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When I was young, I thought of \u201ceating out\u201d as a treat of the highest order.<\/p>\nWhen I was young, I thought of \u201ceating out\u201d as a treat of the highest order.<\/p>\n
It meant that my parents were willing to invest more than usual in a family meal. Dinners out were usually reserved for special occasions like birthdays, and everyone in our family had opinions on where we should go.<\/p>\n
Neither of my parents were drinkers, but I remember taking some pleasure in watching my father order a whiskey sour at a restaurant and seeing our waitress place a cocktail napkin in front of my mother for her favorite cocktail, a daiquiri. Of course, me and my sister, who was one year older, would call dibs on the garnish, an orange slice tethered to a maraschino cherry by a pink plastic, sword-shaped, toothpick.<\/p>\n
Back then, eating out was all about the food. About eating something we didn\u2019t get to eat every day or about the cocktail rituals of the grown-ups I lived with. Eating out was about seeing our entire family eat at the same time.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very different now. I take incredible pleasure from simply being OUT.<\/p>\n
Partially, I suppose, this feeling blossomed in the aftermath of the pandemic, when we recalled, too well, masked and socially distanced excursions to conduct grocery shopping.<\/p>\n
To a large extent, the growing desire to be OUTSIDE for a meal is seasonal. The fall equinox is fast approaching, and it\u2019s hard not to think about coming months of self-imposed confinement. In September, the summer is belting out its inevitable swan song, and I want to drink up every drop of the season.<\/p>\n
In the winter, it\u2019s too easy to talk myself out of socializing over food or drink. I\u2019ll considerer that it\u2019s cold outside and I\u2019d have to warm up the car, that there\u2019s emergency ramen in the cupboard.<\/p>\n
For most of the summer, it was too hot to think about dining al fresco<\/p>\n
But lately, I can\u2019t get enough of long lunches or dinners under the welcoming shade of a striped umbrella.<\/p>\n
A couple weeks ago, I talked a friend into dinner at Hackney\u2019s on Harms. We celebrated not having to wait long for a table by requesting a half order of onion rings right away. Early last week, I went out to lunch with another friend to a beer garden in Andersonville. It was extra fun to turn him on to the hidden spot.<\/p>\n
I must have visited a half dozen outdoor eateries in the last two weeks. All had house specialties and conscientious waitstaff, but the allure was being OUTSIDE, not in a small section along a busy street, but in the heart of the establishment, in an oasis.<\/p>\n
The weather has been in the mid-seventies lately, not buggy or so windy you couldn\u2019t control the movements of your napkin. Even though scores for the baseball games could be had, giant screen TV\u2019s did not take over my senses. It was not only possible to carry on a bona fide conversation, it seemed encouraged. Everybody was all in<\/strong> on being OUT.<\/p>\n This past Friday, I experienced a new delight on my eating outside end of summer tour, an incredible view<\/strong>. My brother-in-law hosted a visiting relative and me for a lunch at the Cliff Dwellers Club,<\/p>\n Appropriately located near Symphony Center and the interactive sculptures of Millennium Park, \u00a0on the 22nd<\/sup> floor of an office building, the Cliff Dwellers Club is a private club dedicated to supporting the arts. The establishment includes a library, a nice bar and a beautiful outdoor seating area where you can enjoy lunch and the view across Michigan Avenue,<\/p>\n The Art Institute, Maggie Daly Park, the skyline, Navy Pier, even the Bean \u2014were all very familiar to me, but I had never seen then from this perspective before.<\/p>\n I try to give myself the grace of experiencing \u201cin the moment\u201d living, something I feel very connected to when I eat outside: the aromas and flavors of the dishes, the feeling of a breeze on my skin, the laughter of friends in conversation.<\/p>\n But there is something so compelling about being in the moment and wanting that moment to last.<\/p>\n Lingering over scraps of skinny, hand-cut fries while enjoying a perfect afternoon with a cityscape rooftop view is no small thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was young, I thought of \u201ceating out\u201d as a treat of the highest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[632],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-blog","grateful-dozen-beauty"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n