17 posts tagged “cincinnati”

It is no secret that I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeff Ruby restaurants, ever since the fabulous experience we had at The Waterfront back in October. I have a rule with restaurants lately: if I can cook my food better than you can cook my food, I'm probably not a happy girl. I make a mean steak - but Jeff Ruby's are, well, meaner.

Even though I guessed my birthday present nine days early (and he still gave it to me!), my husband still decided to take me out for a nice meal when I turned the big 2-3 last Friday. He made an 8:30 reservation at The Precinct. The Precinct is sort of "the" steak restaurant to go to in Cincinnati. There are others that are very good - hell, all the Jeff Ruby restaurants are known for their steak - but if anyone asks where you can get a good steak here, they're probably going to end up at this one.

I suppose I should be embarrassed, in hindsight, that I ordered basically the exact same thing I ordered when we went to the Waterfront. I'd be embarrassed if it wasn't so fantastic, but luckily for me, it is fantastic. I had the Steak Collinsworth, the Cincinnati version of Steak Oscar (filet, two sauces, king crab and asparagus), and John had the Steak a la Roth (pepper-crusted filet). We also ordered the shrimp and crab saute as an appetizer.

I have to say that the shrimp and crab dish was the most disappointing part of the meal. Neither one of us likes mushrooms (the horror, I know), and this had significantly more mushroom than seafood in it. The seafood was fabulous, when you could find it - and even as a mushroom hater, it was still fairly tasty. I just wish the mushrooms had been mentioned ahead of time.

The steaks were, of course, amazing. Both were cooked to perfection. While I am rarely a fan of sauces with my steak, I could have absolutely licked my plate. There was a generous piece of king crab on top of mine - enough that I didn't mind giving John half - and the asparagus was delightful. The steaks come with a side salad and your choice of potato. John and I both opted for the garlic mashed potatoes. Tasting these made me feel like I should modify my recipe - I use minced garlic in my garlic mashed potatoes, but the roasted garlic in theirs is a really nice, rustic touch.

We each had a glass of wine - a Zinfandel for me, Shiraz for him - and two drinks at the bar before our table was ready. As per usual, I'm a little ashamed that I didn't write them down, but I never remember to do that. We passed on dessert because we were absolutely stuffed.

Also, Jeff Ruby's restaurants serve bread with two kinds of butter. One of them is a mushroom butter made with what tastes like a little bit of white truffle oil. They should probably start selling this so I can buy it by the pound. Mushroom hater or not, I cannot get enough of this butter. It's lovely.

Our bill wasn't nearly as expensive as The Waterfront, but we also just went with steak instead of adding on seafood. It's definitely still a nicer restaurant, but not unreasonable. Most steaks are in the $35 range, and the appetizers are about $10. Seafood will cost you a pretty penny, but as we learned with our last Jeff Ruby experience, it's worth it if you can spare the change. Their wine list is extensive and includes many bottles at decent prices, but they have a good selection by the glass as well. We were so stuffed from the food, we could barely finish our wine as it was - we never would have been able to finish off a bottle between the two of us!

A fantastic experience - perfect for a special occasion. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Hello all,

I've been flipping back and forth for a week now. Do I write, do I work on homework, do I go to sleep early and thank God I can still get some rest during the quarter? (The latter has clearly won, most of the time.) I know I've been absent here lately, but I'm coming out of hiding to promote a very good cause.

I don't think I mentioned it at the time, but my good friend Michelle lost her sister to an undiagnosed heart defect in October. 2007 wasn't a great year for her family. I didn't mention it because I felt it best to let Michelle grieve in her own way. I never had the pleasure of meeting her sister Krystal, but based on what I've heard from Michelle and the outpouring of love displayed on the memorial facebook page, I know she was an incredible young woman, loved by many and simply taken too early.

Michelle lives here in Cincinnati. Her sister was a student at Thomas More College. Michelle has set an amazing goal of raising $25,000 over the next three years to start a scholarship in her name. That's a lot of money, but if anyone can rally people toward a cause, it's got to be her. She can't do it alone, though, and that's why I appeal to all of you.

You can find all the information at the KLP scholarship website. Their first benefit is on March 7th at 7 p.m. It's at Briarwood in Hebron, KY, and tickets are only $20. Dinner! Dancing! Helping a good cause! Who couldn't use more of that in their lives?

I know I don't have a ton of readers here, but I would love it if any of you Cincinnati locals could spread the word. Michelle is also seeking donations for a silent auction, so if you, or anyone you know of, has something to contribute - feel free to contact her through the website. Michelle has done a lot for Cincinnati by running her successful (and iPhone-winning!) blog. Let's see if we can't give a little back to her.

