Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Marcella's Ristorante

Boyfriend has been trying to get me to go to Marcella's Ristorante for the last fifty-seven years (okay, more like two months) and about two weeks ago, I finally stopped struggling and just went with it. Once we got there, I wasn't quite sure why I'd been resisting for so long.

Marcella's has two locations: one in Short North (where we went) and one in Polaris. The Short North location comes with the typical pain-in-the-butt of trying to park your car somewhere within walking distance, but the Polaris location is, well...in Polaris. So take your pick.

The Short North location is actually pretty cool, because instead of having outdoor seating, the entire front wall of the restaurant opens like a giant window so the whole front room is like an outdoor patio. We were there on a Thursday and it was fairly crowded, which has stopped surprising me when it comes to good Columbus restaurants. We started out sitting at the bar, ordered a few beers, then moved to a table; Boyfriend had something I don't remember because it had meat in it so I wasn't gonna eat it anyway, and I had a mushroom pizza that was easily the best mushroom pizza I've ever had. Seriously. It was fabulous.

We actually went back to Marcella's a few days later when my mom was in town for a visit, because she suffers from severe culinary xenophobia and breaks out in intense tremors when confronted with any food which did not originate in America, Italy, or a Mexican border town. Boyfriend had the mushroom pizza this time, and I had a great pasta Alfredo. My mom had spaghetti, but the marinara was excellent so it's less boring than it sounds. We split a bottle of white wine between the three of us, and I can say with confidence that I have never before seen my teetotaler mother drink that much alcohol in one sitting.

...She had about a glass and a half. I really don't know where I get it from.

Marcella's Ristorante on Urbanspoon

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Barrio

The first time Boyfriend and I went to Barrio was one of the times this past spring when I was in town for a job interview. On Tuesdays they have two-for-one tapas, and that plus a pitcher of their red sangria made for a pretty enjoyable dining experience. When we went back a couple weeks ago, however, the waitress gleefully informed us that they'd recently changed their menu. Things went downhill from there.

The sangria was the same, and not half bad at that--which is saying something, because Boyfriend and I are something of sangria connoisseurs.The two-for-one tapas Tuesday deal was the same, too. It was the tapas that had changed, and not in any kind of comprehensible way. Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Spain (as Boyfriend and I both have) is familiar with the traditional tapas dishes, and, as far as I'm concerned, it's those traditional dishes that draw Americans to tapas restaurants in the States; otherwise, you're just eating expensive appetizers. Yet, perplexingly, Barrio removed all the traditional dishes from the menu and replaced them with disappointing, not particularly tasty Americanized substitutes. The patatas bravas were replaced by patatas fritas...which is apparently fancy Barriospeak for "burnt French fries."  They also removed the delicious calamari dish from the menu and there was no good substitute for it. About the only addition to the menu that we enjoyed were stuffed tomatoes, but even those weren't much more than decent.

Well...not all change is for the better, I suppose. It's a nice little place to grab a seat outside and share a pitcher of sangria, though.

Barrio on Urbanspoon

Friday, June 17, 2011

The Santa Maria

Technically, The Santa Maria isn't a bar. It's better. It's a freakin' pirate ship.

Well, actually, it's the world's most accurate recreation of Christopher Columbus's ship the Santa Maria, which is docked on the Scioto River in Columbus a couple blocks from our apartment. Why the Santa Maria and not the Nina or the Pinta, I couldn't tell you; but it's docked in Columbus and not somewhere else because, well...Columbus...Christopher Columbus...make sense now?

Anyway, our drinking adventure on The Santa Maria came about as a result of the really awesome website CouchSurfing. I've been a member of CouchSurfing for about a year now, and while I haven't yet had the chance to actually surf on a couch, when I moved to Columbus I realized that the website might be a good way to meet people in the area. The Columbus CouchSurfing group is pretty active, so Boyfriend and I have been able to meet a few people through weekly meet-ups. Two weeks ago, the Columbus chapter threw a huge event known as a Couch Crash, a weekend long party where Couch Surfers from all over the world travel to the host city to meet other Couch Surfers. The highlight party of the Columbus Couch Crash was the "I'm On A Boat" party, hosted on The Santa Maria.

The party was BYOB so Boyfriend and I brought a six-pack, but turns out we really underestimated the generosity of the Couch Surfing crowd. We'd brought enough for ourselves; turns out everyone else had brought enough for, well, everyone else, and there was a bartender handing out drinks. There was by far enough booze to go around.

