Afternoon weekday dining - Hop Leaf

Sorry for the time between posts. Life gets in the way sometimes. Luckily I have a number of posts to make, I just have to go through and write them. Last Monday night I had a visit from Jayadev, one of our writers from Connecticut. He got in to Chicago around 4, and neither of us had eaten lunch. This means that we could get to one of the great Chicago food and drink establishments before the after work crowd.

The Hopleaf is a "gastropub" in the traditional sense of the word. Large and varied beer selection, well prepared upscale bar food with a European spin. They have a few good things on their menu. The brisket is fine, the ham and cheese sandwich is great, and the frites with aioli are AMAZING. But I'm trying to expand my seafood horizons. I've never been a fan of fish or seafood (perhaps because I've only lived in Idaho and Chicago, both rather landlocked), but I really like the preparation of fish and seafood. So I'm trying to force myself to like more of it. I had a decent mussels experience a few months ago, so Jayadev and I got the mussells and frites for two. I know the Hopleaf is famous for their mussels, so I thought it might work out. if not, I had the frites to fall back on.

I started with a cold asparagus soup. Forgettable. Only mentioning for completeness.

Then the mussels and frites. Frites were awesome. No surprise. The mussels had the right texture and flavor, and I was able to finish my portion. I still don't love them, but I do love dipping bread in the broth left over. I have been made to understand that everyone loves the broth, and there may be other people who only eat mussels to get to the bottom of the bucket. I do think I had a bit of "mussel fatigue" (sorry about the pun) as I got towards the bottom. Just got a little tired of the experience, but I definitely filled up on them, and will do so again I'm sure.

Weekday dining - Tweet

This is hopefully the first in a somewhat regular series about dining in Chicago... On weekdays... At popular breakfast and lunch spots... When the rest of the city is working. I work on most weekends, leaving me with two weekdays off each week. Chicago has a great roster of breakfast / brunch and lunch places that get PACKED on weekends. Lines out the door and around the block. But for most of these places, if you show up on a Thursday at 10am, there's no wait. Not bad.

Even though I went last week, I went to Tweet again this week. How else can I devote an entire post to a restaurant if I do it from memory? I met up with Ryan, Michelle, and James, who had just finished walking around Montrose beach. (Yes, i should have walked too. I didn't.) Our servers were the 2 guys who are always there on Thursdays: Ted, and another very nice competent server whose name I don't know. After the usual jokes about having no biscuits and gravy available, we got down to business.

First, coffee. I am only recently a coffee drinker, and I use way more cream and sugar than most people can handle, but I do like good coffee. And they brew good coffee. And there's a fresh cup of cream that appears on the table when you order the coffee. I do like that better than plastic cups of half and half.

They do LOTS of things well at Tweet. Literally every time I go, I get the biscuits and gravy.


And I usually 2 eggs on the side, and hashbrowns. I didn't bother with a picture of the eggs:



The biscuits are always fresh, the gravy is well seasoned and has lots of sausage, and the hash browns are amazing. The pictures don't do any of it justice. The hash browns look rather ordinary, perhaps like they were frozen. Let me assure you this is not the case. They are just cooked to a perfect golden brown, and have this amazing richness to them. I finally asked why they were so good. The answer: cooked in 100% clarified butter. Hmm. Naturally.

How do I know the other stuff is good? Because I eat of of other plates, obviously. I can say that Tweet has the best French toast I've ever had in Chicago. This is what Michelle's order looked like today. Sorry about the shadows from the sun.



Looks good, right?

Ryan always gets the vegetarian biscuits and gravy. I've never tried them. I can't wrap my head around vegetarian gravy. Don't you need animal fat and pan drippings for gravy? But he seems to like it:



And James got some sort of a breakfast burrito. They have a whole list of them. You order by number. This might have been # 5:


I must say, it was a great meal. Ted brought us out some complimentary fresh squeezed orange juice. It's part of our VIP treatment. I would highly recommend that anyone in the area try out Tweet for breakfast or brunch. Just be forewarned, if you go on a weekend, you WILL wait quite awhile.