The Death of Imagination

My meals during the trip ran a considerable gamut. Quite a few were fairly simple preparations where I happened to be staying--a vegan patty at my in-laws', a simple stirfry at Chez LeRouge in Seattle. Probably the most interesting of these was the pasta dinner my first full day in Seattle because it was my virgin foray into making ravioli. (I had the easy work, rolling out the dough; Gaffer did everything else.) My Eastside hosts served me dungeoness crab, but it was simply boiled with butter for dipping.

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Have I finally built up enough allopurinol in my system to get the proper benefit from it or did I simply dodge a bullet this weekend? It'd be nice to know which going forward. Alas, I've never been that good about reading signals from my body and they're anything but clear in this case.

For obvious reasons, I suggested tapas before the opera Saturday. A Googling for something convenient to the opera house led me to Pata Negra inside Block 37. The reviews were mixed but generally positive and I was curious to try something equally new to both of us. Nuphy was game, and happily made reservations.

We didn't need them. Despite some winter lights celebration on Boul Mich in its second or third year that I'd never heard of before the bus driver warned me of reroutes, next to nobody was detouring to the heart of a mall in downtown Chicago's most ill-fated block for a bite. It could hardly have been any more convenient: I took the el to avoid traffic snarls, forgetting that the station connects directly to the basement of the shopping centre.

Getting from there to the restaurant, however, proved at least as daunting as the rest of the trip. There were signs but they weren't very clear, often making it seem like you needed to exit the building rather than go up a floor. But I found it, and Nuphs already on his first margarita of the evening. I eventually ordered a glass of cava to keep him company. There were only two other occupied tables in the joint when we arrived, but I think our corner spot would have been quiet anyway. (The relatively tranquility of the place had been mentioned by at least two of the reviewers.)

The menu was, as you might expect, pretty meat-heavy. I was prepared to let the Funny Little Man get all the flesh he wanted and just nibble bits. But the servings were considerably bigger than we'd expected and, as a result, we'd overordered. The "butifarrita", for instance, was nine thick slices of grilled sausage and when I thought we were ordering two chicken croquettes, it was actually two chicken brochettes, each consisting of three fat pieces.

I ended up offering one whole skewer of botifarra to the neighbouring table. (One of the diners heard me describing calçots to Nuphy and cheerfully added his two cents, so I figured they'd be amenable.) They wouldn't take any jamón serrano, though. "Oh, that's too good to share!" they told us. It was the one thing we could take away, so I got the server to stow it in a plastic-wrapped box that I crushed and concealed in my car coat for the duration of the performance.

Even the non-meat dishes we got weren't terrific for my gout. Luckily crab is far from the worst seafood, since the avocado crab toast was piled high with it. The chef's special was a trio of grilled mushrooms which alone was enough for an entree. Oddly, we had to order bread. (I don't know if we were charged, but I suspect so because it came with a little dish of olive oil, mustard, and peperoncini slices.) The only other purely vegetarian dish on the table was--again, oddly--the habas a la catalana[*], which contained no sausage but paper-thin slices of red onion and asparagus tips, among other things.

Nuphy insisted on trying the Wagyu, which was as weak as the reviewers warned us. He thought the bacon-wrapped dates with cabrales and marcona almonds were a revelation, but I've made exactly that for an appetiser before so I wasn't impressed. They were sweet enough to save for dessert, since we definitely didn't have room for anything else. A shame since I'd vetoed the Christkindlmarket to come here and I nurtured hopes of stopping by afterwards for fried dough in some form or other. (Nuphy did stop by and waved a bar of nougat in my face, which I stole a piece of later while checking his coat.)

I did take a moment to survey the other stations--apparently the policy is that you can bring in food from them when sitting in Pata Negra provided you order some dishes there as well--but I didn't find the bacalao fritters I'd had my heart set on. Some of the other offerings--like the cocas and grilled seafood--looked pretty nice though, so I may try to stop in for a small bite whenever I happen to be there again (which, under current circumstances, could be another year from now).

