Supper for Suburbanites

Sushi Today

2009-09-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

I decided to meet Ben by his office for lunch one day. He had gotten a flyer for this place awhile back and wanted to check it out. This place is located in a little strip mall in Elk Grove.

I got the Sushi Value lunch special ($9.99) which came with a California roll, Sashimi, Tempera and Gyoza plus a drink.

It was pretty good. I would've liked to be able to choose what type of roll I could have, but oh well. I think it was a good value for how much it was.

Ben got the Bulgogi ($6.99) which is Korean style roast beef with rice.

He thought it was fantastic. I did try it, and I thought it was really good also. I believe he has since been back to have this on his lunch. He is hooked.

This place is great for lunch and they are quick at getting your food to you. The staff is friendly which means I will for sure go back!

Sushi Today

552 E. Devon Ave

Elk Grove, Illinois 60007

Sugar Monkey Cupcakes

2009-09-28T14:51:00.000-07:00

I am always looking for good cupcakes places and I wanted to try this place out. Ben and I went here a few weeks ago to try it out.

We got four cupcakes for $3 a piece.

From top right, clockwise, Cookies and Cream, Smores, Chocolate Raspberry, Red Velvet

Cookies and Cream- The frosting was a sugar load, but enjoyable with the cookie crumbs in it. The cake part was dry with cookie bits in it. Nothing special.

Smores-It was a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting with a bit of marshmallow on top with a tiny bit of graham cracker crumbs. I would've liked more of the graham cracker taste.

Chocolate Raspberry-This was my favorite. It was chocolate cake with raspberry frosting. It was just the right amount of raspberry taste. Loved it!

Red Velvet-This was Ben's favorite. For me it was too sweet. I enjoy a cream cheese frosting with red velvet cake and this obviously was not cream cheese frosting.

Here is their daily menu calendar.

Sugar Monkey Cupcakes

28 W. Chicago Ave.
Naperville, IL 60540

Charkies Restaurant

2009-09-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ben and I have been here several times, and we love this place. The people that own this place are so nice and friendly and really know how to treat a customer properly. We went here yesterday for lunch before we went grocery shopping.

I got the Charkies Salad ($5.99) which has crispy romaine lettuce with tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and onions topped with crumbled feta cheese, kalamata olives and a hardboiled egg.When you dine in at Charkies you always get a bowl of complimentary soup. The soup of the day was chicken noodle.

The soup was good, not fantastic, but still a good chicken noodle soup.

Sorry about this picture, I had to take it on my iphone, I couldn't get a decent picture on my camera. This salad was very good. The only complaint I have, even though it's my own fault for not telling them I don't want it on my salad, is raw onion! I cannot eat raw onion on a salad. I love onion, but a raw onion is too strong to eat in opinion.

Ben ordered the gyro sandwich value meal ($7.95) which came with a drink and french fries.

Whenever we go here, he always orders this, so it must be good. I tried a bite and it was tasty. He always orders his plain.

All in all we keep going back to this place for a reason, its damn good. Check it out!

Charkies Restaurant

570 North Schmale Road

Carol Stream, IL 60188

Rosebud Comfort Food

2009-09-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

As we were in downtown Naperville last weekend we knew we wanted to stop somewhere for lunch and as we were walking around we decided to try out the newest venture by Rosebud. Rosebud is known for their Italian food, so I was kinda surprised when I saw that they had a comfort food place. I am a huge fan of comfort food so we were hoping that this place would pleasantly impress us.

I ordered the Croque Monsieur ($8.50) which is Pit Smoked Ham and Gruyere cheese on Brioche. It was served with a choice of sweet potato fries, steak fries, or waffle cut fries. I chose the sweet potato fries. The sandwich was eh...how do I put this, the bread reminded me of frozen texas toast and the sandwich was greasy. I must say though that they made up for the sandwich with the awesome sweet potato fries. They were hot, crunchy and sweet. Very well prepared!

Ben ordered the Rosebud Blue Ribbon Burger with American cheese ($11.25) which is a 100% USDA certified beef burger with a combo of sirloin, chuck and brisket and is served in a toasted pretzel bun. He had the waffle fries with his burger. He really enjoyed his meal. I had a bite of his burger and it was decent, but the baker in me fell in love with the pretzel bun. It was so good! (Sorry about the horrible quality of this picture, well I guess all my pictures! lol)

As you can see Ben loved his meal to the very last bite!

Rosebud Burger

48 West Chicago Avenue
Naperville, IL 60540

A cookie dough sandwich? Can it be true?

2009-09-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Cookie Dough Creations is located in downtown Naperville, IL. They specialize in creations using raw cookie dough, made without the eggs so they are perfectly safe to eat. You can order cookie dough plain kinda like as you would order ice cream. You can also get ice cream with cookie dough mixed in, or you can get the cookie dough sandwich.

