Oh man. John and I got up at THREE this morning to make planes on time. That's three central, which equals one California. I am pretty broken. I don't know if I even have the energy to talk about what we ate yesterday.

Eleven City Diner

John wanted diner food after getting restaurant burnout. Clearly we could have gotten on the train and found a more authentic greasy spoon experience, but we had plans later and in short ended up walking through the entire loop to eat here instead.

There was a pickle and green tomato plate on the menu: how awesome is that? I almost ordered it even though I was otherwise having french toast. The french toast plate was massive, covered in fruit and toasty coconut. It was really rich and yet I ate the whole thing. John had eggs and hash browns, like you do. We also had some really excellent coffee. Apparently in Chicago the good coffee is either Intelligentsia or Lavazza; this coffee was Lavazza. It tasted like grain. I meant to buy a pound to bring back to the office, but only remembered at 4:30 in the airport. Perhaps The Internet can help me.

Essentially, this was good brunch but too expensive to justify often.


Old Jerusalem

Later on we went with my friend Nicky and her person Trevor to the Old Town/Wells St. art festivals, where we mashed our way through crowds of drunk 20 year olds clutching plastic cups. Everything smelled sickly sweet and fermented with spilled cheap beer. It was kind of like I imagine the smell of the middle ages, but with less excreta. When fatigue set in, we decided to go to Old Jerusalem. This turned out to be a good plan: a plan full of falafel and pita and and yet more (unremarkable) iced tea.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the food here, since I was paying a lot more attention to hanging out with people I've barely seen in ten years. It was fine. The vegetarian plate was big, full of tabbouleh and a cucumber salad and falafel and clearly house-made hummus and baba. I also find that in Chicago you get pita sandwiches formed differently than most of the rest of the country: instead of rolling everything up in lavash, or cutting a pita in half and stuffing each half, they cut a strip off one margin of a pita and stuff it from there. It works pretty well as long as you have stable pita.

Afterward we had to plead stupidly early flight and go collapse. Boo!


Today I am home. I took a nap. I washed my face. My eyes are burning.

I walked in the door, unpacked, and had a glass of our iced tea. The best thing about this tea is how little you need to use: one cup needs only five or six pearls. Plus you can then reuse them to brew five or six cups. If this weren't the case, I don't know how I'd have ever justified buying them in the first place. Mm, jasmine.