Sunday the 15th I drove to Cambria, WI to pick up little Hoober and he is so cute and actually pretty good even for a 8 week old puppy.  I am back in the thick of dog ownership and potty training and teaching not to bite and chew on things and no matter what I will have a great well behaved dog.  I bought Hoober from the same breeder as Eddie G and he is actually younger brother to Ed’s dog Jordy.   I look forward to getting them together next week to hang out.   Some pictures of Costa Rica and Hoober are in my galleries.   I have had a couple great nights out with the friends and played poker at Pete’s house and doing a few more things with them while Bill is in town

Other than that is has been some work and getting things going,  I went to a great meeting with my dad at Score and got to listen to some awesome speakers.   All in all things are good and just looking forward to keeping the momentum going and hoping it cools off soon.

I have had a busy couple weeks between helping out at Lockdown and some other projects I have been working on.  After interviewing about 20 Chefs at PJ’s building we narrowed it down to 3 final people and we met those 3 again with Sol and we decided on our new chef Janice Mancusi and she started about 10 days ago and things are going very well.  We have been busy doing tons of changes with getting things more organized and changing out some systems that were put in place early on.   Things are really starting to shape up at Lockdown and within a few more weeks we should be running better than ever and going to launch a major overhaul on the menu and cut  some things off and add some new items.

Some Highlight of the last couple weeks was Friday the 30th I got to celebrate Eddie Garcia’s 40th B-day that started out with a Surprise breakfast at Sarkis with his family and parents and sister and her kids plus myself.  After breakfast I drove him out to Pine Meadow to golf and was surprised there by Paul and Brian,  we had a great round with lots of Bloody Marys and beers and spent some time in the clubhouse afterwards hanging out.  We left Pine Meadow and headed back to Lockdown where Julie and Ed’s 3 boys and Brian wife and his kids met us for dinner and plenty more drinking and we had a great time in the backyard with cake and our own small private party.  Great great day with some pictures going up in my new Galleries.   Last Saturday I drove out to Michigan City to visit Betsy and the kids at there yearly vacation spot and my Dad and Janice were there plus my cousin Miranda, Dola, Aunt Louie and Amani.  We went for lunch at the Tree House and hung out there for hours and let the kids play games and in the sand.  We then went back to the house the rent and relaxed and talked and Jeff made some great food as always and I headed home around 10:30

I have also been busy helping my mom and getting her condo rented out and ready.  Had a nice dinner out with Erin on Wednesday and tried Folklore for the 1st time and it was decent but not as good as Tango Sur.   Friday was a busy day with a meeting with a PR company followed by Lunch with Scottie G and PJ followed by a meeting with Sergey, Alex, KY and Brian and then I ran a ton of errands with PJ and Sol and grabbed a bite at J Alexanders and them somehow went back to Lockdown and hung out till 4am.  Yesterday had a nice late afternoon BBQ and Pete and Grace’s with all the kids and had a nice evening there followed by checking out Lockdown for big UFC night that was crazy busy with 200+ people stuffing the bar and the backyard and even had 60 people out the doors on Cortez and Western watching through the doors.

Well till next time…..

I was pretty busy all week long with not much special going on and then started the weekend early with PJ on Thursday night. We went to the PAWS beach party at North Avenue beach and hung there for a little while followed by a good tourist night out that started with drinks at the Signature Room for a few hours and then we moved on to Dublin’s and finished the night at the Zebra Lounge. Friday started with Cubs Game at 1pm with PJ, Jamie and Colin to start celebrating PJ and Jamie’s 30th bday and it was the hottest day of the year and when I say hot it was like 100 and humid as hell. We left the Cubs game around the 6th inning and headed to LD to meet everyone and start celebrating more Bday fun, well it was a long ass night that ended at 2am and I had been doing it pretty good since 1pm. Saturday I took it easy since I had another B-Day in the evening and I headed to Wrigley around 7 and stopped by Lockdown for a couple drinks then met all my friends at Casey Moran’s to celebrate Grace’s 35th B-day with everyone. We had a great time on the rooftop hanging and we all left and stopped for a quick one at Rockwood then took the party to Lockdown and stayed till 3am eating and drinking and enjoying some great food and friends. Well that was about it for the fun. We had a full page article come out last week on the Summer Drink issue of Timeout Chicago and I was actually interviewed for a website call All-Swagga http://goo.gl/vfq6 kinda cool….  That is it until next time!!!!!

I was not crazy busy last week but had a really fun night that started with dinner at Mia Francesca’s then went to route 66 and met the owner and did some shots and then ended up shooting pool at EZbar on division. Went to Katrina’s wedding Saturday and had a blast, started at 3:30 at the Church on Logan followed by ohare intercontinental. Had a great fun late night till 5am and enjoyed catching up with the entire Solomon family and meeting some new people. Sunday was a small get together at Sergio’s with the kids and the Grace’s and Danny and Mary and the girls. Love all those kids:)

Other than that I have been helping at Lockdown a bit and working on a few things. Till next time

I have been helping everyday at Lockdown and have had a crash course on how hard this business is and everyone that has said that was not lying. Lunches have been going well and getting busier and better and the online ordering has been great between Grubhub and our site. The food is getting better and better and Sol has been helping out with some much needed experience. I have been helping from doing deliveries to dishes to running to home depot with PJ to a zillion runs to restaurant depot. All fun and hard but also exciting learning something totally new. Ky is doing great with building out the online ordering system we plan on selling to other restaurants soon and we set up Village Pizza with a site and full online ordering. Ok enough work……

