Author Archives: hungrywoolf

Sabrina’s Cuisine

Posted on May 21, 2010 | Leave a comment


Cuisine: Somali / Kenyan
4212 Westview Center Plaza (just off Georgesville Road)
614.272.5592
Hours 10am-9pm daily

Click here to map it!

Most of the Somali restaurants in Columbus are clustered near Cleveland Avenue, but there are 3 or 4 outposts on the West side of town. One of these is Sabrina’s. Tucked away off Georgesville Road, it is a small cafe run by a Somali family who made their way to Columbus via Kenya. Sabrina’s has a limited menu and seems part restaurant, part coffee shop.

Most of the menu is made up of seven appetizers, and those available (four on the day we visited) are displayed in a heated display case. We started with a mandhaazi, which we were told was a Kenyan speciality (the only one on the menu). A mandhaazi (above, right) is similar to a donut – a triangular fried bread, not really sweetened, and best, I’m sure, when both fresh and served with tea or coffee.


Next were bajiya which the menu describes as ’round stylish bean mash, mixed with saffron recipes and deep fried’. It seems that these are commonly made with black eye peas, but I am not sure what the bean was in this case. We were not able to detect the saffron but it seemed to contain some red pepper. It was reminiscent of falafel, but drier and would have benefitted from some sort of dip or chutney.

The sambusa’s were easily our favorite appetizer – crispy fried shells filled with shredded chicken, onion, and garlic and well spiced. According to the menu fillings vary and fish and meat sambusas are also available. I was a little disappointed not to be able to try the najakho (boiled egg enveloped in mashed potato).

As with other Somali restaurants we have found that the menu only loosely reflects what is available. The menu lists three main dishes: steak sub, chicken sub and baked chicken with rice, but we were told that we could have meat, chicken or fish with rice. We opted for the chicken with rice which also came with a small iceberg lettuce side salad and a banana. The chicken was extremely moist and heavily seasoned with black pepper and cardamon. The rice was also cooked with cardamon. We were also given a small dish of a green chili chutney. I found this simple dish satisfying but not overly exciting.

Sabrina’s is a sound but limited Somali option for west siders. As is usual with Somali cuisine, vegetarian dishes are not well represented, although the bajiya and mandhaazi were meatless.

Leave a comment

Posted in African, Somali

Tagged , ,

La Super Torta

Posted on May 15, 2010 | 8 comments

721 Georgesville Road (West side of Georgesville)
614 327 4192 / 614 274 4192

Click here to map it!

La Super Torta occupies a bright corner location at the intersection of Georgesville and Sullivant, in a site formerly occupied by La Bamba. It was opened in 2009 by the owners of the taco truck Super Torta II and offers many of the same menu items. The space is clean and refined, perhaps to the point of looking less like a Mexican restaurant than a “Mexican” restaurant.

Nonetheless, eating at Super Torta feels like indoor taco trucking. The choice of food is the same as a taco truck but with the added benefit of ample seating and restrooms. The familiar taco truck options are there: tacos, tortas, burritos, gorditas, huaraches and quesadillas but in addition there are flautas and nachos, and of course the Super Torta specialities of chicharrones preparados and tlayudas.

A tlayuda is a (large) pizza size dish which a thin crispy base which is covered with refried beans, chorizo, lettuce and string cheese and then topped with avocado, a slab of al pastor, a slab of cecina (dried beef), radishes and a jalapeno. It is a monster of a dish, a bit dry by nature but definitely tasty.

Another novel dish was the tinga tostada. Tinga is a chicken stew, that we have eaten and recommended at Otro Rollo. In this case it was packed with chipotle peppers and very flavorful. The tostada was also topped with lettuce, tomatoes, a little cheese and sour cream. A great snack for $2.50.

We also tried the menudo (usually at taco trucks this is a weekend-only special). Menudo is a soup of tripe and hominy, in this case in a red chili base. The owner told us that it was homemade and explained that it takes eight hours to prepare. We could tell that it had been cooked for a long time because the tripe was extremely tender – a great choice for offal fans.

The menudo ($8) is served with a roll of corn tortillas, a bowl of finely chopped onion, cilantro and jalapeno and a couple of lime wedges.

Super Torta also offers sliced mango plates, flan, a couple of agua frescas, Jarritos, Mexican Coca Cola and some fountain drinks.

8 Comments

Posted in Mexican, Restaurant

Tagged , , , ,

Panaderia Otro Rollo

Posted on May 4, 2010 | 2 comments

Otro Rollo Panaderia
3866 Sullivant Avenue
614 278 2339

Click here to map it!

When we first discovered Otro Rollo bakery last winter, we were instantly smitten by their fresh caramel filled churros. It was a lucky break – the fresh churros have proved to be elusive since then – and we spent months trying to work out the optimal time and day to strike churros gold again. During these repeated trips, we found plenty more to love at Otro Rollo, including the tres leches cake, pig shaped cookies and these chocolate covered, vanilla creme-filled donuts.

Otro Rollo has a wide variety of baked goods, and they supply a lot of the Mexican stores around town. They also make ‘special occasion’ cakes to order.

The breads and cakes are stored in glass fronted cupboards and you take a tray and use tongs to select what you want. Take the tray to the cash register and they bag everything for you. There are no prices displayed but it is good value and almost everything is under a dollar.

Without descriptions it can be a guessing game and freshness is also variable. The conchas (shell cakes, above) are more bread than cake, slightly sweet and are wonderful straight from the oven and not quite so wonderful when stale. I love all of the different designs on the conchas.

