I met up with an former roommate at Hill Country Barbecue Market and feasted on meats.

I’ve been to Rolo’s a few times every couple of months and each time I mean to write up the experience. The food is good, but also slightly different each time I visit, making it all the more interesting.

We fried up some eggplant drawing inspiration from Win Son’s fried eggplant recipe, which is to say the result was nothing like the original.

It was my wife’s birthday. We decided to have lunch at a new Chinese restaurant.

On our second night in Chicago, the wildfire smoke had started overtaking the city. The rich haze had turned everything pale orange and halos formed around the street lights. We headed out to Chinatown to eat some dumplings.