Chicago Customer Service, Coffee, Millenium Park, and Hot Dogs

Sadly, I missed my flight this morning back home, and let me tell you US Airways SUCKS in customer service. Because I purchased my trip through Orbitz, US Airways would only put me on the same flight (i.e. I had to wait an entire day) and the next flight only had first class available, so they wanted to charge me $1000 to put me on it. At this point, I am definitely not flying these guys ever again unless I have to.

Good thing my flight was a code-share with United so I went to United and they were able to rebook me on a flight through LA tomorrow morning for just $150. Granted I had to go to the airport and stand in line for an hour, but at least I got a confirmed flight home and they were willing to actually help me.

But I have to say that United's O'hare counter is one of the worst organized I have ever been to. They only had one agent actually helping people. They did have a lot of people that helped to tag your baggage after you did the kiosk check-in, but they were defintely low end hired help that moved like slugs and weren't very helpful.

Thinking on that more, I have to say that Chicago as a whole just had generally average to bad customer service everywhere that I went except for their train stations. The guys in the booth at the train stations were actually helpful in explaining how their transit system worked and also explained the value of getting the multi-day passes. Wait, the Aloft O`Hare actually had a friendly staff and their shuttle drivers were friendly and were a great help in finding places to eat and explaining the train system.

At the Westin O'Hare, service was ok, not friendly, but at least corporate cordial. At the Four Points by Sheraton O`Hare, the front desk was almost rude and their shuttle drivers were rather brash. I found the same average courtesy (if you can even call it courtesy) at most of the restaurants, coffee shops, and stores that I went to--like many of them were just there to do their job and having to help you was just part of their job description. This really makes me appreciate the true customer orientation that I've experienced on most of the West Coast and especially in Hawaii.

Ok enough of my complaining and let's get back to a more fun topic--FOOD! I think I found my new favorite coffee drink, the Lite White Berry at Caribou Coffee. They describe it as espresso, steamed skim milk, white cocoa (is there such a thing?), and the berry flavor of your choice. I chose cherry (which I don't believe is actually a berry), but in any case it tastes yummy to me--better than Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf's Black Forrest Latte. So this is where I'm at now, writing this entry, sipping my drink...

On Friday, I caught the train into the city with one of the girls from the AICPA Leadership Academy and stopped off at Cafe Descartes, a small coffee shop on Michigan Ave. The Mexican Mocha was what caught my eye here--basically a mocha with some cinnamon. I was expecting something with a little more of a rich and spicy chocolate taste, as you normally get with Mexican chocolate, but I was terribly disappointed. The coffee has a weak chocolate taste, hints of cinnamon, and a fairly bland coffee flavor--think Folgers or Yuban with old Hershey's syrup and a dash or two of cinnamon. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed--add to that the fact that the cinnamon scone I got from them was hard, dry, and overly crumbly, and I felt like I had dumped $9 down the tube.

At least I got some caffine into my system and I spent the next couple of hours wandering around Millennium Park. It was a slightly overcast day, with occasional drizzles, but overall a good summer day to be walking around, not too hot and not too humid. The Lurie Garden was pretty expansive, but not manicured very well, so really felt more like I was looking at a bunch of weeds. I think part of that is their choice of flowers to feature--definitely different that the "usuals", but because of that also not as appealing to the eye.

What I really did enjoy though was getting to catch a rehearsal of the Pirates of Penzance by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion--part of the Grant Park Music Festival. I had previously seen this opera, but listening to it again reminded me how great of an opera this is to introduce children (and non-typical opera attendees) to opera. Everything is in English and the story line is fun and easy to follow. The Pavilion itself is also a very exciting structure to behold and has a nice lawn that has an overhead sound system to enable a lot of people to enjoy the performance.

I also have some good pictures of the key features that the Millenium Park is known for, like the gigantic metallic jelly bean-like sculpture on Chase Promenade, the water play area with the electronic image "spitting wall" (my name for it, not theirs), and the great monument and fountain at Wrigley Square. There was also a Family Fun Festival that appeared to be a regular summer event that had some fun activities (like a whole area of hula hoops!) for young kids, as well as a stage where they were singing songs and interacting with the kids.

The last part of the park that I enjoyed was a sampling of sculptures from the Art Institute of Chicago's exhibit: "A Conversation with Chicago: Contemporary Sculptures from China". Normally I'm not a modern art kind of guy, but these sculptures actually made me want to go and see the rest of the exhibit since they had so much personality--and could actually be understood without putting yourself into an altered state of mind. =P

On the way back to the hotel, I caught Matthew at the train station heading over to Hot Doug's, a gourmet hot dog shop (or as they call themselves, a "sausage superstore and encased meat emporium") so decided to join him for an afternoon snack. We caught the train to the Belmont stop and walked about a quarter-mile (at least--it looked closer on the map). As we approached the corner shop, we could see a line out the door and said, gee this must be a good place for it to still have a line at 2:15pm. Turning the corner on the shop, we found out that the line actually snaked back along the other side of the shop for over a block! Man these must be some good hot dogs.

