4 posts tagged “restaurant”

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.

I'm sure I should be embarrassed by this statement, but I'm simply not: I am one of those self-righteous jerks that regularly turns my nose up at chain restaurants. This rule, as with most "rules" of mine, is not without exception. I legitimately like the fajitas from Chili's. I love the roasted garlic sauce from Romano's Macaroni Grill. I order pizza from Pizza Hut fairly often, I really love Chipotle burritos, I've had a couple great meals from the Cheesecake Factory and I ate at Panera Bread so much in high school that I probably own a part of the company.

With all of these exceptions, though, it seems like I don't have a real rule. The rule comes from the fact that I am usually disappointed with chain restaurants. The photos on the menu lie to you, don't they? Everything looks so great and sounds fantastic and then it gets to you and it's just a disappointment. I've been drawn in by their comparatively lower prices (I can't get a 10 ounce sirloin at a steakhouse for $10, but I can probably find one at Applebee's for close to that), but the quality is rarely at a level I appreciate. It's standard food. I don't remember the last time I was blown away by something at a chain restaurant - until yesterday.

Do we all remember a week or two ago when I was whining about my lunch options around my office? How I really wanted pasta but couldn't find anywhere to get it? All of that changed yesterday, when I was introduced to the lunch menu at McCormick and Schmick's. If you live in a larger town, you might have one of these. A new one recently opened in Cincinnati on Fountain Square. They specialize in seafood - the menus are paper because they change based on what's fresh that day. John and I decided we wanted to sit down to a nicer lunch to celebrate the end of a difficult work week, and the sit-down choices around our offices are mostly food court mall food or unbelievably expensive food. McCormick and Schmick's was our best option.

And boy, was it ever. Fettucine alfredo with scallops and shrimp - I know it's not the most innovative dish in the world. It's four ingredients. But those four ingredients were cooked perfectly, and that's the kind of food that really gets me going. The scallops were so tender, they simply melted in your mouth. The alfredo sauce was rich and creamy. I couldn't have asked for a better lunch - and it was $13. I am convinced that I couldn't have found a meal within half a mile of my office that hit the spot as much as my lunch did yesterday. John had the tilapia, which was great, but I'm partial to mine. I'm sure he understands.

While M&S wasn't enough to make me totally re-think my "rule", it did confirm that I should still give the occasional chain restaurant a try. I couldn't have been more impressed, and I'm unbelievably excited to try their $1.95/3.95 happy hour menu sometime soon.

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.