Dane K.'s Profile

very clean, seems brand new.

hyatt place is nicer than most of the other chain hotels in the same price category.  It far exceeds some of the competitors in similar price points even...

Their breakfast is pretty standard garbage continental breakfast.

Aside of throwing about $10k worth of one of a kind art into a single box, dinging up at least one valuable piece, the Professionals were by far the best movers we've ever had.

I've moved a lot in Chicago.  I've used more than a handful of different movers always doing a lot of research to pick the mover that seems the best, more than several of the "top" rated movers on Yelp.  Somehow every time the experience leaves me wishing I had just done it myself, or hired some ghetto Craigslist movers (which I did the last 3 times, after having struck out on the real deal movers..).

Enter The Professionals.  The exhibited a tremendous amount of care in packing the truck. We had everything boxed except for some "precious" items that they were going to put into wardrobes or what not.  They wrapped and took good care of most of it.  What really amazed me is how they handled the furniture.  They wrapped EVERYTHING in plastic wrap, taped everything with 100 rolls of tape. And I do mean everything...  The wrap cost us a little (not much), but the tape was free.

The guys were professional and seemed to care about what they were doing.  Their estimate was *exactly* what the time they worked, but at the end they really slowed down I did notice.  

At the end, the main guy brought a survey to us to fill out "how was everything? was everything OK? anything damaged?" ... They got 5 out of 5s across the board.  Then as soon as the thing was filled out, he does the "let me show you this" and shows SO the corner of the antique dresser that they broke off.  They broke off a piece that was decades ago repaired--this has been moved no less than 15 times in the condition it was and it was never a problem.  It's not a huge deal since it didn't create any "new" break and can be repaired again the same way... But still it's something we're going to now have to pay someone to fix, they didn't even offer.

Kind of sleazy of the guy to not point the damage out BEFORE the survey.

But the real disturbing part is three days later I was doing the "OK, where's this art?" and started unboxing boxes of art.  I came across a single box that had a very large original William Auerbach-Levy painting, a drawing by Albert Hadley, another original painting, and a few other one of a kind pieces that were important in SO's family.  All were thrown into the same 10" wide tall box, no wrapping whatsoever, paintings going into the corners of other things, etc.  The only thing that had damage was the painting, which the frame had some mars from the other items rubbing it, and the painting itself now has a noticeable pressure point on it where another piece of art was cornered into the canvas.   Obviously somewhere along the line there was miss-communication, though I'm not sure how it was unclear when it was literally the first thing we pointed out as being "important" and needing to take care of, these were literally THE MOST important items that they were supposed to take the best care of, and we had set them all aside in one area specifically for that reason. (I'm not sure that English was the first language of at least 2 of the guys, perhaps that was the problem). This was not a bunch of shit from a yard sale as they seemed to have presumed, but even if it was I'm not sure why they did what they did.  Pretty disappointing to have to discover this damage.

Next outlet sale is August 26, 27th, 29th 2010 9a-3p (Thursday/Friday/Saturday). cash or check only.

The night did not start out on a good note. To start, we were picking up our friend from ORD, and his flight was delayed both coming in and once here for an hour each time. We pushed our reservation back from 7:30 to 8:30.

Enter us, 8:30.  Sit down, get the menus, start perusing. BOOOOOMPFH.  silence. darkness.  emergency lights pop on.  Power out on entire block.  "Oh well..." we sighed and started looking for items that might not require cooking. We were hungry, desperate, and ready to have good food.  The server reluctantly told us he'd see what we could order and what the chef was comfortable with. After a few minutes of smelling gas from the kitchen, watching the kitchen staff in a bit of a worrysome pant, and me taking a visit to the bathroom and peeing with only the visible light of my cell phone, it seems the kitchen was back in order. Without power or ventilation.   Like a challenge out of Top Chef, the true top chefs move on and deal....  We ordered beef tartare; the trio appetizer of pate, prosciutto, and a mousse of sorts; the scallops.  The scallops were fantastic... layered on the bottom were fresh gnocchi, above scallops, and on top a Parmesan foam.  Flavors were spot on and everything was perfectly prepared.  The beef tartare is somewhat user friendly and the flavors were all there, quite great.  