I have been super busy and drinking too much but also having fun. Quick rundown from what I can remember: Sergio put together a party at Casey Morans for Kate’s 30th and we had a great time followed by a quick stop to Rockwood and then Pete, Grace and myself went to Lockdown for late snack of Mac & cheese plus burgers and some mussels. My dinner list the last week or so has been decent and in no particular order has been Perennial, Benny’s Chop House, Sunda, Hub 51 and 33 On Wells plus a couple others. My sisters BFF was in town with a friend and we had a great night that started with dinner at LD with 4 bottles of my wine from house and Sol joined us for the last hour at LD then we moved onto The Violet Hour and somehow ended the night with scotch and chocolate Cake at gibsons wow crazy fun night.

I am sure I am missing a lot but it has been crazy. Another big thing going on the last 3 weeks is I found the most amazing new place for my mom to live with some help from a friend. She is moving to The Park at Golf Mill and the place is awesome, it is like a cruise ship on land with so many activities and things going on each hour of every day. She is gonna have a blast and after 3 trips to check it out and me packing her condo up tomorrow she is moving in this Thursday and she is as excited as me.

Well that is the quick catch up so I don’t forget everything. Dining reviews coming soon from the last couple weeks. Till next time.

This was actually my second time here,  the 1st time was just a couple appetizers and this time was a full meal and some great wine.  I really like the look and feel of this place and the food is really good and the outdoor seating is awesome for people watching and checking out Old Town.   My one small complaint is the service is just average and I am surprised since I know Jerry Kleiner does an awesome job with all his places and both times I was there I was not in hurry so it didn’t bother me but I did hear from a friend they left after 20 minutes of waiting for service.   The food for the dinner I just had was good and we started with some Oysters that were good and the bacon wrapped dates.  Shared to fishes for the mains,  the Halibut which was really great and the Tuna was good also but Tuna is always pretty much Tuna.  All in all the food was good and it was a nice night out

Ok now this is my kinda steak house, I loved every aspect about this place from the decor to the menu to the staff that was a little older but very experienced and made it the perfect Steak House.  We got some extra special treatment since I recently became friendly with the sommelier and he brought out us out some special wines and special appetizers to pair up with some cool beers.  We dined on some amazing steak TarTar and some perfectly done Foie Gras for apps and entrees were awesome.  They did something I had never heard of in all my years of dining,  they only offer Line Caught fresh fish and I thought that was really cool.  All the fish were caught by fisherman on single lines all over and flown in fresh.  I enjoyed the Bone In New York strip that was cooked perfect and tasted incredible, my dining partner enjoyed the Dover Sole that was very good also.  Everything on the menu looked amazing and I can’t wait to go back soon. After dinner Justin the sommelier brought us some delicious after dinner drinks and all in all the place was perfect.

I had heard about Perennial and BOKA and Landmark but for some reason I have not had the pleasure of dining at any of them in the past.  I finally made it to Perennial and fought the worst rain storm to get there but it actually worked out very nice since only a couple other people made it out that night.  Perennial is in the perfect spot right on the corner of Lincoln and Clark with a great Lincoln Park feel.  I started with some wine at the bar followed by being seated right by the window where the fun started.   Started with the fish tacos and they were nothing like you would have expected,  they had no shell and were fresh Crudo and some mango papaya salsa and was shaped like a little taco.  We had another appetizer and split two delicious entrees and everything was very very good.  I look forward to trying BOKA and Landmark very soon.

Outside of the bar I have not been crazy busy but I have found some time for a few dinners and activities.   I actually went to Zed451 twice in the last few weeks for brunch,  we took a Lockdown field trip two Sundays ago and enjoyed a great brunch and then I was there this past weekend for Fathers Day brunch.   I had a very scary night at Hub51 and as I was finishing a good fun dinner with a friend I got a horrible pain the the pit of my stomach and was in so much pain it totally took my breath away and was moments from going to the ER but decided to try to get home after calling a Dr friend who said if it is not gone by the time you get home that I should get to the ER,  well my friend drove me home and somehow the moment I got to my parking spot the pain dissipated within like 3 minutes and I was fine but very scary for my problem free body.   Couple other good meals were Elate at the Felix hotel which I really liked and chilled and ate and drank with Sol and PJ and had a nice night.   I also heard that Blue 13 was really good so I checked it out one night and it had potential but I was not crazy about the food,  the menu and everything was great but I think it was an off night and will have to go back.  Went to Music Without Borders and Millennium Park for the free Thursday night concert which was really cool and I should have listened to my dad earlier and started enjoying all the cool shows in the summer at M Park.

This past weekend was a really crazy one and between helping out and few nights of late night drinking and a random trip to Majestic star Friday till 6am I am exhausted and need to get caught up on some sleep.  I also saw a very interesting play at Royal George called Killer Joe and I am not sure if I liked it,  it was actually very good and the acting was amazing and with so much feeling but I think I was just not ready for Bush and boners and screaming and gun shots after a weekend of no sleep but it was very interesting and very good but not sure I liked it =)   Well I think that is about it even though I am sure I missed a bunch of stuff…  Till next time