volare - part 2 (the outcome/review)

date: september 29, 2005
bet: will olive make out with mason in his office?
stakes: lunch and one week of chauffermanship (if olive loses)
winner: olive
loser: mason
destination: volare (201 east grand)
cost: $42

olive: so it was friday afternoon and my stomach was in knots. would i actually go through with it? i did a quick survey lap around the office. this was it.

i walked into mason's office, closed the door and casually said, "hello. i'm here to win a bet." instantly mason's face turned tomato red. "are you serious?" i was serious alright. and so i frenched him. i'll let him give the dirty details if he wants, but VICTORY WAS MINE!!! not only had i won the bet, but i had made mason blush, which is not an easy task. quite overwhelmed with excitement, i returned to my office to contemplate the fantastic win, leaving mason in complete shock.

for my victory lunch, we went to volare. i couldn't decide between soup or salad, so mason agreed to order salad, while i would get the minestrone, and we would share. the soup was very delicious and filled with vegetables, as minestrone should be. for my entree i ordered the risotto con pollo mixed with saffron and peas. delicious. the chicken in the dish was very tender and the risotto was just sticky enough. peas are generally one of my less favorite vegetables, but they complemented the dish nicely. and as agreed, i had a few bites of mason's mixed green salad, which was pretty standard and tasty. they also served bread, which i dipped in a self-made puddle of olive oil, parmesan and pepper on my bread plate. yum!

i suspect that the food tasted particularly good because it was mixed with the sweet satisfaction of winning a very exciting bet.

mason: exciting may be the understatement of the month (i'd say understatement of the year, but last month i heard someone say that our president was a douche). when olive said that she made me blush, she wasn't kidding. i still cannot for the life of me believe that she actually frenched me in my office. it was just plain great. she adhered to all the ground rules and seemed to genuinely be enjoying herself. she even had that 'i just brushed my teeth in preparation for this moment' taste.

so i had to take olive somewhere extra nice for her victory repast (she definitely deserved it) and volare was just what the doctor ordered that day. what i ordered that day was the fruit de mare risotto, and man was it tasty. per olive's description, there's a very fine line when it comes to risotto, and this dish walked it impressively. the seafood was fresh and abundant, and the sauce (or as my grandpa says, the gravy) was exceptional as well. the soup and salad were perfect and the olive oil/parmesan/pepper dip could have stood on its own in meal town. my one and only complaint is water-related, which as you know by now is one of my hot buttons. in this particular case, each refill of water came complete with an inordinate amount of ice -- a practice that continued until there was barely any room for actual liquid h2o. and i was exceptionally thirsty that day for some reason (most likely french-induced). luckily, olive donated her water to the worthy cause that was, for the first time in more than a month, on the losing end of the bet.

so all in all, volare is highly recommended. it's a bit on the pricey side, especially if you share the over-ordering problem that both olive and i openly admit to, but well worth the price of admission.

and on a separate but related and equally exciting note, this post brings us completely up to date. no more living in the past on this blog. we've got our eyes and mouths (for eating) aimed at the future, and at least one of us is bound and determined to inch his way back to the four-bet milestone where he will find a young lady wearing driving gloves, talking in an english accent and addressing me as sir as she traverses this fair city of ours in a very dirty toyota matrix with an incredibly proud passenger seated in the back directing her every move.

to celebrate this turning point, we present you with identity clue #2:

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volare - part 1 (the bet)

date: september 29, 2005
bet: will olive make out with mason in his office?
stakes: lunch and one week of chauffermanship (if olive loses)
winner: ?
loser: ?
destination: volare (201 east grand)
cost: $42

olive: ladies and gents, you are about to witness an o & m first. due to the highly awesome nature of this bet, and the seriousness of the bet stakes, the volare review warrants two (2) separate posts. at this point, mr. mason had managed to weasel himself three consecutive wins and was thus quite close to having me as his personal driver for seven effing days. enter the ultimate bet: would i, as they say, "french" mason at the office, in his office, in fact.

