Billboard Bouquet

We’ve reached another dubious frontier in the ever-changing world of outdoor advertising. In the Netherlands, McDonald’s has rolled out billboards infused with “the distinct aroma of McDonald’s French Fries.”

The campaign–which goes by the somewhat ambiguous name “smells like McDonald’s”–features plain yellow or red billboards that emit the aroma of McDonald’s fries when you get within a few feet of them. They are strategically located within a few hundred feet of McDonald’s outlets, in the hopes that after you take a whiff you’ll be motivated to get an order of the real thing. Each of the billboards apparently contains a compartment where actual fries can be stored, as well as internal heating and ventilation systems that amplify the smell and direct it out to passersby.

I associate McDonald’s fries with lots of grease and salt, so I’m not exactly eager to inhale that odor. Nor would I be particularly desirous of hanging out somewhere that “smells like McDonald’s.” But on a more general level, I bemoan the fact that in addition to billboards assaulting our visual senses, now they’ll be intruding into our olfactory senses as well. And I’m not quire sure how the greasy, salty aroma of McDonald’s fries–or for that matter, Domino’s pizza, or Axe deodorant, or the current hot perfume would interact with the other smells that you often encounter in a big city. In my view, the fewer smells, the better.

The Random Restaurant Tour–LXII

Yesterday we had some errands to do that took us out of the downtown Columbus footprint. We ended up in the uncharted wilds of Grandview, where we decided to visit a Grandview staple–the DK Diner.

I’d never been there before, but I knew I liked it as soon as we pulled up. There were telltale signs of a good diner immediately apparent–people outside who seemed happy, not surly, about the prospect of waiting for a few minutes for a table, and a decidedly unpretentious air about the place. In fact, part of the seating area (and where we ultimately ended up) is in a tent added on to provide some extra seating. Those kinds of messages tell you something about a neighborhood joint–the locals like it and the food is good enough to justify a wait.

It was a little after noon, so we were still in the Weekend Decision Zone time period, where you could opt for a late breakfast rush headlong into lunch. The DK is known for its pancakes, doughnuts, and other breakfast chow, but I felt my taste buds being pulled to the lunch end of the DK menu spectrum. I settled on an elm burger, which comes with white cheddar cheese, bacon jam, a buttered brioche bun, and “elm sauce.” I’d never heard of “elm sauce” before, and when I asked, our waitress said it was some kind of spicy Asian mayonnaise. When I heard that, I knew I had to try one.

Wow! What a burger! Juicy, messy, and packed with flavor in every bite, the elm burger was fantastic–in fact, one of the best burgers I’ve had in a long while. It was so good I immediately declared that I would go back to the DK just to get another elm burger, and I mean it, too. With a nice serving of very crisp chips, which I promptly dipped in Frank’s hot sauce and the drippings from the burger, the elm burger vastly exceeded my expectations. And after eating it, I’m still not entirely sure what is in that mysterious elm sauce–but I’m pretty sure I’d eat tree bark if I could dip it in elm sauce.

One other consideration about the DK Diner: in an era where food prices and restaurant menu items seem to be increasing every day, the DK Diner menu offers a lot of bargains. Great food, low prices: DK Diner, where have you been all my life?

A Person Who Made A Difference

I like reading about people whose lives really made a difference. Recently I ran across an article about one such person: Dr. Norman Borlaug, shown above, who would have turned 110 last week. Dr. Borlaug is one of only six people in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he is credibly said to have “saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.”

Dr. Borlaug was an American who was a leader of the “Green Revolution.” He combined extensive agricultural know-how and political savvy to help increase food production in countries that had been struggling with starvation and famine. He focused on developing approaches to food production that could be readily employed in those countries, drawing upon his extensive knowledge of different varieties of seeds, irrigation, plant pathology, genetics and breeding, soil science, fertilizers, pesticides, and mechanization. He also developed a high-yielding, short-strawed, disease-resistant form of wheat that was key to the effort, and that helped produce enormous increases in production. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and his Nobel Prize biography noted that his wheat strain and agronomic practices had produced revolutionary advances in Mexico, Pakistan, and India and had been adopted by other countries in Central America, Africa, and the Middle East.

Interestingly, Dr. Borlaug was not an ivory tower theorist, but a tough, practical farmer who worked in the fields and got dirt under his fingernails. He also had a gift for convincing governmental officials to try his methods. It says something about Dr. Borlaug’s continuing impact that the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development publishes pages of Norman Borlaug quotes, one of which states: “the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.”

