that's what a hamburger's, all about

 i leave for california tomorrow night, and the first thing i'm gonna wanna do is hit up in-n-out burger at some point before i turn in. i left california more than four years ago and the more that number goes up, the more i miss certain things about the place—or i guess another way of looking at it is, it's become pretty clear what i need to squeeze in while i'm home. in-n-out is the obvious destination, but then i have other spots like adagio, which is a small italian restaurant my parents have been going to for years, and yogurt delite, which outside of dole whip floats at disneyland, serves the best soft-serve i've ever had (banana cream pie). the point is, in so many ways, food really defines the places we've been, doesn't it?

home to me is a double-double animal style with a chocolate shake for a nightcap and the seafood tacos at howdy's in malibu for lunch the next day.

fair haven, ny, which is where i've spent summers for almost twenty years, is rudy's, a burger-flippin'-fish-fry on the shore of lake ontario.

boston is oysters from neptune or b&g or legal, the prosciutto and pesto sandwich on baguette from darwin's in harvard square, and the keith lockhart from mr. bartley's.

for my friend erika, summer after summer—and weekend getaways, too—is washing down new england seafood on the screen porch with pbr (nothing better for a byob) at moby dick's to the backdrop of a cape cod sunset and an ice cold goombay smash from the beachcomber in wellfleet after a day in the sand.

and the list goes on and on. i've been in chicago for five months and already birchwood kitchen is my go-to when i'm too lazy to make a sandwich, and though it opened a couple weeks ago, know that big star is gonna trump bluebird for the local watering hole (the pork belly tacos kinda give it the obvious leg up). and the longer i'm here, the more the food i eat will define the place i am.

but what do you think? am i just some food obsessed nut attaching everything important thing in life to what he eats? or, do you do the same? even though they've never left, i know everybody back home holds in-n-out in the same esteem i do—it's sacreligious not to. but what else? think of the places you've been. it's obvious that different foods define different regions of this country, and i can't forget the world kinda-sorta-maybe-definitely fits that mold too, but when it comes down to it, doesn't the food you eat, decided by the places you've chosen to go, define where it is your shoes have tred?

i hope so, because for me there's nothing more comforting than that first bite of something nearly forgotten after it's been left behind.

the redirection of the wandering goat

when we left boston, i left with it a sizable network of friendships and knowledge within the city's food scene. it's a great food city, but small in scope, and too passive in ambition. the limelight rarely drifts up the coast from the mecca that is manhattan, and when it does, it sometimes shines past the bean entirely (rob evans won the james beard award this year—he's from portland, maine). so bucktown, where we live in chicago, was really a shot in the dark for me. i'd never been here and went off alicia's word, and that of others, that the neighborhood was an understated food destination in the city, far more accessible than spots in lincoln park, downtown, and the rest of the loop. and it was evident our first night here how right she was.

so now we're three weeks in and i'm continually overwhelmed at just how large the food scene is, both in bucktown and beyond. before moving, and with a removed sense of the chicago scene, i worshiped the likes of charlie trotter, grant achatz, and rick bayless on reputation alone, but aside from bayless, these guys haven't even crossed my peripheral since i've been here. there's just so much more i want to see before i drop five hundred bucks for just my share of the tab. and that's what the city offers. loads and loads of choices. loads and loads of ambitious chefs who've opened shop in what is really the only place in the midwest one could open shop—and hope to stay afloat—which in turn has spawned loads and loads of competitive and stylistic gastronmoic banter. and all, on whole, and in contrast to boston, accessible.

but bucktown does seem to have this special mix of talent and accessibility that i'd heard about. rick bayless has benefited in recent months from a certain chicagoan in washington, but his restaurant's are in the city, away from bucktown. yet, i recently learned, he lives here, too. we even saw him the other day, leaving the wicker park farmers' market on a scooter, shouting something as he putputted by. so too does stephanie izard live here, we at least assume, this after bumping elbows with her twice in olivia's market across the street and once more at breakfast around the corner. check their feeds on twitter and there's an entire trail of bucktown spots they've rolled to and tweeted from, and who'd know the spots to be at better than these guys?

there're two gourmet grocers within a hundred feet from us. there's a wine and beer bar called bluebird where i had a birthday bottle of meinklang, an austrian rosé made from organic pinot noir gapes that blew our socks off—it only cost twenty eight bucks—where they also serve cured meats and salumis, kick ass imported cheeses, and homey appetizers and entrees, all while eliminating the pretension of fine dining and seamlessly accentuating the comfy, casual side of eating out. it's the kind of place a chef would go if life at home was out of control but needed the soothing chill of kicking the feet up and knocking back a few. so too is the bristol down the street, its menu dotted by the seductive language of slow food, dishes built around the old world trimmings and scraps of the animal, accentuated by sauces and butters and the garden rich flavors of the season. and then there's silver cloud, where one night i contemplated between the frito pie and a sloppy joe. whose grilled cheese sandwich is served with campbell's canned tomato soup—it's printed on the menu, verbatim—and whose proudest product is tatter tots, which could only come from a giant freezer bag, the taste and feel of which warp you fast back to grade school lunch ladies, which like the tomato soup, might even be the point.

but this sums up what could easily be the beginning half of a saturday night out. there's so much going on and at this point, and with the only down and dirty know-how i have on restaurants being those a thousand miles away, i can only hope to slowly immerse myself within. a hard thing to do when you're out of work and freshly moved in to a much larger apartment than the one prior, thus being empty and needing to be furnished, but here goes.

and on that note, here's a a first step: we snagged two seats.