Goose Island Brewery

Day 1: If you thought we would take it easy on our first day, well, I don't think you read the intro, ;). That's ok. So, we kicked off our morning promising each other that we would be really good until we got to Chicago... and then we got to the airport. After a morning of scrambling to find ID for Anisha, hastily packing up last minute, and making our way through (surprisingly lax) LaGuardia security we found ourselves starving. Despite our best intentions and a 10 minute struggle to convince ourselves to go for the ridiculously overpriced fruit salad, we succumbed to our baser instincts and went for an otherwise unmemorable bacon, egg, and cheese, distinguished only by the fact that it was our first meal of our vacation. It's ok though, because we split... right? ...Right!?!

Moving on. Zip through time to around 1:30pm CT and we've managed to make our way across 8 states (ok, ok, so I made that number up - I'm really bad at geography), one time zone, and an inestimable number of miles (yes, I know they tell you how many miles your flight is, but I didn't check. Did I mention I'm also lazy?), and we found ourselves sitting comfortably in a booth at one of Chicago's preeminent breweries - and much to our surprise (cover your eyes food snobs!) gastropubs - Goose Island. Now, if there is one alcoholic beverage that I love above and beyond all others, it's beer - at least at the time of this blog post, :). So imagine my excitement when the menu comes around and beers that I have trouble finding on the East Coast are on tap.

As I perused through the choices my eyes landed on the (Ipa and stout, insert language). Anisha, being a big fan of Belgians and wheats (imagine how she gets when she finds that unholy union known as a Belgian wheat), went for the 312 Urban Wheat Ale. As we were waiting for the beers to arrive our eyes turned to the menu. Knowing we had an epic meal coming up in a few short hours - more on that later - we decided to go with a "light" meal. And by that, I mean we limited ourselves to one dish - Duck Poutine.

This bad boy came with duck confit, roasted shallots, and duck demiglace - better yet, since we mentioned we were splitting, the kitchen brought us two equally humongous plates of perfectly crisp fries drowning in squeaky, oozing curds and over-the-top rich duck gravy. Oh, and we went for two more beers – a cask conditioned oatmeal stout that put a smile on my face for myself, and Anisha got a beer that she can’t remember. Lightweight. Can I just say that the Canadians absolutely do not get enough credit for inventing this wondrous dish of caloric death in a bowl? Magic, just magic. Canada, I salute you. You're like the little cousin that no one ever expects much out of, so when you do deliver it's that much sweeter! (I kid, I kid! Please, no hate mail. Although I'm sure it would be the politest hate mail ever.) I digress - so to summarize, Goose Island had great food, a great beer, and it was all really affordable. The portions were big enough to split and they had a ton of interesting dishes that won't necessarily expand your culinary perspective, but they'll make you damn happy and, of course, the beers were fantastic. Go there. Do it. Like, now.

Tune in tomorrow for din din…