We asked the person in front of us, if these were really that good, and they said it was definitely worth the wait. They said that the line is pretty much always like this, and that they thought it would take us about 45 minutes to get to the front. Well, an hour later, we were still in line and we had only moved halfway down the block. Unfortunately Matthew had a plane to catch and I needed to switch hotels, so at that point we had to get out of line and go back to the hotel unfed. But man, if that may people are willing to wait in line for that long just to have some hot dogs, I guess I will have to make some time on my next trip to go there.

The whole gourmet hot dog thing, reminded me of Hank Haute Dogs in Hawaii. These guys just made the Top Ten New Hot Dog Places in Bon Appetit Magazine and I did get to try their hot dogs and foie gras fries (french fries fried in duck fat). Ok I know the duck fat doesn't sound appetizing, but if you've ever had good foie gras, you'll know why a foodie like Matthew and well-seasoned eater like myself would be willing to wait over an hour to try to get some. If we didn't have the flight and hotel to worry about, I'm sure we would have stayed in that line until we actually got to taste the food.

Ok now I've made myself hungry again, so I guess it's time to wrap up this entry and go and find my afternoon snack. Definitely not hot dogs, but maybe a good salad...trying to eat a little more healthy since it is summer and gotta watch the waistline so that I can enjoy the beach and summer picnics, without having to hold my stomach in the whole time. LOL

ciao for chow...

Chicago: Wow Bao and Gino's East

Man, what a busy week this has been. I last wrote at the end of my first night in Chicago, and here I am a week later on my last full day in Chicago. Monday was a somewhat leisurely day for me. I caught the train into the city for a meeting with the Executive Director and Operation Manager of AITP, the IT association that I'm also involved in. I didn't know how the train would be on a work day, so I headed out early to make sure that I had time for lunch before the meeting.

On the way to the office, a little restaurant called Wow Bao caught my attention, first by their bright orange sign, then by their name (I love "manapua" as we call it in Hawaii or "bao"--essentially a meat or other food filled, slightly sweet usually steamed bread bun), and last but not least, but by their slogan "hot Asian buns". LOL So since I had time and needed to find some lunch, I decided to check it out.

Just walking into the restaurant, I already could feel my doubt starting--another Americanized (bastardized) Asian food. As I walked in and all the workers were either white or hispanic, my doubt continued to grow. But I figured at this point, I really need to be good and give it a chance.

They had a pretty good selection of flavors, mostly typical-American Chinese food choices like Kung Pao Chicken and Mongolian Beef (the two that I actually ordered), but they also had Thai yellow curry, and other "safe" flavors. But when you think about it, when you're in a city that doesn't have a large Asian population, you would need to appeal to more generalized palate to be able to make it. So from a marketing standpoint, their strategy made sense to me.

Another aspect of their restaurant that appealed to me was their modern design and presentation of steamers (for cooking the bao) as well as steam baskets (for keeping the bao hot and moist). After the cash register you continued along the line past both of these, and the server at the end actually took the bao you ordered out of the steam baskets (much as they do in the Chinese dim sum restaurants) so there was nothing to hide in their operations.

As I sat down to pull out the bao I had ordered, I was pleasantly surprised by how soft and moist they felt--just like the ones at the Chinese restaurants. Of course my skepticism still kept questioning whether the flavor would be good or not. After all this build up, I half-trepidly took a bit of the first one...all bread in my first bite (I think bit a little too small of a piece since I wasn't sure what to expect). The bread was exactly as expected, very moist, a little sweet, and a firm but still very soft texture.

Feeling a little better about it, I took a bigger bite and felt the tangy spiciness of the kung pao chicken gush onto my taste buds. My first reaction was to be repelled a little, I wasn't expecting something that wet. The taste was a little overwhelming, and I had been expecting more chunks of chicken and veggies, and what I got instead was kind of a chunky stew-like (very wet, but not liquidy) consistency. I know that sounds strange, but once I reconciled my expectations with the delivered product, I realized that this actually wasn't that bad. I definitely think it would be better if it was more chunky and less wet (like the standard char siu bao), but they did a good job of capturing the distinct flavor of kung pao chicken, including the peanuts and water chestnuts.

