Stan's Donuts & Coffee

Hello, Today we will be reviewing Stan's Donuts & Coffee.

Max:

So i have been here a few other times, and their donuts are some of the best donuts in the city. they actually might be the best donuts in the city, but there are many more donut places around Chicago, so i can't be positive. i got the Chocolate Pretzel Donut, and it's outstanding! Seriously one of the *Best* donuts. shaped like a pretzel, and with the dough of a donut. it's also covered in chocolate. Yum! very delicious. the atmosphere is very modern. and looks like an average bakery but with a lot more decor. the floor tile is really nice. they are making a lot of donuts fast! and their donuts pretty much always taste fresh and delicious! but overall Stan's Donuts & Coffee has very good donuts and i will go back soon! did you know that Stan's Donuts & Coffee's original location was built in 1963 and in Los Angeles California? check their website out. also Chicago is the only other place that has a Stan's Donuts & Coffee location other than California.

Ruben:
I liked this place a lot. This was my first time here and i had a pretty decent experience. I loved the atmosphere of the place kinda 50's retro but still it still had that new modern kind of look. The service was good and the employes were nice. I loved the display of the donuts they were nicely arranged and they had some really interesting flavors. I had the Old Fashioned blueberry donut. for an old fashioned donut it was super good. i really liked the blueberries it really complemented the glaze. And since one of Glazed and Infused locations is right across the street, Glazed And Infused better look out, cause you've got some serious competition. Stan's is a really good donut shop and i will definitely be visiting again soon.

Otto:
The doughnuts at Stan's are really good. I got the glazed donut, which might seem like a boring choice with all they have there (they have vanilla old fashioned, orange old fashioned, pistachio, maple, nutella filled, peanut butter filled, Biscoff cookie spread filled...and many more), but I like plain glazed donuts, and I think if a bakery can't make a good glazed donut, then they might not be a very good bakery. So it's a good test. And Stan's Donuts did really really well on the test. (I did also try the maple long john on a different occasion, in case you are interested, and it was delicious too). I like the design and layout and feeling of the shop.

Dressed for Donuts

Looking at Donuts

Ready for Donuts

Otto's Classic Glazed 

Max's Chocolate Pretzel Doughnut

Ruben's Blueberry Cake Old Fashioned

Floor Tile

Menu and Donuts

Mixers

OMG...Olive Mediterranean Grill

Hello, today we are reviewing Olive Mediterranean Grill.

Otto:
I got the Mediterranean Chicken as a side dish (one of the good things here is that they offer the meat as a side, they call it a protein plate, and it is very affordable). I also got a side of pita and then put the meat inside. The Mediterranean chicken is not very spicy, but it has a really nice taste. They also have plates and sandwiches. The way it works for the plates is that you pick your protein (chicken, steak or falafel) and then you can pick from different salads and sides. The restaurant is a very modern design, not too fancy but really nice.

Ruben:
This is probably one of my favorite quick restaurants in Chicago. I first went to Olive back in november and went back again in january so this was my third time going there. I got the chicken shawarma sandwich it had chicken, tomatoes, pickles and garlic spread all served in a delicious pita. It was so good and very good quality for the price. I liked the atmosphere of olive very small and nice, and the service was good and the employes were  nice. One of the questions we asked them is how many locations there were, and they said there were three which i did not know, one in downtown, one by Kingsbury street (that's the one we went to) and one in evanston that they just opened in january. Overall Olive is a great place to get a good affordable meal that is quick. I will definitely be going back to Olive in the near future.

Max:
I have been here a few times before and i think their food is very very good. I got the falafel and it was really good. I have had falafel a few times and my previous favorite  falafel was a the West Side Market in Cleveland Ohio. But this one is now my favorite! it comes with 3 balls of falafel, and a few others things on it like hummus and potatoes. And i got mine in a pita instead of as a plate. and also  the thing that i'm noticing is that it needs more condiments on it like maybe some mild salsa, yogurt sauce, or a little more hummus. But you can easily add that by buying those that they sell there. (i added yogurt sauce and hummus on mine by the way.)  but the restaurant was very very good and i will go back someday soon.

At Olive

Max's falafel sandwich

Max's falafel, layers revealed

OMG Plate: Kebab chicken, Mediterranean salad, persian yogurt, chickpea salad

Tiffin

Hello, today we will be reviewing Tiffin.

