A burger round-up

Ah, the wild west!!! A time in American history of lawlessness, cattle rustlers, and gun slingers. This was immortalized by such historically accurate TV shows (NOT) such as Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, and our personal favorite, Gunsmoke. This show had memorable characters such as the 6’7” Marshall Dillon, the vivacious Miss Kitty (who we always suspected of running a promiscuous business on the side), and comic relief provided by Chester who was desperately in need of orthopedic work. With this in mind, Jim put on his chaps and spurs, which for reasons we won’t go into, he just happened to have lying around the house, jumped on our faithful steed “Mini,” and blazed a trail to Cattlemen’s Burger and Brew in Algonquin.

A corned-beef bonanza

Let’s be honest, St. Patrick’s Day is not really known as a culinary holiday. Most people prefer Guiness and Jamesons over boiled potatoes. A perfect example of this is Nancy. If there’s Guiness on tap, she’s there in a heartbeat. She actually survived in Ireland on Guiness and flights of Irish whiskey rather than eating such delicacies as Piggy Cheeks and the delicious blend of oatmeal, pork, bread, and suet known as White Pudding. However, we digress. We found an Irish pub in Downers Grove with an interesting menu with lots of creative and authentic Irish dishes. We jumped into the Mini-Mobile, followed the rainbow hoping to find a pot of gold at Ballydoyle Irish Pub.

Scrumptious spaetzle

It’s so much fun living in the Midwest. You can experience every type of weather known to man all in one day. It can start off as a bright sunny day followed by fog and finally snow. The same is true with dining out. Almost every cuisine in the world is available only a hop, skip, and jump away. You can enjoy Italian, Asian, Mexican, and just about anything else you can think of. One day I said to myself, “self, let’s get some German food.” After a quick search on the Dining Duo computer, we hopped into our German car and took the autobahn, otherwise known as I-90, to Renate’s German Restaurant in Hanover Park.

EL DIABLO DELICIOSO

Jim is rapidly becoming the Six Million Dollar Bionic Man. Actually, that price is not too far off after looking at our Medicare bills. He’s had a knee and hip replaced and is now having the other hip replaced. The good news is, this is now considered outpatient surgery and you are in and out in three hours. What can possibly go wrong?

The site is an older building and has housed several different restaurants during the past years. When walking in, there was a gigantic fish tank with lots of salt water fish swimming around (their sushi must be really fresh). There are a lot of steps to get into the restaurant and also into their dining area, so obviously this restaurant is not handicap accessible.

Steakhouse in disguise… with onions

Now that beef prices are at an all-time high, of course, Nancy has a recurring taste for steak. To stop her incessant whining, I cleverly suggested that we go check out a steakhouse. We have passed by this restaurant a number of times, but never gave it a second thought until today. “To the Mini-Mobile Nancy,” and we headed out to Addison’s Steakhouse in McHenry.

When we arrived in the strip mall, we were surprised that the restaurant had outdoor seating by the shopping center’s fountain. We decided to dine indoors due to the Florida like weather we’ve been experiencing.

It’s huuuge!

It’s been very hot and humid lately and we have been sweating like the pilot in the movie “Airplane.” As long as we were sweating anyway, we decided to go out for some hot and spicey food at a Mexican restaurant. We consulted our super-secret list of restaurants to review and found No Manches Mexican Grill in Carpentersville.

Pret-zilla

Just like clockwork, the deadline for our restaurant review approaches every two weeks. Honestly, this time we had nothing! Time to ask the fountain of all knowledge (not Nancy), we’re talking about Google. We searched restaurants near us and were treated to a list of culinary delights. This included such delicacies as burgers, hot dogs, sub sandwiches, and the all-encompassing chicken nugget emporiums. We kept expanding our search until something caught our eye in Lake Barrington. We decided the place we are going to review is the Wild Onion Brewery.

ABBONDANZA!

Social media is a wonderful thing. Where else can you learn about a household “hack” that will wind-up taking you twice as long to do a chore. You can read a post from someone trying to convince you that the earth is flat, complete with Photoshopped pictures. Also, you are able to engage in a rousing argument about which is the best toe nail clipper. We have to admit, sometimes social media does come in handy, like when we heard the buzz about a new Italian restaurant in Marengo. It piqued our curiosity, so we locked up little Rosie in her crate, armed our GPS, and dashed off to Abbondanza Cucina.

Granite City here we come

It’s a wonderful age we now live in. There are hundreds of cable channels and dozens of streaming services, all for the low introductory price of $4.99 a month. Nancy cringes when I turn on the TV. She is fed up with me watching Hoarders, American Pickers, and Dr. Pimple Popper. As a result, we find ourselves tuning into the old standards, such as the prime-time cartoon show, The Flintstones. We love their creative solutions to everyday items such as the Pterodactyl Airlines, the dinosaur garbage disposal, and the baby elephant vacuum cleaner. Interesting, isn’t it, they all had TV. With this in mind, we jumped into our prehistoric “Mini”-mobile and decided to go to Granite City Food and Brewery in Schaumburg. Jim got his size 14 clod-hoppers all revved up, his feet hit the pavement, and off we went.

