pantsfarm

A survey of my trip to Chicago. This is a bit long, and not especially fascinating to people who aren’t me, I suspect.

I left my Shanghai apartment early in the morning of Tuesday the first of May. I spent a long time traveling, and after going through four airports (PVG, NRT, DTW, ORD) I finally stepped off the 55 bus in Hyde Park at Kimbark Ave.

I got off at Kimbark because I needed to stop at the CVS on 53rd before going to my friend’s apartment as I had forgotten to pack a toothbrush.

Walking down Kimbark at night was a strange way for me to begin my trip, given that the walk was one I’d made so many times before when I lived there. I remember being struck at how nice the air smelled, and paused briefly to inhale deeply though my nose and enjoy not smelling shit, piss, or smoke.

I got to James’ apartment and was greeted by him and one of his roommates. I had felt exhausted getting off the plane but upon finally arriving and having walked a few blocks in the brisk air had given me another wind.

We had a light dinner and spent a while talking, me catching up on random things about life in Hyde Park, them asking lots of questions about my life in China.

Maybe I simply discount the opinion of those people I know here too much, but it was nice to talk with them and try to come up with good answers about China, as well as my own decisions in getting and staying there thus far. I feel like it’s a conversation I would not really have with people here for one reason or another.

After a while some other friends and roommates showed up, we continued chatting and had some drinks, and it was in general a very pleasant evening. I managed to stay awake throughout and the only profound effect of jet lag was waking up before 7:00 the next morning. I suspect that was as much the sun as anything else though.

Wednesday morning I spent wandering around a few places in Chicago, doing some errands in terms of shopping as well as just walking around in the city. I bought a couple things I had been meaning to get, wandered through some stores for kicks. An example was a Bed, Bath and Beyond where I just browsed this monstrous wall of kitchen gadgetry. Such specific and bizarre devices. Doing so inspired me to do some baking later in the week.

I headed back to Hyde Park and that night I went with my former co-projectionist at Doc, Kate, to dinner at Topolobampo. The meal was fantastic, as expected. I’m pretty sure that Topolobampo is still my favorite restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. Here’s what we ordered:

• Crema de Coco ~: savory coconut soup with smoked chicken and chipotle-glazed shiitake mushrooms
• Ensalada Primaveral ~: spring salad of fiddlehead ferns, City Farm mache, Tracey’s sunflower shoots, first-of-season ramps, beets and green beans; red-chile dressing, chilatas (red chile sesame, pepitas, peanuts), Chiapas double cream cheese and crispy jamaica
• Borrego al Pasilla Oaxaqueño ~: roasted Crawford Farm lamb rubbed with smoked paprika, in a sauce of roasted tomatillos, smoky-spicy Oaxacan pasilla chiles, grilled ramps and oil-cured olives; served with lentil-studded red-chile rice, sunflower shoot salad and jícama-morita salsa
• Enchiladas Divorciadas ~: bean-sauce-bathed enchiladas: one filled with homemade herby ricotta, goat cheese, sweet corn, roasted chayote and morita chiles in smoky black bean sauce; another filled with inky Three Sisters Garden huitlacoche (corn mushroom), woodland mushrooms and roasted vegetables in silky serrano-spiked white bean sauce; pickled vegetable salad

I really liked the soup and the cheese-filled enchilada. I couldn’t find the dessert menu online, but from memory, we got a chocolate cake and an avocado ice sitting in a soup of fruit juices and fruit pieces. The avocado ice was really delicious.

Oh, the drinks were also quite good. I had this “beer cocktail” thing which was kind of like a bloody mary but not. It was beer and salsa and I have no idea what else, but it was spicy and delicious. She had a variation on a mojito, which was also good, although not quite as new an experience for me.

After that, it was back to Hyde Park, and not so much going on in the evening. Thursday morning I… forget. I guess I can’t have done too much interesting. I guess this was one of the times I spent walking around Hyde Park and enjoying the Spring weather. In the early afternoon, I decided to bake some cookies, and so I picked up some supplies and got made what I think was a very good batch of vegan almond-butter oatmeal cookies. I didn’t quite finish baking them before I had to bring my stuff over to another friend’s apartment though. I felt kind of like a jerk for leaving unmade batter behind, but I did plan to come back and finish them later, if I could.

