Adventures in Columbus' North Market

A. is way into food and was enthusiastic about showing me some spots in Columbus that I had heretofore not known about it. I know this is true because he had made a note on his iPad of potential places to take me. Warms my heart. In any case, K., A. and I got ourselves together after a lovely breakfast home and made our way to North Market. It's very similar in vibe and feel to Reading Terminal Market, but slightly brighter and a little smaller. We went in order to enjoy a lunch but also so I could potentially pick up a few above average cheeses for the mac n' cheese the family requested I prepare for Easter. There were so many interesting options as far as food was concerned. At first I thought I'd try some barbeque. Then I almost got waylaid by some truly delectable looking sub-style sandwiches. But in the end I chose to try out a han/pate banh mi sandwich from Lan Viet Market. Their pho was also quite tempting, but I decided it was far too crowded a day to try maneuvering myself and a big bowl of broth up to the seating area above the market's floor. The bread was nicely crunchy on the outside and yet soft on the inside. Could have had a bit more flavor on the whole, but a good meal nonetheless.

K. and A. were very interested in getting themselves some Jeni's Splendid ice cream, the line was just so ridiculously long they decided it made more sense to drive to the well populous location of the small ice cream chain. After trying a few different varieties, I ultimately chose a cup with a scoop of lavender berry and a scoop of lemon frozen yogurt, the combination of which was quite satisfying and palate pleasing.

Extravagant Sushi Lunch c/o Doma

A Friday or two ago I took the day off from work. It was one of my last vacation days before my office life gets very, very busy. Lots of editing all of the time. Reminds me that I am generally competent and have a brain. In any case, I was using my vacation day to prepare for my next week's vacation in the Adirondacks, as I would be departing on Sunday and had LW's 30th birthday to attend on Saturday. Preparations included a trip to south Philly for camping supplies and cat food.  On the way back north I thought I'd detour to Federal Donuts, thinking it wouldn't be too crowded in the middle of the afternoon. I didn't actually go in, but it looked crowded from the window and I was feeling weird about crowds. So then I thought I would finally (finally!) get myself a Paesano's sandwich. That's a date I've certainly been meaning to make. A date with a sandwich, that is. In any case I didn't have any cash and Paesano's is cash-only. So on home I went. But now I really felt like I wanted some lunch treat. So I settled on Doma. I think they lowered their chairs, which makes me very happy. I feel like I've gone there twice and both times I was perched in these uncomfortable tall chairs. Or I'm just an unwitting sufferer of chair vertigo amnesia. Who knows. I know I can't remember.

I ordered the hand roll lunch special, one eel and cucumber hand roll, one salmon and avocado hand roll and one spicy California hand roll. In addition to that I also ordered ikura, wasabi tobiko and monkfish paté.

I was quite pleased with my selection. Uncouth as it may be, I enjoyed sprinkling a little of the wasabi tobiko on the salmon avocado roll. They were all well constructed rolls and I thought the eel was nice and sweet, and the salmon fresh. The spicy California roll could have packed a little more punch, but I just infused some of my bites with a wee little bit of wasabi tobiko and straight up wasabi. 

Monkfish paté is just its own special thing. I've only ever seen it except on the Doma menu. It is the 'foie gras' of the sea according to this blog. The liver of monkfish is salted and then wrapped up in a cylindrical shape and steamed. Then disks are cut from the larger roll. This little disk has a definitely firmer and denser texture than actual foie gras. But there is some similar thing going on. The liver part, obviously. But they're very different animals, geese and fish. Additionally, I've always found foie gras to be really sensual thing. Not sexual mind you. It's just that when I eat foie gras I enjoy it with my whole body and brain. It fills me with a sense of satiation and contentedness while also alert. Perhaps that is the nature of all luxury foods.  It's just one of those taste/texture/tongue things for me. The monkfish paté doesn't have quite that brain rocking mouthfeel or flavor, but it has its own mojo. If you're a sushi fan and you haven't tried it, you should. Then we can talk about it.

Ikura, a long time favorite of mine. Just salty pearls of wisdom, each and every one of them.

A very nice lunch spot.

