CHITOWN

A WEEKEND IN CHICAGO

Our plan was to board the Empire Builder in Columbus on its way to Chicago. It for years has made a mandatory screeching stop for a fleeting two minutes in this little burb north of Madison. Neither Rick nor I like driving into Chicago. Coming from the north the drive takes about two hours to reach the outer ring but it can take another three hours to tackle the bumper-to-bumper traffic from the northwestern suburbs to the loop.  Then once there you have to contend with parking. Our go to method for getting to the heart of the windy city had been to take a commuter train. On the half-dozen times we've done it we drove to the Milwaukee airport, an hour and fifteen-minutes, and then took the AmTrack commuter train right into Union Station.
This time since Columbus is only a thirty-minute drive from Madison and since the Empire Builder makes that two-minute stop we thought we'd give it a try. The Empire Builder starts its westward journey from Seattle, WA and goes all the way to Chicago. It's a luxury train with sleeping compartments and dining cars and waiters with white gloves.

Columbus is one of those towns that had a heyday about a hundred years ago and then just dropped off the map leaving it a century back in time. Back when train travel was coming into its own Columbus managed to snag the railroad instead of Madison but the train coup didn't help with its financial and business boon.

What it did do was leave it blessed with an early twentieth century charm, a charm strong enough to draw the director, Michael Mann, to use it as his set for the movie Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp.

It also left it with some significant architecture, Columbus' crowning jewel: the Farmers and Merchants Union Bank designed by Louis Sullivan.

Turned out the Empire Builder was going to be our public enemy trying its best to stop us from getting to Chicago.

Unbeknownst to us it is also notoriously late by the time it gets to Columbus, WI.  We found this out about ten-minutes into our drive from Madison. Rick received a text informing us that the train would be approximately two hours late. Now we love antiquing in Columbus but our bags were packed and we were counting on dinner in Chicago, not in the Empire Builder's dining car. We didn't even need to flip a coin. We did a "U-ey" and started heading toward Milwaukee while Rick wrangled his magic over the phone with the ticketing agent getting our tickets changed from the Empire Builder to the commuter. Turns out the luxury liner also comes with a luxury price. We got a huge refund. We made it to Milwaukee with a half-hour to spare and beat the scheduled arrival time of the luxury train into Union Station by a good two and a half hours.

An Uber to my sister's condo on the north side put us to our destination well ahead of schedule and in time for a tour of her new digs, a stroll through Andersonville and dinner at Lady Gregory's.

We hadn't seen my sister's new apartment since she officially moved in earlier the preceding spring. We'd helped her with some of the furnishings and decorating but the bulk of the design was hers. Chicago has its roots well dug into the Arts & Crafts movement. The influence of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie Style are abundantly evident in the windy city.

My sister's apartment shared much of this influence and she played off of it well, mixing it in with a collection of vintage games and international pieces she acquired while teaching in Saudi Arabia and traveling the world.

Lady Gregory's has become her go to local restaurant for a good dinner and it was a great introduction to her Chicago neighborhood for us. It was the quintessential Chicago eatery.

I wanted a lite bite and that's what I had: the best French onion soup with a side of flatbread topped with crispy spinach, goat cheese and bacon while Rick had fish & chips and my sister had her favorite grilled cheese and tomato soup.

On day two we went back to explore the shops in Andersonville. This was essential given the amount of antique window-shopping we had done the night before. These shops are like a magnet for us. No matter how hard we try to resist the pull is overwhelming and sucked us in like a bear to honey.

I walked out of one shop with a pair of lamps for a client back in New York. It's so much fun spending other people's money!

After shopping, food is always our story. When you mix the two it can be dangerous especially after lunch at a great little Mexican restaurant serving a top-notch margarita. I developed a bit of a drunkard's limp after a margarita lunch. I 'm such a light weight.

After the margaritas I had to give up on my no sugar campaign. I made the three of us stop in at this amazing bakery for a cinnamon roll and cappuccino. I have no idea of what Rick and my sister had. I was now on a sugar high

As if that wasn't enough Ebby had made reservations that night at one of her favorites and a Chicago institution, Sun Wah, for their famous Peking Duck.

It's not a very fancy place but it's huge serving between 900 to1100 ducks in any given week. Getting a duck requires you to place an advance order from the "secret menu" . That menu is the only place you'll find the Beijing Duck Dinner. Thankfully my sister knew the secret trick.

The duck isn't just plated and brought to your table. No, the whole carcass is brought to your table and carved in a theatrical display There were a couple of neighboring tables that obviously didn't know about the secret ordering process. Wearing covetous stares they looked on with complete envy. Now all I want to know is where the Sun Wah people keep their duck farm.

On day two I was still trying to digest the duck. We told ourselves: today food was not going to be the focus. This kind of edict never works out. As an attempt at our resolve we headed to the Art Institute to see the Manet show. My sister's membership was going to get us in before the hordes and since you can't take food into the museum, we were counting on the ticket police to be our no food enforcer and give us the once over for contraband delectable.