Couch Surfers are kind of the most interesting people on earth. The party, which was nautical themed, featured everything from pirates to a mermaid being eaten by a shark to Steve Zissou. The highlights of the friendships I made on The Santa Maria include:
  • Lawyer, who had just finished law school and was studying for the bar exam. He was the one dressed as Steve Zissou, and was kind enough to let me wear his Steve Zissou hat. I asked him if he could offer me legal advice as to what fate would befall me if I killed Boyfriend by pushing him overboard. Lawyer said I should just claim it was an accident and that I couldn't rescue him because I couldn't swim. I thought this was a solid defense until Boyfriend pointed out that I'm scuba-certified and it would be hard to convince a jury that I actually can't swim.
  • Russian, who claimed to be from Russia, and said he was motorcycling across the United States, and then he said lots of other things that I don't actually remember because they were pretty unbelievable and Boyfriend and I are fairly certain he was full of cow excrement.
  • Boatman, who actually worked as a tour guide on The Santa Maria. I asked him if I could climb up to the crow's nest, but he said the only people who are allowed to do that are the people who work there. So then I told him I was going to come back the next day and apply for a job. I never did.
  • Architect, to whom I gave a lesson in hubris by insisting that if you're going to tell people you're an architect, then you better be prepared to point out no less than three buildings in the skyline that you personally designed and built by hand. Architect said he had not built any of the buildings on the skyline. I told him he should learn to be a better liar and just go ahead and take credit for the whole damn city. I mean, your average citizen wouldn't know the difference, anyway.
  • Assistant Prosecutor, who is married to Architect. I don't think she was actually an assistant prosecutor, but she was some sort of lawyer with the District Attorney's office. She was very baffled when I asked her if she was aware that Architect had personally designed the entire city of Columbus.
The boat party was probably one of the most fun nights Boyfriend and I have had in Columbus. I highly recommend renting out the place for your next birthday, graduation party, bar mitzvah, wedding, funeral, or any other occasion you can think of that calls for celebration.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Betty's Fine Food & Spirits

Honesty time: I don't understand the hype about Betty's.

According to my friends at Urbanspoon, Betty's is the fifteenth most popular restaurant in Columbus. Like, in all of Columbus. After our visit, I wondered if maybe its popularity stems more from its bar/nightlife side than the restaurant side, but, no, if you read the user reviews, everyone else really likes it. So either everyone else is really dumb, or Boyfriend and I really got cheated.

One of Boyfriend's friends had recommended Betty's to us, so we decided to head over to the Short North for dinner one evening. Betty's is a cramped little restaurant with an interesting bar-like atmosphere, if the bar were actually been run out of your alcoholic grandmother's living room. It has weird wallpaper and cheesy ceramic figurines everywhere and the whole place is arranged to highlight the bar, which allegedly has exactly umpteen billion beers on tap but I wasn't particularly impressed with the selection.

We ordered the spinach-artichoke dip for an appetizer, which was delicious; and our beers were perfectly beer-y, if nothing special in terms of selection or price. Dinner, however, was downright disappointing. Boyfriend had the fried chicken...which, when it arrived, was clearly baked, not fried. Not being much of a carnivore myself, I was excited to see that Betty's had a tofu steak on the menu. For the non-vegetarians amongst you, I should probably mention that tofu can be tough to cook really well, so when a restaurant has the balls to put straight-up tofu steak on the menu (as opposed to a dish that just happens to have a bit of tofu in it) it's generally pretty safe to assume they know what they're doing, and that the tofu is going to be really good.

Yeah, well, you know what happens when you ass-u-me things? You end up with a crappy piece of tofu that tastes like curry sauce without the spice. Also a side dish of completely dry, unseasoned broccoli.

I suspect that if you're drinking at Betty's and just happen to get hungry, their food is excellent when compared to your typical bar food. But if you're having dinner at Betty's and just happen to get a drink, that's when you're disappointed. Good bar food, not great food-food.

Betty's Fine Food & Spirits on Urbanspoon

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Bar L'Etranger

There's good news and there's bad news with Bar L'Etranger. The good news is that it's the best (and our far-and-away favorite) bar we've visited. The bad news is that Bar L'Etranger has already closed.

Boyfriend had been to this bar--which appears to be in the ghetto but is actually only a block or two from High Street--once before, so a couple weeks ago when we decided to grab drinks, he was eager to show it to me. We were there on a Thursday night to enjoy their half-price champagne bottle special (and this champagne was a far cry from Andre, believe you me), and while I didn't get to try the cocktails, Boyfriend all but swears by them.

The lounge-like bar was surprisingly empty, but despite the relative quiet, I was pretty much instantly sold. The lighting was low and the decor had a sort of antique-French-vintage-style-thing going on. There were two bars, one right when you walk into the door and the other in the second larger lounge room. The larger room had gorgeous vintage furniture arranged throughout--sofas, tables, chairs, even a loveseat swing hanging from the ceiling. There were also two perplexing palm tree-eqsue pillars in the middle of the room, and the ceiling was decorating with a weird fabric-and-robe sort of design that made me feel like I was on a pirate ship.