I’d heard about the Green Revolution but was not aware of the specifics of Dr. Borlaug’s career and accomplishments–which shows, again, how one person can made a profound difference in people’s lives. You wonder how many people like Norman Borlaug are out there in the world right now, working under the radar yet having a huge impact in their communities. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of them.

Green Plastic Grass

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates the occasion!

Easter morning is a time of tradition in most families, including ours. When the day arrives your thoughts naturally turn to the Easters of your childhood when–only after church, naturally–it was time for the Easter basket hunt, when hyped-up kids went tearing around the house in their best Sunday clothes searching for their particular flimsy, brightly colored Easter basket, enticed by the prospect of gorging themselves on Easter candy.

Of course, the hunting wasn’t over when you found your basket. That’s because the basket inevitably was filled with fluorescent green plastic grass that served as a convenient hiding place for a little foil-wrapped chocolate egg or a random jelly bean. If you wanted to be sure that you had found every last bit of Easter candy in the basket–and you surely did–the preferred approach was to remove the main hunk and orphaned strands of fake grass, shake the grass a few times to be sure that you had removed every candy item, and put it on the floor. At our house, this left the floor of the family room coated with a layer of green plastic strands.

The green plastic strands, like the tinsel used to decorate Christmas trees, were not easy to clean up after the frantic chocolate consumption was over. The strands nestled deep in shag carpeting and hid behind chair and sofa legs. At least the strands weren’t charged with static electricity, as tinsel was, but like tinsel the fake plastic grass was not vacuum cleaner-friendly. It typically would get wound around the rolling brush at the vacuum’s intake vent, causing the vacuum to stop picking up debris and overheat and requiring you to carefully extricate each green plastic strand.

Why green plastic grass, and not real grass–or no grass at all? Who knows? The ’60s and ’70s were the height of the plastic era. If future generations ever excavate American landfills, looking for evidence of what life was like in the days gone by, they’ll no doubt find lots of that green plastic grass, and wonder what in the world it was.

Cupboard Campers

Have you ever noticed that some items in your cupboard, once purchased for some long ago, now-unknown reason, never get used? To be sure, they will be moved from time to time, as you search for other things that you know are somewhere in the cupboard, but you’ll never fully haul them out and access the contents. Instead, in the shifting of items, they will inevitably migrate to the rear of the cupboard, where they will camp out and remain forever.

Other items in the cupboard–jars of peanut butter, cans of tomato paste, boxes of pasta, canisters of seasonings, a bag of almonds–are temporary occupants of cupboard space that get consumed and depart, creating a healthy cupboard rotation. There are always a few items that become long-term constants, however, that will be with you until the end of time. And they are misleading, too. They’ll make your cupboard look like it is full, but then when you start sifting through the items you realize there’s really nothing to eat.

For us, the two primary long-term tenants are two bottles of vinegar. The only thing that, to my limited knowledge, vinegar is used for is making pickles–which I hate. The white wine vinegar has never been opened, and the apple cider vinegar looks like it was used once. Most recipes involving vinegar–like this collection–involve using only tiny amounts of it. And that raises another question: why is vinegar sold in such big bottles? It’s as if Heinz wants its vinegar to hang out in your cupboard forever. If you matched container size to actual recipe needs, vinegar would be sold in portions no larger than the tiny liquor bottles you get on airplanes when you order a drink.

All of this raises a question of why we haven’t thrown out that big honker bottle of vinegar. That’s because I’m a big proponent of “waste not, want not” and can’t bring myself to throw out something that could conceivably be useful. Because it’s remotely possible that we could make use of the vinegar at some point, it will remain in the cupboard, stolidly occupying its space in the rear corner, until that improbable day comes.

Bowl Game

Yesterday we went to a barbecue place called Pecan Penny’s for lunch. The menu offers traditional sandwiches, ribs, and platters, and also “BBQ bowls.” The BBQ bowls allow you to build your own dish by putting everything that would have come separately into a bowl. You start with your choice of a “base,” add a protein, “load it up” and then add toppings. I went for cheddar grits for the base, pulled pork, and cheddar cheese and smoked pecans for toppings. Our server later delivered a bowl containing all of those ingredients. I added some Carolina mustard sauce, mixed it all up so that each forkful would have its share of grits, pork, sauce, pecans, and cheese, and happily shoveled it down. It was very good.

