Chicago Walks and Eats

Walk #7: Andersonville

2008-06-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, no doubt about it. We've fallen smitten with Andersonville.

About three miles straight north of where we live now, Andersonville is a vibrant community. It contains some great restaurants (we tried Big Jones the other night with our friends Rebecca, Will, Greg and Gaby - delicious southern comfort food!) and delicious chocolates. We walked up and down the bustling Clark Street, exploring the various stores and eateries and generally admiring the neighborhood's character. Not nearly as "glitzy" as Lincoln Park, but fun and comfortable. We could live here. We even peeked in at an open house and were happy to find that the home prices in Andersonville are substantially less expensive than home prices in other neighborhoods.

We biked to our walks today, so we got a good workout. Biked three miles to Andersonville, another three over to Devon Avenue, and then six or seven back home via the lakefront bike path. That far north, the eighteen mile long lakefront bike path is surprisingly uncrowded. It was very relaxing to spend some time on the path rather than the streets - though I'm generally a fearless biker, I still don't like having to weave amongst all of those cars.

Walk #6: Devon Avenue

2008-06-22T20:07:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile! We've been travelling and having guests, but we're finally back. To make up for lost time, we combined two walks into one this weekend. The first was Devon Avenue.

The card for the Devon Avenue walk was sorely lacking -- it just told us to walk down Devon between Western and California, and cited no specific stores, restaurants or landmarks. So we had to make our own way. That area of Devon Avenue is the center of Indian and Pakistani communities here in Chicago. Filled to the brim with Indian restaurants (Matt was seduced by the siren song of the lunch buffet all day long), clothing and jewelry stores, and incredible markets. We saw street vendors selling fresh coconut milk and incredible saris. If I wouldn't look like an idiot / poser, I think I'd love to have one.

Parts of Devon are apparently quite Russian, too, though we didn't see much of that. We walked by a Russian bookstore but that was about it. We stopped for a lovely lunch at the Viceroy of India. Now, I know very little about Indian food, so I can't offer you opinions on whether it was authentic or representative. But it was delicious. Isn't that enough?

Out of town

2008-06-11T20:58:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we were out of town, visiting my dad and his wife in Atlanta. We'll be back with another walk this weekend!

Walk #5: Southport

2008-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

Though I was pretty tired when I got home from my class reunion in South Bend on Sunday, Matt and I went on a walk near our house: on Southport Avenue between Belmont and Grace. We'd been in and out of this neighborhood to go to a few places, like Take Five (a Michigan bar where all food is $5) and Tango Sur (a great Argentinian beef restaurant that's surprisingly inexpensive and a BYOB).

We stopped at Paper Boy, a paper/card/gifts store that is like a larger version of Two Sided -- my favorite card store. We walked up Southport, stopping at Starbucks for an iced coffee for Matt, and then ducking into Candyality. Candyality is a large candy store with all sorts of fun classics like candy lipsticks and candy cigarettes. They had neat gift baskets of candies from different decades, and also claimed to have fantastic gummy bears. Matt and I bought some, and we agree. The store's gimmick is that it tells you your personality based on the candy you buy -- apparently the gummy candy said we were sensible, the Jelly Bellys said we were creative, and the red licorice said we were loyal folk.

Though the neighborhood was fun and active, we didn't feel any strong desire to move there. Phew. At least one we can cut off of the list.

Walk #4: Lincoln Square

2008-05-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

After being out of town for another couple of weekends, we pulled a card out of our box and headed up to Lincoln Square. It's an old German area in the northwest part of Chicago, seemingly bounded by Damen to the east, Western to the west, Montrose to the south and Lawrence to the north.

Per usual, we loved the neighborhood. It's right on the brown line, so it's easy to commute into the loop. There's a little shopping area that's almost entirely a pedestrian street, filled with cute restaurants like Bistro Campagne and the Chicago Brauhaus and awesome stores like the Merz Apothecary. There's a good looking movie theater and a wine store, and it's just generally pleasant. There isn't much traffic, and the streets are wide and open. My favorite spot is the Book Cellar -- a combined bookstore/wine bar. Alas, we've found another neighborhood we'll consider in our house hunt. When will it stop?

