New Local Food Guide

The Central Ohio River Valley published its 2014 Local Food Guide this week, and celebrated with a launch party this week at Om Eco Cafe.
The Cafe was a perfect fit for this organization, which features healthy, sustainable and often organic farmers, food purveyors and related businesses and services in the new guide. Many of the farmers and other businesses represented in the guide attended the party.

New food guide, available around town

Om Eco Cafe, on Ludlow Avenue in the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati, is a two-level, three-roomed cafe and shop with a few booths, tables, and a comfy sofa or two. The staff prepared and served some of the tastiest -- and healthiest -- snacks and appetizers that I've ever seen at such an event. It was really very well done!

The guide will be distributed for free all around town, or you can download a copy at this website:
http://www.eatlocalcorv.org/corv-local-food-guide

Serving snacks at the event

In case you're not familiar with Om, here is an excerpt from their website explaining their philosophy and menu:

Om Eco Café is "green", meaning Earth conscious, caring for the whole, drawing all that is (w)holy from ourselves.  Om Eco Café supports local businesses, grows its own organic vegetables, and composts and recycles everything possible.

Om Eco Café offers healthy, delicious SEASONAL food and beverages, featuring direct trade, organic, shade grown, locally roasted coffee and espresso. Our food menu offers a variety of healthy choices. Here are a few examples:

• The BEST Soup: Offering two Om-made organic soups daily. Try a Cuplette!
• Organic Cuban Black Bean Chili
• Right out of our garden Salads
• A Unique variety of Wraps and Sandwiches
• Om-mazing Healthy Organic Breakfast Choices
• Quiche of the day
• Specials Daily
• Grilled Blackened Tofu
• Loving Grilled Cheese

Elephant Walk -- University Heights

There's a new restaurant near the University of Cincinnati campus, on McMicken in the area now called U-Square. It's a combo of Northern Indian and Ethiopian food.
While we have a LOT of Indian restaurants in this and nearby neighborhoods, Ethiopian is unusual. So we ordered from that side of the menu.
This is the vegetarian sampler platter.
It didn't do much for us.
I'll write in more detail as soon as I can get the time.

Elephant Walk Ethiopian sampler

New Menu Items at La Poste

Clifton's destination restaurant (La Poste) has debuted a spring menu.
While several reliable dishes remain available -- such as the Roasted Crimson Pear appetizer ($12 for almost a meal in itself, with prosciutto, herbed goat cheese and arugula, served warm), Wild Mushroom Ravioli ($18 and incredibly rich, but you can ask for an appetizer sized portion and be satisfied) and Seared Diver Scallops ($16, with the preparation altered somewhat from Day 1 of the restaurant) -- there are new salads, a bowl of mussels in a garlicky fennel broth, and several new entrees.
Click here to see the current menu.
My husband ended up ordering off-the-menu specials for both his appetizer (a mushroom/onion soup) and entree (amberjack with lots of veggies).
Someone had to sample new menu items, so I went with a Smoked Duck Breast appetizer ($13, pictured below), followed by a fish that I've never seen on their menu, and we've been regular patrons for the 3-4 years they've been open.

La Poste: Smoked Duck Breast

It was Skate Wing with quite a few sliced veggies and a caper sauce; I didn't care for the too-salty "sunchoke galette" that the fish and veggies sat on, but the rest of the dish worked well.
 

Skate Wing entree

We split a very nice Mandarin orange creme brule for dessert.
And you can always rely on the staff at La Poste to suggest appropriate wine pairings for each dish. 
 

Grading a few local restaurants

Here's a quick look at some of our recent restaurant experiences

Tiny "cassoulet" at Nuvo

NUVO in Covington: Had a great adventure there, much fun and delicious food. As I posted after our visit, there's no menu and you just eat what the kitchen sends out. A
Red Feather in Oakley: The replacement for Boca, they've done a lot to liven up the bar scene and make it a more casual, neighborhood place. The food was hit-or-miss, but my entree of short ribs with mashed potatoes and roasted root veggies was a winner. It's only been open for a few months at most, so it probably needs a little more time to iron out the kinks. B

Short ribs @ Red Feather

La Poste in Clifton: This is our neighborhood favorite and it never disappoints. We're so glad to have a destination restaurant that's a five-minute drive, or 10-minute walk, from our front door. Our only beef is that the menu would make us happier with a few lighter choices, but the owner mentioned that they're working on that and plan to revise the menu in that direction soon. A-

