Neocon

I started off June by moving. A week after I moved, I went to Neocon in Chicago. The last time I went was a few years ago and it included a lot of activities prior to the trade show. This time, since I'd just moved, I basically got in and out. The trade show itself was quite interesting.

However the best part of being in Chicago is trying out restaurants. When I arrived in town and despite a 3 hour delayed flight, I managed to just about make dinner at MK Chicago. We were sat in the balcony with a view overlooking the main floor of the restaurant. The food was Chicago's version of farm to table and was delicious!

Monday night was spent with the TW team (people from TW Facilities in NY, Turner from Atlanta and HBO from NY and Santa Monica) and Herman Miller. HM treated us to a private dinner at Girl and the Goat which is one of the renowned restaurants in town and a very hard reservation to get. The restaurant is run by a Top Chef contestant and the name comes from her last name being a type of goat. We were transported in a ridiculously long limo to the restaurant and taken down into their basement private dining room/wine cellar/storage room. The menu had 13 courses in the form of small plates type dishes. All of them were delicious. The wood oven roasted pig face was particularly amazing (think the best bacon and eggs ever) and I had my first taste of goat (although I was so stuffed by then, I could only eat a small portion. The main meal was followed by four types of dessert (amazingly I discovered I had enough room to try a bit of each).

Here are a few photos from the festivities. 

My final meal was with a small group from LA at a french bistro near our hotels called Henri. This was a quiet, elegant establishment and we all agreed was the perfect way to wind down after what is always a hectic and jam packed 2 days at Neocon.

Neocon 11 in Chicago

I went to Chicago this past week for Neocon, which is a huge trade show for vendors to the commercial interiors community. The show takes place in the Merchandise Mart, which is a gigantic building on the Chicago River. Before the show starts, many people get into the city a little early to take advantage of the wonderful restaurants, sightseeing, art and architecture in the city. The last time I was in Chicago for Neocon was about 3 years ago.

This time I stayed at the JW Marriott. The hotel is beautiful, with comfy mattresses and a gorgeous bathroom (separate shower and gigantic tub). After our group settled in, a few of us headed to Ribfest which was located north of the downtown area. We didn't really know what to expect and the weather was overcast and chilly, plus we were starving, having had only airplane food. Turns out this is a fantastic food feast! Lots of rib cooking restaurants in the area had booths providing all kinds of ribs, both pig and cow, as well as related foods (sliders, cornbread, etc). The air was smoky with the smell of all the meat cooking. We tried 2 different spare ribs, corn bread, pork sliders and some maple bacon doughnut holes. The ribs were better than expected but the doughnuts were a little disappointing. After we had our fill and as the temperature continued to drop, we headed back downtown to meet the rest of the gang for deep dish pizza. I had no intention of eating any more but when the beautiful pies showed up, it was impossible not to at least take a few bites.

On Sunday, a large group of us had brunch on one of the lake cruise ships. The food is served buffet style in an indoor deck with access to the top deck for views of the skyline. The weather remained changeable so it was nice to have the protected deck to retreat to. Eventually the skies cleared and we were able to get some beautiful views of the city. After the boat came back to dock, a few of us headed to Michigan Ave to get mani/pedis and then do a little shopping. Some of us needed some warmer clothes, plus I wanted to bring the girls to Nakamol, which I was introduced to a few years ago by my friend Beth. The store has moved since then and is in a smaller location. Their sale tables were as wonderful as last time, and we all came away with unique jewelry pieces as souvenirs of the trip. For dinner, we tried to get into The Girl and the Goat, but it was packed and we were starving, so we had steaks at Rosebud Prime. Megan and I shared a giant ribeye, barely finishing half of it between us, along with mussels, chased down with a delicious Chateau Margaux. The wait staff in this city are like many you find in New York, they are professional service people and it shows. After dinner, we took a cab to the Hancock building to try and get into the bar for a view of the city at night. The skies were crisp and clear and you could see for miles.

