For Patrick's birthday, my parents had planned a Chinese lunch on Saturday. We dropped the stuff we got from the annual organic plant sale in my parents' backyard and drove off to the restaurant in Glenview.

"Their food is really authentic," my mom raved in the car. "It may not be as good as in Chinatown, but you wouldn't think it's a restaurant in a suburban mall." Even with her rave review, I was skeptical, and so was Patrick, who politely kept his mouth shut. But we were to be pleasantly surprised. The food at the restaurant owned by a Taiwanese family, misleadingly named Szechwan North, was fantastic.

It was before noon when we walked into the dimly lit, overly decorated restaurant (there was a giant jade sculpture of a dragon-shaped sailing ship, about three feet tall, in the entrance, to give you an idea). A middle-aged man with decidedly unfashionable glasses came out from the back, and greeted my father, who immediately struck up a conversation. They both spoke stuttering English, but seemed to be having fun. The man told us (via my father) that he was from Taiwan, but named the restaurant Szechwan North because of the name recognition. My father told him that he'd been to Taiwan several times on business, and mentioned the name of an entertainment district in Taipei, which cracked up the restaurant owner. After a bit more of lively conversation, my father got beer for all of us, and the owner disappeared to the kitchen, still smiling.

The disappearance of the owner was immediately followed by an appearance of a similarly middle-aged woman in a white shirt and black apron. Strikingly red lipsticks seemed a little out of place on her otherwise childlike face. She hastily gave us menus, placed plates and chopsticks on our table, promised us to come back with water and disappeared quickly. Then, another woman, this time in a loose, white, collarless shirt and with her long hair tied into a pony tail, approached our table.

To my surprise, she started to explain what she had at hand for the day. She could steam a fresh, two-pound water pike she just purchased this morning and dress it with her special sauce. We should add a plate of stir-fried pea sprouts, she said, which she also got this morning. We nodded our heads in agreement, half perplexed by the burst of attention we were unexpectedly receiving. To those main courses, we added a bunch of goodies and waited with excitement. The brisk recommendations by the staff made it feel like we came to our regular hangout, where chefs and staff knew what we liked and cooked to our taste. The only thing we ordered right off the menu was our appetizer.

My parents got hot and sour soup, and the younger generation (us) got chicken corn soup. Both were excellent. The hot and sour soup was hot and sour (duh), but it didn't have the nasty, stinging sourness that I'm not very fond of. Our chicken corn soup was a true comfort food, with the slight sweetness of the corn and the robust flavor of from the chicken. I loved the thick texture of the soup as well.

This is the only thing we ordered off the menu: scallion pancakes. The thin wheat pancakes had bits of scallions inside (could have been more), and were served with sweetened soy sauce and hot chili sauce. I think the pancakes were baked with sesame oil, and the combination of the sesame oil and the sweet soy sauce was fantastic in a junk-foodish way.

The female cook (or the woman we assumed to be one) seemed to know that Japanese people tend to order stir-fried noodles at Chinese restaurant. So she included a combo noodles in our main courses. The noodles was the least impressive of the dishes we had at Szechwan North, but that's not to discredit the noodles. They were decent noodles, but the competition was way too harsh for them.

To accommodate Patrick's deep love of black bean sauce, the chef cooked up stir-fried beef with black bean sauce. A dish not on the menu, it had plenty of succulent beef pieces along with fresh onions and scallions. The pungent flavor of the black bean sauce was balanced out with the soy sauce, fresh garlic and ginger, and some sugar. It was one of the best black bean sauce beef in my life. (The dish in the back is the pea sprouts--lightly stir-fried with chicken broth, ginger and garlic. It is truly amazing what a satisfying dish this could be, considering how simple it is...)

Then came the main course--the steamed water pike.

The cook herself delivered the fish, cut the tender fish with a fork and a spoon, and distributed the pieces to our ready plates. When she said she was going to steam the pike, I was slightly apprehensive: I've had enough bland steamed fish in my life. But it turned out that the fish was deep-fried before it was steamed, just to give it the kick of oil (which we're all addicts of) and to coat it with a layer of flour. This extra layer of flour worked as a sort of sponge that picked up the sauce, which otherwise would slide right off the fish. The sauce contained large chunks of ginger, scallions and whole cloves of garlic, and the fish was covered with yellow chives, cilantro and green onions. These aromatic ingredients eliminated the fishy odor that the pike might have had once in his afterlife and worked well with the soy-sauce-based brown sauce.

