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June 29, 2005

Cafe Matou

Matou is French for tom cat. Cafe Matou is a beautiful French restaurant in Bucktown. The menu changes daily and features seasonal food with unique seasoning.

After spending the early morning and afternoon eating Guatemalan tamales and Pollo Campero, mi amor and I spent Saturday night saying goodbye to each other over an amazing French meal. It is our new tradition - we first went to Cafe Matou before I left for L.A. for Thanksgiving (our longest time apart until now).

The restaurant offers champagne by the glass, which mi chavo thoroughly enjoys. Personally, I prefer a Berry Godmother as an appetizer drink - it's champagne with raspberry liquer and a dark chocolate twizzle stick. Absolutely delicious.

Along with our champagne, we had appetizers - mi chavo had

Grillade des asperges et champignon
Grilled asparagus and portabello served with a relish a relish of tomato, fresh basil, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and Auvergne blue cheese
And I had a duck confit salad -
Salade de mesclun et confit de canard auvergnate
Baby mixed greens, duck confit, roast bosc pear, Auvergne blue cheese and walnut vinaigrette
At first, I didn't want to try fish because the smell of seafood isn't appetizing to me (although it tastes good and I always mistake the smell of shellfish for the smell of fish). In the end, I chose a blackened grouper with breading in a delightful sauce that included tarragon and something else. Mi chavo had the salmon with asparagus and a sauce, but I can't remember exactly what was in anything. Perhaps because we also shared a bottle of white Rhone wine. It was magnificent. After finishing ever last bite of my meal, we ordered dessert. Mi chavo picked better for dessert quality - he had phyllo with yummy stuffing. It was rich and filling, but I only had a taste so again, can't remember the details. I had figs in a light syrup with a side of chantilly. What's chantilly, you ask. Well, it's basically a fragile whipped cream. We drank coffee with dessert.

My problems began when the sommelier offered us a taste of a red wine while we were finishing our coffee (we were talking to him and were surprised that he was drinking a chilled red wine). After a few sips of that wine, I was a goner. Felt as drunk as a skunk. Oh well. I suppose most of our best evenings have ended with me passing out on the way home.

We had delightful conversation throughout the evening and I managed to not think about work during most of the date. It was spectacular.

Posted by cj at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Meeting La Abuela de mi Chavo

So mi chavo's grandmother arrived Friday night, as you probably know from my previous entries. She is the most amazing woman. She's 85 years old, and despite serious ailments (like arthritis that has deformed her hands and feet and a touch of deafness), she is still extremely active. And she loves to talk. Which is absolutely fabulous, except, um, I'm not fluent in Spanish.

Oh, if I could only go back and slap the girl who goofed off in high school Spanish because she didn't like her teachers. If I could only chastise the woman who refused to take Spanish class seriously in college because it wasn't Chinese (the language she really wanted to learn). If only, if only.

La abuela de mi chavo made tamales for us in Guatemala and brought them to Chi-town. Except we didn't get all of the tamales, because she "had" to sell some at market to cover the cost of the ingredients (she didn't actually need to sell anything - mi chavo's father would have covered the cost - but again, she's stubborn). I mention this because truly made from scratch tamales taste like nothing else. If you eat enough tamales, you can really taste the difference between masa made from a bag and masa made from ground-up, fresh corn. It was absolutely amazing; better than any tamales I've ever had.

So, we had to make do with my limited abilities and her desire to get to know me as soon as possible. At one point, mi chavo's father had to tell her that I'm a gringa and she should talk to me like a gringa, not like a Guatemalteca. But we managed to work it out. I told her about my work and my family and she told me about how her friend didn't like whiskey, but when she gave her friend a whiskey and 7-Up, then she liked it. (Which got me telling her how whiskey and 7-up is my sister's favorite drink too.) I used to be partial to whiskey, but somewhere between graduating college and now I lost my taste for hard liquor. Instead, I like girly drinks and wine. (My current favorites are almaretto sour and any wine from the Rhone Valley in France.)

I'm really lucky, not just because I have mi chavo, but also because his family has welcomed me with open arms. It's just such a wonderful experience.

Aside: some people might not have read my explanation of "mi chavo." It means my boyfriend and is a Guatemalan phrase. Mi chavo doesn't want to be identified by his name, hence using the pseudonym. When he gives me ideas for my blogs, I refer to him as "Blind Boy Grunt," which was a name used by Bob Dylan. Since I do not claim to know 25% of what mi chavo knows about Dylan, I'm not going to try to explain the origin of that name.

Posted by cj at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

Pollo Campero - the world's greatest fried chicken

I bet most casual readers of this blog have never heard of the mouth-watering fried chicken from Pollo Campero. It's a shame really. You think that KFC or Popeye's or some regional variation of an American fast food chain has the best fast food fried chicken around. You are so wrong.