During the trade show, the days are spent walking from showroom to showroom, taking tours and learning about new vendors, but a person has to eat, so I had lunches at Nick's Fishmarket (inside the Mart, which was nice) and Coco Pazzo, a delicious Italian place I'd been to a few years ago. On Monday night, many companies have cocktail parties both in the showroom and at outside venues. One of the best is the Interface party at ZED 451. They seem to have their event here every year and they always do it up right, taking over the whole place, providing a huge spread of noshes and a signature cocktail. This year's was Bourbon Lemonade. A nice treat was the wine tasting provided inside their wine closet, with paired cheeses. Delicious! From the Interface party, we hitched a ride to a warehouse district that is apparently becoming gentrified (like the meatpacking area in NYC or the warehouse area in downtown LA) where Coalesse had their party. I ran into someone I used to know in LA! What a coincidence. Dinner on Monday was at Red Canary, a small gastropub. We pretty much took over one side of the restaurant. The food was delicious, pot pies, fried chicken, mac and cheese, etc. It was a table full of interesting women of all ages. On Tuesday, dinner was at Socca, with a crowd of about 50. This time dinner was served family style, which was nice as it allowed for some measure of portion control after so many days of huge feasts. The food was fantastic and the company equally wonderful. A few of us headed to the bar at the W Hotel afterwards for drinks. The beauty of this location was that it was across the street from our own hotel, making for an easy stumble back to our rooms after.

On Wednesday, we were scheduled to leave on a 1p flight, but it was cancelled so after some finagling we were scheduled on a 7p flight to OC. That was not a pleasant thought, but it did allow for some time to go for a walk and to visit the Art Institute. They had some wonderful new things on display, but we concentrated on the masterpieces in their collection, including Edward Hopper's Blackhawk diner, Seurat's Sunday on the Grande Jatte, Monet's haystacks, etc.

By the time we all got home, everyone was pretty exhausted but I'd bet we'll all be looking forward to Neocon again when it rolls around next year!

Here are some of the photos I took.

Midwestern tomatoes

While I was in Chicago, there was some kind of big salmonella thing going on across the country with tomatoes. I didn't have that much time to listen to or read the news. But while all this was hitting the news, I was eating some of the most delicious tomatoes in Chicago. Some were cherry tomatoes (at N9NE) and I believe those are not part of the problem, but I had a cold tomato soup at Coco Pazzo and uncooked tomatoes in all kinds of other things. They were all exceptionally tasty and tomato-y and nary a health problem.

Gotta come back to Chicago!

Day 2 of Neocon and I'm hearing that there are not as many people as previous years. Really? Seemed like a lot to me and the traffic is terrible. People are always talking about LA traffic, but I've never been in anything as bad as Chicago. To and from the airport, slow crawl all the way taking an hour. Plus taxis here don't seem to believe in air conditioning and it's hot and humid here. In the city, people honking and driving between lanes, completely crazy.

Again today, great food. I went with Becky and Sandra to Frontera, which is Rick Bayless' casual dining restaurant. He has a ton of cookbooks and apparently is on PBS occasionally. The food was again marvelous. I had a mango cooler and we all decided on the special of the day, pork in corn massa wrapped in banana leaf (so like a tamale but different). The sauce was a red sauce and was really delicious. We had ice cream with two sauces, but the knockout was the goat cheese, which was caramel coloured and had the most amazing balance of spices, it was like tasting fireworks. We also had flan which was very creamy but after that sauce, they kind of paled.

Dinner was at Japonais again. This time cocktails by the river with yummy spring rolls and sushi rolls. Dinner was shared plates, 2 different kinds of special sushi, 3 different kinds of rolls, plus a chicken, beef and tuna entree. I was so full by the time entrees hit that I could only taste the beef and skipped the other two. My favourite dessert was the 'Coffee and donuts', which were beignets with chocolate inside with green tea ice cream. After dinner, we hit the Mohawk party. Wow, what a bash. Huge crowd with an absolutely amazing live band that totally rocked the house.

Unfortunately the trip must end, however Chicago has impressed me a lot. I barely scratched the surface of the great architecture here (FLW, Mies' Farnsworth, all the Louis Sullivan). We ate a lot of great food, but there is much more where that came from. Plus there's the Field Museum, Art Institute, and more!! This city deserves a longer stay, for sure. One interesting observation about the city, the people are very warm and down to earth, but the population here is very black and white. Most of the Asians I saw were at the Mart (there was a large foreign contingent here for the show). Becky's colleague also noticed the dearth of Latinos (she is one herself).

I found Neocon itself to be totally exhausting but I came away realizing that what you get here that it's not possible to get at home is the ability to put all of the various manufacturers in context with each other. I really got a sense for what they all think is the future of their industries and hence of how they think our workplaces will look in the not too distant future. Whether or not they are right only time will tell, but there were clear patterns here and I really enjoyed getting that perspective. I also enjoyed meeting various people from the manufacturers who are not located in LA.

