Photos: Taste of Dine Originals

Taste of Dine Originals is this week Thursday! Hosted by the members of Dine Originals Columbus, the event raises money for Buckeye Ranch.

I’m sharing some of Mrs. Bfast w/Nick’s photos from last year’s event to give you a taste of what you can sample. The event is a showcase of some of Columbus’ best and brightest in the culinary world.

Expect all sorts of delicious treats and drinks.

Tickets are $100, but it supports a good cause. And you’ll get to eat and drink your way through an amazing Columbus culinary tour the whole evening.

Event details:
Taste of Dine Originals
Thursday, May 9, 6-9pm
Capitol University Field House
670 Pleasant Ridge Ave.

Chinese New Year giveaway!

Happy Chinese New Year! The celebration of the Year of the Snake starts today and runs for fifteen days. The folks at Molly Woo’s Asian Bistro are kicking things off with a traditional Chinese Lion Dance at 4 p.m. today, and to include others in the overall celebrations, they’re providing a $25 giftcard to give away to my readers!

To enter, first take a look at the Molly Woo’s menu, and simply comment on this post (by 11:59 p.m. EST on Tuesday, February 12) by saying what you would order if you were going to celebrate the Chinese New Year there!

National Pancake Week!

It’s a dream come true. I’ve always wanted a breakfast dish named for me, and well, here we are.

This week, which I’m sure you have marked on your calendars, is National Pancake Week. It’s a week to celebrate our justification for having cake for breakfast. In Central Ohio the six Sunny Street Cafe locations are celebrating with pancake specials every day. You can visit them seven mornings in a row and sample a different style, from pumpkin to berries to chocolate to maple glaze.

And on Friday, February 8, you can enjoy Pancakes With Nick: buttermilk pancakes stuffed with bacon and sausage, served with eggs on top. It’s the full breakfast experience.

I’ll be there on Friday, most likely at the Arena District location, but you can have Pancakes With Nick at all six Sunny Street locations:

Arena District – 277 W. Nationwdie Blvd.
Dublin – Sawmill – 7573 Sawmill Rd.
Dublin – Avery Road – 7042 Hospital Dr.Grove City – 2788 London-Groveport Rd.
New Albany – 5481 New Albany Rd. West
Westerville – 644 N. State St.

EDIT: Here is Sunny Street Cafe’s press release, with descriptions of each pancake.

Dine Originals Week in review

Dine Originals Week has wrapped up! Did anyone make any good discoveries? We managed to try three places, which is saying something considering our busy schedules and the kids! For one of the first nights, we hit up our family-favorite Katalina’s Cafe Corner. There we were able to try both their lunch and dinner specialties. The lunch item was a nice, fresh fall salad. It was loaded with figs, baby onions, cheese, and roasted acorn squash. Like a big, leafy pile of autumn.

We also split their dinner special: a skirt steak with skillet potatoes and a side of the fall salad. The steak was medium rare and sliced into thin strips. While it was a little chewy, the crust was packed with flavor: smokey, sweet, spicy all at once. Nice crispy side potatoes, again with a little bit of heat, plus a helping of the salad on the side. For dessert we devoured their pumpkin custard in seconds. I wasn’t even quick enough to get a picture.

Later in the week we visited Katzinger’s Deli to try their special. It’s been too long since we last visited, and we were in the mood for some reuben sandwiches, so we ordered their corned beef and turkey reubens. Both were quite good – the meats and sauces were spot-on, although the bread was a little hard. They came with different sides, both decent but not notable: a roasted squash soup and potato salad. They tossed in some chocolate chunk cookies, too.

Our last visit was a Friday morning breakfast at Pistacia Vera. I’ve had Pistacia Vera’s baked goods many times before, but never had the pleasure of sitting down to one of their delightful breakfasts. My wife ordered their DO Week special of a thick slice of mushroom quiche with a side salad and a cup of coffee. The quiche was big and moist and loaded with mushrooms – really superb. I ordered their baked eggs, but you’ll just have to wait to read more about those!

What about you? Did you try any new places last week?

Dine Originals Week giveaway!

Dine Originals Week is off and running! Some of Columbus’ most creative restaurants are busy offering fixed-price lunch and dinner menus (with the occasional brunch, yes) from November 12-18, allowing customers to easily sample the soups, sandwiches, steaks, seafood, salads, desserts, cocktails, and more from around the city.

