crave

date: january 15, 2006
bet: will olive or mason divulge a smooch in front of co-workers?
stakes: lunch
winner: none
loser(s): olive and mason
location: crave (201 west gorham street, madison, WI)
cost: $76 (including meals, several top-shelf drinks and tip)

olive: now that our relationship is old news 'round the old office water cooler, we thought it would be fun to see who, if either of us, would be willing to display some affection toward the other during an office happy hour. the exact bet went something like this: (1) at an office happy hour, either o or m had to place arms on or around the other and plant a kiss on the subject's cheek (it's not as easy as it sounds), and (2) at least two co-workers had to witness the event. the winner was whoever accomplished the challenge first.

i must say, i love bets like this. both contenders have a fair shot, and the anticipation of who will make the first move is F-U-N. unfortunately, the turnout of this particular happy hour was quite pathetic. i won't speak for mason, but i was far too nervous to make a move in the presence of that teensy, hawk-eyed group. had there been a larger crowd (and presumably more drinks and distractions), the outcome of this would probably be a bit more interesting.

mason: yeah. i'm with olive. first off, there were only four other people at the happy hour beside olive and myself, and of the twenty or so people we work with, they were probably the last four i would have chosen to be witness to a public display of my olive-flavored affection.

secondly, for some reason everyone (except for me) was drinking like they were at a high-school party and hadn't quite acquired the taste for beer yet. i mean really, by the time everyone has finished their first beer i was on my third (not to mention the whiskey/coke with which i kicked the happy hour off).

so there we were, sober as a couple of republicans at church, talking about work outside of work (which is always fun), and wondering what these four must be thinking about us. maybe they thought we were playing footsies under the table (we were seated directly across from each other). or maybe they were just waiting for one of us to start pawing at the other. but i doubt it. instead, we drank (if you could call it that) for an hour and then all went on our separate ways. there was a fraction of a second at one point toward the end of the happy hour when i switched chairs to avoid having to talk further with the super-boobed pilsner girl that was peddling her company's wares (though not before i drank two free mini cups of said ale) where the bet could have been won by either of us, for we were right next to each other and the rest of our coworkers were as drunk as they were going to be in each other's company that night. but alas, neither of us pulled the trigger. jack bauer would be ashamed. ASHAMED!

i will say this, though. after we left, we did reach a pretty significant turning point in our relationship when i stopped half-way through our walk home to urinate in an alley. i wasn't sure how olive would take this, as we haven't quite reached the "comfortable with poo and pee" stage yet, but she handled it just like i thought she would -- cool as a cucumber. and speaking of cucumbers, how bout the meal we ate to celebrate the neutral outcome of this bet, olive?

olive: right. so for the (non-)prize meal, we went to crave during a visit to madison, wisconsin. that's right, wisconsin. we're broadening our horizons in preparation for some international reviewing (hint hint). anyway, crave is an uber-cool martini lounge and restaurant. the decor is extremely pleasant. pale green walls, cozy booths, dim lighting, down-temp music. everything about the design of this place is sleek and soothing.



i ordered the spicy tomato soup to start and created a salad from the appropriately titled "make your own salad" menu, for my entree. the soup was presented with a mini-heap of homemade croutons and freshly grated parmesan on top. the flavor and consistency were delightful and contained just the right amount of spicy. my salad consisted of mixed greens, red bell pepper, tomatoes, carrots, snow peas, goat cheese, boiled egg and balsamic vinaigrette. the veggies were fresh, crunchy and artfully arranged. the meal left me quite content, both in belly real estate and taste-bud satisfaction. i was also pleased by the grey goose-soda-splash-o-grapefruit-juice liquid delights that helped wash it all down.

mason: ah, washing things down. is there anything better? i too washed down a delicious meal at crave, though mine was a bit more hearty (remember, i am a MAN). i chose the spicy chicken and penne with bleu cheese, balsamic onions, roasted red peppers, portabella mushrooms and spinach. man, if that wasn't a spicey meat-a-ball then i don't know what is. my buds were bursting with hotness to the point that i believe i may have contracted a permanent case of the jimmy-lips. i had to stop eating a quarter of the way through the meal to take a vodka tonic break, which was just what the doctor ordered (and allowed me to reconvene chomping shortly thereafter). i should also note that i started with a salad that could have used a bit more dressing, but was otherwise outstanding. the croutons, as olive alluded to above, were like a meal unto themselves.

so in summary, crave hit the spot. the service was friendly, the drinks were just strong enough and the food was top-notch, even for wisconsin, which, as we found out the three days prior during a ski weekend at devil's head just outside of madison, was anything but par for the course in this state. wisconsin may be famous for cheese, but i must say that i have never eaten so many consistently terrible meals in a row than i did at devil's head. now it may have just been the resort, but i have a bad habit of macro-sizing micro-sized experiences and forming somewhat unfounded prejudices based on isolated incidents. it's not naive, it's really quite mathematical. bad food at devil's head=bad food in wisconsin as a whole. see? mathematical (i used an equal sign didn't i?). so we may have been a bit biased during our experience at crave, but i'm pretty confident that even if the previous three days hadn't been rife with disgusting food intake, our meal at crave still would have done our respective tummies justice.

last on the list of things to mention: the "new format" of olive and mason eat chicago that i alluded to in a previous post. while we're still very intent on taking this sucker to the next level, it's taking us a bit longer than we had anticipated (damn technology!). so please bear with us and thanks for your patience in the meantime. we promise we'll carry on our traditional posting with much more consistency than we have in the past month as we lead up to the dramatic unveiling of our first olive&mason-cast.

until then, keep eating and keep reading!

