"Staycation" guest post on Drink Up Columbus

I don't always go on vacation, but when I do, it's generally at a Columbus-area bar. Check out my new guest post on "destination drinking" here.

Guest post on Drink Up Columbus

I have a guest post about the best places to get classic cocktails in Columbus on the blog Drink Up Columbus (no relation) today! Check it out here.

Martini Modern Italian and Sway

Over the last few weeks, I've been doing battle with one of the most agonizing beasts of Columbus city living: house-hunting in the rental market. Just about anyone who's ever been a twenty-something living in Columbus should understand the horrors I've endured trying to find a three-bedroom, single-family, pet-friendly rental home within walking distance to a COTA line, all for under $1500.

Well, on Friday, we finally defeated the beast and signed a lease for a rental home in Woodland Park, a couple blocks from OSU Hospital East. So to those of you still stuck in the jowls of the rental market search, I say: godspeed, and may you always be the first to respond to new Craigslist posts. To myself, Boyfriend, and Boyfriend's best friend/our new roommate who will henceforth be known as Ted Mosby due to the How I Met Your Motheresque nature of our new living arrangement, I say: time for $5 martinis.

We found two $5 martini venues within a stone's an olive pit's throw of each other in the Arena District of downtown Columbus. The first was, rather predictably, Martini, a Cameron Mitchell restaurant for which we were all somewhat under-dressed. We made it there with about five minutes to go before happy hour ended. The selection included, rather predictably, martinis, though I opted for a grapefruit gimlet that was heavy on the grapefruit and light on the gimlet. The happy hour-priced calamari was also somewhat unimpressive. But let's be honest, here. Everything was $5. I can't really lodge any valid complaints. And to be fair to Martini, I've heard really rave reviews about their entrees. Maybe some day when I'm not about to finance a move into a new house, I'll stop by for dinner.

Literally right around the corner and offering $5 martinis til 10pm is Sway, a bar that is either so new or so obscure that it doesn't even have an Urbanspoon page. They evidently pride themselves on nightlife, and while we weren't exactly there at night, it was still surprisingly full of life, especially considering the aforementioned lack of an Urbanspoon page and the fact that it's not even on High Street proper. The $5 martinis are poured right at your table, which I thought was a nice touch. And the appetizer selection is full of interesting choices. We ordered a sort of tuna shish-ka-bob, which was cooked perfectly, by which I mean hardly at all. Raw tuna is the best tuna.

Stonewall Columbus Pride Festival

If you were in town this weekend, it was probably hard not to notice that Saturday was the 31st annual Stonewall Columbus Pride Festival. I was in Columbus for Pride last year, but didn't actually participate beyond being the unsuspecting victim of a few Pride-related downtown traffic jams. This year I decided to see for myself what all the fuss and traffic jams were about, accompanied by my loyal gay sidekick (or LoGS for short).

Logs and I met up downtown before the Pride parade kicked off on Saturday morning. First stop: CVS, to buy SPF 50 sunscreen and ladies' face wipes for him (Logs is kind of a stereotype, don't worry about it) and a fabulous "ladies' floppy hat" for me. Who knew CVS was such a bastion of high fashion?

By the time we were done sunscreen shopping, High Street was one giant traffic jam and a good portion of the downtown roads were closed off to clear the way for the parade. We were supposed to meet a friend in the Short North to watch the parade, but the buses had all been re-routed to god-knows-where and the hike from State and High to the Short North isn't exactly a casual walk in the park when the temperature is pushing 90 degrees. So we did what any rational person would do: we cut through the downtown Sheraton, walked up to the concierge, and asked if our taxi was there yet. The concierge said we must have just missed it and ordered us a replacement...or, really, just a placement, since obviously we weren't hotel guests and hadn't actually ordered a cab in the first place.

The cabbie was a delightful Moroccan man who would periodically burst into Arabic song and kept telling us about how there must be "100,000 of those people" in town this weekend.

The parade was enjoyable, though we ended up towards the end of the route and most the paraders were pretty exhausted by the time they got to us. My "Champion of the Day" award goes to one particular drag queen who walked the entire five-mile-long parade route in what must have been six-inch heels. The Pride theme this year was "allies and equality," and I was genuinely touched by some of the paraders who were thanking the straight allies in the crowd for their support. One older gentleman was blowing kisses and looked like he was on the verge of tears as he pointed to people in the crowd and thanked them. Finally! I feel like it's about time someone recognized the hardships I've overcome as a middle class heterosexual WASP who has never been denied the right to marry, to adopt children, or to serve in the military.

