No, this is not a euphemism for what the candidates do in their bedrooms.

The results for Taste of Cincinnati were recently announced on the Idiot Box Local News.  Some of the categories had legitimate winners from reputable establishments.  Others had, and I will be as kind as possible when I say this, some total dogs.  Let’s recap some of the highlights and lowlights, shall we?

Best Appetizer – Burbank’s Real Bar-B-Que, Southern Smoked Chicken Tenders

Best Salad – Indigo, Black & Blue Tuna Salad

Best Vegetarian Dish – Arloi Dee, Veggie Pad Thai

Best Seafood Dish – Shanghai Mama’s, Shanghai Seafood Noodles

Best Dessert – Buca di Beppo, Tiramisu

Best Damn Dish – Carrabba’s, Chicken Bryan

EVERYONE should have at least two “what the fsck!” moments on that list.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, two of these things – Carrabba’s & Buca di Beppo – are shameless, schlocky chain restaurants.  The other four are delightful members of the local dining scene – Burbank’s & Shanghai Mama’s are among my faves.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand and recognize that many large chain restaurants have some good food.  I love the bread at Romano’s Macaroni Grill; go off-menu at P.F. Chang’s and order some fabulous Mongolian Scallops; Maggiano’s knows their way around some veal; and it wouldn’t be called Cheesecake Factory if their cheesecake wasn’t pretty goddamned good.  So I get it.  I get that there are a few redeemable items on some absurd menus.

But for two chains to win an award each at the Taste of Cincinnati is a travesty and a sham and a mockery.  It’s a traveshamockery!  This city is so full of so much good food, I refuse to believe that the best these judges could come up with was Tiramisu & Chicken Bryan, whatever the fsck that is.  Should we just go ahead now and rename Taste of Cincinnati?  Why not “Taste of Lowest Common Denominator” or “Taste of Things that Won’t Confuse Grandma”?  I thought this event was created to celebrate the culinary successes of LOCAL places… you know, in CINCINNATI.

It leads me to two possible conclusions:

1.) The great restaurateurs of The Queen City decided not to give it their all, to hold back, to restrain themselves and let someone else win for a change by not entering their establishments.  That’s fine, I suppose, but considering it is a BEST FOOD COMPETITION, I will summon the spirit of Herman Edwards to express my feelings.

2.) The judges of Taste of Cincinnati lack the operative word in the event they are judging – Taste.  

I’ll be the first to admit that they had, at best, only a handful of the best restaurants in Cincinnati to judge from.  This was probably the greatest collection of second tier places (in my biz, we call ‘em “B Doors”) that Cincinnati has to offer, with the very careful exception of Bella Luna, Indigo, Shanghai Mama’s, Andy’s Mediterranean, and La Petite France.

So I don’t really know what to make of it all.  Maybe I’ll write a letter.  Nonetheless, when the Illustrious Katie! comes to town for Memorial Day Weekend, we will most certainly NOT be attending Taste of Cincinnati.  Our own private Taste of Cincinnati Tour will be comprised of the following:

Dim Sum brunch @ Pacific Moon; prix fixe dinner @ Slims; lunch @ Arthur’s; a housewarming party at the Lovely Lisa’s new home; LND @ PRC; and a good ol’ fashioned throwdown grill-off at Stately Pratt Manor.

Stuff that in your ballot box and eat it.

Part of my enjoyment of restaurants is my predilection toward dishes I’ve either never had, or cannot make at home for various reasons.  I’d like to think that I’m a pretty accomplished cook (I am not a chef, I’ve never taken a course, and my wife will not hesitate to tell you that I am not a professional chef, no matter how much I may wish I was one).  Give me a recipe and I’ll nail it, and add my own flair to boot.  If I try something in a restaurant and it is translatable to a home kitchen, I’ll usually be able to pull it off.  Many dishes are done very well in my kitchen.  Some things, however, just cannot be done at home.

Sadly, it will be some time before I have a Berloni kitchen or a Viking range with super-suck-o-matic 5000 ventilation hood and an 800 degree salamander, so a genuine steak frites will have to wait.  However, sometimes satisfactory do-it-yourself fare can come in the simplest formats.  So in true Idiot-Box-Local-News Fashion, I Ate The City presents some don’t waste your money ideas for dining in.

Sunday night, we decided that we would emulate two of our favorite Cincinnati-style chili parlors and add a little bit of old-timey nostalgia.  Start with the footlong coneys from The Rootbeer Stand in Sharonville, put Gold Star chili on ‘em, and then serve it with a Skyline-style greek salad and some cold High Life.  Instead of schlepping all over town and paying a premium for our various parts of the singular Cincinnati gastronomy, a brief trip to the supermarket and some extra packets of salad dressing (courtesy of the nice waitresses that like me at the Kenwood Skyline) is all it took to bring it together.  

Cut to tonight – second verse same as the first: LaRosa’s runs their Spaghetti-A-Plenty on Monday and Tuesdays.  If I worked late on Tuesdays, I would eat at LaRosa’s every Tuesday night.  There is something about their red sauce that is just addicting.  It could be the heroin.  I could be wrong.  Sans heroin, we recreated the LaRosa’s experience at home, only with healthier turkey meatballs, whole wheat pasta, and Bove’s organic roasted garlic pasta sauce.  And instead of cheesy garlic bread, we toasted up some Servatii bakery sesame sandwich pretzels, spread on some cream cheese, and topped it with jalapeno jelly.  Killer.

