Michel and Elizabeth Eat Steak by Night and Brunch with Dinosaurs by Day

Ah, the fall!  Time for visits from parents!  Michel's parents visited, of course, over his birthday weekend in September, and November brought us dinner with Ian at Fish Bar (oh, how we love that place) while he was in town for work and a weekend visit with my parents.  As always, we try to do new things each time parents visit, and this time was no different.  It was a particularly good food weekend, in fact.

First stop: Gibson's

E: Gibson's Steakhouse, as you may know, is one of Chicago's legendary steakeries and also serves as the exterior of the bar on one of our favorite shows, The League. 

M: The interior featured on the show more or less matches the bar area as it actually exists.  The rest of the restaurant is much fancier. 

Photobombed by the celebrity (and not-so-celebrity) photos on the wall

E:  It's one of those places with photos of all the celebrities that have eaten there hanging on the walls in the entry way, which is tiny by the way, and the main dining room is like something out of an art deco movie.  Super old school Chicago. 

M: Rumor has it that a small amount of Al Capone's ashes is sprinkled on every dish served.  And let me tell you, they are delicious.

E: Now that Michel has finished creating his own Chicago legend...

M: You don't know that.

E:  We will now tell you about the food.  Or, more specifically, the macadamia turtle pie.

 The Macadamia Turtle Pie

 Size comparison: It is literally as big as Michel's head...which is quite large.

E:  First, let's be clear.  The food is good.  Real good.  But what made the experience was Paul, our waiter.  Paul is one of those career waiters who can turn a good meal into a spectacular meal, a nice dinner into a lifetime memory, just because of how he does his job.  Our table was not that great.  It kind of jutted out into a major walkway for the waiters, and it was crushed in against several other tables.  In fact, the group ahead of us was supposed to have that table and stole our booth.  When Mom noticed that they were asking to be relocated, she asked the host, "They didn't like the table?"  He said, "Yeah, but you're actually the winner here.  You have Paul as your waiter."  

M: Paul's presentation of our various meat options was astoundingly thorough and immaculately performed.  Also, Elizabeth has undersold the food.  My steak was truly great. 

E: Paul recommended the turtle pie.  This is Paul. ↓

Paul is the best.

M:  I think it bears pointing out that most of what you see in the turtle pie is ice cream.  It is a foot tall ice cream thing.  

E: Delicious.  It was a really fantastic evening and a great way to start my parents' visit.

Cab usie!

M: I think it should be called a selvesie.  

Next Stop: The Field Museum

E: After breakfast at Marmalade the next morning, we headed over to The Field Museum, home of Sue the T-Rex, to see the paleontology and Egyptology exhibits.  

 

 Sue the T-Rex!

 Rawr!  Sue is about to eat us!

M: The paleontology exhibit is an impressive and extensive look into the evolutionary process.  In terms of quality, it is much closer to what can be found in the Houston Museum of National Science than is the Egyptology exhibit.  

E: That is to say the paleontology exhibit is better than the Egyptology exhibit, just in terms of organization and use of space.  (Though it's hard to beat HMNS's brand spankin' new Egyptology exhibit.  It's pretty spectacular.)  However, the Field Museum has mummies.  A ton of them. 

M: Rumor has it that a piece of Al Capone's skeleton is included in every dinosaur on display.

E: True fact: T-Rexes used their tiny arms to tickle each other to show affection.  We learned that in Houston, but it applies to the giant T-Rex in the middle of the lobby, too.  

 That is a giant sloth.  Not kidding.

The coolest part was that you could actually see into the excavation lab to see what they were studying and cleaning.  This is the only picture I got, though, because everyone else said it was creepy that I was taking pictures of the paleontologist in the box.

Final Stop: Gather

 

E: After the Field Museum, we ordered pizza and watched the UT game, so Sunday morning was all about brunch.  We chose another new place (for us) in the neighborhood called Gather, known for its Sunday Brunch.  When we arrived, we were ushered into the back room for a semi-private dining experience.

M:  Semi-private until the party of 90 showed up.  Even then, though, the room stayed pretty quiet.  

 Front Room

E: And the food was so delicious!  I had French toast with cinnamon baked apples.  The French toast was tasty, but the apples totally made it.

