My Favorite Day

My Favorite Day

My favorite day is the day my family and I go to Hot Chocolate, my beloved restaurant in the city. This place is held dear to my heart, I came here for the first time three years ago. My mom had taken me here for lunch the day before I left to go travel in Ecuador for two months. My mom told me about the restaurant during our drive down the Edens Expressway. "Of course they have delicious hot chocolate there and deserts, but what you really HAVE to have is the mac and cheese or the hamburger!" This prompted my first experience of REALLY wanting to try a restaurant. Before this day I never understood "foodies" or people posting pictures of their food online, but this day changed me forever.

We arrived at the adorable Bucktown restaurant and I was so hungry, I forgot to eat breakfast. We sat down and I looked around the room and at first glanced it looked like every other restaurant aiming for the young, hip demographic with exposed brick and uncut wood furnishing. Then I looked closer, mainly at one painting in particular that was hanging above my head. I was a man holding a bunny, but it wasn't quite right. The man literally had a pig's nose and he was naked. Also, the bunny was dripping blood and this was when I made the conscious choice to not look at that wall for the rest of the meal.

The waiter arrived then and I ordered the mac and cheese, which my mother had promised me would be enough food, and it was. I was waiting bouncing in my chair from excitement. My mom didn't even like mac and cheese and she said it was amazing so I knew this would be a great experience. After what seemed like an eternity my food arrived. It came in a small casserole type bowl, the bowl and the plate the bowl rested on were both white like fresh snow, with the yellow-orange mac and cheese bursting through the middle like the sun.

I marveled at how pretty it was, it's top was lightly browned but in a way that made you know underneath this layer was...