Naturally, after having eaten several times my ordinary daily allowance of high-purine foods, I braced myself for a night of agony which failed to arrive. Usually the reaction is pretty immediately, but it was another 48 hours before I was convinced I was out of the woods. So maybe I can afford the occasional splurge after all? In that case, this could be a marginally better Thanksgiving than expected. Or was it due to contributing factors which aren't necessarily reproducible? I think it'll take me some suffering to find out one way or the other.

[*] Definitely not faves a la catalana, as the waiter corrected me when I said this.

In possibly the least auspicious beginning to one of my birthdays ever, my first phone call wasn't from the pharmacy robot (as I first suspected) or a well-wisher (my second guess), but a collection agency. Seems my doctor's office hasn't the patience to wait for my insurer to reprocess all our bills for the year until they get it right and I'm not sure I blame them. (Naw, I kinda do.) On the other hand it featured this exchange:

"Can you verify your zipcode and date of birth."
"My zipcode is XXXXX, my date of birth is X/XX/XX."
"So today must be your birthday."
"That's correct."
"Happy birthday."
"Thank you!"

If I'd gotten out of the house when I'd planned, I would have missed the call entirely, but I hadn't slept well and (relatedly?) I'm still dealing with some GI issues from last week. Getting down to the facility to see monshu took a whole hour: half-an-hour to wait for the bus and then another half-an-hour for it to make its way down to Lawrence with all the old and infirm getting on and off at every stop. When I got there, I found him waiting to be cleaned up by the CNA--who, it turns out, hadn't been told he needed assistance. Neither had his nurse. He had no idea who he'd told, in fact, so there was no way of knowing who'd dropped the ball. I left frustrated with both the staff's sloppiness and with him for tolerating it.

My first stop was Cafe Meinl on Southport, which managed to disappoint me in a myriad of small ways. My coffee was badly mixed. (All the syrup was on the bottom.) My eggs were overdone. My waitron was training someone and couldn't be bothered to give me the check or run my card. My guts were still acting up. And Southport itself has changed so much from the street I first fell in love with twenty-two years ago. When I told my father, he asked, "Changes for the better" and I said, "It's not for me to judge, really. I don't live in Lakeview. Maybe they're very happy to have a Gap there."

Stage two was Bookworks on Clark Street. The moment I learned that they were closing and today would be their first 50% off day, I knew where I wanted to spend my birthday. But I was fighting a sense of melancholy the whole time I was scanning the shelves. And even having told myself I was going to be as generous as I could when it came to my choices, I still found it hard to find things to buy. My customary limit of $100 was in place, but in the end I barely spent a quarter of that.

Meanwhile, the sky continued to threaten rain and I'd left my umbrella at home, lulled by radar projections which showed the bulk of the storm remaining comfortably south of us. At least I finally had quick connexions taking the bus back to share my birthday torte with the Old Man (who this time was just after getting cleaned up) and the droplets held off until I was back at home. On the way, I'd cobbled together a dinner at Revival on Granville with the couple across the street and their straight nephew, plus JB (coming straight from work and looking the worse for it) and Diego.

There were a few missteps in this meal, too, bu they're much easier to take when you're distracted by good company and pleasantly lit on a fancy g&t. The server's easy charm only fed our spirits and I had the rare pleasure of seeing one of my friends explain slashfic to a whole table of people unfamiliar with the concept. We left in high spirits and I arrived at home just in time for a comedy of errors with my phone: First Dad called me while I was going through messages and I missed it. Then he called my sister by mistake, who informed me of this via text. Then he called back again while I was replying to her and sent his call to voicemail by mistake. He finally switched phones and called from the landline.

So now the frustrations and discomfort of earlier in the day are all but forgotten and I'm left with the pleasant afterglow of a good meal with friends and well wishes from a host of people. That's all it really takes to make me happy any more. The single best thing about getting older is finally getting your expectations calibrated.

