As someone who enjoys eating a lot, I definitely cannot afford to miss the annual taste of Chicago since I am just in the region over the summer. Met up with my high school classmate who is also around in IL over the summer and we went on a 2 day food (as well as city) exploration of downtown Chicago!
This might make me sound kind of deprived, but I have never taken a double decker train before! The only railway system that we have in Singapore is the KTM to go to Malaysia (which is going to be torn down soon by the way). So I was really excited when I can take the Metra from where I am staying in Naperville to downtown Chicago! =)
So Chinatown is THE place to go when you are craving for some Chinese food like me. But the other interesting thing about Chicago Chinatown is the pretty vintage point from the CTA train stop. You get to view pretty much the majority of the Chicago downtown from the station. =)
So rumour has it that the Garrett Popcorn in Chicago is one of the best you can find anywhere. The line at any of the branches is ridiculously long! So while waiting for the July 4th fireworks, friends and I decided to spend 30 minutes of our life lining up to get the popcorn. Most of the customers get the Chicago Mix which is a mix of the Caramel Crisp and the cheese flavor. I would say it is not THAT fantastic to worth the 30 minutes of wait but one should try anyway. This picture is a close up of the caramel crisp flavored popcorn. It actually looks pretty good from here.
So how can one not eat the famous (or may be infamous) hotdog in Chicago! Chanced upon this pretty random hotdog stall at Navy Pier and decided to give it a short. The pork sausage taste pretty decent with the sweet braised onion. But the bread was kind of dry and bland.
Chicago Chinatown! Honestly, the best thing about Chicago Chinatown is the bakery shops. They are just so many of them and they sell awesome bakeries at ridiculously cheap prices! This polo bun costs only 70cents? I wonder if you can still get any decent food with 70cents nowadays if you are not in Chinatown. Anyhow, the lady serving us was pretty amused with me taking photos of getting my polo bao. Oh well. I like to take photos like this. So just nice.
Went for dimsum at the Pheonix Restaurant finally! We got there at about 2pm (so much waking up late for the day and not knowing where to get our CTA card). Anyhow, this is the Char Siew Puff that they served on the push carts. They actually looked a lot better than they taste though. The pastry wasn;t crisy enough and the char siew in side was dry and bland. =( oh well
Surprisingly this egg tars were pretty good. The egg custard was pretty smooth and the pastry was kind of crispy. But still, I think I like puertuguese egg tarts better. Oh man. This reminds me of Maucau. I want to go back there for the yummy egg tarts and zhupabao!
Another all time favourite dimsum item that most people will order. Pretty standard but I would say it was one of the better items we had for the day.
Braised chicken feet! I love chicken feet! No matter how you cook them, they will always taste sooooooo good! And it is supposed to be good for ladies too since they are so rich of collagen! Good excuse for me to eat more of them!
So enough Chinese food for the week, we got to try some American stuff since we are in Chicago isn;t it? We went to the Grand Lux Cafe just off North Michigan Ave. The dessert here is just heavenly. You can never ever be sick of the sweet treats here. We ordered three desserts and 2 entrees for the day. Sweet wins over savoury! Anyhow, this it the New Orlean Beneigt (basically sugar powdered fried dough to dip in chocolate, strawberry or cream sauce.) You got to order this 30 minutes before hand though since they take really look to make. But it is definitely worth the wait,
So we actually went to the official Taste of Chicago event. This is the deep fried sweet potato that we ordered. We still had a couple of other items which i din manage to take photos of. But in a nut shell my conclusion for the event is that unless you go with a large group of people and sample just a small bit, it is not actually that worthwhile to go.
So this more or less summed up my July 4th weekend food exploration. Full 3 days of high calorie, high cholesterol diet. But they are yummy. So indulgence once in a while is worth it. =)