...In all seriousness, though, it was pretty great to see openly gay veterans in uniform marching in a Pride parade.

The Pride festival itself was held in Goodale park, that downtown grassy patch infamously known for its man-made pond that sprung a leak a while back and has been the city's largest mudhole ever since. There were rows of food trucks serving the typical carnie fare; stands for various community, nonprofit, and gay rights groups; and a couple different stages with musical guests like the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus (fun fact: you need be neither gay nor a man to join). You had to buy drink tickets in order to buy drinks, which I thought was something of a regulatory burden, and the drinks were all priced at $5 a piece, which I was a little grumpy about until Logs reminded me it was all going to a good cause (that is, Stonewall Columbus).

The highlights for me were 1) the Obama stand where they were giving away Fla-vor-ice popsicles if you signed up to receive Obama For America emails, which of course I did for the sake of the Fla-vor-ice, though the volunteer working the booth almost wouldn't give me one when she saw I was already wearing a giant "Gary Johnson: Libertarian for President" sticker; and 2) the stand where, for $5, some creative ladies would decorate your hat so it would be appropriately fabulous for Pride. My CVS "ladies' floppy hat" got quite the makeover with feathers and rhinestones, which I'm going to have to somehow peel off if I ever want to wear that hat in a non-Pride setting.

It wasn't until I got home later that night that I realized I still had one drink ticket left. I guess that means I'll have to go again next year?

Beck Tavern

Beck Tavern has got to be the dive-iest, dirtiest, darkest, dankest, most-unheard-of bar in Columbus, and that is exactly why I love it. Well, that and the fact that it is literally about 100 feet from my house.

In general, my #1 complaint about Columbus bars is that every good place is also extremely popular and thus incredibly crowded at exactly all the times that I want to go there. Not so with Beck Tavern, which is not to be confused with its much more popular cousin High Beck. High Beck has outdoor seating and a pool table and, if you read my last post, occasional ubiquitous balloons; Beck Tavern is located off of a street that is barely more than an alleyway, I'm pretty sure most of the light bulbs inside are burned out, and they have a sign on the door that says you're not allowed to enter unless you have a valid Ohio driver's license. Well, I've lived in Ohio for more than a year and haven't yet worked up the courage to make a trip to the BMV and trade in my old Indiana license. Not only has Beck Tavern never given me a problem about their "Ohio Only" discrimination policy, but I've never even been carded.

Beck is the kind of bar where the bartenders wear t-shirts with "The Punisher" logos on them, cheap beer is primarily served in large pitchers, and every surface is just very vaguely sticky. In other words, it's dive bar heaven. My deepest fear is that the hipsters will discover this place, trade out the televised football games for episodes of "Portlandia," replace the dart boards with a vintage '70s futon, and make all the Punisher bartenders wear salmon-colored skinny jeans and grow porn star 'staches. Or in other words: turn it into Bodega.

High Beck Tavern

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, I've never been to High Beck Tavern without something weird happening. I'm not talking zombie-apocalypse-weird or even stranger-proposes-marriage weird, just slightly-off-kilter-weird and probably-worth-mentioning-later-to-friends-weird and definitely-going-on-the-blog-weird.

High Beck is located on the edge of German Village, right at the intersection of--fittingly--High and Beck. I've found that it's a fairly popular happy hour locale, presumably due to its central location, large interior, cheap drinks, and the fact that it has not only an outdoor patio, but also a pool table. Oh, yeah, and they casually give away free food every Monday and Tuesday. That might have something to do with it, too.

The first time I went to High Beck was with a friend of mine who was a member of my sorority in college and had already been living in Columbus for a few years. We were having a sort of "girls' night out" shindig where we tried to relive the college glory days with cheap beer in crowded locations. High Beck did not disappoint. It started out just fine, and then...

Enter weirdness: A man, obviously drunk, apparently at the bar alone, wandering the place and striking up conversation with young, pretty women. Which is pretty commonplace for any bar, but the special High Beck touch was that this particular man was trying to woo women by playing the spoons. But actually. Like, taking two spoons, and slamming them against each other, and trying to play music on them. In case you are unfamiliar with spoon playing, here is a YouTube video to demonstrate what I mean.