There are things that should change, and there are things that should stay the same forever. There is absolutely no rule that these things follow other than this: If I have ever enjoyed something, then it should never change. It's a simple rule, of sorts, but I'll concede that it's subjective.

Imagine my utter hatred for Champs sports bar on Elm Street, if you will. John used to go there during lunch from time to time and get a huge plate of nachos for about $7. They once had a wealth of pasta options. They weren't great food, but the options of places to eat when you work in this corner of downtown are few and far between. My office is on the far southwest corner of downtown Cincinnati. There's a deli on the corner of 4th & Plum, there's the Tea Room (a place I eat at least twice a week), there's food at the mall, which can only be classified as "mall food". (If you've ever been inside a mall in the midwest, you can probably list all the eating establishments.) There is the overpriced Margaritas that does not have particularly good food, and there used to be Federal Reserve, my absolute favorite lunch spot ever. They moved to Newport, which is outside of the range I can get to and back in an hour.

Today, I really wanted pasta, so we stopped at Champs. It's my only option, unless I want to brave the Sbarro at the mall. We were there for about thirty seconds before we realized the menu had changed. The bartender was kind enough to tell us that it just changed Monday, so we're not that behind. This is a crappy sports bar. If you've been to a Champs anywhere, you've been to this one. Hasn't been re-decorated in decades. Has crappy bar food. This is what I was getting myself into.

The new menu has two pasta dishes, neither of which sounded particularly appetizing. They are $15 and $22. The rest of the menu is in a similar price range. None of it looked like anything I really wanted to eat, much less spend $20+ in the Cincinnati area downtown. We were two of three people in the restaurant. It makes me wonder how many other people came in, saw that the menu has changed with absolutely no updates to the rest of the restaurant, and walked back out. The bartender didn't seem particularly taken aback.

I need new food options close to where I work. I crave them. I could walk all the way down 4th, but I'm not going to - and perhaps that makes me lazy, but let's take into account that it would be a 15 minute walk to a different part of downtown, which means I've got 30 minutes to get my food and eat it if I'm going to make the round trip in an hour. It's also cold. (That's the lazy part.) Everyone at the delis around my office knows me by name. I simply can't eat mall food every day.

Today, I miss New York more than ever. Sure, the financial district didn't stay open past about 5, but at least I had a wealth of lunch options. Lunch options that didn't suddenly decide to become "upscale" without warning me first.

Oh, Cincinnati. You've told me over and over about the magic of Jeff Ruby restaurants, but I am sad to say I had never been to one. The reasons are many - they are mostly financial. Jeff Ruby, for those of you who aren't locals, has a chain of restaurants that are centered around the Cincinnati area. They're mostly upscale locations that are pretty steak-focused. As I also consider myself to be steak-focused, it's sort of shocking that the two of us had yet to meet.

John took me to see Cymbeline at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company last night, and as him getting me theatre tickets is such a rare thing in our lives, we decided it would be nice to go out to a fancy dinner beforehand. We were going to go to The Precinct - another Jeff Ruby establishment that I've heard great things about. Unable to get a reservation, we decided on the South Beach Grill at the Waterfront.

First of all, let's talk about the decor. Think 1980s cruise ship throwback. Lots of neon, colors that no 2007 interior designer would consider putting together, etc. Still, there's a quaint quality to all of it. The decor is a little tacky, but please don't let that be any indicator of the quality of the food.

And, it's an actual boat. It's constantly docked, but still a boat. If you're lucky like we were, you can be seated right next to the window with a beautiful view of downtown Cincinnati.

The food was incredible. John and I didn't go terribly adventurous - they have a large seafood bar, but we stuck to classics. Steak Collinsworth (there's a joke here, but it boils down to really being Steak Oscar, a beautifully cooked steak topped with crabmeat, bernaise sauce and asparagus) and lobster for me, a filet and eight ounces of king crab for him. We traded food back and forth so we'd both get a little of everything. It was an incredible amount of food. We left very full and very happy. I don't think I've ever had a more satisfying meal here in Cincinnati.

Though the waiter pushed suggestions for bottles of wine on us, we declined. We opted instead for individual glasses - he had a shiraz that he really liked, I opted for the waiter's suggestion of a zinfandel. Of course I forgot to write down the names, but I was impressed with mine. I'm branching out and starting to drink more reds (Michelle, did I remember to tell you that we loved the bottle of wine you and Kevin gave us when we were at Eden Park?), and the zinfandel was light enough to satisfy my tastes and pair well with both my steak and lobster.

It was the most expensive meal John and I have ever had together, but it was also the most delicious. I wish we hadn't been on a deadline to get to our show, because I think we rushed through it a little more than we would have liked. If the food here is any indicator of how the rest of the Ruby restaurants are, sign me up.