Boyfriend, having spent some time in France, went to order us a bottle of champagne while I staked us out a spot on a couch in the corner. The only other people in the room were a rambunctious group of older ladies and one very gay gentleman. The entire group was hilariously drunk in a very classy way, and one of the women turned to apologize to me if they were being too loud, and said it was her sixtieth birthday. She was easily the drunkest of the bunch (as the birthday girl, she really had the right to be) and explained that they'd spent the evening at a winery or something like that, and were now guzzling champagne at their favorite bar. She also gave me a glass of champagne to make up for how loud they were being (Friend: Made!), though in all honesty I didn't view them with any annoyance at all, but rather with a combination of amusement and genuine admiration. When I turn sixty, I hope my birthday party is that much of an episode of Sex and the City.

The best part was when the Sixty-Somethings ordered a pizza. To be delivered. From Domino's. To the bar. Wish I'd thought of that...

Bar L'Etranger also had an outdoor deck, which was absolutely gorgeous: all wood, enclosed by brick buildings on three sides. I was completely in love with this place, so both Boyfriend and I were mildly brokenhearted when one of the Sixty-Somethings told us the entire establishment was closing in two days. Boyfriend confirmed this with a bartender, and there was an additional heartbreak when we found out none of the furniture was even for sale.

There's a tiny glimmer of hope in the fact that Bar L'Etranger is apparently being re-vamped and re-opened as a gay and lesbian bar. If they keep the cocktail menu and the gorgeous atmosphere, I'll be more than happy to frequent L'Etranger's reincarnation, even if it means getting hit on by some girls and sharing Boyfriend with the occasional flirty gay man or two.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Ugly Tuna Saloona

Oof, I'm way behind in updating...it's not my fault, I swear! I've been super busy...sitting around the house doing absolutely nothing. Yeah, okay, I lied, I haven't been busy at all, just lazy.

Boyfriend and I decided to spend a Wednesday evening a week or two back at Ugly Tuna Saloona (say it out loud and you'll get it. See? It rhymes!).The Ugly Tuna has a great location on the second floor of a complex right off High Street, which it shares with a movie theater, meaning that the whole place smells like delicious, delicious popcorn pretty much all the time. It's more or less the ideal college bar, and even on a Wednesday night it was busy enough that we had to fight a bit for seats--that's actually one of my big complaints about this bar: it has a lot of space, but most of it is just open space. More tables would be nice, please.

Anyway. My Colgate peers will appreciate that the Ugly Tuna reminded me a bit of the Jug, if the Jug were a lot bigger and with an outdoor balcony, had cheap drinks and stalls on the bathroom doors, was much classier, and wasn't in someone's living room. So basically its resemblance to the Jug ended at the part where they both end up serving a lot of college kids with fake IDs.

I'm discovering the great thing about Columbus college bars is that the drinks are often so cheap that it's almost unbelievable. The Ugly Tuna has an every day happy hour special that includes various drinks in various low dollar amounts; forgive me for not remembering the exact specials, but like I said, this was almost two weeks ago. Specials along the lines of $1 wells and $1 drafts almost made up for the fact that there was a Spongebob Squarepants mural painted on the wall.

Boyfriend and I grabbed some cheap wells, and in the course of enjoying them we noticed a pretty spectacular drink a couple tables over--a giant fishbowl of punch that looked like it was being split by about half a dozen people. Boyfriend suggested we come back some other day with reinforcements and take on a fishbowl of our own, but I'm far too impatient for that nonsense and made the extremely mature choice to order one just for the two of us. It came with six giant straws.

Yeah. So. The thing about the fishbowl. I drank about two-thirds to three-fourths of it, with Boyfriend, who was driving, consuming only a modest amount. I would not recommend the fishbowl. I drank nearly that entire freakin' fishbowl and while I'm pretty sure the shit-ton of sugar gave me diabetes, I was not even remotely drunk. Nauseous from consuming about a gallon of HI-C punch, yes; intoxicated in any way, not at all. I imagine the fishbowl would be immensely popular with a birthday party of nine-year-olds, but please don't actually purchase it for your nine-year-old because if I'm wrong and there is alcohol in it, a birthday party of drunk nine-year-olds would not really be the best thing ever.

In any case, my only symptom after drinking enough sugar water to put a hive of honey bees into a coma was that I was enormously hungry for the popcorn I could smell from the movie theater next door. It was around midnight, and as we were leaving, I insisted Boyfriend buy me popcorn. When we ordered, the woman at the concession stand asked if we'd already bought our tickets, at which point I had to explain that we weren't actually seeing a movie, I'm just a fat-ass who eats movie theater popcorn at midnight on a Wednesday. I expressed my surprise that I was the first person to have done such a thing; No, she said, people do it all the time, just that "You might be the first sober person."

Like I said. Don't buy the fishbowl.

Ugly Tuna Saloona on Urbanspoon

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