Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Carmen's Cafe in Brookside is a personal favorite. There's also a new place downtown called Bice, where I recently had some amazing gnocchi.

And I second Alm25, Room 39 is delicious!

@embolini9, you could opt for a veggie roll, which is what I do. They usually have avocado, cucumber, carrots and other assorted non-fish goodies. I LOVE vegetarian sushi (YES, it's not real sushi but it help when everyone you're with wants it). I think it's because I'm a slight masochist and love making myself almost cry with wasabi--mmm.

No idea how nice they are/price ranges since I don't live there, but my friend LOVES Hub 51 and Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba...I'd suggest checking out reviews of LEY restaurants on Yelp...the Yelp community in Chicago is huge (I'm in KC and jealous of it) and I bet you can find help there.

These are so great...I actually bake them rather than frying them.

This is my favorite pasta salad of all time. I could eat it every day and be totally happy!

oh, NO. I found so many recipes from tasty looking pictures I found on there. Dammat :(

Obama would be new, fresh, exciting and delicious. McCain would mostly be stale. I wonder what side of the political spectrum I fall.... ;)

"but unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore."

That made me crack up...I liked the part about not eating anything that used to have eyeballs. It boggles the mind that some people somehow don't think chicken or fish are "meat."

*cracking up* Seth, I am absolutely with you. In high school I worked at a sandwich shop and we had to empty out these gigantic tubs of mayo into the containers we used on the line to make sandwiches...getting a whole bunch of it slathered on my hand one time almost put me over the edge. Urp.

I think I've already answered this in a different thread, but my roommate and I have had lengthy discussions about opening Nacho Town--It would probably be the best place on earth.

My roommate and I have already figured this one out--Nacho Town. Not only gourmet types of standard Mexican nachos, but Italian nachos, Chinese nachos, veggie nachos, pretty much any type of cuisine, but in nacho form. We have a list of ideas for almost all "ethnicities" of food to turn into nachos. Dessert nachos included! We think it'd go over pretty great in a college town....

I'm a vegetarian and I love it! I'm trying to slowly transition into a vegan throughout 2008 but it's hard being semi-recently out of college and living with a roommate to make that full switch.

Favorite veggie recipes..hmm. My dad (a huge meat eater) loves this recipe (and makes it for my granparets--even bigger meat eaters). I've found so many great recipes on vegweb and there are tons of great veggie blogs. Some days I might make a grilled portobella sandwich, other days a salad, other days tofu stir fry...there are tons of options.

This week, most of my meals have been similar...dinner has been brown rice, black beans, broccoli and tons of garlic on Monday, brown rice, broccoli, spinach, tons of garlic and soy sauce on Tuesday, fried rice with peas and carrots, broccoli, onion and yes, tons of garlic last night (I'm taking a breather and going out for tapas and sangria tonight). My lunches have all been sandwiches of whole wheat bread, roasted red pepper hummus, spinach, tomatoes, maybe a little cucumber thrown in there...whatever I feel like.

I need to stop. Now I'm starving!