Neocon begins

I'm not going to bore you with the show stuff, except to say that there are a ton of people here, the Mart is HUGE, and some women are crazy to wear the shoes they are wearing. Lunch was at Coco Pazzo and really good (the panna cotta was incredible). There was a cocktail party at Martini Park and this is a really cool place. It's quite a large space but it was packed. Drinks were free flowing as were the little mini-burgers. They had a DJ spinning some great music and the bartenders were terrific. When we had to leave, there was a line out the door waiting to get in. We lucked out again in our timing! Dinner was at N9Ne and was good but I wasn't blown away, however I've had so much good food so far here that they had a lot to live up to.

Oh, one more thing I want to mention, I've experienced more weather here in a few days than I have in 20 years living in LA!

Architecture and weather in Chicago

Chicago is home to some great architecture. Sandy and I took an architecture boat tour to see some of it from the Chicago river. It was a great tour, although I would've been very happy without the volunteer commentary. There are great examples of all kinds of architectural styles done up as a skyscraper from gothic revival to international style to post-modern. There appears to be a major riverside renewal with a lot of industrial buildings being converted to homes with river views. Luckily, we took our boat tour in the morning, because while I was having lunch with Pam, there was a major thunderstorm! We saw the rain from the restaurant and it was blowing like crazy and coming in sideways, with lightening and thunder. It was spent by the time we finished eating and the air had that great post-storm feeling-cool relief!

After lunch I met up with Sandy and we walked down Michigan Ave to do some window shopping and to see Millennium Park. This place has been much photographed because of the Anish Kapoor sculpture called Cloud Gate but often called the 'bean'. There is also a beautiful Frank Gehry designed open air theatre with a huge lawn for playing, sitting, throwing a ball. The Cloud Gate was gorgeous. Because the sky was still stormy, its reflection in the mirrored surface was amazing. Just as much fun was seeing how people were interacting with the sculpture. Another major attraction here is the Crown Fountain which is two large glass block rectangles with images of faces projected from inside (apparently via LED lights). Water pours down from the top or from an opening in the images' mouths into a shallow pool. Even on a stormy day, the combination of children and water is irresistible.

After a short rest at the hotel, the evening started at the Vitra party at Japonais, a neat Asian themed restaurant with a lower level lounge and patio looking right onto the river I'd just been on that morning! Next stop was Harry Caray's bar for a light dinner and trying to watch the Dodgers and the Lakers at the same time. It's going to be a very long day tomorrow, and my first experience of the Merchandise Mart.

Chicago!

I had a really smooth flight to Chicago. The security lines at the airport were really short. The TSA folks were exceptionally nice, and the plane was full but I had no trouble with overhead storage space. When we were just outside Chicago, we flew by some weather (we had to fasten the seatbelts) and although the ride did not get particularly bumpy, on the right side of the plane we were treated to the most spectacular cloud formations I've ever seen. One in particular was this ridiculously huge stack of fluffy, cloudy whiteness (massive!) that turned grey and fuzzy near the top and kind of blended in with a thin layer of dark grey clouds above us. I later learned that there was a tornado just south of Chicago and I wonder if that cloud formation had any part of that.

Traffic into Chicago was rough (it was raining off and on rather hard) but after we got checked in, cleaned up and changed, I met Sandy down at the hotel bar for a quick drink (Patty was there too, after a hard 2 hours of shopping) and we went to meet some folks at The Gage for dinner. The food was really good and the restaurant was busy and hopping. We shared a delicious cheese plate (some cheeses from Europe, some local). Barb had the celery root soup with salmon rolls which was surprisingly good. I had elk with mashed potatoes and the meat was amazing, flavourful, juicy but not fat at all. The mashed potatoes were buttery, smooth and delicious. Yummy! For dessert we tried the peanut butter mousse s'mores and the french toast. I didn't much care for the french toast (the maple jelly was good but the crispy rice didn't have much taste) but I loved the peanut butter s'mores, although really I think they were more like Reese's with marshmallow foam. We had two delicious bottles of wine, one a Chardonnay from Mendoza, Argentina and one a Pinot Grigio. We had a great time talking about things both important and trivial, and crushing on the bus boy (he's 21, from El Salvador and in Chicago because he heard it was a fun city).

After dinner, Sandy and I went to Blue Chicago to listen to a really fun blues band. They started with a male singer but were later joined by a woman with a voice that'll blow you out of the room. They sang a few covers, made sure there was plenty of audience participation, and just rocked the house.

The streets were packed as we made our way back to the hotel. What a great intro to a great city!