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.
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.
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