My assessment of the mongolian beef bao was the same, a little too wet and mushy, but definitely capturing the taste and overall not a bad experience. I would definitely go back and try some of their other bao when the opportunity arises. In particular the thai curry bao and the custard bao (another asian favorite) definitely sounded good.

That reminds me, in case you are more of a rice person than a bun person, they also had "rice bowls" with the same entree offerings. I only hope that they don't just take their fillings and put them over rice. Wet and mushy in a bun is acceptable, but wet and mushy over rice definitely sounds gross.

With lunch out of the way, I continued my trek to the office to make sure that I knew where I needed to be for my meeting. It turned out to be pretty easy to find (I didn't even have to use my GPS) and lucky me, it turned out to be right at the start of the Magnificant Mile...Chicago's major shopping district! I could not have planned that better if well...I had planned it! LOL

The last time I was in Chicago was almost two years ago, and we had stayed in this area, so I immediately knew that there was definitely a bunch of stores that I wanted to hit. The good thing is that I had only 1.5 hours until my meeting, so there's only so much damage that I could do in that time! Shoppers luck was with me again. Just three weeks ago in San Fran, I had hit a bunch of sales in Union Square with a lot of stuff 50% off. It was the case again here in Chicago, with stores like Kenneth Cole having an additional 50% off already marked down merchandise. I managed to keep myself from buying new shoes (but the temptation was VERY strong!!) but did end up with just one shopping bag of purchases from various stores. Well I did only have 1.5 hours...and there's only so much browsing you can do with a laptop bag on your shoulder trudging around in the Chicago summer heat (which really wasn't that bad, but I was wearing business casual attire not shorts).

After my meeting, I decided to head back to the hotel since we were going to have a get-to-know-each-other dinner before the AICPA Leadership Academy started. Jumping back on the "El", short for elevated train, which is what I was told is the "local" way of referring to the train by the people I was meeting with. I always love to be able to sound like I'm more familiar with a city, so definitely liked that tip.

Dinner that night was at Gino's East of Chicago, one of the original Chicago deep-dish pizza places. The last time I had REAL Chicago pizza was quite a while ago, and I don't think it was the real thing because it was nowhere near as deep and full of stuff as the Gino's pizza was. There were nine of us and we ordered three large pizzas and maybe four appetizers to share. Little did we know how filling the pizzas would be since they are deep-dish. By the time we were done, we had finished the apps, but only barely half the pizzas. Of the three pizzas we tried: vegetarian, meat lover's, and supreme, the meat lover's was definitely the best by far. The tomato sauce for the vegetarian overwhelmed any of the flavors of the vegetable chunks, but the flavors of all the meats on the meat lovers definitely went well together and made for a delicious treat. We were all so stuffed, dessert was definitely out of the question.

Well this is getting long, so I think I'll end this here. More stories to tell about my wanderings through Millennium Park on Friday, and then I'm heading to see Jersey Boys tonight so you can be sure you'll hear more from me soon.

Chicago: flight and Home Bistro

Well it seems like this is going to be another one of those years of travel for me. Three weeks ago I was in Las Vegas for the AICPA TECH+ Conference, a national IT conference for CPAs. This is my second year on the steering committee for that conference and it has been a fun conference to work on because we are really able to help drive the direction of IT in the CPA profession. Needless to say, that also makes the conference a very busy three days for me, especially since this year I was coordinating five session and speaking for two of them. One of the great things about this conference is also that it's at Bellagio, so a great location with a huge bathtub that I can submerge my entire self in...and I did several times on that trip.

After the conference ended, I flew over to the Bay Area to attend a Microsoft partner training at the Microsoft Mountain View office (about a 45 minute drive from San Fran, heading toward San Jose). The training was a good one and I was able to meet some of the Microsoft resource people that help support Hawaii. The training was over by lunch, and then I stayed in San Fran for the rest of the weekend for some much needed R&R.

Then I was home for almost two weeks (12.5 days to be exact), and now I'm here in Chicago getting ready to attend the inaugural AICPA Leadership Academy. I was one of 28 "young" (<35 years old) CPAs chosen from 130+ applicants throughout the nation to attend this prestigious leadership training, that AICPA Chairman Ernie Almonte says will fundamentally change our lives. I had originally though it was going to be a kind of indoctrination into AICPA propaganda and identity (which is not necessarily a bad thing to me), but now that I've talked to Ernie and read the agenda, I can see that we are in a really powerful, paradigm-changing three days.

However, that doesn't begin until Tuesday. Last night (Saturday), I caught the red eye out of Honolulu to Phoenix, and from there jumped up to Chicago. This was my first time flying US Airways and I must say it was quite different from flying American Airlines or United Airlines (my two usual carriers). And having flown Hawaiian Airlines to Vegas, it was way different. I have to say that Hawaiian Airlines actually does a really good job on their flights. I was never really a fan of theirs before (due to some allegations of unfair business dealings by some of my travel industry friends), but I really have to say that I enjoyed the Hawaiian flight and would definitely considering flying them more. Their aircraft was clean, they had pillows and blankets, and they served food!

