Ann Sather is a small Chicago chain known, with good cause, for its cinnamon rolls. I went to the 70-year-old Ann Sather restaurant one El stop south of Wrigley Field (it’s right outside the Belmont station off the Red Line) before the Under Armour Game on Sunday for breakfast. The cinnamon rolls – two constitute a single side order – are very good, with a soft dough that’s somewhere between cake and brioche in texture. The cinnamon-sugar-butter filling was heavy on the cinnamon (good), although it tasted a bit like cheap cinnamon (not good, but, in their defense, it’s cheap). Every egg plate comes with your choice of two sides, and two cinnamon rolls constitute one side, so it’s a pretty good deal. I went with two eggs scrambled, which were prepared without the slightest adulteration from salt; the hash browns “well done” (my waitress’ suggestion), which means they have a crisp brown crust that breakfast potatoes should be required by federal law to have; and the “Swedish potato sausage.” I asked my waitress what that sausage contained and was told pork, veal, and potatoes, and that “it’s pink.” I’m thinking, okay, pork sausage usually has a pink hue to it, but what came to the table was dead pink in the center, and in my book, that’s raw. I didn’t eat them. That platter plus tea came to about $11.50 before tip.
In the mini-mall attached to the Renaissance Hotel on West Wacker is a fast food-ish place called Wow Bao which I really had to try. I’ve had authentic Chinese dumpings – both bao zi and xiao long jiao zi – in Taiwan and in the U.S., and I think they’re out of this word, particularly the latter kind. Bao zi are giant puffs of a simple yeast dough usually stuffed with a meat filling and steamed; the texture of the dough is very soft, almost pillowy. Jiao zi are smaller dumplings with a thinner dough and a higher filling-to-dough ratio; the fillings are juicier and part of the experience of eating one is getting the burst of liquid that comes with the first bite. (Think of jiao zi as a Hershey’s Kiss: the dough is the foil wrapper and the filling is the chocolate. That gives you a rough idea of the construction, at least.)
Anyway, Wow Bao serves enormous bao zi for $1.39 apiece or $7.99 for a six-pack; I tried several kinds, the barbecue pork being the best if a bit too sweet, the whole wheat with edamame being the worst with an overpowering taste of scallions, and the chicken and curry also scoring well despite perhaps a lack of authenticity. I highly approve of their homemade ginger ale, which tastes like … ginger. One big negative was a poor ratio of dough to filling, which, since the dough on most of the dumplings comprised only white flour, meant for a bit of a food coma not long after I ate.
Shifting locales, I’ve been remiss in not writing up Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from my trip to see the Tigers and White Sox last month. The fried eggs were cooked flawlessly (over medium) while the thickly sliced bacon was excellent and also correctly cooked. The grits … well, I’m not a huge grits fan, but these were pretty good, with a fair amount of salt in them. Not as good as even mediocre polenta, of course, but good for grits. The big bonuses for me: real tea; and a small plate of donut holes for us to try, obviously just fried and out of this world, as just-fried donuts usually are. There were five of us there and the waitress was absolutely hellbent on splitting the check for us – she wouldn’t take no for an answer – but I suppose that’s better than the waitress who takes your order and disappears for an hour.
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