pencil and paper or people-watching. We sat just opposite the main prep bar, so we had lots to see.

Spaghetti Dinner

The Independence Park Advisory Council has been running a spaghetti dinner and silent auction for a many years, to help fund special projects and improvements at the park itself. Last night marked the 20th anniversary of the IPAC spaghetti dinner. The Dad and I have been around for 6 of those years, although we have not attended the dinner every year.

Despite the foul weather and the conflict with St. Ed's Big Red Auction, the evening was well-attended. The Boy saw two of his classmates and hung around with them. The Girl was happy to hang with her older brother's friends. They had two entertainers -- a Frank Sinatra imitator singing on the main floor, and belly dancers from nearby Arabesque, demonstrating and performing in the auditorium on the third floor. The Girl took part in the demonstration, but commented later that she didn't think it would be comfortable for one of the dancers with all the stuff she was wearing (arm bands, hair pieces, etc.). The Dad and I saw and chatted with many of our neighbors and contributed to the fundraising.

Big Jones

Last night, I had the rare opportunity to go out with The Dad "on a school night." We attended a celebratory dinner for his friend, Brian, and Brian's new wife. Another pair of Brian's friends own Big Jones, a relatively new restaurant along Andersonville's north Clark strip, so they generously hosted the party of 12. Big Jones's schtick is southern coastal comfort food, but it also uses fresh, locally sourced organic ingredients. The Dad and I left the kids asleep at home with a sitter, but the restaurant has a kid-friendly menu from which my three would happily eat; I joked that they must have had me in mind when they came up with their target demographic. I had the Chicken Benne with southern greens and grits, which was really, really good -- and that's saying something as the food genre is not one that I eat often or would gravitate towards if left to my own devices. The Dad had the Tallgrass Beef Burger, which looked really good. I skipped the beer for the most part and spent most of my caloric-splurge on the Red Velvet Cake*. One of the best I've had -- delightfully moist and flavorful, with a perfectly rich and lightly tangy cream cheese frosting.

In addition to the great food, the evening was enjoyable for me because the rest of the party consisted of a cross-section of Chicagoans with whom I am not ordinarily in contact. Most people did not have children -- and if they did, the children weren't the focal point of dinner conversation. We talked about politics, the economy, the restaurant itself, obscenely rich people, the Joffrey ballet and dance education, crazy You Tube videos, Chicago Public Schools, neighborhoods, and shooting off rockets with a group of grade school kids with Mad Science.









*Red velvet cake has become a bit of a theme in my life lately, as my new friend Jenna has about 8,000 recipes for it and made some for The Girl, The Boy, The Tot and me on a recent playdate, thereby renewing my love for the red velvet cake. I've made it only a handful of times and have discovered that it is a lot of work, and it's probably best to focus on the baking that I do well and leave red velvet cake to someone with more time, more patience and more red food dye than me! Apparently, I am not the only one who is obsessed with red velvet cake; there was talk that the Trib will run a food piece on the best red velvet in Chicago. I hope Big Jones's entry makes the list.

Nickels

The Dad took The Boy and The Girl to Nickel City this afternoon, leaving me and The Tot at home for some much-needed rest. I took a long nap. The Dad balanced the video games with a trip to Barnes & Noble to read, browse, and buy books. He also took them to Chili's for dinner.

Otom

I promised more on Otom... and at last, here it is.

Otom was an interesting experience. I think it would be that way with or without kids, but going with The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot added an element of speed-eating to the experience. I really liked the space -- it had something like 14' ceilings and despite its long, narrow dining dimensions, the effect was airy and light. There were floor-to-ceiling curtains dividing the space into 3 sections - a small dining and lounge section, another one for the bar and bar seating, and a third dining section. We sat in the back dining section, which was mercifully filled with families with small children when we arrived for our 5:15 reservation.

Like its parent and next-door neighbor, Moto, the premise of Otom is to de-construct American dishes and reconstruct them in a new way. Moto specializes in true "foodie" food, but Otom reconstructs "comfort food." I would never think to isolate the flavors within blueberry pie a la mode, for example, and recreate it within another dish. It's basically what I do in my work, but with food. Intellectually, I think it's a pretty cool concept. But while I respect the art behind the work, I'm not sure that I am enough of a foodie to enjoy the end result.

Otom offered a 3-course prix-fixe menu for KRW, but the selection was extremely limited. There was basically 1 adult menu (salad and pork belly) and 1 kid menu (mac & cheese and corn dogs & fries). I liked the salad, wasn't fond of the pork belly (it came in a little square, with "beans" that were actually ground pork and another square of smoked bread). The pepperoni pizza mac & cheese was good, but I thought it needed salt. The fries were teeny, tiny shoestring potatoes and the kids thought they were fun. The corn dogs were good. I also ordered one of the 3 "mocktails" on the menu: the rhubarb "gimlet," a mix of lime juice, crushed raspberries, rhubarb, and pomegranate juice. Everyone liked that.

Service was extremely attentive and everyone from the bread guy to the waitress was accommodating of the little-kid crowd (and their parents -- I must have dropped my fork through the slat on the side of my chair 4 or 5 times). The bread guy offered us slices of bread whenever we ran out, and they quickly replaced the little ramekins of sweet-herbed butter whenever we ran out of those, too. The Tot ate the butter straight-up, and The Girl very kindly spread butter on slices of bread for me (on her own initiative).

