Overworked. Underfed.

Del Seoul

Almost all the Chicago restaurants I tried were recommended to me by various friends and family. Del Seoul was a place I found on Yelp. It looked pretty delicious and reminiscent of Kogi. It was a bit far from our hotel but we cabbed it pretty easily. Seriously, we spent so much in cab fare…

The Purple Pig

It’s been a long time since I last met up with Ho Bag for some grubbin’. After all these years, she’s still one of the funnest people to hang out with. Now that she’s become quite the foodie, we can really bond. As sad as it is to say, you simply cannot be my friend…

Xoco

With 5 restaurants, including 1 at O’Hare International Airport and the Macy’s flagship store off the Magnificent Mile, in addition to the title of “Top Chef Master,” Rick Bayless is a Chicago based chef with quite the empire on his hands. Who knew a guy from the Midwest could master Mexican cuisine and elevate it to…

The Publican

So after our disappointing dinner at Blackbird, we tried to scale it down a notch and take on some more casual fare at Publican. I only just found out now that they are restaurants from the same chef, Paul Kahan. I was surprised to find this out since the food could not have been more…

Crisp

Knowing this trip to Chicago would have a heavy focus on eating, I wanted to make sure we didn’t feel overwhelmed and weighed down by food. I didn’t want eating to turn into a burden. So I tried hard to find “lighter” more casual fare for our lunches. Crisp offered a variety of rice bowls,…

Blackbird

Chicago turned out to be one of the best gastrotourism trips I’ve ever had. Granted it was actually supposed to be an educational trip because of the conference Dumpling Man was attending, I made it my mission to make sure we ate only the very best for our sorta of mini vacation. I did my…

Smallwares

Would you ever go to a restaurant that describes itself as “inauthentic”? Well, we did and it was surprisingly delicious and true to its description, “inauthentic.” Smallwares is helmed by Johanna Ware, formerly of Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ssam Bar. Having never been to Momofuku anything and only read about the food and tried recipes…

Drago Centro

I dunno who started the tradition of the “First Paycheck Dinner” in my family. Somehow it went from, “Oh, gee whiz a nice dinner on your tab? How nice!” to “Dude, where’s my ‘first pay check dinner’? I’m waiting…I’m waiting!!” I can’t even remember what dinners I was treated to by Smooth Obturator and Triple F. I remember…

Kirin

Shanghai River was delicious, but I was really looking forward to the dim sum since that’s all people talk about when it comes to Vancouver. I recently had an argument with Weeners about how disappointing the dim sum was compared to my very favorite dim sum restaurant in Rosemead, Seafood Harbor. She has almost certainly…

Shanghai River

Our next dining destination in Vancouver was going to be West. We thought one fancy dinner would be a nice highlight for the weekend. When it came down to it, we felt a bit foolish not eating more Chinese food while in Vancouver. I mean, it’s called “Hong-Couver” right??? So at the last minute we…

Kintaro Ramen

Every city has its “Bests.” Best burger, best hot dog, best pizza, best brunch, best Italian, best sushi. I think you get my drift. Our short getaway to Vancouver was certainly an attempt to eat the best the city had to offer. With its reputation for all that is Asian, mainly of “Ching Chong Chang”…

Oxtail Ragu

Sometimes, I am limited to cooking certain things because ingredients are either prohibitively expensive or not conveniently obtainable. I would say this about duck, rack of lamb, and some seafoods. Surprisingly, one of the Asian supermarkets here has oxtails, which I guess is no surprise since Asians do use oxtails. Granted when the Asian markets…