Random Eats: Aroma, Rookwood Pottery, Take the Cake

Sushi Bento Box/Aroma

One new restaurant experience (Aroma) and a return to two favorites round out my weekend dining ventures. For lunch on Friday I tried Aroma in the Kenwood Mall for the first time. Although there's an extensive menu of fresh sushi and many salads and hot entrees, we found the bento box lunches irresistible. My companion had chicken terriyaki bento and I chose the sushi bento box (pictured) -- fun, tasty, and just the right amount of food. 
I don't usually have lunch at such nice places, so I also splurged on a glass of pinot gris wine, which took the zing out of my afternoon and reminded me why I don't drink alcohol at lunch, except sometimes while on vacation.
Friday night my girlfriend Susan and I had dinner on the deck at Rookwood Pottery in Mt. Adams. They have a short but interesting list of craft cocktails; our waiter recommended their gin & tonic because he adores the house-made tonic, so I went with that. (Great recommendation!) For dinner, Susan had her favorite dish there, a grilled veggie sandwich, and my chicken breast on spring peas/ramps risotto was not exactly light, but the risotto was excellent, and the chicken was fine, too.

Grilled veggie sandwich/Rookwood Pottery

Chicken/risotto @ Rookwood

Finally, we had a quick brunch after church on Sunday at Take the Cake in Northside, which makes some of the best biscuits you have ever tried. The last photo shows the biscuit with zucchini, tomato sauce, ricotta cheese and a poached egg.

Brunch at Take the Cake

Take a biscuit (and a cream puff?) @ Take the Cake

Okay, biscuits aren't the world's healthiest food. But when they're made right, biscuits are hard to pass up.
Take the Cake (a bakery/eatery in the Northside neighborhood of Cincinnati) makes biscuits right.
When we went for lunch a couple of weeks ago, I randomly ordered chicken stew with a biscuit. The stew was cream-based and a little too rich for my taste, but the biscuit was stellar.
We returned this past weekend for brunch, and I was happy to see that perhaps half of the brunch entrees came with a biscuit.
Pictured are our breakfast entrees: ratatouille (with a biscuit), pulled pork and coleslaw (with a biscuit), and a breakfast burrito (no biscuit).
The coffee was really good, too.
It was busy but we happened to arrive when the line to order wasn't but a few people. It got longer, later. There's enough turnover that people managed to find a seat before their food was ready.
One more thing: you place your order right in front of their pastry case, of which the top row included a tray of amazing looking cream puffs. The only thing that saved me from going back for one to take home was that the line had gotten really long and I didn't want to ask my friends to wait.
Another friend who lives in Northside says that cream puffs are a weekend special at Take the Cake.

Mom's Birthday -- with great cakes

Today (Feb. 12th) is the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin and my mother, Wilma Mason. She lives a mile and a half from our house among the kind, caring staff at Scarlet Oaks Retirement Community.
Today we staged a party for her!
I brought a delicious sheet cake -- yellow cake with chocolate icing, the best basic combo -- from Servatii's Bakery, supplemented by an amazing assortment of mini-cupcakes from Take the Cake bakery.
In addition to many of her friends and staffers at Scarlet Oaks, my husband dropped in to wish her well.
Hope you enjoy the photos!

See my article in today's Enquirer

On Friday 9/18, my article about lunch at Take the Cake (Northside) is in the Weekend section of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090918/ENT01/909180310/1026/Take+the+Cake+serves+lunch