Anyway back to US Airways, the aircraft was clean but old. Their flight attendants weren't very welcoming and they didn't offer to help you find your seat, they didn't even greet you as you boarded the plane. However, they were nice during the drink service and the cups that they used to serve the drinks were twice the size of the cocktail cups that the other air lines used. No pillows or blankets, but you could purchase a set that included pillow, blanket, eye mask, and ear plugs for $7, which I thought was pretty reasonable. Overall the flights were pretty uneventful, except that for both landings we had some rocky turbulence.

Since I was arriving early, I decided to look for a hotel for tonight different from the Leadership Academy hotel and found an Aloft that was near O'Hare airport for a great deal. I stayed at the Aloft in Phoenix this past April, so I was curious to see if they were all the same--and YES they are, almost exactly. The lobby, hallways, and rooms look like almost exact replicas.

They gave me a handicap accessible room for the night since they had a bunch of very late checkouts and none of the regular rooms were available. The room was pretty much the same as the Phoenix except for the shower, which was just a big open space. From an accessibility standpoint, I could see how this would be really helpful to just have soooo much room to maneuver in, the only flaw I saw is that they didn't have a bench or anything to sit on, so I'm not sure if they expect a wheelchair bound person to take a shower in their own wheelchair. (I'm sure they must bring you something if you call them, but there wasn't any instructions or information provided to indicate so.)

Side Note: More Aloft O'Hare pictures in my Picasa Web Album.

Well traveling all day made me really hungry, so I decided to find some dinner. Searching on yelp.com, the first suggestion was HB Home Bistro), I read the reviews and it sounded really good, so I jumped on the subway and headed into the city. I didn't realize how far outside of the city I was...it took me about 45 min to get to the loop (the center of the transit system where all the trains go into a "loop" and you can transfer to various lines). Then it took another 20 minutes to get to the stop. Then it was about a 10 minute walk to Home Bistro.

A couple of the posts on yelp.com indicated that it may be hard to get a table and when I walked in, I could see why. It was a very small space, myabe 15 tables. Luckily my timing was good and I only had to wait 10 minutes for a table. And lucky me, also got a table facing the street, so I was able to watch all the people walking by in between courses. I love people watching, especially in cities that I'm relatively new to.

Home Bistro has a great menu, there were so many things that I wanted to try. I decided to start with the Oven Roasted Red Beets salad. The salad looked good, a combination of mixed greens, thinly sliced beets, and crumbled feta, complimented with some mandarin oranges and candied walnuts (the menu said pecans, but it really tasted like walnuts to me). The sesame truffle vinaigrette was nicely balanced and the rich beet taste was evident throughout the salad. The feta chunks were a little big for me (and I like feta!), they overwhelmed the salad when I ate them with the other ingredients, so I ended up breaking them d own smaller myself. The mandarin oranges added a nice sweetness, but there were only a few wedges, and the candies walnuts were stale. My pickiness aside, the salad was very good, in fact, I'd actually say that it was one of the better beet salads that I've had since everything was so well balanced and the wonder taste of beets was definitely dominant.

For my entree, I decided on the Compart Family Farms Loin of Pork. This was served over a bed of braised collard greens over scalloped potatoes, and topped with sauteed apples. The pork had a nice taste, but was over-salted and slightly over-cooked so a bit dry. The scalloped potatoes were also over-salted, almost to where I couldn't eat it, but I could tell that some of that came from the cheese that was used (I couldn't tell what kind of cheese it was). The collard greens could have been a little softer, but had a good taste, not too bitter and flavorful of the sausage they were cooked with. The favors were all very intense so even though it was over-salted I still enjoyed the meal--I just had to drink two glasses of water to get through it. =)

The taste of the potatoes actually lingered in my mouth so much, I ended up eating some of their herbed foccacia to cleanse my palate. It was served with a garlic balsamic vinegar that also had some herbs in it. The balsamic was actually REALLY good. The foccacia was cold and a little hard (I think on purpose) so I didn't really care for it, but I kept eating it because the balsamic was so yummy.

They actually had two desserts that sounded really yummy, a strawberry tart and a butterscotch chocolate tart (I think that's what he said), but I was so full from the salad and pork that I decided to pass on dessert and go walk around a bit instead.

Well that was the highlights from today. I actually do have pictures of the food this time, so I'll eventually get those posted as well. I hope everyone had a safe 4th of July! More stories to come...