M: I had The Skillet, which consisted of braised pork shoulder, a fried egg, cheddar cheese, avocado, black beans, potatoes, and fire roasted salsa.  It was really great.

E: Mom had the Sunday omelete with shitake mushrooms, onions, goat cheese, and an arugula salad, and Dad made his own breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries, and toast.  

E: We had the opportunity to go back a week or so ago with my cousins, and Gather continues to be amazing.  This time around I had the sweet potato hash, and Michel had the fried chicken biscuit.  This is definitely one we'll be adding to our visitor rotation!

M: Rumor has it that Al Capone started Gather with his college roommate.  

E:  Well, he was known to hang out not too far from here, so maybe... In any event, it was a great way to end Mom and Dad's visit!

 Snow!  It always snows at the end of Mom and Dad's visits...even in April.

Until next time!

 

Ina! Ina! Ina!

Elizabeth: INA!!!

Michel:  Elizabeth really loves Ina Garten, so in May when I saw that Ina would be speaking in Chicago in November, I bought tickets immediately.  For the intervening months, Elizabeth spent every waking moment plotting to use this event as an opportunity to become best friends with the Barefoot Contessa.

Elizabeth:  INA!!!

Michel: Shortly after we found our seats (front row center mezzanine), someone came by and said they were their seats, and we believed them.  We searched throughout the rest of the mezzanine for our seats only to find that we were right in the first place.

Elizabeth:  My friend, Lee, who knows my love of Ina told me that she hoped I was close enough to breathe on Ina...which is much sweeter and not as creepy as it sounds, I promise.  While not that close, our seats were pretty awesome. 

 Awaiting greatness

Elizabeth:  I was super calm and collected until Ina, introduced by that lady who does Check, Please! on WTTW, the local PBS affiliate, walked on stage.  Then I began making this uncontrollable and very strange half laughing/half crying sound.  She had arrived.

Michel: With every moment Ina spent on stage, I could feel from Elizabeth, intermingled with her uncontrollable giddiness, a sense of surprise that they were not yet best friends. 

INA!....INA, INA, INA!!!

Elizabeth:  The crowd was much rowdier than we were expecting, and there was a lot of audience response to pretty much everything she said.  Of course.  Because she's Ina, and she's amazing.

Michel: A surprisingly high percentage of the questions from the audience were asked by straight men.

Elizabeth:  You love her, too.  Admit it.

Michel:  No one besides Jeffrey loves her as much as you.

Elizabeth:  Perhaps I should explain a little why I love Ina so much.  In college, I would schedule most of my morning classes between 8 and 11, and often found myself decompressing in front of the tv for a half hour before lunch.  The Barefoot Contessa was always on at that time, and she was such a wonderfully soothing presence, particularly during stressful times at school.  I loved her show, and so did my friends.  Some of us would have a daily "Barefoot Contessa date" before heading down to lunch.  No matter how the day was going, watching Ina would make it better. 

 A picture of Ina, answering questions, untarnished by local television riff-raff

Now, that's why Ina as the Barefoot Contessa is awesome.  But let me tell you why else she is awesome.  Ina didn't get into the specialty foods business until her 30's.  Before that she married her high school sweetheart, Jeffrey (who is a professor of international trade, finance, and business in and former dean of the Yale School of Management), and she was a White House nuclear policy analyst for the Ford and Carter administrations.  Paraphrasing Ina, how cool is that? 

 INA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elizabeth:  Ina was absolutely lovely: friendly, practical, and funny, just like on her show.  And she gives really great advice on cooking, entertaining, and life in general.  I did not, however, succeed in my goal in becoming her best friend.  After the talk, Michel convinced me to get her new cookbook as a consolation.  It was, after all, the reason for the evening.  And Michel is clearly the best husband ever!!

Michel: I was surprised at all the profanity, frankly.

It's signed!  Ina!!!!!!!

Michel:  In the end, even though Elizabeth was not able to become best friends...

Elizabeth: INA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lollapalooza for Intellectuals

 In Chicago, fall means turning leaves, crisp days, pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks, and the Chicago Humanities Festvial...or, as it is now trying to bill itself, Lollapalooza for Intellectuals.  While I know plenty of intellectuals who enjoy the real Lolla, NS Magazine and CHF have a point: the festival is always a glorious smorgasbord of fascinating people doing amazing work in all fields of study.  (Fun fact: my friend Dara's husband, James McLurkin was one of those fascinating people doing amazing work in robotics last year!  Check out his work!)