As a side note, the man in that video is not the same man who was spoon-playing for me at High Beck. Which means there are multiple men on earth who think eating utensils rank among the sexier musical instruments and that proficiency with spoons will somehow enable them to slay mad biddies. But I digress.

The second time I went to High Beck was with a group from work for a co-worker's farewell party. We walked in the door, and...

Enter weirdness: Balloons. Everywhere. Balloons. I just...I can't even...balloons. So. Many. Balloons. I'm still not entirely sure what they were for. They were for balloons. Meta-balloons, celebrating balloondom. I really do not know, but they were everywhere, like someone was having an "Up"-themed birthday party. And since we were in a bar, that "someone" would have to be an adult, which would be...a little weird.

The evening got even weirder later on, when Boyfriend picked me up from the bar so we could grab sushi for dinner. At the end of the meal when I went to pay for my half of our sushi rolls (yeah, we're all modern like that), I couldn't find my debit card...and realized I left it at High Beck. Forgetting my debit card is a highly uncharacteristic thing for me to do, and I realized it only happened because I ordered one beer, left my tab open, and then sat there for two hours without ever ordering anything else, so I ended up forgetting that I never closed my tab. I went back to collect it after dinner. The balloons were still there.

So that's three weird High Beck-related things in one evening: Ubiquitous balloons. I forget my debit card. I drink only one beer over the course of two hours.

What a world.

The Refectory Restaurant and Bistro

This is how you know Boyfriend desperately wishes he were a 50-year-old rich dude: The Refectory is his favorite restaurant. We've only been there once, since it's a much nicer, fancier, and more expensive restaurant than two twenty-somethings really have the right to eat at regularly. Our one Refectory experience was late last summer, during restaurant week when we could take advantage of the prix fixe menu.

It's probably one of the most beautiful and elegant restaurants I've ever been to, and certainly has the best service. Every time you stand up and leave the table to go to the restroom or to...I don't know, whatever else people do that causes them to stand up and leave the table...one of the waiters picks up your napkin and re-folds it and places it back on the table. We started out with cocktails in the bistro/lounge area and later moved to a booth for dinner. I deviated from the prix fixe menu and ordered the swordfish, because swordfish is one of my very favorite meals but I've sworn to myself to only eat it on a very limited number of occasions in my life, since it's so over-fished. So that's how you know eating at The Refectory was a special occasion: I ate the endangered fish.

Even during restaurant week, it's hard to get a cheap meal at The Refectory. We were, needless to say, the youngest people in the room by about twenty years. Our restaurant companions were mostly older couples and middle-aged businessmen having fancy business dinners. I'll admit to being a little intimidated. It was kind of like being a twelve-year-old trying to crash the grown-up table at Thanksgiving. I mean, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who giggled whenever the waiter folded my napkin.

Nevertheless, it was one of the most delicious meals of my life. And for the non-50-year-old-rich-dudes of the world, if you can't make it during restaurant week, the bistro part of The Refectory now offers a lighter menu that isn't as much of a sticker shock.

Jury Room

When I originally started out on this bar-going venture of mine, I had this ridiculous notion that I was going to go to every bar once and write about it before going to any bar twice. Obviously, reality has prevented that from happening; of course I'm going to frequent bars nearer to where I live and work more than once each. But the intention behind my "every bar once before any bar twice" rule was to prevent myself from developing a couple favorites that I always went to and to encourage exploration. Well, as it turns out, Jury Room was the first bar to completely shatter that intention.

Jury Room has, apparently, been a bar in continuous operation since 1831. There are two things that instantly made it one of my favorites: the atmosphere, which has a wonderful, speakeasy feel that I can only describe as "old-timey," and the cocktails, which are not only interesting, but remarkably cheap. Jury Room is one of the Betty's restaurants, along with Dirty Frank's, Tip Top, and, of course, Betty's. But I like it so, so much more than any of those. In fact, I like it so much, that I think it's only appropriate to organize my liking-ness with a list:

I Like Jury Room Because...

