What will I miss about Chicago? I
will miss a lot of things about Chicago. I want to start with the neighbourhood
that I stayed in. It is called as Taylor Street, the Italian street. There is a
high-end restaurant, Tuscany at the corner of Taylor and Miller Street. I could
see Tuscany and it’s parking lot from one of my apartment windows. I loved to
see top notch cars getting parked in the parking lot by the valets, Cadillac,
Mazda, Buick etc. Once, I even saw a red colored Ferrari. I remember one
particular valet who always spoke something loudly in Spanish whenever I passed
by Tuscany’s parking lot.I will miss the
chatter of the people dining in Tuscany, the clinking of the knives and forks
on the white ceramic plates. I will always remember the way they looked at me
while eating their exquisite Italian pasta or spaghetti as though I was some
exhibit walking by.
I will miss the cozy thai
restaurant, ‘Thai Bowl’ in which the UIC students got a 10 % discount. I never
failed to avail that discount when I was a student. I was a student for a long
enough time, for about 5.5 years and in all those years I must have saved at
least 100 bucks, thanks to Thai Bowl. I miss the wonderful times I spent with
my friends in that restaurant. I used to take the fortune cookies as dessert. As
I edged close to 25, I started taking an extra fortune cookie for my would-be
life partner, whoever that would be. Whenever, I looked at my fortune, it
reminded me of my uncle’s fortune. It said, ‘You just realized how futile your life is’. May be the guy who wrote the fortune cookie got pissed off that he has
to write fortune for others when he himself cannot find his fortune. I will
miss all the times I sat outside the restaurant with friends in summer, in the
small enclosure decorated with small pretty pink and blue flowers and batted
the mosquitoes as we ate chicken satay, thai fired rice, basil chicken and drank
thai iced tea. One time, I had a fired banana for dessert. I could not
understand why the chef had to torture the fruit by dipping it in dough and
deep frying it. I felt sad for the banana and never had it again.
There used to be an Italian
lemonade shop, Mario’s Italian Lemonade, right across Thai Bowl. It was a
famous destination. Every summer after the store opened on May 1st a
long queue of people used to stand in line to savor the lemonade, which was just
crushed ice flavoured with fruit flavoured syrups. Sometimes, tourist buses
used to stop in front of Mario’s Lemonade and the tourists loved having the
cold lemonade in that hot weather. The cost of the lemonade was $1. I used to
crib about the price. It was expensive for just crushed ice with syrup on top of
it. In spite of all my boisterously voiced complaints with friends, I ended up in the line
on May 1st of every summer. It was an iconic little shop on that
iconic street and no one can move away from that shop without enjoying the lemonade.
A cute little cupcake shop,
Flirty cupcakes, opened up across Tuscany, just at the time when I was about to
leave. The cupcakes were expensive about 5 bucks for a two-bite sized cupcake.
But, when you bite into the cupcake, it was soft and moist and the core was
juicy. It soon became my favorite spot. I used to enjoy at least one cupcake every
two weeks.
There is a lot more to tell about
Taylor Street. I will continue it some other time.
**************************************************************************
All images are taken from google images
Flirty cupcakes: www.hertown.com
Tuscany: www.skyscrapercity.com
Mario's Italian Lemonade: noshameadventures.blogspot.com
Thai Bowl: www.tumblr.com
Do you remember any of the comments about would be partner? Do you think at least one is true now?
ReplyDeleteThe fortunes were mostly related to time or money. There were hardly any regarding relationships.
ReplyDeletenice post bhabhi... vividly written :)
ReplyDelete