There is a certain pleasure to be derived from not only enjoying your favorite flavors from random joints – whether swanky or dive – but also in making them your own.  One of these days I’ll document and post my filet mignon fried rice recipe.  Because leftover filet is a terrible thing to waste.  Other D.I.Y.s to look forward to: Fried pickles a la Hofbrauhaus and garlic fries, Napa-style.

There is a strange phenomenon that I have become more familiar with over the last two years or so. See, one of my co-workers is very indecisive when it comes to ordering at restaurants – not just at proper sit down places, but at fast food joints as well. It is an amazing thing to behold – he even has a hard time deciding where to go in the first place. Inevitably, when we go somewhere as simple as First Watch or as nice as Trio, he will always look across the table, frown, and say, “Yours looks so much better than mine. Why are you so good at ordering?”

I’ve decided to dub this habit “Order Envy”. It has only happened to me a handful of times, usually because of three things: 1.) I have confidence when I order; 2.) I know what I like; 3.) I rarely have food regrets.

The last time it happened, Cody, Joel, Zach and I were at Chez Panisse in Berkeley (another one I can cross off the Wish List and add to the Honor Roll). I ordered the grilled grass-fed beef ribeye with potato & sorrel gratin, watercress & shallots, and a 2002 Chinon. When I go to a restaurant for the first time, if they don’t have a specialite de la maison, I’ll usually judge it by how they treat a steak – pretty safe, right?

The ribeye at Chez Panisse was perfectly cooked to medium-rare, and had a wonderful, beefy flavor that definitely allowed it’s grass-fed nature to shine through.  Their commitment to local and organic ingredients mirrors one of my great culinary philosophies, and I applaud them for it.  However, the beef lacked the kind of crust I would expect out of a fine-dining preparation, probably due to it’s size. The steak was only a 10 ounce portion (compared to larger ribeye cuts at traditional steak houses or bistros), and it was certainly enough to satisfy me, but not make me uncomfortably full. Had it been thicker, there would have been opportunity to expose it to the high heat required for a good, crunchy crust without overcooking – it’s thinness may have been it’s undoing. The watercress salad was a bit too salty, and the potato & sorrel gratin was just good – not memorable. The sauteed shallots were fine, but I wouldn’t say necessary.  Am I really panning Chez Panisse!?  Hold on.

Zach ordered the Northern Halibut with asparagus, beet relish & aioli; Cody ordered the cheese ravioli with peas; and Joel – in true Joel fashion – ordered the duck, pan roasted in Chez Panisse’s wood-fired oven. Joel loves duck. We passed around bites of our respective dishes; the ravioli was good – simple, rustic, delicious; the halibut was better – delicately prepared, very fresh, with wonderful accompaniments; but the duck was killer. My steak was good; the duck was a monster. It melted in your mouth and made you drop to your knees and beg for more. I found myself questioning my choice of entree for the first time in a long time – how could the duck outdo a grass-fed beef ribeye? It boggled the mind, but should not have totally surprised me. Alice Waters’ restaurant is widely considered among the most progressive in No.Cal, rated among the finest in the country, and has been heralded as one of the spearheads of California cuisine since they opened in the early 1970s.

If there was a secondary highlight to the evening, beyond Joel’s duck, it was the order envy I inspired in others when I received my salad – a fresh mixture of garden lettuces & spring greens in a lovely, light vinaigrette, served with two generous portions of baked goat cheese from Andante Dairy. The cheese was breaded in a crispy panko-style crust and served still-warm from the oven, but not hot. Incredible. Cody was a late arrival and I encouraged him to order it, seeing as I had finished mine.  Everyone who tried it was floored.

The Ohio redneck in us decided that it would be hilarious if we exited the restaurant while loudly extolling the virtues of their potato salad & shit-on-a-shingle, then deciding that we would tell our hillbilly friends that the next time they went to Berkeley, they should go to this great little spot called “Cheez Penis.” We are as sophomoric and classless as we are refined.

Yet, dining at Chez Panisse made me realize one important thing about the American gastronomy: the strongholds of cuisine in this country are starting to have very powerful rivals emerge in the most unlikely of places. I believe that any number of restaurants in Cincinnati could hold their own against New York, Chicago or San Francisco establishments. I’ll take my chances with David Falk & Jean-Robert Pigall against anyone that the “big cities” have to offer. I’m pretty certain that not only would it be close, but Cincy might win a round or two. Who would have the Order Envy then?

I’ve been off the grid for a few years, but the time has come for me to again make my presence known. I have far too much to say to remain silent any longer.
I could say that this will be exclusively food-related, as that is one of my primary concerns, but that would be a lie. As any of you might know, I rarely let myself be tethered to a lone subject. Any of you lucky enough to be at The 500 Club or Picaro in the Mission last weekend will know that not only will I go drink-for-drink with you, I’ll also go toe-to-toe on the difficult topics of the day… Like how problems in urban areas are not just systemic, but a combination of accepted cultural norms AND flaws within the system.

Food, love, politics, booze, sarcasm, late night television & late nite dining – everything that makes me one of the coolest people you know.

I’d just like to point out to anyone who cares that it is a far greater thing than anything else that has happened in television in the last two years that Craig Ferguson was allowed to continue as host of the Late Late Show on CBS. Night in and night out, the guy absolutely slays me. Anyone who saw his interview with Hugh Laurie (HOUSE) on Monday night knows exactly what I’m talking about. I wanted desperately for Stephen Fry to make an appearance, and the three of them could just jabber for an entire hour.