Exploring the Windy City

Continuing our quest to determine which cities we could possibly live in, one day in the future, we headed off to Chicago for a long weekend of fun. We were hosted by the lovely Kathy R., in the West Loop, and began our adventures there. Our action packed weekend included wandering through 10+ neighborhoods, popping into Open Houses to see what you can get for your money (a LOT!), eating tasty Chicago dogs, dining with Kathy and Darren at Carnivale (yum!)..

..seeing Keb Mo at the House of Blues (fantastic show, but he didn’t sing House in California despite Kathy and Sherri’s pleas!), catching up with Joey (who was in town from SF to find an apartment), cocktails with Sherri’s friend Chris (from the good old dot coom boom days in SF)...

brunch with Laura (from Habitat for Humanity El Salvador) and her fiancée, buying my very first pair of Fluevog shoes, and .. this one deserves its own paragraph..

DINNER AT MOTO with AT's friend Greta and her boyfriend Keith. AMAZING.

If you have never been to Moto, it is worth every penny for this one-of-a-kind dining experience. Moto describes itself as such: a “futurist influenced, degustation focused restaurant dedicated to the avant-garde cuisine of Homaro Cantu. At moto dining is an interactive, multi-sensory experience unlike any other.” .. “With his philosophy of pushing the limits of known taste, texture, and technique, Chef Cantu provides our guests with a truly unique and exquisite dining experience.” Please allow me to break that down for you. Whatever you think you are eating, it’s not going to be that. It’s going to be a different texture, flavor, temperature than you are used to. The 10 course menu includes liquid nitrogen, the 15+ course menu also uses a laser. The menu is delivered with your name on it “moto welcomes A.T. Howe”, you select which menu you would like, then you eat the menu.

It’s a very tasty parmesan cracker. Yum! Each course blew my mind. We had fish over popcorn sauce (it just TASTED like buttered popcorn) with pomegranate noodles and a minty sauce. We had quail over macaroni and cheese (the macaroni was cooked, dehydrated, and reconstituted with a smoked gouda sauce, so it was almost crunchy, a completely unexpected texture and delicious flavor!), we had a delicious sort of salmon tartare (to say simply salmon tartare is NOT doing it justice, I know) with sesame crackers that were scooped out of a bowl of liquid nitrogen and onto your bowl (if you ate it quickly, you could blow smoke out of your mouth). Each course was truly an experience, and while completely stuffed at the end, I didn’t want the experience to end. The grand finale looked like a bowl of nachos. I’m going to make you go there yourself to find out what they were REALLY made of.

Overall analysis of Chicago: two thumbs up. It’s brrr cold in the winter and hot & humid in the summer, but we loved it anyway. I would definitely need a winter and a summer wardrobe, and should probably start growing some thicker skin. But it seems like Chicago would be a fantastic adventure, with lots of food, nightlife (A.T. loves him some Blues!), people, and places to explore. Maybe one day..