Foodie Adventures: the Goddess, Wow Bao, and a Goat

If there is a theme for the day, it’s Google Home.

It’s everywhere in Chicago. It’s on billboards. It on computer ads. It’s on TV. It’s in cabs. It’s on the walls in the malls. And, now it has become bus stops.

For some reason, Google is really really pushing this product. I’ve never seen them act so aggressively when selling a product; and, I’m wondering why.

I think it’s because Home pulls together all the software (both built and acquired) that Google has been gathering over the past few years. There is a bigger play, and we’re now just seeing it come together.

Breakfast. Goddess and the Baker.

For a moment in the morning, I thought that I had run out of good coffee options to explore in Chicago. Then I realized that there’s a concerted effort to sabotage certain cafes in the city… and drive them down in-app and map results. As such, I REALLY dug through pages and pages of coffee recommendations until I found the Goddess and the Baker.

This is my new favourite coffee shop in Chicago. Hands down. The vibe is energetic. The coffee is delicious and the perfect size. Sure, the service was a bit disorganized, but the resulting coffee on the other end made up for the extra minute of waiting time.

The barista knows how to pull a shot without making it bitter and how to heat milk to the right temperature. The bean they use is slightly fruity.

On the other side of the counter, they are a plethora of different baked items for a variety of food preferences (gf, v, nut-free). For a rare moment in my life, I had to choose between the gf options that were available (instead of going to two separate places for coffee and food).

Walking to work after the experience was a wonderful thing because it felt good to find such a great place!

Lunch. Fusion. Wow Bao.

Bad. Just really really bad. I don’t want to talk/write about it. I ate maybe two spoonfuls before throwing it out.

I feel bad for this place… to be sandwiched between two fantastic restaurants on one day. And, it was already terrible, to begin with. Now it just seems extraordinarily terrible.

Dinner. American Tapas. A Girl and a Goat.

The moment I hit the ground in Chicago (or rather… the moment I found out I’d be in Chicago) I booked a reservation at A Girl and a Goat. I managed to score a crappy time on my last day in the city but I snagged it because the foodie-rumour-mill says it’s nearly impossible to get in without months of notice.

This is how it works for us foodie travellers… we immediately find the best restaurant… we put our name on a reservation list sometime in the impossible future… and we hope we don’t get rolled off the project before we get to experience the food.

This time it worked.

I can’t even begin to explain the fantastic-ness that is A Girl and a Goat; everything we tried on the menu was off the charts delicious.

The cuttlefish (above) was so good we ordered it twice, the goat liver pate came with freshly baked bread, and the entire evening just became a sea of one delicious food after another.

I’m happy that we managed to make A Girl and a Goat work; it was worth the wait and became a great last dinner in Chicago.