Banana bread pudding. At a new restaurant in the neighborhood which referred to itself as a chophouse, they gave us a dessert that was as big as a helping of lasagna. In texture, it alternated between a soft bread and softer bananas held together with caramel sauce. We were talking with a friend who had recently moved to South Carolina and hadn’t yet found good Chinese, and her mother, also from that state, was wondering what seasoning they put on the chicken fingers; celery salt or old bay was our surmise. I was eating the cod in a butter sauce that tasted almost exactly like chicken soup, with carrots and onions for good measure. If it had been winter, this might have been exactly what I wanted.

(Photo: Chicago, summer 2012.)

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