Chicago-style Weekend

Hello all! I thought I'd share some details about my latest weekend here in Chicago since it seemed to be a quintessentially "Chicago-style" weekend. What ingredients, you may be wondering, go into making something perfectly Chicago-style? In my book, the following should definitely be present:

1. Hot dogs
2. Baseball
3. Awesome people-watching 

I got in all three of these, and #3 was made particularly interesting given the Lollapalooza concert-goers that invaded the city this weekend (more on that in a minute, for now, onto #1!)

Hot Dogs: They might seem simple, but Chicago puts a unique spin on this seemingly commonplace food item. A Chicago style hot dog, if you order it with all the fixin's, comes with: mustard, onions, relish, tomatoes, hot peppers, celery salt and a pickle spear (this last topping happens to be my favorite food group so obviously I'm a fan). You are absolutely not supposed to order ketchup on a hot dog in Chicago, and at Flub a Dub Chub's Hot Dog Emporium, they will take your picture and put it on the Wall of Shame if you do ask for it. Eric and I visited this tiny, partially subterranean restaurant, which happens to be located about 25 steps from my front door. Because of its proximity and the deliciousness of the dogs there, this place has become a must-go-to place to eat for any future visitors (I'm talking to you, Dad!). I had the "Flubby", their classic Vienna dog, with the works, and Eric had the footlong. Both delicious, washed down with ice cold fountain Coke. Simple, but done perfectly. This place gets a big thumbs up from me!

Eric and I also visited Frank's and Dawgs, which was recommended by older sister Katie and her bf Dustin - and this place was definitely worthy of their excellent review! It's starkly different than the aforementioned Flub a Dub's, i.e. anything but simple. Rather, this Chicago hot doggery specializes in gourmet hot dogs (oxymoron?) and sides. No matter what dog you choose, you absolutely have to get the truffle fries. You have to. These came to our table before the dogs, and Eric said he wished they hadn't, because you just couldn't top them. That good. So coming down from our fry high, we were each trying our second choices from the menu (they were out of our unanimous first choice, the China Town Duck). Here were our selections:

My choice: the "Belly up": pork sausage, mustard glazed pork belly, pickled fennel and macerated grapes.

Eric's choice: the "Krazy Kimchi": spicy beef sausage, braised short rib & turnips, kimchi, wild rice & basil.

I was not a fan of the pork belly on mine (it's basically pure lard, yichk!) but I liked all the other ingredients of my dog. Overall I liked Eric's better (yes I made him give me some of his). We also had the truffle mac and cheese, which was good, but didn't hold a candle to the truffle fries. I can't wait to go back here again and try one of their other crazy creations!

Baseball: As you know, Chicago has two baseball teams which splits the city's North and South siders into rival fan bases. I'm not an avid baseball fan, but I love the atmosphere of games, and it seems like the perfect summer activity to do with friends. Plus, Chicago has two teams, two ballparks, and therefore twice as many opportunities to watch games, so I like to take advantage of that! A few weeks ago I saw the Tigers take on the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field, but this past weekend I was at Wrigley Field (see #30 in Stuff White People Like) to watch the beloved (but chronically bad) Chicago Cubs.

view from our seats @ Wrigley Field

Now you might think that because the Cubs are having a pretty terrible season, the price of tickets would be lower. Not so. For whatever reason, people will pay exorbitant amounts of money to get into this ballpark and watch this team sabotage itself all season long! (sorry Cubs fans) However, this fair-weather fan is also a bargain hunter-extraordinaire when she wants to be, so I did not pay full price to watch this game. Eric and I got to Wrigley sometime around the 3rd inning and walked around outside of the field looking for cheap tickets. We were turned down by a bunch of ticket hawkers at first, but by the top of the 5th we got our lower level tickets for around 1/8 of face value (muahaha). We still got to see the most exciting parts of the game, the Cubs came back from being 4 runs down to make things interesting, but in the end, even with home field advantage they couldn't beat Cincinnati (not so shocking). Oh well. Turns out baseball is still wonderful when you have a seat in the shade, a nice cold drink and a boyfriend who won't make fun only makes a little bit of fun of you for not knowing (the very widely known) rules of the game.

Eric with the infamous Harry Caray

And finally, I come to the last ingredient of a perfectly Chicago-y weekend: Awesome People Watching. Half the fun of any activity in Chicago is seeing the throngs of other people who are out and about in the city too. Baseball games are great for this since you get such a wide range of people. When you mix families with little kids, drunken spectators who are hell bent on rallying the crowd, and sometimes an emboldened fan who runs onto the field to plank and gets pulled off by security, it makes for a pretty entertaining day!

Restaurants are also great people watching spots, especially if you venture to a neighborhood that you don't normally visit. Sometimes I forget that people over the age of 30 even exist because there just aren't any of them in East Lakeview, I swear. Then when I head down to Carmine's in the Gold Coast, I'm swiftly reminded that middle aged people do, in fact, exist in the city of Chicago! (and some of them like to display their affection for their much younger wives rather publicly while I innocently wait for a table and sip my drink to try not to chortle...bah!)

Also, if you want the prime-time of people watching, come to Chicago during Lollapalooza, the live music fest extravaganza of the summer. For 3 days the city is inundated with teens and 20-somethings from all over the country, dressed in their best hipster gear, carrying around the most random collection of stuff (a cockatiel, gallon of pink lemonade and a lit cigarette would be a normal combo) and they're walking around in various stages of disarray depending on how late into the weekend it is. I didn't even have to go downtown where the venues were to see all these eclectic music fans; they were all staying on the north side of the city with their young friends who make up my entire neighborhood! This makes sense; when you're 20 years old and you've just paid a few hundred dollars for a 3 day concert ticket, you obviously don't stay in some super shmancy, expensive hotel downtown. You shack up with your friends in Lakeview/Wrigelyville/Roscoe Village and provide me with endless opportunities to stare at your wildly flamboyant clothing/items you are carrying/personality in general! Unfortunately I have no pictures to go along with this paragraph, but it's basically a modern day Woodstock, only instead of taking place in some field in the countryside, it's in the city of Chicago.

So thus concludes my musings on whats makes the perfect Chicago-style weekend. Until the next post, adios everyone!