Our Easter dinner was a very modest affair. I didn't even get around to decorating the eggs (unless you count scribbling faces on them in felt-tip pen so they wouldn't get confused with the raw eggs in the same carton). monshu had a gratin all ready to go until he decided at the last minute it smelled a bit off and pitched it, so the brussel sprouts we had were simply steamed instead. In a nod to the nominal reason for the season, there was Jerusalem artichoke in the mash, but the centerpiece was obviously the perfectly cooked rack of lamb. It was such a treat I had TWO WHOLE CHOPS and damned the consequences.

We were both somewhat worn out by the good weather, which coaxed us outside to do a little yardwork. The Old Man attacked the porch, whipping it into fit shape for me to eat my egg salad sandwich on before the afternoon showers began. At that point, I'd been hacking out in the hellstrip for a couple hours, digging another hole large enough to bury a body in so that I could fill it with fallen branches and dead leaves. Probably one more of these and I'm done for the season. Then it's time to start thinking about what to do with the shambolic retaining wall Scooter left behind.

I was unsuccessful getting ahold of anyone later in the day, so I spent most of my time reading. Roddy Doyle's A star called Henry isn't great, but it reads quickly and seems a decent introduction to the major episodes in the fight for Irish independence. It does feel a little overly determined at times and I'm not sure what's with all the gratuitous fucking except for some middle-aged wish fulfilment, but I'm already two-thirds of the way through it and thinking about what my next novel should be.

I didn't expect monshu to remember that yesterday was the Lantern Festival and I certainly didn't expect him to put together a festive meal given that he's been feeling poorly the last several days. But I know he tracks full moon days for fasting purposes, so I should've reckoned with the possibility. He nixed the pomelo salad (which comes as a relief to my esophagus) and served up two kinds of dumplings plus inarizushi. So a very simple meal, really, but very satisfying.

I wish I knew what to blame for the problems I've having. The "sweet-and-sour fish" I ate before the opera turned out to have chilis in it, so I resigned myself to a possible bad night. Instead I've had three in a row, all involving propping myself up to keep the reflux at bay. Lately my suspicion has begun to fall on the banana bread I made as a treat for the Old Man on Sunday that he turned out not being able to eat, since it's the only common element in my diet recently and everything else has been so bland.

At least the loss of sleep isn't keeping me from reading, as it sometimes does. I'm officially at the halfway point in Life and death are wearing me out, which I still expect to finish even if the whole time I'm reading it I'm nagged by the suspicion that there is a much better book out there I could be reading instead. And I've decided to put off Er ist wieder da until the Führer's birthday month so in the meantime I've returned to Der Nachsommer. Still as boring as ever, but that's not a bad thing when you're trying to fall asleep at night.

Trying to cheer up a single friend on Facebook, I told him, "My best Valentine's Days have been just okay while my worst were bloody awful." That's a bit unfair. All it really means is that monshu and I aren't the sort to go in for grand gestures (well, unless they're absolutely necessary), so "Valentine's Day" for us means "a nice meal somewhere". Which is something you can have any day.

I never asked for confirmation that the date on the calendar was the reason why he oh-so-casually proposed taking me out for a meal this weekend, but I don't think I need to. I didn't want to choose any place that would be crazy busy, which was a bit of a challenge because I also wanted to pick someplace new. Eventually I settled on Quesadilla La Reina Del Sur, which is just barely in the same neighbourhood as us, which means it took fifteen minutes on the bus and another ten or fifteen on foot. Very few people were out on account of our second snowstorm of the season (delivering a whopping six centimetres or so).

The restaurant itself was all but deserted when we arrived, but it was nearly 2 p.m. Eventually we were joined by two more couples, one of which we got into a nice chat with (he's a db manager; she's retired). They ordered burritos and they were enormous; I was relieved that our portions (a huarache and chiles rellenos) were merely generous. The soy "carnitas" tasted nothing at all like actual carnitas, but as long as you forgot the name they were perfectly pleasing. The soy chicken on the huarache was more successful; I tried to explain to the server that I thought it would make a great milanesa but I'm not sure she understood me. It was all tasty without being incendiary, which is key for me. We were really too full for dessert, but we managed to talk each other into sharing the tres leches. Again, this wasn't much like its namesake, but was interesting all the same--more of a spice cake than the typical vanilla version which only has notes of cinnamon. I was blown away to discover it was vegan, I'm just so used to vegan cake being gummy and dense.

