First Day in Chicago

We had a nice flight from P-Town to the Windy City and Andrew was there to pick us up. Henriët had rehearsal and met us at home shortly after we got there.
We spent a few minutes hanging out.

Carla brought her needlepoint; Andrew is hanging out 

Henriët hanging with me on the couch wearing a beautiful Africa shirt

I'm working a crossword puzzle

After a bit we headed downtown for dinner. Henriët is part of a South African expatriate group. Through the group she heard about Cafe Dodo; a little diner that occasionally spends a month or so on new cuisines. We were lucky enough to be in town when they are doing South African food.

The waitstaff were great. I wish we wouldn't have dug in so fast. I didn't get any pictures of the plates.

The menu lent itself to having a number of small and large dishes and sharing family style. They even renamed the cafe for the South African theme!

As appetizers we had biltong, black-eyed pea salad, and carrot salad. The black-eyed peas were fantastic, as was the biltong; we got 2 orders of biltong to take home.
For dinner we had small dishes of umfino which were similar to collard greens, and mealie pap which are kind of like grits. but better. They were very creamy and tasty. For large plates we had the ginger beef ribs, groundnut stew, and potjiekos. My favorite was the groundnut stew. I tried to keep it by my plate so the others couldn't get to it. We were not big fans of the potjiekos; Henriët and Andrew say it was way too dry; it should have been much more stew-like

For dessert we had Melktart. They've been working on this dish for a couple of months and keep getting hints from the South Africans who eat there. They obviously were paying attention as it was delicious.

Sorry I didn't get pictures of the plated food; I'll work on it.

After we got back we wanted to stretch our legs a bit so took a walk over to Lincoln Square which is about 1/2 mile from their place.

As when I visited in May, there was a festival going on with a fun band and lots of people hanging out.

Our plan for tomorrow is to hit Navy Pier and take a cruise up the short of Lake Michigan. Henriët has rehearsal at 7:00 PM so we get to spend the day together.