Archive | February, 2013

Amuse Bouche — The Coop (Inside of The Hey Hey)

20 Feb

There are some occasions where I’ll go to a restaurant, or make something at home, and while I’ll want to share some aspects of the experience, I don’t feel that an entire post is warranted.  Interested in delivering more content—in a more timely manner—I’ve decided to create a new category of post for this blog.  These posts will be light on written content (there will be some still!) and heavier on things like photos.

I toyed around with what to call them.  The first couple of titles that came to mind, quick bites, short orders, were already in use.  And so I’ve settled on “amuse bouche.”  Literally translated as amuse the mouth, an amuse bouche is the small single bite appetizer that is occasionally served at some restaurants.  Usually every diner on any given evening will get the same thing.  Which is: whatever the chef feels like making.  It seems like a fitting title for this new series.

The first in the series features a well-respected Columbus food truck, The Coop, in a new and unexpected location, the kitchen of Shumaker Place neighborhood bar, The Hey Hey.

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Baking Steel — Not From Krypton, But Still Super

17 Feb

By now, the secret of the Baking Steel is not much of a secret.  The word is out that this project, started on Kickstarter by Andris Lagsdin after reading a review Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine: The Art & Science of Cooking, is the “most impressive home pizza product [J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats] ever tested.”  Pizza lovers everywhere are trading in their stones for these well-made (and really heavy) sheets of steal.

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I got mine for Christmas (thanks Tania!) and it has been an incredibly useful tool as I’ve begun to explore the world of bread baking.  As I try and try again with my bread baking, I’m learning more about cooking than I have in years. And as good (or bad) as some of the breads I’ve made are, I hadn’t put the baking steel to its real intended purpose: making pizza.

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San Diego — Or, What I Did on My Winter Vacation

2 Feb

Tania and I just got back from a whirlwind of a trip to San Diego.  The main purpose of our visit to California was a wedding of some close friends.  (I was in the wedding, ostensibly because the groom and I grew up next door to one another.  But it may also be that I just happen to look damn good in a tux.)  As would be expected of someone who cares enough about food to write about it on the internet, we did our best to eat our way through San Diego as well.

We ate incredibly well at the wedding itself.  The rehearsal lunch was fantastic, and dinner at the wedding reception exceeded all my expectations for wedding food.  As good as those meals were, it’s the many other meals that will be the subject of this blog.

Rather than a chronological listing, I’m going to recount our trip by category.  Looking over those meals, with one notable exception, they appear to break break down into three main classes: breakfast, fish, and drinking.  Because this is a long post, here’s a quick list that will jump you right to each place we went:

The Mission
Mystic Moca
Mariscos German
Oscar’s Mexican Seafood
Hamilton’s Tavern
Stone Brewing Company
In-N-Out Burger

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