Last week we had a Roundarch team dinner at Prosecco, an Italian restaurant on the Near North Side. Prosecco has a huge selection of wine and one of the largest selections of Italian sparkling wine in Chicago.
I’d never been to Prosecco before and the menu online looked good, so I was excited to try this place. Upstairs the dining room was really pretty and brightly lit. Our private party was taking place downstairs in the private room/wine cellar.
Last Saturday we were pretty tired after our trapeze class. We came home, washed up a bit, got Dallas and headed to dinner at Buona Terra. This is a great restaurant in Logan Square that we overlook all the time. I’ve only been there once and this was Dallas’s first visit. It was so delicious. Dallas had a osso bucco special of the day, Steph had a squash ravioli with browned butter and sage sauce, and I had pasta with prosciutto, mushrooms, green peas and parmesan. So delicious. If we’re not back here soon, I’ll be disappointed. Oh, we also split mozzarella wrapped with prosciutto and grilled. ZOMG! Go here. You won’t be disappointed.
After dinner, Dallas went home and Steph and I headed to Summer Sessions on the Square. I was still pretty tired, especially after eating a bowl of pasta, but Summer Sessions is relaxing, so I was all for it. On the square we met up with Sara, Jessica, and Alden. We all sat on some sheets, enjoyed some wine (not Steph!) and listened to the bands. I love doing this in my neighborhood in the summer and hope to do it more this summer than I did last summer. Actually, last year when Steph was visiting we went to Summer Sessions too. I’m glad she likes it.
Here’s what was different this year. This year as the bands wrapped up and the sun set and it was dark, everyone on the lawn swiveled around. Behind us, across 4 lanes of traffic we could see the Logan Square Comfort Station. And in the window of that building, Manual Cinema performed a unique puppet show called “The Ballad of Lula del Ray.” This was no ordinary puppet show, though. It was performed with light and shadow and paper cut outs and an overhead projector. And music. It was so neat! Here is a trailer for the show, if you want to get a feeling for how it went.
Can’t wait to see what is planned for the next Summer Sessions on the Square show!
While I was staying over in Kohler, WI, we went to dinner at Osteria Nonna Maria in Sheboygan, WI. It was just a short drive from Kohler. Jill had somehow heard about this place while looking up restaurants online. It’s a small hole in the wall kind of place. It’s a house in a row of houses in a residential area. When you see the sign pointing to downtown, go the other way, basically! It’s a “hidden gem” according to our hotel concierge when we asked for directions.
SEE YOU IN MY NIGHTMARES!
When you walk in there’s a dining room with booths to the right. It has the feeling of a diner crossed with your grandma’s house. In fact, the owners, Bill and Mary Jo (Nonna Maria), have photos of all of their grand kids on one wall. To the left is the kitchen. We were lead through this area to a room in the back with a bar and some “interesting” wall mountings.
Parmesan Artichoke Crostini – Fresh grated Parmesan cheese and artichoke on toasted Italian bread
Fresh-baked olive bread
Salad with homemade creamy dill dressing
Chicken Cacciatore – Chunked chicken in Nonna’s creamy Sicilian marinara and vegetables served with Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese on imported capellini
Our server for the night was Kim, who is the grand daughter of the owners of Osteria Nonna Maria. Kim was perfectly nice and attentive, giving us recommendations off the menu. We had a super delicious parmesan and artichoke crostini for an appetizer. We all got salads to start and most were obsessed with the creamy dill dressing. It was like putting dill dip on top of your salad. So good. Our bread was hot-out-of-the-oven olive bread. And for my entree I got chicken cacciatore. At some point during dinner, the owner/grandma stopped by our table and chatted with us a bit. I thought that was nice.
I couldn’t finish all of my pasta so they wrapped it up for me to go in this cute duck made of aluminum foil. Actually, mine was more of a duckling, because Jill had a big portobello wrapped in hers which made it a lot bigger duck.
When Jill made the reservation she spoke with Kim and asked her about cake for dessert for Jen’s birthday. Kim said “let me talk to my grandma” and her grandma ended up making a whole entire cake for us! It was the lightest angel food cake, which was perfect since we’d just eaten a somewhat heavy dinner. Kim said this is the cake that her grandma has made for her birthday every year for as long as she could remember, so we made her take a slice to eat as well.
