hopcat

so matt is like "quit pretending to be surprised about all the good beer here, you're from michigan for crying out loud" but i can't because i am still amazed!  until moving here, i did not realize the state of beer affairs here and i will not get over it for a while.

one of the best new additions to the local beer (and food) scene is hopcat which i hear opened in like august or something.  rumor has it they have a location in grand rapids too, which my sources tell me has better food and also a more expansive menu, but i am pretty happy with what we have here.



i have been there twice now and i can't get over their beer list.  my sources also tell me that even though they have approximately 972 taps, they are regularly running out of things.  oh i'm sorry, you only have 834 beers available to me?  WELL WOE IS ME.  run out of all the beer you want hopcat, i can find something to drink on this list.

the first time i went there was for one of their tap takeover events, which is when they have like pretty much every beer ever created by a brewery.  that one was for atwater so you really could not go wrong.  i tried the macaroni and cheese and it was delicious, although i was slightly disappointed that it appeared to just get slopped in a crock right before serving with some breadcrumbs sprinkled on top rather than being all oozy and baked in the crock.  but the other side of that coin is that the food literally came in like 30 seconds.

tonight i had the amazing experience of their insane happy hour deal, which is a delicious burger (any burger you want!) with delicious fries AND a delicious beer for... wait for it... SIX.  DOLLARS.  yes, you read that right.  oh wait, i only get to pick from one of your top 20 taps for my beer?  and those top 20 taps include atwater vanilla java porter and dragonmead final absolution?  ugh, you guys are so stingy.

i like how the place looks and feels too.  it is really open with two floors of window walls and they got their hands on some of the cool antique lights from the MSU buildings that are slowly getting remodeled and the lighting is good in general (lighting is a thing for me).  service is good and friendly and prompt and attentive.  it can get busy, but it has never felt too crowded when i have been there.  of course granny has only been for dinner so who knows what it is like at like 1 am.

i also hear that they have a great brunch which involves a bloody mary bar so you know i will be spending a lot of quality time here in the future.

tavern 109

annette and kevin came to visit today to bring me some furniture and help me attach my tv to the wall with one of those arm thingies so i can pretend i'm a real grown up with a tv over my fireplace.  we wanted to eat before trying to do any manual labor and i thought it would be nice to kill 2 birds with one stone (brunch + cocktails) so i suggested tavern 109 in williamston.

it's one of these new american type places with the whole wood floor/exposed brick/big windows things going on.  i enjoy that kind of a vibe.

 infused liquors

the cocktails were great.  kevin and i got the bacon infused bourbon manhattan and it was good (i did think it was a little strange that it came on the rocks but that's probably for the best at 12 pm anyway).  annette's bloody mary was delicious and had a bunch of nice snacks on a stick (cheese, pepperoni, olives, pickles, celery, etc.).

annette and kevin got the chili and really liked it.  then annette and i got the ham and cheese sandwich which is basically a croque monsieur on white bread and it was delicious.  we also got the macaroni and cheese and it was fine but nothing to write home about.  kevin got the shrimp po boy and he ate the whole thing so i'm assuming he liked it.  worth noting is that kevin made a fuss about not wanting brunch and they let him order off the full menu so that's nice.

(mac + cheese) + (ham + cheese)

service was ok.  the server didn't come by very often and we had to wait a while to get things like cream and sugar for coffee, the bill, etc.  maybe they were understaffed?  we were in the second room so we couldn't really tell how busy it was in the front room.

this is like a NORMAL RESTAURANT TAP LIST here!!!

overall i think this is a decent brunch option although it is a bit far from lansing.  the menu included both whitefish dip and chicken and waffles which made me happy even though i didn't order any of them.  and there was an amazing draft list but that seems to just be the norm around here.

golden harvest

i just moved to lansing, and here i am about to write my very first food blog post in lansing, and i am also about to make myself the most hated person in lansing.  golden harvest is where everyone tells you to eat in lansing if you ask (and even if you don't).  it has 4.5 stars on yelp.  and it is horrible in every way possible.

actually, that's not really fair.  the food is decent, if you are ok with a healthy amount of oil and grease on your plate.  but the flavor is there.

however, the food is the only think that even comes close to being acceptable about this place.  let me count the horrors...