The Old Man needed to hurry home, but I decided I needed a walk. Away from the Lake, the wind wasn't so bitter, but I still found myself with alarmingly stiff fingers. So I mashed out a text to itchwoot, who was staying nearby at clintswan's old place, and invited myself over. The gang was playing Rock Band and largely ignored me, though I did manage to make myself useful as a microphone stand. Then they broke up so the German could finally experience mac 'n' cheese and I was out on the street again.

monshu had shoveled once, but there was enough accumulation to justify me pulling out the broom and giving everything a good sweep. We barely felt like eating. He made some peanut noodles and I had peanut butter and apples on toast. Then I sat down to watch Cowards Bend the Knee while doing laundry and got such a sense of déjà-vu that I suspect I already watched it at some point with princeofcairo and forgot about that completely.

So, yeah, you could look at this day and characterise it as "just okay". But then I recall Valentine's Day last year--which could not be more firmly in the "bloody awful" category--and it seems nothing short of miraculous.

Leaving the Container Store today, I remarked to the Old Man that we'd ended up observing MLK Day by going someplace with the fewest Black people we could find. I was painfully aware of the irony when we planned the trip, only I didn't see an alternative. If he'd been feeling better then, we could've completed it last weekend and I was too sick of all the Christmas shit littering the den to put off buying sturdy plastic boxes for it yet another week. It doesn't all fit in the ones we've acquired, but most of it does and we can manage with the odds and ends.

The lunch place, Kingsbury Street Café, felt like Trixie ground zero. (My long hair is trendy again, but I'd have to wear it down and artfully radiating even at the cost of rendering a fur-lined hood purely decorative in -27°C windchill.) I was genuinely shocked when monshu made the decision to eat there even after being told of a twenty-minute wait. My "salmon hash" was flavourful and generous with the salmon, even if I didn't care for the trendy substitution of tater tots for actually potatoes, but he's being super cautious and only had plain pancakes. We hardly need to come to North & Clybourn for that.

Sunday was a day of pure hibernation. We'd spent Saturday running around so we had plenty of heat-and-eat treats from Middle Eastern (the chive-feta spread is a keeper). I ended up having to hike all the way to Whole-mart for the "vegetable crumbles" for the meatless shepherd's pie, only to find that pea protein is a key ingredient, so they might not actually be lower in purine than real meat after all. Same for the fake chicken strips I transformed into a kind of gyro with the help of fresh tzatziki and a little romaine.

But I had to do something to make up for my splurge on speck at Spacca Napoli on Saturday with tyrannio and innerdoggie. To be honest, it felt distinctly odd eating at a straight-up Italian place with them, but they vetoed the Mexican place I wanted and I nixed the inconveniently-located Turkish café with its paradoxically meat-heavy menu. Hours later, as I was coming back home on the Broadway bus, I learned that someone had been shot dead at a McDonald's only a mile due east right about the time our pies arrived. But that's the privilege that comes with living on the "right" side of a divided city.

Turtle shared with us her New Year's resolution to do supper club at least ten times in the coming year. So I'm going to make it my resolution to blog all ten meals out, if only briefly. But since this resolution was made over the table at Cantina 1910, why wait?

There's been more than the usual amount of food press drama about this place. It was an ambitious and anticipated endeavour with a somewhat rocky launch that hasn't been made easier by the collision with locals' expectations. We saw this with Premise, another attempt to create a destination restaurant in Andersonville. I honestly don't understand why this is so difficult. As I ranted in the car tonight, "If Logan Square can become a destination for fine eating, why can't Andersonville?" monshu is adamant that you can't survive there without the support of people in the neighbourhood, so you have to make some kinds of concessions for them.

