surly uncertainty about crab cakes...

Betty and I decided to meet up with Columbus Yogurt and his wife at Surly Girl Saloon one of our favorite bars in Columbus. At SGS I decided to expand my ordering horizon. The reason for the expansion was most likely due to a series of conversations with CY about pizzas and an on-going pizza feud between his preference for Figlio's pizza over mine for SGS. But this is not a story about pizza -- it's about a bear expanding his taste palette at one his favorite joints and the tragic tastes that would follow. Betty and I both ventured beyond our favorite italian sausage pizza and turkey sandwich with poblano mayo to try their BLT avocado and their special for the day which was crab cakes with poblano mashed potatoes and corn. Looking at the pictures below it's strange to think that food that looks so delicious would be so underwhelming.


B. L. T.& A


crab cake special

To make a long story short - the crab cakes were bland and had a rather slimy consistency accompanied with even more bland uninspired mashed potatoes. Betty's sandwich was lacking in quantity the tasty ingredients promised by the menu - namely the A - avocados. CY suffered the same fate. In general the lack of taste in the food could be made up in SGS's fine selection of beers but today would not be that day as we waited with empty cups for over 3o mints and no one offered to take our order for drinks. This was most likely due to our waiter needing to cash out but we really wanted to stay and have some more drinks...but felt uninspired to have to work to order them. The disappointment at SGS and El Vaquero recently have taken me by surprise -- and again bring to the paw-front the notion of taste bud evolution and or critical mass consumption. For me in the immediate future I will most likely take a break from dining out in Columbus hibernating to the kitchen until my taste buds make rhyme or reason of the recent misadventures.

cholesterolking gets a year older.

If you want to roll with Betty and Umberto look for us at Marcellas from 4:30-6PM and then Surly Girl Saloon from 6:00ish and beyond.

home Surly home...

Betty and I have been on a kick of eating at home during the week and then trying new restaurants on the weekend to get outside of our comfort zone and to explore new places and tastes. This goal lasted about 3 months so Thursday's date night with Betty at Surly Girl Saloon was a homecoming of sorts for us. Surly Girl is one of our favorite restaurants in Columbus for a number of reasons including their excellent beer selection, their sausage pizza and their roasted turkey sandwich. Sure I could go on about how Betty and I fell in love in the shortnorth and really made the bars and restaurants there our stomping yards but I won't. It had been some time since we had been back to Surly Girl and as we placed our drink orders Betty and I wondered if our favorites could still hold their own after all the complex and new tastes we had experienced over the past 2-3 months.


roasted turkey sandwich with bacon and poblano mayo on wheat with fritos

traditional italian sausage pizza

Not sure what we were worried about. The food was as delicious as we remembered it. The turkey sandwich has gone through some changes in the past year and a half including less turkey actually on the sandwich and a vendor change that we were pretty bummed about last year. I am not sure if SGS switched vendors again but the sandwich tasted better than the last time we ordered it. The sandwich is served on toasted wheat with bacon and a delicious poblano mayonaise. I am not a sandwich person but I truly love this sandwich. As for the pizza - I think it's strange how much I love their traditional Italian sausage pizza especially considering all my other favorite pizza joints across Columbus but simply put I love it and that's all i have to say about it. It's comforting to know that no matter what new places and tastes cross my palette that at the end of the day I can still count on our timeless favorites and reminisce about Columbus and why we call it our home.