Chicago Diner {Comfort Food for the Vegan}

Hello from Milwaukee! Today has been a long day and full of adventures at that! We started our trip at 10am and it is ending as soon as I post this entry which is close to midnight.

We started our trek from Michigan and we headed to Chicago. On the way we tried to find a Starbucks or Bigby but can you believe that in 3.5 hours there were not any coffee shops?? Very sad but we survived. We arrived in Chicago around lunch time and we had decided beforehand that we were going to stop at Chicago Diner. I had read about this meat-free restaurant in VegNews since the restaurant boasted being meat-free since 1983.


Since we thought we were eating sushi around 5-6pm we decided to go a little light on lunch so Ryan ordered the vegan potstickers which had tofu, cabbage and carrots with a nice dipping sauce along with a green salad with a house Italian dressing.

From An Opera Singer in the Kitchen

Ryan liked his dish and thought it was different than any other potsticker he had ever tasted. Then my dish came out. I was tempted by the featured dish which was called the Radical Reuben Sandwich which was sliced seitan, onions, red peppers, sauerkraut, vegan Thousand Island Dressing, Daiya mozzarella on marbled rye. Sounds good eh? Hmmm, so good. Now I knowI said I was limiting and working on eliminating gluten from my diet but this was too good to pass up.

From An Opera Singer in the Kitchen

I added a side raw kale salad instead of fries so I was was happy with that. I actually was disappointed with the salad. It had NO dressing at all and was just kale with a few golden raisins. Very strange. I then kicked myslef because kale is one of the dirtiest leafy greens and who knows if places wash it well. It looked clean to me. The sandwich was SO TASTY and VERY delicious. I really felt like I was eating corned beef but all vegan.


After we left, we made sure to ask for vegan brownies to go. Who could pass on those? As we left the diner, I started feeling queasy and I told Ryan, thinking perhaps the hot weather might be producing such symptoms, but the feeling was getting worse as I got in the car. Well, we had an hour’s drive yet to Milwaukee and I knew this was more than just a feeling. I had to hurl folks. I told Ryan to pull up in a residential area so I could do the hurling business. It was horrible. I have not felt like this in almost a year and was sad that this had happened at a well-known restaurant.


I figure since I shared half my sandwich with Ryan WITHOUT him having any Thousand Island dressing, that the dressing perhaps had not been refrigerated. Could that be? It happened so darn quickly and I had no symptoms like this before arriving to the diner. I was famished in fact.


Question of the day: Should I call or email a manager and tell them what happened or should I blow it off and treat it as a weird fluke? Another thought came from Gone Pie indicating that maybe this was a result of Gluten overload. What do you think?


I paid good money for great eats and it feels like a waste. Please leave your opinions. All in all, the service was great, the place looked clean, and the food and brownies tasted delicious (those did not upset my tummy.) I just want to know what happened, you know? Food poisoning us not fun!


Tomorrow we hit a Cubs game. Have a good one!

From An Opera Singer in the Kitchen