A side note: I've decided to participate in NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. I did this last year, though a month late as a personal project. Basically, I'll be posting once a day every day of November. The only problem here is that I'll be out of town with no internet access from November 1-4, so I'm already going to be missing the goal. Still, I think it's the spirit that counts, and I'm happy to participate as well as I can.

I am twenty-two years old, lacking a degree in anything related to writing or food. I know this. No amount of eating or reading will make me into a food writer, but I'm doing the best that I can with what I've got. I will say that I'm experienced in food. I know what I'm looking for and I've done the best I can so far on a modest budget to expand my horizons. I am currently writing an article for a local magazine, something that I'm very excited about. I was offered a shot at the article even through my honesty about my age and experience level, and I can only work hard and hope to do well.

Now that we've gotten all that out of the way, allow me to voice an opinion about one of our local publications and the injustice I feel they've done to food and drink this week. I won't drop names, but I'll paint the scenario - every major city has a free weekly publication. Larger cities may have them daily - New York has Metro and AM New York, as well as Downtown Express if you're below a certain street, and I'm sure there are others. I grew up reading Pitch Weekly in Kansas City, which I believe is now just "The Pitch". A few culture articles, large listings of events happening around the city, and whatever else they please. The weekly ones usually have a large classified section at the back, complete with personals ads that everyone giggles at from time to time.

Cincinnati has two of these, and I read them every single week, cover to cover. I don't look to them to be the world's best writing. They're part of my regular reading lineup, along with the online edition of the New York Times, the weekend editions of the Cincinnati Enquirer, and a handful of magazines that just make me look like a big girl. On page 12 of one of these local publications this week, the food writer admitted that she ordered her filet well-done. On the opposite page, reviewing a new beer from a local brewery, the writer says, I quote, I'm not a huge "beer person".

Seriously.

I have mentioned before in this very blog that, quite frankly, I don't care how you order your food. If you're paying $50 for a steak and you want it charred and the chef doesn't come kick you out or lecture you about how you won't even be able to taste it, what do I care? The closest I've come to lecturing anyone recently is when my mother suggested splitting a steak with me and I made a snippy comment about her desire for burnt meat. (There is a dish in most Kansas City barbecue restaurants called "burnt ends", which refers to the burnt ends of a brisket that are cut off when it's sliced. You should order it. It is the exception to my medium-rare steak rule.)

So, why don't I lecture my mother or my friends about their charred steak but I get all up in arms about some writer in a local weekly magazine ordering it that way? None of my friends are getting paid to write articles about quality food. Call any chef, anyone who's well-educated about food, and ask them how a steak should be served. Most of them will tell you that even my lightly seared medium-rare preference is beyond done.

I suppose I take the most offense to the beer writer who doesn't like beer. There had to be someone else out there who could write that article. Someone who knew what they were talking about. It's the equivalent of all of the phenomenon that food blogger Deb refers to on epicurious who hate the recipes because they made fifteen different substitutions. I don't want to know what a random person on the street thought about the beer, I want to know what a "beer person" thought about the beer. I love reading Michelle's blog because she knows what she's talking about. When she doesn't know what she's talking about, she goes out of her way to find someone who does in order to learn and educate herself - as well as the rest of us. There's something to be said for writing about something you're not 100% sure about and are now taking the time to learn, but the two articles I read today don't give me any indication that there's a learning process happening behind the scenes.

Me, I'm spending the day learning about bread. A cheese and herb bread that, admittedly, is based out of a box. It's going to be married to turkey in about two hours, and I simply couldn't be more pleased. I'm also going to sit down with my newest Cincinnati magazine that I have yet to read, because they always leave me with a local smile on my face.

"You see that under the sink?" our home inspector asked me, standing in the kitchen of the house that I had spent weeks convincing everyone I know was the most perfect house that's ever existed. "Those wires?"

"Yeah, you shouldn't be seeing those."

"...oh."

"Do you know what a GFI is?"

"...no."

"These plugs are within 6 feet of a water source. They need them."

"Oh, okay."

"You see the dip in the floor there?"

This is the part where my voice gets smaller and quieter, like a little girl. "I do now."

"Yeah, that's a sign of previous termite damage. Whoever re-did the dry wall just covered it up rather than actually re-doing the boards underneath, and that's what's causing your floor to bow."

"Oh."

This was the beginning of the conversation with our home inspector. By the time we actually got outside of the house, which is, as I would find out soon, where the real problems are, I was already exhausted and pretty sure that there was not a home in my future. The home inspector helped me climb over the railing so I could see the side of the house.

"You see that yellow tube there? Do you know what that is?"

"...a hose?"

