Yearly Archives: 2010

Chutnys

Posted on June 17, 2010 by | 7 comments

Cuisine: Indian

CLOSED MARCH 2011 – reopened as Paradise Chutnys with new Management

195 East Campus View Blvd (270 and 23 North, Crosswoods, next to Starbucks)
Open Tuesday to Thursday: 11 am – 2:30 pm (lunch buffet $7.95); 5:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Friday to Sunday: 11:30 am – 3:00 pm (lunch buffet $9.95); 5:30 pm -10:00 pm
614.430.0090
Chutnys.com

Click here to map it!

The Crosswoods complex at SR 23 (North High Street) and I-270 is not far off the beaten path. In fact, many paths beat their way to this suburban, strip mall laced part of the northside. The Crosswoods area is densely packed with apartments, office buildings, condominiums and not so long ago, six steakhouses in a quarter mile area. Somehow this retail center has become beaten down with numerous failed restaurants, unpatched potholes and thousands of cars driving by in search of an Applebee’s. Buried in the rubble of what was once a booming retail strip is a ruby of an Indian restaurant.

Chutny’s has survived where many well known competitors have failed to thrive. This nondescript location, sporting a nylon banner for a sign may have the best value Indian buffet in town (based on variety, number of offerings and price). The restaurant does not seem to get much traffic from the nearby office workers but it does run a brisk lunch time business with what appears to be every Indian IT worker on the north side (based on observation and overheard shop talk). The menu offers a wide range of northern and southern Indian cuisine as well an assortment of tasty milkshakes (Elaichi Kesar and Roohafzaa) and Lassi.

The buffet is impressive in the depth of dishes and the quality of the food. There are fifteen entrees to choose from which include two to three soups, two to three varieties of Biriyani rice and frequently filled arrays of other dishes. A few entrees are perennial including Palak Paneer (stewed spinach and paneer cheese in a curry sauce), Chicken Makani (a creamy, flavorful chicken dish which seems to be a house favorite) and a daily special daal (lentil based stew).

Ginger Chutney - all kinds of awesome!

A second buffet station features a mixed variety of desserts (usually mango custard, frequenty (sweet) curd rice, and almost always (milk and flour balls in sweet syrup) Gulab Jamun). On occasion beetroot halwa makes an appearance but disappears quickly. There are vegetables for salad, three chutneys which usually includes a ginger chutney (which can only be described a nirvana in liquid form) as well a variety of sauces and condiments.

naan

There is a self serve beverage station for those that want coca-cola products. The service is exceptional with staff getting more than a bit nervous if they see your water glass is below the 85% mark. Fresh, hot, crispy, sliced naan (bread) is brought to your table within 5 minutes of arrival.

The dining area is mostly booths with some large tables for groups. There is seating for sixty and a noticeable high volume carry out trade at lunchtime. Light Indian music plays in the background as the servers strive to anticipate your next move so they can meet your needs without interfering with your dining experience.

For those eaters that have never experienced Indian food, this is a very accessible option at an unbeatable price. For those acquainted with the finer details of northern and southern Indian dishes, there is an excellent depth to the main menu that would take months to explore. The entrees vary in price from $5.99 to $13.95.

While Columbus has quickly grown a large number of Indian restaurants in just under a decade, this one is worth putting at the top of your list. It has received high rankings on a local Indian culture website and may be a destination the local Indian community is trying to hide in very plain sight.

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Bono Pizza

Posted on June 5, 2010 by | 16 comments

Cuisine: Italian and beyond (pizza, crepes…)

1717 Northwest Blvd.
5xNW section of town
614.906.8646 (ToGo)
as the menu says: “of course it’s in the back of a liquor store, it’s bonopizza!”
Open: Wednesday to Sunday 5 PM to 10 PM
http://www.bonopizza.biz/

Click here to map it!

Regular alteaters may be thrown a bit off balance when trying to conceive of Bono as an alt.eats destination, but consider the case carefully: Bill Yerkes, the head ‘tosser’ at Bono Pizza is about as alternative as any human could be and Bono also meets our other alt eats criteria: off the beaten path location, authentic (with a dash of audacity) ethnic food and independently/family owned.

Bono Pizza is located in a carryout on Northwest Boulevard (almost in Grandview) in the area known as 5xNW. It features a wood fired oven and the always entertaining personality and styling of Bill Yerkes. His wife Peggy is there most evenings to take orders and take care of her customers. Bono features eighteen specialty pizzas as well as a ‘build your own’ option. All pizzas are $10 each.

Bill perfected his pizza craft during twenty odd years in Italy. His crusts and ratios are in the Italian style with all flavors balancing each other harmoniously. Italian pizza lovers have often said that the Yerkes approach to pizza pie would make any Italian proud. Bill’s non traditional half (or in his case 3/4), exhibits itself in the some of the toppings and names (Hulk, Waikiki, The Greek Boy….). Using a wood fired pizza and hand tossed techniques, the pizza may have a bit of char or not come out as a perfect circle. We like to call that real food.

A Greek Boy.....

