A Journey to Philly

Two tickets to see Journey/Foreigner/Night Ranger at Susquehanna Bank Center provided me the perfect opportunity to reaffirm (or disaffirm) my favorite sandwich on the planet: Tony Luke’s roast pork Italian with broccoli rabe. The show started at 7pm, so after packing up the cooler with a few pre-gaming goodies, we were on the road by 2pm.

The traffic heading north on 95 was pretty brutal. What should’ve taken 1.5 hours took over 2, so it was about 4:15pm when we snagged a great parking spot (in the middle of the street) and were presented with this disheartening sight:

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The Most Epic Day Ever III

This past Friday was supposed to be spent eating and bar hopping our way through NYC, but due to some excessive celebrating the previous night, one member of our party (Chris) was ridiculously hungover the next morning so we ended up cancelling the trip.  After getting a couple more hours sleep, we decided to make the most of the day by getting breakfast and then smoking some ribs.  It ended up being a damn fine day all things considered.

Aside from the horribly slow service, our breakfast at Open Door Cafe was quite good.  We chose to dine al fresco and after our hostess seated us, she mentioned she was the barista and that they had a fully functioning espresso bar so I ordered my usual decaf soy latte.

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30/66 Chicago: The Finale

The original plan (and original plans never seem to work out) was to get up early Sunday morning and partake in two separate breakfasts. Matt and I actually did manage to arise on time, but after dumbly staring at each other for 10 minutes we both went back to bed. There was an unspoken agreement that breakfast #1 was cancelled (it was supposed to be at Southport Grocery and Café in case you were wondering.) Luckily, the entire gang was up in time for our 11am brunch reservation at Nightwood. After an ass-blasting drive down Lake Shore we arrived right on time.

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30/66 Chicago: Part 4

Sorry to sound like a glitched out cyborg (i.e. repetitive), but Hopleaf was yet another venue where everything simply fell into place. Aside from the fact that it was pretty packed, and loud as F, I simply had no complaints.

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30/66 Chicago: Part 3

Our destination for dinner was just a few short blocks away at Avec. I knew they didn’t take reservations and coupled with the fact that it’s one of the most highly recommended restaurants in Chicago, I was expecting a wait. But not quite this type of wait. When we rolled up right around 8pm the place was back to the gills with a huge crowd of people outside. Dismayed, but not deterred, I went inside and put our name in for a party of 5 and was quoted with a wait of 2.5 hours. Holy shit. That would mean we’d be eating somewhere around 10:30 and we had a show to catch at Second City at 11pm. Dinner at Avec simply wasn’t an option.

After much brainstorming we finally decided to go to Abuelo’s since it was cheap, delicious, and we had a virtual guarantee that there wouldn’t be a wait. I loved the large windows and airy space, but was kind of annoyed that the only lighting they had were a few strands of Christmas lights hanging in the front window. So, therefore, I’m sorry that these pictures suck.

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