Game #39 / Restaurant #28 – Café Orchid

Game #39 / Restaurant #28 – Café Orchid

Saturday, August 31, 2013
Heather, Wigs, Kristen, Trish, OB, Shelly, Joe, Kevin & Julie

A little cooler today, but still warm. Good crowd – it’s been a while since we’ve had this many. Fun times! Poor Joe just landed from Argentina around 1:00 and needed to re-pack for their trip to Hawaii tomorrow. Yea, poor thing.

This was a good back and forth game:

PHI   0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0     3 6 1
CHC 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 x    4 11 1

Once again, we left a lot of guys on base – 11 hits but only 4 runs. Some game highlights/stats:

• Castro hit his first HR in over a month
• The Cubs have 89 home runs at Wrigley, second most by a team at home in the Majors behind the Orioles, who have 94.
• Castro also has career high 111 strikeouts with a month still left
• Cubs are 5-14 in one-run games
• Phillies pitcher was Cliff Lee. He was the fourth Cy Young Award winner the Cubs have faced in five games -- and the only one to get a win was the Dodgers' Zack Greinke on Monday.
• Cubs pitcher was Rusin. In the 3rd, with 2 outs (after 8 pitches), an error by Rizzo led to another 16 pitches to finish the inning. 
• Cole Gillespie had 2 RBI’s and a diving catch to prevent a base hit in the 8th.

After the game, to Bernie’s for a couple and then down to Café Orchid on Addison for some Turkish food. (Trish, JO & KD took a pass, so just the 6 of us.) This place has been here a while and we finally tried it. BYO, which is always a bonus, and we sat outside in a really cute outdoor café with plants and lights.

We started with a bunch of appetizers, including hummus (super fresh), babaganush (which is just fun to say in addition to being super fresh), lentil fingers (red lentil, onion, red pepper, cumin, parsley, scallion, white pepper, cracked wheat served over fresh romaine lettuce & lemon, mild spicy) and falafil. Everything was really, really good.

For dinner, I’m not sure I remember everyone’s but this is what I have (yea, end of season….):

Wigs – Iskender with Adana and spicy butter sauce. Adana served over pan-fried bread with butter, yogurt with mild spicy butter sauce. I have no idea what Adana is, so of course went to wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adana_kebab%C4%B1

Kevin – Sultan Delight - char-grilled eggplant puree sauteed with mozzarella cheese & topped with lamb cubes cooked with onion, red & green bell peppers, olive served with rice or bulgur





Julie, Shelly & Heather – Chicken Shish Kebobs - chicken cubes marinated with veg oil, lemon juice, milk, paprika, garlic, oregano, black pepper

Although I think Heather & I had the kebobs and Shelly had the skewers.  I'm not sure of the difference, other than the presentation.   

Joe – no idea. Maybe it was the Uskudar?? - lamb cubes sauteed with onion, tomatoes, mushroom, red & green peppers, garlic wrapped with sliced eggplant served with rice.


Everything was really good. Shelly declared this her new favorite place to go after Cub games. Not too pricey, easy to walk to after game, nice patio, BYO. Definitely on the list!!

Recap:

Cubs Win 4-3

My season record: Visitors 25, Cubs 14

Parking update: No update today