Jan 8th, 2023 Sunday Cloudy
Over the holiday season, my husband took me on a relaxing trip to Chicago, mainly for the gourmet food experience and some shopping.
Chicago is fun to visit during the holidays – as night falls, many residential houses and businesses have elaborate decorations in their front yards, sparkling and waving as you pass by, making the city a lively festive scene. Also, the traffic and parking are not nearly as bad as typical workdays – being able to reach a destination without the frustration of traffic jams or the hassle of finding a parking spot is certainly a bonus.
Of course, the main attraction of Chicago, where we have visited at least ten times by now, is the food. Let us be honest: Chicago has many tourist sites worth checking out, but I have been to ninety percent of them, and I am not in the habit of visiting the same place twice 😛
Yummy food, on the other hand, is a separate story. The few days of stay in Chicago were never enough for me to explore even a fraction of the thousands of tasty and/or fancy and/or characteristic restaurants that this windy city has to offer. After all, I only have one stomach with limited capacity ?
So I keep coming back. This time, we decided to try “Wood”, a stylish American restaurant infused with some Asian flair. They did not have an overwhelmingly large menu, yet my indecision to select a dish kicked in again. After perusing the menu, no single dish stood out to me immediately as “I must try this”, so I had to go with a more “scientific” approach – eliminating dishes that sounded plain or uninteresting, or with key ingredients that I usually dislike (e.g. goat cheese).
That left me with two options for “large plates” (basically the entree): Torchio al Funghi (a mushroom inspired pasta with braised escargots), and coq au vin (red wine braised chicken leg & thigh).
This is what cognitive dissonance is about: both options had their own pros and cons, and it was hard to know which one I would enjoy better, at that moment. The Torchio sounded more novel, but it was vegetarian other than the escargots. After a long day of walking, I was craving some animal protein (not escargots!). The coq au vin sounded very hearty, but it required more finesse of knife and fork, and I have made similar dishes in the past. Since selecting one means giving up the other, and we have no plan of re-visiting the same restaurant in the near future, I could sit in the restaurant for another twenty minutes without being able to choose one.
Seeing my dilemma, my husband, who was eyeing a different dish before, jumped to my rescue.
“We will order both,” he told the waiter who checked on us, “and we will share.” He smiled at me. Ah, what a sweet husband! That totally solved the problem. I sighed in relief.
And I know what he meant by sharing – I got to taste all components in both dishes, and eat whichever parts I like. Whatever remains would be his dinner 😛 He IS a picky eater but I am harder to please, at least when it comes to food.
Here they are, the two plates that commemorate a lovely date night. My vote would be the coq au vin, especially since my husband kindly took care of the cutting job 😉