Their wine list is nice as well.  

Kitchen closes at 9:30.  It's a very smallll space--I wouldn't show up here without a reservation. They do have an outdoor section, but it's only 4 or 5 tables, and only one is more than a 2 top, so it's extremely difficult to impossible to get without reserving it specifically ahead of time.

Great time, will definitely be back.

I went in with 3 bags of clothes that I had pruned from my closet while moving.  Nearly everything in the bag was vintage or purchased within the past year.  I eliminated some of the cheap s*** I knew they wouldn't have interest in before setting foot in the place.  She looked through my items carefully and was very friendly, she had obviously mastered the art of taking emotion out of the process.  

She immediately took a vintage cowboy shirt I knew they'd take.  There was another vintage-like shirt or two that they didn't want, despite being in like new condition (I wore them 1 time).  There were 2 pairs of jeans she pulled, but then the other lady looked them over and said no.    They were picky about the jeans, yet when I looked through their jeans selection they were all really outdated styles, I had at least two pairs of newer style Seven jeans that they didn't even glance over for 2 seconds before tossing back.  Actually, contrary to some of the reviews here, the buyer was very courteous and took a lot of time to refold everything I brought in.

So 3 bags in, I walk out with 3 bags - 1 shirt, and $2.80 in my pocket.  I highly doubt they're selling the shirt they bought from me for only $8 though.  Kind of a waste of time, but at least "now I know" ....

Based off of what they pay you, you should be able to find some incredible deals if you frequent here enough.

Until this week, I had the displeasure of living in the house directly adjacent to El Jardin for a year.  The management of this restaurant are some of the most rude, unfriendly people I've ever encountered in or out of the restaurant.

The layout of the place is 2 lots wide, the main part of the restaurant is the base of a 3 flat building.  Above that, the management lives.  She has a dog. A big dog.  And 3x a day you can see her parading the dog through the restaurant to let him out.  They have a sign on their own grass that says "keep dogs off grass" so what do they do? They come and pee on "our" grass.  Not to mention I think it's disgusting that they bring a dog through the restaurant's kitchen area in order to take the dog out back.  Ironically, we once called on a quiet afternoon where their patio was otherwise empty, asking if we could bring a small 8# dog over. They said yes. When we showed up, mama's husband told us no, no, no, despite the fact that we had called ahead to ask.

The restaurant is unfriendly to neighbors, even though as neighbors we had to constantly put up with the shit that came out of this restaurant... Loud garbage truck pickup at 4am every morning. Sysco, Tyson (IBP ...better known as the ammonia soaked beef that the movie Food, Inc. was about, of which boxes are regularly loaded into the kitchen here), and other vendors parking their truck in the alley for 30 minutes while leaving the engine running, allowing exhaust to fill our entire building. Loud parties in their patio frequently somewhat late at night; patrons from their restaurant sitting on our stoop to smoke, etc..  Being neighborly and all, I once went in there because I was almost done with dinner and had run out of sour cream. I asked to buy a small container of sour cream, "mama" literally rolled her eyes, then charged me $3 for a 1 ounce container of sour cream (literally the size they give you if you get a taco).

The food is unremarkable.  Average on the best of days.  Their house margaritas ($8/glass) are a gross high fructose corn syrup mix, and the cheapest liquor they can find.  It's actually grain alcohol, and you can taste it.  If you want to get really f'ked up this is the margarita for you though.  For $13 you can get a normal margarita with normal tequila.

All in all, we only went there 2 or 3 times.  The last visit we went mainly because I've had a http://restaurant.com gift certificate for almost a year. The certificate states you need to spend $50 to get $25 off, excludes alcohol at restaurant's discretion.  We spent $88, $45 of which was alcohol. With most http://restaurant.com restaurants, the intended disclaimers are at the restaurant's discretion and normally are there to keep people from just ripping them off by ordering the minimum possible.  The waiter came back, and said "sorry the food totaled out to $39" and dropped the bill off.  10 minutes later we tracked him down, we were ready to order $11 more food, which would've made our bill cheaper, or $20 of tequila shots. We actually gave him the option.  He came back and said she said "mama" said she'd take $15 off but no shots.  We could've ordered $11 of food and been in the same place, but I was so annoyed we just did it.  Our waiter was actually very nice, and we were prepared to tip him very well, but he added tip on at a lower rate than we were prepared to tip. So we threw in some cash for him beyond the added in tip.  

