Day 5: Isla de Cafe Slash Dousing My Caffeinated Paranoia With Alcohol

On Tuesday I tried out Isla de Cafe, Humboldt Park's newest food and coffee truck, with my friend Laura. I had heard about it through Time Out Chicago but had also seen it on my way to work (I used to commute on North Ave). You can see the airstream if you're driving on North Ave between Humboldt Blvd and Kedzie.

The pickup window.

We ordered two sandwiches, the mallorca and the jamon y queso. As for coffee, Laura got a large iced coffee and I got a cortado, which is an espresso with a small amount of milk. We met Cristina, one of the co-owners, and the head chef, Luis. 

Luis presses our sandwiches to order.

The mallorca.

The mallorca was delicious. It reminded me of when bacon becomes friends with french toast at breakfast. The jamon y queso was okay -- I'm more excited to try the other sandwiches than to get that one again. I think I'll have to get the pastrami next time. The coffee was kick-you-in-the-face strong and delicious. After eating our sandwiches, we went to the window a second time to get some desserts. We chose a guava pastry and a sweet corn cake. Since the coffee was so good the first time, I got a second drink, the chichaito, which is espresso with anise syrup. 

Chichaito, sweet corn cake and a guava pastry.

The corn cake was fluffy and a great accompaniment for the coffee. The chichaito is a typical Cuban coffee drink in that it's very strong and very sweet. I usually don't like sweet coffee but the anise flavor really made it. I'd get it again. 

We chatted with Luis for a while and he told us that he almost ended up cooking in Japan but couldn't learn the language so he came back to Chicago. We also learned that he has been to Jamaica a number of times and really wants to go to Thailand. 

Having two coffees at Isla de Cafe is a dangerous move. My caffeine buzz was so strong that I felt drunk, but like hyper-drunk. I started getting really paranoid and anxious about how I didn't have anything else planned for the day. Luckily, I ended up meeting my friend Brian for drinks in Logan Square at around 8pm. I was still feeling pretty caffeinated by the time we met so I thought it would make sense to try to kill my caffeine buzz with some alcohol. 

I overdid it. 

After a pitcher of margaritas at El Cid, we headed to the little alcove bar at Longman and Eagle and proceeded to have another three rounds of drinks. That area is super cool and it's easy to stay a little bit too long. By the end of the evening, I was more than talkative with who knows how many strangers and ended up presenting my cab driver with a clearly drunk-off-your-ass quandary, 

"I have a credit card or this $10 bill. Which would you like?"

If you live on the west side, you know it doesn't cost $10 to get from Logan Square to Wicker Park, but I clearly wasn't thinking straight at the time so he took the $10 and didn't run the meter. Smart man. I then continued on my crusade of embarrassment by getting cash at an ATM with a horrible fee ($3) and stumbled to the window at Big Star to get three tacos before bed. 

Parts of the evening I remember: 

• Introducing myself to three diners clearly trying to mind their own business and smothering them with my drunken crazy talk
• Impatiently pacing in front of the window, looking at an imaginary watch on my bare wrist
• Reading my number wrong and then acting crazy when the ladies at the pickup window corrected me

All in all, a shameful night. Needless to say, I was in bed half the day Wednesday and returned to the pickup window later that evening to apologize for my terrible behavior. So. Mortifying. 

The rest of the day was kind of a wash but I did have a couple of drinks at the Burlington with my friend Mike and his sister. It's a cool bar.

After this mid-week drunken fiasco, I resolved to structure or plan the days of my sabbatical from here on out -- I can't spend half of it hung over in a fetal position.