holly's chicago weekend part 4

continued from holly's chicago weekend part 3 (here) ...
saturday
lara came over on saturday morning. while holly and i had grand plans of heading out to a farmer's market early in the morning and whipping up some farm fresh breakfast for lara's arrival, we instead all kind of slept in and decided we'd go out for brunch instead.

morning
miss lara came over. yay!!! it was so great to see her!
we walked to brunch and had a lovely time catching up with lara.
on our walk back home, we spotted a scripps license plate frame and tried to take a self portrait of our faces at the butt of a stranger's car.  not weird or anything.

afternoon
we went for mani/pedis and then saw lara off with her friends for the wedding they were all attending.  so sad to see her go.
late afternoon
sarah came over and she got to play with miss piper and talk to patrick for awhile. piper LOVED sarah. she wanted to BE sarah, and by the end of the visit, piper was sporting sarah's shades and gold iphone. 

 snuggled up in sarah's lap

becoming mini sarah

evening
eventually, our stomachs started to grumble, but we were in a low key kind of mood. we decided to go to a BYOB called Urban Belly.

instead of going to the wine shop around the corner, i thought it'd be fun to go to a wine shop over in the noble square area, a slowly emerging neighborhood, where they usually have several bottles of wine open for tasting. however, we had a self-proclaimed pot head helping us and she was super weird. we settled on a luis pato wine out of portugal, instead of something from the $10 rack that our pot head was steering us toward. again, she was so weird.

we finally headed over to Urban Belly. it's a small communal dining style restaurant, owned by chef bill kim his wife yvonne, which boasts itself as 'noodles reimagined.' it's definitely out of the way, but the chef has an interesting background including that he was sous chef and chef de cuisine at charlie trotter's (which has been awarded best restaurant in the country and the world, over the years). he wanted to get away from fine dining, and opened his own restaurant under his and his wife's own creative concepting. urban belly received a bib gourmand star from the michelin guide for 2011, but i heard there was a lot of controversy with those awards last year?

food reviewer steve dolinsky says this, "In many ways, the restaurant feels like a response to David Chang's wild success in New York with his Momofuku empire. Both guys are Korean; both love pig and both have set-up shop in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Kim has been honing his recipes and adding his own Korean spin. Like Chang, who began in a gritty part of the Lower East Side, Kim opted to open his "baby" as he called it, on a similarly desolate stretch of North California Avenue, in what might graciously be called Avondale, although local real estate agents might stretch it and say Far North Logan Square."

bill kim's second restaurant is a block away from us, and has a korean-latin influence; it's called belly shack. 

i didn't want to eat in my own backyard while having guests in town, so thought we'd venture out, but i think i made the wrong call! look sarah, belly shack has gluten free choices!!!

The "Shack" is located under the Western Blue Line Station and decorated with Banksy-inspired graffiti decorating the walls. Belly Shack is Bill Kim and his wife, Yvonne Cadiz-Kim's new Latin-Asian inspired casual dining restaurant. The menu is short and focused, but still takes some risks (there are even several vegetarian/vegan and gluten-free choices).

we took sarah back to her friends' place after dinner, and then we ourselves headed off to bed.

sunday

holly's flight was on sunday, but we did have time to squeeze in brunch.  patrick picked, and off to revolution brewery we went.  it's in the logan square neighborhood.  we definitely took holly to some places a typical tourist would never venture to. 

revolution brewery

i never order pancakes.

not a pancake person.

usually.

but i loved my porter pancakes with michigan cherries, which looked something like the above.

after brunch, a HUGE storm came in and it was time for holly to leave us.

at the airport, she actually got to hang out with lara who was also flying back out!

piper looks sad to see her go.

bye holly!

sorry the weather was so freakishly chilly, we didn't get to spend much time outside, and that our scripps party never came together.  none the less, it was great to spend time with you!