Good food in Minnesota, for the most part, is scarce - and at the Mall of America, it's just plain weird. J and I dared ourselves to eat at Bubba Gump, a Forrest Gump theme restaurant, and like the movie, the restaurant gave me indigestion.
J is an avid deep-fry fan, but Bubba's actually exhausted her desire for all things deep-fried for something like 3 days (totally unheard of). Our meal consisted mostly of deep-fry: deep-fried fish, deep-fried shrimp, french fries, and some alcohol to wash it down. I ordered these shrimp/fish deep-fried balls and they were tasty in a omg - this is totally clogging my arteries sort of way. J is usually pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but not even she dared to order the "Boat Trash" entree, she went for fish and chips instead.
Wisconsin was mostly a cheese tour for us. We even stopped at some place called "Mars Cheese Castle" where they had oodles of varieties of curd among the different cheeses, and they even had cheese shaped like Wisconsin (see photo).
J's family, who is mostly from the Minnesota-Wisconsin area, is famous for their "Snickers Salad" which actually features Snickers candy bars, but unfortunately, it wasn't on the wedding reception menu - instead, I had some lemon cookie that had potato chips smooshed into it just to give it an "interesting effect" - indeed!
Driving to Chicago from Wisconsin we found places dotted along the highway called "Oasis" where someone had constructed food courts above the highway. 
It was a pretty amazing find - we were out in the middle of nowhere, low on gas and hungry for Taco Bell, and there it was. Kudos for the inventive use of space, and extra points for atmosphere - eating above rushing traffic is sort of fun.
Chicago was a whirlwind - we only had about 12 hours to tour the city, so a top priority was Chicago deep-dish pizza. We found an interesting place: Gino's East Pizza. The atmosphere was kitschy - surface after surface covered in graffiti from diners of the past, the food was good, but we had an annoying server who tried to kick us out because we had ordered from the take-out counter and not from him. In the end, I won and we ate our pizza at the table and he spent the rest of the time trying to reverse the negative effect his insolence had on his gratuity.
So - back in Tukwila now and I'm about to go get some lunch with my sister who is visiting from Salt Lake City, so sorry B and original J - you have another day of lunch without me.
Food: 2/5
Good times: 5/5
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