Oak Park: An Evening on the Town

Today, my family and I (excluding my dad who was at work) met up with one of my mom’s friends in downtown Oak Park. There’s a program there called “Thursday Night Out” where you can buy ticket books that are redeemable for certain dishes at 18 different restaurants around the downtown area. One dish is one ticket period end of story so it’s pretty cool, and there’s a nice variety too. My mom and my younger siblings stuck with her friend and kids and we older siblings all went our own ways. Each ticket booklet has 4 tickets, which may not seem like so much, but that qualifies for things from lemonade to pizza to Pad Thai to burritos to chicken wings. So being me, I was at first paralyzed by the smorgasbord of choices available, but I finally decided where to go first. Soon after, I also decided that I would only eat non-American food. There were some cool options for dessert that were American, along with main dishes, but I figured it’d be great to try something new or at least partially unfamiliar. Now before I go into case studies of where I went and what I got, I also decided that I would take a picture of each dish I got and the storefront too. So I’m inserting the pictures into this post too so you can really get a feel for the food (or at least your soon-to-be-salivating tongue can…) I’m also including the description of each dish that came with the menu.

P.S. Sorry that the pictures cropped everything so weirdly. I type up the blog without the theme and the margins are a lot bigger so I didn’t realize what would happen.

Restaurant 1: King and I Thai Restaurant.

 Dish: Pad Thai Chicken (Fried rice noodles, tofu, egg, bean sprouts, green onions, and ground peanut topping)

An interesting note, I actually walked into a different Asian restaurant before finding this one. I felt so stupid, but you come up on these small places really quickly and I thought the sign said something like a Pad Thai place. Guess not…Anyway, the noodles here were fantastic, thought that may be due to the fact that I was the hungriest at this point but who cares. They weren’t too greasy and none of the other ingredients were overpowering. It wasn’t too salty like some restaurant and lots of Asian food is, so that was a pleasant surprise. I liked the way all the flavors and textures blended together and all the ingredients I liked in the first place so I was quite pleased.

 

Restaurant 2: Jerusalem Café. Dish: Falafel Sandwich (Seasoned ground chickpeas and veggies, deep friend in a pita pocket)

This dish was quite interesting. The main ingredients beside the chickpeas were sliced cucumbers and a sauce that went with it in the pita pocket. The cool, crunchy contrast with the warmer and differently textured fried chickpeas was quite refreshing, though the chickpeas seemed a little too deep fried for my taste. Then again, I’ve never found roasted chickpeas awesome. I absolutely adore hummus, whose main ingredient is chickpeas, but these seemed a bit overpowered by their cooking. The cucumbers were nice though. The sandwich wasn’t too messy and only a bit of sauce and a few slices of tomato fell out so I was thankfully not trying to eat it and simultaneously contain it (something I hate doing).

 

Restaurant 3: Khyber Pass. Dish: Frontier Chicken with Rice (Thin strips of chicken cooked in onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes)

This dish, which I was unable to finish on account of being full, was also somewhat of a mixed bag. First of all, as the pictures indicate, the food was in tubs and so I don’t know if having it on a plate or in bowls might’ve somehow subconsciously made them seem tastier. Anyway, the red sauce the meat was in complimented everything well, as did the onions, peppers, and tomatoes did to the chicken. I also poured some of the rice into the chicken dish because it was kind of plain tasting on its own. It also had it’s own taste that I wasn’t familiar with in rice and didn’t like as much as normally cooked rice. Maybe it was the yellow flavoring because I’m used to my mom making Mexican yellow rice. Anyway, I’m hoping that everything will taste better tomorrow when I’m not as full.

 

Restaurant 4: Mancini’s.  Dish: Gelati Stracciatella (Italian style chocolate chip ice cream)

As you can see in the picture, this was a huge serving and it was already dripping down the sides onto the top of the other food container. I had to finish it at home because it was too much and had to balance it on top of the other two containers the whole car ride home. The difficulty was augmented by the fact that it had melted completely and so was quite slosh-prone. Anyway, as I said, this probably would’ve tasted better if my stomach was not at its bursting point when I first got it, but either way, it wasn’t my favorite. Now make no mistake: I love ice cream, and I love Italian ice cream, but I don’t like those chocolate chip flakes in it. I like more American brownie or chocolate candy pieces in my ice cream (Think: Culver’s flavor of the day frozen yogurt). If I could do it all over again, I would’ve gotten plain vanilla ice cream and probably would’ve been happier.

 

So yeah, this was a blast to do, and for 12 bucks, I will definitely push to have us do this again sometime in the future.