With the holiday weekend upon us, we really wanted to try and take advantage of it as much as possible. Friday nights are always a bust for us as my wife teaches a fitness class after her full-time job so I hang out with the kid after work. This normally means that we just hang out, eat dinner at home, and then lay around on the couch. But just because Friday nights are usually spent at home doesn’t mean the rest of the weekend had to be spent there as well.
Saturday morning we were up bright and early to get ourselves ready to head into downtown Chicago. And when I say bright and early, it was really only about 20 minutes earlier than we’re normally awake, but early none the less.
We were on our way down to meet up with our friends to do Yoga in the Park at Millennium Park. The three girls were going to do Yoga while us guys, and my daughter, were going to hang back at our friend’s place and wait for them to finish.
Breakfast at Miss Ricky’s
Once Yoga was over we headed over to Miss Ricky’s in the Virgin Hotel to grab some breakfast. Miss Ricky’s is located in/next door to the Virgin Hotel. It’s got a pretty spacious dining room and a great outside patio, complete with a table that has swings for chairs. Since there was a larger group of us, our only option was to sit inside, which was all good. The restaurant itself is casual, but the interior is very clean and modern. I really dug the breakfast bar area that looked into the kitchen.
The menu has all of your favorite breakfast foods on it: steak & eggs, bacon, pancakes, chicken & waffles, french toast, etc.. I’m not sure why my eyes skipped over the chicken & waffles, but had I seen them I probably would have gotten them, but instead I just kept it simple as my stomach was a little off that morning.
Since I was playing it safe I decided to just go with my normal breakfast fare and get the 2 Eggs Your Style, and get them over-easy, as I usually do. The eggs came with home fries, your choice of toast and meats. I opted for white toast, cause I’m boring, and bacon.
When the food arrived I was immediately kind of disappointed. Normally when I order over-easy eggs I get an egg that has the egg whites set and cooked and a runny yolk that I can dip my toast and bacon into. In this case, however, I was greeted by a barely cooked egg in general. The egg whites were definitely not set and just as runny as the yolk was. And looking across the table I noticed that a couple of my friends that got their eggs sunny side up had egg whites that were cooked way more than mine.
Maybe I have the definition of “over-easy” wrong? Should I have ordered over-medium instead? I don’t think so based on the definition I found on the internet, as well as all of my other past experiences ordering over-easy at restaurants… but who knows.
I still ate what I could of the eggs as I’m not really one to send things back. Although I probably should give the restaurant a chance to correct their mistake instead of just writing about it on the internet, but even if I did have them take it back and cook me new eggs, the first impression would still stick with me and would still make it’s way to this site.
On the positive site, the bacon was delicious and perfectly crispy (I hate flacid bacon), and the home fries were pretty decent. I do prefer crispy hashbrowns to home fries, but I can’t complain about these potatoes, they were solid.
I thought my eggs might have just been a fluke, but one of our party members’ omelet was incorrect as well, but I believe it was just some missing spinach which they corrected and was then delicious.
Between all of us I think we had the run of the menu… except for the chicken and waffles! There were a couple omelets, pancakes, and a couple steak and eggs. The service and the atmosphere were great, most of the food was perfect, but just a few minor complaints. I would probably go back again and give it another shot, but this time I would definitely get the chicken and waffles.
Drinking on the Riverwalk at Island Party Hut & Tiny Hatt
After breakfast a couple members of our party had to head back home while the rest of us decided to extend the morning a bit with a stroll down the Riverwalk and a couple drinks.
Our first stop was some tropical drinks at the Island Party Hut. We figured what the hell, why not pretend we’re on vacation on a tropical beach and order some tropical drinks. Iman and I had Mai Tai’s, which were delicious, and the girls got The Riverwalk Rambler and The Hammock, which they both seemed to enjoy.
I liked the ambiance of the Riverwalk, I had never been, and the Island Party Hut has a great feel to it. There were lots of picnic tables and random games you could play, there was even live music at 11am. We probably could have sat and drank a couple more drinks here, but we decided to venture back on the Riverwalk to check out a newer place called Tiny Hatt.
Tiny Hatt is a great spot to grab a drink or some quick food. The menu consists mainly of sandwiches, salads and appetizers, none of which we ate, and then crafted cocktails and beer. It was probably a mistake for us to not order the pulled pork nachos, but there’s always next time. Instead, we just had another round of drinks as we sat on the steps by the river and hung out for a bit. Unfortunately by this point our daughter was getting a bit cranky as she didn’t have the greatest nap in her stroller, so we decided to call it a day around 1:45.
It was a great day and I think we’re planning on doing it again this Saturday. This time though I think we’re just going to cook breakfast at Iman and Jillian’s place and then venture into the city for drinks and lunch, so we’ll see how that goes.
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