During this week, you can enter to win a $50 gift certificate from Dine Originals (for use after this week)! To enter, you need to read through the Dine Originals Week menus here, then comment on this post with an answer to this question: as the weather is turning colder this week, we think of more warm, comfort food to get us through chilly days. Which two menu items from the week sound the most warm and comforting to you, and why? Comment by the end of Dine Originals Week (midnight on Sunday, November 18) to enter!

An English Second Breakfast

Today – September 21st, 2012 – marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, prequel to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. In case you haven’t noticed, these books have been getting increased world-wide attention in recent years because of the Lord of the Rings movies, and the upcoming definitely-going-to-be-amazing trilogy of films of The Hobbit. In honor of the book’s publication, the official fan club has organized a world-wide second breakfast (one of several meals that hobbits eat throughout the day) at 11 a.m. sharp. We decided to celebrate our first breakfast by making a traditional English breakfast together as a family.

We replicated the ingredients as best as we could: baked beans, mushrooms, fried eggs, English sausage, grilled tomatoes, and toast. It’s a delicious, calorie-packed breakfast.

We purchased the eggs, beans, and mushrooms from the store. The tomatoes came from our garden – we grilled them face-down on our George Foreman grill, with mixed results. The English sausage we found at a butcher’s shop in western Pennsylvania. It’s not truly authentic, as it’s not imported from the UK, but it’s made in a similar style. We didn’t have any back bacon (bacon cut from the back of the pig, as opposed to the belly), but we did cook the eggs in the sausage drippings. We served the toast in a caddy that we bought on Portobello Road years ago! If you’re not used to making a full prepared breakfast, this one takes a little longer, but it’s well worth it.

In a little under an hour, I’ll be eating second breakfast in honor of the book, using some of the leftovers from this morning. What about you?

And if you want to take your celebration a step further, don’t forget that tomorrow – September 22nd – is Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ birthday in the books. So maybe another English breakfast is in order?

Photos: pancakes on the Hills Market veranda!

Who wants pancakes? Okay, better question: who doesn’t? Saturdays and Sundays on the Hills Market veranda, you can eat your fill of delicious blueberry pancakes. With the weather taking a chillier turn (for now, at least), a plate of pancakes, sausage, and a cup of hot coffee is just the ticket!

This past Saturday I hosted (read: ate pancakes and annoyed Kate, the pancake maker) the pancake breakfast as part of the Hills’ farmers market and Foodie Fair, their kick-off for Local Foods Week.

It didn’t take long for the veranda to fill up!

The pancake breakfasts are served Saturdays and Sundays, but the bonus of going Saturday is that you get to hang with Kate. She makes some wicked awesome pancakes.

The normal serving is a stack of three pancakes, which is a steal for $5. And I love some sausage links with my pancakes. You can help yourself to Silver Bridge coffee, too, and for an extra dollar you can get real Ohio maple syrup.

For an added bonus, I wandered over to the Jeni’s Ice Cream truck and picked up scoops of their Honey Vanilla Bean and Salty Caramel. And what do you know? They taste pretty amazing on blueberry pancakes. Now, how do I convince Jeni to do a Breakfast With Nick ice cream flavor?

Eat a local breakfast!

Local Foods Week is nearly upon us! Join Local Matters from August 11-19 for a jam-packed schedule of markets, tastings, tours, classes, trucks, and family events (see complete schedule at the link above). Remember that you should always start with a good breakfast, so if you want to get a solid beginning to the week, you need a hearty early meal. You can kick off the celebration by stopping at one of these suggested places.

One of my regular breakfasts around town, Katalina’s Cafe Corner, prides itself on sourcing local ingredients whenever possible. Their favorite Mazatlan pork and egg sandwich uses a succulent pork shoulder from Bluescreek Farms. Likewise, the spices for their Latin-themed dishes come from local markets or from North Market Spices.

Likewise, Rick and Krista at Knead Urban Diner pride themselves on creating delectable meals out of Ohio ingredients. They cure many of their own meats, bake their own breads and pastries, and literally hang a map on the wall showing from where their ingredients are sourced. Rick’s house-made bacon is worthy of note, or their homemade sausage gravy and biscuits, featuring eggs from Holistic Acres.

And don’t forget the coffee! Columbus is full of strong coffee roasters. The recently opened One Line Coffee in Short North roasts their own beans in Heath, Ohio. They use all manner of coffee preparations – hot and cold, simple and complex – to show off their roasts.