Dessert was kind of odd. It was called milk & cookies, but it wasn't. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was expecting: a flat, hard crepe (like a pizzelle, but flat) with baked chocolate-dough dots on it. The Tot was quite confused as to why these things didn't peel off or taste like chocolate chips. The crepe was accompanied by a scoop of ice cream, a dollop of mascarpone, and a few banana slices drenched in caramel.

Our meal total came to $43.19 with my mocktail and 2 Sprites. I left a $20 tip, which probably is not much when you consider that everything would probably have been $100 outside of KRW. As we were leaving, there were 3 or 4 metrosexual business guys at the front, looking doubtfully at the crowd -- they obviously didn't realize it was KRW when they made the reservation.

TRU

No, not the restaurant. It's not a participant in Kids' Restaurant Week, but even if it were, I probably would not take my kids to Tru, though the Trib has good things to say about Gale Gand (and as a pastry-addict, I'd like to try her stuff sometime). Instead, dear readers, I am talking about a giant, brightly colored, plastic-filled, noise-generating, headache-inducing outpost: Toys "R" Us. Otherwise known as TRU among the parent-set.

I took The Boy, The Girl, and The Baby to Toys "R" Us this afternoon. It is unlike me to shop for toys (a playroom [including a 5x5 EXPEDIT unit] bursting at the seams, plus toy bins in every bedroom, and the basement have killed that urge), but we had some gift cards to spend. The Boy picked out a new Razor Scooter (he left his old one on the front sidewalk and it had been stolen), The Girl chose a Little Tykes digital camera, and The Baby got a baby stroller (we now have 3; hopefully this means fewer squabbles over them) and a new GeoTrax train with controller (bringing our total of those up to 3 also; I hope this also translates into fewer squabbles). The best part? We still have $26.41 left over for another rainy day toy expedition. I was tempted to spend it on a huge GeoTrax Central Station toy, which was on clearance for $49.99. But although it'd be cool, it would also require more storage space than we currently have, so I passed.

At that point, we were all hungry and pretty grumpy because of it (despite the toys), so we stopped at Target for dinner on the way home. The Baby and I split an order of chicken tenders and a Yoplait yogurt (the kind I don't normally buy because its low fat content is counteracted by high-fructose corn syrup, which bumps the calorie total to an obscene number for low-fat yogurt), The Girl settled on a beef hot dog (organic mac & cheese was unavailable), and The Boy had his usual Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. We did shop a bit afterwards for pantry staples and a new kitchen rug.

Je suis fou

I've never met little Remy Lichtenstein, but whoever he is, he's well-dressed. Yesterday, I picked up a few more of his castoffs at the Treasure Store -- most of it is European-made Oilily or Petit Bateau in excellent condition (save the name labels stuck onto the waist/neckbands). And the Treasure Store guy put the "children's clothing reduced to 50 cents/piece" sign up right before I checked out, so I got a huge bag of stuff for less than $16. My neighbor calls the Treasure Store "retail therapy." I know I talk about the Treasure Store a lot, but it combines three of my favorite elements: shopping, adventure (especially when accompanied by 3 kids), and fantastic bargains.

Speaking of adventure... as if shopping the Treasure Store in late afternoon with 3 small kids wasn't adventurous enough, I took them all to Wicker Park's Piece pizza afterward. I've said before that I often find myself in situations where I'm the only person with small children in a given establishment. Maybe the problem is not my children, but my taste/proximity. I often go to Wicker Park because it's easy to get to. But it just isn't a kid-friendly or kids' neighborhood the way Lincoln Square is. Still, I was there yesterday and while our destination was actually Penny's Noodles, with the chilly weather, no stroller, and three tired kids, we stopped at Piece instead because it was 4 blocks closer than Penny's and a friend in our MDO co-op had recommended it.

As soon as I walked in the door, I realized my mistake, but we were already inside and I was tired. I even said to the host, "Oh, I we are so not in your target demographic." They were pretty nice about it and lead us back to a table above the main floor. Along the way, we passed another baby and a stack of highchairs, both of which were somewhat reassuring. Still, last night, The Boy and The Girl were the only kids in the place (the couple with the baby had only one and she was definitely a baby, about 6-months-old or so). The upper-level banquettes were set up to look out over the main floor through "windows" in the wall at the end of each booth. This amused both The Boy and The Girl. The Baby couldn't seem to get an edge in.

Our server was pretty nice; he showed The Boy where the bathroom was when he had to go. Piece serves New Haven-style pizza. I am not a pizza connoisseur (I didn't eat it at all for about 10 years straight), so I don't understand the differences between it and Chicago thin crust, but everyone, including The Girl (who also doesn't like pizza) ate it. I ordered a small, with fresh basil and goat cheese on one half, and plain cheese on the other. Between the four of us (and three trips to the bathroom!), we managed to finish it all. Since I had to drive home, I didn't sample any of Piece's microbrews. The pizza, tax, and tip came to just over $20.

Grandma and Grandpa Naperville

After we left Maria back at her hotel, instead of heading back into the city in Friday afternoon traffic, we headed southwest, to Naperville.

We had a playdate with Grandma and Grandpa, had dinner, and they had a mini birthday party for The Girl. Since I didn't have to make dinner, I got to play two rounds of Candyland with The Boy and The Girl. We ate cupcakes and ice cream, and The Girl opened her present from Grandma and Grandpa, a Dora Big Wheel.

Then it was time to go home. Mercifully, they all fell asleep on the way home and The Dad and I were able to transfer them all into their beds.