I want more parmesan

Nancy doesn’t ask for very many things in life (okay, let’s wait for the lightning bolt to subside after hitting this newspaper). One day she had a taste for a pizza in a dine in restaurant. I would never pass up a good Italian dinner and remember, happy wife, happy life. She remembered a place in Elgin that coincidentally is in the same shopping center as our favorite donut shop. Looking forward to a “win-win” that evening, off we went to Maciano’s Pizza and Pastaria.

The big bang bang

Nancy has saved the Eggers’ household countless millions of dollars by being on every restaurant rewards club mailing list. Most of the time these rewards consist of getting a free small cheese pizza after you purchase 62 large pizzas with all the toppings. However, every once in a while, an email does strike a chord and actually is a good deal. Such was the case when Nancy received an email telling us about “Lobster Weekends” at Bonefish Grill in Algonquin.

Cantina zone

You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of taste. You are about to enter… the “Cantina Zone.”

We wanted to shake up our restaurant reviews and not go to the same old places that have liver and onions as one of their daily specials. Boy did we find it!!! This very eclectic venue is in the downtown Crystal Lake area with a menu that would stump Rod Serling. We are referring to Cantina 52.

Flying broccoli

We have been having a rough couple of months (health wise), and both of us needed a fun date night with dinner and a show. What better way to combine both of these than at a Japanese hibachi restaurant. We literally have to lock Rosie in her crate since she is an escape artist and opened the latches and got out twice!!! Feeling confident that she was secured, we jumped into the Mini-Mobile and headed out to Arlington Heights to dine at Rokbonki Japanese Steakhouse.

Oliver O’ Oliver

Those of you who grew up in the Chicago area will probably remember a TV show on WGN that was a staple of our childhood. We are referring to the show of all lunchtime shows, Bozo’s Circus. We ordered tickets when Nancy got pregnant, and we received them when our daughter was seven years old. One of Bozo’s sidekicks was Ray Rayner posing as the clown, Oliver O’ Oliver. The reason why we are babbling on about this show is because one of our loyal readers suggested Oliver’s Bar and Grill in Woodstock and we had no idea how to start this article. The best we could come up with was this lame Bozo’s Circus reference.

Great Tata’s

When searching for restaurants to review, we seem to have fallen into a somewhat disturbing pattern. Unfortunately, our “golden years” are spent going from one doctor visit to another. We find ourselves googling for restaurants that are close to our next doctor appointment. Upon searching for restaurants in the Elk Grove Village area, our trained eyes spotted something totally different.

Size doesn’t matter

One afternoon Jim had a taste for Italian food. I told him that my bowling buddies, “The Pin Pals,” found a place in South Barrington that we enjoyed. Us girls work up quite an appetite since our bowling skills leave a lot to be desired. We hardly get any strikes and a three-game series usually takes about three hours. We feel like it’s not our fault since the bowling alley refuses to put up the bumpers for us.

Check in at Checkers

A long, long time ago, in a suburb far, far, away, there lived two young foodies. They traveled near and far in search of new restaurants. This was a big adventure since there were no cell phones or GPS, they had to rely on Jim’s map reading skills and Nancy’s nagging. They ventured from their comfortable Hoffman Estates home all the way to what they considered the boonies of Woodstock. The reason for this trip was a restaurant called Deeter’s which featured excellent German/Swiss cuisine.

Move ahead a few millennia, and lo and behold, these two young foodies are now ancient and use a GPS in conjunction with Nancy’s nagging. As fate would have it, they now live in the boonies of Huntley, and Woodstock is their close neighbor.

Potato pancake palooza

Getting a puppy is fun and exciting. However, once she comes home, that’s when the fun begins. First thing: housebreaking. We hung a string of bells on the patio door and taught Rosie to ring them when she has to go out. Unfortunately, she loves the outside and rings those bells every 15 minutes. If we don’t take her out, she sits in front of us and looks at us as if to say, “do you feel lucky”?

Wine and dine

Sometimes social media can be a good thing. We discovered that there was a new Portillo’s open on Randall Road in Algonquin. We are addicted to their chocolate cake and have waited in the drive through for half an hour just to get a couple of slices. While in line, we noticed that right next door was another new restaurant called Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant. It was lunch time and we were hungry, so after buying our cake, we went next door for lunch.

The good ol’ days

The new year is a time for planning ahead as well as reminiscing about the “good ol’ days.” Our thoughts wandered to our youth when there were drive-in restaurants and hot cars. Nancy grew up in Franklin Park and was the proud owner of a Ford XL with a 429 cu. in. engine with dual quad Holley carburetors. This was her pride and joy and her parents’ worst nightmare.

2023 B.E.L.C.H.

How time flies when you’re having fun!!! After 12 years, 249 restaurants, and 4,380 cholesterol pills, we’re still alive and passionate about what we do. It’s not easy to constantly stuff fatty foods in our faces and live to tell about it. The truly amazing thing is our pictures are in the paper that is circulated around Huntley, and no one has suspected a thing.

Proudly Serving the Community of Sun City in Huntley

Proudly Serving the Community of
Sun City in Huntley