I realized something recently… I’m kind of tired of going out to dinner are the restaurants around me. They’re the same old thing over and over again for the most part. Go in, maybe order an appetizer to share, get an entree, and go home having eaten too much of the same old same old.

About a week and a half ago, I found out that Dayton, Ohio, offers an alternative… A real wine bar! Ok, Brian, the owner and proprieter of the Wine Gallery & Cafe (WG&C), has a chef that cooks, too, but I have to be honest; the food isn’t the real reason to be there. Don’t get me wrong… The food is good. The au gratin potatoes, in fact, are great! But what sets WG&C apart is the treatment of wine.

It’s nice to have a local place that has a good wine list, but there are several in Dayton that can handle that. There’s even a couple of places with really good selections of wines available by the glass. WG&C goes one step further by offering something like thirty (sorry, I didn’t count them) flights of wines on the menu. Their take on a flight is three glasses with two ounce pours of different wines that are linked by a theme. With so many flights, the themes are pretty varied, from sweet whites to big reds, and everthing in between. Each flight has a quick description above it, such as Pinot Noirs, or Sweet Reds, Spicy Reds, Oaky Whites, etc.

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The third weekend of October seems to usually be the best weekend for fall color in Ohio. Saturday, my wife and I decided to drive to south-central Ohio to see some color, as the Cincinnati area is kind of dull this year due to drought. We got in the convertible and drove east to Wilmington, Ohio, then continue east from there, staying on country roads and avoiding divided highways.

After about an hour and a half, we ended up in the Chillicothe area. Chillicothe isn’t a big town and it’s not on an interstate highway. It does carry the disctinction of being the first state capitol of Ohio. As we got near town, we saw signs for the Adena House, and, having no set plans, followed the signs to see what the Adena House is. It turns out it was the home/estate of Thomas Worthington, called the father of Ohio’s statehood and the sixth governor of Ohio.

It was a gorgeous day, starting off in the low 50’s and getting up to about 73 during the day. The sky had nice, fluffy clouds in the morning, clearing to brilliant blue later. The grounds at Adena included the mansion, which we toured, along with a barn with a covered wagon in it, a tenant farmer’s home and the spring house for the grounds. The home had extensive gardens, and I’d like to go back when things are in bloom, as it looks like the gardens are pretty well kept.

It was one of those days where it’s just comfortable to be outside. We spent about 2 1/2 hours at Adena, then found an ad for a barbecue restaurant in town and decided to go in and see how it was.
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My recent trip to Pittsburgh has left me all kinds of stuff about which to write. One store that we tend to revisit in the Strip District is Mon Aimee Chocolat.

Mon Aimee Chocolat is a bit of a fluff store, to be honest, but it’s not too froo-froo. The store is tastefully done, but it’s just high priced candy. But boy is some of that stuff good! One item I love is an M&M type chocolate, with cayenne pepper. They used to have sea salt as well as black pepper, but they don’t anymore, and I think those two were even better.

I’m not a big candy eater, actually, but there are some things that I do love. English candy bars, mostly Flake, in fact, are some of my favorites. I probably like Flake bars as much because of memories when I was 11, and my family was in England on vacation. We got softserve ice cream cones, and each one had a small Flake bar stuck in it. If you haven’t tried a Flake, do so… It’s basically what its name says, flakes of chocolate kind of pressed together. This means that you get lots and lots of surface area, and, with chocolate, surface area = loads of chocolate flavor.

At the counter, I noticed a square ‘bar’ that looked interesting. It was dark chocolate with some lighter color, too. It was about four inches square, made by Chocopologie. One thing I’ve found about Chocopologie, by Knipschidt Chocolatier, is that they also make the most expensive chocolate in the world, a chocolate covered truffle that’s something like $2500 per pound. No, I didn’t buy one of those, but the bar I did buy was bad enough, at $8.95.

The bar is a dark chocolate with burnt caramel and Hawaiian sea salt. And last night, I decided to try it. My wife and I both took a square, and I let her try it first. Her reaction was that she hated it.

Okay, I wasn’t surprised… She doesn’t really like dark chocolate. I took a bite, though, and my reaction was far different.