If you're going to offer a gift certificate or coupon that's designed to be a marketing effort, don't go out of your way to piss off your customers and be stingy.  

I don't think I'll ever be back here voluntarily. Service is hit or miss depending upon who you get.  The food is not anything special, their ingredients are the crappiest stuff they can buy. There's way better Mexican in Chicago, and way better food to be had the area.  And the management is inexcusably horrible.

I had never been and bought two Groupons for here...

Observations:
I find the menu confusing. There are two sides I guess, one where you put toppings onto the yogurt and the other is blended in.  There's a third category for their "pre-designed" flavors, which is what I chose. But there's no pricing on those, because it's really a reincarnation of the other two items but you're supposed to add some cost to that, I don't know.  

I got the chai, which comes with slivers of almond on top.  I have no idea how much sugar was in this, but I assume a lot.  It was indistinguishable from ice cream, which is OK and fine since I wasn't really caring about how healthy it was at the time.  Though I'm not sure how almonds fit in with Chai, they were a fantastic idea and worked very well.  Brian chose something similar from their pre-designed options.

The two of us got larges, and even with the $5 off Groupon, it came to over $8.50 (so, that's $13.50 for 2 yogurts in a cup if you're counting..).  To me this seems outrageously expensive, maybe I'm missing something.  Even with the Groupon my cost was $11 for two.

But was it good? Absolutely!

This new boutique furniture shop opened up recently in a corridor of Grand Ave that quickly has become a little oasis of cute furniture shops.

The shop has new furniture that's really unique and one of a kind, old furniture, trinkets, antiques, new furniture made from local artists, a bit of everything.

I'm a huge fan of Whole Foods and do pretty much all of my shopping there, sans for the CSA that I get a lot of produce from.

This particular location is raved about and while I agree it's a great store, I think it's just a little too big for its own good.  It's the SuperCenter of Whole Foods.  There's made-to-order food, wine bars, beer, etc.  This makes it a bit of an attraction, and unfortunately an "event" to go shopping here.  If you're the type of person who goes shopping 3-4x a week like I do, this store is beyond annoying and I much prefer the store the Lakeview/Halsted store.  You can get in and out of there in 4 minutes if you are in a hurry. Here, you're looking at a 30 minute minimum.  It's a really bad location IMO, even before this store relocated across the street the entire area is a cluster-fk of cars everywhere.  And they couldn't even work with the city to get the street it's located repaved so it's not like driving on a Swiss cheese?

The one redeeming thing to all of this chaos are the express lanes, which are set up in a number queue, where everyone waiting stands in one line and an automated "ding" goes off to tell you which register just opened up.  

The parking garage is huge, and people are often trolling for the good spots.  My advice if you drive (which took me a few visits to realize) is to go up levels and not keep stopping until you're at a level where it's less trafficked.

As far as produce/meat selection goes, the smaller locations elsewhere in the city have pretty much the exact same selection.  There are areas where they'll have a few more varieties of certain things.  The packaged good selection from what I've seen is pretty much identical to other locations too.

The crowd that this place attracts is more annoying than any other Whole Foods location I've been.  While it's nice that you have the option to have wine/beer while roaming the store, it's also a bit annoying having to stand next to Susie as she sips on her glass of Chardonnay, when all you wanted was a pound of ground grass fed beef.  Do we really need to go to that level of pretentiousness?

Pricing at this location matches all of their other locations, which also means they're cheaper than Jewel/Dominicks on comparable items.  Sometimes far cheaper.  All in all expect the same high quality products here, but it can be a bit of a hassle at times.

One of the best, if not the best, antique shops I've been to in Chicago. There are two floors... It's flea market style where various vendors have their own little area. There are some extremely high end, high quality pieces throughout.  There are also a number of shops with a lot of smaller items.  Prices throughout seemed pretty reasonable.