Restaurant Card Intro

Did you have birthday traditions when you were growing up? Maybe your dad took you fishing or mom made your favorite waffles on the morning of your big day. Not totally out of the norm, my family went out to dinner at the restaurant of the older-and-wiser one's choosing. Until approximately age 10, Chuck E. Cheese was my personal dining preference. The puppets were admittedly a little ominous and freaky, but I killed at skee ball. As my taste buds became more refined, I advanced to Beni Hana. This was my b-day destination spot for probably a few more years than I'd like to admit; the "Beni Hana bersday" song still resonates in my mind, and I maintain a bizarre penchant for little Buddha statues.

Eventually, my grasp of the fine dining experience did evolve. I started to select restaurants in the city instead of those in local strip malls; the menus no longer contained the word hibachi; the ambiance was not defined by the shrill cries of Ritalin-deprived adolescents; and my expectation for the service within went beyond the chef being able to flip a shrimp tail into his hat on command (I love you, Beni Hana). With a family of five, five birthdays a year allowed us to sample a myriad of chic San Fran hot spots and famous eateries riddled with Bay Area history. Here, my affinity for fine fare began.

So when my mother recently moved to Chicago, it was no wonder that she wanted to immediately familiarize herself with the local gastronomy. She searched through magazines and web sites but found she was unable to keep track of all the restaurants she liked, disliked, or had yet to visit. Fear not - a solution I did create! See, I regurgitated all the information, research, and reviews I could find about a particular restaurant onto a 4x6 index card and compiled a vast number of cards into a cheap Walgreen’s photo album. In essence, I created an assignment book of restaurant cards for my mother on which she could directly document her dish, experience, and thoughts about the eatery! The effort put toward this on-going gift to her did indeed prove to work in my favor, too; every time she wanted to sample a new spot, guess who she called on as her dinner date!

I discredited my mother’s suggestion to make these cards public because, well, she’s my mother - - she used to frame my pre-school finger paintings - - of course she’d be proud of my latest creative output. But when some friends started asking for copies of the restaurant cards as well, I figured this might be a nice offering to the extensive food-loving population in Chicago. So here you go... look for all my posts with the blog label "Restaurant Card" and keep checking back for new additions!

**PRINTING INSTRUCTIONS: Click on the Restaurant Card. Feed a 4x6 index card into your printer then go into your Print Properties and switch the Orientation to “Landscape” and the Paper Size to “Photo”. Please let me know if you experience any difficulties printing!**