Crisp
2940 N Broadway
Chicago
Date of Last Visit: Saturday, September 19th
The Victim: Me
The Damage: $20
The Background: Truth be told, I was feeling a little fragile. I’d been out the night before with my friends Christina and Kent and before you knew it, it was 2 am and there were a lot of empty margarita glasses in front of us (me?). (LOVELY lovely Margaritas, for sure. Thank you, Gilt Bar. And more about Gilt Bar later.)
So on Saturday, I did a lot of nothing. Well, that’s not really true. I paid a man a lot of money to kit out my closets. And then I went shopping for bed linens. And then I got on eBay and saved a lot of money on said bed linens. Exciting, no? Welcome to middle age.
But by the time I got home from my shopping expedition, my bed (or, well, my corporate housing bed) was calling me. And you know…going to bed at like 6 pm is not a good idea. So I did what everyone does, right? I got on a bus in search of some Korean fried chicken.
A healthy chicken is apparently a sexy chicken.
I feel like the Interwebs have been buzzing about Korean fried chicken for ages. Mostly in California. And New York. Chicago only has Crisp on Broadway. But will soon have Del Seoul on Clark, where practically every business I used to know has gone out of business. I’m a little worried about Chicago, really.
But I digress. I got the standard…half a chicken, with the Seoul Sassy sauce…ginger, soy and garlic. I was hoping for a deeply ginger-y and garlicky sauce.
Hmmm. Kinda mostly soy. A little disappointed.
But the chicken was good. And I liked that it was hormone free and obviously cooked to order. (They advise that you will have to wait at least 7 minutes for your order.) It was crispy. In short, it was nice. But I wasn’t like totally dying over it. Which is what I was expecting.
Better was the kimchee. Spicy crunchy kimchee. The only problem is that that you had to order a container of it, and that container feeds three people. I had kimchee for breakfast the next day. And the next day after that. This was a good problem to have though as kimchee and egg are an excellent combination.
The Verdict: Good. Not great. But maybe I’m just spoiled.
Bobtail
2951 N Broadway
Chicago
After I finished my chicken (and my kimchee), I figured I might as well go all out and have some ice cream. Funnily, when I was in business school, the guy that started Bobtail was in my class. So it’s nice to see it go from this idea on paper to a full-fledged ice cream parlour. (To clarify…Bobtail is right across the street from Crisp. That’s why I went.)
That being said…and this is me being not-so-nice…Bobtail was kinda dirty. I mean, there was this fan on the ceiling CAKED with dust. And the place had that lingering sour smell of spoiled milk that only comes from inexperienced staff who really don’t know how to close up at night. (An aside, but related. I remember reading this article about Delta Airlines and how to save money, they stopped deep-cleaning their planes regularly. You know…where they totally clean the carpets and the seat cushions and everything with those wet-vacs. They realized very quickly that this was a big mistake. BIG mistake. And it also reminds me of my flat in London. Even though I had a cleaning lady, it took four guys from somewhere in Eastern Europe two hours to show me what a clean flat really looked like. Clean Living in London, I thank you.)
So I had some peanut butter ice cream. With chocolate chips. Welcome back to America, huh? It was nice. I might even go back for some more. But I probably wouldn’t stick around. Too much clutter. Too much stuff. I want to relax when I’m at an ice cream parlour. That’s one of my big observations of life in America…there’s stuff everywhere. We’ve become this country obsessed with stuff. (Except for Gilt Bar. Which again, I’ll come back to.) No wonder there’s a show called Hoarders.
The Verdict: Good.