This is, bar none (no pun intended), the best chocolate bar I’ve ever had. The burnt caramel didn’t overpower the chocolate (though I wouldn’t have complained), and the sea salt comes in with a texture and saltiness that’s just perfect. I mean perfect. The dark chocolate is just bitter enough to benefit from the sugar in the caramel, and the caramel just done enough to benefit from the bright saltiness that comes in over the top of it.

I really hate spending so much on a candy bar, but this isn’t your dad’s old Hershey bar, or even his Hershey with Almonds! You can find these at chocolate.com, but it’s $13.00 to have it delivered. If you can find it locally, that’s great, but, knowing what I know now, if I had no other way to get it, I’d pay the $13.00 online!

I personally think that foodies that have not been to Pittsburgh are missing out on some incredible stuff, from blue collar traditions to better imported foods than you can find in most other cities, especially at the prices you can get them in Pittsburgh.

My mom remarried when I was 11, to a man that was raised in Pittsburgh. Growing up, I wasn’t into the city much at all, though I didn’t turn down the food we got when we went there! Little did I realize how the place was becoming a part of me. Each time I go back, a couple of things happen. One is that memories come back to life. The Strip District changes here and there, but it remains the Strip District still. The city skyline still is a surprise when coming through the tunnels north into town at night. The first person still turns left when lights change, and people going the other way let them.

The other thing that happens is I make new memories. My wife and I enjoy going to the Strip District, and each trip is a bit different. We buy some of the same stuff to keep our pantry going at home, but we also try something different. We stay at different places, see parts of the area we haven’t seen before, or revisit areas we liked. This trip, we went to Phipps Conservatory, and they had an incredible Chihuly display. We also went to Fox Chapel to drive around, which is just a gorgeous town north of the city.

This last trip also brought a flat tire on I70, east of Cambridge, which meant we fought with AAA on the phone and ended up changing the tire with the help of Trooper Cunningham, at 11:30 PM, driving into the hotel on one of those weird spares. Unfortunately, we had to deal with getting new tires there, but we got a great deal on new ones, and we got to see yet another part of the area we’d not seen before, and I beat my wife at a video hunting game while we waited. We also fought with the VZ Navigator, Michelle, the voice on my phone that gives me directions. She wasn’t keeping up well, and I got kind of ticked off that she left me high and dry a couple of times when I needed directions.

One of the cool things about Pittsburgh is that the city seems very eastern US, but the people are more midwestern in attitude. The city used to be mostly blue collar, but that changed starting in the 80’s. The people keep the same feel as before, though, so it ends up being a very down-to-earth city. It’s very much a city of traditions more than one of trendiness.

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A while ago, I was contacted, along with several other bloggers, to review some American lamb, thanks to the American Lamb Board (http://www.americanlambboard.org).  They are the premier nonprofit promoter of American-raised lamb.

I promised to review the lamb, and I am finally getting to it!  I know several others have already reviewed it, and I’ll have trackbacks listed to some of them, too.  But on with the review!

The kit arrived well packaged and still good and cold.  The kit included basically a 6-8 lb. boneless leg of lamb, a probe thermometer and dried herbs from a great company, Penzey’s (one of my personally preferred spice sources).  It was nicely packaged, and it also included a great write up on American lamb, along with a variety of serving ideas.

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Back in April, my wife and I went on a quick trip to NYC, and I happened to have photographed about every piece of food that I ate!

One place we found we loved on a previous trip was Carnegie Deli in Times Square.  Not only do they have great pastrami sandwiches, but they also have incredible cheesecake.  In fact, I have half of one in my freezer right now, a gift from my sister, Heather.

But recently, Bobby Flay did a Throwdown with Junior’s in Brooklyn on cheesecake… Bobby won that one, but Junior’s put up a new cheesecake called Devil’s Food Cheesecake.  It’s basically a devil’s food cake with a layer of cheesecake in the middle of the whole thing. 

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Several weeks ago, I got some rubs in the mail from Melanie of Rod’s Rubs, with a bottle of each of their rubs.  I told her I’d try them out, and then got busy.  I finally got a chance to try them!