"An exposed natural gas line."

"Those are supposed to be underground, aren't they?"

You see, I was not supposed to handle this home inspection by myself. I grew up with an electrician for a father who is currently renovating a previously condemned victorian 600 miles away from me. None of that is genetic. My realtor and my husband were working on different schedules than the home inspector, you see, so all of this was relayed to me. Needless to say, the inspection just got worse and worse.

I have spent the last three days going back and forth on what to do. Here's the thing with houses - decisions happen much faster than you think they would after you make that decision on which house to buy. So we were on a deadline and had to make a decision. We were not ready to let go of this house. John met with our realtor today and we submitted a very intense list of requests for the seller. They are all completely legitimate things, and they are big things, but the truth is that they just need to be fixed, and it will cost us a lot of money to inherit their problems. Now we sit, and now we wait. We will know tomorrow whether the seller thinks we're crazy.

On a pleasant note, the Reds are playing the Mets for the next four nights, which means I get to watch my boys play. It's not really a distraction from all of the house nonsense, but it's a nice bonus.

I've got the sickness. The house sickness. For those of you that have never had it, just beware - there is no cure. I lay in bed at night and think about the houses. I dream about them. I spend all my time going through back issues of Dwell and Domino and reading blogs and looking at Home Depot's website and prowling for good deals at Target. I am a monster that can't be stopped.

Just over a week ago, we saw four more houses, two of which were under heavy consideration.

Big House, Big Distance: This was a simply beautiful house in the wrong neighborhood with a slightly too high price tag. We went to see it in the hopes that we could make a lower offer. I loved everything about it. The owner has put a lot of money into restoring its original beauty and it really shows. The problem? It took us 30 minutes to get there. That's a deal breaker for John & I. We are not highway people, we are not commute people. I don't know that my blood pressure can handle highway rush hour twice a day. I am not exactly a calm person, especially when it comes to driving. So, as much as we really liked it and felt comfortable and could see ourselves being there, that house was out.

White Castle House: This house shared a fence with a White Castle. There was not a single thing we liked about it, and we were freaked out because there was a car in the driveway and all the lights were on when we walked in, so we were convinced the owner was hiding in a closet getting ready to kill us.

World's Cutest Small House Ever: One bedroom. Only one. But the entire house is completely updated, it has a fantastic screened in porch, the ceilings are high, the rooms are huge, and it is just beautiful from one corner to the next. It's not far from UC or downtown and it's in a small, very cute community. It's walking distance from various restaurants and bars, but unlike where we live now, it's very safe.

Needs Some Love House: The house was huge and within our price range. It also hasn't been touched in at least twenty years. This is the house your grandparents hole up in for the last few decades of their life. It would have required thousands and thousands of dollars to even be livable by our standards. Instantly out as soon as we pulled in the driveway.

I suppose it's big announcement time. I had difficulty writing about the second to last house because I don't have anything bad to say about it. It is not the house I imagined that we'd buy, but we couldn't stop talking about it. I didn't even want to go see it. Over the next week, we picked out paint colors and backsplashes and planned parties. On Wednesday afternoon, we had an accepted offer. We offered a little low, they countered, and now we have a house.

The next couple of weeks are a little more complicated. We have to get a mortgage. Have a house inspection. Gather every piece of paper that represents us over the past few years and present them to everyone in the free world. The last part is a little bit of an exaggeration, but seriously - buying a house is not so easy. The good news is that less than a month from now, we will have our very own house. I would not expect me to write anything unrelated to the house for at least a little while.

These weeks are also the most frustrating. We just want to be in the house, you know? We're making our best efforts to move forward and begin a new chapter in our lives, and it seems like the whole world is against us. Seeing houses and chatting with a realtor, as we learned, is actually the easy part. It takes most people months and months to find a place, but our circumstances (read as: finding an incredibly inexpensive house in a more-expensive-than-we-can-afford market) led to us finding a place we really loved in a much shorter time. Making the decision on what house we wanted to buy wasn't really as difficult as we thought, because it turned out that we really knew what we wanted. Location was not something we were willing to negotiate on. We had a very small window in which to negotiate on price. We needed a place that was move-in ready instead of requiring a huge investment and renovation before we carried in the first box. When you're talking about the price range we wanted to hit, there really weren't that many fantastic optiosn out there. Most properties could be ruled out just by seeing the online photos - and the ones we couldn't rule out with the photos, we were able to rule out pretty quickly. This was the one that stuck with us.

So, the house inspection is Monday, the mortgage meetings and phone calls are ongoing, and soon we'll be at the "hurry up and wait" stage. That's the stage after we've gotten the home inspection, we've given the mortgage company all of our paperwork, and we're just hanging out, waiting for things to happen.

