over a pupusa dinner, stopovers at various bars for PBR and PBR-equivalents, a 4am country bar, and finally breakfast at a shlubby 24-hour breakfast chain. Though Sizzlenutz and I combine to make for the perfect man (a smarty phd with an MBA’s income potential), it soon became apparent neither of us would elimiDATE the other since we focused so much on making the other giggle through increasingly solipsistic and abstract memes. It was supposed to be a light, breezy affair with the feel of an MTV dating show. It quickly evolved (or devolved, as the case may be) into a Heart of Darkness psychological journey; only instead of leading us into the forbidden region of man’s soul, we found the mediocre, gooey center of Middle American culture.
The nadir of the evening was reached sometime ‘round 3:30am whilst heatedly arguing whether the sloppy drunk girl in glasses and pink shirt stumblingly line dancing to the live band’s Walk the Line cover was attractive or not. Pupusería Las Delicias (3300 W Montrose Ave) was the launching point for the evening. The pupsas at Las Delicias had an interesting texture, a delightfully non-greasy fill, and overflowing repollo topping. The highlights were the vegetarian chipilin and calabaza pupusas, and the doblado de pollo (a sort of tacos dorados unique to Central America) though the egregiously large pupusa loca comprised of our choice of 5 toppings made a respectable showing; however, I have to admit that I’ve had much better repollo, which is the most crucial aspect for a superior pupusa experience. However, the décor was the real show-stealer.
We never figured out raison d’etre for the flamingo motif, but we plan on showing up Sunday nights for karaoke night (anyone who wants to hear a chittlins rendition of Maná’s Como Quisiera will not be disappointed). BYOB, an awesome pupuseria run by a friendly Guatemalan, and karaoke…if you can’t be happy here you’ll never be happy.We went to several bars after that, at some point I had a not-bad pear salad at a bar in Logan Square where men wore tight-fitting v-neck sweaters, skinny jeans, and looked like they were singers in independent rock bands, which is as useful for identifying a Logan Square bar as saying you remembered an Indian kid at the spelling bee. We got to Hungry Brain in Roscoe Village in time for last-call. Sizzlenutz is on this place’s bone for some reason, which makes sense given that as my friend he must have an affinity for balding, bearded intellectuals in v-neck sweaters.
The headlining venue for the evening was Carol’s Pub (4659 N Clark), a 4am country bar in Uptown. Like many things in life, there was no way the experience could have matched the expectations preceding it; still, more than once we found ourselves uttering, “man, this is a real shit show”. The clientele was evenly split between older and younger, although they all shared similar beer bellies and bad white-people rhythm. I actually enjoyed the live band’s performance of accessible country music anthems, but I’m still angry about the ugly, loudmouth girls that felt they were entitled to cut to the front of the men’s restroom line ahead of us bipedal relievers. Seriously, girls, you have to be really good looking to get away with that…and I’m not saying like 15 years ago in your freshman year of college. Unfortunately, that was more representative of the crowd than the exception.
Though exhaustion weighed heavily on all of us, we could not go home without stopping at 24-hour breakfast landmark, the Golden Nugget (1765 W Lawrence Ave).
Needless to say, by this time my best food critiquing was behind me, though I will say that GN’s modest exterior belies its relatively high prices (you just feel everything is $2-3 more than it should be). More laughs were had. Chlodnik and Sizzlenutz took my favorite picture by far of the evening. Closing January and leading into February, love was in the air, but we were upwind from it. NEXT!Follow us on our food map
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