Category Archives: Restaurant

Jeddo Kabab

Posted on March 11, 2010 by | 3 comments

Cuisine: Persian
New Location
2171 E Dublin Granville Road,Columbus.
http://jeddokabab.com/
614.794.1202
Hours: Tue – Thurs; 11:30am – 9:00pm, Fri & Sat; 11:30am – 10:00pm, Sun; 12:30pm – 8:00pm

Click here to map it!

To the best of our knowledge, Jeddo Kabab is the only Persian restaurant in central Ohio.  Shame that, but if one’s all we get, this’ll do just fine.

Jeddo’s dining room is small, fastidiously well kept, and maintains a small market selection of prepackaged Persian foodstuffs for sale.  Seat yourself if you’re eating in, head to the back counter to place carry out orders.

The menu manages to be, at least for those with some awareness of Middle Eastern cuisine, both familiar and unique.  Falafel and baba ganoush sit next to items like kubideh and kashk o bademgon.

Kashk o bademgon it was, for starters.  This appetizer is described on the menu as ‘a delightful mixture of eggplant, onion, and garlic with traditional whey’.  The photo might not sell it, but your first taste will.  This deliciously rich concoction, served with plenty of pita for dipping, instantly reminded me of an artichoke dip… but better.  A dish that is sure to convert even the most fervent of eggplant haters.

Next, we tried the bahktiari – a platter with chicken kebab (which included grilled vegetables), a ground lamb skewer, salad, and rice.

A quick digression – chicken, for me, is usually an automatic skip… something I tend to think of as a restaurant’s sop to calorie obsessives and the unadventurous.

Suffice it to say, the chicken on the bahktiari was anything but a sop.  It was as tender as properly cooked chicken flesh could possibly be, marinated in a delicious but unidentifiable mix of flavors (that the proprietors were altogether unwilling to divulge), and grilled to perfection. Truly chicken that could compete with lamb.

Which is not to suggest that the lamb was sub-par in any way.  Skewer grilled, and spiced similarly a traditional kefta, this hefty spike of ground meat satisfied completely.

As did it’s beef counterpart, a kubideh, listed as a sandwich and wrapped in a pita.  A large one, too… I’d guess the whole thing measured out at 10″ in length.  Onions, lettuce, and a tahini-esque ‘Jeddo sauce’ complete this tasty package.

We hope it’d be obvious by this point that we highly recommend Jeddo Kabab. Having operated for 8 years and counting (a lifetime in strip mall restaurant years), we’re probably not the only ones.

All of Jeddo Kabab’s offerings are halal.

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Posted in Iranian, Persian, Restaurant

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Little Dragons

Posted on March 11, 2010 by | 6 comments

Cuisine: Chinese
1508 Morse Road (Morse and Karl)
614.846.9114
Open 7 days a week. Sun-Thursday 11-10pm, Saturday & Sunday 11-11pm
Lunch specials 11-3pm, Dim Sum Saturday & Sunday 11-3pm

Click here to map it!

Like many Chinese restaurants Little Dragons has a split personality. On one side it has a busy take-out counter offering standard Chinese-American fare with Kung Pao, Orange chicken and General Tso representing. On the other side a more authentic Chinese menu with such exotic ingredients as sea cucumbers, conch and balsam pear (bitter gourd).

We opted for some of the more standard offerings from the Chinese menu: snow pea leaves (the menu calls them leeks) sauteed with garlic, spicy crispy tofu, and double fried cooked pork.

The double fried cooked pork, made with slices of pork belly, was unsurprisingly greasy but very flavorful. The belly was stir fried with carrot, cabbage, onion and bamboo shoots, and seasoned heavily with 5 spice powder and hot oil. Good with steamed rice.

I love snow pea leaves and am always pleased to see them on a menu. Little Dragons’ version seemed as much steamed as sauteed and with very little oil, lots of garlic and very fresh tasting. A good antidote to the pork belly.

The tofu with snow peas and pak choi was sound but unexceptional.

The only disappointment of the batch was the scallion pancake which was overly bread-y and insufficiently scallion-y. The typical scallion pancake should almost resemble an Indian paratha in texture with more scallions incorporated into and between the dough.

Little Dragons has a fairly large, partitioned dining room, decorated with fairly typical Chinese decorations and is very clean. The service on our visit was little lackluster as we spent some of the meal trying to flag down our server.  Nonetheless, the food arrived promptly and they were more than willing to answer questions.

Little Dragons serve a selection of bottled beer. If you are grabbing a takeout menu, be advised that there are two versions of it. One has the standard Chinese-American fare and the other includes the authentic dishes listed.

6 Comments

Posted in Asian, Chinese, Restaurant

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Arirang

Posted on March 11, 2010 by | 18 comments

Cuisine: Korean
1526 Bethel Road
614.459.8070
Open until 9pm

Click here to map it!

Arirang was first recommended to me by a Hungrywoolf reader (Thank you Molly). It has become my favorite place for Korean food, and I thought that it was still a wonderful secret until G.A. Benton from Columbus Alive wrote his humorous post about it this week.

From the outside you would never guess that this little grocery store has a restaurant in the  back. You order at the store’s front counter and then take your ticket to the open kitchen at the back of the store. Find a seat and wait to be signaled to when your food is ready. There is no table service so you go up to the counter and collect it yourself. The menu has recently been updated and is in English and Korean with a clear indication of which dishes are spicy. There are three price brackets ranging from $4.95 up to $8.95.