Oh, and I'm still picking out tile for the backsplash in the kitchen. Don't think for a moment that I'm not crazy.

I am obsessed with real estate. Literally obsessed. If I've got nothing better to do with my time (and even if I do), I am jumping online and looking at homes. I attribute this to the following reasons:

1. I lived in New York for most of 2006, I continue to read New York blogs, I have friends who live in New York. Due to informal research in my own lab, I can confirm that 79% of New Yorkers are obssessed with real estate and want to talk about it all the time. Where the new condos are, who bought an apartment two years ago and has already quadrupled their profit, whether it's possible to still get a two-bedroom for under half a million dollars in Manhattan, whether or not it's worth it to move to Inwood in hopes of still getting a good deal. I've been at your parties. I know what you're into.

2. I am friends with many women who are over 25 with secure jobs. Once again returning to the lab, I've come to the conclusion that once women get out of school and get steady jobs, they're on the house path. And who can blame them? We're all spending more on rent than we would on a house, and we want our own kitchens. While I may not be over 25 with a secure job, I am surrounded by women who are, and since I am the only one that's married, I feel it tacks enough supposed maturity and wisdom on to me that I can be in their realm. You'll note that I only refer to women in this case, because the majority of 25+ men that I know, whether or not they've got steady jobs, look at me like I have three heads when I talk about buying a new couch, much less investing in property.

3. I watch a LOT of HGTV. So, while I don't even know where my hammer is, I'm confident that I know how to use it and I'm more educated than the common consumer about how I would fix up a house. Since I watch so much HGTV, I'm also confident that I know when to tackle a project on my own and when to suck it up and call someone to have them install my new exotic hardwood floors.

John watches a great deal of HGTV with me, and while I'm not sure he'd want me to share that with all of you, it doesn't matter because he doesn't read my blog anyway. He and I are usually on one end or the other of the pessimism scale depending on what topic we're discussing, and when it comes to real estate, he's definitely not into it. While I watch our television shows and see these amazing transformations that cost less than $1,000 per room and imagine the families living happily ever after in their sleek, modern kitchens, all he sees is disaster. $20,000 investments that suddenly turn into $100,000 disasters. Episodes that can't last five minutes without combining the words "over" and "budget". Busted water pipes, cracked foundations, termites.

It is for these reasons that I was shocked when I showed him a house a few weeks ago and he said "Cool, let's go see it."

You have to understand that I have been pushing the idea of buying a house for years, even before we had credit, jobs, and a concept of what our lives would be like for more than the next three months. Since I had been joking about it so long, I began to take for granted the idea that I would bring up real estate, he would shoot me a certain smile and tell me to go do my homework instead of looking at houses, and we would move on. Then one day, without warning, he just snaps and agrees with me? Crazy.

So, the past three weeks of our lives have been consumed with real estate. We found ourselves an agent named Shney who never once judged our price range and has started to know what I'm thinking about the size of a kitchen even before I've vocalized it. Unfortunately for all of my friends, this is the only thing I've been talking about, because it is the only thing I've been THINKING about. John and I are dreaming about houses. Waking up in the middle of the night asking one another about cabinets. Going to Home Depot and pricing out appliances. We have toured houses and pictured exactly where we will put our new couch. I've drawn out floor plans, John's taken over 400 pictures, and I actually made a to-scale 3D model of one space I was convinced was never going to work. (It didn't.)

Since my friends have stopped caring about our real estate endeavors, I've decided to bug all of you about them. Here, for you, is a summary of the main properties we've seen so far.

