Volunteer Park Cafe

I've been a little under the weather for the past few days. It seems like everybody around me has a cold so I was sure to catch it. I'm still hungry though and sometimes you just get tired of having to cook for yourself when you're not feeling well. And as much as I love my wife, her trying to cook scares the hell out of my. A year ago when I got walking pneumonia she panicked at the grocery store and bought me a can of chili. We can laugh about that now but at the time it was traumatic. I had to get out of my apartment and find some "make me better" food. I wanted comfort food, some kind of chickeny goodness. Volunteer Park Cafe seemed like the perfect spot.

Volunteer Park Cafe is a great little neighborhood comfort food joint situated across from, yup you guessed it, Volunteer Park. It's also right across from the cemetery where Bruce Lee is buried, but I guess calling it Bruce Lee's Cemetery Cafe would have been weird. They have a great selection on paninis and seasonal pot pies as well as daily quiches and giant delicious salads. It's a great community place where everybody seems totally relaxed and the food is consistently delicious.
Perfectly enough their soup of the day on my sick adventure was matzo ball soup. I'm not Jewish but my neighbors in Miami were so once in a while I'd get invited over for some home-made matzo ball soup. It's such a delicious soup that warms you to the core. If my grandmother's Cuban chicken soup was nowhere in sight, fresh made chicken matzo ball soup is the next best thing. Their version was delicious with a bright and not overly salty chicken broth, big chunks of tender chicken, carrots and celery, egg noodles, and a perfectly fluffy matzo ball dumpling that melted in my mouth. Exactly what I needed.

Volunteer Park Cafe is not just a place to go when you don't feel so great. It's the perfect place to go when you just want some amazing ole' fashioned comfort food and a lovely place to eat it in. I'll have to try their dinners some time soon. They also do wine tasting dinners on the second Friday of each month. Oh and most importantly, did I mention that they are part of the slow food movement and use organic & local product. It's true, they even have their own little garden out back. Give them a visit. Volunteer Park Cafe