1. the staff.  not nice, ranging on a spectrum from "apathetic" to "mean."  which is strange, because there are signs everywhere saying "be nice or leave."  but the staff doesn't have to be nice apparently?
2. the ambience.  first of all it is loud as fuck.  yes i know i am a grandma but seriously, i don't think even the youngest eaters are that happy about having some ska/punk noise (honestly it was so loud i couldn't even tell what it was even on top of my embarrassing lack of pop culture knowledge) breaking their eardrums before they have even had their coffee.  there were all kinds of "kitschy" (i guess) toys and crap everywhere collecting dust, just like rotted out copies of old ren and stimpy comic books and board games that had been sitting in the sun since 1982 and non-functioning magic 8 balls and shit.  i guess that is to keep you busy for the hours you spend waiting to eat.
3. the hours you have to spend waiting to eat.
4. the obvious health code violations everywhere.  worst was watching a waitress carry toast with her bare hands from the front counter, through the restaurant, into the kitchen.  but less bad than that were many other things including the long hair within inches of food without hair nets, the layers of congealed blackness on the floors behind the counter, and the overall dinginess of the entire restaurant... the whole place looks like it needs a long bath in a vat of oxy-clean.
5. the coffee.  weak.
6. the service.  this is different from the not-nice staff.  first of all we waited AN HOUR AND FORTY FIVE MINUTES from the TIME WE ORDERED before we got our food.  this was AFTER waiting FORTY MINUTES outside in the freezing cold to even sit down.  ok, you have no space inside to wait, i have to wait outside, i get it.  but to have to wait TWO HOURS AND TWENTY FIVE MINUTES from the time of arrival to get food, with most of that time spent AFTER you sat down?  give me a fucking break.  but that is not all that is wrong with the service.  not by a long shot.  examples:
• the waiter asking if we wanted more coffee, and when we said no, he took our coffee mugs away (BEFORE WE EVEN GOT OUR FOOD).  what the fuck?
• ordering an "appetizer" which came with all of the rest of the food... an hour and forty five minutes after we sat down*
• getting chased out of the restaurant after we did not tip (sorry, you forfeited your tip at an hour and a half of waiting for food) and being yelled at in the parking lot by a waitress for not tipping*

i get it.  lansing is not some big booming metropolis like cincinnati (ha), you have to take what you can get in terms of good food.  but i could get this food in my own kitchen without the attitude, the wait, and the likelihood of salmonella.  it is above average for diner food, but if you are someone who knows how to throw in some artichokes and red peppers into your omelet or some mascarpone into your french toast, you too can work this level of kitchen magic.

i look forward to my future meals at other lansing dining establishments and i am sure that whatever is missing in menu creativity will be more than made up for in oh say GETTING MY FOOD IN LESS THAN AN HOUR AND FORTY FIVE MINUTES AFTER SITTING DOWN AT A TABLE.

so hi lansing, i'm liz.  nice to meet you... those of you who will still speak to me after this post anyway.

*these events were recounted to me by my friends as i was actually not present due to the fact that i had to leave at 2:00 p.m., before the food even came, because when i went to breakfast at 12:30 p.m. at a diner in a cold, underpopulated, mid-sized midwestern city i thought that would give me enough time to actually eat.  silly me!

forkheartknife

it has been a long time since i have been this excited about a place and a post. i am so excited i don't even know where to start. we have a lot of things coming together here. i will break it down.

forkheartknife

forkheartknife is a new catering kitchen and occasionally a casual restaurant on main street just south of liberty. i first heard about it from this soapbox article via wine me, dine me.

the kitchen

the minute i finished reading the article i was totally excited. fresh, interesting, cheap food in over the rhine = awesome. the story of how co-owners sierra and leah decided to start their kitchen = emotional. the innovative, dynamic style of the kitchen = intriguing. i had to know more.

sierra's blog

my next stop from the article was the forkheartknife blog. i read the entire blog in a couple of hours. i was so fascinated that i started in on the clean plate club blog, sierra's former blog. yes, i am a stalker. i was just totally into the awesome photographs and even more so, sierra's writing style. here, i will give you some examples:

i flipped through my recipes and found this tart recipe (bon appetit?). they are beautiful and when leah and i did our taste testing i was jumping around yelling YUM with my mouth full and the chills on my arms. a sure sign that we had struck gold. this one is vegetarian with asparagus, piquillo peppers and goat cheese baked in an egg custard with a sprinkle of spanish paprika.