Walk #3: Ukranian Village

2008-05-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

As we were in Iowa last weekend, we didn't have a chance to do one of our walks. But we're back this weekend with a walk in Ukranian Village.

This week's walk was rather short, and centered around a stretch on Chicago Avenue and on Oakley Boulevard. We saw a couple of incredible Ukranian Catholic churches there, and ate lunch at a funky restored bar called Tuman's on the corner of Chicago and Leavitt. The highlight of the walk was enjoying the quiet, leafy streats around Chicago Avenue. We ended up stopping it at an open house for a condo in the 2258 Huron Lofts. The building is a converted church, and the details inside are incredible. There are apartments where the choir loft used to be, and the apartment we looked at was where the altar area was. Matt and I previously agreed we would wait another year befoore buying a house, but this made me want to buy one right now. I wonder if we'll be able to last another year :)

So the short of it is, we didn't see anything particulary notable, but we really liked the feel of the neighborhood. When we start house hunting for real, we'll go back!

Walk #2: Broadway

2008-04-21T19:19:00.001-07:00

We missed a weekend in there while I was out in Washington D.C. and Matt was travelling to Boston. But we're back!

We originally drew a card for a walk in South Chicago, but having read and listened to the news over the weekend (and having received work that needed to be done over the weekend) we selected a walk a bit closer -- the Broadway Street walk. This walk was less interesting than our first, for a couple of reasons. First, we live in the neighborhood, so we've seen most of the places on the card. Second, unlike our last walk, all of the locations were shops or restaurants. Not so many cultural sights on Broadway between Diversey and Addison.

We did, however, stop at Windy City Sweets. We got a pecan/chocolate treat, a peanut butter truffle thing, and a s'mores-like creation. (Okay, none of those are very descriptive.) The first two were alright, but the s'mores creation was delicious. The chocolates were quite expensive, though -- we spent nearly $10 on those three!

We also took a detour and went to our very first open house. We checked out a beautiful loft just a few blocks north of us in Lakeview, with exposed brick, high ceilings, and exclusive roof rights. Even though we're not ready to buy a place yet, it was fun to start daydreaming.

See you next week!

Walk #1: Old Town Triangle District

2008-04-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today, Matt and I drew a tour around the Old Town Triangle District from our deck of Chicago walks. This quaint and quiet neighborhood, bounded by North and Armitage Avenues and Clark and Sedgwick Streets, was the perfect way to ease into our walking tours.

We began our walk on the quiet, leafy Eugenie Street, suddenly feeling like we weren't in the city at all. We live on a relatively quiet street, but we still get a lot of cars passing by (and a lot of honking), and can hear a lot of the ambient noise from Clark Street. Eugenie Street was much quieter -- you could hear the leaves rustling, the birds chirping, and we didn't see a car drive through while we walked down the street. We walked by some beautiful houses with incredible molding, many dogs, and a mom and dad teaching their daughter to play baseball in the park. We thought she looked tee-ball age, but she connected with the ball just as we were leaving the park -- I guess we were wrong. We peered into St. Michael's Church, a gorgeous Catholic church with an unusual front combining red brick and white carved limestone. From there, we also walked by the Midwest Buddhist Temple. Apparently what is now the Old Town Triangle District used to be called "Little Tokyo." We continued walking through the small streets, ending our walk with a look at the incredible flower store, A New Leaf. A New Leaf had so many flowers, plants, vases and designs, and to top it all off, they had a stunning event space. If we ever get married again, I think we'll have to have the reception there.

Hello out there.

2008-04-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

My husband Matt and I recently graduated from law school and moved to Chicago together. As he grew up in Boston and I grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, we're new to the area and don't know much about all of the wonderful neighborhoods around here. We've decided to fix this problem in a couple of ways:

1) Fifty Chicago Walks. We bought a silly deck of fifty cards with walks around different Chicago neighborhoods. We're going to do one every week until we get through the deck. Hopefully, by the time we decide to go house hunting in a year or so, we'll know the entire city by heart and we'll know just where we want to live! So this blog exists primarily to write about our travels and adventures in the Chicago area.

2) Eating out. We both love to cook, bake, eat and drink. I have no idea if we'll be any good at this, but when we can rustle up the motivatioon, we'll write about this on our blog too.

We hope you'll join us on our adventures, and suggest others for us too!