The days are getting colder in Chi Town making it easier to sleep in longer, take long hot showers, eat hot breakfasts, read books, and spend entire days inside. Yesterday started as one of those days until we read about a free burlesque show that happens in our neighborhood on Wednesday nights. Kristina had never been to a burlesque show, so we bundled up and ventured into the cold for some hot dinner before the show. We ate at a Costa Rican restaurant where they “charge a quarter to use the restroom and a quarter to flush” or so said the host with a straight face – drawing a reaction of confused horror from a slightly gullible, full-bladdered Kristina. It turns out that the "host" was actually the owner of the very popular, zagat-rated Irazu Costa Rica Restaurant who took an immediate liking to his victim and even made our 20-minute wait for a table enjoyable. We drank our byo beer and horchata while we waited and realized that the owner made everyone feel comfortable and welcome. When we got to our table, he sent us a complimentary plate of black bean dip and avocado to go with our chips. The rest of the meal consisted of potato tacos, tilapia casado, spicy costa rican rice, and the two highlights- fried plantains and an incredible soy-oatmeal shake.
All of the food and drink was very tasty. The casado came with a couple of innocuous looking grilled green peppers (see pic just above the rolled tacos). Todd popped a whole one in his mouth and proceeded to breath fire, sweat, blow his nose and cry for the remainder of the meal. Lesson learned??
All in all, the meal was excellent and the experience very fun.
We re-bundled up for our walk to the burlesque venue, Debonair but learned that the times stated on their website were outdated and that we needed to kill a couple of hours. That was not difficult in this particular area of Chicago (Wicker Park) as it is pretty happening even on a Wednesday night. We found a really cool Pizza place/Brewpub called Piece that had the first game of the World Series on every other of it's 20 big screen TV's. We got to watch the last couple of innings of the Giants closin out the Rangers and enjoy a Camel Toe Egyptian Pale Ale 9.5 % abv.
Thus braced for the cold again, we returned to Debonair and continued our wait. It turns out the complimentary champagne mentioned on the outdated website doesn't really exist but the bartender decided to comp us one anyway. The midnight burlesque show actually got under way at about 12:45 and we'd like to say that it was worth the wait. It was mostly worth the wait, but it wasn't exactly burlesque. Judge for yourself but we think it was vaudeville/exhibitionist/fetish/stupidhumantricks mixed up with hipster crowd in goth bar:
In case you're wondering, the final pic is of a girl creating a shower of sparks using a power-grinder on her metal "bikini"!
After nearly freezing on the way home, we declared the night SOMETHING. . .
All in all, the meal was excellent and the experience very fun.
We re-bundled up for our walk to the burlesque venue, Debonair but learned that the times stated on their website were outdated and that we needed to kill a couple of hours. That was not difficult in this particular area of Chicago (Wicker Park) as it is pretty happening even on a Wednesday night. We found a really cool Pizza place/Brewpub called Piece that had the first game of the World Series on every other of it's 20 big screen TV's. We got to watch the last couple of innings of the Giants closin out the Rangers and enjoy a Camel Toe Egyptian Pale Ale 9.5 % abv.
Thus braced for the cold again, we returned to Debonair and continued our wait. It turns out the complimentary champagne mentioned on the outdated website doesn't really exist but the bartender decided to comp us one anyway. The midnight burlesque show actually got under way at about 12:45 and we'd like to say that it was worth the wait. It was mostly worth the wait, but it wasn't exactly burlesque. Judge for yourself but we think it was vaudeville/exhibitionist/fetish/stupidhumantricks mixed up with hipster crowd in goth bar:
After nearly freezing on the way home, we declared the night SOMETHING. . .
1 comment:
todd, you're halfway back, we're playing vb this thursday. see you then?
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