i make a lazy pickle, or “quickle” (because i like making combo words, too). i don’t have a granny to teach me the fine nuances of canning, and so i get stuff in a jar with a tight lid and keep everything in the fridge for safety. for veggies like cukes, peppers, okra, onions, green beans, softer veggies: pack a jar with the vegetable, heat the pickling brine on the stove and pour it over the jar after it comes to a boil, making sure that the seasonings are equally distributed in each jar. the lids go on while things are still really hot and that usually leaves me hearing the POP of the jars sealing. things cool down and they go in the fridge for up to a month. i love them in the first week, usually still nice and crunchy and fresh tasting. not that they get less crunchy, but its fun to taste how things change while they are hanging around longer…

little known fact: long ago, before i even started culinary school, i lived in providence, rhode island for 6 months. while i was there, i worked at a bakery, as a barista and counter person. i would have to go in at 4 in the morn and dust all the flour off the glass display shelves, arrange the bread, scones, muffins, cookies, etc. and i fell in love with food then. that is when it happened. walking in there on a cold morning when it was almost impossible to get out of bed, and having it be hot and steamy from the ovens.. the glass fogged up… the smell… romantic as hell. i gained about 20 pounds in those 6 months, eating that bread and marveling at its perfection.

i swear i got the chills when i put this bite in my mouth. i wanted to do something bacon wrapped for this party (how is it ever wrong?). and i remembered jenna raving about this bacon wrapped date thing she’d had at a wine dinner at dunham cellars.. stuffed with manchego made for the perfect combo! manchego cheese is my favorite, its spanish and its got a great, smooth, nutty flavor. with the sweet date, the nuttiness grounds the bite, the crispness and saltiness and fat of the bacon adding everything else you would ever want! EATING FOOD IS SO AMAZING!!

the combination of straightforward, to the point descriptions plus the uncontainable excitement for food itself and feeding other people that comes through in every sentence just got me. that plus she makes pickles!

pizza night

a quick segue into pizza night. one final reason i became fully obsessed with forkheartknife. pizza night is a thing that used to happen last summer. a group of guys who are all amazing cooks would get together and make this amazing pizza (homemade everything... dough, pizza sauce, sausage, you name it they made it) on thursday nights in the take the cake space.

the pizzas were an absolute revelation. i could not get enough of them. they would make seven kinds of pizza, plus two appetizers (usually some variations on bruschetta... my favorite was the tuna paste mashed up with fresh garlic... yum). occasionally there was a sorbet which i never seemed to be able to get my hands on.

you would show up at like 7, pay $10, bring all the wine and beer of your own you wanted, and just hang out and chat and eat. the appetizers came out first and then one by one, the pizzas. it was just one pizza at a time so you would kind of snack all evening while you drank and met new friends. the food was amazing, straight up skilled kitchen creativity, and it was also just such an experience going there and eating awesome food and talking to people who loved food and relaxing and having fun, all while knowing it could not last forever or probably even much longer.

pizza night was so good that i vowed to myself i would never breathe a word about it on this blog. i only told maybe five or six of my friends about it. i never even took pictures of it (and i always take pictures). it was so awesome and felt so tenuous and fleeting that i was scared it might get overrun with people and disappear forever. and then at the end of the summer it was over. now it is just a memory for the people who were able to experience it. however, rumor has it that the pizza night guys are hard at work developing their new idea of opening a full on restaurant. i am very excited about this but i know it will not be the same.

here is the point of me talking about pizza night: on one of sierra's blogs, i found this post. she had been to pizza night! and then i found this post. and this post. and this post. and this post. she had made the sorbet at pizza night!!!

after that i was officially obsessed. i had to meet this girl and eat her food.

sunday brunch

a bit more internet stalking and i learned that forkheartknife was open last week for thursday dinner and sunday brunch. they are just getting started and don't know until that week when they will be open. so they post it on facebook and twitter. if that is too hard for you then fine, more food for me.

anyway i had to go asap so i rounded up erin and we went for brunch. we sipped coffee outside while waiting a few short minutes for a table and then we decided we had to try one of everything on the menu. it was wonderful and everything i hoped it could be. we ate some delicious things:

fruit gazpacho and lemon bread pudding with raspberry sauce

bacon and collard green frittata and spiced roasted potatoes with chimichurri and red pepper romesco

if those photos don't sell you then there is nothing i can say that will. the food was awesome. fresh, simple, to the point, and very flavorful. the bread pudding especially impressed me. i am not a big sweet breakfast person and it was perfect. the lemon custard (was it custard?) was tart and rich without being too sweet. the raspberry sauce was deeply flavored and balanced the lemon perfectly. the bread itself was thick and chewy and totally able to handle the strong flavors of the lemon and raspberry. so. damn. good.

