Saturday, February 16, 2008
Dreading our Applebee's Future
Most weekends, we go out to dinner at our favorite family restaurant here in Chicago: The Port. We first discovered The Port (short for "Southport City Saloon") when we were first dating when I'd drive from Ann Arbor to Chicago for weekend visits. Being a block from Andy's first apartment on Southport, we went to their brunches and visited the beer garden on a few occasions. The Port is the coziest, least pretentious place I know in our neighborhood. It offers comfort food with a German flair (although the chef, Jose, is Mexican so they also have great guacamole and nachos), and the servers are so nice. They know us by name, and, Sal, the bus boy, LOVES Henry. The Port holds a special place in our hearts for a few reasons. We went there one week before I had Henry for a yummy Oktoberfest meal, we went there for our first family dinner when Henry was a few weeks old (and took turns swinging him around in his car seat so he'd fall asleep), and we continue to visit regularly because we never feel like they get annoyed with our 16-month-old. In short, we love it, and it's definitely one place we'll really miss when we move. We keep envisioning endless strip malls filled with Applebees, Chilis, etc. and it makes us cringe. The Port is what all those places strive to create, at which they fail miserably. The Port doesn't need "flair," memorabilia from local points of "Americana," or even a chic Chicago menu--It offers something beyond that, something that can't be reproduced, something we will miss dearly.
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In our few weeks of house hunting in Georgia, we were forced to describe different houses by naming the people in them, rather than the houses themselves. We were choosing between "fat baby house" and "house with the grandma and a bunch of kids," rather than "that great Craftsman," or "the yellow bungalow." We live in a sea of strip malls, AND we live in the county that gave Bush his biggest lead in 2004. Quite the adjustment from good old Ann Arbor. I'm happy to say, though, that I've found my own liberal enclave here, and the city of Atlanta has also offered some respite. I even thought that I was doomed to Starbucks for coffee and wifi, but luckily found a local place just 5 minutes down the road. You'll find the same in Houston - you've just got to join the right groups and go to the right places!!
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