Food, Coffee etc...

It has been a little while since posting last, and although I have not been anywhere monumental. I will soon be updating with a food/ drink experience I was forced into...not fun, but still good to do on occasion. For the time being enjoy living, and drink good coffee. Go to DoubleShot!

Plum Tart. Who would have thought?

Lula Café (Logan Square) “Hmmm…Wonderful”, really that says it all. Margarite and I went out the weekend after my Birthday, to celebrate and catch up with each other after an eventful summer for the both of us, and Lula Café in Logan Square, Chicago was the perfect place to go for a mid- evening desert and coffee combination. This café is going on my ‘ Comfortably Chic’ restaurant list. I enjoyed it immensely. Lula’s is on Kedzie at Milwaukee and Logan Boulevard, it seems to be a neighborhood staple for a comfortable, laid back neighborhood café. This laid back atmosphere is not to say that this is…. Lets put it this way, Lula’s is the perfect blend of the casual and the sophisticated, without being stuffy or pretentious. Because the evening was a warm one, bistro tables ringed the door outside Lula’s, and as we approached, were greeted by a smiling hostess, dressed in an exceptional, lipstick red, a-line shirt-dress. The hostess let us through the outdoor space into the entry of Lula’s companion bar and after a moment hurried off to find us a table while we walked out past the patio seating to wait. I must say, that I’ve never really seen a slow day at Lula’s the several times I’ve walked by failed to stop in. And when I say failure I really mean it, this place is one that I plan on going to much more frequently and wish I’d discovered sooner. Well… that was a bit of a rabbit trail if I do say so and with that I think that I should move on to the food, the service and the interior. After waiting about a minute, maybe two, the Hostess returns motioning us to come closer as she asks if we minded sitting at the counter, and since neither Margarite nor I had any particular preference we said “sure! The counter is fine”. It was completely perfect, the counter stools weren’t too high and although some people might not enjoy sitting in front of the service counter, I enjoyed having a voyeuristic view into the inner workings of Lula’s kitchen, not to mention the fact that our waitress always checked in on us whenever she came through from assisting the many other satisfied people filling up every other table and chair in the whole space. I especially appreciated the fact that, although Margarite and I were only indulging in some coffee and dessert, we were given as much attention as any other party in the place and were continually met with smiles and friendly questions and conversations. As I just mentioned, Coffee and a shared dessert were what was on the plate, and since neither my friend or I’d ever been to Lula’s we decided to be a little daring and try something we’d never had before and after a bit of discussion and menu reading we decided on the Ricotta Plum Tart that is prepared with Klug farm plums and a limoncello zabaglione. Zabaglione- as I have learned, is a dessert or sauce made from egg yolks, sugar and whine or liqueur that is beaten until thick and is served hot or cold and apparently has Italian roots… and Limoncello is a sweet lemony Italian liqueur, which makes up the Liqueur portion of the dish. The crust of the tart was perfect… the plating was wonderful, and the presentation close to exceptional and with a plate that looks that good, it would make perfect sense that the dish would taste as good as it looked, if not better. The smoothness of the ricotta paired with the slight tartness of the plum was a wonderful thing. My only complaint was the coffee. It’s sad. Maybe I’ m biased, But given the fact that Intelligentsia Coffee is supposedly the best coffee place in the Chicago area, with 3 locations and a roasting facility where they roast their own ‘fresh’ beans, one would expect them to have the most amazing coffee, but unfortunately they didn’t impress me. In fact I did something that I’d never even think about doing at my coffee shop in Tulsa, I put cream and sugar in it! I know, I know. Most people wouldn’t bat an eye at this statement, but if you’ve ever had coffee at Doubleshot Coffee Co. you would know that it is almost sacrilegious to even consider putting these things in Doubleshot coffee, yes, it’s that good! Anyway, so the coffee was sub par, but… don’t let that stop you from being blown away,by Lula.

Sweet Thang!

Sweet Thang! : Bakery. I was walking along North Ave in Wicker Park the other day. I was going to a job interview, which, fortunately I did not get; thank goodness I didn’t have to tell them I wouldn’t be taking the underpaid, high-stress job surrounded by snobby people, but that is beside the point. Anyway, while walking by the day before, I noticed the Eiffel Tower shaped sign for Sweet Thang, a somewhat trendy little bakery that I’d heard good things about from several local news publications and city food/culture guides which made me want to go in and try it out. Well… just to give a little foreshadowing, I might have to try it again sometime. Let me explain myself, I went into the bakery and it’s a café of sorts as well. Nicely set up, except that the front display-case, for a bakery, was a little spartan, yes, I said Spartan, look it up! It has some unusual implications. Needless to say, there wasn’t much to choose from and all I wanted were a few cookies and something a little special for a friend. I did noticed a few fun-looking desserts and in doing so, lit upon a cute dome shaped chocolate tiramisu cheesecake with what looked like a chocolate graham cracker crust and a dusting of cocoa powder on top...This, was what I wanted, it would be the perfect thank you gift for my friend who loves anything chocolate. I also wanted some oatmeal raisin cookies to take back for everyone at work but unfortunately, things didn’t go as I’d imagined them. Oatmeal raisin is a pretty standard cookie, like Chocolate chip, just not quite as popular, in the mainstream, if of course you consider the mainstream the way to go. I try avoiding the mainstream although I do exploit the convenience of it more often than not, but my preferences are not really the point. Well, I take that back, because the only reason I am writing this is because I have certain preferences so…there you go. So, the cookie... it was a decent oatmeal raisin, and it was a nice 2-3” in diameter and I loved the fact that there were regular raisins, and what I thought looked like dried green grapes along with them…I’m not sure if they were in fact grapes that had been bleached to achieve their lightness, as one of my co-workers’ said, or if they weren’t raisins at all. And if they weren’t raisins, what are they, and why were they in my oatmeal raisin cookie? It terms of cookie consistency, these were nice, but not spectacular. The texture was just about right, it didn’t fall apart when you bit into it and it wasn’t brittle, but…it still wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure what it was exactly that made it seem a little “off”, maybe it was the fact that it was just a little too brown on top, not that the color varied on the surface or was burnt, it just had this strange sort of glazed quality to the surface, as if they contained more than the traditional amounts of sugar or that they were possibly brushed with a sugar-water solution while they were baking. Either way, it made the cookie good, but not great. Do you recall the lovely tiramisu mini cheesecake that I described previously? Well, I didn’t get it…nope, I asked for it and pointed at it and when the girl asked to clarify which cheesecake I wanted, it apparently wasn’t clear enough for her and what did she do? She picked up the one next to it (the more expensive one) and put it in the little box. So instead of getting a chocolate tiramisu I apparently got a strawberry cheesecake with a pink musical clef note. Very cutesy…but not what I wanted. It was apparently “more strawberry than cheesecake” I don’t know if that was good or not. When my friend took a bite, the look on his face… well it wouldn’t be one I’d like when I was eating a dessert. Notwithstanding the cookies and the mistaken cheesecake, I would still have to attempt this bakery again. Hopefully they’ll do better next time, especially in the customer service area, they were nice, but not the level of service one would expect when you are shelling out $10 for a half dozen cookies and a mini cheesecake (the wrong one, no less). Better luck next time. I’m skipping the review on the Mexican Bakery, but hopefully will return to it later. Next, I’ll be describing my first trip to Lula’s in Logan Square.