Day Out in the Country

A. grew up about 45 minutes or so outside of Columbus, maybe closer to an hour (we left from closer to Grove City). So on Saturday his family was coming together for a pre-Easter Easter celebration. A.'s sister, who was hosting the lot of us, has an alapaca business, so K. thought it might be nice to bring along a few nephews and nieces so they could get a little time in the wilds/give their parents M. and S. a little break. The last time I saw these kids they looked more like this. Now all three are looking even more grown up ... and they have a new baby sister to boot!

There was a great spread for lunch. I ate a little of everything and contributed a vat of my mac n' cheese, which seemed to go over pretty well.
K. and A.
K. practicing fielding a pop up (kind of).
A. and I walked over to the alpaca enclosure with a few carrots. I wanted to give a few different ones a chance at a great, but this lady was very grabby. There always is that one horse in a field that is all sweet with you but bullies the other horses so that it gets all the apple...this was that horse in alpaca form.






Basically from the moment K. saw W. it was wrestling time. Seriously. For hours. W. has the stamina and patience of a saint.
In this photograph K. is basically telling his younger sister I. that W. is his wrestling partner and playmate and that she would be wise to get off of him immediately. K. then insisted that W. and he had to 'start over.' Which means both of them had to stand up and charge each other before falling to the ground and wrestling.
W., again, was a really good sport. I enjoy wrestling and wrangling and spinning kids more than some, but even I would have cried uncle by this point in the afternoon.


It never ended. They're still on that lawn right now, wrestling away.

Thanks goes out to all of A.'s family for inviting me into their bustling day!

Lunching at Ernie's, Day 2

After breakfast I went back to my room and read Jane Austen until I got the text that said that the Ohio contingent was amassing and moving to Ernie's for lunch. I met up with them there and decided to revisit the beef tomato soup I so enjoyed as a kid. Sad truth is that this soup did not hold up well to my memory or current taste buds. There was a metallic taste to it, the beef was rather dry and though I like beef jerky I'm not really all that fond of it in soup form. I tried to get past it, but the majority of this soup went to waste.
I had a simpler dog too, just mustard. E. realized that he could order 'one with' and then scoop some of the excess chili and onions onto a second simpler dog. Clever. Thrifty. We met up with our Gettysburg cousins F. and N., and an epic round of 'let's show each other photos of our grand kids' began between E. and N. Sweet kids all of them (I only know E.'s).
After that we went to the Gettysburg Visitor Center. It continued to be an extremely gloomy day and the walk from the parking lot included a consistent drizzle and dampness I could have done without. The visitor center is huge and relatively new. We went the whole hog and had tickets for the introductory movie, cyclorama and admission to the exhibits. The movie, narrated by Morgan Freeman, traced the events that led up to the Civil War as well as some of the particulars of Gettysburg. I was tearing up during the opening scenes. Hearing about the stupidity of the situation in the first place (ie: ever thinking slavery was a good idea, mixing the rights of human beings with the profits of business etc etc) and then reflecting on the sheer loss of life. And then. I don't know. I couldn't help but think about the Trayvon Martin story and while yes, things are markedly improved from the days of slavery, the ramifications of that time period and the Civil War clearly haven't abated entirely. Men fought and died over something as dumb as race, and men continue to die over it whether they want to or not. I'm not a scholar. Nor do I have an incredibly nuanced view of race politics. It just made me so sad to think that all that blood spilled on both sides, and we haven't really grown all the way up as a nation on that specific topic. I'm not someone who has a fully rational or informed academic position on the true causes of the Civil War nor the true impact it had on our society. I was, however, struck by one part of the film that mentions the incredible destruction of the south's buildings and infrastructure, and how long and hard the process of rebuilding was, which of course played a role in subsequent decades of interaction between north and south, black and white. After the movie we took an escalator up to the cyclorama, which really is something to see. Oil canvas all the way around, the way they've set it up there are moments where the canvas stops and the rest begins. Then there were the exhibits and relics of the massive cleanup and burial process that all Gettysburg citizens had to deal with post-battle. Thousands of corpses taking months and months to properly bury or return to their families. The smell in some places must have been something.
Ok enough of my ill informed thoughts on the Civil War. We spent a nice chunk of time around the facility before braving the continued rain to pile into our two cars and go to the Outlets. Except I stayed in the car and read Pride and Prejudice while they shopped.