Thursday night I ate at Spring with Alex, which was also quite delicious. There we both ordered the tasting menu. He took pictures of the meal and I hope he’ll upload them somewhere accessible later. Since the whole menu isn’t readily available online I’ll just summarize from memory. First was an amuse-bouche of three oysters: one plain, one with wasabi and cucumber, and one with a gelee of soy sauce and maybe ginger or something, I don’t know. It was tasty though. Next were two appetizers, one was scallops and little dumplings of something over mushrooms in a delicious wine sauce, and the other was a tartare of I think poke, over puree edamame and some kind of sauce. Then two entrees, one was some whitefish with white polenta and roasted cauliflower, a carrot-bacon emulsion and dehydrated prosciutto. That one really looked like a clever take on bacon and eggs. The other was duck breast over some greens and quinoa and apricot. Finally for dessert was adzuki bean cheesecake accompanied by a soba ale ice cream. I’m not the biggest fan of cheesecake or adzuki beans, but, the ice cream was phenomenal. Overall, the meal was very very good, although I think I enjoyed the previous night’s better.

After dinner, we met up with somebody else for some drinks at a nearby bar, where I was pulled into an impromptu pool lesson from a somewhat drunk woman. After this, I sort of became the partner-on-call for anybody who wanted to play but didn’t have a partner handy. That was fun, although sort of stifled my efforts to talk with Alex and his friend. A while later we headed back and that was the end of Thursday.

Friday morning Alex and I got brunch at Valois, where I’d never been before. It was a staggeringly large amount of food, no wonder everybody in America is huge. After that, I went ahead and indulged in some nerdiness and watched the two honors economics presentations going on that day. One by an old acquaintance, on microcredit in Thailand, the other about cigarette addiction, by somebody I didn’t know. After those presentations, I walked with the acquaintance a little while and declined an invitation to join her for lunch as I thought it would be strange to join her and her BA seminar for the celebratory meal and then both not eat anything or know anybody particularly well. Instead I did a few more errands like run to the post office and bank, then met somebody else for tea on campus.

Later in the afternoon, I returned to James’ with my stuff in tow, as it turned out I wanted to stay there another night. I finished baking the cookies, and then due in part to some poor communication, ended up without particular plans for the evening. I considered briefly the option of going to see the Queen at Doc but instead spent the better part of the evening talking with one of James’ roommates in their apartment. Later in the evening, one of James’ other roommates returned with friends from her Lab (I think?), and James too got back from his dinner. We all had some drinks, then decided to visit one of the friends’ apartments where a party was going on. There I managed to have a couple drinks past slightly drunk, which was an entertaining departure for me given my relative sobriety since having left school.

Eventually, we all made it back to their apartment and I slept quite soundly until later on Saturday morning. Saturday morning was very subdued due in no small part the problem of hangovers. Eventually James and I went to get sandwiches with Adriana for lunch, and returned to his apartment to talk for a while.

After that, I met up with Kim, my former roommate, and drove up to her place Bucktown. She’s got a really nice apartment! We got dinner at an Italian place nearby and it was entirely too much food for me to eat, but we had a good time talking. It was a nice change to talk with somebody who was also now a year out from college.

And then Sunday morning, she dropped me off back at ORD, and I did the same trip in reverse. It felt much more exhausting though, and when I finally arrived back in Shanghai on Monday night, I had to readjust to the pervasive stink of excrement and pollution. Already though, I feel like I’ve readjusted and nothing smells out of the ordinary anymore.

The whole week was punctuated with phone calls to people in the US who I haven’t called recently for whatever reason.

Oh and a final note, the movies I watched on the flights were: Casino Royale, Music and Lyrics, Charlotte’s Web, Miss Potter, and Stranger than Fiction. Of these, I liked most Casino Royale. I look forward to seeing it in a better viewing experience at my parent’s apartment in Beijing sometime after I head there next week.