Here’s my review:

Overall, the one thing I liked about the rubs was that Rod doesn’t over-salt them.  The problem with a lot of commercial rubs is that salt is cheap, so companies load their rubs up with them, and whatever gets cooked tastes too salty to me.  Rod’s Rubs aren’t too salty.  A huge plus.

Rod’s Original Rub is a standard, all-purpose rub.  It’s got good flavor in general, but it was nothing special to me.  I prefer something that stands out a bit more, and this one was very similar to a lot of other rubs I’ve tried.  It’s better than most commercial all-purpose rubs I’ve tried, though.

Rod’s Sweet Mesquite Rub is ok.  I really didn’t find anything that wowed me with it.  I prefer my own rubs to this one, though the honey flavor is nice.

Rod’s Citrus Tang Rub, however, is very good.  I mean really great stuff.  Enough so that I’ll be buying more of it.  It’s got a nice citrus flavor that’s maybe more lime than lemon, which is probably part of why I liked it.  I had it on some chicken, and it was just awesome.  I want to try it on some grilled salmon or trout where I think it will shine even more.  If you’re looking for something a bit different to try on lighter meats, this is worth a look!

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were in Manhattan, mostly eating everything in sight!  One of our stops was at Daisy May’s BBQ, which is chef Adam Perry Lang’s restaurant, located at 11th and 46th.

The first impression was that it was incredibly clean.  Everything looked great; they used to only do catering, but have added cafeteria style service and seating in the back. 

I wanted to try brisket, and the guys working were nice enough to give me a sample.  The only way to get brisket is chopped and sauced; not quite burnt ends, but along those lines.  The brisket was good, though.

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A few weeks ago, I got an email from Dave at Nando’s Peri Peri.  It was a somewhat typical email from a company asking for a link.  Well, so far, my only links listed on the blog have been to non-commercial sites.  It was a nicely worded email, though, and not a form letter.  I replied that I didn’t want to start adding to my links with commercial links, but that, after looking at the website, the sauce sounded pretty good.

Dave turned around and very quickly sent out 3 bottles of Nando’s Peri Peri to me to try.  Nothing asked at all of me, just to try them.  Well, I first owe Dave an apology for not getting to them quickly enough, but I finally made time to try out the sauces.  I was a bit cautious, as I read something on their website about preferring gas grilling to charcoal, but I kept an open mind and went on!

I smoked some chicken thighs on Saturday to try out the sauces, which were Hot, Medium and Garlic.  I ended up grilling chicken yesterday, simply because the sauces were so good, I want to try them more!  I actually marinaded the chicken yesterday in the Garlic for a couple of hours before grilling. 

(Nando’s Peri-Peri Sauce graphic, from the website, used with permission)

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This coming April (2007), my wife and I are celebrating our 4th anniversary.  We decided, on our first anniversary, to not get each other anniversary gifts.  Instead, we go somewhere for a long weekend together. 

So far, we’ve gone to Cincinnati (close by, but still fun to stay in a nice hotel and enjoy the city), Chicago and, believe it or not, Pigeon Forge.  Pigeon Forge is not my favorite place, but we had a really nice cabin with incredible views, so that part of Pigeon Forge was actually very nice.

This year, we’ve chosen New York City.  My sister lives there, and we’re going to visit some with her, do some shopping on 5th Avenue, and enjoy a long weekend in the Big Apple.  Yes, I’ll likely try R.U.B. or Daisy May’s, or both, but we’ll also hit Carnegie Deli and a couple other spots.

I’d really like some help, though.  For one meal, I want a really great restaurant.  There will be 3 of us going, and what I’d most like is a restaurant where we can sit at the chef’s table.  I’m asking for help from any of you that either are in a restaurant where this is available or can get me some connection to get to sit at the chef’s table.  The dates are April 26, 27 and 28, 2007.

If you can help, email me or leave a comment.  If you even just know of a place, let me know.  I’d love to review it, especially if you’re a chef wanting to get word out on the food blogs.  I wouldn’t even turn down a comped meal, but I’m not trying to be greedy.