Terri N.'s Profile

Long lines. Yes long lines. What?
What do you mean what? Just wait in line.
You are too impatient? Then come back another time.

Believe me, it gets hectic at this place. First you have people waiting for their food all near the door, then you have another crowd waiting to order, a few people are squeezed in between trying to grab something from the fridge, then you have another wave of crowd all the way in the corner and they are those foodie taste tasters. Overwhelming huh? Indeed it is. But once you surpass all that, Goddess and Grocer is a really neat place. An upscale deli spot minus the overly rated upscale price. Their soup there is great. I've bought a couple of their salad dressings and fell in love with the herb one. Love it! Lug that darn bottle with me everyday to work. =)

I've tried their beef brisket sandwich and that was pretty flavorful. Loved how the kaiser roll complimented the beef. Went there after work one day and had their california dreaming. Huge sandwich. Ate half and was nearly full after that. Love the avocados and sprouts with my turkey sandwich. Their cobb salad wrap was okay. Nothing great about it. Just your average salad in a wrap.

I have yet to try their desserts. I will indeed come back for that. Every time I pass by their sweets counter, my mouth gets all watery and I just know I would order everything because I want to try everything, literally everything because I'm just weird like that. So I will save that crazy moment for another day. A less hectic day.

Oh yeah, I purchased their toffee up at the front counter. $12 for a huge huge square piece of matzo topped with dark chocolate and sprinkled with the finest toffee. Yum! Shared that with Tony and he loved it.

Celebrated a friend's birthday here last Thursday at 8pm. Such a wonderful cozy place. The staff were all accommodating and kind. They gave us ice buckets for our wine and beer bottles, corked it without a fee and split our tabs without even complaining one bit. The food was awesome.

A few food we had on the table were:
Green pasta (sort of like pesto but peruvian style) with sauteed mushroom, chicken saltado, lomo saltado, calamari

I can't remember the rest but all the gals seemed to have enjoyed all their food without complaining or sending anything back. Portions were huge. Great flavors and ratio of meat to rice. I had actually order the arroz con pollo to go and another chicken saltado plus their beef empanadas for the family and they loved it. They actually raved about the infamous green peas rice, moist chicken, and said everything had great flavors.

Definitely a great place to dine with the family and friends. Byob.

Again, that 5 stars is for Eric my personal shopper. He is just AWESOME. Called me a week beforehand and told me to come by 7/31 for goodie bags, sweets, drinks and first look at their new arrivals plus 20% off of it. He also, happily booked for me, my sister and niece to come in all at the same time (bright and early, first appointment). When we got there, he was very accommodating and helped pulled a bunch of clothing together for my niece for her Vegas trip. He also helped my sister grabbed a few key summer pieces that can easily be transitioned into fall. Most importantly, he helped me picked out to fabulous cocktail dresses for two weddings without ever complaining one bit for helping all three of us gals out all at the same time. He is truly a sweetheart. I can pull out an outfit, look at him and say something is missing and he would know exactly what to get to complete the look.  Love him. Wouldn't shop here unless he's working.

After joy yees, Tamia, her grandmother and I came by to grab some frozen yogurt to go. The server that day, a young lady was so kind and polite. She patiently waited for Tamia and her grandmother to pick up their flavors.
Our order:
Original with mango and chocolate
Original with strawberries and chocolate
Original with strawberries, mango, and mochi
Small with fruity pebbles (made a special request and asked the young lady to just fill the cup up a quarter of the way and she happily oblige)
Checked out, and the young lady was very kind greeted us a great day and offered us extra napkins and spoons.
Love their frozen yogurt!

