There are few things better than for-no-good-reason days off. Kristine and I are fortunate enough to have leave time to spare, and decided to take a day trip to the northern reaches of Chicagoland. A little retail therapy at IKEA and Mitsuwa seemed in order.

And on the way down, my lovely and brilliant wife asked if we needed to look for a Chick-fil-A while we were in the Chicago area. (Chick-fil-A doesn't get any closer to Wisconsin, and neither of us had ever experienced the phenomenon.) With Swedish meatballs and Japanese candy already on the menu, this was looking like a pretty solid outing.

We hit IKEA at about 10:30, and wouldn't you know it? The restaurant is on the third floor, exactly where we started our shopping. Meatballs for me, mac and cheese for her, and I'm kind of blissing out. I don't think IKEA meatballs are a guilty pleasure, exactly, but they are definitely buffet-style junk food. Still, a great combination of sweet and savory.

A bag full of goodies later, we disembarked from the blue mothership and consulted the internet for the closest Chick-fil-A. Turns out, it's right down the road from IKEA. "I don't care if I just ate, I'm eating again," said the discerning food critic.


The reason this location of Chick-fil-A, while appearing on the company website, didn't show up on Google Maps is that it just opened on September 15. As a result, those red-and-blue flashing lights and cops directing traffic weren't so much there for accident recovery as they were for crowd control. Yes, there were two lanes of drive-thru and both were packed. The pedestrian line poured out the door. (Shades of SONIC's debut in the Madison area.)

Nevertheless, we managed to get into the line, and in short order, two chicken sandwiches were ours. Finally, I have perspective on what Wendy's and McDonald's are taking on with their less-processed chicken breast sandwiches. These things actually tasted, looked, and felt like chicken. Good chicken, not dry, stringy chicken. I'm ready for a Wisconsin location, thank you.

It turns out that Schaumburg has become a little slice of low-brow foodie heaven, because IKEA, Chick-fil-A, and the all-in-one Japanese market Mitsuwa are in a line, more or less--like an Orion's Belt of "I really shouldn't eat like this".

Our radar at Mitsuwa is still tuned primarily to the candy and sweets section. This used to be true because we were in over our heads with the rest of the grocery offerings (unless our Japanese friend Emily was there to guide us). It's still true now, but not because of culture shock. It's because we know we can get most of Mitsuwa's core offerings at markets in Madison. So we're magnetically drawn to the candy that we can't find anywhere but the internet.

With three packages of HI-CHEW in our pockets (actually two HI-CHEW and one Kanro), we made a quick exit from the bustling Mitsuwa. This, along with a stop at the slightly absurd but irresistible Belvidere Oasis, would have been a pretty good day. A great day, even.

But then we got back to Madison. And, after a few errands, we discovered the best part.

[EDIT: Holy crap. I was in such a hurry to finish this post before the delivery guy got here, I completely forgot about the bag of meat! For a mere $35, I made two pounds of locally-produced charcuterie my very own, thanks to the Underground Food Collective. Stay tuned for another 2-pound meat CSA offering next month. Can't tell you how jazzed I am about the nduja. Now, on to the thrilling climax!]

The skimpy, crowded bit of Sprecher Road that runs under the Interstate, that's been under construction forever and will be forever--that's a nightmare to navigate in the winter--has finally been remedied. In an email a few months ago, I told our alder (council president Lauren Cnare) that what I really wanted was a temporary blacktop lane to spread traffic out. Just a little loop off to the other side of the support columns, to give people some breathing room.

And now it's there.

LOOK, MADISON, AT WHAT I HAVE DONE FOR YOU.

I'm serious, this is the best day ever. I'm gonna go eat some more candy.

It's hard to imagine, on this 30-something degree morning in September, that not too long ago it was 90 degrees outside--and 104 in my little library. But it was indeed, and man, does that kind of swelter take the initiative out of just about everything. This is why I get fatter in the summer, defeating the usual winter bulk-up trend.

(Actually, I get fatter in the winter, too. I'm just generally getting fatter; to every food there is a season, after all.)

The twin concepts of hot spots and comfortable, lazy haunts guide this edition of Kyle Ate Here. A few new places were tried, a few scenes were made, and yes, there was sushi, too. Isn't there always?


