Hot Dogs at Hot Doug's

Yesterday, I had my first experience at Hot Doug's and I was impressed. This restaurant specializes in a variety of hot dogs/sausages and has a diverse "affordable gourmet" menu that is constantly rotating. I opted for the traditional Chicago style hot dog as well as a corn dog- Not very adventurous :) I'm not a huge hot dog gal, but these were absolutely delicious. We also tried the fries, which are fried in duck fat on Fridays/Saturdays- Also delicious!

Apparently, the line is usually out the door and around the corner during lunch time but luckily we beat the rush. We arrived close to 11 a.m. and probably only had to wait about 10-15 minutes to order. By the time we left at noon, the line was much longer.

If you haven't tried Hot Doug's you MUST! While it's a little difficult to get to without a car (it's located in the Chicago Avondale neighborhood), the food is totally worth it. The best part (besides the food) is that it's not too pricey. I will definitely be trying Hot Doug's again.

Currently Loving: Fall 2012!

Fall is my all time favorite season- colorful leaves, boot weather, pumpkin spiced lattes, football, CANDY CORN- the list is endless! This past weekend I went home to see my fam in Wisconsin (so this entry is technically a "Meredith in the Suburbs" edition). While I was home, my little sister and I did a couple fall crafts including painting pumpkins, planting mums, and candy corn filled candle hurricanes. A few pictures from my fun fall filled weekend above.

Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinders

Oven grinders is a little hole in the wall type place with AMAZING food! They are famously known for their "pizza pot pies" available in a 1/2 pounder or full pounder size. My favorite items on the menu are actually the Mediterranean bread and the Chef salad (both pictured below). The salad comes with two delicious dressings- sour cream garlic and sweet and sour poppyseed (the poppyseed is my personal fave).

This place does not take reservations and you usually need to wait a bit to get a table- especially on a Friday or Saturday night during dinner time. Every time I've been here the hostess is amazingly able to remember the order in which people arrived- he never writes anything down. This made me a little stressed out at first (heaven forbid that I have to wait longer for my pizza pot pie!) but surprisingly he seems to know what he's doing and the wait always go by very fast. If you haven't been here I would definitely check it out. 

Orange With A Peel

This morning I went out to breakfast at a place near my apartment called "Orange With a Peel". One of my favorite things on the menu here is- "Frushi". As the name suggests, it's fruit sushi. Today's frushi featured mango with coconut rice and strawberries. I also ordered the homemade granola with strawberries, blueberries and vanilla almond milk. So delicious!

Blown Away

I love when my little sister comes to visit me. Our time together usually consists of shopping, eating portillo's chopped salads, and self-served froyo (Froyo on State Street is our current favorite). But when she came to visit me last Thursday and Friday, we added a new activity to our itinerary- blow outs!

"Blowtique" is a new blow-out boutique that opened in early June and offers customers a convenient and efficient blow-out. There are four different blow-outs on their menu, all of which are $35 bucks (They offer up-styles too, which are $70). I went with "The Deep Ellum Dallas"-big body curls with a dramatic bounce. Dramatic bounce is an understatement (see picture below)- my hair was HUGE!

Don't get me wrong- I love big hair and lots of volume. But this was a little intense- even for me! Luckily, I got the blow out done Friday morning so by Friday evening my hair had settled down (Picture from Friday evening below). Overall, I really like this place and plan on going back- especially for special occasions. They also said that they do fun "girls night out" events- where you can bring in food/wine with a bunch of friends and get ready for a fun night out on the town. Next time, I plan on trying one of their 3 other blow out styles with a little less volume ;)

RPM Italian

RPM is one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago. I love this place not only because it has delicious italian food, but also because it's co-owned by Giuliana & Bill- who doesn't love these two?!

When a vendor from work invited my team to dinner here last week, I could not have been more excited. This was my 3rd time at RPM (it opened in early 2012) and I have had an amazing time/meal each time I've been here.

I started off ordering a G-Rizzle for my drink. I'm still not exactly sure what was in this- but Giuliana created this drink so it was an obvious choice for me :) I did not even see this drink on the menu but remembered hearing about it on the reality show Giuliana & Bill. There was a strong ginger flavor and it was delicious.

I then ordered the Giuliana salad. I've had this salad every time I've been here and it's always amazing! It's an italian salad with salami, red onion, pepperoncini and cheese.

For my main course I had Mamma DePandi's Bucatini Pomodoro. This is honestly the best pasta I've ever had. The pasta is homemade and it is to DIE for. As you can see from the picture below, the portion sizes are not enormous so it's not overly filling. I also added a meatball on top :)

Finally, dessert! Not surprisingly, the desserts here are also amazing. I opted for the Tartufo which is a hazelnut gelato ball with a hard chocolate shell. I also tried a few other desserts that others at the table ordered including: Bill's chocolate budino, homemade mint chocolate gelato, and Klug farm peaches.

Overall, I would give this restaurant 4 out of 5 stars. If you haven't tried RPM I would highly recommend it- you will not be disappointed!

The Start of Something

Starting a blog is something I've always wanted to do. Especially since moving to Chicago almost 2 years ago. I thought this would be a great way to document my post-college life in the amazing city of Chicago- the best city in the world if I do say so myself :)

So here it finally is! I plan on sharing restaurants I'm trying, places I'm going, events I'm attending, shopping purchases- you name it.