Donut 2 and Lunch at Ernie's Texas Lunch

Originally it seemed like my fam (uncle, aunt, cousin, cousin's bf and his two kids) and I would arrive at roughly the same time. But with the wrench of no fried chicken, I ended up embarking on my drive to Gettysburg a little earlier than initially expected. I opted for not taking 76 for the majority, which meant smaller roads, more stoplights, the occasional ugliness of strip mall mentality and glorious sunny fields, country roads and red buds blooming. Once in Gettysburg I checked into General Lee's Headquarters (formerly Larson's). I had a room that faced the main road on one side, and the edge of a battlefield on the other...two windows! I decided that while I waited for the rest of the crew I'd tried out the S'mores donut while enjoying the sunlight. Seriously it was easily 70 degrees and marvelous. The donut wasn't that bad either, though I liked the simplicity of the hot sugar donut a bit more.
Once the Ohio contingent arrived we made our way to Ernie's Texas Lunch. This spot has been a favorite of my family since the beginnings of time. We sat at the big back table and those of us over the age of 21 enjoyed ourselves a lager each.
French fries for the table. Extremely hot, extremely crispy but with a nice inside, well salted. No complaints. Ernie's knows what it's doing when it comes to French fries.
My past experiences with having the Texas-style dog with everything have always left me feeling like I really don't need the chili or quite the pile of onions that Ernie's feels is the best. And this time I remembered that outlook and asked for two dogs with cheese, mustard and a little bit of onion. They were big and juicy. I ended up eating the meat more than the buns.
Seriously a beautiful day.

Cocktails, Tomatoes and Burger c/o Village Whiskey

The same weekend as Bar Ferdinand found me getting a hair cut in Center City. I knew this in advance, of course, and thought it might be nice to meet up with some peeps and have a burger at Village Whiskey. BC and LW were in it to win it and so a plan was born. I had thought that around 3 would be a good time to go, and that there wouldn't be quite as much of a wait on a Sunday afternoon. This didn't turn out to be entirely true; we ended up having to wait about 45 minutes. This wasn't so terrible because the weather was amazing and the establishment is kind enough to have a bench outside for those waiting to enter their magical beef wonderland. When we were seated we first ordered drinks. The cocktail menu is different that in times past, and for a minute I was confused about how to proceed. I was not deterred for long, finally deciding on the Chinook, a cocktail consisting of rye whiskey, cynar, punt e mes, maraschino and muddled grapefruit. Delicious and oh-so-pretty. LW and I split the pickled cherry tomatoes, which remained revelatory in their simplicity.
How a skinned tomato in a light pickling concoction can be so mouthwateringly awesome is beyond me. Or perhaps not. I think this may be the summer I FINALLY get around to fiddling with pickling.
BC ordered a side of duck fat fries with beer cheese dipping sauce. I hadn't tried their fries or the sauce before, and must say that I was not surprised to find them both to my satisfaction. I love melty cheese in pretty much any form, but this was definitely a step above the wiz. LW and I both ordered burgers with medium rare while BC went with medium. BC's burger was perfectly cooked from the look of it, but LW and I were a little disappointed with our own burgers, as they didn't have that oozy pink juice center that one expects with medium rare. We quickly debated the pros and cons of sending them back. I worried that the kitchen would judge us, even though I knew that the burgers really weren't cooked to our specifications. LW pointed out the disappointment she (and I) would inevitably feel if we ate burgers that weren't exactly what we had been looking for. So we sucked it up and asked our server if we could have a re-do. She warned us that it would take extra time, and we relayed our willingness to wait. Meanwhile, BC ate her burger and the server gave us a complimentary second set of fries to tide us over. The wait, which wasn't too long, was 100% worth it. Our new burgers were nice and pink and juicy and wonderful.
A fine afternoon meal with friendly faces.

Late Night Drinks and Mid-Morning Donuts and Chicken

The Saturday after I got back from the Bahamas I made my way over to C. and R.'s for a pizza, laundry socialization visit. As we often do, we enjoyed pizza and wine while shooting the shit. At some point my roommate texted me to see what I was up to and I invited him to join us. Once the wine ran out, C., the roommate and I all headed to McCrossen's. There we drank more and I insisted on a few not so stellar photographs. My hair is now long enough to kind of put into a pony tail. I was very excited about this.