Yeah Ben was looking up places to try out last weekend and he found this place online and at first I was a skeptic, but we went and these things are so bad for you, but at the same time they are so yummy. It seriously took us like 4 days to eat these things, 1/4 of these cookie sandwiches is a sugar load in itself. The cookie dough sandwiches are two cookies of your choice with raw cookie dough of your choice sandwiched between the two cookies. They are about 5 dollars a piece. We actually got one for free because as the girl was putting Ben's cookie sandwich together a part of the cookie broke off so she gave it to us for free!! (Yay! We love free stuff)

I got two chocolate chip cookies with oreo cookie dough. Very sweet but of course very good!!

Ben got two sugar cookies with cake batter cookie dough. He loved it. He told me he wants me to order a bunch of these for his birthday next year instead of a cake. Ha!!

All in all this is a place you should check out, but not if you are on a diet that is for sure. If you have a major sweet tooth you will love this place!

Cookie Dough Creations

22 W. Chicago Ave.

Naperville, Illinois 60540

Also don't forget to check out my giveaway on my cooking blog!

Joy Teriyaki

2009-09-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

I must say the first time Ben and I went to this place over a year ago when they first opened, the food was good but the inside wasn't too clean (tables were not cleared off, floors were dirty..etc) So we hadn't been back, but a few weeks ago I was in the area and wanted to grab something quick for lunch. I was happy to see that it looked like they got their act together and the restaurant seemed much cleaner and customer friendly. I got the chicken and pineapple teriyaki ($8) that came with white rice and a salad with ginger dressing.

The portions were huge as you can see. The flavor was spot on and satisfying. I will go back again and take Ben cause he really enjoys teriyaki.

Joy Teriyaki

199 E Army Trail Rd
Glendale Heights, IL 60139

(In the plaza at the corner of Bloomingdale and Army Trail)

The Latest Crave

2009-08-31T17:57:00.000-07:00

Ben and I were exploring downtown Geneva a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this cute little cupcake shop. I love baking and eating cupcakes so I had to get a few so we could taste test them. We got a german chocolate, black bottom, carrot, and a red velvet cupcake. They were pretty good. Our favorite was the german chocolate closely followed by the carrot. If you are a frosting lover then this is the place for you, their cupcakes have a ton of frosting and they even sell little chocolate cups filled with frosting, calling them frosting shots. We didn't try these up might next time we stop by. All in all this place is very cute and we will for sure be back. The cupcakes were $3 a piece.

The Latest Crave

227 S. Third Street

Geneva, IL 60134

630-262-8200

PSA Free Gyro Day

2009-08-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Do you love gyros? Well Ben and I do so we will be partaking in free gyro day! Check this out!

They will be free all day in tons of Chicago locations.

Free Gyro Day

Guava

2009-08-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ben and I always try to go somewhere new when we go out to eat so we ended up trying this place. It is a newer restaurant and serves latin food and tapas. When it comes to going to restaurants, we are boring and always go to the same type of places ( american and asian styles are the most frequented by us) So trying this place was a real treat for us. We arrived and were seated right away. I had looked up the menu earlier in the day so I knew exactly what I wanted to get to drink, anyone who knows me knows that I love watermelon so I had to have the watermelon mojito ($8).

It had watermelon chunks and mint garnishing this refreshing drink. The drink tasted just like a good mojito should! I was not disappointed at all. Ben was borning and got water to drink.

For dinner I decided to order two tapas thinking they would be pretty small portions, boy was I wrong. They were very large portions and very filling. I ordered the Peruvian style tuna ceviche (10.95) with sweet potato. The only complaint I would have with this is that it could have been seasoned a little bit more, a little salt does a ceviche some good ;) The texture was good and the chips were huge and went very well with the ceviche.

The other tapa I got was a duck and sweet potato sope with peach salsa and queso fresco($8.95). The duck was very tender and the peach salsa was out of this world. The flavors of the dish really complimented eachother and made me a very happy customer.

Ben got the Steak Currasco with gandules, pozole, and poblano salsa. ($16.95) I am not going to really speak for him, but he enjoyed it. He only ate the steak, as I keep updating this blog you will come to realize my husband is the pickest eater. He really doesn't like trying new things so it wasn't a shock to me that he didn't eat everything. The only comment he really had was that he would've liked the steak a little less cooked. He likes some pink in his red meat.

All in all we will for sure come back to this place and we will recommend it to friends. I would love to come to this place with some girlfriends sometime and split a bunch of tapas. The decor is welcoming and the music was fun. It even looked like they have salsa dancing nights. So check this place out and hopefuly you will enjoy it as much and we did.

800 E. Ogden Avenue
Westmont, IL 60559
phone 630-654-9600