We had to head up past North Chicago to get near all of these pharmaceutical companies. We were starving, and we were lucky enough to end up up in a random strip mall that happened to have a Jimmy John’s. Turns out it’s J’s favorite sandwich place! I remember seeing one in downtown Philadelphia, and being curious about it, but had never had any real desire to give it a try. Here was my chance! You have to love a place that has a neon sign that says “Free Smells”. I liked it already.

So Jimmy John’s started in Champaign, IL. It’s a brilliant idea really. What do college kids want to eat? Pizza and sandwiches I presume. And here’s Jimmy John’s now, a big chain. They sell sandwiches, people, just sandwiches. And there’s not too much variety. The bread is white. They call it a french roll, but it’s really not. When I think french bread, I think crusty. This roll is incredibly thin, but chewy and dense. It kind of defies logic, actually, because of how thin it is. Seriously, if you look at a profile of the sandwich, it’s like there’s not even any bread there. But it’s delicious. And it’s the only bread they have. The ingredients are simple as well. It’s cold cuts, and they slice it all onsite. They only have one kind of cheese, provolone. And as boring and plain as this all looks, the sandwich was quite delicious. Sometimes, being complicated just complicates things. I quite enjoyed my simple turkey sub. They have some chips, some drinks, maybe even some cookies. But that’s about it. And that’s all I need. I’ll be happy to try this again!

After hosting a little breakfast for customers, we headed back down to chicago, proper, to grab some lunch. T decided to take us to Flat Top Grill, which happens to be smack dab across the street from Harpo Studios. I was sold! Flat Top Grill is a chain that is basically a create-your-own-stir-fry kind of joint (mongolian grill-like), only with tons more choices and options. Here’s what I ended up with at the  end.

So you grab a bowl and fill it up with whatever you want. There’s rice and various noodles. There’s veggies up the wazoo. Then you sauce it up. They recommend you to put in 5 ladles of sauces. Not only are there asian sauces (teriyaki, sesame garlic, pad thai, etc.) there are indian sauces as well so you can really create whatever type of crazy stir-fry you want. Just make it up! Then you take a little bowl and put in your meat of choice. They have beef, chicken, etc, and even calamari.

Here’s where it starts getting interesting. Next, you start sticking these colored wands into your bowl of what you want. If you want your bowl made into a soup, stick that stick in. If you want lettuce wraps, then use the green stick. If you want mu-shu, which is basically an asian burrito, then the stick is clear. Adding tofu requires a stick. So does a shrimp skewer, which costs extra. Start sticking!

I went with rice noodles, a bunch of veggies, calamari, random sauces, and added sticks for eggs and roti prata bread. By the way, the roti prata bread is like beyond awesome. More on how awesome later.

Then they’ll throw your bowls on the grill, stir-fry it up for you, and then deliver your bowl to your table. Whee!

They also have some random other items on the menu that do not involve you creating your own edible masterpiece. We got this shrimp spring roll appetizer. It was pretty good, but you could tell it was made awhile back, as the rice wrapper had gotten hard. Hard and crunchy rice wrapper on a spring roll is not pleasant! But the innards were quite fine.

J was still sick, so he decided to get his creation made into a soup. Look how great that looks! It’s a great big noodley soup bowl. Yum!

So if you want, you can get a piece of the roti bread with your food. It’s really freakin good. So good that I asked them if they could make me a roti grilled cheese, and they totally did! Two pieces of this delicious roti with ooey gooey cheese in between. I was lovin it! My arteries probably were not, but who cares! This was a fun lunch. It’s great for those people who are extremely picky and want complete control of what is in their food.

Also, after the lunch, we walked across the street to see if we could sneak into Harpo Studios. Well, we ended up being in the audience for the Nate Berkus show! No sneaking was necessary! I mean, that wouldn’t have been possible anyway. The place is like fort knox. Oprah wasn’t at the studio that day, but heck, I was still in the very studio where she tapes! It was glorious!

After the company event, we did need to have a proper dinner. So we walked over to the Bubba Gump at Universal CityWalk. Yes, it’s a chain. Yes, it’s based on Forrest Gump. Yes, it’s a tourist trap. It’s decorated with all types of Forrest Gump related kitsch, and they even play the movie on tv’s.

Some restaurants have a green side / red side system. Some have buzzers. Bubba Gump has these little “Run Forrest Run” and “Stop Forrest Stop” signs if you need to fetch a server for any reason. It works!

Ok, so there were a bunch of us there and we were still waiting for more, but didn’t want to wait. So we ordered up a bunch of appetizers. Shrimp cocktail! Who doesn’t love shrimp cocktail? Well, people that don’t like shrimp, I suppose. Boo to those people! Oh, and I had a strawberry lemonade, which was delicious!

A freakin tower of onion rings! Yes, I can see how this would definitely be fun, especially for kids. Lucky for Bubba Gump, they taste pretty good too! I like onion rings in general, but I prefer to eat the onion, with very little of the batter. But it was hard to remove the batter with these ones.

Cajun shrimp! These little suckers were sauteed in a spicy cajun butter sauce. These are deceptively spicy! They were very good.

This is a shrimp restaurant so we really did stick with shrimp dishes. We got 3/4 lb of the Shrimper’s Net Catch Garlic Spice peel-n-eat and another 3/4 lb in Cajun Spice. These were so good! If you don’t like peeling your own shrimp, then obviously, avoid these. But these were quite good. Both the garlic ones and the cajun ones were good. It was actually best to mix the two together. After everyone else showed up, we did also order the steamed shellfish, which was a mix of mix of steamed mussels, clams, snow crab, lobster claw, and shrimp. It was also served with jasmine rice, cole slaw, and garlic bread. I immediately absconded the rice and cole slaw. M was nice enough to peel me some random things and give them to me, so I didn’t even have to do any work! Thanks M!

So you know I avoid chains as much as possible. But there are times it’s unavoidable. I enjoyed my meal here, I know, it’s surprising. But it was fun. So now I know that I can always have Bubba Gump’s in my back pocket as a decent chain option. Thanks Forrest Thanks!