now, since the beginning of the throws, mason has been chomping at the bit to get my tongue in his mouth during working hours, and i have been vehemently opposed. until now. the genius of this bet is that it makes mason a winner either way, so he'd be a fool (A FOOL!) to refuse. if i make out with him at work, victory is mine and i don't have to be a chauffeur, but mason also gets his wish. if i don't, i remain committed to my non-office-makeout stance, but i'm punished by having to haul mason around, not to mention the unending ridicule i would surely receive from him and on the blog. isn't that so, mason?

mason: i wouldn't go so far as to say that you'd be ridiculed, but you probably wouldn't be able to show your face in public ever again. or at least in the public parts of town where people know who you are. regardless, let's just say that this bet caused quite a stir of excitement and anticipation that was felt in the loins of millions. would olive sacrifice her professionalism to avoid 4am runs to la bamba's? i, for one, didn't think so. you see, when olive said that since the beginning of the throws i have been chomping at some sort of bit to get her tongue in my mouth, she was only half right. in fact, as any man who works in a similar environment as us i'm sure will agree, a tongue is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to office shenanigans. but it's a start. and without a start, as they say, there can never be a finish.

now some of you may be thinking that because of the nature of this bet, it was somewhat skewed in my favor. while it's true that no matter what happened i would be rewarded with either an explicit office makeout session or my own personal driver, it's also true that olive was given a choice, whereas a traditional bet would have left her at the whim of the betting and lunching gods. and let's be honest, the B&L gods have not exactly been casting rainbows in olive's direction as of late.

so the bet was about to be made, but knowing olive's tendency toward sneakery, i felt we needed to lay out some very specific ground rules so as to avoid any confusion regarding the outcome of the bet. those ground rules went as follows:

1 - from the day the bet is consummated by a handshake, olive would have until the following thursday at noon (lunch time) to french me at the office. if she didn't, she would assume her new role as my chauffeur and drive us to a lunch destination of her choosing where she would not only pay for our meal, but also drive us back to work afterwards. she would also go down in olive and mason history as the first person ever to lose four bets in a row.

2 - should olive decide to go ahead with the french, it would need to take place in my office, which just happens to be located directly next to our bosses office, during regular business hours.

3 - the french would have to last a minimum of twenty seconds and would need to, at least once, accelerate into what has become known in certain circles as a "deep french." i'm not sure this requires any further explanation, but if it does, your confusion can surely be quelled somewhere else on the computer internets.

4 - finally, even if it wasn't the case, olive would need to at least appear to be enjoying herself. after all, i wasn't doing this merely for my own edification.

and so the bet was consummated. it was made on a thursday, which meant that olive had nearly a week to decide whether or not she wanted to win the bet (talk about pins and needles). what's more, it meant that for 5.5 days, olive represented the seldom-manifested yet strangely awe-inspiring determining factor of whether mason was going to win or win. now that's what i call power.

olive: yes, drunk with power, i could barely think of anything but the task at hand. an additional rule was thrown into the mix to ensure that the bet, should i go for the gold, would remain somewhat civilized. thus, the french had to take place from separate sides of the desk, helping to minimize mason's ability to put his grubby little paws on me.

so, i came to work the next day having made up my mind to win the bet. the true challenge would be in mustering the guts to make my move - oh boy, was i nervous. but the odds were in my favor. half the office was absent on this particular day and the rest were working with doors closed, which on a friday, can mean that people are either in meetings or busy recovering from a thursday night on the town. anyway, the office was quiet, i was on fire and mason didn't suspect a thing...

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jimmy john's

date: september 8, 2005
bet: who gets the most strikes during another trip to lucky strike
stakes: lunch
winner: mason
loser: olive
destination: jimmy john's
cost: $12

mason: from labor day to memorial day each year, the office at which olive and i work celebrates summer hours, which means the office closes at 2pm every friday. to mourn the last of 2005's early dismissals/extended weekends, olive and i decided to meet some friends at one of our new favorite places, lucky strike lanes. because this was the last summer-hours friday of the year, our office closed even earlier than usual, and the fact that drinking commenced at around 1:30pm that day must have provided olive with some vodka-soda-induced confidence because she challenged me to a new, bowling-related, bet. the bet was who would get the most strikes during our time there and the stakes were, once again, lunch. we must remember, though, that at this point, olive had lost two bets in a row. losing a third would mean that she was 3/4 of the way toward becoming my chauffeur for a week. so not only was lunch at stake, but also olive's dignity.

