One of the reasons we decided to drive to Florida this year was to create a reason to go to Nashville. While I don’t necessarily envision Nashville as a final destination, stopping over for the night was something I was really looking forward to. Provided you don’t stay at the Ramada by the airport, it’s a really good time… but that’s another story.
Crema is a totally rad coffee shop a little off the beaten path from the big flashy bars and touristy country music stores. I’ll always love my Starbucks, but this place is special. We met up with a friend who swears by their Cuban coffee. Since she’s marrying a Cuban guy you can be sure she’s a reliable source. A had the cortado, which is essentially a really, really strong latte. I wish I hadn’t eaten a crappy waffle at the Ramada, because I would have loved to try the house-made quiche, or a breakfast “cremarito”. On a chilly Sunday morning it was easy to find a cozy corner to chat or read a book, but from what I hear the place can get packed pretty easily. People don’t mind the wait, and after trying Crema once, I wouldn’t mind it either.
Using the Nashville filter in Nashville… naturally
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Crema is located at 15 Hermitage Ave. in Nashville, TN. Store hours are MON – FRI 7AM – 7PM // SAT 8AM – 6PM // SUN 9AM – 4PM. Follow them on twitter @cremacrema
Ah, how I love a road trip. I’m not going to say that I rely on road trips to fill out my collection of Starbucks site visits, but it sure doesn’t hurt.
Leaving this winter wonderland behind wasn’t too hard…
… to spend the holiday vacationing in Florida. Along the way we came across rising temps and a nice little Starbucks outside of Atlanta. Apparently you aren’t supposed to drive through Atlanta, though I can neither confirm nor deny the horrendous traffic that is rumored to be there. After a couple hundred miles with not a green siren in site, this was a misto I’d been waiting for (which might explain the weird look on my face… or maybe I was in the middle of sentence. Either way…)
Blogging is not something anyone does to make bank, but it does have its perks.
I was recently contacted by Vimbly to promote the new Chicago branch of their event booking company. Sort of like Amazon for events, Vimbly partners with companies to provide a storefront for all sorts of fun things to do around Chicago. They asked if I would try out one of the events, and I had originally booked a walking tour in Millennium Park. If I’m honest with you, I wasn’t that sad when Vimbly contacted me to let me know the event had been cancelled. In exchange they offered me my choice of other events as a replacement, plus an additional voucher.
So, you mean, instead of parking downtown and walking around the bean in the cold I get to stay on the North Side and tour the (indoor) KOVAL Distillery (and you’re giving me money to do another event too)!? Ask me if I was disappointed…
The KOVAL Distiller (currently trying its hand at gin)
The KOVAL tour is something I’ve been wanting to check out for awhile. You know me… I’m into that local sustainable thing, and everything at this Chicago-based whiskey distillery is done locally, and by hand. The only thing they don’t do on site is grow the grain that becomes their whiskey. Oat, wheat, barley and rye, along with all the ingredients needed for flavored liqueurs and brandies are from Illinois or its surrounding states (except the coffee liqueur, because coffee doesn’t grow in Iowa).
A tour of the original distillery – which now appears to be purely for show while operations are out of a bigger facility elsewhere – lasts about an hour, including a generous number of tastings. The story of this family business is a fascinating one, as is the process of making fields of grain into bottles of spirits. Each step is thoroughly explained with tastes along the way, and for the beverage enthusiast this is a not-to-be-missed afternoon for North Side Chicagoans. While you’re at it, you might as well walk up to the Fireside and grab a hot apple cider too (maybe sneaking in a little of the apple brandy you just bought at the distillery…).
My only concern for KOVAL is growth. It’s so good that everyone’s going to want some. I’ve been on a couple of similar brewery tours of craft beers that started as small, family-oriented, DIY businesses and are now huge empires run by machines. For now, everything at KOVAL l is done by hand, but how long can they keep that up? The fact that a guy stands in front of the bottler and pours whiskey into bottles all day long is part of what makes me want to buy it. I want to support that guy. With growth and expansion (and there’s been a lot of that for KOVAL over their five years of existence) comes the inevitable replacement of that guy for a more efficient method. When machines start taking over I start losing interest, but fortunately that’s not the case yet.