1. Two-story with awesome backyard. This house had a beautiful backyard. It was a two-story older property with a driveway that led back to a one-car garage. The garage had a staircase to the right of it that led up to a patio and a small back yard, otherwise known as the perfect place to sit and drink margaritas. It had a small patio below that clearly was meant to hold a brand new gigantic stainless steel grill. You will note, however, that I haven't mentioned the house. The living room was small, the basement was scary, the kitchen needed to be completely redone, the master bedroom didn't have a closet, the bathroom didn't have a tub and only had a weird corner shower with a door that opened in, the third bedroom wasn't big enough to be called a closet. Welcome to the home search.
2. West side bungalow. A foreclosure property that was completely re-done with a beautiful sunroom and a completely re-done kitchen. A completely re-done 8x9 kitchen. Have you met me? Have you met my KitchenAid? There's not enough room for both of us in an 8x9 kitchen. I know that's big by NYC standards, but that's why I came back to the midwest. No 8x9 kitchens. And it was on the west side. And it was only two bedrooms. And the second bedroom absolutely would not have fit anything. And it had only one bathroom that was so tiny, I smashed my knee on the sink as I walked in. And, and, and. It would have been ours, it was the right price, but the margarita/grilling out dream died. Plus, I'm pretty sure they were killing people in the basement.
3. Dream home in Walnut Hills. After seeing the first two, we set out to see three houses in one night. I wanted to cry the second I walked into the house. I knew this house was mine. Big living room. Big dining room. Kitchen that needed to be gutted, but was big enough to turn into my dream kitchen. Two bathrooms. Three original tile (Rookwood!) fireplaces. Big, big rooms with beautiful original hardwood floors. So, why didn't we buy it? The basement. The basement was dug out, it was less than 6 feet tall. We would have had to completely re-do the top floor plan because it was an awkward space. We would have had to gut both bathrooms and restructure the property. I drew, I modeled, I went to Home Depot, I made plans. Ultimately it just was too much of a project. But I will always remember that beautiful house with all of its potential.
4. The house that changed our view of houses. This house made me panic. It was a tiny mid-century home on the west side that had been completely re-done already. John loved it. I freaked out. You want me to move into a tiny starter home in the family neighborhood you grew up in? You have to understand that the west side is completely different from the rest of Cincinnati, as far as I'm concerned. This is exactly what I don't want. We are young! We are hip! We are not ready to move to the place where you start popping out babies and live for the next thirty years of your life. I can't handle it. So, my own unfortunate hesitation aside, why did this change our view of houses? It proved to us that there are houses in our price range that are move-in ready. They made fantastic choices with this house. We could find a place that - gasp! - had a great kitchen already! With walls we don't have to instantly start sanding and patching! After much consideration and a weekend of talking about it entirely too much, we decided to start fresh and ignore everything we had seen so far.
5. Trashiest home in all of Cincinnati. This home was, in a word, tragic. That is the word I've used to describe it to everyone we know. On paper, it was THE house. In a cool neighborhood close to lots of things we love to do, HUGE with lots of space for studios and computers and everything else we could ever want, and right in our price range. We walked in to find a brand new bathroom and kitchen. Hooray! Then our realtor told us to not walk any further. The owners had to have trashed the place when they left. The entire upper floor reeked of cat urine. I mean, REEKED. Cracked terrible linoleum tiles, four or five different colors of paint on one wall, missing floorboards that allowed you to see through the entire floor down into the basement. I thought I was going to cry. Maybe it was just the cat pee getting to me. The only reason to go there? Seeing a family of kittens curled up around their mom outside. Leave the place to the cats. I don't want anything to do with it.
   

Thus ends the house search so far. We are seeing FIVE more places tomorrow. Five! We've upped our budget a little in the hopes of finding somewhere we love that we can come in with a low offer and still make it into our price range. I know more about home ownership than I could have considered knowing a month ago. I am most definitely making all of our friends crazy, but hopefully they'll get over it when we invite them over for a party on our brand new deck.

Oh, and all those great things I was going to blog about before home ownership took over my life? Don't worry, they're all rolling around in there. The main thing is that we went to an amazing event at the Party Source a few weeks ago with Kevin and Michelle. Three German winemakers came to speak about their rieslings and we got to taste all of them, plus a Gewurstraminer. Since Michelle already did such a great job talking about it, I'll just direct you to her writeup here. I left with two bottles and could have left with many more.

And, yes, school is once again in full swing. I haven't been too terribly busy so far, but I'm pretty sure that's going to change shortly. I also have at least one Kansas City trip and two New York trips in my future. It's a busy summer around these parts, but hopefully I'll be able to check in from time to time.

In my inbox right now, there is a draft email to myself. The subject is "Things to Write About", and the list in the body of the message just keeps getting longer and longer. The truth is that I have gone to so many places lately that are really worth writing about, but I'm too busy doing all of them to write about them. So I vow to myself to write about them soon, but there are a lot of obstacles coming up in the next week for me to prevent me from doing that. It's my last full-time week at my job, and many of my good friends are flying back into town so we can start our school quarter up again on the 18th. There are evenings out with friends, a baseball game and celebratory happy hour on my last day of work, a day of fun with my husband to celebrate his 26th birthday, and many other things that I'm sure will be presenting themselves to me over the next few days.

Yesterday was our first anniversary, and can I just say that I'm exhausted? While I'm all for going out and seeing the world, I'm also for relaxing after our terribly busy work week. Torn between sitting on the couch and playing video games or going out and running all over town, we shockingly chose the latter. The day started off with lunch at Melt.