It was Jen’s mom, Nancy’s, birthday just a few days ago, so Jill arranged for her to get a slice of tiramisu with a candle in it, not knowing that we were getting a whole entire cake for Jen! We passed the tiramisu around the table. There was a lot of whipped cream on it, which Kristin loved and took care of. I really liked the part that was soaked in the strong coffee/espresso. So good.
Overall, I’d say that Osteria Nonna Maria is a hidden gem, as our concierge had said. The food was great, the prices were reasonable, and with Kim and her grandparents, and the fact that you were in a house-like building, you almost felt like you were dining in someone’s home.
To further celebrate Jen’s birthday, this past weekend Jill, Kristin, Jen, Jen’s mom Nancy and I all headed up to Kohler, WI for a pampering girls spa weekend. I’d never spent a whole day at the spa and I’d heard a lot of things about Kohler, so I was excited to check it out.
Note: You’re not allowed to take your phone or electronics around the spa. Which makes sense, because you’re there to totally relax. The photos of the spa and our hotel are from their official websites.
On Saturday afternoon we left for our 2.5 hour drive. I did not want to take my Jeep, since the breakdown was a little fresh in my mind, so I borrowed Jen and Chad’s Smart Car and drove that. Jill rode along with me. Kristin drove the others up in another vehicle just in front of us. In Pleasant Prairie we stopped for a late lunch. I’d already eaten, so I just got a small scoop of the flavor of the day: Backyard Smores. YUM.
We arrived in the late afternoon and checked into two connecting rooms in our hotel, the Inn at Woodlake. Ironically, this is no quaint inn by the lake. Well, it is by the lake, but it is a very modern hotel. All the rooms were wired up to the max. At one point we turned the TV on and Jill was in the hallway, she thought someone was in the bathroom, but we quickly realized that there were TV speakers in the bathroom!
Also, I didn’t really think about it beforehand, but every bathroom in Kohler and the surrounding areas is all rigged up with top-of-the line Kohler products. You should have seen how many jets our shower had!
While we were settling in to our rooms we cracked open a bottle of wine that Kristin brought along. Our rooms overlooked a putting green, a bocce court, an outside seating area and a small lake (I’m assuming Wood Lake). Since the seating area was empty, we brought our wine outside and enjoyed the evening before dinner. The photo above is of the seating area/event space in use, but of course, while we were out there, we had it all to ourselves. Nice and relaxing, next to the lake, which is pretty much where that guy in the back, standing up is pointing.
For dinner we took a very short drive over to Sheboygan and ate at Osteria Nonna Maria. This place was great! Delicious, down-home Italian cooking. Our waitress was Kim and her grandparents own the place. And we got to meet them. They went all out to help us celebrate Jen’s birthday. I’ll have more on this in a separate post, because the restaurant is one place I did take photos.
So, the next morning we headed over to the Kohler Waters Spa. Our hotel offered a free shuttle to anywhere in Kohler that we wanted to go. So convenient. And there was no wait either. When we had the concierge call, it took about 3 minutes for the shuttle to arrive. I was not getting a massage until 11:00, but decided to head to the spa early with everyone. If you were getting any services there you were able to hang around the spa all day and take advantage of the relaxation pool with a waterfall, whirlpools, sauna, steam room, rooftop relaxation room with a huge whirlpool and fireplace, and refreshments like fresh fruit and nuts throughout the 4-story building.
We checked in, got our robe and spa slippers, changed into bathing suits, put everything else into our lockers and then headed our separate ways. I spent a couple hours on the rooftop reading a book on a luxurious lounge chair nearby the fireplace. I switched off between reading, napping and taking dips in a whirlpool all morning. The funny thing is that in the hotel the night before I was reading a Kohler magazine and saw a photograph. I held the magazine up and proclaimed, “I want to go to there!” Guess where I was the next day? Yeh, I spent almost the whole day in the room I had seen in the magazine. So awesome.
At 11:00 it was time for my massage. I didn’t know what kind I wanted to get, so I got the massage sampler. This was 50 minutes of several massage techniques in sequence, including warm stones, stretching, ah-shiatsu (barefoot massage), and sinus pressure relief. I loved the stretching and the warm stones. The barefoot massage was .. uh interesting.. The therapist actually stood on the massage table and held onto bars that were attached to the ceiling while she massaged me with her feet! It was interesting. You couldn’t really tell it was feet. I had a hot compress under my neck and a cold compress on my eyes at that point and really you just feel the pressure the same way you do with hands/arms/elbows. And yes, she did wash her feet right before the procedure!