• The drinks are awesome. They have happy hour til 7 on weekdays, the highlight of which is $3 wells and cheap appetizers. If I had a dollar for every whiskey and ginger ale I've consumed at Jury Room happy hour, I'd have a lot of extra money to buy more whiskey and ginger ales at Jury Room happy hour. And that's to say nothing of their extensive and interesting cocktail list, which changes seasonally. At one point, they even had Singapore Slings on the menu. Oh, and I haven't even gotten to the beer list yet, which includes Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale and, recently, a beer whose name I have forgotten but that contains 9% alcohol.
• The food is good. My friends at Urbanspoon seem to be split on this point. Half the reviews rave about the food, and the other half seem to find it wanting. I'm with the first half. I think the menu is interesting--clam po' boys, shrimp-and-pesto pasta bake, and stuffed mushrooms, among others--and reasonably priced. The happy hour appetizers--fried zucchini, truffle french fries, and fried gnocchi--are good to munch on, and I also enjoy the calamari. I will admit that lately the fry cook seems to be a little deep fry-happy and I've had a few fried appetizers come out to me a bit on the well-done side, but it's $4 and they've always been more than willing to make me a new batch upon request.
• It's a great place for conversation. I think that's one of the main reasons Jury Room has become one of my happy hour go-tos. It's usually not too crowded (though it can become so, depending on the time of day) or loud, and the wait staff seems to have no problem when I sit there with a friend or two and take up a table while ordering well drinks for three or more hours.
• It's the perfect distance from where I work. There are closer bars, and cheaper bars, and bars with better food, but Jury Room is within walking distance while being juuuust far enough away that I'm not likely to run into my boss when I'm four cocktails in.

In conclusion, it breaks my heart that Jury Room isn't ranked higher on Urbanspoon. WHY DON'T PEOPLE LIKE MY FAVORITE BAR MORE. I just don't understand it. But you know what, fine, stay away, more $3 wells and outdoor seating for me.

Plank's Bier Garten

Alright, kids, there are two ways we can play this: either I give a whole long list of perfectly valid excuses for why I casually haven't posted in six months (started a new job, quit that job, started yet another new job after the first new job, you know...the usual), or we can just ignore the whole six-month hiatus thing and get on with it already. Let's do that.

It is very important that you not confuse Plank's Bier Garten with Plank's Cafe & Pizzeria, because even though they're really only a couple blocks away from each other (the Bier Garten is on High Street at the west edge of German Village, and the Cafe & Pizzeria is on Parsons on the east edge of German Village), there's apparently some sort of family feud back story that resulted in the existence of two Plank'ses. Something about the uncle disagreeing on the pizza sauce recipe so he American Revolution'ed the whole place and started the Parsons location. Same name, completely different restaurants.

There are two types of occasions under which I've been to Plank's Bier Garten (hereafter referred to as "Plank's"--we're gonna stop talking about the Cafe now). The first is work functions for Boyfriend's company, which basically means they convert the place into a frat basement. The second is my own work functions. Both my old new job that I quit and my new new job that replaced my old new job are with the Ohio government in a capacity that requires (I mean it, requires) me to let certain interested parties buy me a lot of free alcohol. Somehow, Plank's is the ideal venue for both government after-hours events and frat parties.

I never much liked Plank's when I went there for Boyfriend's work functions, probably because, you know, they turned it into a frat basement. I mean it. They pushed all the tables together and played beer pong (apparently Plank's keeps ping pong balls on hand for that very purpose). I think I saw a keg stand once. The floor was sticky with spilled beer and the pizza had always been sitting out for so long that it turned all gross and congealed in the way that really greasy pizza tends to do.

The times I've been to Plank's for my own work functions, however, have been much more enjoyable. People were sitting at the tables instead of throwing ping pong balls across them. The pizza was still hot. Nobody spilled beer. And really, in that setting, it's easy to see why Plank's is so popular. The pizza is really good if you eat it before it solidifies into grossness, to start with. Most importantly, however, the restaurant itself just has a great set-up. It's a lot bigger than it looks: half the restaurant is indoors, with the usual bar and tables/booths spread around, but the other half is split between an sort of screened-in patio and an open air...well...bier garten. It's great for parties because it gives you a lot of space to spread out and, depending on the crowd, talk politics or play beer pong. So while it's still not my favorite--I doubt I'd even think to go there on my own and not as part of a scheduled function where they've rented it out--it's not a bad place for a function.

Also, I hear that families take their kids there for pizza? Weird. Just...weird.

Nida's Thai on High

Nida's Thai on High is probably one of my favorite restaurants in Columbus. As far as authentic Thai food goes, it's not the best you can do in this city--from my field research, I'd say that honor goes to Bangkok hands down, if you're brave enough to venture that far east--but Nida's is still an awesome place. It's both popular and in the Short North, which means you can expect a crowd, but despite that, we've still managed to eat there without reservations on more than one occasion.