Oh, Melt. Have you been there yet? If you like anything about Northside, then you'll love everything about Melt. Delicious, freshly made food that doesn't have a lick of grease to be found in it, presented beautifully but without pretension, for a price you can afford. They're right next door to Northside Tavern, they have cupcakes that are to die for, and if you opt for takeout instead, you can walk across the street to Shake It, the city's best record store, and do some browsing while you wait. I don't know why you're all not there right now, to be honest. John had never been there, so we decided that the time was right to go. He got the nachos and I opted for the significantly more girly brie plate. Wedges of brie laying with grapes, apples, walnuts, and a delicious salad topped with maple balsamic dressing. I'd eat it again right now.

After Melt was a trip to Shake-It, where we spent a little more than we probably should have on magazines and toys. Then we headed out to the butterfly show, because when a good friend gives you free tickets to something you wanted to go to anyway, it's a sign that you have to go. The butterfly show is always fun, but we were a little disappointed this year by the number of butterflies they had. I don't know if it's really lower than there have been in the past or if they were all just hiding in the trees, but we weren't terribly impressed. It's still fun, and the conservatory is always beautiful, so I'm glad we went. Every time we go, I think that I should really come back with my camera, and then I never do.

We left the conservatory and went to Homearama. Locals, have you been to this? I had heard of it, but never visited. There's an event in Kansas City called Parade of Homes, where the whole city turns into a big open house, and you can go around and visit the new homes being constructed. I asked John a few weeks ago if there was an equivalent to that here in town, and Homearama was the closest thing he could come up with. It isn't quite the same thing, though, because these homes are in the 2+ million dollar range, which is a ridiculous sum of money in this area, and they're around 6,000-9,000 square feet. It's a chance to see how the "other half" lives, as a local publication put it. There's a new subdivision created every year, and local home builders pull out all the stops to create one home in this gated community that I'll never be able to get to unless I'm allowed to buy tickets like I was yesterday.

The homes are spectacular, but I have to admit I wasn't as impressed as I thought I was going to be. I know that there are trends in new homes, even the high end ones, but after the third house, I felt like I knew exactly what the next one was going to look like. If you've seen one 9,000 square foot house with a basement theater, full-scale bar, pool table and gym, you've seen them all, right? I'm also pretty judgmental as a designer, and most of the homes didn't look like they could be lived in. I know that when you've got that much space to work with, you're obviously going to gravitate toward certain spaces of the home, but I didn't see living rooms that I could live in. I want somewhere that facilitates laying on the couch and watching the news when I get home from work. Perhaps I'm a circumstance of my own income and when you get to buying 2.5 million dollar homes, you no longer flop on a couch after a hard day at work, but I imagine people with that much money still want to have their friends over and hang out and enjoy it.

It's a fun event, but it's strenuous. It's a ton of walking, and lots of stairs, and it was hot. Even well air-conditioned homes get up to about 80 degrees inside when you have thousands of people constantly coming in and out. We had a great time, though, and saw some things that were definitely unique. Working at an interior design firm, you get to see lots of great stuff, but it's all retail for me. It's nice to get a sense of where home design is going.

After that we had dinner at the restaurant we went to the night we got engaged, because we're sometimes sickeningly cute and like to do that sort of thing. Then we came home and lounged around, reading the magazines we had collected over the day and making our predictions about what year two is going to hold. Year two is going to be busy, without a doubt. We've got my senior year to deal with - job prospects, senior capstone projects, graduation. UC's graduation was yesterday. Since they're all gone, I'm officially the next class of UC graduates. Bring it on, I say. Here's to a full, lovely second year of marriage.

Every year in Cincinnati, there's a huge food festival downtown called Taste of Cincinnati. (It's not original, but hey, cut them some slack.) I should probably be ashamed to admit that I've never gone, but there are a few things to take into account. Number one, I didn't live here last year when it was going on. Number two, it draws a huge crowd. I mean, huge. If there's anything I hate in this world, it's fighting through a large crowd. So, there you have it. But, they moved further downtown this year, which meant John and I both had convenient, close parking at our offices, and I didn't have anything better to do, so we went down on Monday.

The festival encompasses more than just food. I was surprised to see such a selection of beverages. It's partially sponsored by Bud Light, and if there's anything people like in southwest Ohio, it's a good Bud Light, so I really expected that to be it. I was wrong: Woodchuck, Blue Moon, Christian Moerlein, Great Lakes and Spaten, just to name a few. They also had frozen margaritas and frozen daiquiris, and some wine offerings that I won't even mention. (Michelle made this point first here - so it's worth following her lead.)

Overall, I was disappointed with the selection of food. A lot of barbecue places (and being from Kansas City, I am a barbecue snob) that had mediocre offerings, a lot of German places, and a few other types of cuisine thrown in for good measure. There are some fantastic restaurants here in Cincinnati, and I really wish some of them had set up a booth.

