Our second team dinner was at Ditka’s Restaurant. Yes, that Ditka.
It’s primarily a steak spot. Also, there’s lots of drinking. And plenty of TV’s for sports watching.
We ordered a bunch of oysters to start. These suckers were huge, like they were on steroids!
The angus prime rib. It is heavy aged and slow roasted, served with burgundy mushrooms, horseradish cream, and au jus.


The tomahawk! It was a special that night and beyond expensive. Look how caveman this thing is!
The filet, 8 oz. of center cut prime.
The Filet Medallions – 3 Ways. We have horseradish, blue cheese, and oscar styles.
I was the lone weirdo who did not get a steak. Yeah, at a steak house. Whatever. I got the Blackened Mahi Mahi. There were two healthy sized hunks of grilled fish with two different sauces – cilantro pesto and smoked tomato. Oh, and a bunch of mixed rice. I loved this! I liked both sauces but definitely preferred the smoked tomato. The rice was also a winner.
We also got a few sides to share. The truffle fries were kind of amazing! The sweet corn dish with cheese was even better. It was sweet, it was sour, it was awesome.
The smashed sweet potatoes with bacon was also good. I am a huge fan of all their sides!
Last but not least, we all ended up sharing this giant piece of chocolate cake. Oh, it was delicious, and there was still some left over.
Also, earlier in the trip, I went and had some pierogi at Pierogi Heaven. These were, by far, the best pierogi I’ve ever had. I tried potato with cheese and sauerkraut. They’re served with bacon and lovely sweet caramelized onions. I imagine they’re just like your polish grandmother would make!

I recently got a chance to go to Chicago and actually hang out for about a day before having to do what I went there for, which is work. It’s a pretty cool town. It was unseasonably warm as well, so it was especially nice to wander about.
Our first team dinner was at Giordano’s, so we could try chicago-style deep-dish pizza. The pies take awhile to cook, so you order your food in advance while you wait for it to cook and while you wait for an open table. There are plenty of bars to keep you busy during the wait.
We also ordered a regular thin-crust pie for those not into the deep-dish. This wasn’t particularly exciting to me.
Here’s a plain deep-dish. The size of this pie was huge. It was almost scary. And the depth was also surprising. I had never experienced genuine chicago-style pizza. Plus, I actually don’t really like deep-dish pizzas, in general. But this thing? I surprised myself and really enjoyed it. It’s mostly cheese, and that’s no exaggeration at all. It’s just filled with pounds of melted cheese. There’s a bit of a crust at the bottom and up the sides. But basically, you’re looking at a big hunk of melted cheese. A delicious hunk of melted cheese. I could barely eat one slice. After that, I was pretty much done!
Oh, and right after I got to my hotel, I walked to Hendrickx Belgian Bread Crafter and had an almond croissant. This thing was really different from any croissant I’d had before. I highly recommend it!

There are a thousand and one sushi choices in center city. So we pretty much just ended up at Wasabi House, just by picking a neighborhood and roaming around. The dining room is small, and it really seems to be mostly a take-out joint. Their normal house salad thing with the ginger dressing is HUGE! I wanted something refreshing and crunchy so I ordered the cucumber salad, because it said hot & spicy. This thing was totally korean! And I loved it.
Here’s Wasabi House’s version of Sushi Regular. While it tasted fine, my problem with it was that there were multiple pieces of some of the sushi. With only 7 pieces in total, you only got 3 types of fish and shrimp. Did they run out of other fish that day? Is this their normal Sushi Regular? I have to call them out on the lack of variety here.
Here are the tuna and avocado roll and the Fancy Roll (cucumber, avocado, carrots, crabstick). Both of these were fine, but nothing exciting. I have to say, I picked some boring rolls that night! My bad! It wasn’t particularly memorable, but just fine.