I’m probably behind the curve on this, but lately I’ve noticed that more and more restaurants are offering bowl food. I suspect that Chipotle was the first to really focus on this, with its deconstructed burrito in a bowl, but now bowl options seem to be everywhere–at KFC, at taco joints, and pretty much wherever going with the traditional handheld consumption approach would be messy. Taco bowls avoid the hard taco shell disintegration problem, and the KFC bowls no doubt take the “finger-lickin'” out of “finger-lickin’ good” chicken. As for the BBQ bowls at Pecan Penny’s, yesterday is the first time I can remember finishing a meal at a bar-b-q place where I didn’t have to immediately head to the facilities to soap up and wash the sticky veneer of barbecue sauce off my hands.

The bowls also allow you to easily mix up your food. They’d be anathema to fussy people who like to consume their main dish and sides separately, but if, like me, you like to mix things up, the bowls are a very handy method of doing so. I figure it’s all going to end up in the same place, anyway, and I like the flavors in combination.

There are times when only a standalone handheld will really hit the spot–like when you’re wearing sunglasses, a ball cap, a t-shirt, and shorts while on vacation, eating outside on a bright sunny day when a chance to lick barbecue sauce off your fingers and chase it with a cold beer is really the only way to go–but if you’re wearing a suit and tie on a work day the bowl option is a nice one to have.

Unchanging Places

Recently some friends from high school were in town–for a memorial service for one of our classmates, regrettably–and we decided to get together for lunch. They’ve long since moved away from Columbus, so I was trying to think of a place we could go that they would remember from our high school days.

This was easier said than done, because our high school days ended in the ’70s and pretty much everything in Columbus has changed dramatically since then. Most of the places we knew from that time went out of business, or were torn down entirely, decades ago. I could only think of one place that has survived: Tommy’s Pizza. It was a big hangout in high school, especially for pizzas before and after home football games, and it still occupies its traditional spot with the familiar towering “Tommy’s” sign shown above–so Tommy’s it was.

Our visit was the first time I’ve been to Tommy’s in many years, and it was like going back in time. So far as we could tell, the interior was identical to what it was 50 years ago, with the same entrance, the same pick-up counter just inside the front door with the stacks of “Tommy’s Pizza” boxes and hand-lettered signage written on the round cardboard inserts that Tommy’s puts under pizzas before boxing them up for a carry-out order. The tables, chairs, and configuration of the seating areas all seemed to be unchanged, too, and so far as we knew the same waitresses were still taking orders and delivering hot pizzas fresh from the oven. And the pizzas we got were the same great, crispy, thin crust pies that Tommy’s has been serving since those high school days.

The sense of sameness and memory evoked by our lunchtime visit to Tommy’s was very striking, especially in view of the sad event that brought us all together in the first place. It was oddly comforting, and cool, to think that one place from our youth was still there, pretty much unchanged by the passage of time. Columbus has changed a lot, but I’m happy to report that Tommy’s Pizza is still there, just as it always has been.

The Random Restaurant Tour–LXI

Some restaurant spots seem destined to change hands repeatedly, housing one restaurant after another without much of an opportunity to get to know any of them. That’s been true of the restaurant location at 201 S. High St., under the old-fashioned “Restaurant” sign. It was once de Novo, then it was a taco place, then it was Lola’s, then it was a place called the Downtown Tavern–and I’m probably forgetting a few of the places that existed in between.

Yesterday our lunch bunch went to the newest venture to occupy the spot. Called Hydeout Kitchen & Bar, it offers a nice lunch menu. The layout of the place looks pretty much the same as it always has, with a long bar and booths against the opposing wall. We sat at a booth, perused the menu, and were immediately tantalized by the fact that it offered potato pancakes as a side dish.

Potato pancakes, for the uninitiated, are a high-risk option. When poorly made, you are presented with what tastes like lukewarm leftover instant mashed potatoes covered in sawdust. When well made, the coating is crispy and crackling, the potatoes inside are hot and have some texture, and you add dollops or sour cream and applesauce for a true taste treat. Alas, we learned that the potato pancakes weren’t available yesterday, so we’ll have to go back to learn where the Hydeout version places on the potato pancake spectrum.

That was okay, however, because I was able to apply the cheeseburger test–which I’m happy to report was passed with flying colors. Hydeout’s burger, shown above, is very tasty indeed, and combined the essential qualities of good meat, fine patty formation, proper cooking, tangy cheese, and onions, and they add a dab of mustard to give it a special zing. The fries were excellent, too–crunchy on the outside, hot on the inside, and presented in a reasonable, and not excessive, portion size. They make their own hot sauce, too, which was an excellent complement to the fries and the burger.