Judging by how empty the place was on a Sunday night, Cantina 1910 might need to start doing that. It's hard to say where it will be going since the chef departed with her sous-chef only three days ago, citing differences with the ownership. Meanwhile the staff are still executing the established menu, though whether or not to the same standard is an open question.

We had one serious clunker in our meal, dropped right into monshu's tasty dish of stewed pork, pork belly, and beans: a half-dozen slices of tough near-flavourless pork loin. It was treated with so much less care than any other ingredient in any of the dishes we had (not rubbed, not brined, not sauced) that I wonder what it was even doing there.

On the other side of things was the arroz negro con huitlacoche. I couldn't even tell what all was in it, only that it was a beautiful mix of flavours and textures in every bite. Actually, from the moment the guacamole arrived, I knew were in good hands. Even the chips were outstanding. (One of the more common whines from unhappy Yelpers is apparently that they charge for chips and salsa.)

I was very happy we had a group and could share. I was deeply intrigued by the oxtail on a bone marrow tortilla, but that's too rich a dish for me to even think about ordering for myself. Instead I got a couple of tasty bites while depending on the squash tacos to do the heavy lifting of nourishing me. Nothing we had could really be called "spicy", but there was plenty of warmth from the use of chipotle, smoked paprika, and the like.

And since none of us our heavy eaters, it was all pretty reasonable: about $30 a head including tax and tip but not alcohol. (The Old Man had two glasses of whine, Turtle had a row of cocktails, Turtle Wife teetotaled, and I contented myself with a glass of soda mixed with the bartender's self-concocted hops-grapefruit bitters that seemed to be just the tonic for my upset stomach.) We shared the dessert, for instance, which was a few crunchy chunks of carrot cake and cubes of flan on a bed of rich rice pudding.

Will we make it back? At the rate we're going, it'd have to hang around another year before we'd return. (I only just made a return visit to Hopleaf this year thanks to Blondie coming to town.) I hope it does, but that's not looking like the way to bet.

The only real failure of this year's Pilsen trip was tamales. Specifically that we didn't come back with any. I'd mooted the idea of stopping in at Día de los Tamales on 18th, but that was more of a hike than the Old Man was up to. We thought we might find a good postprandial pick-me-up at Café Monsiváis, but it was all savouries so we abandoned it for Panaderia Nuevo León across the street.

It was worth it for the experience alone. The woman behind the counter was a stitch. As we waited in line, she said something in Spanish about how much she loved Sundays because "everyone comes to visit me". We were behind an adolescent with a huge tray of assorted pastries. After he'd paid up, he had his head turned talking to a girl and your woman had to say, "Baby you chane!" three times to get his attention again.

I was worried about having no pan de muertos, so we made a run to Bombón first thing. It was a one-man show and the poor guy seemed flustered to have anyone else in the bakery with him. Eventually he brought out two medium panes and we bought them both. Thanks to monshu's terrible influence, this also probably marks the first time I've left Bombón without a pastel tres leches.

Going to and from the store brought us past Bistro 18, in the old Mundial space. Here was where we'd planned to eat lunch and I was more worried about a crowd there than at the museum, so even though it wasn't yet noon we grabbed a table at the window. Sunlight was streaming in and I was almost steaming before even ordering a cafe con leché. Since it was still early, I decided to go for coconut french toast even though the grilled fish was what really appealed, but monshu got the combo. It took only a couple of bites of this to convince me I needed to order a fish taco of my own, which was generous enough to constitute two at basically anywhere else I've eaten.

Service was slow for no apparent reason, however, so it was almost one by the time we made it to the museum. Still not as crowded as I feared. As usual, there was quite a range of ofrendas, starting with a three-tiered construction from Huaquechula in Puebla which is easily the most elabourate I've ever seen. Only a short wall separated it from a nearly postmodern altar to masked wrestler El Santo, who died in 1984. For some reason, there was a plethora of throwbacks this year, including Selena and Anthony Quinn. For the student-teachers slain in the massacre at Iguala, the excuse can be made that at this time last year, there was still hope of finding them alive. The memorial to them was so powerful it had me choking back tears.

