The wife turned 31 this weekend, and so did her cousin, which meant a long weekend of eating and drinking; my birthdays are spent pretending it’s not my birthday. Friday night was a celebration of her cousin’s birthday so we made our way down to Bin 36 for dinner and drinks. Being the good catholic that I am, I made sure to remind everyone at the table that they couldn’t eat meat on Friday’s during lent, as I force fed a cheeseburger into my face hole. Yeah…. I am Catholic, but I’m far from what you would call a “good catholic”, plus I figured since my sister-in-law was eating Chicken, I could eat meat as well, although she has an excuse being pregnant and all. We had a bunch of cheese and ironically enough my wife and I were the only ones that drank wine, everyone else had mixed drinks… weird considering it’s a wine and cheese place, but I guess I did feel weird ordering a burger there. And when it came to the cheese, I don’t know if I just only like “fake” cheese, but most of the cheeses were too sharp for me (we got the gouda and cheddar plates), oh well, the burger was delicious and the fries were delicious.
Saturday night was our night to celebrate my wife’s 31st birthday, and since we were trying to keep it a bit low-key this year, we ended up at Goose Island on Clybourn. We were just going for drinks and not dinner, since figuring out dinner with a large group is a pain in the ass I didn’t want to deal with. I had called the restaurant a couple weeks ago and arranged an area for 20-25 of us, which was being very generous since the Facebook invite only had like 15 people accept… whoops. I felt terrible when we arrived at the restaurant and it seemed as though the hostess/waitress thought we were going to have 20-25 people eating dinner. We ended up having between that number, so I felt a bit better about it, plus everyone was drinking multiple drinks, so I don’t think they lost any money in the end. Again, my wife and one other person were the only ones drinking beer… and Goose Island is a brewery. Kind of makes you feel weird about having your birthday there, but the space and ambiance is nice and low-key, so it was all good. We finally got to meet a friend’s girlfriend, whom we hadn’t met yet even though they’ve been dating for quite a while now. And despite a few of his previous girlfriends, this one actually turned out to be really cool, way to go man.
So I can’t really comment on the food at Goose Island as we didn’t eat, although the pub chips were delicious and made you want to drink more so that’s always good. And the service was incredible, thank you so much to [insert name I can’t remember], she was attentive and never got pissed or annoyed at the fact that when we first sat down there were only a few of us… I seriously felt bad about it. So Goose Island is definitely a place we will be returning to in order to actually eat and maybe drink some beers.
The best cure for a Sunday morning hangover is brunch, and what better place to have brunch than The Bongo Room in Andersonville…. Well, ok, that’s kind of a lie as I could think of better places to have brunch, but this is where the wife wanted to go so this is where we were going. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but the fact that we had to wait 45 minutes for a table for 5 was a little ridiculous, especially when there were plenty of tables opening up (it seemed), but oh well, we managed. I just got my normal 2 eggs over easy, toast, bacon and potatoes, so it’s kind of hard to mess that up… which they didn’t, so they are ok in my book. But this wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t complain about at least one thing… the sprite. Ha! I know, I’m a jackass if I’m going to complain about the Sprite, but it tasted terrible for some reason, and not just watered down terrible, like terrible terrible. Basically it just didn’t taste like Sprite, I think it was just seltzer water. But like I said, it’s a small minor complaint that wouldn’t stop me from coming back here… the fact that it took so long to seat us, when we could have gone anywhere else and gotten food of the same quality, is the reason I probably won’t jump at the chance to come back here. There are plenty of other brunch places in the city that serve eggs…
So while I didn’t venture too far out of my comfort zone this weekend, it was a big weekend for eating and drinking. And on top of it, I am now sick at home trying to get over this cold I’ve had since last Thursday… It really kicked up a notch on Monday though. So maybe that’s why the Sprite tasted funny to me…. that would actually make a lot of sense.
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