not surprisingly (at least to me), i won the bet. we ended up bowling two games, and i believe i bowled five strikes in those two games, while olive bowled a mere two. feeling somewhat sorry for olive, not only because of her slow and steady decline toward a week-long career in vehicular servantry, but also because she was in a car accident a couple days prior to the lunch and was having a hard time walking, i agreed to have the bet settled at jimmy john's, which is located quite close to our office and quite appropriately, right on the other side of lucky strike lanes. of the big four build-your-own-sandwich eateries in chicago (the other three being potbelly, quizno's and subway), i rank jimmy john's #2 behind potbelly. perhaps more importantly, however, i rank their whole pickles #1 by a landslide. i am an admitted pickle addict. maybe i have some sort of salt deficiency, but i can't get enough dillified cucumbers to save my life. jimmy john's pickles are so perfectly pickled that they make you want to save one of the four spears you receive so you can show your friends. the sandwiches are good too, especially the bread, but they don't look anything like the one pictured below (advertisements are misleading bastards). regardless, jj's is always good for a quick, healthy and affordable lunch, and their pickles will brighten your day.

olive: i am quite a fan of jimmy john's. it ranks number one in my build-your-own-sandwich eatery book and their bread is, hands down, the best. on this lunch date, i ordered the #4, aka "turkey tom." it comes with turkey, tomatoes (extra tomats for me, please), lettuce, sprouts and mayo. i also tested mason's pickle, and agree about its deliciousness. though i am not at all addicted to pickles like he is. salt deficiency indeed. he should probably wear a salt lick around his neck.

had i been in the mood, i would have gotten some of their extra crunchy salt and vinegar chips to accompany my sandwich. but i was not and so i didn't.

anyway, mason had three of four bets under his belt and, while he was getting cocky, i was getting nervous. in order for me to make or take the next bet, it would have to be one that mason would undoubtedly lose, but clever enough that mason would willingly agree to. and until our next post, i will leave you to imagine what the next bet could possibly be...

hint: it's good.

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foodlife

date: august 31, 2005
bet: who won the game of bowling at lucky strike?
stakes: lunch
winner: mason
loser: olive
destination: foodlife (835 north michigan)
cost: $19.18

mason: the score of the bowling game was something ridiculous. olive would say it was close, but not close enough for her to celebrate after the fact. the fact was that any celebration that took place at lucky strike lanes that fateful day was a celebration in masonry. what's more, this was two wins in a row for me, which as it turns out, represented a turning point in the eating of chicago by olive and mason -- a turning point that generated a rule regarding simultaneous win scenarios, the first of which, we'll soon find out, was about to manifest itself.

olive: it's true. with our affinity for betting and rewarding winners of said bets, we determined that, should one of us win a series of four bets consecutively, they would be rewarded with the chauffeur services of the loser for the duration of one week. which meant at this point, mason was halfway to having me committed to carting him all around town, driving gloves and all.

mason: let's not forget about the chauffeur's driving hat either, olive. or the fact that the chauffeur would be at not only the beck, but also the call, of the quad-bet winner. and we certainly can't overlook the new title the driver must assume during their week of service, which, of course, would be left to the discretion of the winner, who I'm sure would take full advantage of this privilege by proclaiming that his or her counterpart would henceforth, for the duration of seven days, be called jeeves, wadsworth, or perhaps even bubba. or wait, what was the butler's name in Clue? man, i loved that movie--not only because of the crush i had on yvette, but also because it's just plain silly. anyway, if you can think of the butler's name, please post it.

so here i sat, fat with glory at food life with two wins under my belt, enjoying a celebratory endeavor into La Vida Mexico, where I feasted on a burrito the size of a small child, with a side of rice and beans. I'll leave the review of the food up to olive, as I'm fairly certain we shared similar views on the meal. before I do, however, I must say something about foodlife. and that something is this: i'll eat the hell out of everything there. i like it. i like it a lot. and as you'll find out, this would not be our last trip to food life, nor would this be my last win in a row...

