chriskindlmarket 2010

Earlier this week, Sarah and I went to the Daley Center to visit the Chriskindlmarket. In the several years that we have lived in Chicago, neither Sarah nor I had ever been. Being a good German, Sarah thought it was time to finally check it out.



I had actually went earlier this month with some people from work. That time, I ate a leberkese and sauerkraut sandwich and drank some hot spiced wine in a novelty boot-mug. I had never had leberkase before, but it was described on the picture menu as a cooked pork and beef product. And if there's anything I love, it's cooked pork and beef product. Eating it was like eating the anthropologic ancestor to a spamwich. It was awesome. I should have gotten a second one.

This time, I got the wine again. However, they were out of the novelty boot-mugs by this point in the year, taking away one of the only two redeeming qualities of this spiced wine - the other redeeming quality being that it contains alcohol. I don't know why people drink hot wine. It's gross.

The first thing that I ate with Sarah was a weinerschintzel. It was supremely tasty. It was like eating a really large breakfast sausage patty, which is awesome for me. Because breakfast sausage patty is my favorite style of sausage patty. It was breaded and fried, so it had a really nice crispy crust. Even Sarah liked it, except for the fatty parts. Sarah does not like the fatty parts, and as we shared this sandwich, she would save the fatty parts for me to eat. This is one of the reasons why our marriage works.

Next, we ate some potato pancakes. These smelled so wonderful that we couldn't wait to take a picture of them before diving in. And they were so delicious that we were done eating them before we even remembered to take a picture. You must get potato pancakes if you go to chriskindlmarket. but there are two kinds. The kind we had came from a batter and had an irregular shape. This is the real deal. Other booths had potato pancakes that came out in perfect round circles. I suspect that they came flash frozen before being deep fried. Those are not the real deal.

Finally, I ate a weisswurst. I've never eaten a weisswurst before, so I was very excited about it, particularly because the place I got it from was serving it with a bavarian pretzel roll. When the lady handed it to me, I think she could tell that I was in a little over my head. She warned me to take off the casing before you eat it.

So, of course, the first thing I did was try to take a big ol bite out of it. Turns out she was right about the casing. I don't know what that casing was made out of, but it was chewy. Like hot, pork-flavored gum. I had to spit it out.

Trying to eat this dish of white hot tube meat was intimidating. But once I was able to dig the meat out of the casing, the insides of the weisswurst were pretty good. I've never eaten head cheese before, but I imagine that it would taste like weisswurst. I was glad to have tried this, and I ate both of the two links that came in the serving. But I don't know that I will be going out of my way to eat this again. The pretzel was magnificent though.

Overall, I liked Chriskindlmarket, and, along with the Lincoln Park Zoo Lights, I think that this will become part of our yearly Chicago Christmas ritual. There were way too many kids there though. I mean, seriously, shouldn't they be in school? I mean, I love babies and little kids and all. But teenagers, bleh.