After the museum we had signed up for a walking tour of some of Chicago's most significant architecture. The meeting place was the Art Institute of Chicago's Annex. These tours are very popular. We shied away from any of the tours that included restaurants or tastings and stuck with inedible concrete and glass.

Once again we thought that if the tour guide kept us moving we wouldn't have a chance to purchase any food along the way. We almost succeeded. Our guide never mentioned this building but the sight of it did make our stomachs do a little flip and that helped to momentarily quell our hunger.

The walk took us along the banks of the Chicago River where you can see a spectrum of architectural styles from the Wrigley Building to Marina City and on to the most recent Trump Tower.

One of my favorite stops on the tour was the post-modern lobby at 77 West Wacker Drive, a building designed by Ricardo of Arquitectura. The way the architect was able to frame an exterior view of an adjoining building to make it look more like a painting than a view through a window was genius and beautiful.

Chicago is a city rich in architecture

Every street is a walk through history. There is so much of significance that its beauty can seem almost ordinary and expected. This couples with a heritage of Nordic cleanliness almost everywhere you go. When you combine the two Chicago rises to one of the world's great cities.

With so much grandeur it can be easy to overlook the details of the city that decorate its exteriors like the jewels in a Tiffany lamp

This beauty extends inside where peacocks parade in a glory of brass filigree

and then returns outside to remind us of Chicago's cultural history in neon and sparkling light.

If your not spinning by now then look up and crane your neck to see the beauty above your head under the spectacular glass ceiling in the Chicago Cultural Center.

We held out for as long as we could before we broke our hunger strike. We popped into the old Marshall Fields and went to the top floor and the Walnut Room where we dove into a plate of grilled naan topped with roasted chicken, butternut squash, gorgonzola and baby arugula then dressed with a maple vinaigrette.

We added a hot plate of their famous buttery garlic bread toasted with a thick layer of Wisconsin Asiago cheese. Beat that! It was well worth breaking our resolve.

We had asked Ebby to pick a top restaurant for dinner on our last night. She did her research and made a reservation at North Pond.

North Pond is architectural the essence of Prairie Style architecture and ambiance. You could sense Frank Lloyd Wright sitting at a table down the aisle from you.
This was definitely the height of nouvelle cuisine. We dined on a rollercoaster of unique flavor combinations under the tutelage of their most knowledgeable server and sommelier.

This was a dinner we were going to take our time experiencing. We all tried to pick different offerings from each course. My sister who eats no meat began with a salad of poached Gulf shrimp with red plum "Pico de Gallo", green tomatoes, hibiscus kettle corn and sprinkled with Chicago cheese popcorn. The problem with this dish it was spread out over a plate that made it impossible to gather a bit of everything into one bite.

I went for a composition created around candied baby beets and golden watermelon with shaved coppa, smoked cotija and pickled peppers with an anise syrup drizzled over the top. This is the kind of dining where I don't have the faintest idea or knowledge of half of the ingredients.

Rick skipped the salad and went straight to the first course with a plate slashed with Piperade-raisin jam, shards of Guanciale bacon and topped with a soft-boiled egg that spilled its runny yolk throughout the dish once it broke open and rolled over the rest of the dish. This was definitely one of the better concoctions. Like a trained truffle pig or dog Rick can always root out the best dishes on a menu!

Our main courses were just as fascinating and complex as the salads and first courses. From a slow-roasted Coho salmon filet served with charred sweet corn, a popcorn-crusted frog leg, early peaches, arugula, capers and corn "flakes". I dare you to try and describe how all of that tastes in one mouthful.

Rick is the only one who ventured into the meat category with grilled pork tenderloins and crisp rillettes laid on a smear of cherry jam. Then added to the plate was some shitake mushrooms, black garlic "Chicherron" with a couple cherry cola gumdrops. The tenderloins were delicious.

I went for the tilefish and nectarines. The fish and fruit was accompanied by Cavolo Nero(those were those little black things), some shishito peppers, sourdough beans, pickled onion and sprinkled with an herb crumb. I ate it but I can't say I was thrilled

We should have called it quits but since from the start we had wanted to experience the entire menu we did dessert. I love figs so when I saw them paired with honey I felt I'd be leaving on a comfy note. Once again the plate was way more complicated than it needed to be. The figs were roasted in balsamic vinegar and the honey came in the form of gelee on top of a yogurt panna cotta. Added to this was a scoop of plum sorbet, a rose cloud and a sugar nest crown.

Rick chose a slow-roasted peach served with a cinnamon-orange brioche pudding and olive oil ice cream that tasted just like it sounds.

All I wanted after that was a slice of Chicago style pan pizza. The dinner was a bit pretentious but the setting was worth it and so was the company.
Chicago will always be a refuge for us, now more than ever, since my sister has given us an open invitation for whenever we need an energy boost. It is a beautiful city. It's a world-class destination and the perfect escape for a long weekend holiday.