Heartland Cafe and Paleteria La Monarca

Last night, Alex and I ate at Heartland Cafe. (That's a total lie, obviously, since I just said that last night we had Indian food. But we're going to go with it.)

Heartland Cafe, on Thursday nights, has $2.50 pints of Rogue beer. So we had a couple of pints each of Dead Guy. Actually, Alex had a couple of pints, but I could never get the waitress' attention to get my second. It's probably for the best. Alex and I like Dead Guy, but the big fan of it is my dad. We brought some back for him from Portland, and he told me that he thought it was really, really excellent. My dad can be a harsh critic, too.

I had a philly cheese steak-like sandwich that was made with portobello mushrooms instead of steak. It was really good. I have to say, every vegetarian philly cheese steak variation I've ever had (like those awesome vegetarian philly cheese steaks at the USAS conference) is far better than its meaty counterpart. But it's entirely possible I've never had an actually good cheese steak. Maybe in good ones, the meat would be less stringy and gross. I got sweet potato fries on the side, which were good, but I've had better. They didn't quite match the flavorfulness and crispyness of the Zen Palate ones.

Alex had a spicy bean burger and cornbread stuffing. His burger was quite good, though much of it fell off the bun, which was a little unfortunate. I've gotten really interested in variations on veggie burgers. (Another post, maybe?) The stuffing was good, too, though maybe a little dry. I'm not sure about that, though. I think it was dry if you're calling it stuffing, but it was definitely yummy if you're calling it something else.

What was really nice about Heartland Cafe was its outdoor patio. It was on a really leafy street right by the Morse El stop. It was a great place to sit and watch the neighborhood go by. Also, the Heartland Cafe is known for its support of progressive causes. In the bathroom, there were signs up for a "prostration for peace" protest on the Rogers Park beach. We had missed it, though. I think that's okay. The bookstore seemed to have lots of interesting books, newspapers, and magazines, but I wasn't really in the mood to check them out.

Paleteria La Monarca is at 6955 N. Clark, and was in the Time Out Chicago list of food to check out on Clark St. in Rogers Park. It's a Mexican bakery, but not really your typical one, as they also sell ice cream. I got rice pudding instead, which may or may not be arroz con leche in Spanish. It was okay, but I think I really should've gone with churros or funnel cake. Alex got ice cream. I don't think I tried it, but I think he enjoyed it.