Hot spots

As many have in these late days of summer, I visited Dumpling Haus at Hilldale for a lunch with my wife. Many dishes, I'm told, hail from Yen Ching; it's a parent kitchen for the Haus. The Haus pork can move out of its parents' house any into permanent DH residence any time; even Kristine ate the fat, and she never does that.

Restaurant Muramoto was bustling for a Friday night dinner stop, full of twentysomethings; I rejoiced at the reappearance of the gunsmoke roll. We also joined the crowd of people using their about-to-expire Groupon at Cilantro. A bit dry and characterless, this was not as enjoyable. Nice chips and salsa, though. Brunch at Sardine and a late Friday night at Graze added to our hipness quotient for the month. My Limburger and salami sandwich at Baumgartner's stand at Great Taste of the Midwest, less so--but the massive crowd spoke to a different kind of cool.


Lower degrees of difficulty

Ain't nothin' scene about Carnival's, but damned if it doesn't make me happy every time I go there. The mushroom and swiss burger is a thing o' beauty. The most disaffected server ever dampened an otherwise-celebratory stop at Alchemy; seriously, I think she might have been an actual zombie.

The bloody Mary at Weary Traveler was spicy-hot, but the brunch crowd was small and chill for our group. The bacon proved to be a tripping point, but the staff rallied and made right--plus, it was real good. A plate of fried calamari at Hawk's was nothing fancy, but appropriate for its time and place. (If Appleton's Cena, which I also visited in August, was in Madison, it would be Hawk's. This is fine.)


The best thing I ate

This is really challenging. The deep-fried bacon on a stick at Great Taste (via The Smokin' Cantina) was glorious, and that Haus pork was luxe and wonderful. But neither--made of pig parts as they are--can compete with memory and nostalgia. And here, Bandung steps in and takes the prize. We'd gone eight-some years in Madison before trying this Indonesian spot, and since my dad was born in Indonesia, this delay itself is kind of a crime. But their starter menu includes hot, crispy-fried krupuk udang--shrimp chips--and these take me way back, to my dad at the stove. I lost my dad in 1996, but this reintroduction to shrimp chips brought back the best of warm memories.

I'd like to tell you the story of two food personalities. I won't say "chefs", because for different reasons the label doesn't fit either one.

They're both a little portly. They've got an Everyman kind of charm without being either clownish or misogynistic. They each get a television show wherein they interact with innocent bystanders and challenge people to eat things they wouldn't normally eat.

Except one man's show only lasts a single season before being cancelled. The other man's show, which started two years after the first, has lasted for three years and four seasons.

This is the story of George Duran and Adam Richman.

So how unlucky does George Duran feel today? His Ham on the Street for Food Network was this close to achieving the success Adam Richman has with Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel. Maybe we should feel empathy for Duran, since his concept was much more focused on sensible, mostly real-world eating, while Richman's show embraces conspicuous consumption and (frankly) overeating. Duran fought the good fight, and lost--no shame in that. And after all, Duran is an actual chef! Richman is an actor who likes food.

But how, then, do we reconcile the latest news? The news that George Duran hosted an invitation-only dinner at a supposed pop-up restaurant in New York, only to pull back the curtain at the end to reveal that the entire premise was a promotion, a focus-group ambush for the benefit of Marie Callender's Frozen Entrees?

What is it about failed TV chefs that makes them think the way back into favor is to endorse frozen food? And in Duran's case, shouldn't someone have thought, Maybe we shouldn't invite a bunch of food bloggers to this deal? It's a PR event, after all. Invite PR people, TV execs. Not snarky denizens of the internets.

Somewhere, Adam Richman is looking down at his 20-egg omelet with a Reuben and two cream puffs inside and smiling. He's being genuine; he's doing what he says he's doing. He's not inviting people to a meal with a promised "surprise" at the end, and then delivering the surprise in a way that undercuts everything else he's said about fresh food, and seasonal food, and good food. That's not what chefs do, but it's what George Duran did.

And when you do that, this is what you get. You get crushed--cah-RUSHED--by bloggers for the dissembling performance, for the two-faced shillery, for the sheer absurdity of the bullshit. And you're going to take every lump, George. Because you've earned it.