My parents Chicago visit. Lots of amazing dining...

This weekend my parents visited. It was really awesome. They haven’t visited since Hiromi moved back - and they really wanted to see her. So they stopped by for a quick trip and some excellent dining.

They got in Thursday night - so Hiromi and myself went downtown and visited them at the Hard Rock Hotel and had a nice quick drink. They stayed on the same floor (the Frank Zappa floor) and the exact same room as Hiromi and I - when we last stayed in the Hard Rock. heh. Weird.

So the excitement started on Friday. My parents came and met Hiromi for lunch. I wasn’t able to accompany because I was at Fogo De Chao with the skinnyCorp eating an awesome spring Fogo lunch. Hiromi and my parents ended up going to Smokin Woody’s and then hanging out at the Red Eye cafe that is next door to my place. They then walked down to skinnyCorp and hung out in Charlie’s booth and rocked out a bit. We ere able to snag a quick reservation for Green Zebra to start off our eating just right.

For those of you who have never been to Green Zebra - you should stop what you are doing and make a reservation right now. It is amazing. Totally awesome vegetarian friendly food. They have such a great menu and the atmosphere is really nice. I love it. My parents also loved it. Even Tag -who hates vegetarian food thought it was amazing. We spent a long time just hanging out and talking. The only downside is that green zebra was more than my parents airfare out to Chicago. hah.

After having such a nice dinner - Hiromi, Tag and myself went to sonotheque and had a couple too many drinks. heh. Then home.

Then on Saturday - we walked around and got hiromi a nice coat, ate at the South Water Kitchen. The South Water Kitchen is located right by the Hard Rock and we had a really nice brunch/lunch. The service was amazing and the food was simple. Afterwards we chilled out a bit and did some shopping and eventually made our way up to Clark and Foster to meet up with Matiss and Erica at LaDonna for dinner.

LaDonna has a amazing selection of pastas and accompanying sauces. You choose a pasta and a sauce and hope for the best - which is really pretty easy. I had lobster ravioli with a tomato cream sauce. So good. Everyone seemed really happy about their dinner choices and we had a good time - even though the service was really bad. It was really nice to have dinner with Matiss and Erica - and nice that my parents were finally able to meet Erica.

We then all went home. Hiromi and I have been getting more and more sick and Saturday night was the peak of our sickness. We came home and watched Blood Diamond. It was quite good. Really sad. Hiromi was sad to have a diamond ring after she watched it. What is interesting is how you cannot tell if your Diamond is conflict free. You just have to not have diamonds. Stupid De Beers and their monopoly. It is worth watching.

So Sunday came and Hiromi and I in our Nyquil induced slumber accidentally slept late. We finally met my parents about 1pm for lunch. We went to Smith and Wollensky’s, where we had an excellent steak lunch. It was not as light as our previous meals and was quite nice. I had a pepper encrusted filet and my father had the filet Oscar. Both quite good. My mom had amazing truffle mac and cheese and Hiromi had a really nicely prepared fish. It was awesome.

After lunch we went to Macy’s to check out Lush and to get some medicine at Merz. I have been a bit under the weather for the past couple weeks and Hiromi has been taking great care of me. She has picked up a number of homeopathic medicines and I really like it. I have taken to calling it hiromiopathic - because she takes such good care. So now that she is sick I need to step up and take the best care too.

After our quick little shopping excursion - we went to the worst movie I have ever seen. It was called Astronaut Farmer. Hands down the most cliche insane movie ever. It was so bad. I wished I could have fallen asleep. But we enjoyed the horror that it was.

To pay our selves back for witnessing such a horrible monstrosity that was Astronaut Farmer - we went to AVEC for dinner. Avec is probably one of my favorite restaurants in the city. I love it. it has such a good atmosphere and the staff is always very nice and accommodating. And the food is amazing. We had some really great cheese and of course awesome olives. I had a really nice proscuitto and a really awesome parsnip dish. The dessert was an incredible grapefruit sorbet - it really topped off an amazing meal. So tasty.

So that brings us to now. It has been an amazing time. I am really glad that my parents were able to make it. The only thing that would have made it better is if Dylan and Sarah were here as well. But that will have to wait until another time.