I have been trying to get TW to agree to dinner at Booby’s for WEEKS. For some reason she had it in her head that it was a hot dog place and that’s why she kept turning up her nose at the suggestion. It doesn’t matter that I rambled off all sorts of things I’d seen on their menu, none of which were hot dogs. It didn’t matter that it had a great name or that everything I read indicated this would be a place TW would love. She just kept making that face… the one that means we should find some place else for dinner.

Finally, she grudgingly said yes to Booby’s. On a Wednesday night, which is not a convenient time for me to go out for dinner due to a standing date. But whatever, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity - who knows when she’d be game to try it again.

So we headed out. For some reason I thought it was much further from our house than it actually is. I also thought there was less parking than there actually is. Win. Win!

It wasn’t crowded at 6pm on a Wednesday. But, the folks eating there were interesting. Older folks. Men in suits grabbing their Boobys’ to go. A couple of families.

TW and I ordered Big Boobs and we ordered a Cheeseburger (that doesn’t seem to have a special Booby’s name) for TW’s mom. We ordered a side of onion rings, a side of cole slaw, a side of fried mushrooms and a couple of rice puddings.

It wasn’t fast but it wasn’t slow either. I ate my onion rings on the drive home and they weren’t great but they weren’t bad either.

The Big Boobs on the other hand - amazing. Best. Burgers. If not ever, than definitely the best burgers we have had in ages. They have slaw and onions on them. BBQ sauce that is not exactly BBQ sauce but something else. And, the dill pickle… I need to order a side of dill pickles next time. Awesome pickle. Oh yea, did I mention the slaw was fabulous and I was so glad I ordered an extra side.

As for the rice pudding - I thought I heard TW’s mom say she didn’t like it. Turns out I mis-heard. She loved it. She was comparing it to some fabulous rice pudding from some place else. I know squat about rice pudding (except that it’s disgusting) but TW and her mom liked it and that’s saying something since they are picky about their rice pudding.

I love Booby’s.

On the way home from the Flea Circus, we stopped at The Village Creamery on Waukegan & Oakton primarily because my cousin had recently blogged about visiting the Skokie store and we hadn’t gone yet…

We should have planned to eat dinner there and have dessert because there’s nothing better than a plate of Pancit but I had forgotten they had actual food and it didn’t hit me until we’d already started ordering our ice cream. Ah well, we’ll go back.

Anyway, about the ice cream… there were too many flavors I wanted to try and I was there with too many people who weren’t interested in trying unusual flavors so I couldn’t even bargain for a lick of theirs. I mean really, who goes to a cool ice cream shop with all of those interesting flavors and then orders… chocolate… banana… rocky road… java chip… seriously. I am not taking those people back to the Village Creamery until they agree to step outside the norm.

Thankfully I had TW and she ordered a scoop of Avocado. Awesome. I liked it quite a bit and would order it again. No problem.

I ordered a milkshake made from Maize… it was good but a little too vanilla-y and not quite maize-y enough.

I bought a pint of Queso (with pieces of Kraft American!) Ice Cream to take home…. I’m having a tiny bowl now. Mmmmm, cheese!

On Wednesday, TW was reading her feeds and stumbled across this post about Super H Mart who makes tofu in the store. Fascinating, right?

Even more fascinating is that the Super H Mart in Niles is very close to our house and we’d sort of wondered what was over there… I thought it was just a Home Depot. Boy was I wrong.

The Super H Mart is a heck of a lot more interesting than a Home Depot.

First, it’s huge. Second, it’s really HUGE.

The food court was really interesting and we bought a lot of cool Korean buns before we’d even walked 10 feet into the place. We totally missed the housewares because I assumed we could circle back round to it but I was wrong - we needed to hit it when we went in the door. And what were those big appliances in the bakery area? No idea but I would like to read Korean so I could figure it out.

The produce… wow, there were things we’d only read about and things we have rarely seen. In the freezer section - frozen Monkey Balls with the skin on (that’s what us dumb Americans living in Panama called the spikey purpley Rambutan) who knew you could freeze them in the skin????

There was so much stuff that we had never seen before and all sorts of things we knew about but don’t quite know what to do with. We’ll be figuring it out and buying lots of stuff to try.

In the meantime, we spent $60 on all sorts of interesting things including… Olive vinegar tea that smells like Easter. Its label says something about “for your happy time” and it certainly makes TW giggle (seriously, it does.) It’s a liquid and comes in individual little tubes like the powdered Crystal Light. We also bought some gelled looking citron honey tea that TW says tastes like marmalade… I don’t like marmalade but I will be trying this stuff, seriously. And then there’s the snack sized bag of Nong Shim Sweet Potato Flavored Snacks that I bought and promptly ate… can you say addiction in the making?

Oh and after you check out at the Super H Mart in Niles, there’s a little court of shops - Hello Kitty heaven and Fancy Pencil Land, a dance/exercise place full of tiny Korean women doing some sort of dancing, some “health food” shops that seem interested in aiding the sex life of heterosexuals, a shop that sells those wonderful bidet toilets that will resolve one of TW’s new problems and a shop that sells Korean platform beds… jade inset even (gorgeous, really gorgeous bed.)

Did I mention this place is really interesting? All of that and we didn’t even get to see the tofu making in action because we went late at night and they’d closed up shop in the tofu making area. No worries, we’ll be going back. A lot.

Updated: TW and Prince J went to HMart and enjoyed the food court:

yummy

We’ve driven passed the Filipiniana Restaurant in Niles many times. We’ve even mentioned it as we passed by but we didn’t make enough of a note in our heads about it to actually think to try it when we discuss lunch or dinner plans. Today, it popped into my head probably because I needed to go to Valu-City which is very close to it.

So, we left Evanston and headed down Golf Rd. When we hit Greenwood, I started looking for the strip mall where the restaurant was. I felt like I’d driven passed it but no - I hadn’t, it’s farther down than I remembered.

As I pulled into a parking place, I looked at the window and saw several Philippine lanterns in the window and I smiled. I wish I had kept my Philippine lantern, even if the lights were burnt out and I couldn’t repair it myself. Someday, I’m going to get a new one…

The restaurant is nothing special to look at. Just a strip mall restaurant. At 3:30pm, there were several tables full - full of Filipino customers. Good sign. All of the employees I could see were also Filipino. Another good sign.

I looked at the menu… real live honest to goodness Filipino food. Most restaurants I’ve been to that claim to have Filipino food - don’t. This one did.

The kids were a bit unsure of what they might want. Prince J immediately mentioned the Pancit - I reassured him that this was a good choice as I was trying to choose between Chicken Pancit or Chicken Adobo. I recommended the Chinese noodles, not the rice noodles and he agreed… when he ordered, the waitress misunderstood and ended up bringing the rice noodles out. That’s ok, they were excellent. (He and RJ shared a plate and halfway through, the waitress came over to make sure they didn’t need her to bring more out. Nice, since she’s the one who suggested they share because it would be a lot of food.)

I did order the Chicken Adobo and Chicken & Veggie Lumpia. TW went for the Lumpia, as well.

She brought out six Lumpia, plenty for all four of us to have some. We all shared the Chicken Adobo which was also excellent, though I’d like it just a bit spicier.

RJ had a mango tapioca smoothie of some sort and TW ordered the lime juice, aka Kalamansi (which I had not even thought of in 20 years!)

I have to go back this weekend, and take my “Filipino children” with me.