No, I am not writing about that aisle of the grocery store which seems like a combo of candy bars and granola crunchy quasi athletica. And is filled with calories and cane syrup sometimes. What I am writing about is a place I dined today because I was desperate to avoid the St. Patrick's Day lunacy of Chicago (yes, they dye the river green; yes it is cool; no the many drunk people dressed in green were not) and needed to eat. So, I walked right by the many bars with revelers and finally dipped into a place called Protein Bar. Kind of a fast food casual place, it had protein burritos (with some other punny name), salads, and quinoa bowls. Yep, the place features quinoa. And protein drinks. So: I had a signature salad called the southwest -- huge, with greens and quinoa and a zippy house made dressing -- and what was really a milk shake kind of thing pretending to be a protein boost. I was asked: 2 percent, skim, soy or almond milk? And, I was asked if I wanted my salad mixed or layered. I loved the food. While it can come veggie I did have organic chicaken in my salad. It was chopped very nicely. The ambience was marred somewhat by the fact the only place I could find to sit was near the bathrooms -- and the lines for that were in fact filled with somewhat obnoxious people who had clearly had too much green beer. . . I suspect it is dandy though on more ordinary days. And, of course, everything came in plastic. Hmmm. I ate like mad and then took the rest of the salad back to my hotel, and ate more of it later.
Turns out, now that I have googled it, I had found is a kind of Chicago area chain. The name: Protein Bar Chicago.I think it was the only place in the city not serving green beer (thank goodness). Here's what urban spoon has to say: (I picked this location randomly, of course).
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