Practicalmadness

"Did you have a earthquake, Mr. Kodos?"

The highlight of the past two days has been the Best Meal Ever at Bistrot Zinc on North State. BZ was my idea; Jenny had originally picked Bistro 110 on Pearson (next to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Bar, conveniently located to post-dinner sweetness) after reading a favorable review on Citysearch, but when we got there the menu was a little, well, French. That is to say, traditionally French to the point of boredom, whereas Bistrot Zinc was not nearly so strait-laced.

We both ordered from the monthly specials menu (it quotes Eliot's The Waste Land, e.g.: "April is the cruellest month", then extols fiddlehead ferns). Practically we should have left it to just entrees, but we ended up getting a full three-course meal.

The appetizer was rabbit rillettes with fresh greens and croutons. For those not familiar with French cuisine, perhaps this description will be more vivid for you: homemade paste of rabbit liver with tiny fragrant leaves, mustard seeds and tiny pieces of hardened bread. This was okay by itself, and really good when Jenny told me it was okay to combine the rabbit pate and mustard with our crusty bread and butter. ("Eat your Thumper, dear," she said.)

Mmm, Thumper yummy.

Then we moved onto Bambi's mom. No, just kidding, we had Porky and Donald instead. Her entree consisted of grilled duck in a blood orange reduction with sauteed frisee and onion confit. "This is the best meal I ever had!" she said. The duck was cooked medium rare such that I swear you could still hear it quacking...

I had the French take on the Hungry-Man plate: pig, mashed potatoes with sour cream and greens. More accurately, it was a succulent grilled pork chop in a port deglace with fiddlehead ferns -- almost impossible to get, let alone do justice to, according to Jenny -- and pwecious Peruvian purple potatoes (mashed, of course) served with mustard creme fraiche.

My culinary opinion is that it was an excellent take on a traditional meal, making the most of some very special seasonal ingredients in a way that would shame three out of four Iron Chefs. My more visceral take: "yuummmmmy."

We debated whether or not to get dessert. Well, actually, we first debated whether Bistrot Zinc even served dessert. ("Of course; we're French!" said our server.) Then we pondered the menu, or more specifically we began the "creme brulee or anything else" argument.

I settled on millas du Bordeaux, a dish involving caramel, pastry and a vanilla-cherry custard, which was delicious beyond all reason and not even all that heavy. (A good thing, since I had just eaten the French Hungry-Man plate.) Jenny got profiteroles with fresh vanilla ice cream and dark-roast chocolate sauce. "It's very hard to do right. They did it at least right," she says.

It was a perfect evening meal. Well, if you don't consider the Mexican busguy who decided the best approach to refilling my water glass was to reach over my plate while I was eating. He's welcome to his own style, but...well, I was eating that and had hoped to continue eating it without interruption by a steel pitcher and accompanying arm.

We got out of there spending a week's worth of Jenny's tip money, and would have gone to the Oak/Rush Starchucks for a post-French digestive coffee. But they decided to be (scoff!) regular and close at 10 pm (scoff scoff!).

So after a quick trip to Virgin Megastore to use the restroom and buy Simpsons Monopoly (she won), we are now drinking coffee at home.

Earlier, before going to the Bistrot, we finally got to visit Powell's Bookstore on Lincoln, where you can stay as long as you like, but you can't ever leave without buying something. There weren't as many disgraced bestsellers as at a far weirder secondhand bookstore we visited the day before (Monday), but Powell's is just as much a sketch for a surrealist movie set. And they even have a public restroom.

We walked in both carrying book bags and shopping bags, and yet we were not stopped or stared at, but rather given time and space to browse effectively. While I looked over their twenty-foot-high shelves of film books, the clerks (who are our age) were talking and there was not a single "umm" or similar vocal tic to be heard.

We also stopped at the Starbucks at Sheffield and Diversey, which stocks retail items (bar spoons, mugs) neither Jenny nor I had ever even heard of, and which had to be reminded what a Tazo Citrus was. It's a store that's been there longer than we have, and -- miraculously for a Starbucks in Chicago -- the staff has been there the whole time. (Unlike a store like Le Cafe d'Enfer, which goes through staff like water, so to speak.)