Offbeat Eats

(Closed) Way back in 2013, I did a review of a relatively new addition to the Ohio City dining scene: Black Pig, which had been newly opened by chef Mike Nowak (who had previously been executive chef at several other Ohio City hot spots, including Bar Cento and Market Garden. Since that visit, a lot has changed with Black Pig. For starters, they’ve moved, from their relatively cozy location on W 25th to a substantially larger location on Bridge Ave that used to hold the revered Parker’s restaurant (meanwhile, their old location was taken over by neighbor Nano Brew, providing them a much-needed increase in space). With the move, they ended up retooling the menu a little bit; the focus is still definitely on “New American Cuisine” using locally-sourced, seasonal ingredients, particularly focusing on Ohio’s beef and pork products, but shifting a bit more towards a more regular menu; my two previous Black Pig visits had custom chef’s tastings, and while they’ve still got an impressive “Tasting Menu”, it’s generally now just a prix fixe menu with periodic seasonal updates. And with the substantially enlarged space, Black Pig does a lot more “Private Dining” events than they used to as well. But I continue to hear some really good word of mouth about Black Pig, so I figured that ending this year’s Death March there would be a great opportunity to check in on how they are doing.

I’ve got a number of reviews here that are, in the grand scale of the internet and blogging, well, ancient. For example, way, way back in 2009 I did a review of Wonton Gourmet in Cleveland, and while I’ve had many, many trips back to the Cleveland area, I haven’t actually been back to Wonton Gourmet in almost a decade. But with this year’s Cleveland “Death March”, not only was I revisiting Cleveland, but we were literally walking right by Wonton Gourmet at lunch time, so I decided it would be a good place to stop, take a break, and see if Wonton Gourmet was still as good as I remembered.

For our actual “Death March” in Cleveland, we started out at Shaker Square on the far East end of town on the border with Shaker Heights. Both the area and Shaker Square itself are pretty interesting: it was one of the United States’ first “Shopping Centers”, designed to mimic Europe’s town squares while integrating some relatively high density housing, transit (trains at the time, now buses), and provide a gateway to the suburbs, and a bit of an open space that serves nicely for the weekend farmers market. Built in a Colonial style, it’s definitely a little dated, but does provide a nice insight into what early 20th century urban planning looked like, and there’s now a theater and a bunch of smaller shops and restaurants around the square. One of these is a joint with a reputation for a good breakfast, Yours Truly, which also served as a nice gathering spot for our hiking crowd.

(Closed) My regular readers know that once a year, I gather with several of my friends and we do a “Death March” in which we spend an extended weekend at a different metropolitan area exploring the food, drink, and cultural scene, culminating in a ~20 mile walk through the city to explore all the neighborhoods. We’ve done a lot of cities, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, London… this year was Cleveland. Okay, I can hear a lot of you already asking, “Wait, what? Cleveland?!” But you heard me right. Yeah, Cleveland had some rough years of post-industrialism, burning rivers, and general rust belt blight, but as I learned with many business trips to the area in the ’90s through recent years, Cleveland is actually one of the country’s most underrated cities, having cleaned themselves up quite nicely, and the city has a plethora of great attractions, ranging from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to some great parks, some great breweries, and excellent restaurants both old and new. While much of the culinary coverage of Cleveland focuses on the newer places, we started our visit in the city with a trip to one of the old stalwarts of Cleveland ethnic dining: Sokolowski’s.

At times I have to remind myself that here at Offbeat Eats, we’re all about finding good food wherever one’s travels take them, and that can mean anything from dive bars, to food served out of the back of a converted U-haul, all the way up to Michelin-starred restaurants on obscure islands. A good example of this is “Chinese” food. Chinese-American cuisine is really an odd sort of evolved cuisine. As covered quite masterfully by Jennifer 8 Lee in The Search for General Tso, ethnic cuisine in America is much like immigration in general: a mix of cultural integration, cultural preservation, adaptation, preservation… as well as more than a little improvisation and occasionally bastardization. And you know, while I do love going to various more “authentic” Chinese restaurants in various cities, and really enjoy some of the higher-end Chinese-inspired fusion cuisine that’s come into existence, sometimes I like a good Chinese-American meal as well. Like a good Tex-Mex meal, a “Chinese” meal doesn’t need to be “authentic” to be great, it just has to be well-prepared with good ingredients. In that light, earlier this summer I joined some of my good friends from the FOM for a friendly outing at an old, classic New England restaurant serving unapologetic “Chinese American Food”: House of Wu (not to be confused with the fashion designer)

After a splendid four day weekend in Lake George, we ended up taking a slightly roundabout route home in order to do a bit of tourism. Normally we’d head back east on Route 4 through Rutland, but this time we ended up going north to the very north end of Lake George to check out Fort Ticonderoga, and then meander our way back home by crossing the scenic Lake Champlain Bridge and heading home through mid-Vermont, stopping off in Middlebury for dinner. Middlebury has always been a pretty good food town, with options like a location of American Flatbread, or even one of the few remaining A&W Root Beer drive-ins (with Lake George being one of the others), but while we smelled some rather splendid smells coming from Taste of India, we were in a bit of a burger mood, and decided to check out Two Brothers Tavern.

Our second morning in scenic Lake George, we had a bit of spare time to explore, so went driving a bit north along the western shore of Lake George, seeing some of the nice views, seeing a few of the larger resorts, and finding a place for breakfast. We ended up selecting one of the area’s more venerable establishments, the Lone Bull Pancake & Steak House, now approaching it’s 50th year of operation.

The very end of June had us heading out to scenic Lake George with a bunch of friends for Ohana By The Lake, a three-day celebration of Tiki culture, rum, and basic fun sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Moai (of which I am a member), held at the scenic Tiki Resort, one ofAmerica’s last best existing examples of mid-century American Tiki culture. But it also gave us a chance to explore the Lake George area, with it’s many, many mini-golf courses, scenic vistas, boardwalk, and the like. One little place we found for breakfast was just across from The Tiki: Biscotti Brothers.

As I mentioned in my previous review for Kona Tiki Bar, downtown Ormond Beach is a pleasant, quieter sibling to Daytona Beach, and sports a rather nice selection of restaurants on its own; walking to Kona Tiki Bar, I walked right by a rather nice Victorian-style large mansion done up as a restaurant: Rose Villa, that looked like it had some potential for a nice dinner, so when the next evening gave me another opportunity to grab some dinner around Ormond Beach, I decided to give them a try.

As a somewhat frequent business traveler, sometimes business travel is pretty good: I get to go to some interesting parts of the country (and sometimes world), meet interesting people, and explore some restaurants that are quite different from those around my rural New England home. Usually, a trip is one part work and one part pleasure. Well, my June trip to Daytona Beach to do some testing at Embry-Riddle? It definitely wasn’t one of those business trips that went well. Pretty much everything went at least a little askew. Work booking the wrong hotel. The wrong hotel somehow screwing up the room reservation ending up with my stuff in a box, and my rental car getting towed since they showed me as having checked out. Flights back home getting canceled and having to scramble to find a way home to not miss a vacation I was due to depart on. Pretty much, this was the exact opposite of what a good business trip generally is. But there’s one place this trip really shined, and partially made up for all the headaches, and that was on the culinary front.