So we’ll be going back to Hydeout–assuming it sticks around for a while–and I’ll gladly try another of their sandwiches in hopes of sampling an elusive potato pancake. Now that I’ve been tempted, I’ll have to see it through to completion.

The Random Restaurant Tour–LX

Restaurants tend to come and go. It’s nice when you find a place that actually stays open long-term, continuing to reliably provide the good food and friendly service you’ve come to expect . . . and value.

So it is with the Tip Top, located on Gay Street in the heart of downtown. I’ve been there countless times–for lunch, for dinner, for Sunday brunch, for drinks after work, for fantasy sports drafts, and for a wedding after-party. Unlike other downtown spots, it survived the COVID weirdness, and with its comfort food-oriented menu, its long bar, its rotating draft beer list, and its array of high-top tables, it has remained a reasonably priced, dependable-quality, tried-and-true staple of the downtown dining scene for years.

Recently our merry band of Tip Top frequenters learned that the bar and restaurant has been sold to new owners. Columbus Underground says the sale brings an end to the “Liz Lessner Era” in Columbus restaurants. I really didn’t venture to her other spots, but the fact that she was involved in creating the Tip Top was good enough for me.

The new owners evidently have big plans for the Tip Top, including physical renovations. That’s the way of the world in the restaurant business, and as Gay Street itself continues to change, it’s inevitable that the Gay Street businesses will, too. I’m just hoping the new owners keep my favorite lunchtime order–the succulent, melt-in-your-mouth pot roast sandwich with chips, which I got with either malt vinegar or hot sauce–on the menu. But that’s the risk when a long-time favorite moves on to new ownership.

Pizza Madness

It’s March, which means we’re on the cusp of March Madness and endless hours of people talking about their brackets and arguing about whether the NCAA selection committee messed up with its seeding decisions. But hey . . . why limit the madness to a bunch of athletes running around in shorts and shooting hoops? Why not expand the madness to something really important–like pizza?

CBUSyoday, a local website that focuses on all things Columbus, has filled this obvious void by sponsoring its inaugural “pizza shop bracket.” After an initial round of voting last week, the website placed the top vote-getters into the bracket, and head-to-head competition starts this week. JT’s Pizza, which I think unquestionably makes the best pies in town–and I’m not alone–is pitted against Rubino’s Pizza in a tough first-round match-up. Other contestants in this Columbus Pizza Madness contest include Tommy’s Pizza, which has been a Columbus pizza mainstay going back to my high school days, Harvest Pizzeria, and Sexton’s Pizza, which like JT’s gets a lot of buzz.

You can see the CBUStoday bracket and vote for your choices here. Participation is easy, and I’ve cast my votes for the first-round match-ups. If you’re a pizza fan, I urge you to got to the website and vote, vote, vote for JT’s Pizza. And if you’re on the fence, head to JT’s and try one of their selections. You won’t need any more convincing.

Hot Stuff

Normally I avoid having snack foods around the house, but sometimes you need to give yourself a treat. When I checked out to the snack aisle of our neighborhood grocer in search of something to try on a cold February weekend, the choices seemed to be overwhelming. Fortunately, my eye was caught by this bright red bag featuring Mama Zuma herself sporting a bandolier of peppers and hiking through a desert landscape of flaming saguaros–and suddenly my choice became easy.

I like hot, spicy food, and red-hot habanero kettle-cooked potato chips were something I just had to try. Mama Zuma’s Revenge potato chips, made by the Route 11 Potato Chips Company, fit the bill very nicely. The chips had that nice, crispy, non-greasy kettle method crunch and were coated with a red, peppery dusting that produced a great fiery taste. The chips created some enjoyable lip burn, too–making an accompanying glass of cold water essential. With each handful of chips, your fingers were left with a residue of the pepper dusting that you needed to lick off, which produced a second helping of the heat and increased the residue left by your next handful. And like any good snack, once you started, you just couldn’t stop until the entire bowl was done.

Mama Zuma’s Revenge was most enjoyable, but also reaffirmed why the snack aisle is best left unvisited.

Prematurely Aged

They’re making good progress on the new restaurant that will be opening soon at the northwest corner of Gay and High Streets in downtown Columbus. The plywood barricades have been taken down, and they’ve started to add a few of the finishing touches, like nifty tilework at the Gay Street entrance and some of the signage.

As the tilework indicates, the restaurant is called Hank’s–specifically, Hank’s Lowcountry Seafood and Raw Bar. According to the Hank’s Columbus website, it’s the sister to a restaurant by the same name in Charleston, South Carolina, and it is aiming to open its doors this spring.