So, cheers!
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Koval Distillery is located at 5121 N. Ravenswood in Chicago. $10 Tours + tastings take place each Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, and can be booked in advance online through Vimbly.com.
I’m flying solo tonight going to (can you guess?!?) a dance show and stopped for a greek yogurt and short hot chocolate. It’s the dinner of champs, right?
There is a buzz about downtown stores that reminds me of mine. Lots of guests, even in the evening, and lots of baristas, all quite friendly. The wifi, the stale smell of past grindings… it almost makes me miss it.
Every once in awhile, it’s fun to schmooze downtown at a fancy place – the sort of place where you might go hang out as a tourist. Last weekend, the GF and I got an opportunity to meet up with some friends at the Radisson Blu hotel bar before a dance performance at the Harris Theater. The bar was fancy enough, but the bathroom was out of this world. We all decided it was like being inside a disco ball. I wouldn’t want to be the guy that placed all those individual mirrored tiles (and, let’s be honest, it doesn’t make for the most flattering image).
But wait, there’s something else! The toilets are named after my guilty pleasure band.
What do you call rolling around in the mud with a few hundred people you’ve never met before? You call it the Warrior Dash; I call it a heck of a weekend. For the second year in a row I made a pilgrimage to Johnson Creek, Wisconsin to jump over fire, swim through a murky lake, climb cargo nets and traverse a few muddy mountains. I couldn’t think of a much better way to celebrate than a Warrior Misto from the Starbucks in Beloit just over the state line. This is my second stop in Beloit, and a different store. And this time, I’m wearing this awesome t-shirt.
When I was first invited to the grand opening of Plum Market, I pictured a small cafe / grocer much like Panozzo’s or the once lovely City Provisions, which closed earlier this year. I got dressed up to meet new blogger friends from the Chicago Blogger Network under the assumption that I’d be spending a leisurely hour or two perusing, schmoozing, and sipping on free coffee.
Boy, was I wrong.
The coffee line…
In spite of massive thunderstorms that moved through overnight I arrived at Plum Market’s inaugural Chicago branch to find a line hanging out the door of a relatively massive grocery store. More akin to Whole Foods than City Provisions, all of Plum Market’s 27,000 square feet of organic goodness were packed to the gills. I never found any of the bloggers, I never got a free coffee (for fear of running out of my free hour of parking waiting for it), and wondered the store in somewhat of a culture shocked daze after spending three weeks in unpopulated Wyoming.
After securing my bag of “blogger income” (i.e. free samples) and navigating the store, a few key points came to mind:
Grocery stores can be very beautiful. Aside from my obsession with piles of fresh food, Plum Market goes a step beyond in it’s stunning design elements, bountiful hot and cold bars, and specialty areas.
People other than hipsters enjoy organic food. I love Whole Foods as much as the next person, but sometimes being waited on by a disinterested dirty hipster is a turnoff. The staff at Plum Market are clean cut, friendly, and very helpful. If they can keep it that way I’m totally sold.
What’s good for Old Town is good for me. Just north of Division and Wells, Plum Market is in an ideal location bordering hoity-toity-ville, gross bar-ville, and homeless-man-hanging-out-by-the-red-line-ville. This market will easily satisfy the residents of Old Town, is walking distance to the Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts, and hopefully will give the miserable Jewel at Clark and Division a run for it’s money. Though grocery stores don’t necessarily make for great tourist attractions, Plum Market extends Old Town’s charm a little further to the South then the average visitor would be apt to walk, and provides a lovely stop to grab a cup of coffee and a break before turning around and heading back.
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Experience Plum Market for yourself at 1233 N. Wells St. Store hours are 8am-10pm; free parking for 1 hour with validation. For more information, visit www.plummarket.com or @PlumMarket on twitter (#PlumMarketCHI). Plum Market is also on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.
Lauren Warnecke 
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