Amy's Blog

When making our arrangements for our Chicago trip, I told my friend that there were only two things that I wanted to do during my stay in the windy city.  One, meet up with my British boyfriend, Chris Martin, of the band Coldplay, and two, scout out for my other boyfriend, Chicago native, Bill Rancic.

I don’t watch any TV now, but in college, I had cable for the first time and my own TV for the first time, and became a TV junkie! I discovered Bill Rancic when I watched the very first episode of the Apprentice with Donald Trump.  I LOVED him! He was so smart, ambitious, hard working, and of course, good looking!  Anyway, he became famous by marrying an E News anchor and having a reality show with her.  I’ve never seen the reality show, but found out through the Twitter grapevine that Bill and his wife had opened up an authentic Italian restaurant in Chicago.

When I told my friend about the restaurant, she was super excited, as she is a fan of the reality show.  We made reservations and the place is so popular that we couldn’t get in until 10:30.

That just meant that I had plenty of time to do other things.  I spent the morning in the hotel lobby drinking mimosas and catching up on some stuff on the computer.  Then I decided to venture out for a shopping trip.  Normally, I don’t shop anywhere that I can get at home, but I had a DSW birthday coupon that was set to expire before I was going to get back home. So, I found a DSW on State that didn’t have the boots I wanted, so I walked a mile and a half to the next one, sight seeing along the way.  I found my boots, and lucky for me, the shoe store was in the same mall as a Whole Foods where I found, yes, you guessed it, Crispin!!

After my afternoon excursion, I headed back to the hotel where we had happy hour and then headed out to a FANTASTIC wine bar, Bin 36.  Bin 36 was not only a wine bar, but it also had a wine and cheese shop, and dining area.  We sat at the bar and enjoyed wine flights, and hand crafted cocktails with some of the most talented bartenders in the city.  I even left with a recipe to take home…Lychee Cucumber Cooler was a refreshing summer cocktail served over ice with lychee liqueur (very hard to find in Kansas City), house infused cucumber vodka, and freshly made lemonade)

We headed out to our dinner reservation with hopes that there would be a Bill Rancic sighting, although, I had been Twitter stocking all day and didn’t get any indication that Bill was in Chicago.  In fact, according to Twitter, he was spotted in Corpus Christi at a speaking engagement.  Anyway, although it was 10:30 at night, it was CRAZY busy.  There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.  We started with one round of drinks, then a second round of drinks, and then the waitress took our appetizer order.  At first, I appreciated the way that she gave us time to enjoy a leisurely dinner, but then I realized, she was just too busy to be too attentive to us.  appetizers consisted of bruschetta and truffle garlic bread!!! Truffle anything??? YES PLEASE! It was to die for!  Then came the Brussel sprout chopped salad.  For the main course, I ordered the lobster ravioli. I will say that there is a lot of hype surrounding this restaurant, but everything that we had was amazing.

The highlight was the gelato flight that they brought on the house to celebrate our birthdays.  Three hours later, we waddled home, full and satisfied, but without any Rancic sightings.