Even if you’re making breakfast at home this week, try picking up some local ingredients to build your dishes. Stop by the Clintonville Community Market or North Market Poultry & Game for Ohio eggs. Pick up some challah from Eleni-Christina Bakery in Short North. Visit any one of the city’s farmers’ markets to get fresh veggies for an omelet.

Join me for the start of Local Foods Week tomorrow morning! I’m hosting the pancake breakfast at the Hills Market from 8-11, and I’ll be selling/signing books, too!

Photos: A Very Dinin’ Hall Breakfast!

This past weekend we got to try breakfast at Dinin’ Hall! A couple of food trucks whipped up special menus just for a book-signing, and a crowd of about 60 or 70 people joined us! Ajumama set up with a very special and delicious menu.

And the cart from Spinelli’s Deli was there serving up breakfast sandwiches!

The folks from the new Solar Cafe made their first appearance in Columbus, giving away samples of their coffee. Solar Cafe is apparently a national “chain” of coffee shops. The coffee is roasted by Solar Roast Coffee, at a facility in Pueblo, Colorado, actually using solar power. And not just electricity converted from solar cells, but focused sunbeams used to superheat air which is circulated around coffee beans.

Solar Cafe has a trike, from which they’ll be serving coffee around town, and they’re opening a cafe in Old Hilliard in July.

It’s been in the 90′s and muggy here in Ohio (plus a freak windstorm on Friday night), so a tall class of omija tea from Ajumama was the perfect start. The tea is made from the “five flavor berry” (pictured here), so called because they’re salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory all at once. Makes for a very refreshing summer drink.

For breakfast, Laura and her crew from Ajumama served some unique versions of hodduk. A regular hodduk is a small cake filled with brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts. It’s a rich, sweet little snack. In addition to the standard version, Laura made a budae or Army hodduk, which used American cheese, spam, and kimchi. And then she did a bacon brown sugar version. All three = delicious.

They also served a veggie pajeon, which is a thin pancake filled with sprouts, shallots, zucchini, mushrooms, and garlic. My wife and I were big fans of this one.

We also grabbed something more traditional from the Spinelli’s cart, which was a nice complement to the Korean street food breakfast. Here’s a veggie crostini on a croissant, with a hash brown patty. The crostini is set apart from their regular breakfast sandwiches by the addition of roasted red peppers. I can never get enough of those.

Overall, a great event! It seemed like a bunch of people got to try Dinin’ Hall, who aren’t normally available to come by during the weekday hours. Thanks to everyone who came. Perhaps we can make it a regular thing?

Photos: Taste of Dine Originals 2011

Taste of Dine Originals was last night! It’s your best chance to catch many of Columbus’ best restaurants all in one place. The new location at the Grange Audubon Center offered a little more room, so the crowds didn’t feel as crowded. I’ve never been to the Center before, but I was impressed. Seems like a great area, and I’m excited to see how the Whittier Peninsula continues to grow. Plus, the views of downtown are unbeatable.

I sampled so many things that I forget the exact names and ingredients, but I don’t remember having anything bad the entire night (not like that’s a surprise). As usual, Basi Italia used one of my favorite displays, with mini polenta cakes topped with a sweet salsa.

Chef John Dornback at work.

This year also included two of our local distilleries. Here’s Watershed serving up Gin & Juice. In another corner, I tried a sidecar with Middle West Spirits Honey Vanilla Bean vodka. Both refreshing and delicious.

Pork belly from Due Amici.

Mini Cuban pork sandwiches from Barcelona.

Owner Thom Coffman of The Clarmont…

…serving up macaroni and cheese balls!

Right next to the gang from Deepwood.

Quick break for a sip of Summer Teeth from Columbus Brewing Company.

Even more restaurants lined up in the main hallway of the building.

It’s always fun to see Chefs Kevin and Patrick from Skillet at work.

Towers of delicious smoked duck crostinis (above) and a lavender pound cake with chocolate ganache (below) from Chef Anthony with The Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls.

Amazing display, as usual, from Pistacia Vera.

And of course, you have to finish with Lara’s maple bacon cupcakes from Surly Girl Saloon.

A wonderful and delicious evening all around. It’s always amazing to see such a diverse mix of fare at this event. Thanks to Dine Originals for inviting me out. Looking forward to 2012 already!