The menu is a constant blank slate for Bill. There is a core group of pizzas and sometimes other dishes (maybe a salad, maybe a pepperoni roll) and who knows what else. Bono has offered crepes for $3, espresso for $1 and on occasion creme brulee in shot style glasses. Beverages can be obtained in the adjoining carry out.

The location is not without challenges. There have been issues with the roof and the space itself calls for some creativity for business hours after the carry out closes. However, customers get a “hidden clubhouse” feel about Bono that can be hard to beat.

Here are a few examples of the pizzas:

San Rolando
Fresh tomato sauce, pepperoni, (real – really good too) Italian Sausage and fresh Mozzarella cheese.

Carbonara
Smithfield peppered ham/bacon, carmelized for three plus hours with onions then lathered on a layer of Asiago and real mozzarella cheese with a sprinkling of Parmesan and “pixie dust” (that came right off the menu and not my keyboard, but at Bono….it could happen).

This pizza was created and inspired in part by the Grumpy Gourmet who has made an appearance or two at this establishment.

Here is a bit of Bono history to give the current incantation some added meaning.

The summer of 2008 was THE season for Bono Pizza in the Short North. The unconventional ways of pizza purist Bill Yerkes meshed a traditional approach to pizza (well kind of) with many non traditional elements such as a unique partnership with a Short North Bakery in a location in an alley. The enterprise should not have worked. It did. In fact it prospered. It was the darling of Short North and Victorian Village residents as well as an unofficial meeting point for Columbus Underground ilk. However, like any burning sun, it was bound to extinguish and it did in the fall of 2008.

There were attempts at rebirth. Bill came full circle with a location near his home at a site vacated by Cowtown Pizza but the site did not quite work out. Unfortunately most of 2009 was a year without a Bono Claus so the natives started to get a little restless. Bono reopened in mid 2009 and has slowly been rebuilding a following.

Alt eats specializes in some out of the way places and off the beaten path locations. For a few, the far side of 5xNW may be a bit too far. Bill does have a mobile pizza oven that can be available for events and catering (give him a call) and there is ongoing discussion of partnerships with other businesses to bring Bono to the masses on occasion. We will see what happens.

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Posted in Restaurant, vegetarian

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Apna Bazaar

Posted on May 27, 2010 by | 13 comments

Cuisine: Pakistani/Indian

810 Bethel Road
614.326.2762
www.apnabazaar.biz

Click here to map it!

After our experiences at Luc’s, Mecca, and Arirang, we’ve come to believe that some of the best international cuisine in town is put out by pint-sized kitchens shoehorned into the corners of out-of-the-way ethnic groceries.  As such, when we were told about another grocer/kitchen combo out on Bethel Rd. (thanks, Amar), we were primed to expect the best… and we are happy to say that we weren’t let down.

Apna is located in a fun (from an alt.eats perspective) little strip mall across the street from Microcenter that is also home to Banana Leaf, a Korean restaurant, a Thai/ Vietnamese restaurant, a Mexican grocery store, and a bubble tea shop.  While Apna’s primary focus seems to be on take-out and catering, they’re also happy to serve you at a table in the back of the store that seats up to 8 people.

Apna Bazaar’s kitchen specializes in tandoori and karhai preparations.  The photo above is the tandoor oven, which we were allowed into the kitchen to admire. Another shot in the kitchen (below): making chicken samosas.

We started with tandoori boneless chicken (you can also get a leg and thigh or a whole chicken), served straight from the tandoor. Garnished with onion, lime, and with a relatively mild sauce on the side, this dish was a little spicy, far more tender than most tandooris we’ve had, and very very popular. It was altogether too quickly devoured.

Luckily for our hungry group of 8, the food kept coming. We sampled (below, clockwise from top left) chicken karhai, beef nihari, goat qorma and chicken kabab karhai.

The word karhai (or karahi) refers to both a traditional wok-like Indian/Pakistani cooking dish, and a cooking method that uses this dish. Apna offers chicken (whole or half), goat, and kabab karhai preparations. We tried the (bone on) chicken karhai – fragrant with ginger, this was one of the more mildly spiced dishes we tried – and the kabab karhai, a generous quantity of heavily spiced ground chicken shish kababs, chopped up and sauteed with onions and tomatoes.  Both were enjoyed by all, with the nod going to the kabab version.

The nihari was another crowd pleaser, a delicious rich stew of tender beef shanks cooked overnight.  Apparently a popular breakfast dish in Pakistan, Apna’s nihari was deeply flavored with cloves, cumin, ginger and cardamon, and had a heat that came on slowly and peaked impressively.

The qorma (korma) consisted of tender goat served in a sauce whose richness was similar to the nihari, but was distinctly different in flavor with plenty of cardamon and a lot of chili. Among a table full of spicy-hot foods, it was the hottest of the dishes that we tried.

The meal was accompanied by seemingly endless piles of naan bread. Apna’s naan is different than most, and is considered by our Indian friends to be more authentic – made with whole meal flour, it was lighter, crisper, less doughy and served without any butter or ghee.