Anyone remember when cubanos became the new food asshole thing? I recall Dale complaining some years ago now about trendy redesigns which change the original formula (ham, roast pork, pickle, mustard, soft white roll) in ways that really demand renaming. For the longest time, I only remember seeing them in ethnic eateries like La Única or Cafecito but I was in two upscale cafes on Sunday and each had its own version.

By an odd coincidence, I'd just watched Favreau's Chef the night before to unwind from a hard day's shopping. If you haven't seen it, he plays a bigtime chef who loses his job and decides to open a food truck which sells cuban sandwiches. To explain the choice, he's given a Cuban wife (played by Colombian-born Sofía Vergara, whose costeño accent is fortuitously close to Cuban) and roots in Miami.

ObLing: Can I just take a moment to register the total implausibility of someone who got his start in the restaurant trade in Miami of all places not knowing a word of Spanish? Honestly, this is like being a computer programmer in Germany who doesn't speak any English. Giving him a Spanish-speaking wife is just insulting, and actively decreases my sympathy for the character. (What kind of asshole doesn't learn the language of 90+% of his workforce, two-thirds of the population of his hometown, and his own wife?)

It's a sweet film and easily one of the most food-porny I've ever seen. The father-son scenes are truly affecting; by the end of the second act, I was tearing up and pledging to call my father to suggest we take a trip together. I was also wondering what kind of resolution the director was going for. The answer, unfortunately, is an egregiously implausible feelgood one. Which is both too bad and--in hindsight--something I should've seen coming.

It starts with the soundtrack, which is stuffed with the most obvious choices imaginable. We want a Latin vibe? Let's open with "I Like It Like That" and close with "Oye Como Va". We have Perico Hernández playing Favreau's father-in-law? Let's have him do "La Quimbumba". We're coming up on LA? "West Coast Poplock". Same with the food and locales. We're in New Orleans? Well, then, let's park on Bourbon Street, have beignets at Café du Monde, and naturally a jazz funeral will come marching through on cue.

What saves the film for me are the scenes between Favreau and Emjay Anthony (a ten year-old playing ten for a change) which are well-scripted, touchingly acted, and devoid of cloyingness. I feel like they soft-pedaled the rigours of kitchen work on a child (although thankfully they didn't ignore them completely). It's the absurd final reel which gives the whole thing the taste of a middle-aged man's fantasy (Spoiler alert! He ends up with the woman of his dreams doing what he's always dreamt of doing) as it spreads a thick layer of irony all over the hero's outspoken dedication to offering challenging cuisine rather than smothering comfort.

The food scenes are incredible, though. I would watch it again just for those. Favreau does his own cooking in his scenes, which is pretty impressive, given that I naturally assumed he had stunt hands for his knifework. Celebrity chefs (such as Roy Choi, who was co-producer and oversaw all the cooking, and Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin) guest star but take second-billing to their products. (Honestly, I was expecting the brisket and the lechón to appear in the cast credits.)

Needless to say, it all left me hungry for some good food. My Sunday game session was around the corner from Growling Rabbit on Sheridan and I was naturally tempted by the cubano on their menu. But I wanted to save up my binge credits for dinner that night with an old friend of monshu's so I went for the "sorta vegan" skillet instead. The vegetables were cooked well enough, but the eggs were badly overdone and the seasoning was terrible--lots of black pepper and tasteless herb confetti.

When I saw the Cuban again on the menu for Uncommon Ground, I declared it fate. The GWO's friend also gallantly offered to split it with me in return for half his fried green tomatoes to lessen the impact of all those injurious purines. I'll say this: unlike some of the meals I've had there, this one was perfectly fine. But the sandwich wasn't pressed and the pork was surprisingly dry, making for a less-than-satisfying experience for this food asshole.