I’ve not been to Hank’s in Charleston, but I’m guessing the Hank’s Columbus will have a decidedly old school vibe. The tiled entrance has that feel, and the signage does, too–including some apparently conscious fading and running of the ink. Hank’s seems to be going for a prematurely aged look, as if the restaurant has been there for decades, rather than being the newest place in town. That’s an intriguing concept that makes me interested in trying Hank’s out once it opens up for customers.

The Frosted Pop-Tarts Period

I saw that William Post, widely recognized as the creator of Pop-Tarts, died recently at the ripe old age of 96. According to his obituary in Newsweek, in 1964 he was asked by the Kellogg’s Company to create a new product that could be made in a toaster. Within a few months he and his team came up with Pop-Tarts . . . and the kid breakfast world would never be the same.

Pop-Tarts were a staple in our household from the point Mom first brought a box home from the grocery store, which was probably shortly after they were introduced. (Our household tended to be a first mover when it came to new breakfast food options.) I liked the original unfrosted version–especially the strawberry variety, which the Newsweek article says was the original flavor–but my Pop-Tarts consumption really took off later, when frosted Pop-Tarts hit the market.

My favorite was the frosted blueberry Pop-Tarts. They came in a foil packet containing two of those rectangular pastry delights. I actually preferred them right out of the packet, without using the toaster. The delectable goodies had a hard icing crust that crunched and cracked when you took a bite, which provided a nice textural element to the whole frosted Pop-Tart experience. If you put them in the toaster, in contrast, the icing melted a bit, and you lost that. (You also risked taking a bite of superheated filling.) The stiff white icing coating was an excellent contrast to the rich, dark blueberry filling. Strawberry frosted Pop-Tarts were good, but a packet of two blueberry Pop-Tarts with a glass of cold milk made for a perfect post-high school snack.

Blueberry frosted Pop-Tarts entered the “forbidden foods” category, along with Frosted Flakes and Cap’n Crunch, when an adult metabolism made me start paying attention to my calorie intake, but the memories of the first bites of them live on. Thank you for the memories, Mr. Post!

The True Cold Warrior

The weather app shows that this morning’s temperature is 7 degrees with a nine-mile-an-hour breeze, which will knock the “wind chill” temperature a few degrees lower. We’ve been experiencing a severe cold snap over the past few days, the kind that hits Ohio at least once every winter. It’s the kind of cold that feels like a frigid slap in the face when you venture outside, making it painful to breath the frosty air. And even though every brain cell is urging you to stay inside at all costs, you know you’ve got to bundle up and head off to work.

And that is where I turn to an essential winter ally: coffee. Coffee before I venture into the cold, and especially coffee immediately upon reaching the office. Coffee, to delight the nose with scented steam from a freshly brewed cup and seize the tongue and the palate with the first gulp of sultry, brown, creamy goodness. Coffee, to provide that welcome, warming gush of hot liquid down the gullet, directly into the body’s core, to heat up the innards and fortify them against the chill. Coffee, to sharpen the senses, increase the alertness, and ensure that you tug those gloves on a bit tighter, cinch the headwear down, brace yourself for the outdoor arctic blast, and watch for thos icy patches on the sidewalks and crosswalks.

Yes, it’s pretty clear: coffee is the true, essential cold warrior. On a day like today, what would I do without it? 

The End Of The Baking Road

Yesterday I finished with the last bit of cookie preparation–traditionally, it’s icing the sugar cookies, and making an unholy mess of sprinkles and icing drips in the process–and then boxed them up. In our household, Kish is the Cookie Tin Procurement Officer, and she did an excellent job this year in finding the containers shown above. I am then charged with distributing the finished baked goods among the tins that we’ll be delivering to friends, family, and neighbors.

The cookie distribution process requires some forethought. You want to make sure that you put the heavier cookies on the bottom, and then try to fill in gaps as you stack up the cookies. This year, I made some sequilhos, along with the perennial fudge and Dutch spice cookies to act as gap fillers, and they served their intended purpose admirably. You also want to make sure that the different kinds of cookies are evenly allocated, and I like to put the iced sugar cookies on top, so that the recipients get a nice dash of color when they open their deliveries.

No job is officially over until the clean-up is concluded, and I’ve now washed and put away the bowls, mixers, ingredients, cookie cutters, cookie trays, and baking dishes, and wiped down the countertops. With that, I’m done with the cookie baking process for 2023, and can fully focus on the upcoming holidays. For the next few days, though, I’m going to have to focus on getting some exercise to burn off the cookie intake calories.