We woke up without an exacerbation of our gout. It’s no longer my gout, now it’s collective gout. This was a good thing because after dinner last night (steak), it was a distinct possibility. My brother had recommended a place called The Publican and we had made reservations for 9:30am and there goes your memory of the type of hat your childhood teddy bear used to wear.

It was an open style restaurant: long winding tables and patrons are sat next to complete strangers. The advantage is that you can see what your tablemates are eating and order accordingly. I’m told that the design is to mimic a barn, where the booths have doors as if they were stables. While I admire the design, I think that would have been better suited for Golden Corral, complete with feeding troughs. Sorry-not-sorry, I loathe the Golden Corral. Also, the menu is reasonably limited so it’s easy to guess what someone else ordered.

The coffee cup was large, the coffee was hot and pure, completely without bitterness. My recent coffee exposures have been centered around the Keurig I bought for the office, and this was a pleasant reminder that coffee does not have to be awful. The sugar came as brown sugar cubes: my favorite.

The first out was a slice of coffee cake. This was lighter and drier than I’m used to. It crumbled less, but these were all positive qualities. It was topped with a generous helping of powdered sugar.

Adrienne had a waffle: it was lighter and crispier than we are accustomed to, which was refreshing. It didn’t weigh her down. And it wasn’t covered in too much syrup, two small cups of butter and jam were present to freshen it up a bit.

I had smoked pork shoulder. They gave me a knife which likely speaks to the waiter’s inexperience. It was completely unnecessary: the shoulder fell apart when the fork just looked at it, and it wasn’t a particularly managing looking fork, either. It sat atop a dollop of a whipped potato bed and was partnered up with an egg: sunny side up. Because the only other way to eat an egg is hard-boiled.

After lunch, we made our way to Michigan Ave. for some quick shopping prior to heading home. We had about a 1 mile walk that was noticeably devoid of cabs. “We” had a bit of a Donald Duck incident when we reached an unmarked road, and shortly thereafter found a cab, hailed him, and all were happy.

We stopped at Argo again and got an iced hibiscus apple tea and a hot rooibos. Afterwards, we made our way to Watertower and through some of the various shops. When the time came, we hailed a cab back to the hotel and set about coming home. On our way home, we unanimously voted to stop eating like such royalty and start eating like real Hoosiers at our local Applebees.