BYOBargain

Hi! How was your week? Mine was a little crazy at work, so I only managed to get two posts up instead of three. Three a week is my goal, but two might be a little more realistic at times. So that's why you get a weekend post. Plus, I have an exciting update that couldn't wait until Monday. Without further ado, this post was brought to you by the letter "C" which stands for the caffeine found in my tasty cup of Streudal Cake coffee from the Coffee and Tea Exchange. It's like a bakery poured itself into my coffee cup and I loooove it :) I keep telling John that it's my crack coffee. I'm addicted.

OK, so back to the post at hand.....One of the cool things about Chicago is the plethora of BYOB restaurants. I never saw those in St. Louis or Cleveland. They're mainly sushi, Thai, or some other type of Asian restaurant, which is alright by me. Every so often I need to fulfill my craving for pad thai or rainbow rolls.

Usually you can bring whatever you want, but some places only let you bring wine. I haven't been to Chilam Balam yet (a BYOB Mexican/tapas restaurant), but apparently they'll make sangria using a bottle of wine you bring. And beware that certain places charge a corkage fee, but that's still a steal since you're bringing your own drinks. Some of the places we've enjoyed include Joy's and Duck Walk for Thai and Lips ($1 corkage fee per person), Red Bambuu, and Ukai for sushi.

If you use a $10 off coupon, like we did last night at Ukai, or a restaurant.com gift certificate, like we used for our anniversary dinner at Lips, you can have a pretty stellar night out for a fraction of the cost. We also used a Groupon for Red Bambuu.

Ukai (source)

What would I recommend bringing? Your very own homebrew, of course! (Or a cheap bottle of wine from Trader Joe's or Binny's) Recently I told you that we bottled the beer that we lovingly brewed six weeks ago. After two weeks of bottle conditioning/fermentation we were able to enjoy it....yay!!! Not to brag or anything, but I think it's pretty awesome. We made an IPA, generally a pretty hoppy beer. This one still has the hops, but it's also slightly darker, and tastes a bit fruity. Like how a wheat beer can be a little fruity. John doesn't agree with my fruity analysis, but that's besides the point.

I present to you Bear Shark Brewing Company's Hammer Head IPA! John's buddy designed the labels, and yes there's a spelling error. He's in the process of fixing it, but I was too excited to show you to wait until we got the new ones. And the name is courtesy of a joke John had with some friends in college. We still haven't purchased the kit to start brewing at home, but that will happen soon enough.

Thanks for stopping by this week. How was your week? Super crazy that you couldn't wait to enjoy the weekend? We're going to see "Rock of Ages" tonight and I'm really excited. It's a musical set to 80's music. Plus, it's the final weekend of tapering before the Chicago marathon. Only 8 miles!
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