Bockfest kicks of Friday, March 1! It’s a big, fun, authentic, affordable, raucous, community-inspired, quirky and authentically Cincinnati celebration all weekend long. Parade starts at the city’s oldest bar, Arnold’s, heads up through OTR on Main Street and ends in Bockfest Hall in the OTR Brewery District. New additions to the revelry include the Bockfest 5K and a fish fry at historic Old St. Mary’s Church. More info: bockfest.com 

Precipitation Retaliation tonight at Milton’s

Bockfest 2013 is almost here…

cheeksandchubs:

after many months of trying, we made it to a Please dinner last friday. we got the first of two covers, at 5:45pm, at the streetpops shop in over-the-rhine, and let me say we walked away awed and inspired. chef ryan santos was careful not to toss around his skills on making foams, and uncommon cooking techniques. his intro for each dish was brief, which gave us time to focus on the plates set before us, and to taste the unique flavor and texture combinations.

this was the (pescetarian) menu:

• first of the year green onion fried in ash tempura, with pine nut emulsion
• smoked potato, clam emulsion, turnip milk, lemon, honey and sea lettuce
• arctic char, uni, carrot, egg yolk, saffron
• squid ink bread
• skate, meyer lemon, celery root, broccoli stem, pickle kohlrabi, salted cultured butter
• grilled milk with black cardamom, euchalyptus, hazelnut and salted meringue
• “my girlfriend’s cookies”

we left with full bellies around 7:30, and walked right to … second dinner!

don’t judge.

quan hapa is an asian gastropub brought by the same owners of super good (and super popular), pho lang thang. even after a 7-course meal, none of us could resist trying out a couple of their sliders (pork belly and duck), an order of squid ink soba, and the okonomiyaki.

(in case you were wondering, we’re working on living the hobbit life and trying to get to “elevensies”).

OTR felt new to me that night. side streets that we would never have passed through before were now well-lit, and took us from main to vine without having to go down 12th street. we discovered the real OTR, which was inaccessible to us prior to the revitalization. 

this city of ours continue to surprise me.

“we discovered the real OTR, which was inaccessible to us prior to the revitalization”

HGTV’s House Hunters airs an episode filmed in OTR, downtown and Walnut Hills tonight at 10pm.

cheeksandchubs:

this past weekend turned out to be a productive one, and i am happy as can be to be able to tick some things off my long to-do list! what makes a weekend of to-do wrangling even more fun is when it’s sprinkled with side trips and new discoveries.

we planned a stop at collective espresso. i had read about them in a back issue of domestica magazine, and had since wanted to visit this new coffee shop in over-the-rhine. it is located on a small side street that we’ve passed so many times, and are glad that now there is a (very good!) reason to walk through. just so you know, collective espresso offers the regular coffee items like mochas, and macchiatos, etc, but if you are an afficionado, or appreciate the many ways a coffee can be served, they also offer pour overs, like chemex and hario. from what i understood, their coffee bean selections change regularly, so you’ll always get to try something new when you go.

we were surprised (shocked even!) to have caught shadeau breads open, and with still some items left! it was a snowy weekend, so i guess we lucked out, and rarely do we make it downtown that early (early = 11:30am). so, with bellies empty, we walked out with two types of focaccia, a german “twist” baguette, a loaf of salt-top rye, and some pastries. we can definitely do some damage when we’re hungry!

i am not a spontaneous person, most of the time – i’m game, as long as you tell me in advance! but there is this sense of thrill, and wonder, when i experience something totally unplanned. 

and in this city of ours, there are plenty of new things to discover – if you are open, if you appreciate anything, if you love that feeling of thrill and wonder, you’ll never be bored. it is with these in mind, that we share this blog with everyone. cincinnati is not new york, not san francisco, not miami, but it has a charm uniquely it’s own. to live here is to experience it as much as we can, learn about the old, and welcome the new. and we hope you are on a similar journey wherever you live right now.

sidenote: i hit my head with the car door last friday - if you didn’t notice my “injury” the first time, now you know why the sad look. the pains i take to capture the great (and small) moments! you should see how the car door looks ;-)

taestell:

Kaze is now open on Vine Street.

Bar and restaurant is open - biergarten coming soon!