Everyone's favorite German neighborhood
Ramen and a show in Lincoln Square
Short updates:
In a delightful piece of tactical urbanism, people put benches on a block of Lincoln Avenue that’s closed to traffic for construction. I’m planning on checking this out with my 3-year-old son this weekend. This is also just north of the places I’ll talk about in this post1.
Given that the theme here is enjoying things we encounter in life, I highly recommend this post: How to like everything more. It has a lot of concrete advice for enjoying (mostly artistic) things. I found that I do practice many of them, and also that I’ve never verbalized most of them so clearly.
One concert I mentioned in the short updates section recently was a Ballaké Sissoko show at the Old Town School of Folk Music, back in March. The Old Town School, which really is a music school2, is in Lincoln Square3. And it’s a great venue for folk music—very broadly defined—which for me makes it one of the best places to see African music in Chicago4.
Another great thing about the venue is that there’s a lot of great dining options in the area. Lincoln Square is an old German neighborhood, with a beer hall and a sausage shop, but there’s all kinds of cuisines represented on Lincoln Avenue and nearby streets. Luella’s Southern Kitchen is probably our current favorite5.
But we’ve ended up at Menya Goku6 for dinner before the last couple of Old Town shows. It might have something to do with how we think it’s one of the top places for ramen in the city, and how they’re not open for lunch.
Menya Goku is a pretty small restaurant, with less than 20 seats at tables, and they don’t take reservations. We were hoping, this being a Wednesday, there would be 2 open seats, and sure enough, we were able to sit at the bar, but there were people after us who had to wait for seats to open up.
We don’t always trust a ramen shop to make great clear soups (shoyu and shio)—you can’t hide your not-great broth with other strong flavors—but we trust the Ramen Wasabi/Menya Goku crew to make very good to great soup, regardless of the style. Their shoyu ramen includes sous vide pork and chicken instead of the fatty char siu, which definitely reflects their confidence in the broth.
One imperfection this visit was that a few noodles were stuck to each other, leading to a not-great bite. This is where a reviewer in Japan would say “2 stars” (see the note on Tabelog), but really, it was a very good bowl of ramen.
By the time we paid up, it was 5 minutes before the show7. Of course, the show didn’t start right on time so we were fine, but it was funny to see a woman power-walking in front of us, and finding that she was also going to the show.
As for the show, the video below gives a good sample. We’d seen Ballaké Sissoko (kora) and Vincent Ségal (cello) before at Old Town, and Vincent Peirani (accordion) and Émile Parisien (soprano saxophone) were new to us.
I’d listened to their studio album from 2023, but there’s so much you miss compared to live. Like, I didn’t know Peirani wasn’t wearing shoes—seriously, though, his stage presence doesn’t transfer to a studio recording. I’m also convinced everyone needs good accordion music sometimes.
Ségal commented that this collaboration was really just Parisian music. It was a bunch of friends, with different personal and musical backgrounds, throwing ideas at each other.
Another comment he made was about the Old Town School as a venue. Usually on tour, he would have to spend some time before the show in boring dressing rooms with nothing much to do. But at Old Town, he could check out some instruments at the shop or go to the music library. Another reason to like this place.
What I’m listening to now
I’ve already talked about 2 Montreal bands in this space, and Choses Sauvages (“Wild Things”) is another one8.
I’d say this is for Talking Heads fans. I could try to say which song here is most like a Talking Heads song, but an easier question might be which Talking Heads song is most like a Choses Sauvages song. I’m going with “Making Flippy Floppy“ or “Moon Rocks”9. It’s that combination of punk intensity, disco beats, and synth shenanigans.
What makes Choses Sauvages not like Talking Heads? They sing in French, almost in a speaking voice, with a lot more vocal harmonies.
I appreciate it when an album is crafted with the two-sidedness of the vinyl record in mind. This album is a good case. The A side ends with “Chaos initial”, the B side with “Big Bang”. These are the most relaxed songs on the album, with “cosmic” themes. “Chaos initial” just might be my favorite track.
I was ready to get this post out quickly in a fit of FOMO last weekend, when it sounded like this was not going to last beyond the weekend and I was going to miss out. Then they were able to keep the street pedestrianized into this month.
perhaps most famous for John Prine attending classes there.
The original location really was in Old Town.
I’ve also seen Béla Fleck (twice, once with Chick Corea) and Rhiannon Giddens there.
which I thought would be closed by now, but they’re still open.
Menya Goku is on the south side of Montrose, so it’s technically in North Center.
This reminded me of when we went to Monster Ramen and barely made it to a circus show.
Actually, the 2nd band (La Sécurité) is a supergroup that includes Félix Bélisle from Choses Sauvages.
“Moon Rocks” is very underrated, IMO.