What I love most about Nida's is the atmosphere. It's nice and a little quirky, crammed into a small space with a lot of personality. It reminds me a bit of a few restaurants I've been to in New York City, which might account for why I like it so much. The pad thai is great; the curry is good, and spicer than you might expect; but the sriracha rice is my very favorite.

Now, the one downside to Nida's--and for a drinking blog, this is a pretty big downside--is that the cocktails leave a lot to be desired. Beer-wise, they have a few of your typical Asian imports, if you're into that kind of thing (I have yet to find an Asian beer that impresses me), but they have what appears to be a gorgeous, interesting cocktail list...until you actually order one of the cocktails. I should have known I was in trouble when we went there for my birthday last June and the waitress couldn't give me a coherent cocktail recommendation when I asked for one. Both Boyfriend and I were thoroughly unimpressed: they're a bit on the pricey side, and not nearly as good as I would expect from a restaurant like Nida's. So, my advice on Nida's? Stick to the Asian imports; as unimpressive as they are, they still aren't as disappointing as the cocktails.

Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails

Somewhere during the course of all this bar-going, I got a dog. She's a beagle/bluetick coonhound mix, her name is Raider, and she is actually the cutest dog in the whole entire world. The problem is, after months of being moved from one dog shelter to another and being abandoned by her family on no less than two occasions, she developed very severe separation anxiety. For a few weeks after we adopted her in mid-June, living with this dog was almost unbearable. We couldn't go anywhere, ever, because we couldn't leave her alone or she'd start howling and screaming and tearing up everything in sight, not to mention hurting herself in her desperate attempts to escape.

I mention all this only because the first time we went to Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails, it was only because we needed a place to go for dinner that would let us bring the dog.

I should clarify: they wouldn't let us bring her inside. But they have a very nice outdoor patio with a not-too-shabby view of downtown, so we were given a table outside right next to the fence so that I could tie Raider's leash to the fence...with her on the other side, since technically having a dog in the patio was some sort of health code violation. Or something. Whatever, there are dogs at Northstar all the time.

Obviously, they win major points from me for being dog-friendly. Even more so because every single member of the staff came over to pet Raider at some point during our meal. The customers, too. And random passersby. And even a wedding photographer, who took pictures of her. But enough about how awesome my dog is.

Tip Top is great. Not only was the food good, but it was interesting--it's not just your typical American fare. They have a ton of veggie options and even more dishes that can be easily converted upon request. The macaroni and cheese is delicious, if you can get over the fact that you sort of feel like you're ordering off the kids' menu (trust me, this is adult mac 'n cheese). And the drink menu was thoroughly satisfying. They even have a selection of ciders, which impressed this one-time London resident, at least.

Thurman Cafe

Full disclosure: I'm a vegetarian. Actually, if we're being brutally honest, I'm one of those obnoxious, self-righteous, hardcore vegetarians who refuses to eat Jell-o or any kind of non-meat item that's been cooked in the same unwashed pan as a meat item, and who periodically condescends to my carnivorous peers about their disgusting, inhumane, earth-killing dietary habits.

And yet, despite all of that, I went to Thurman Cafe, and I ate a cheeseburger.

You may know Thurman Cafe from the Travel Channel series Man Vs. Food; there's an episode where what's-his-name the host conquers the truly enormous Thurmanator. It was a popular restaurant before the TV show, but afterward, this poor little German Village staple has been overwhelmed. The place isn't really very big at all--just one small room of tables--so combine that with its phenomenal popularity, and it's not uncommon at all to have a two- or three-hour-long wait for a table.

I've been to Thurman's twice; once the wait was two hours, and the second time it was an hour (which is basically no wait at all, by Thurman standards). Both times I waited about five seconds before Boyfriend said screw it, and we cut the line and sat at the bar. I'm still not entirely sure if you're allowed to do that, but, well, Boyfriend does it all the time, and as of yet, no restaurant has ever stopped us.