The next morning I was hurting a little, but I also had an appointment with destiny...and L. and BC and Federal Donuts, which was on the resolution list. We tried to get there early enough that it wouldn't be completely crowded, but late enough that they'd be frying up some chicken. This place has been getting nothing but rave reviews from pretty much everyone, including the New York Times so it wasn't really a surprise that the place was packed. This is a place that unless it's a week day afternoon, you simply cannot sit and eat there. Very much a new version of takeout. So we passed the time talking about this and that while waiting for our moment to discuss what kind of chicken flavoring we wanted (they have a rotating set of flavors; we went with Z'atar and Coconut Curry). After not a short amount of time, but not so long a time that we were impatient or angry, we had our chicken and donuts in hand. We went back to BC's to enjoy our bounty and she pulled out a bottle of bubbly. L. was more into the donuts than the chicken but felt their hot sugared ones were better than any of the 'fancies.' I think I'll need to go back in a donut mood to be able to comment on them myself.
What I can comment on is how freaking delicious the chicken was. Nice and crispy. Flavors in the batter actually came through. I think I liked the Z'atar better than the coconut curry, but I ended up taking a piece of the coconut curry home with me, and it held up quite well as a lunch the next day.
It's always great when a place totally lives up to its hype, and Federal Donuts did.

Lodging c/o A Stone's Throw Away, Lunch c/o Traveller's Rest

We spent the majority of our flight to Nassau talking about the Vampire Diaries. Or, more accurately, I attempted to distract L. from the flight by talking at her about the Vampire Diaries. In any case, we landed safely. L. was flying out that very day, which was sad making for us both I think. I had one more night to play with. After our arrival at the airport we took a moment or two to reflect on our trip and then I called A Stone's Throw Away in order to have someone from the establishment pick me up and bring me to where I'd be lying my head for the last evening of my Bahamian trip. I had chosen the place because it was far less expensive than some of the bigger chains, but seemed to be less sketchy than some of the other even cheaper places. And that's not to say that this was an incredibly cheap hotel. I think I got my room for $230 a night or so, which is still far better than the $300-$500 for some of the bigger chains and resorts. And it was really quite a little gem in my opinion. I had one of two rooms on the second floor that opened up onto one of the place's two levels of wraparound porches, with a great sea view. And then there were these day beds and other nice furniture to take advantage of. You see that day bed kind of thing right there? I lay on that for a couple of hours, yes I did.
The view.
The first floo's shared porch space, also where you could get breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The little lagoon-like pool.
The stairs leading up to the hotel. The hotel is literally an easy five minute drive to the airport and a five to ten minute walk to the water. And on a high embankment/hill/cliff, which really makes you feel like you're above it all, even though the major ring around the island road is just a block or two away.
After checking in I decided that I would follow through on my plan to have lunch at Traveller's Rest. So I walked down the stairs, then down a small hill and then along the water for about five minutes.



This was my view while I ate.
I was disheartened to learn that they only did conch salad on weekends, but I understood that it's not a dish that keeps all that well, so I made due with trying their conch stew...which was great. Peppery and spicy, rich and salty. A good thing.
For my main lunch I chose to go with the whole fried snapper, which came with peas and rice and the choice of two sides. I went with macncheese and coleslaw.
Early on I accidentally swallowed a small fish bone. The waitress thought that my expression of consternation was because I was afraid of the fish. I managed to croak that I just was having a little fish bone problem, she suggested eating a plug of bread. And that helped get that bone away from my throat. Good trick to know: bread. The fish itself was great. Spiced nicely, flaky white meat.
Afterwards I walked back to the hotel, changed into my suit and then went back to the water for a short spell.

Then I returned and made myself a Ricardo rum and pineapple juice drink. The hotel had an 'honor bar' where you made your own drinks and then would write them down on a clipboard and then be charged at the end of your stay. I wasn't planning on wiling out on my last night, but I both liked and disliked this feature. I liked it because it was homey and allowed me to ponder a drink choice without making a bartender wait on me. I disliked it because they didn't actually give you a sense of how they priced the different alcohols and mixers. It turned out not to be that bad, but I did wonder.
There was an older British couple in the other room facing the sea, and we made friends a bit. When the husband saw that I was trying to take a photograph of myself with the sea in the background, he offered to take the photo for me, which turned out better than my attempts. Though I look a little shiny. That is actually because I had just put lotion on my face after a shower and it hadn't sunk in yet.
Then I lay on day bed, read a book, drank my strong rum drink and generally basked in the setting sun's rays.