olive: i, too, enjoyed a giant burrito filled with rice, beans, spicy chicken, sour cream, lettuce, tomatoes and guacamole, served hot and yummy. it was a calorie-fest fit for a queen, or a loser. a two-bet loser. but i think i'd like to explain a bit on how foodlife works. when you arrive, you are given a little foodlife credit card. they show you to a table and then you proceed to visit one or many of the various food stations. the price of each item you order is added to your card which is later settled at the cashier station on the way out. it's a pretty good system for a foodcourt. in fact, foodlife is the best foodcourt i've ever seen.

mason: i'll agree with that, though if you decide to drink water instead of ordering a soda pop (see how i assimilated to two regional dialects there?), be prepared to get up anywhere from two to eighteen times during your meal to refill your cup (in my case, due to the spiciness of the burrito, i had to get up around 12 times). what's with places only giving you tiny cups when you opt for water? i hate that. the next time that happens i'm going to make sure i have some tiny U.S. currency (monopodollars would work) with which i'll attempt to pay for my meal. upon refusal by the cash register attendant, which will most likely be accompanied by either a snicker or sneer, i'll explain my disgust with the tiny cup they just handed me and demand to be treated as soda pop drinker's equal. should they choose to stand their ground, i will refuse to produce authentic funds and abort the meal altogether. i will not, however, give them back the tiny cup. i will save it for the next time this happens so i won't have to abort the meal altogether because i'll have two tiny cups instead of just one, which is almost equal to one regular-sized cup.

so now that i've gotten that out of my system, let me thank you for indulging us once again and ask you to stay tuned for our next post where not only does mason go a bit comma crazy, but he also comes one step closer to being granted to right to wake olive up in the middle of the night to drive him to walgreen's for some cigarettes and sour patch kids. and as if that isn't enough, mason also makes a triumphant return to writing in the first person while his run-on sentences take a turn for the worst.

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lucky strike lanes

date: august 25, 2005
bet: what time is it right now?
stakes: lunch
winner: mason
loser: olive
destination: lucky strike lanes (322 east illinois)
cost: $40

mason: 1) i've been told i'm too longwinded. 2) accordingly... 3) the changes and may or may not at schuba's approximately one week before this lunch took place.

m: hey what time is it?
o: what time do you think it is?
m: i don't know. around midnight?
o: no way. it's more like 11.
m: want to bet on it?
o: yes.
m: okay, then what time do you think it is right this second?
o: 11:12
m: no, i think it's 11:13.
o: okay, let's see (check phone). eff!

the rest is his story. but not really. it's history. his story is just how olive tends to say things. like mittens. they're not mittens to her. they're mit-tens. two words. not one. but there goes my wind again, getting all long and what not. i will stop that. now.

so i won the bet. what's more, it was actually exactly 11:13, but bragging is not my style.

my prize lunch took place at lucky strike lanes, which is the new, ultra-muscular and veiny arm of the AMC on illinois and near the lake or navy pier or whatever. i had chicken strips and they were great. and what i mean by "great" is "accompanied by at least four outstanding dipping sauces." if you ask me, you should be able to order dipping sauces and then have the to-be-dipped item come on the side. cause i'll dip anything. even this blog.

the service was negligible, cause we were bowling. it was probably good, though, cause we had a female server for once, who must have been straight cause she didn't flirt with olive at all.

anyway, something interesting happened during this lunch. call it a bet within a bet. or call it whatever you want. wait, remember taming of the shrew? perhaps not. but if you get the chance, read the first act. you'll be like, "um, where's the shrew and what the hell does this have to do with any type of taming of said shrew?" that's because the play starts with people who go to see a play. the play that they see is the shrew-ridden one. and then they disappear for the remainder of the play cause they're watching it, just like you're reading it. and when those people come back at the end of the play you're like "oh yeah, those guys. i remember them," but you really don't even give a care.