La Poste

Bistro Grace in Northside: Another treat to have nearby, this is Suzanne McGarry's dinner spot on Hamilton Avenue in the old location for Honey. One cool feature is that they're open every night, including Sunday, and they've started to add special deals such as half-price burgers on Sunday and half-price wine nights (not sure which night) and happy hour specials on weeknights. It's also very new but the kitchen started off with a bang, quality wise. A few details need to be tweaked, such as providing more interesting bread and perhaps adding a few more shareable dishes. They had a very soft opening in late November, so we hope that enough people catch onto its presence to make it a success. B+

Yummy hangar steak -- Cincy Enquirer photo

Dinner added at Om Cafe (On Ludlow)

Om Cafe, in the Aquarius Star shop on Ludlow Avenue in Clifton, is expanding its menu rather substantially.

Some of the seating at Om Cafe

It's a spacious, comfy place that's been mostly a coffee shop, although they have served sandwiches, salads and pastries, too. But now they're going to start serving dinner. We're pretty happy about it, since the options for dinner here in our neighborhood are rather tired and limited, with the exception of course of La Poste, which is more upscale than we can quite afford on a weekly basis.
We'll see how Om does; here is the announcement they put on Next Door Clifton, a website for the neighborhood:

Hello Fellow Neighbors, We would like to inform you that we will begin our NEW Dinner Menu on Monday Dec. 16. Items on our menu: Aztec Lasagna, Red Beans & Rice, Turkey Melt Open Face Sandwich and Pesto Prima Vera. Our food is local, organic and we grow much of our own food in our garden located in the Enright Ridge Urban Eco Village. For now you are welcome to bring a bottle of wine to our establishment and we will cork it for you for a small fee. However, please be aware that a liquor license is pending for us and we will be serving amazing wine, craft beer and so much more. Stayed tuned to the Om Difference!  Another interior view, Om Cafe

La Poste WILL reopen tonight, on schedule!

I had a call this morning from the restaurant's general manager, who says the staff will be "working our tails off" today to finish up the remodeling and hold the welcome-back reception this evening. Yay! [Kelly also said that they had taken down the reception announcement temporarily so they could wash the windows.] My sincere apologies for misreading the "signs" and concluding that they couldn't possibly be ready to open tonight.
So Clifton's best restaurant LA POSTE will hold a reception tonight, from 6-8 PM, including a spread of complimentary food and wine as they showcase the newly spiffed up interior.
As a huge fan and "regular" customer, I'm planning to be there.
Here's that photo of the lovely rose wine and a special appetizer from a few visits ago........

La Poste

A Neighborhood Gem (and in MY neighborhood)

Long-time readers know that I love this restaurant: La Poste, on Telford Street right here in my neighborhood of Clifton. It's around the corner from the six-screen Esquire Theater and is by far the best choice for dining -- and a peerless wine list -- before or after a movie.

Baked Pear & Prosciutto Salad

My husband and I are well known by all the staff, no surprise since we drop in for drinks and/or a meal at least a couple of times a month, and often more frequently than that.
This week we had a pre-holiday dinner--soup and a fish special entree for him, pear salad and appetizer-portion scallops for me. He doesn't drink liquor, but I had the restaurant's sommelier select two half-glasses of different white wines (which is what went best with my light dishes) to go with each of my courses. I think all four wines were French -- always good by me -- and my favorite was a white Cotes-du-Rhone, a Roussane/Marsanne/Viognier blend that went beautifully with the salad's ingredients of pear, prosciutto and goat cheese.

Scallops appetizer -- plenty of food!

If you live in the Cincinnati metro area and you haven't tried La Poste yet, you need to get on down there. They serve lunch Tuesday - Friday, and dinner Monday - Saturday.

La Poste, Revisited

Made it back to Clifton's new hot spot last night -- La Poste, the wonderful restaurant that replaced the defunct & (was) missed Tink's. The new incarnation of upscale dining in our 'hood is quickly making the old one (Tink's) a fading memory -- going, going, gone.
I had a crab cake and the pork tenderloin (pictured), but as upon my first visit the highlight of the evening was the wine pairings offered by sommelier Bryant Philips.
I only wish I could fit in dinner at La Poste more often!

