Cafecito

Weekend, Chicago-style

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Even though we live IN THE CITY LIMITS of Chicago, we rarely actually go into the city. Even when people come to visit, we mostly just hang around the neighborhood. So when my siblings came over, we decided to do some of the regular, old-fashioned tourist stops.

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You never know what kind of weirdos you’re going to find at The Bean.

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This was as good excuse as any to hit up Cafecito, and then visit everyone’s favorite dinosaur, Sue:

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Of course, we also left plenty of time for board games.

I think the most memorable game was The Resistance, which I will have a separate post on coming up soon. But we also introduced some new people to Puerto Rico, and found some time to play Pandemic.

You know, in retrospect, I think I am innately something of a story teller. That’s why I enjoy writing and blogging, and why I always enjoyed role playing games. So, for me, the storytelling aspect is always one of the funnest parts about a game. My brain just tries to fit a narrative to any situation. I would imagine that there are people who play a tabletop game and they just treat it as a straight up game: “I move my piece to this spot in the red zone and play this 4th blue card to accomplish the goal”. I suppose that’s kind of fun, but I prefer to imagine it as, “I go to the research station in the explosive diarrhea epidemic zone and cure the childhood obesity epidemic faster than you can say Fecal Microbiota Transplant!” Sure your job is to manage the island of Puerto Rico, but it’s more than just shifting little cardboard squares. Those little brown tokens working in your fields and factories have LIVES! And you can’t just go on a mission for the resistance, you have to know what you’re fighting for! How can you play your card with the proper zeal if you don’t even know if you’re fighting against Hitler, robots, or nut-free classrooms?

All in all, one of the best weekends I’ve had in awhile. Hope to do it again sometime.

Cafecito

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I had one of the best sandwiches I have ever had in my life.

This is not a statement I make lightly. I am a big sandwich fan (and a former sandwich artist), and I have had my share of tasty sandwiches.

However, we hit up Cuban coffee house Cafecito the other day and one of the sandwiches really spoke to me; the Chivito. At the time I thought it was a specialty of Cafecito, but I’ve since learned that it is the national dish of Uraguay. Cafecito’s version consists of Steak, Ham, Bacon, Fried Egg, Mozzarella, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Shoestring Potatoes, and Citrus Mayo. In short, what’s not to love?

I found this picture of the Chivito on yelp:

Despite the ingredients list, this is NOT a breakfast sandwich. I don’t know why exactly, but the sum is different than the individual parts somehow. I was a little nervous about the citrus mayo at first, but it was surprisingly good and really meshed with the whole sandwich. It was a welcome addition.

All of the food was good, though the service was a little slow (we took it to go and had to wait for a while). There were lots of good looking things on the menu. However, I would be hard pressed to order anything else with the Chivito staring me in the eye. It is not to be missed.