06.14.11

The night began innocently enough. Along with Jackie, Tessa, Gene and a slough of new UPChicago cohorts, we started off at Innjoy with $1 PBR's ($5 pitchers). We got all of the introductions and businessy stuff out of the way, finished our drinks and moved next door to Small Bar. There was apparently some sort of sporting match of the international football variety. Already failing in my pledge to pay more attention to the sport after the World Cup last year, the significance of this game was entirely lost on me. Alas, I had to leave before the first half even ended. In a hurry to other dinner reservations, I slammed my Lagunitas Pilsner, picked up a sixer of Leffe Blonde at a nearby liquor store, withdrew a lot (a lot) of cash and headed to Schwa.

Schwa. That tiny hole in the wall, infamously lower case 'f' fine dining gem hidden in plain sight on Ashland Avenue on the edge of Wicker Park. The meal: incredible, and the details will be revealed elsewhere soon enough. But a curious thing happened at the end. As they had Max's credit card in the back, and after we were greeted by Mr. Carlson himself (after devouring our Lou Malnati's gift), the server asked one final time what we thought of the meal. Now, some people aren't familiar with my brand of sarcasm. It's so...incessant, ubiquitous, sinister...it's very delinquency is so absurd that I should almost never be taken seriously in casual, social banter. And I get it: it's hard to for some people to grasp that such extreme abuse of this lingual form can exist and that they have to be confronted with it. So when I insinuated the meal (the nine course, $115 meal) was on par with a cheeseburger I ate earlier (which I never even did for the record), it's understandable that someone after a long night or serving and drinking, taking care of us for three hours, might misconstrue the comment.