Saturday, August 20, 2011.
The Art Of Walking Your Feet Off. Leaving Late And Dinnerless.
Our last day in Chicago, but a full one. The train doesn't leave until eight tonight. I skipped breakfast and slept late, though not as late as Mary Leigh did.
Our plan for the day included a return to the Art Institute, lunch, then shopping at the old Marshall Field's. But a line of thunderstorms we could not ignore was headed to Chicago. We left the hotel before it arrived and cabbed it to the art museum. We were too early, but this proved lucky. We were about twenty people from the head of the line, and by the time the doors opened the line went well down the block.
An articulate man advised the queue how they should line up (down the sidewalk, not to the curb). He also told jokes and noted various points of interest. For example, this spot was the exact eastern end of the historic Route 66. Just before the doors open, he admitted that he didn't work for the museum, but was a homeless person with a small magazine to sell for two dollars. I bought one, and wondered how good a living this guy makes from his little scam. His glibness would make him a good waiter, but maybe he makes more doing this.
Mary Leigh and I explored all the rooms we'd missed in our first pass through the Art Institute. Mostly modern art. We agreed that a clear dividing line could be discerned between the artists with unique points of view and artistic talent, and those with the points of view but not much actual ability at constructing visuals. Conceptual art never did much for me, and ML seems to feel the same way. She's the one who brought up the silliness of the gigantic tree trunk. An artist whose name we don't remember saw it on the side of the road and felt it must be memorialized. He had a plaster (?) cast of the tree made. But only after having the trunks sawed into many pieces and sent to an artisan in Japan who did the actual casting. In his notes the artist tried to engender our sympathy by telling how many times he had to go to Japan to oversee the process. The casting of the tree moved nothing in either our minds or hearts.
The high points, on the other hand, were very moving. Many Picassos, Dalis, Matisses, and no small number of brilliant pieces by artists I didn't know. A number of paintings by Giorgio de Chirico were on display. I will have to ask Carmelo Chirico whether he's a relative. Also here were Grant Wood's American Gothic and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks--two of the most familiar and most-parodied paintings in America. The originals, right there on the walls.
Two hours into this we stopped for lunch in Terzo Piano, the modern Italian eatery we saw the day before while exploring Millennium Park. I was in need of a sit-down, and we were both hungry. Mary Leigh had her doubts about this place, and indeed she found the ravioletto in broth inedible. That was the only item on the menu that appealed even a little to her. I did better with a cold frittata with herbs and a salad. The whole staff had a sort of sacrosanct attitude to this avant-garde food; I couldn't get a laugh out of the waitress no matter what I said. But I guess that's right for an art gallery.
We ambled around the museum for nearly five hours. I was exhausted, almost to falling asleep when I stopped to sit for awhile. Mary Leigh was fascinated by the visuals, though, so I kept going until we really and truly had seen it all.
The first drops of rain had fallen just as we entered the building, and increased into a major thunderstorm. By the time we were ready to go the clouds were gone, the temperature was in the low 80s, and the sun was shining. Our luck on this trip has been almost too good.
To Macy's on State Street. This is the former Marshall Field's, one of the world's greatest department stores. Or used to be. A combination of Macy's corporateness and the shifting of shopping vogues has neutralized the magic. I am old enough to remember the golden age of department stores, and I can use my imagination and memory to make a visit here wonderful again. For Mary Leigh, this was an old store behind the times, grand and impressive but worn out and irrelevant to her. She desperately needs a new purse, and I gave her carte blanche to buy whatever she wanted. But she couldn't find anything, and didn't want to look anymore in this place.
She had another desire prodding her along. With no breakfast or lunch, she was hungry. She wanted Mexican--a surprisingly strong cuisine in Chicago. (This is Rick Bayless's home turf, after all.) Using her iPhone she found just the place: Adobo Grill, in Old Town on the North Side.
Taking cabs in Chicago is easy and cheap, and we did so four or more times a day. The most memorable of our rides was the one from Marshall Field's (I am in solidarity with Chicagoans about the need for Macy's to bring that name back) to Adobo. The driver was a recently-arrived young Irish man. In contrast with all the other drivers, he drove carefully and spoke in hushed tones. Mary Leigh said he was "adorable." He had a little trouble finding the location, and en route we encountered a large area where traffic was being detoured far out of our way. When we finally got there, the driver apologized for the delay and insisted that we owed him only five dollars. Wasn't his fault; I gave him the full fare plus generous tip for charming my daughter. Us Irish guys have to stick together.
The word was that Adobo was very hip and popular. And there was clearly something festive going on in the neighborhood. But we were there so early--about five--that we got a table right away. The menu looked great. Even though it was decidedly Americanized, it was still more interesting than anything we have in New Orleans.
We started with guacamole, made a few feet away from us by an older Hispanic woman who seemed to do nothing else. It was terrific. The queso fundido was unlike any we'd had before, coming as cubes of semi-melted fresh cheese with a matrix of sauce with tomatillos.
Adobo serves four kinds of molé. I had the enchiladas with chicken and molé coloradita. This was a ruddy brown, with a little chocolate in it but mostly made of roasted peppers and sesame. Excellent. Mary Leigh got gorditas filled with pulled pork with ancho chili salsa. That didn't knock her out, but it may have been because of all the guacamole, queso, and tortillas she'd already consumed. I was rather full myself.
An interesting dessert: tamal de chocolat. This was a sort of molten chocolate cake wrapped in cornhusks, served with ice cream. We both loved that. It and the whole dinner made the perfect end to our Chicago visit.
Then to Union Station a little after seven. It was the moment ML was dreading: back on the stinky old train. I tried to lift her spirits by nothing that because we were first-class sleeper passengers, we would be able to wait in the Metropolitan Lounge, where there were free drinks and snacks and a nicer environment than in the terminal at large.
However, the Metropolitan Lounge has gone too long without being refurbished. "It smells just like the train," ML complained. Well, we'd only be here a little while, and then we'd be in our bedroom on the City of New Orleans. "Yeah. Can't wait," she mocked.
One of the other first-class passengers shouted, "Hey! There's water coming from the ceiling!" Why, there sure was. The attendant was alerted. Then the volume of water increased, a ceiling tile broke loose, and a waterfall emerged with a loud splat. My God--in the Metropolitan Lounge? This was getting serious.
An Amtrak employee rolled a garbage can under the gusher, and kept replacing it every few minutes. It was determined that a broken hose in the snack bar in the floor above was the likely culprit. The flow of water was reduced, but never stopped.
In the meantime, we also learned that our train was running late. How could that be? This is the station where it originates. Yeah, but that trainset comes in from San Antonio, and had run very late. It needed to be restocked and the crew needed a rest. So we got a chance to hang out in the Metropolitan Lounge--which seemed to get seedier with each passing moment--for an extra hour and a half. It was almost ten before the City of New Orleans left the station.
They served dinner on board anyway. For the first time in my hundred or so train trips, I passed on the meal and got ready for bed. Mary Leigh had already climbed up into her bunk. "If you wake me up for anything tomorrow morning, I'm going to kill you," she said. I unwound myself in the bottom berth and went right to sleep. The magic carpet made of steel rocked me gently all night long.
Adobo Grill. Chicago: 1610 N. Wells. 312-666-7999.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