Apna Bazaar also has a selection of Indian sweets including gulab jaman, laddo and halwa, but as we were too full, we managed only a cup of steaming hot milky chai.

Apna Bazaar does not provide many options for vegetarians, and with the exception of potato samosas and naan bread all of the dishes are meat based. Drink selections are also limited but include water, chai, Coke and some Pakistani sodas including the sweet and floral Pakola.

Our bill, including drinks, came to about $10 per person. The owner seemed willing and able to adjust the spice level in most of the dishes. We recommend calling ahead an hour before you want to collect your food.

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Posted in Indian, Pakistani, Restaurant

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Euro Delicatessen

Posted on May 25, 2010 by | 4 comments

974 Galloway Road
(Galloway Square)
614.870.0723

Click here to map it!

The business card says that Euro Delicatessen  is “A mini grocery store specializing in European Foods,” but this claim is modest -for anyone looking for Eastern European delicacies, this is a treasure trove. This clean, bright store sells candies, bread, packaged baked goods, cured meats, pickles, teas and a variety of other hard to find items.

Our attention, unsurprisingly, was mostly captured by the two refrigerated cases of sausages and pork products containing 3 or 4 types of bacon and many many types of kielbasa sausage including kabanosy and moldavska. Sausages hailed from countries including Russian, Poland, Hungary, Estonia and the Ukraine. We were given tastes of several of the sausages to aid in our decision making. It didn’t seen to help as each one seemed better than the last.

We were also interested in the wide variety of pierogi and pelmeni – almost twenty varieties mostly from Grandma’s pierogis in Toronto, but there were some homemade pelmeni.

There were also whole smoked mackerel and other smoked fish, cheeses, kvass (a drink made with fermented rye bread), kefir (a fermented milk drink) and, as befits somewhere selling pierogis, plenty of butter and sour cream.

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Posted in European, Grocery store

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The Food Corner

Posted on May 21, 2010 by | 20 comments

Cuisine: Indian (and Mexican and Greek and American and…)
60 N. Wilson Rd.

614.208.3600

Click here to map it!

Note: As of 10/9/2010, The Food Corner is closed.

Anyone remember the Kentucky Taco Hut that used to be in the OSU campus area?

I think we found its indie cousin.  Much as you could leave KTH with a bucket of original crispy, a meat lovers pie, and a burrito supreme or two, at The Food Corner you can take your pick from a menu with such divergent items as quesadillas, fried bologna sandwiches, gyros and tandoori chicken.

We’d driven by The Food Corner on numerous occasions, and while we’ve gotten a chuckle out of the ‘American – Mexican – Kabobs & Curry’ sign, we can’t say it inspired us to try them.  It took an Indian gentleman’s suggestion (we bumped into him during a fruitless attempt at finding a rumored Filipino grocery on the west side) to nudge us into entering.

It’s clear this used to be a fast food restaurant – perhaps a Wendy’s?  At any rate, for such a conversion, it’s unusually clean and well sorted out, if maybe just a bit lacking in the charm department.  The process seems to be that you order at the counter, sit (your meal will be brought to you) and then return to the counter to pay.

 

Click to enlarge

 

The menu (above) that shows the aforementioned motley mix o food is surprisingly extensive and almost comically wide-ranging, but it really just scratches the surface.  There is also an entirely separate full Indian menu – with, I kid you not, 102 additional items – as well as an Indian lunch buffet.  I don’t think we’ve ever seen a more ambitious range of items on offer anywhere.

Since the owners appeared to be of Indian origin and the recommendation came from an Indian man, we stuck to the Indian menu.

First up was the vegetable samosa, served chaat style – with chickpeas and a variety of sauces.  There were a lot of flavors playing well together in this dish, but the samosa itself struck us as being a bit on the chewy side.

Next came the ‘bread basket’ – a mix of naan, garlic naan, and aloo naan. All of these were enjoyable – particularly the aloo naan with its potato and onion filling – but they’re not quite up to the heavenly deliciousness of Mecca’s wonderful bread offering.

We have no idea what came out next.  We ordered an item off of a photo on the wall that is not on the take home menu we intended to rely on… and what came out most assuredly was not that item anyhow.  It was a chicken dish in a brown sauce, and was surprisingly bland by the standards of Indian cuisine.  The chicken was on the dry side.

Last, but not least, was the mattar paneer… which, mercifully, was both as-ordered and on the menu.  The paneer – a light, rennet-free cheese – was as good as any I’ve ever had, and the sauce that came with it was enjoyable if curiously subdued.  This is but one of twenty vegetarian options available on the Indian menu.

The buffet (which went untried on this visit) seemed a good value at $6.99.

The Food Corner’s service was solid, and the owners were thoroughly kind and helpful.  Our recap of our experience isn’t entirely glowing, but it’s hard to suggest that that should mean anything when there was (due to the size of the menu) so much left untried. To that end, if any of our readers do try (or have tried) the place, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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Posted in Indian, Middle Eastern, Restaurant, Uncategorized