This year, crazy busy schedules prevented us from taking advantage of as many of the presentations as we'd have liked, but we did make a point to make it to the evening with Renee Fleming, presented at the University of Chicago and hosted by Chicago Lyric Opera's dramaturg, Colin Ure.

Michel:  Strangely enough, Renee Fleming was also there to discuss her work in robotics.  She predicts the humanity will be fully cyborg within the next 8-14 months.  I think she might not be very good at robotics.

 Elizabeth: Besides her work in robotics, she also discussed her career as an international opera star and her work with Chicago Lyric on bringing and keeping arts education in the schools.  It was a really great talk, I thought.

Michel:  We also learned that she had a pet monkey for a weekend growing up.  Apparently, people used to buy monkeys at department stores.  But it was an interesting, well-curated discussion. 

Elizabeth:  The next weekend we had the opportunity to see Renee again, this time as part of the Chicago Lyric Opera's 60th Anniversary Concert.  That's me all dressed up because we found out last minute that it was technically black tie...

Michel:  Although in our section, I saw a number of people wearing jeans.

Elizabeth: It was fun getting all gussied up, though.  Fun and cold. 

The Civic Opera House is a gorgeous example of art deco architecture, and it was all done up for the event.  Although even not done up, it's a beautiful building.

 Lobby level

 The lobby from above

 The lobby ceiling

 Non-black tie riff raff

Elizabeth: The inside of the theatre itself was gorgeous, too.  To the left is the ceiling right near us.  We were the second to last row from the top.  It's actually not a bad view, but the sound has a difficult time getting past the tiers of ceiling to the nose-bleeds.

Michel:  Except for Stephanie Blythe who may as well have been sitting next to us when she sang.  She could be heard through 8 feet of concrete.  And I mean that in the most complementary way possible.

Elizabeth: Yeah, she's got some lungs on her.  Plus her voice is gorgeous...like buttuh.  She was probably my favorite singer of the night. 

Michel: But Eric Owens, Christine Goerke, and Quinn Kelsey were also pretty great. 

 Elizabeth: The evening presented several international opera singers, including the four above mentioned as well as Renee, Ana Maria Martinez, Johan Botha, and mybestfriendSusanGraham, singing some of their favorite pieces, supplemented by the Ryan Opera Center's young artists.

Michel:  In addition to the singers, Jane Lynch was the very funny emcee, and in between songs were sketches by some of The Second City's main stage performers.  It's probably the only environment where they can make Pinkerton jokes that kill.

 Elizabeth:  We were thisclose to Jane Lynch before the show because she was hanging out in a hallway right next to the sidewalk where we walked in.  It was super exciting.  You'll be seeing us both on Hollywood Game Night since we're now close personal friends with Jane Lynch.

Michel:  As celebrities, of course.

Elizabeth:  Even though some of the aria selections were...weird, it was a pretty incredible evening of comedy and opera!

Michel:  The true star of the evening was the butterscotch mousse from Fork.  It came complete with chocolate dipping cookies.  

Elizabeth:  I don't know.  My apple crisp with homemade maple ice cream was pretty tasty, too.  Fork, we discovered, is one of the few places city open late enough to do an after-show dessert date.  Fortunately, the desserts are delicious, plus it's basically on the way home.  

Thus ends our week with Renee.  We had an excellent time, and hope she did, too. 

Michel and Elizabeth Experience "The Change"

Recently some of you have been asking what fall looks like in the Windy City, particularly in regards to leaves changing colors.  Now we don't live next to the Shenandoah National Forest, like Elizabeth's brother, Ben, does, but our neighborhood puts on a pretty good show.  Michel experienced leaves changing growing up in Pennsylvania, but for a Houston girl like Elizabeth, the massive expanses of yellow leaves are pretty exciting.  So we thought we'd give you a glimpse of what a walk in our neighborhood looks like mid-October, especially as we had our first real snowfall of the season this weekend.

And yes, you would be totally right in guessing that this post is just a tiny bit of a filler post until we get through some of our craziness in work and school and have time to catch you up on all of our excitement from the last few weeks!  But our neighborhood is a pretty cheerful place to be on a gorgeous fall day.  Enjoy!