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Our time in Chicago is sadly coming to an end. Despite the late night, we still woke up bright and early, ready to tackle our last full day in Chicago.
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For a quick breakfast, we stopped into Good Ambler, a cafe, bakery, and chocolatier all in one. It's quite spacious inside and we saw lots of people setting up shop with their laptops. We had AYCE sushi on our lunch radar, so we shared a ham & cheese croissant to preserve stomach space. Still warm, the croissant was super buttery and flaky. Not a bad start to the day.
Next on our itinerary, we took an Uber over to the Garfield Park Conservatory. A coworker strongly recommended it and I'm glad we followed her advice. Tickets are free (donations welcome) but reservations are required. We simply booked one in the car on the way over.
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The gardens are gorgeous and absolutely stunning. The greenery is so lush and there's something to see around every corner.
Like the Muttart Conservatory in Edmonton, there's different "rooms" with different climates and plants.
I highly recommend visiting the Garfield Park Conservatory! Take a break from the hustle and bustle of the city and get lost in nature for a bit. Especially since it's free!
After the conservatory, we took an Uber over to Wicker Park. It's a cool neighbourhood with lots of trendy shops and restaurants.
Lunch was at Sushi Taku, a popular destination for AYCE sushi. Lunch was a very reasonable $22.99 per person while dinner is $31.99.
Unfortunately there's no sliced sashimi options on the AYCE menu, only sashimi salad. They do give you quite a bit of sashimi so no complaints there. There's a few wisps of mixed greens underneath but the salad is mostly made up of chopped cubes of salmon, tuna, and yellowtail. Most likely scraps and tail-end pieces. The sashimi was fresh, dressed with soy sauce and wasabi aioli. LT also wanted the seaweed salad which was pretty standard but they also give you quite a bit.
For appetizers, we got the tempura, soft shell crab, and takoyaki. The tempura came with 2 pieces of shrimp and 4 vegetables. I wish that they could've been ordered individually because it ended up being a struggle to finish. The dipping sauce was quite bland as well. The soft shell crab and takoyaki were definitely better options.
For sushi, we ordered 2 unagi, 2 salmon, and 2 yellowtail nigiri. The rolls we chose were the color dragon roll and the fire phoenix roll. All of the ingredients were fresh and they didn't pack too much rice. However, we still ended up super full and had to tap out out after the first round. I think the move for next time would just be ordering as many plates of sashimi salad as our stomachs could handle.
It ended up being a beautiful day for exploring and walking! Wicker Park definitely reminded me of a much bigger Whyte Ave.
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Our final stop was Eli's Ark for ice cream. Lots of unique flavours, but the main draw is their animal decorations! You can choose between a bear, monkey, dog, panda, koala, pig, llama, or unicorn. They use chocolates, candies, cookies, marshmallows, and meringues to make your ice cream come to life.
I chose a pig while LT got a panda! My ice cream flavour was pretty in pink, roasted wild strawberries, yakult, and rose essence. Although it wasn't super creamy, the ice cream still had good texture and wasn't too sweet. LT got the kookie monster with a panna cotta cream base, oreos, biscoff, and nankhatai cookies.
We rested back at the hotel before our final dinner reservation at Girl & The Goat. Girl & The Goat is owned by Stephanie Izard, who won season 4 of Top Chef, the first female chef to do so. I remember watching Top Chef religiously during earlier seasons and was excited to try another Top Chef alum's restaurant.
We booked an earlier reservation so that we had time to pack later that evening. The restaurant was quite busy and bustling. Our server recommended getting 5-6 dishes to share, but we stuck with 4 and was already quite full by the end.
The roasted pig face ($24.00) is the signature dish of the restaurant and my favourite of the night. The dish is prepared using, you guessed it, a whole pig's head. The cheeks, snout, and tongue are rolled up like porchetta and braised. They slice it up and crisp them in their wood oven. The two medallions get stacked with fried potato sticks and a sunny side up egg. There's an array of sauces including a tamarind vinaigrette and a red wine-maple gastrique. The pork medallions are so tender, fatty, and unctuous. The potato crisps were basically like hickory sticks, providing some good texture, while the creamy egg helped combine everything together.
We had to try a 'goat' dish and went for the goat empanadas ($19.00). They were garnished with pickled kumquats, piparra peppers, and idiazabal cheese. If anyone is weary of eating 'goat' meat, I would say it tasted pretty indistinguishable in the empanada. In fact, the flavour reminded me of Zap'ems. You know, those microwavable taco bites? Of course, these were way better than microwave dinner, but I couldn't help be reminded of the taco seasoning flavour.
I also had high hopes for the sautéed green beans ($18.00) which are highly lauded online. The green beans are sauteed with shallots, drizzled with a fish sauce vinaigrette, and topped with toasted cashews. The green beans had some good char and wok hei, but tasted overcooked and over-seasoned. They were quite limp and mushy and a bit too salty.
Our final dish was the crispy braised lamb ($28.00), with 12 spice bagna cauda and grilled radicchio. The nuggets of lamb were indeed crispy and tender. The flavour of the sauce reminded me of bun bo hue, as it had a prominent five spice flavour. The beans were unexpectedly crispy too.
Banksy, is that you?
Before we called it a night, we still needed to use up our free dining credit at the hotel. We stopped in the lobby for dessert at Fora, a contemporary, global-inspired restaurant and patio. They're pretty much open all day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We ordered the arroz con leche ($12.00) which is basically Mexican rice pudding. Rice pudding is a simple, humble dessert, but this was elevated into something much more delicious. Surrounding the thick and creamy pudding was a ring of passionfruit curd. It brightened up the dish with its tangy, sweet flavour. There was also some candied cashews for texture and beautifully caramelized bananas. I have an affinity for banana desserts and this was no exception.
The next morning, we woke up at 3:30am, checked out, and headed to the airport. We thought we needed to be at the airport 3 hours early, but it's probably not necessary that early in the morning.
Nothing hits the spot quite like a McDonald's breakfast.
Thank you Chicago for an unforgettable trip!
- CT
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