La Poste, First Impressions: "A"

My friend and I had dinner Tuesday at Clifton's new restaurant, La Poste, on Telford Street around the corner from the Esquire Theater in the space that housed Tink's for many years.
In a word: WOW.
What an upgrade from Tink's, and what a great thing for my 'hood. This will not only be a top-notch neighborhood restaurant, it also will become destination dining for the rest of the metro area. At least, that's what I think based on one evening of wining and dining.
To start, La Poste has Clifton's first-ever (to my knowledge) sommelier, Bryant Phillips. As soon as we sat down and opened our menus, I asked to speak with Bryant and he came right over to our table. Of the wines offered by the glass -- at least a couple dozen -- I was only familiar with one or two. (That's my kind of wine list -- I am not interested in drinking familiar wines when I go to a restaurant: turn me on to something I don't already know about!)
More good stuff: you can order by the half-glass for half the price of a full glass and try more wines. As you can see from the top photo, we sampled several wines and I look forward to getting back there soon to try more. Bryant is a true wine geek in the best sense, and he seems to have visited every obscure European or American vineyard whose unusual wines he's selected for the list. The glassware was excellent and the whole wine experience is several notches above anything in town except perhaps the most expensive fine-dining establishments, and even there I am hard pressed to think of anything as good as what Bryant and the rest of the staff have put together.
Everything else about our evening was equally wonderful, except perhaps that the kitchen was a little slow in getting our food out. A minor point though when all else was near perfect.
The space is the same as Tink's in size, with the addition of an extra dining room and wine storage where a jewelry store used to be....but the feel is much, much more elegant without being at all stuffy.
My friend ordered a scallops-with-bacon appetizer (Second photo) -- much too rich for my taste -- and said "wow" with every bite. She would have liked to lick the plate for every last drop, she said. (It's been awhile since I've fallen that much in love with a dish, though I do remember it quire vividly -- a special entree at Frontera Grill in Chicago about 2-3 years ago....)
I ordered a seasonal salad with tiny chunks of butternut squash (third photo), and then we split the chicken fricassee entree -- the photo above is of half the dish.
We passed on dessert and stopped at Graeter's nearby for a cookie instead.
The floral arrangements around the place were glorious, and I had to include a couple of photos of them, including the amazingly fragrant bouquet in the lovely ladies' room.
I can't wait to go back!

Om Cafe --newest hangout for lunch and coffee on Ludlow

In my 'hood -- Gaslight Clifton--there are several places for coffee and pastry, each with a distinct ambiance. Sitwell's has the boho feel of a throwback to the 1960s, Bruegger's Bagels fronts Clifton Avenue and Burnet Woods, Brutopia is a bit more serious about their coffee drinks and has a hole-in-the-wall, away from it all feel.
The most recent addition is Om Cafe, across the street and a few doors down from Sitwell's--or across from the fantastic Esquire Theater, if you're not a Cliftonite.
Here you can browse books about New Age spirituality* and chow down not only on pastries but also on healthy salads and sandwiches. *Om Cafe is within the Aquarius Star store.
Pictured here, a Lebanese wrap (something unique, thanks to the ethnic background of the family that owns the place) and a salmon salad.

Lunch at Tink's on Telford

Cliftonites are lucky to have Tink's as a dining choice--it's the most upscale option in the Ludlow Gaslight District. It's where I meet my friend & former co-worker Tricia about every 2 months to catch up over a cocktail at the bar. It's also a reliable spot to take out of town guests, and the best dinner before or after a movie at the Esquire Theater, around the corner.
Today I had the grilled salmon over a corn cake, and mom had the shrimp and grits ("best thing on the menu," our waiter enthused).

Biagio's Bistro in Clifton

I took my mom to lunch at Biagio's Bistro (308 Ludlow Ave.) today. We both had my standard order: the house salad (hold the onions, dressing on the side) topped with sauteed chicken. While I think that much of chef/owner Biagio Lamassa's cooking is pedestrian, he nails the chicken every time. It's a boneless skinless breast, flattened to cook evenly, and sauteed perfectly with a golden brown crust and juicy, pale inner meat. Warm slices of chicken sit atop a bed of fresh romaine lettuce, sliced olives and diced tomatoes, which even in the off-seasons manage to be good quality.

The restaurant was two-thirds full at lunch today--not bad for midweek in a recession--with many patrons conducting business over their meal. Other than the salad/chicken combo, Biagio makes reliably good soups and the occasional special dinner entree that's worth a try. And the dessert case tempts with high-quality sweet treats. My favorite is a slice of first rate apple pie. I skipped it today (hooray for will power!) since I am atoning for the indulgent weekend in Carolina.