In July Otro Rollo opened their own taco truck right next to the store and some excellent offerings including the Mexican hamburgers and the chicken tinga. The truck is open long hours and even serves some breakfast foods including eggs and tamales. Over the winter the taco truck served champurrado, a chocolate atole (like a thick hot chocolate) – just what you need with one of the cakes.

2 Comments

Posted in Bakery, Latin American, Mexican

Tagged ,

Panaderia Oaxaquena

Posted on May 3, 2010 | 5 comments

Mexican Bakery and Grocery
63 S. Murray Hill Rd., West Side
614-878-5220

Click here to map it!

Attentive alt.eats readers will recall that we’ve been more than willing, in the past, to feature markets that prepare their own food items for consumption on-premises.  With this post, we’re going to stretch this a bit to include markets that make exceptional food items which may require a bit of home preparation to complete… because damn, these guys make some amazing molé!

Tucked away just off of West Broad Street, Panaderia Oaxaquena is a full fledged grocery store which includes a meat counter, produce section, and bakery. As such, molé is just one of their house-made offerings – they also have their own Mexican-style breads, cheeses, sour creams and more.

We were tipped off about Panaderia Oaxaquena by G.A. Benton of Columbus Alive. He included their molé in his ‘Get Real for Cinco de Mayo‘ article in 2009. Good molé is hard to come by and even harder to make (making molé sauce from scratch can literally take days), so that was all the enticement we needed.

You can choose from molé negro or molé rojo, and the package gives instructions for completing the dish. You can read about our interpretation here.

As for the cheeses, highlights include quesillo, a type of string cheese that can be grilled like halloumi.

Crema comes in two varieties – the regular white and pale pink. We haven’t been able to find out much about the pale pink one, so if anyone know why it is pink and what it is used for, please let us know.

You can also find these flatbreads called tlayudas, which are often served with beans and cheese, like a large tostada.

As PO is also a bakery, we bought some bread, hot from the oven, which steamed as we greedily broke into it. Soft, light white, and delicately flavorful. You can see the bolillos below which are used for tortas (Mexican subs).

5 Comments

Posted in Bakery, Grocery store, Mexican

Tagged , , , ,

Taste of Bali

Posted on April 21, 2010 | 11 comments

This restaurant closed late 2011. If you are looking for Indonesian dishes in Columbus you may find some at Lily’s on Bethel Road.

Cuisine: Indonesian
2548 Bethel Rd
614.459.7230

Click here to map it!

Taste of Bali is the only Indonesian restaurant in Columbus, and the only Indonesian restaurant we’ve ever been to.  This simple fact made it harder for us, as newcomers to Indonesian fare, to compare the quality and authenticity of their food.

With that caveat behind us, here goes…

As the menu can be somewhat daunting in its unfamiliarity, Taste of Bali have a variety of set menus with different names such as ‘vegetarian’, ‘spice lover’ and ‘adventurous’. Since we were a large group, though, we opted to order a la carte.

We started with the Bali Sampler, a mixed plate of appetizers including sate ayam (chicken satay) which was pretty run of the mill, pangsit goreng (deep fried chicken dumpling), crispy crab and vegetarian spring rolls, none of which was overly memorable, and risol (a chicken and vegetable spring roll) with a slightly creamy but largely flavorless filling.

Our server, who was very accommodating and helpful, offered some suggestions and we had also come armed with some recommendations. Beyond those, we also tried some of the ‘new’ menu items. One of these was a salad called gado-gado comprised of steamed, mixed vegetables topped with lettuce, deep fried tofu, a boiled egg and peanut dressing and was served with shrimp crackers. The mixed vegetables were straight-from-the-freezer green beans, carrots and sweet corn. The dressing was more of a sauce and there was a lot of it.

Sambal goreng kentang were fried diced potato stir fried in sauce; a tasty side dish and one I would order again.

Mie goreng was stir fried egg noodles with shrimp, cabbage, scallion, chinese vegetables and egg. It was a little overcooked and surprisingly bland.

We ordered a couple of different chicken dishes: Ayam bakar jimbaran which was grilled marinated chicken and Ayam bumbu rujak which was grilled chicken breast in red curry sauce. Unlike a Thai red curry, the ayam bumbu was just chicken, somewhat overcooked in a rich sauce.  The bakar was competently executed grilled chicken marinated in a sweet sauce.

Redang daging was a flavorful stewed beef with spices in curry sauce and was one of the most popular dishes.

Gurame Goreng was deep fried fish served whole with sambal ulek (hot sauce) and lalapan (salad).  It was slightly overcooked and bland, at least without the accompanying sambal.

Gudeg is a combination of opor ayam (chicken breast in white curry sauce) and telor balado (egg boiled and pan fried in chili sauce) and jack fruit. Jackfruit is a great meat substitute for vegetarians and vegans and was another popular choice. The egg was very spicy.

One thing we noticed overall was that most of the dishes were very sweet, which may be partly attributed to the use of coconut milk in many of the dishes.

Dessert options include fresh young coconut, bubur ketam hitam (warm black rice pudding topped with coconut milk) and shaved ice with fruit and condensed milk, with either es durian or es teler with sweet jackfruit, avocado and young coconut in sweet coconut milk. The sweet icy desserts were a great antidote to the spicy dishes. Being frozen, the durian was not as stinky as its reputation but still slightly odiferous. It tastes much better than it smells.

Taste of Bali has a children’s menu and caters to vegetarians. Their menu also offers some pan-Asian dishes and notes healthy menu options.

11 Comments

Posted in Indonesian, Restaurant, Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,