There Exists a Vegetarian Diner!

Don't get me wrong, I love Chicago's restaurant scene and it certainly still holds many undiscovered facets for me. But Chicago is built on the values of Midwestern sensibility and blue-collar industriousness, "the City of Big Shoulders" as Carl Sandburg once wrote, and with that comes a certain practicality and adherence to convention. Thus, leading the list of hometown specialties is Chicago style pizza and Chicago hot dogs, which is fine and delicious and dandy, but generally I'm looking for more exotic fare.

So, on a lark, Katherine and I decided to google "Chicago vegetarian restaurants" to see if anything appetizing would pop up. Lo and behold, the first hit is for the Chicago Diner, whose slogan is "Meat Free since '83." This seemed sort of oxymoronic to me; aren't diners built on the concept of greasy spoon heart-attack-on-a-plate goodness? But according to the website, the restaurant has won all sorts of awards, plus their "Vegan Shakes are the Shiznit." Mad props are hereby awarded to any restaurant using "shiznit" on their website.

Glancing over the menu, I was reminded a lot of the ABC Cafe in Ithaca. I mean, a tempeh Reuben sandwich? Pfft, been there done that! But the rest of the menu was extensive, and I could have closed my eyes and pointed and been happy with what I ordered. Red pepper ravioli or a black bean burger? I ended up ordering the Polenta Fiesta, which included sun-dried tomato polenta topped with roasted sweet potatoes, spinach and rice & beans. Our waiter was similarly crunchy, and came equipped with shaggy hair and a beret. We kept telling him how happy we were to have discovered this place, and he was grooving right with us. "Yeah, Chicago tends to be big on meat...sometimes you just gotta detox, you know?"

Oddly enough, the Chicago Diner is planted smack in the middle of Boystown, the gay district in Chicago. (No really, it was the first officially recognized gay neighborhood in the U.S.) I would have expected a hippie, vegetarian diner to be closer to Wicker Park and the hipster sections of town. Even more amusing is the fact that Boystown is located in the middle of Lakeview, which has a reputation for being heteronormatively fratty, filled with popped collars and such.

You can't miss the boundaries of Boystown, since the blocks are adorned with (phallic) posts with tipped with rainbow stripes. After dinner, we did a little wandering around the neighborhood and walked past a cute store window filled with knick-knacks, like wedding cake toppers with homosexual and interracial couples. The next store also had a cute display...of mannequins bound in leather and chains. I don't walk into sex shops that often, but this one was well-endowed with all kinds of plastic parts and an extensive gay porn collection (lots of bare chests but no boobs in sight!).

I think this means we need to take a trip to Andersonville too (the lesbian district).