so this bet within a bet set the stage for a pretty interesting next few bets. and in the interest of keeping my wind short (i ain't no baller this post), i pass the qwerty torch to olive.

olive: first and foremost, we all know that mason only won this bet because i guessed the time first. i happen to have an incredible internal clock and can usually guess the time quite accurately without consulting a time-keeping device. now, i am convinced that mason used this to his advantage and delayed his guess so that my correct answer would have expired, but being the good sport that i am, i let it go (and let's face it, mason's a bit of crier and probably would have spent the rest of the night weeping if i didn't just let him win).

and now, because you're dying to know, the bet that was made during the bet lunch was who would win the game of bowling. simmer down though, because I'm not telling who won.

i must say that lucky strike is quite cool. it is filled with couches, pool tables, bar areas, tables, flat screen tvs, bowling lanes and large jugs of candy. FREE CANDY!!! one could keep themself entertained at this place for hours upon hours. though i suspect that during the night hours, it is also filled with douchebags. and that's not cool.

anyway, i ordered a cheeseburger, which is unusual for me because i rarely eat red meat. but on this particular day, i had a hankering. the burger was okay, but it was a little over-cooked. i had to load it up with available condiments to get over the too-well-doneness of it and i only ate about half of it. the french fries, however, were very crispy and tasty.

also, the food didn't arrive until we had already finished our game, which i suppose would have been okay, except for the fact that we were trying to squeeze in a game and a lunch during our standard lunch hour.

the atmosphere alone made this lunch outing well worthwhile. the place was practically ours. i mean, who's bowling downtown on a thursday lunch hour? we are. and the best part was that when we returned to the office, we didn't tell anyone, so i was able to bask in the fact that we had secretly been lunching and bowling, while others were probably enjoying their lunch of yesterday's leftovers while perusing the internet at their desks. ha ha!

mason: similar to my tendency to cry, olive tends to lie. and i dedicate that rhyme to the shakepearian reference above. just like rules are rules, 11:13 is 11:13. don't argue with god, the keeper of time. in fact, dude invented time. this god. or whoever. not sure how he/she/it likes to be addressed. my family calls him something like "according to whom i will raise my offspring," but i hate that band. i'd like to keep them separated.

so for your viewing pleasure, i present identity clue #1, which took place just seconds ago during olive's testimony. this will become a common practice:

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grand lux cafe

date: july 28, 2005
bet: whether olive would spill the beans
stakes: lunch
winner: olive
loser: mason
destination: grand lux cafe (600 north michigan)
cost: $50


olive: first, some clarification on the bet. thus far, the office romance has remained a secret, though mason was quite certain i would spill the beans to a co-worker during an office happy hour, either purposely or accidentally. and so a bet was born. but i kept my wits about during the happy hour and managed to last the evening without the beans being spilt.

the reward lunch took place at grand lux. this is a popular lunch destination, so it's difficult to squeeze into an hour. the seating system is quite garbage, if you ask me - you have to wait to be escorted from the downstairs lobby to the upstairs dining area. but oh my lucky stars, we were seated in a giant booth, which is the best kind of booth to be sure.

the menu is extensive. i decided on the lunch sandwich special consisting of the french country soup (chicken broth, curly noodles, veggies, yum), a half portion of the turkey b.l.t. and a small house salad with a light vinaigrette dressing. i washed it all down with a draught amstel light. gulp!

we skipped dessert because i don't generally dessert after lunch, but i say! the waitstaff must make commission on after-meal treats. our waiter might have cut off his own arm if he thought it would help sway us to order dessert. i'll leave the rest of the service review up to mason, but overall, the food was very tasty and the helpings were generous. i'm generally a fan of grand lux, so this makes one of my favorite lunch outings.

