Where to start? The weekend was a little long. I had a bunch of birthdays to celebrate. My mom turned 47, my brother Nicholas turned 10, and Sandy turned 30! I ended up with less cake than one would expect.
Sandy and I took Friday off and made our annual voyage to pick some apples in Hobart, IN. We ended up with 15 lbs. of apples and some stuff for my mother. That night we went to a local Italian spot, Sapori Trattoria with something like 12 people. The food was solid, as always. The company was great also. Overall, it was a good time.
On Saturday, I took Sandy to
Charlie Trotter's, for part of her birthday present. If you aren't familiar with Trotter's, it's widely regarded as the finest restaurant in Chicago. In one recent poll I saw, it was ranked 2nd in the United States, trailing only The French Laundry in Napa Valley. It's more like an experience than a meal.
I had to get reservations about 6 weeks in advance. After arriving, I could see why and it wasn't just the food. There was room for about 30 people in the dining room which looked like a converted hotel lobby. There was an island in the middle with many wine bottles and other amenities for the servers to use. There were 6 servers in the room at all times, tending to your every need. There are really two options in the main dining room at Trotter's. You can get the "Grand Menu" or the "Vegetable Menu". The menus change every day, however. Both, in our case, were 6 courses of culinary artistry. Sandy got the Grand and I got the Vegetable so that we could see and try everything. I also got the beverage accompaniment, which was essentially a series of juices, meant to coincide with each of my dishes. I think that four of these succeeded nicely, and were absolutely great. The other two were awful. This could have been just my personal taste though, you can't like everything. The food was out of this world, across the board.
They just kept bringing plate after plate, it seemed. I can't even remember everything that we had, and my descriptions would hardly do the dishes justice. THe descriptions they gave us couldn't even do them justice. When they set down the plate in front of you, you almost didn't want to eat it. That would mess up the dish. It was that beautiful.
Among my favorite memories, was a tremendous risotto. It was so delicately prepared. Many times when I've had rissoto in the past, it feels almost like a stew with the grains sticking to each other, building one glutinous mass. This was nothing like that. I had to consciously slow myself down so that I wouldn't eat it so quickly. It was so delicious, I just couldn't get enough. Sandy had a scallop dish, with one large scallop as the centerpiece. If I had to describe a perfect scallop to someone, a picture of this dish would do the trick. I had a canneloni dish that used root vegetables (a personal favorite) in lieu of pasta. This was wonderful. Desserts at the end, were tremendous, as well. I had some Michigan raspberries (another personal favorite) in a tremendous white chocolate style sauce and fresh vanilla bean ice cream. We also shared some tremendous mission figs. On top of that was the best chocolate mousse i've ever had. It was as though they had taken 3 awesome servings of chocolate mousse and packed all of their flavor into this chocolate mousse. The amount of flavor really blew me away. There was also some chocolate on the bottom that they told us was from an island in the pacific and you could tast the "volcanic flavor". You really could! It was nuts. It tasted like lava, or what you would expect lava to taste like, in a good way.
At the end of the meal, we went on a tour of the kitchen. It was much smaller than I expected, but heavily staffed and pretty freakin' cool. They had a French stove that hardly anyone in the U.S. has. The chef that showed us around (not Charlie of course, he was probably sipping a margarita somewhere) told me that he got in at 11 a.m. and he'd be going home around 3 a.m. He shook this off quickly as "kitchen hours". For all you aspiring chef's out there, it's not all caviar and cabernet.
Well, that's enough about the food and what not. Happy Birthday again to Sandy though.
On Sunday, Sandy and I scrambled into Bourbonnais for my brother's party with 12 of his closest friends. We all went bowling, due to the rain. I got my brother his first Harvard t-shirt. No pressure there, right? He's a smart dude though, what can I say? A trip to Monical's Pizza rounded out a great little trip to the homestead.
Did you catch the Bears game this weekend? They turned in one of those brutal Bears efforts. Orton had 5 picks. They couldn't stop Carson Palmer. Wow, that was a tough sentence to write. They just didn't play very well. This after a week where they couldn't have played much better. So who are the real Bears? You just saw them in the past two weeks. They're going to beat most of the teams they should beat and lose to most of the teams they should lose to. Unfortunately, the Lions are a team they should lose to this year. There will only be reason to panic if they Bears lose in two weeks to the Browns. That's a team they should clearly beat. Because their schedule is so weak, and the division so poor, I still expect a playoff appearance.
On the bright side, Orton threw 5 INT's and still was out there throwing the ball like he wasn't afraid. Many QBs go in the tank after interception 3 and definitely after 4. Orton led a scoring drive to keep us in the game at 17-7. This is after he had 5. He's either an idiot or he's fearless. He went to Purdue, so the jury is still out on that one. Still, I'm inclined to go with fearless. Either way, if he sucks it up for the next 8 games, maybe we get Rex Grossman back this year and see which one is better heading into next year. That's really what matters most. We have to figure out who is our guy. We aren't winning the Super Bowl this year, that's for sure. A playoff berth would be a nice stepping stone for us right now though.
In other football news, Peyton Manning is submarining my fantasy team. I'm not sure where my complete faith in Peyton began but he's done nothing short of disappoint me. Two straight years I've lost money in Vegas betting on the Colts to beat the Pats. Now he's tanking my fantasy team. If you see Peyton Manning on my side, get on the other side quick. That's the moral of this story.
If you haven't picked up
Now I Can Die in Peace by Bill Simmons yet, you are missing out. Click over to Amazon, and score it.