The first time we went to Thurman's, I went in knowing I was about to face a moral dilemma. For the sake of adventure and this blog, I felt like I couldn't not at least try a stupid burger, but at that point in time, it had been about a year and a half since the last time I could remember eating a hamburger. There was actually a distinct possibility that even attempting to eat red meat would result in my being very physically ill. But here's the thing: my personal rules of vegetarianism dictate that it's better to eat meat than to insult or greatly inconvenience my host. And by the time I was sitting there at the Thurman's bar, I realized there was no way I could just order a tuna salad sandwich. Probably no one would have been insulted if I had, but it just seemed wrong to not order a burger in the burger capital of Columbus.

The exchange with the waitress went as follows:
Waitress: Are you ready to order?
Me: I have a confession to make.
Waitress: Um.
Me: I'm a vegetarian. I haven't had a hamburger in nearly two years. If I order a burger, will it be worth it?
Waitress: Honey, I don't care what you do. Order the tuna salad.*
Me: But are the burgers actually that good?

Oh joy! Oh rapture! Oh, what a burger it was! It's entirely possible that my memory of burgers had faded over the course of my long burger abstinence, but being that my ever-carnivorous Boyfriend agreed that it was one of the best burgers in the whole wide entire giant world, I'm pretty sure it actually was that good. It was certainly the best rotting hunk of disgusting cow-flesh I'd ever eaten.

I reconciled myself with my broken vegetarian vows by ordering a very large shot of tequila the second my burger was finished. Turns out the human consumption of rotting cow-flesh is morally acceptable if the cow-spirit is thanked for its sacrifice with libations.**



*But seriously. She actually said that. I'm not making it up this time.
**Don't eat animals, it's disgusting.

Park Street Patio

Once, we got drinks at
Park Street Patio. So what?
Nothing else happened.

Bernard's Tavern

This is the story of how Boyfriend and I got kicked out of one of the most popular bars in the Short North.

It begins, as so many of these things do, with beer pong. A few of Boyfriend's coworkers were meeting up at one of their apartments and then heading out for the night, and we were invited to join. Being that Boyfriend's coworkers are all relatively recent college grads and their company does a very good imitation of a college fraternity, it was almost inevitable that by "meeting up" they actually meant "pre-gaming," which in Frat Talk is, of course, synonymous with "beer pong." All our Colgate friends will be happy to note that Boyfriend and I won all of our games, though I should admit that might have had more to do with the fact that the floor of the apartment was ever-so-slightly angled (in such a way as to give us an advantage) than it does any inherent beer pong skills on my part.

After entirely more beer pong than any group of college grads has the right to play, it was just a quick packed cab ride over to the Short North. As any loyal reader of this blog has no doubt noticed, the Short North is a veritable cornucopia of drinking utopias. The choices are very nearly endless. Despite the fact, I have yet to go out with a group of Boyfriend's coworkers to anywhere other than Bernard's Tavern.

Bernard's is just like Facebook: it's not very good and nobody really likes it, but everyone's there because everyone else is there. I can talk myself hoarse with anti-Bernard's pleas, but we always end up there anyway because that's where everyone else is going. I have no idea who decided Bernard's should be the young college grad hangout of choice, but every time I ask someone why they want to go there, the only response I get is "Well, everyone else will be there," so I can only assume it was some sort of collective hive-mind decision and my lonely input was never considered.

I mean, sure, it makes sense that Bernard's would appeal to that crowd, by which I mean they have cheap, uninteresting drinks (think bottles of Bud Lite). But why it ALWAYS has to be Bernard's is completely beyond me. The place is loud, like every popular restaurant and bar in Columbus--I swear the people here don't understand the Kindergarten concept of an "indoor voice." There's not much seating; some chairs at the bar, a few booths against the wall, and some awkward stand-alone tables in the middle of the floor with not enough chairs to distribute between them. But the worst part is that it's really crowded. And I don't mean crowded in the sense that it's hard to find a place to sit. I mean crowded in that it's nearly impossible to stray from the tiny amount of corner space allotted to you and your group of friends because everyone is packed in so tightly that you have to crowdsurf if you want to get to the bar or the bathroom. Definitely not high on my list of go-to bars.

On this particular Bernard's night, I suffered the usual non-stop company talk from Boyfriend and his coworkers by pretending to think a bottle of Miller Lite is an exciting beer choice. Fast forward an hour or two, and I decide I'm hungry.

Remember that time when Boyfriend and I saw a birthday party of Sixty-Somethings order pizza to the French bar? I've been dying to try that ever since, and Bernard's seemed as good a place as any.

