Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Restaurant Research and Reaction Papers

I love birthdays- they're like little holidays sprinkled throughout the year and offer a great excuse to eat cake, be spoiled, and go out with friends and significant others. I turn 25 next Monday. My girl friends are taking me to a wine bar Thursday night and JP and I are going to dinner on Saturday while two friends dote on Landon. I have a reaction paper due at 4 PM on a scholarly paper I still don't understand enough to "react" to, but I've spent the last hour perusing restaurant reviews online for our dinner out on Saturday. I feel so much pressure! I love trying new places, I love researching, and I love reading menus, but there's too much information about too many restaurants! And we're leaving Chicago in a little over three months and there's so many restaurants we haven't tried yet. I'm torn between going to a tried and true favorite and trying one of the million other great restaurants in this city. And I want to go somewhere nice where we can have a long, multiple course meal, with drinks, but I don't want to spend all of my birthday money on one night. We both love Latin American food, but we just went to Carnivale to celebrate JP's admittance to business school (definitely one of the best meals I've ever had), so I'm thinking we should branch out to another type. There's just too many fantastic places to eat in this city!

Sigh... I suppose I should return to working on my Law & Politics paper that's due in less than 3 hours. I've read all 53 pages of the paper being presented, twice, and I still don't understand it. The authors are proving a theorem that seems completely intuitive to me and they never explain why this theorem matters or needed to be empirically proven at all. So far I have two pages rambling about my belief that all papers should have a point and this one does not. You should be able to answer the questions, "what is this paper about?" and "who is going to (want to) read it?" after reading the introduction (or at the very least, the entire paper) and I still can't answer either one. I'm not sure my professors are going to like it, and I'm not sure how I can possibly expand on that any further to reach the length requirement, but I'm armed with a diet coke and chocolate chip cookie, so I'm going to try. I wonder how many times I can get away with using the word "understand" in a single paragraph...

8 comments:

  1. Go to Chuck E Cheese! It's the height of culinary excellence . . .

    ReplyDelete
  2. mkchicago.com Get the prix fixe. Spendy, but SO GOOD. If you choose MK (which I would highly recommend), be SURE to get the pomme frites with the truffle cream. Even just as an appetizer replacement. They'll do excellent wine pairings for you also.

    Also, Custom House. Better than Spring (and more red meat); also has a tasting menu (which I haven't tried). (Spring also has a tasting menu, which I have tried but it seemed overpriced for what we got. It was good, it just wasn't Ah-Maze-Ing.)

    I haven't tried Butter but I walk past it all the time and their prix fixe menu always looks amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ooh thanks K. I've been to MK when it first opened for a firm dinner and it was great (and I remember those fries). I'd actually forgotten about it and JP hasn't been there. Further research is obviously in order! It'll get me through this workshop at 4:00 with the authors presenting this pointless paper I'm struggling to react to...

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is both Latin American and expensive, but have you been to Nacional 27? We went for an anniversary and then for Dan's law school graduation with family. The latter was such a big party we had a fixed menu, dessert sampler, pitcher of white sangria...it was THE best meal of my life, seriously. When we talk about visiting Chicago again we dream of going to our favorite sports bar, Second City, and Nacional 27.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Topolobampo is nice (spendy, but nice) too- fun and deeeelicious.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, De La Costa was completely one of my faves. Went for my birthday last year and I still think about the great meal we had!

    I know North Pond is also supposed to be fab. I haven't been there yet, but it's one of my sister's favorites.

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://www.annamariapasteria.com/

    This restaurant is really really good. Read more about it here http://orangetangerine.blogspot.com/2006/12/i-love-city.html from Chicago's finest wordsmith.

    ReplyDelete
  8. okay, not terribly fancy, but my dad's company held a 25th anniversary party for my dad at Stefanos. Fabulous food and they have their own Zinfandel.

    http://www.stefanosstuffedpizza.com/main.htm

    don't know of too many other fancy places in Chicago since I moved before I had any real money to spend on a nice dinner. ;)

    ReplyDelete