With its extremely bright fluorescent lighting and slightly sterile feel, Arirang is not somewhere to go for the atmosphere but what it lacks in ambience it makes up for with the food. It is also extremely clean, good value and you can do some shopping while you are there.

Your meal will come with the traditional banchan (a selection of small dishes, including the requisite kimchi.) and there is an urn of complimentary barley tea as well as a water cooler.

My favorite dishes tend to be the spicy ones but there are plenty of options for people who do not like spicy food. Some of the beef soups are very lightly seasoned. The dolsot bibimbap (mixed rice in a stone pot) is also not spicy and comes topped with lots of vegetables, sprouts and kimchi. The egg was fried with a soft yolk rather than the raw egg that is often served. As well as large steaming bowls of soup and noodles there are also stir fried dishes and I really enjoyed the stir fried pork.

The picture at the top of the post is kim-bap, a Korean roll (a vegetarian sushi style roll) and we have enjoyed the crispy pancakes both mung bean and seafood.

The soups are extremely hot in temperature and usually arrive at a rolling boil. If you are really hungry, order a pancake or a roll to eat while you wait, to prevent searing your mouth. Also a good idea not to go right before they close – it’s hard to eat steaming food in a hurry!

18 Comments

Posted in Asian, Grocery store, Korean, Restaurant

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Pho Hua Jennie Cali

Posted on March 10, 2010 by | 2 comments

CLOSED
Replaced by Erawan Thai

Cuisine: Vietnamese
3589 Refugee Rd

Click here to map it!

This restaurant, started by a Vietnamese family who recently moved from Cali(fornia), serves Pho (among other Vietnamese dishes), and is intended to be a tribute both to Hua (the restaurant left behind in Cali) and a relative named Jennie.  Ergo – Pho Hua Jennie Cali – got that?

PHJC has taken up shop in the old Pad Thai space on Refugee road.  Little has been changed outside of the kitchen, and given its oddball southeast Asian strip mall charm, that’s alright with us.

We started our meal with a selection from the khai vi (appetizers) – nem nuong cuon (‘pork on sugar cane stick rolls’).  All who tried it were enthused – the pork is grilled on thick sugarcane skewers (from which it presumably gains its sweetness) and forms the center of what is otherwise a fairly typical example of a quality Vietnamese spring roll.  Served with a hoisin-esque dipping sauce, this was a crowd pleaser.

Perhaps less exciting was the bun cha gio thit nuong (rice vermicelli with egg rolls and BBQ pork) – a bowl with greens topped with rice noodles, mini egg rolls, and pork, accompanied by a side of a sweet sauce for dressing the dish.   As you will see in upcoming reviews, this dish gets a test drive in almost every Vietnamese restaurant we try.  The egg rolls (a standard part of this dish) were deemed exceptional, but the pork, which was plentiful, was perhaps a bit lackluster flavor-wise and a bit on the tough side.

Unfortunately we doubled down on pork when ordering, and got the com thit nuong chien cha trung (steamed rice, BBQ pork, fried egg).  Same pork, similarly generous quantities, with some rice and a fried egg.

We’ve marked this place for a return trip – we’ve barely scratched the surface of the menu and sense that there is far more to it than what a single visit might reveal.  Service was extremely friendly and efficient – if you’re in the area, give it a shot.

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Posted in Asian, Restaurant, Vietnamese

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Los Galapagos

Posted on March 9, 2010 by | 5 comments


Cuisine: Ecuadorean & Colombian
378 S Grener Road
614.878.7770

Click here to map it!

Los Galapagos is a family run grocery store and restaurant specializing, as the name would suggest, in Ecuadorean food with some Colombian dishes thrown in for good measure. It is definitely off the beaten path, on Grener Avenue, south of Broad Street near the exit from 270 but well worth searching out. A couple of notes: It closes at 8.30pm so get there early if you want dinner and some of the Ecuadorean specialities (such as the hornado) are only available at the weekend.

It was a cold night and the morocho (a hot spiced milk drink made with dried corn kernals) was a very popular choice.

The food is all cooked to order and while we waited for our main dishes we snacked on some tostados (roasted corn kernals).

We also shared some empanadas. They had two varieties, chicken and cheese of which the cheese was most popular.  Taco Drew thought that the chicken tasted like pot pie.

And we couldn’t resist some plantain maduros.

Hunger staved, our eyes almost popped out of our heads when we saw the size of the main dishes. The prices make for an extremely good value. This was my chaulafan, an Ecuadorean take on chicken fried rice with ham , bacon and vegetables. It was really good and enough for two people.

CMH Gourmand and Taco Drew opted for the bandeja paisa, a Colombian platter with rice, avocado, ground meat, pork rind, egg, plantain, chorizo and arepa and beans (served separately). It was a feast of a platter and neither came anywhere close to finishing theirs.

The arepa was different to the ones we have had at trucks tasting more like grits than yellow cornmeal. The chorizo was particularly tasty and I was pleased to find that I could buy some to take home. Our friend had a soup with shrimp and plantains, not really a hit because the plantains gave it a peculiar texture. Although we didn’t try them on this visit we heard that the broth based soups are very good.

Like Restaurante Salvadoreno on the opposite side of town, Los Galapagos offers the chance to experience a different Latin American cuisine from the more common Mexican fare. A visit to one of these restaurants is a step beyond arm chair travel – when you walk in the door you almost feel like you have left Columbus. This is a no frills, yet charming, dining experience with satisfying, unpretentious food, generous portions and genial hosts.

5 Comments

Posted in Ecuadorean, Grocery store, Latin American, Restaurant

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