So we ordered Donato's delivered. They didn't even question the order, because it had to be about 1:30 in the morning by then and we were right down the street from the pizza place. The delivery dude called when he got there, and we went outside to collect the pizza, huddled around the tiny little Bernard's table we had finally managed to claim, and had a pizza feast. Boyfriend's coworkers either thought we were insane or really awesome, I still haven't decided.

It took about four seconds for the first Bernard's waiter to approach us and say we aren't allowed to have pizza in the bar. I, being my polite midwestern self who can't stand the thought of causing inconvenience to any poor soul who is just trying to do his job, was ready to turn and run. Boyfriend and one of his friends, however, somehow pulled a brilliant story out of their asses about how we had tried to order pizza from Bernard's, but had been told that the kitchen was closed so we had no choice but to have pizza delivered. I don't know if the poor waiter was just confused or if we'd been tipping him really, really well all night, but he let us alone with our pizza.

Then it was about another eight seconds before the second Bernard's waitress approached us, and she was not as easily convinced. Boyfriend and His Friend even tried explaining that our pizza decision had been endorsed by the waiter we had spoken to only a few moments earlier, but she was having none of it. That's about the time she started swearing. "Get this delicious pizza out of this overrated restaurant right this very minute!" except instead of "delicious," "overrated," and "very," she was actually saying "fucking." Boyfriend, being Boyfriend and with a few beers in him, started arguing back, at which point my poor aforementioned midwestern sensibilities were completely overcome, and, hounded by the waitress's nonstop profanities, I fled the scene with our either delicious or fucking pizza, depending on your perspective.

Boyfriend and coworkers followed me out (I mean, they had no choice, I had pizzanapped the pizza) and the waitress, ah, "escorted" us to the door. Boyfriend, still being Boyfriend and with a few beers in him, demanded to speak with the manager. Me, being me and also with a few beers in me, plopped the pizza box down on top of a trash can, and Coworkers and I went back to pizza-eating.

So, the end scene: there we are, me and two or three of Boyfriend's coworkers, somewhat drunkenly eating Donato's pizza out of a box propped up on top of a trash can, while Boyfriend reams out the manager of Bernard's about how he and his friends dropped who-knows-how-much-money on drinks there that night, were told the kitchen was closed, and get got screamed at by a hysterical waitress, so that now all of Boyfriend's friends were eating pizza out of the trash.

Needless to say, we haven't been allowed back to Bernard's since.*

*That's a blatant lie. I just wanted to be dramatic. We were there last week.

Elevator Brewery & Draught Haus and Fleur (and the city impound lot)

To begin, allow me to apologize for the long delay and assure you that while I took a break in posting, we did not take a break in drinking. We've had quite a lot of excitement in the last two months, and believe it or not, it all starts with a perfectly ordinary Friday in June when we decided to catch some afternoon happy hours.

At the start of summer, Boyfriend was promised half-day Fridays at work for the summer months. Half-days turned out to be more like three-quarter-days which eventually evolved into "today is a half-day but you'll still need to stay until 6:30 so we can get all this work done"-days. But back when we were young and naive and believed "half-day" meant, well, half of a day, we made plans to check out Elevator and Fleur, two downtown restaurants that I'd heard a lot of good things about (from the internet, I mean).

Elevator Brewery & Draught Haus is a rather well-known downtown establishment with an extensive food menu and some truly entertaining beer options. You can't beat the atmosphere; I don't know what that building used to be, but my first guess would be either a theater or a church. They offer a huge selection of local and seasonal beers, and the bartenders were able to speak knowledgeably about every single drink on the menu, which is awesome when you haven't heard of half of them and have tried even less. The most impressive drink of that afternoon was the watermelon beer, which sounds disgusting but was unusual enough to be worth a try. It smelled like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, but when you drank it, there was only the faintest hint of fruit. If that alone doesn't sell you on Elevator, the $2.50 drafts until 7pm on weekdays should.

It was when we left Elevator, after about a beer-and-a-half each, that things started to get interesting. Parking in downtown Columbus, to put it politely, sucks balls. We'd driven in circles around the block for what felt like most of my life before we finally found a parking meter on a street perpendicular to Elevator, maybe a block or two away but easily within walking distance. We were in Elevator for maybe 45 minutes, tops, and when we came out again, our car was gone.

Yeah. Yeahhhh.