At noon we all met back up for lunch. We’d pre ordered lunches when we checked in. I had a salad and a glass of wine. Actually, I think everyone got salads. After Culver’s, an Italian dinner and birthday cake the night before, we needed to detox with vegetables!
So everyone else was staying up in Kohler until Monday, but my vacation time from work is severely limited for the rest of the year because of all the vacation time I took for our wedding. So, I needed to head back home in the Smart Car on Sunday. I’d originally planned to leave after lunch, but I realized there was nothing I really needed to be home for. Dallas wasn’t even there, he was in North Carolina. Plus, I was having so much fun at the spa, I didn’t want to leave. Everyone else had afternoon spa services scheduled, but I didn’t because I had planned to leave. I decided to just hang out for the afternoon. I laid around and did more napping and swimming and reading and loafing around. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon!
When everyone was done with their spa services we all met back up.. for… you guessed it! More laying around! The spa was just so relaxing and beautiful. I never wanted to leave! But, alas, I had to get on the road at some point. I took a shower at the spa and we all left to go back to the hotel. I quickly packed my things and was about to fly out of the room, but oh man! Kristin and Jill were setting up a cheese plate to have pre-dinner snacks and wine. They were eating at the Whistling Straights restaurant. Fancy! I guess my wallet wasn’t going to miss that, but they do have an awesome looking scallop dinner on the menu that I would have loved to try. Oh well.
My drive back to Chicago was pretty uneventful.. until I got close to Chicago. I left Kohler around 6:15 p.m. and expected I’d be back to Jen & Chad’s by 9:15. Around the part where the tollway ends and merges to the Edens I hit some major traffic and was stuck there for something like 70 minutes. More than an hour. Just stopped. Crazy. It did give me time to call my dad for Father’s Day, though! I had seen him a week then and given him a gift (Kona Brewing beer label tshirt of the beer we had at our wedding!), but it was still nice to chat quick on the actual day. Anyway, I didn’t end up getting to Jen and Chad’s to get my car til late, I didn’t get home til after 11 p.m. I was so tired! Monday morning came early!
Despite the drive home, I had a fantastic weekend. I loved hanging out at the spa. Yes, it was way pricey, but I only got one service and then just enjoyed the free amenities. A big thanks to Jill for coordinating every detail of the trip! She was so organized and prepared that I told her she should be applying for event planner jobs! And happy birthday to Jen. Remember, 40 is the new 30!
P.S. Fun fact I just learned while looking up “Kohler, WI” on Wikipedia:
Many people in Wisconsin refer to drinking fountains as “bubblers,” because the first Kohler drinking fountain was known as “The Bubbler.”
On Saturday I went down to Tinley Park for Erin‘s baby shower. I’d never been to Tinley Park before and honestly? It was pretty easy to get to and only took about 40 minutes tops, no traffic! Erin’s shower was at an Italian restaurant called Gatto’s and her mom, sisters and friends reserved a space for us to celebrate. When I walked in, I had a tiny socially awkward panic thinking I didn’t know anyone, but very quickly I saw Blagica and Claire. We sat together and chatted, enjoying a nice Italian lunch of salad, calamari, penne, and chicken vesuvio.
Erin mingled around at each table and she looked so adorable. The last time I saw her was September. She was about 3 months along, I think? Honestly, she wasn’t looking too pregnant. She’s looking pregnant now! The baby is due three days before our wedding February. Erin introduced me to some people I didn’t know and told them I was getting married in a month. She went on to say how she and Scott had totally planned on attending and were even looking at rental properties, when they found out they were expecting. She said she was so bummed. Joyous. But bummed. Erin & Scott, I know I’ll have a lot going on when we’re on Kauai, but I will for sure be thinking of you guys. Can’t wait to meet your baby girl!
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Oh. P.S. I wanted to note the gift I got, since it was made by local crafty ladies. Since I worked with Erin and Scott on Chicagoist and that is where Erin and Scott met, I got them two Chicago-themed onesies.
The onesie on the left has the Chicago flag and was made by the talented Anne Holub, who we are all friends with. This gift got a small applause.. so .. winner! On the right, the Bean Baby onesie reminded me so much of our old Chicagoist bean tshirts that I couldn’t resist. Erin and Scott “got it” immediately, so that was awesome too. The Bean tshirt was made by Leigh Kelsey, who has an Etsy shop called Rhymes With Twee, and once applied to be a Chicagoist contributor… so it was all so perfect!
