food filled weekend!

i had a great weekend despite being a little under the weather. this weekend was all about the food, just as i like it to be. it started on friday afternoon when i met my old boss and her new adorable baby for lunch at caffe de luca in bucktown. i had a great salad and we caught up on their patio. it was so nice. later that night, rob and i went to pho&i a new vietnamese/thai place in our neighborhood. i've been wanting to try it because it's the same owners as my favorite cheapo thai place, duck walk. we split an order of crab rangoon and i got spicy fried catfish in a red curry and rob got a spicy fried rice. it was very very spicy but i really liked it! i was excited to try something different. afterwards we went to a show at the metro. it was a good date night.

after a relaxing mani/pedi with my friend darc, i met my girlfriends mary and tara at jam for a delicious dinner. jam originally only did brunch but they expanded to lunch and dinner and man, am i glad they did! we split 2 tasting menus and 1 entree. the tasting menu included a heirloom tomato salad with blue cheese and a chocolate puree - yum! the next course was foie gras ravioli - bigger yum. then we had pork tenderloin on toast with olive tampenade which was very tasty. the entree was a pork chop with quinoa and apricots. super good. and the desserts were to die. one was a panna cotta with fruit on top and the other was a chocolate hazelnut cake with melted chocolate on the inside with ice cream on the side sprinkled with hazelnuts. we ended up ordering another of the cake because it was so damn good. i really liked it and i'd definitely recommend it.

on sunday i laid around a lot to try to feel better and eventually met all my rugby friends out for burgers at urban burger bar. i was pretty disappointed. the service was not very good and the food was sub-par. i had a braised short rib burger with warm onions and a fennel slaw. it was good but i was bummed everyone else's food was just ok. all the burgers came out SO rare. and they forgot toppings on one of them. not cool! regardless, it was lots of fun to see everyone and catch up!

overall it was a great weekend full of food, friendship and love. couldn't ask for anything more.