Ruben:

I have been to many indian places and this one was pretty good. I have been to Tiffin several times but i haven't been there in about 2 years. One of my favorite parts of Tiffin is the tandoori chicken and naan which they bring to you with any meal. the Naan is so flavorful and comes out nice and hot. And the tandoori chicken is served steaming hot you basically have to wait about 10 minutes for it to cool down but it's worth the wait for the crispy red chicken served with grilled onions! we had the lunch buffet it was okay. the meat was exceptional. the curry was really good and spicy. and the samosas were  just average, but i had a good meal so I'm not going to say Tiffin was Amazing But just okay so if you are ever on Devon Ave Check it out. also the servers were nice but the service was slow. i will probably go back to Tiffin but not any time soon.

Max:
So this is fairly standard indian cuisine. their buffet is okay, their Chicken Tikka Masala is pretty good, but the atmosphere is really authentic with different colored lamps and soothing music. their Naan is nice and flavorful. their buffet had plenty of choices to choose from. their chicken and lamb was quite good with a nice sauce, but i didn't like that they left the bone on them. their Tandoori Chicken was pretty good and served on a skillet, also very spicy, and it needs to cool down a lot before you can eat it. and Samosas were pretty good. after that, we got the Chicken Tikka Masala and it was good. it had a bright orange curry sauce, and it was a little spicy but still pretty decent, but it didn't blow my mind. So the restaurant was about average and i might go back someday, but there are so many more indian places that i can go on Devon.

Otto:
At first I tried the buffet. I got a couple of pieces of curry chicken and some rice. But the chicken was on the bone, and I don't like it like that when it is in sauce. They let me order something off the menu instead and did not charge me for the little bit I had taken from the buffet, which was nice of them. I ordered Chicken Tikka Masala, which was really good. And their naan was good. I also liked the Tandoori chicken. I also liked the little donut like sweets they had for dessert.

Tiffin

Food is here!

Sample of the buffet offerings

Tandoori Chicken

Dessert

Our Tiffin Restroom Dance.

Our adventure!

Flirty Cupcackes

We stopped in to visit Flirty Cupcakes in their first week in Lincoln Square.

Ruben:
Now these are good cupcakes, when i say good i mean AMAZING! first of all, we went to the brand new location of flirty cupcakes on lincoln and wilson. they also told us that they have a food truck and a shop in Little Italy. i had the IHop Cupcake, it was so good! it was a maple cake with a wonderful vanilla frosting with bits of bacon on top. the cake was so good and you could tell that it was nice and fresh. the frosting was phenomenal, very creamy and light and just melted in your mouth. and the bacon bits on top were the perfect touch, went so well with the maple cake. i had a bite of the other cupcakes that Max and Otto ordered and they were very good. i can't wait to try more. i loved the atmosphere of the place, very modern and cozy, just a great place to eat a cupcake. the service was great, the staff was very nice and asked how the cupcakes were and talked to us about the place, etc. the furniture was really cool too, they had a coffee table that was an old drum. they also had a table that was a old door with a piece of glass on top and these really cool metal stools. the counter was also really nice too. they displayed there cupcakes beautifully and just the whole shop was very nice. i loved flirty cupcakes and i plan to go back soon and it's a great touch to the lincoln square neighborhood.

Otto:
I got the For the Love of Nutella, which was chocolate cupcake with a big blob of Nutella inside and a buttercream and Nutella frosting. The frosting was so creamy and delicious, although the whole cupcake was even more delicious. I liked all the oven doors on the wall and the drum table. And I also liked the table that was made out of a recycled door. They had lots of repurposed things. It is so new that you can still smell some of the paint or oils or whatever they used on the furniture. But it wasn't so bad that you could not eat there. And it was fun to be there when it very first opened.

Max:
So i got the Peanut Butter Delight and it was UNFORGETTABLE!!! you see, this was maybe the best cupcake i have ever eaten. the Peanut Butter Delight's cake part was chocolate with a salted peanut butter center and delicious peanut butter frosting. and it also had a piece of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup on the top of the frosting. Yummmmmm! apparently this was a super new location that they said that they opened last Thursday, so we might be the first people to review it. the atmosphere was very nice. it was a very modern atmosphere but with old decorations. i liked the white counter tile. and also one of the tables was an old drum that might have been used at a circus or marching band. one of the walls had what looked like old rusty oven doors on them, they were very cool. i also really liked how they stacked their cupcakes, it was very beautiful but also something that's kinda hard to explain, but you'll see it in the pictures below. the service there was very nice. in fact our waiter said that the Peanut Butter Delight was his favorite cupcake. but the entire restaurant was really awesome, and i will definitely go back very soon!