I was also disappointed with the presentation of food. Here's the basic setup: you have a restaurant. That restaurant chooses three or four of their best dishes, which should be an adequate selection to give you an idea of the restaurant's menu. They mass produce these on site at a street booth and sell the offerings for anywhere from $1.50-5. People, I'm a realist. I know the presentation isn't going to be outstanding and I'm not expecting them to break out their best china. But what I didn't enjoy are super flimsy little paper cartons and sporks that you can barely cut into your food with. There are definitely not very many tables down there for all the people, so you're going to end up eating your food as you walk. Wasabi Ginger Glazed Salmon and orzo pasta, served in a little paper bin with a spork? There has to be another option.

As I mentioned, Michelle's review is here, and it's worth a read because she makes excellent points and tried different food than I did. You can see all of the food offerings here, if you're curious. Below are the things I tasted.

But first, a quick note about how to handle Taste - go with a spouse, partner or friend. Two people means tasting twice as much food! The portions are bigger than you'd think. John and I spent about $25. Drinks are expensive - $4 for a 16 oz. beer and $6 for a 22 oz. beer at most places, about $3.50 for sodas. Cincinnati Water Works had a booth all the way at the end with free cups of water, and frankly, I wish they would have had about four more along the way. It was hot! It's the beginning of summer. Plus, it's always nice to have a little something to wash the food down. Staying hydrated is key, and you're more than welcome to bring in your own drinks. There's no cost of admission and no real admission gate - you just sort of walk down the street and you're there.

What we tried:

Ravioli Marinara (Buca di Beppo) - I know, it's a chain restaurant. But in my defense, it was on the way out, and I really wanted ravioli. There were a few big chains there, but they didn't overpower the little guys in any way, and I actually think the individually-owned restaurants got more business. Anyway. I liked the ravioli, but I like all of Buca's food. Unfortunately, they put a little too much sauce on it, which I immediately proceeded to get on my shirt. At least it was the last stop.

Smoked chicken and sausage gumbo (Burbank's Real Barbecue) - I loved this. It was really hot, which was strange to eat outside in 80+ degree heat, but it was delicious. Spicy without overwhelming its own flavors, and the chicken was really tender. They also offered a smoked turkey & berry salad that Michelle has a photo of over at her blog. I saw someone else getting it and immediately wished I had gotten one.

Teriyaki Sirloin (Melting Pot) - Okay, it's another chain. Whatever. The teriyaki sirloin was good, but overcooked. Go to Melting Pot, have fun, and thank me later. The food is regularly delicious, but their offerings here left a little to be desired. I understand appealing to the masses and whatnot, but couldn't we have at least settled for medium well?

Crab Cakes (Behle Street Cafe) - These were delicious, albeit a little greasy. John and I both loved them. They had a really spectacular sauce with them that wasn't overly spicy, just a little extra moisture to them. I would have liked them with a little more meat in them, but I'm sure they're a little different if you're at their restaurant.

Pretzel with Beer Cheese (Courtyard Cafe on Main) - The pretzel was nice, although too salty for my taste. Take that with a grain of salt (HA!), though, because I think all pretzels are too salty. The beer cheese was nice, but I wish it had been a bit more... beer-y? Does that work? The cheese had a great consistency and was nice and smooth, but could have used a little more flavor.

Chocolate raspberry crepe (La Petite France) - a perfect example of how presentation could have gone a long way. It looked pretty terrible. It was basically crepe soup. That being said, it was pretty delicious. The sauce was a little runny and I would have preferred a richer flavor, but the berries were nice, the crepe was warm and a nice consistency, and I'm sure it's absolutely delicious and beautiful at the restaurant.

Wasabi ginger glazed salmon (Mike Fink) - Among the barbecue sandwiches and greasy food, you have salmon with orzo? I was a little leery, but we really liked it. For salmon you get in a little paper tray at a festival, it was outstanding. I didn't really get any wasabi glaze out of it and would have liked something a little more intense, but the fish was actually decent quality (I feared they would wheel out their bottom-of-the-barrel specimens for a $3 tub) and we both liked it. I'm not even a salmon person.

Pepperoni Topper slice (LaRosa's) - one of the few hometown Cincinnati chains represented. No Skyline, no Gold Star, none of that. John needed his pizza fix. He claims festival pizza is always more delicious than regular pizza.

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Sundae (Indigo Casual Gourmet Cafe) - They get the presentation award, hands down. It was served in a little plastic martini glass. The sundae itself wasn't anything spectacular. The cheesecake wasn't particularly rich or creamy, and it was topped with some chocolate shavings and whipped cream. It was enjoyable enough, though, and stood out in my memory as one of the more interesting dishes.

There's our experience! Here's looking forward to Taste 2008!