It makes me laugh when I read people complaining about cupcakes costing more than $3 each. If you want cheap cupcakes go to sams, Costco, or jewel for them.
Swirlz never disappoints us. We actually ordered their mini's for our family Thanksgiving and Christmas party. What they do with the mini cupcakes is that they scaled them down but never do they lose the concept and flavor of the cupcake. Their seasonal apple pie and pumpkin cupcakes is truly phenomenal! I'm literally at Swirlz once a month because Tamia is in love with this place. We've tried every cupcake and bakery in Chicago and at the end of the day Swirlz is where our heart is.
We came by last week and order a dozen to go. We placed an order for the usual flavors but also picked up on a few gluten free mango passion fruit cupcakes and their surprise (which tasted like dulce de leche it had an awesome caramel filling iinside). Tamia grabbed her usual twixie flavor. My goodness when we came home Tony and I devoured the passion fruit cupcake. All the layers of flavors totally compliment one another, you can taste the tart and sweetness of the mango and boom you get a hint of the passion fruit, which was the perfect way to end the cupcake. Truly amazing! We also bought a dozen for my sister and her kids, and it's just heartwarming for me to see her kids' eyes light up every time they see the Swirlz box in their kitchen. Love, love, love this place. Their gluten free and regular cupcakes are all phenomenal. Oh yeah, I forgot, Tony even picked up some mini cupcakes for our dog penny and our niece's dog Mochi. It smelled like banana. Whatever it was both dogs devoured it. Overall, great quality of cupcakes, great flavors, such awesome and friendly workers and a really cozy place to hang out. Love that we can please the whole family and dogs at one bakery.

My cousin Mistey had me on a French Macarons craze. Literally. So, one evening, after picking me up Tony told me he was going to take me to Fritz pastry but by the time we got there they were closing. He turned and said don't worry, there's another place called Alliance Bakery that sold French macarons as well. So Tony, tamia and I headed there instead.
Open for business, Alliance had only one worker that evening. Walking in, you can tell it's a cozy little bakery. I was amazed of all the beautiful cakes on display filled with intricate designs. Anyway, the server asked us if we had any idea what to order, since there was another patron in the store we told him to serve her first. When she left we were still clueless on what to order. Tamia decided on a simple chocolate cupcake, which she had devoured in the car. She loved that it was moist and not overwhelmingly chocolaty. I order two almond croissants for my sister and she said it was AMAZING! Tony ordered practically all their macarons (pistachio, chocolate, lemon, rose with rose cream, vanilla, rose with chocolate). The pistachio macarons were awesome. Light, crisp and moist, none of the flavors overpower the other. The rose was refreshing, very airy and definitely taste like rose. The lemon was my favorite; it reminded me of biting into a lemon meringue pie. The chocolate and vanilla tasted stale and old. That was a huge bummer. Overall, Alliance is a nice hidden place and has a great amount of sweets on display. I know that their macarons flavors are seasonal so you just have to wing it for that particular day and hope it's as great as it looks. I need to come back for their almond croissants and hopefully I can pick up some more macarons. We are kind of staying away from it since Tony went a bit overboard in ordering all of it. 6.5/10

Came here 8/15/11 with the family to grab a late lunch for my mother-in-law's birthday. We originially had planned to go to davis's seafood but when we got there, it was closed until 4:30p. Tony decided to just walk down the block for Joy yees instead.
Once we got there, we asked if we could sit at the table near the door because of Taylor (she's 2), that way we could enjoy our food and if she was whining or whatever it wouldn't bother any other patrons. Need they seat us there? No, of course not. After just sitting down and not even 2 minutes later, the server comes up and asks us are we ready to order. NO, of course not.
When we did place the order we asked them about their allergen background and requested politely to make sure Taylor's food didn't cross contaminate with soy, eggs, or shellfish; the server gave us the most annoyed look. The funny think about this place is that the appetizer comes out just as fast as the entrees so you have to tell them to wait a bit instead of slamming the small table with plates and plates of food. Needless to say, we didn't have to worry about the food contamination but we did have these flying gnats and flies, flying from our plates to the people sitting across from us. None of the workers wanted to do anything about it. They lady across from us was disgusted with the gnats flying around her water that she quickly asked for another glass of water. After seeing the gnats coming back to her new glass of water she decided to just pay for her tab and left.
We order the usual, Korean short ribs (they gave us mostly ribs with fat instead of meat), kimchi and scallops (don't get it, they just stir fry kimchi and scallops not worth $13), asparagus and beef (bland), shrimp and garlic noodles (taste like ramen noodles with soy sauce, garlic and shrimp. You literally can make that at home). What we did enjoy was their bubble tea: jackfruit, coconut, and avocado (all with tapioca).
As we were winding down with our meal, taylor was getting a bit agitated and started fussing. The workers promptly came by our table and asked us to wrap things up and tried to check us out quickly fearing taylor's fussiness was annoying other patrons. Duh! We asked you earlier to sit us by the door near the cashier away from the center of the restaurant.
Sadly, I work in retail so I gave them a decent tip, but I really would not come here to dine. Maybe order food to go (the food is decent, not GREAT, but eatable if you're really hungry), but I would have to have some great cravings to want to come here. I wouldn't mind coming here for the drinks, which we always easily order to go the majority of the time when we are in the neighborhood. The food isn't authentic but I can see why a lot of people enjoy eating here because it's accommodating towards a demographic that isn't familiar with authentic Vietnamese/Thai/Korean/Chinese food.