Ruben's IHop Cupcake

Otto's For the Love of  Nutella

Max's Peanut Butter Delight

Counter

Creative Cupcake Display

Drum table

Old Oven Doors

The view from the inside

The view from the outside (looking in)

Urban Belly

Hello, today we will be reviewing Urban Belly.

Max:

I have never been here before and their food is AMAZING!!! no seriously this is the best review we have done so far, we all think. i had their Rice Cake, if you have never had rice cakes before, they are basically big plumps of rice, but not in grains they are more like balls of rice flour. but anyway, the Rice Cake was very good. it was in a big bowl with Really tasty spicy sauce, and my favorite part, Mango! that's right, Slices of mango were in the sauce, which was interesting since Mango is sweet and the sauce was spicy. but it was Delicious! there were also strips of fried chicken. and even though the sauce made the fried chicken a little soggy, the chicken was still so flavorful!! the restrooms were very pretty, and the tile in the restrooms was pretty too! and the soap containers were very cool, they were old cans that had Korean symbols on them. and they also had a really cool wall of plants,  they were growing in pots and on the wall! and not to get confused with the green rug that was on the wall near the restrooms. they were playing really good music in the entire restaurant!! so after we all finished our meals, we got warm maple doughnuts! and they were delicious with a nice maple flavor!! but they are also too hot if you eat them right way. OHH! and speaking of doughnuts, we tried to go to The Doughnut Vault before we went too Urban Belly. but unfortunately they were sold out :( but even though that they were closed we at least could go too Urban Belly!! so to get back into the subject of Urban Belly, i would definitely go back there because their food is AMAZING! and we loved it.

Otto:
This was the first restaurant we have reviewed when I have been able to try all the meals, and I liked them all. I got the beef brisket, which was really really good, every single part of it was good, except for the garnish on the top (carrots and green stuff), which we removed. It was beef on noodles with a really good, non-spicy curry sauce. I would have liked even more sauce on it. Another dish I tried was the Ramen, which was really good. I don't eat much Ramen, so I don't know how it compares to other Ramen, but the parts I ate of it were good, the noodles and the broth and the pork belly. I've never had rice cakes like the ones in the shrimp and chicken dishes we got, but I really really really like them. They are like rice compacted together, most likely in a tube like thing and then sliced. (We just looked them up on Wikipedia, and I am mostly right.) We got the maple glazed mini donuts for dessert. They were small and warm and delicious.

Ruben:

Okay i have never been here before and it is amazing! First of all the service was great, the woman behind the counter told us what was good and let us take our time before ordering. Also the other staff was very nice. I had the Urban Belly Ramen. I'm new to gourmet ramen i have only had it a couple of times but this ramen was phenomenal. The broth was very good it had a wonderful combination of spices. and the broth really complemented the other ingredients of the ramen. The noodles were good they were not amazing but just regular ramen noodles. The pork belly was so good very chewy but in a good way. Also the mushrooms were a very nice touch to the ramen. I also tried the other dishes and let me say all of them were good, not one tasted bad. I really liked these rice cakes that Max had in his dish. when i go back to urban belly i might consider getting a dish that has the rice cakes in them. To finish it off we had the fried bite sized donuts they were so good! it reminded me of these donuts that i had a couple of times in southern Indiana. even though they were Vietnamese it still reminded me of the south. I liked the atmosphere of the restaurant, very modern and edgy. All there furniture was super cool and they had a awesome plant wall. The music was great—whoever made that playlist thumbs up! to them cause i was dancing throughout the restaurant. Overall i had wonderful experience at Urban Belly and i plan to go back soon. P.S. check out the Urban Belly restroom dancing video below.

Outside of Urban Belly

Shrimp Pad Thai (Korean Rice Cakes with Shrimp, Peanuts, Toasted Garlic & Chives)

Beef Brisket (Thinly Sliced Beef with Wide Rice Noodles, Red Curry & Cilantro) 

Ramen Noodles with Braised Pork Belly, Mushrooms & Egg 

Chicken Katsu with Sliced Rice Cakes, Mango, Cilantro & Korean Chili Broth

Eating/Slurping

Mmmmm.....Maple-Glazed Mini Donuts with Vietnamese Cinnamon 

Ruben at green wall

                       

Max at green wall

Korean Soap Dispenser

Restroom Tile

Chairs

Extra long table

Wall of Plants

The extremely loud and awesome music in the restroom inspired a dance.

And if you just can't get enough of the dancing...

And....

Finally made it to Doughnut Vault.

Sold Out.