Chicago, Saturday, April 3, 2010 ("Later That Day," or "Don't Forget the Smelts")

Met up with an old college friend for dinner and catch-up at Nightwood, one of those "New American" joints that does the whole sustainable, local thing.

While waitin' on Jimmy, I watched my neighbor valiantly attack a gorgeous lookin' spit-roasted pork loin, which under most other circumstances is likely the entree I woulda ordered. After the intemperance of my lunchtime meal, however, the pork is more monstrous than delectable.

I top myself off, instead, with two appetizers:

1. arugula and a sunny side duck egg on a bed of Anson Mills farro (tastes like barley--I can't really tell the difference)
2. deep fried Michigan smelts with green garlic mayonnaise and some kind of...green

The smelt is important because April is smelt season in Chicago, when folks are supposed to be casting off Lake Michigan and dunking the little fuckers into a deep fryer. I get the feeling the scene's not exactly swinging, either 'cause the fish aren't running or 'cause I just ain't hanging with the right crowd for smelt. At any rate, it was an opportunity for me to eat local, trash fish, so I tooks it.

They were prepared really well, light, crisp on the outside, and tasting like soft-shell crab, the "finniness" of the whole fish texturally similar to the soft-shell exoskeleton, then the buttery insides. You just have to be unfazed at the prospect of biting a head off a fish, and you certainly can't be one of those "I only eat fillets" kind of motherfuckers.

For drank, a non-alcoholic, tamarind rickey (house-made tamarind syrup, lime, and soda), since I am now a half-assed, teetotaler.

(I don't have anything against alcohol, even how it makes people, me included, act when indulged in excess. I just have a shit time recovering the next day. If I can figure out a way to not feel like someone raped my brain the following morning, I'd get right back on the bandwagon. Or off it. Whichever it is.)