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bistro 110

date: december 28, 2005
bet: will olive stay awake until all hours at mason's christmas party?
stakes: lunch
winner: mason
loser: olive
location: bistro 110 (110 east pearson)
cost: $60.00

mason: i say christmas instead of holidays because i expect people to assimilate to me, not the other way around. i guess it depends on the situation, but for the most part, i'd like to say ginerbread yuletide red-nosed reindeer fat white-bearded crucified spiked egg nog guilt-ridden greetings to each and every one of my fellow martyrs. frankly i'd like to put you all in a stocking and mail you to the north pole where the elves may or may not be as real as angels. and saints. and martyrs. and the third to the father's and son's first and second, respectively.

that said, for some reason olive thought that on one particular night she would be able to stay up until all hours, even though she's only accomplished this two times in her life, and one of them was the day she was born.

all hours: n. 1. remaining consistently awake until 4am local time regardless of sleep-inducing influence. 2. something that is very, very hard for olive to accomplish. 3. something that olive should never, ever bet on. 4. something easily managed in the presence of a blockhead.

olive: so, lesson learned. but to my credit, i have stayed up until all hours on more than two occasions, and i honestly felt if i made a bet about it again, i'd be able to do it. i even came close, but at 3:20 a.m., after all but a few christmas party guests had departed, i declared, "i don't care if i lose!" falling backward into peaceful slumber, still in party attire, beside a roaring fire. ahhh.

mason: but alas, there were no blockheads present, and thus olive succumbed to her slumber without even a thought to the documentation that would result:



i was on vacation the day i reaped my reward, and therefore awoke before noon from my well-deserved peaceful sloth for the first time since my impersonation of the unemployed began just one week earlier. i even missed the view.

since olive lost, she was granted the privilege of picking the venue. on this day, she made a bold choice. and by bold, i mean french.

now given the staunchness of my political affiliation (and by staunchness, i mean my blind ability to believe in elves), i've been against everything french for the past few years. i say few because it's been more than two (a couple). that's right, i was against the french before it was cool (i think i was wearing a north face jacket at the time).

but i swallowed my pride (to quote olive: gulp), put on my beret, flicked off the fashioning of george bush i placed atop my christmas eiffel tower (trees are for liberals to hug), and made my way across town on foot to the only french eatery in all of chicago downtown proper, which was conveniently located right across the street from the new hershey shop, which i can only imagine is doing quite well, given the amount of sexually deprived overweight people that visit said proper.

olive: so let's get to it then. we almost immediately started chowing down on the fresh french bread, which was especially tasty when dressed in roasted garlic (i mean a whole effing garlic just sitting there, roasted, and ready for smearing) and du buerre. following that, i ordered a mixed green salad with the addition of goat cheese. i had contemplated the endive and goat cheese salad, but my fondness for endives doesn't nearly match my fondness for cheese of the goat variety. our waiter suggested adding goat cheese to the green salad, and boy, what a dish. a light vinegar citrus dressing made the mix.

i wasn't in the mood for a meat dish as an entree, so i ordered the appetizer pizza featuring french and american cheeses. welcome to disappointment city. this so-called "pizza" was a paper thin flaky crust with a pound of greasy cheese on top. my ordering mistake was evident after a few bites. luckily, i was pretty full from the bread and salad (and a late breakfast), so that's all she wrote.

mason: disappointment city may be an understatement. it was more like disappointment nation, not to be confused with 120 disappointments (i just got chills remembering the first time i saw the video for pictures of you).

don't get me (us) wrong, though. with the exception of the decorative garland-entangled trumpet that was protruding from the mirror that was wall-mounted and perpendicularly hung above our table, this lunch started out great. the plentiful bread and mother-clove of garlic were well-complimented by a couple of amstels from the good part of europe (i hope my sarcasm is transparent enough by now).

it wasn't until the cage match that our experience at the good old one one oh took a turn for the worse/t (which is it? i'm sick of random googling tonight). the croque monsieur (translation: ham on soggy bread topped with greasy cheese) made olive's miserable excuse for a pizza look like a jack's naturally rising at the end of an all-hours nuit (with a self-readied vine-ripened tomato topliment and all).

i will say this: the french onion soup that made its way down the belly hatch (if you're going to click on one link in this entry, do so here) between the bread that got our hopes up and the title match that got our hopes down was perfect. it even rivaled the irish french hybrid at elephant and castle (though its trunk was notably shorter, and thus an inadequate receptacle/projector of peanuts, water and the like).

olive: anyway, i won't be making a repeat trip here anytime soon, despite my affinity for french culture and fare. our tale may have been different if we had worn our ordering caps (similar to thinking caps, but working in conjunction with the stomach) this day, but we didn't, and with the pricey menu and forgetful, albeit kind, waiter, bistro 110 is near the bottom of my o&m list.

mason: bottom indeed. nearly all the way down. as down as one can get. almost as down as hell, or china for that matter.

but there's one thing we forgot to mention. one very important thing. but it was for a good reason. without spelling out that r-e-a-s-o-n, i can say this: within the past 24 hours, i've heard two different coworkers say essentially the same thing:

coworker 1: "olive's probably told you this already, but..."

coworker 2: "how was your time off? what did you guys [you and olive] do?"

less than a month ago, these words wouldn't have even entered their minds. not that i (we) care, but regardless...

it's time we took it up a notch. it's time for some new characters. it's time for a new medium (okay, if you're going to click two links in this entry, do so here). it's time to show you what it's like to be olive and mason.

forgive us in advance for the forthcoming ramp-up. we promise it will be worth it.

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