mason: right. so yeah. first and foremost, i need to qualify my forthcoming rant by saying that just because i've thought that the waiters were hitting on olive at every lunch we've reviewed so far doesn't make me some sort of a raving loony tunic. on the contrary, i think i'm actually quite sane -- grounded even. i've even heard people say things like "man, that mason sure is grounded." except they usually call me by my real name, which as you know, i cannot reveal. sometimes i've even heard people say something like "man, that mason is almost TOO sane." which got me to thinking, am i so sane that these waiters look at me and think to themselves "that guy's way too sane to wait for me to get off work, follow me to the train station, sit next to me on the train, then cut my throat when we pass through a darker than normal portion of track just because i'm hitting on his lady-friend right in front of his very (sane) eyes?" perhaps. and they would be correct. i would not do that. in fact, it's hard for me to even imagine. i didn't even imagine it myself just now -- i saw it in a movie. my brain is too sane to give flight to such a dastardly deed. way too sane indeed.

but i have to be honest, this waiter at grand lux was driving me a bit crazy. first of all, he all but ignored me when he greeted us. that is until after he stared at olive for a verging-on-uncomfortable number of seconds and then said, quite seriously (and as best i could tell from my vantage point, a bit seductively), "you have a beautiful smile." then, to add just the proper amount of insult to an already excessive amount of injury, he turned to me and said "doesn't she have a beautiful smile?" that's right. the first time he acknowledged me was to ask me if i thought my own girlfriend had a beautiful smile. so i said what any completely sane guy in my position would have said: "ummmmmm, yeah. that's why i'm currently dating her and also plan on making out with the mouth in question later tonight." okay, so i didn't say that exact thing, but regardless of what i said, it was accompanied by a look that resembled the look of someone who had lasers for eyes would have looked at his prey just before eye-lasering them to death -- my prey being the waiter.

so then, after we ordered some water and beer, i thought maybe i should simmer down a bit because 1) the people we work with every weekday of every week don't even know we're dating, so why should this dude, and 2) perhaps this waiter was in fact a spy hired by our office to try and get us to admit, through no fault of our own, but rather, as a reaction to an apparently overzealous but actually merely "hired" food industry employee (in the employ of not only grand lux, but also our very own office), that we were in fact throwing (see post "start!" for explanation). but then i realized that 1) this is ridiculous and 2) i was beginning to act a bit insane, which is so not me.

so anyway, we proceeded to place our order, which as olive mentioned began with two crisp, cold, super delicious but deceptively low-calorie amstel lights, and of course, two icy glasses of chicago's very best H20. from the menu, i chose the Spicy Flat Bread Chicken Sandwich, which was nothing short of outstanding. thing is, this menu at grand lux is like a freaking phone book, but instead of being filled with names and numbers of people you don't know/have never heard of, it's filled with names of some of your favorite people. like that little old lady who's always walking her dog when you stumble home at 7am and she probably thinks that you just ran out to get the morning paper or have just returned from church or something when in actuality you just had drink number 28 of 28 and cigarette number 32 of 32 from the prior evening about 20 minutes earlier when you decided you should try and get in bed before the sun comes out. meaning that just like this lady is someone you recognize and like, even though you haven't really ever talked to her before, the menu at grand lux is filled with items whose names are not only familiar but also include below them a very detailed description of what the dish entails, for instance:

Spicy Flat Bread Chicken Sandwich
Grilled Chicken Breast Topped with Pepper-Jack Cheese, Avocado-Corn Salsa, Red Onion, Lettuce, Tomato and Mayo on Our Grilled Flatbread.
Served with Fries

so the point is, it's kinda hard to decide what to get and very easy to get caught up in reading each and every item description. after careful deliberation, however, i was happy with my choice, and so was olive cause she got to eat some of my fries.

the service, inappropriate flirtations aside, was pretty good for the most part, but as olive alluded to, they're really pushy about the "baked-to-order" desserts. what are we, my mom and grandma? have we purposely left approximately half of our tummy real estate vacant so we can order cheese cake and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert? no, we're a couple of high-powered executives with a dirty little secret. a secret, you'll find out, that becomes the very subject of our next couple bets. let's just say that this is where things start to get interesting and where that can of beans starts to become dangerously unstable...

olive (rebuttle): whoa, whoa. let's not blow this dirty secret bit out of proportion, mason. i'd hate to mislead our reader(s). and, let's not go overboard on claims of sanity. this entire blog borders on the edge of crazy town.

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