Mr. Pike disappeared pretty quickly, leaving only his cheek-less head wondering where the rest of his body went. (He was cheek-less because cheeks are often the tastiest part of a fish's body. They tend to be much more succulent and firm than any other parts of the body.)

The tab came out to be about $100 for the four of us (including alcohol and tip). According to my parents, they don't always shower you with recommendations and other assistance. We might have bee just really lucky, coming to it when it was empty; people who came after us were given regular menus and were pretty much left to their own. So, the two recommendations when visiting Szechwan North are A) go there for lunch, and go there early to catch their "we're so bored, we want customers to chat with" mood, and B) if you're lucky enough to get this kind of attention, follow their advice, and don't hesitate to ask for stuff you like (like Patrick did).

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Szechwan North
2857 Pfingsten Rd., Glenview, IL
847.272.0007

My parents live in Glenview, a north suburb of Chicago. It's a pretty boring suburban village with lots of chain stores in posh-looking malls. Not much tasty food when it comes to the bang for the buck, and no coffee house to speak of (well, that's not a surprise, I suppose).

The village has recently seen a sizable change, since the redevelopment of the huge Naval base now called "The Glen." Lots of expensive-looking stores and restaurants moved in, and the traditional downtown area is feared to be drained of its customers. Downtown Glenview is not that interesting, anyway (an old town feel without the old town charm, I should say), so I haven't been there for a long time.

In that context, you can imagine my surprise when we walked into the Sweet Dreams Organic Bakery & Café, just to see what it's like, well prepared to be disappointed. We'd noticed the bakery before and figured it'd be just another storefront bakery, but since I'd started this blog, I figured we should at least take a look. I pulled into the narrow parking lot behind the brick building, while a guy in a black Audi backed up to let me pass (with a pastry in his hand, I noticed). Squeezing between the car and a dumpster, we walked into the store through the back door; it was a whole another world.

The first thing that jumps to your eyes when you walk into the Sweet Dreams is its pink walls. Then you'll notice the carefully arranged, comfy-looking armchairs (some are woven wicker, others are leather) around a fireplace. Then comes the showcase. When we visited the bakery, the two showcases on both sides of the register were brimming with appetizing goodies like peanut butter cookies, flaky apple strudels, loaves of chocolate pound cakes, flourless espresso torte with its top cracking open, orange sponge cake with lots of berries and whipped cream, dense cheesecakes--the list goes on and on. Some of the cakes and cookies were vegan or gluten-free, and others were 100% organic. After drooling around for a while, we decided on a veggie strudel and a slice of chocolate & walnut torte with espresso butter cream.

Unfortunately, though, the food looked better than it tasted--at least that was the case for what we got. The organic veggie strudel had a nicely flaky, buttery shell. Inside was shredded carrots, zucchini and shiitake mushrooms with soy sauce-based seasoning. The strudel came with thick and rich peanut sauce. Each of the three component were all very good. The sad part is that the didn't work together too well. The stir-fried veggies were great by itself (I can imagine eating a ton of it with a bowl of steamed rice--yum!), but didn't go well with the buttery shell. The peanut sauce, on the other hand, had too much of a kick to complement the strudel. It probably needs something with a stronger flavor, like beef, to balance out the peanuts.

The torte, though beautifully presented with a geometric doodle of chocolate sauce on a white square plate, left a spacious room for flavor enhancement. The cake part--chocolate sponge and walnut sponge--tasted like normal sponge cake without chocolate or walnuts powder. Even more disappointing was the espresso butter cream, which, if they hadn't told me it was supposed to be espresso-flavored, I wouldn't have guessed it in a million years. I might be being a little bit mean--for a family-run bakery in the United States, their baked goods were pretty good. It's just that they look so good that the actual flavor and texture cannot live up to the expectation that their appearance creates.

Croatian-style pastries, which Mary Spocic, the owner of the bakery has been baking for most of her life, both in her native country by the Adriatic Sea and in the United States, might be a better choice. The grilled veggie sandwich that a guy was having when we walked in looked very tempting as well. Given the extremely cute and cozy interior (and don't forget the free wi-fi), I might go back there just to give it another try, maybe in the savory food department next time. It is just very nice to see an environmentally conscious café--and a very cute one at that--open in an otherwise bland suburbia where I frequent, and I do feel an urge to support its business. (Another bonus point is that they serve fair-traded coffee from Intelligentsia--an award-winning roaster in Chicago.)

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Sweet Dreams Organic Bakery & Café
1107 Waukegan Rd. Glenview, IL
847.657.1092

Every first Sunday of the month, from 2 pm to 4 pm, they have a free tasting event. Awesome!