La Ciudad: Mexican Food without the Sombrero

Recently, someone asked us how we would choose the one restaurant to visit for each of the popular cuisines, like Italian or Chinese or Mexican, and we didn't have a good response (some of our friends have mistakenly assumed we've put lots of thought into this project, and that's adorable!).  This past weekend we came up with the answer: we opted for La Ciudad for Mexican cuisine because it was a nice afternoon and the restaurant was an easy walk from our place.  We weren't that familiar with the restaurant, but we were aware that the place had been featured on Check, Please!, so we strode off confidently, knowing that the liberal media wouldn't steer us wrong.

Marrakech Cuisine: a taste of Morocco

When it gets really cold and snowy and gray in Chicago, it's nice to let your mind wander to somewhere warm and exotic.  With a destination off the beaten path planned for later in the evening, we set about to find a new and different restaurant in a new and different (to us) part of town.  After some digging around on Google, a winner quickly presented itself.  What would take the chill off and warm your taste buds better than some Moroccan food?  The reviews online warned to not let the street view scare you off, so we set out in the freezing winter to check out Marrakech Cuisine.  When you walk up to the restaurant, the outside appearance lived up to the billing.  This is the kind of place you could walk (or likely drive) by a hundred times and not look at twice.  When we walked in, it appeared to be empty of people, but as you walked towards the back, you quickly realize that the real action is the back half of the room, where a small bar/service area is set with eight or so small tables around it.  We came in, got a table, and began our Moroccan adventure!