We added Curio Cafe largely - no, entirely - on account of Monica Eng’s write-up in last week’s Tribune dining section. What drew Ms. Eng to the cute, mostly organic, very kid-friendly cafe “tucked away in a highly residential Northwest Side neighborhood” that otherwise wouldn’t have made the paper? Is it that Monica lives in Irving Park and goes to Curio a lot? Stalking time!
Actually, you wouldn’t catch us within 500 feet of all those children who frequent the cafe. Not because we’re a convicted sex offender, but they carry germs, you know? Their kids’ menu has an almost unheard-of three sections, covering breakfast (French toast with bananas and a juice box, $3.25), lunch (mozzarella grilled cheese with apple slices or carrot sticks and a juice box, $3.50), and snacks (ramekin with mixed fruit for $1.50. No juice box on that one; it’s seventy-five cents a la carte. But consider the potential vocabulary lesson surrounding ramekin!).
Adults have options, too. Monica recommends the carrot soup when they have it (soup of the day is $4) and the chicken sandwich, served on a ciabatta bollo, with herb roasted chicken breast, mayo, avocado spread, lettuce, and tomato for $6.95. Oh yeah, and to the extent that it’s a coffee shop, you can get Equal Exchange organic brew for $2.50 a cup, and an assortment of teas and juices, also of the organic variety.
One more thing of note: several of the sandwiches use Vienna bread, a variant with which we have little familiarity. So we looked it up, and now there’s a big old picture of it at the top of this post. Wikipedia has the following to say about it:
The dough is placed into the oven under a ceiling of steam or, alternatively, the oven is injected with steam as soon as the loaf is loaded. This adds moisture to the body, the crumb, of the bread and establishes the crust quickly, resulting in a light and airy crumb. When the steam is gone (sometimes today, withdrawn), the dry heat of the oven bakes the crust, producing its characteristically slightly crisp and flaky texture. Vienna bread is typically formed as an oblong loaf, but can be baked in other shapes. As a longer loaf, it may well have been the origin of French bread as bakers there attempted to adopt the steam method to produce their baguettes.
We added Curio Cafe largely - no, entirely - on account of Monica Eng’s write-up in last week’s Tribune dining section. What drew Ms. Eng to the cute, mostly organic, very kid-friendly cafe “tucked away in a highly residential Northwest Side neighborhood” that otherwise wouldn’t have made the paper? Is it that Monica lives in Irving Park and goes to Curio a lot? Stalking time!
Actually, you wouldn’t catch us within 500 feet of all those children who frequent the cafe. Not because we’re a convicted sex offender, but they carry germs, you know? Their kids’ menu has an almost unheard-of three sections, covering breakfast (French toast with bananas and a juice box, $3.25), lunch (mozzarella grilled cheese with apple slices or carrot sticks and a juice box, $3.50), and snacks (ramekin with mixed fruit for $1.50. No juice box on that one; it’s seventy-five cents a la carte. But consider the potential vocabulary lesson surrounding ramekin!).
Adults have options, too. Monica recommends the carrot soup when they have it (soup of the day is $4) and the chicken sandwich, served on a ciabatta bollo, with herb roasted chicken breast, mayo, avocado spread, lettuce, and tomato for $6.95. Oh yeah, and to the extent that it’s a coffee shop, you can get Equal Exchange organic brew for $2.50 a cup, and an assortment of teas and juices, also of the organic variety.