After much research, I've decided to go with Nova driving school. Of course I was hesitant because if you look at their yelp reviews, some of the yelpers were recently created and aren't legit. Come on, if you want boast your business and earn great creditability at least wait for people to honestly write reviews and not create false reviews. Common sense. Let the real people review. I digress, so I went ahead and booked their 2hr for $80 lesson. I opted out of buying a whole package because I wanted to at least be able to get a feel of the first lesson, instructor and business ethics.
First call, the manager was nice, she politely scheduled me down for a lesson and told me Celeste would be my instructor. I was able to pick an early time slot for 7am. They ran the credit card and sent me a confirmation number via email. The next day Celeste came at 7am and took me to a church parking lot in the Sauganash area where she had evaluate my driving skills. She realized it need some touch up and never once hesitated in telling me what I needed to build my skills on. After 30 minutes of practicing in the lot, she went ahead and told me to drive on to the small street. Next thing you know it I was driving all the way to Old Orchard. Celeste was able to ease me into the situation without making me feel overwhelmed. I felt confident enough to drove home as well.
Because I had such a great experience with Celeste I went ahead and book two more lesson with her for the following week. That day, I asked Celeste for her input in my driving progress and she went ahead and gave me the green light with the road test. So I decided to book the ROAD TEST lesson with Nova. Celeste was late because the car that she was assigned to had no keys ready for her to pick up. This delayed made her 15 minutes late. Also, there was some sort of miscommunication with Nova and Celeste because, what was supposed to be a Road test, turned into a 2hr lesson. When I told Celeste I was booked for the road test, she happily drove me to the DMV and told me she would wait for me. After spending 30 minutes in the DMV waiting for my number to be called, I got the paperwork and was ready to take the road test. Walking outside, Celeste came up and informed me that Nova wanted to charge me $180 for both the 2hr and Road test. Feeling very angry about their OWN miscommunication mistake between employee and manager I decided to nip it in the bud and agreed to pay for it. I didn't want to sit there feeling angry while taking my road test. While driving up to get THEIR vehicle inspected by the DMV, another thing went wrong on Nova's end, the inspector asked me to honk the horn...and guess what? It didn't honk. There was a malfunction with their vehicle horn, the fuse apparently went out. The inconvenience of this was that the car did not qualify to be used for the road test. Livid for them requesting to pay for both lesson when I only booked for the road test lesson AND this vehicle's horn malfunction, I decided to call them and just opt out of their Road test.
I called them their on the spot and informed them I will just pay for the suppose 2hr $80 lesson even though I had booked for their $100 road test. Since the vehicle's Horn wasn't working I told them I was not responsible for paying for the road test fee. The young lady on the other end happily obliged and was apologetic for their faulty horn. She offered a discount and a reschedule on the road test and also asked if she can do anything else for me and I told her I would call back if I needed any other service.
Yes, I'm extremely happy of getting my license, but I am also disappointed with Nova's business end. If you are employing someone to represent your company and he or she is doing an exceptionally well job in representing your company's name and business ethics then TREAT them with respect and dignity. Celeste was such a wonderful instructor. She has the skills and patience in teaching ANY individuals the tricks and trade to driving. She's honest and punctual. However, when the business end screws up, then it makes her as an instructor look bad. Last week when I had called for lessons, I was told that Celeste was unavailable, then the day before me wanting to book for the road test the young lady on the phone tells me she's open for lessons all day. Come on now; get your business clerical end together. It was their miscommunication with her that had her cancelling one lesson with someone else during the whole ordeal.
Do I plan on ever using Nova again or referring them to others? Yes, I have referred a couple of friends already and told them to go to Celeste. I plan on taking their stick shift lesson some time before August ends. Hopefully, by that time their business end of the company is a bit more organized by then.

