Chicago, Chicago...
My second business trip to Chicago in six months was for a conference. In terms of conference food, not much needs to be said beyond the fact that it was “bleah�. Not the worst conference food ever, but not the best; my group maintains an official company blog, so they have been treated to all of my snarky comments about the conference, speakers, content, etc. As an aside, it was kind of interesting to see a former competitor in action and to run into a former client (who was just as schizoid with them as he was with us). And, the conference was somewhat interesting, so the trip was at least worth it from a lessons learned perspective.
On a personal level, Chicago was very nice as well. I was able to see my Great-Uncle Chester and Great-Aunt Helen, always a treat. They’ve been married for 67 years, an absolutely mind boggling amount of time. Chester and I went to dinner and Helen gave me some shoes. I hope that I’m able to get to Chicago and see them again, before...
I managed to catch the Hotel Amalfi happy hour (which is one of my favorite hotels EVER, excellent breakfast pastries and coffee); they provided a decent selection of wine and beer and great Italian cold cuts – prosciutto, other hams, cheeses, some grilled veggies. Also, in one of those “wow� moments, someone from a group invited me to join (I had been sitting by myself, eating, enjoying my glass of syrah, thinking about what to write in my work blog posts) and I ended up spending some time with the youngish and fun lawyers, all of whom came from other areas and had New Orleans in common. Some had survived Hurricane Katrina, a sobering event that they referred to with a tone of having dealt with and now moving on.
Later, I met up with Dave, a former colleague, now a suave and handsome grad student happily enjoying the challenges of business school. We went to Shaw’s, a prototypical Chicago restaurant with leather booths, wood paneling and a giant menu of old world favorites. We split a dozen oysters, our favorite by far were the Raspberry Point (crassostrea virginica) from Prince Edward Island, which were on the smaller end, light, crisp and tangy, our second favorites the Blashke Island (crassostrea gigas) from Alaska, also on the smaller end. I have no idea what the words in parenthesis indicate, since Dave took the menu and e-mailed the names to me; I’m assuming that they are the “scientific� classifications, but could also be a joke on Dave’s part (let's see how gullible Schelley is!). The crab cakes were very delicious, with huge chunks of crab. A bottle of Australian sauvignon blanc (as usual, can’t remember the name, but it opened up so well and tasted of pears and melon and other summery fruits) went very well with the meal, especially the oysters.
It turns out that Nilay and I crossed paths in Chicago, specifically at the intersection of the B and C terminals of O’Hare airport. I was flying out, he was flying in and our worlds collided (we’d actually figured this out the night before, but I have to admit that the sentence sounds a bit dramatic). In a sign of what our lives are like, this is the second time in about a year that I’ve met up with a friend at the airport as we were leaving/arriving (the other time was with Greg, which I blogged about and would link to, but it’s on the server that is unplugged in someone’s garage in London). Anyways…after receiving precise directions from the help lady, and then confusing her (again, Nilay, what were you thinking?), we trekked from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3, to the K1 gate, to dine at O’Hare’s Wolfgang Puck restaurant. At any other place, I would have deemed the restaurant “ok�, but for an airport, it wasn’t bad. I had a Caesar salad and salmon, Nilay tortilla soup and chicken, and we split a bottle of cab and sorbet for dessert. Life, indeed.