After a confused and panicked few minutes, we noticed the absurdly small, not-at-all-conveniently-placed sign: no parking Monday-Friday, 4-6pm. During those eight hours every week, that lane opens up for traffic. So even though we paid the meter, the meter accepted our money, and we were away from the car for less than an hour, the good city of Columbus towed Boyfriend's car.

What followed was a flurry of calls trying to figured out who towed the car and to where; a long and hot walk in the direction of our apartment, only to realize the key to the apartment was still in the car; several conversations with bicycle police cops to get directions to the impound lot; a heated argument with Google Maps over where, exactly, "Impound Lot Road" was located; a confusing drive with a cabby who barely spoke English and had only been driving in Columbus for a couple weeks; and, in the end, no less than $200 spent (cab ride included) to get the car out of impound. The highlight of the impound trip was my observation that the ridiculously large city impound lot included no less than two rental moving trucks, one bulldozer, and three school buses.

After seeing a good chunk of the paycheck he had just received that morning gobbled up by the good city of Columbus, Boyfriend was (understandably) thirsty again. This time we headed to Fleur, another downtown bar. Fleur has a great location in a weirdly shaped little building that seems to be made entirely of glass; the sunshine paired with the bright white interior of the bar means that people tend to wear their sunglasses inside. Fleur specializes in fancy and very expensive cocktails, primarily champagne-based drinks and martinis. They also label themselves a "dessert bar," but except for the free cotton candy, the dessert part is pretty sparse. The trick to enjoying yourself at Fleur is to go during their happy hour, Monday-Friday 4-7pm, because otherwise you'll need to sell a couple organs to pay for a few rounds of drinks. Even the happy hour is a bit pricier than I would normally accept for a happy hour, but it's a good discount from their usual prices and it's such a fun bar that it's worth the splurge. Not to mention the fact that the drinks are pretty great.

Our post-car-getting-towed trip to Fleur ended with me driving home, Boyfriend having drowned his car-getting-towed problems in cocktails, which is far less "Mad Men" than it sounds when you consider the fact that he was drinking champagne in place of scotch and was also eating cotton candy the entire time.

Of course, the really fun epilogue to this story is that exactly six days after getting his own car towed for parking in a No Parking M-F 4-6PM Zone on a Friday between 4 and 6pm, Boyfriend managed to get my car towed from the parking lot of our apartment, for the very simple reason that the apartment said they didn't recognize my car, and thus it deserved a good towing.

Short North Tavern

With the exception of Thurman Cafe (post about that coming soon!), pretty much every overly popular restaurant in Columbus is located along the little stretch of High Street known as the Short North (I don't understand the name, either, because it's not particularly short and "north" seems to be a pretty relative descriptor). Most of the bars and restaurants in the area can be decently priced...it's just that you're looking at vast overcrowding and two-hour waits if you want a seat on a Friday or Saturday night. Short North Tavern, however, has somehow missed the rabid popularity that plagues nearly every other establishment on High Street, and I think that's what I like most about the place.

Short North Tavern is a dive bar, and not the sort of trendy faux-dive bar (like Village Idiot) which is common amongst the Columbus college scene. It looks a bit run down from the outside, and is pretty easily overlooked surrounded as it is by the most fashionable of Columbus's dining establishments--in fact, the only reason I even noticed it in the first place is because it's about three buildings down from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, which means you're neck-and-neck with the Tavern for a good part of your thirty-minute-long wait to grab a dish at Jeni's. Inside, the Tavern is a no-nonsense, very straight-up bar with a few tables; they serve food, too, though Boyfriend and I just grabbed a few drinks. It's the sort of typical midwestern bar that I'd expect of my hometown in Indiana, and it's a refreshing change from the often pretentious popularity of most of Columbus's bars. The bartender ribbed me when I payed for the drinks (Boyfriend had payed for dinner earlier that night, so it was only fair), and I had to do so in cash--the Tavern is probably one of three places left in North America that still doesn't accept cards. The best part was the young child running around the bar; like I said, they serve food, too, so presumably the child was there for the mac n' cheese and not the beer. But, hey, who knows.

On a different note, I'm terrifically sorry if the posts have been somewhat colorless lately; Boyfriend and I went through a spell of relatively uneventful bar-going for a while there. But I've got some great ones coming up, I promise! In fact, Short North Tavern was our last drinking experience before we entered The Month From Hell (also known as June 2011), so there are some pretty wild stories to go along with that.

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.

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.

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.

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.