I've been living in the Mayfair community for almost two decade and never have I ever heard of Sano's pizza. Luckily, Tony had won a free large pizza from Sano's during our Karlov Block party three weeks ago. So we decided to put the coupon to use last night but was a bit skeptical about it because we've never heard of the place.  
Our order:
Large cheese pizza (thin crust)
Medium Italian beef pizza  (thin crust)
We had placed our order for delivery. The woman on the phone was very accommodating and nice. Our food came within 30 minutes. Oh my goodness, hands down this pizza is way better than marie's. I am truly not sorry for having to say that. Frank the owner and pizza maker truly knows what he's doing. Making real good pizza requires two things, simple ingredients and a pizza maker who knows his/her craft. Frank did not disappoint us at all. Our daughters love, love, love their cheese pizza. Tamia was literally savoring each bite of it and raving at how it had the perfect amount of cheese. The Italian beef pizza was awesome. Put some hot giardiniera on top and oh goodness, you got Italian beef sandwich in a pizza form. It's totally different but super good. Tony was a bit skeptical at first of the whole giardiniera on his pizza, he used Tabasco sauce on his first slice. I went ahead and place some on his second slice and he was hooked! My sister and her family came over and I introduced them to apply the same concept on their pizza slices and boy were they hooked! (** you can ask them for giardiniera on the side, we didn't order it because we had a jar of it at home). Sano's pizza is a great place to order pizza from whenever you are craving for pizza and are in the area or live in the area. The place is a small place near the currency exchange on Lawrence (near elston).  I'm so glad we found a place to order pizza from because we tend to order at Villa Palermo but this place is closer to the house (3-5 mins away). Give Sano a try and say hi to Frank (you can't miss him the kitchen is right in the front of the store).

Love, love, love their food. When we are craving for real Vietnamese home cooking food, this is the place that pops up in our head. The owner makes this special Hue noodle soup called Bun Bo Hue. Omg, I'm from Chicago and my family and I would literally make our way out to the burbs for it. It has the right amount of spice and is filled with just an abundance of flavor. Noodles and meat ratio is just perfect. My two daughters loves their Pho bo vien (noodle soup with beef meatballs). Tamia would never finish any meatballs from any other place except from this place. She loves that it has no fillers. Also, It is imperative for me to order food to go for Tony whenever we are at this place. He truly enjoys their deep fried Cornish hen dish with a side of over easy egg or their Bun bo hue. Honestly, we haven't eaten one dish that we didn't like.
When you head there please keep a few things in mind:
Yes, it's a small family restaurant
Yes, it can get overwhelmingly crowded
Yes, the service can be altered and delayed when it's busy
When you understand that much about Pho Ha then you'll realize not to come in with such high expectation and hope to be catered to every second. What I appreciate so much about coming into this restaurant is that it's so family friendly and accommodating. You don't have to worry about other customers staring you down because you brought your kid(s). It can get extremely busy during at any random time, but the cooks and workers knows how to buckle it down and make it work. Now, it can only run as smoothly as long as the customers allow them to. So if you're coming here hoping for it to be pin drop quiet you should just order your food to go. The owners are truly wonderful people. They would come out and greet you. Also, another plus to this place is that my youngest daughter is allergic to just about everything but they make sure they don't cross contaminate her food with other shellfish, soy, egg products.