Let's be clear: Pollo Campero is better than any fried chicken made by anyone anywhere in the world. Mi chavo's grandmother brought some for us from Guatemala City last Friday night. At 4am Saturday morning, I had my first taste of heaven. After licking the bones clean, I felt my life was complete.

My sources tell me that Pollo Campero is better directly from Guatemala City (where the chain began) than anywhere in the U.S. The reason is U.S. farmers feed their chicken hormones (along with other chickens, cows, and pigs - no seriously, chickens are eating other animals in the over-crowded feedlots of America). At any rate, I can vouch for the amazing quality of the Pollo Campero direct from Guatemala City. The combination of spices and just enough breading without being overwhelming, plus meat that is succulent whether it's white or dark is simply unsurpassed.

If you or your relatives aren't planning on visiting Guatemala anytime soon, I encourage you to check out one of the U.S. franchises. There's a ton in the Los Angeles area and one is opening up here in Chicago over the summer. Yahoo!

Posted by cj at 01:23 PM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2005

Cafe Tacuba - Not Like How You Hear Them on "Morning Becomes Eclectic"

Last Friday, mi chavo and I were invited to meet friends at the Aragon for a Cafe Tacuba concert. I knew I had heard of the band and couldn't remember how. Sunday's NYT Magazine piece on Nic Harcourt reminded me that I had heard them on my favorite radio program - Morning Becomes Eclectic, (which you can now listen to on demand!)

Anyway, back to the concert - I don't have a ticket stub because my ticket was simply a raffle ticket, which surprised me since it cost $55. So, I don't remember the names of the opening acts. The first act was a band lead by a female vocalist whose favorite phrase was "la la la." Apparently, writing three minutes songs is too difficult these days. Instead, the tired, basic sound of post-punk 80s was attached to a few phrases in Spanish, and the over-arching "la la la," which seemed to occur in every single song as the major lyric.

The next band was much, much better. They're name is Kinky (really, how can you forget that?) The Chicago Tribune wrote that they're one of the best new latino bands around, and I agree. They have a punchy connection between rock and traditional latino music - including a rousing accordian player.

The only problem, which kept getting worse throughout the concert, was the ventilation. Aragon fits about 6,000 people and although the place wasn't sold out, it kept getting more crowded. Add to that the lack of a decent air-conditioning and a well-known poor quality sound system and it added up to one uncomfortable night. Between the drunks spilling and throwing beer, the stifling air, and the music being blasted at a decibel level meant for an audience three times the size of the venue, I was almost ready to leave before Cafe Tacuba got on stage.

The concert was announced as started at 7pm. I believe the first band took the stage at 8pm, and Cafe Tacuba didn't start till after 10. Since mi chavo needed to pick his grandmother up from the airport, we weren't able to stay for the whole concert. While we missed a little, I don't think we missed much. Our friends left with us because one of them got nauseous from the heat. Besides, the music didn't need to be as loud as it was and none of us were looking for a concert with 1,000s of our closest inebriated friends. Guys were stumbling from the concession stands with five beers in their hands and usually chugging at least two of them. I'm all for people having fun and drinking, but please explain the point of buying a $7 cup of crappy beer and the throwing it onto the rest of the audience?

According to our friends, Cafe Tacuba's concert at the Hard Rock Cafe here in Chi-town was much better, both because it was calmer and because the ventilation and acoustics were so much better.

Posted by cj at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2005

Blogging, New Media, Etc.

Last night The NewsHour on PBS had a story about new media - how newspapers are getting more readers online than through subscriptions and how they're doing web-only content, including streaming video and podcasts. Also mentioned was grassroots journalism, and blogging was dimissed as a "commentary-only" realm.

Yesterday, CNN published "Corporations enter blogosphere," by the AP. It's an odd story since it doesn't contain any links to the blogs mentioned.

Heading the pack of corporate hacks is GM's FastLane, a blog that's making me want to get a lil bitty car to replace my gas guzzler.

Intelliseek is a company that gets paid to monitor online buzz. They have a corporate blog that looks incredibly boring and this thing called BlogPulse that monitors blogs.

Richard Edelman heads a PR firm and likes to talk. I haven't read his posts yet, but I guess I'll check it out at a later date.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has short posts here.

Jonathan Schwartz's blog is very techy. Which makes sense, since he's president of Sun Microsystems.

Micro Persuasion is written by a balding white guy about "how weblogs and citizen journalism are impacting public relations." Because the man is even trying to take over blogging.

Stonyfield Farm sponsors five blogs. They make great yogurt and their prez got hooked on the idea while volunteering for Dean's campaign.

Randy Baseler, VP of airplane and death machine manufacturer Boeing, blogs here.

Mark Jen, web-famous for being fired from Google for blogging blogs here (at his new corporate home).

Posted by cj at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)