Chicago, Take Two

After a good night’s rest in our toasty room, we woke up far less jet-lagged, and very ready to take on the day.  Our first stop was the Field Museum.  We had been invited to attend the preview event for the opening of their new exhibit, the Greeks.

The event was wonderful.  A few key speakers talked about the new exhibit, while we had the pleasure of nibbling on Greek pastries.  After the speeches wrapped up, they opened up the exhibit for us all to wander through, and we had such a great time.

The exhibit is filled to the brim with beautiful Greek artifacts, and is definitely worth a visit if you are in town.

After our taste of Greece, we wandered through the rest of the museum as well.

There are so many awesome exhibits in the Field Museum; we both especially loved all of the dinosaurs.  I think that we may have even discovered the original duck pout…

After way too much fun, we decided to walk down to the Adler Planetarium for a quick pass through before heading to lunch.

In the future, we would personally skip this one.  Unless you are really into the interactive and 3-D movies, there is not much to do here.  Even so, it ended up being a good way to keep us busy for an hour before we had lunch.

For lunch we headed back uptown a bit, right across from the Bean and the Art Institute, to the Gage.  It had been recommended to us by so many locals, and so we were thrilled when they asked us to stop by for a tasting.

We started with the insanely delicious curry mussels, carrot and ginger soup, and half orders of the beet salad and Caesar salad (yes, those are half orders!).  Everything was as good as the last, but our favorite was the beet salad with granola crunch.

pasta course: tortellini in brown butter (I am still dreaming of this sauce!)

 

bone in tenderloin & venison burger 

maple pumpkin doughnuts & butter pecan fudge cake

Everything was as good as the last bite – I would say that I had a favorite, but truly everything was outstanding.  And what really topped our experience was the service.  We have never had better service anywhere.  Our waiter was so thoughtful, patient and knowledgeable – offering us stellar suggestions for wine pairings, and perfectly timing the entire meal.

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Clearly having had a decent lunch, it was time for some much needed walking and shopping.  We wandered the streets of Chicago popping into little shops and just enjoying all of the holiday cheer that Chicago had going on.

We loved all of the windows at the old Marshall Fields (now Macy’s).  We walked around the entire building taking them all in, before heading in for some holiday shopping.

After finding our way across the river, there was one more stop that we wanted to make before our dinner reservation.  And that stop was Eataly.

While you can easily go here to eat (and yes, it is delicious), we love to go and peruse all of their Italian imports, and pick out some new things to bring home and enjoy later.

Eataly is like a candy store for a foodie, they have so many fun things.  And we were so excited when they told us that they are building one in Los Angeles – now we’ll be able to pop in more regularly!

After dropping off our goodies in our hotel room, we wandered the few blocks towards our dinner destination, RPM.

first course: roman style artichokes & wood roasted octopus

pasta: carbonara, pappardelle bolognese & MaMa DePandi’s bucatini

our favorite pasta was hands down the bucatini with a meatball

dessert: hazelnut tartufo & a special of the day: beignets

We had such a great time at RPM; the ambiance, the service and the food were all on par, making for a fabulous night.  They take such care in all of the details.  We loved that all of the pastas are homemade, and they even mixed in our egg yolk for the Carbonara tableside.  Funny enough, our absolute favorite thing the whole night?  The beignets.  Neither one of us has ever had a better doughnut.  Ever.

We had a great night – we relaxed in our booth, spending hours just laughing and enjoying our time.  We left at half past 11, and there were still so many diners there.  I loved that they weren’t pushing anyone out to close up the restaurant.

We walked back to our hotel with the glow of a great trip under our belts.  Chicago is such a great city…she really blew us away!

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This post was written in collaboration with both the Field Museum and the Gage restaurant.  Although the experiences were complimentary, no financial compensation was received.  All opinions expressed and written here are my own, and are an honest account of our experiences.