on top of all that we got to meet sierra and leah who are just as awesome in person as they seem on the internet. sierra even gave us a couple of muffins which we munched on later that afternoon. they were moist, tasty carrot muffins with big fat juicy raisins and pineapple chunks inside. delicious.

thank you forkheartknife for living up to all my wildest internet stalker dreams! i am excited to see how this place develops. you should get there as soon as humanly possible, but don't forget to make sure they are open first.

mayberry

i know everybody else has already blogged about it, but mayberry is fucking good. i took a break from my insipid downtown job and went last week with my coworkers. we tried pretty much the whole menu (except sadly the sloppy josh which they were already out of by the time we got there) and there was not a miss in the bunch. i personally had the burger... a 3/4 mass of juicy delicious angus beef cooked to a perfect medium rare sent over the top by a sweet and tangy onion compote, ridiculously thick and awesome bacon, and a poached egg. damn.

maggie's cobb salad, as seen through my crappy cell phone camera

it's tiny inside but the decor is cute and the service is friendly. the best part though is the prices. my insanely huge/awesome/artery clogging burger was only $8, and that included a small side salad. i was so full from this meal that i did not eat dinner and that. never. happens. i am serious, so much food. it's byob so if you want to make a nicer meal of it, you can. can't possibly get any better, right? well yes it can... they do brunch.

take the cake is now open for sunday brunch!

as you and my many japanese stalkers know, i love take the cake (read my post and a bunch of weird japanese porn links here). well guess what... that damn place somehow just got even better. they are now open for brunch!

from a facebook message from @geekjames:

"Looking for a great Sunday brunch? Starting this coming Sunday, Take the Cake will open from 9am-2pm to serve a fresh blackboard brunch menu!

Tuesday's fresh lunch menu at Take the Cake:

• Autumn French Onion Soup,
• Brazilian Black Bean Soup (veggie),
• Vietnamese Hoagie (Banh mi, veggie),
• Flank Steak Hoagie w Red Pepper Aioli,
• Spicy Amish Chicken Salad,
• Broccoli Cheddar Quiche

Tuesday's secret word is "LOCAL". Say the word "LOCAL" when you place your order & we'll give you $1 off your fresh Tuesday lunch entree!)

Don't forget to think about cakes & pies you'll be needing for the holidays!

We also cater anything from boxed lunches to multi-course dinners, on or off-site, always fresh & flavorful!"

labor day in chicago

i haven't really felt like writing about food lately. trust me readers, i have been eating it. i just have not been in the mood to blog about it for some reason. i know this is going to sound crazy but i just haven't felt like writing about food much lately, or even just blogging at all.

i think part of it is that i am just completely addicted to spending every free moment possible outside enjoying this amazing weather. why sit in front of a computer when it is so beautiful outside, and i know it's not going to last long? plus i have just been obsessed recently with cramming as much fun into my life as possible. blogging can be fun but not as much fun as like oh say going out, eating, drinking, and meeting an entire bar/restaurant/party full of new friends. which i have been doing a lot of lately.

one of the many things i have done for fun lately is go to chicago to visit my friends for labor day. we had an awesome weekend and of course it was totally food focused. here are some pictures and stories from my trip.

white sox game with mike and lavine. my dad and his brothers are crazy lifelong white sox fans and somehow i had never been to a game. mike happened to be in town for the weekend too so i gave him a call to see if he wanted to meet up and he was like "oh i'm on my way to the white sox game and i have two extra tickets behind home plate, do you guys want to come?" hell yes! it was awesome, although i have to say the food sucked. all they had were like hot dogs and corn on the cob. boring. but a totally fun time anyway.

lavine and i stopped by the most amazing whole foods ever to do a wine tasting and we saw these little pastries in the counter. i got excited because diego is in the process of creating a chicago pastry empire with eric the crazy french chef and renee, so i thought maybe they had hit the jackpot and gotten a contract with whole foods. but no, this is their competition. oh well.

dinner at the publican. from everything i was hearing and reading, it's one of the best new restaurants in chicago (and probably anywhere). we had ridiculous oysters, amazing mussels, unbelievable roast chicken, over the top summer sausage, and life altering belgian beers. seriously, if you are in chicago, eat here... unless you are a vegetarian.

lavine decided to make brunch for some of our friends so to go with her delicious spread, i had to make butter. we split it into two batches because there was so much of it. it's fascinating to me how different each cream i use comes out. this one was very rich and yellow and did not have much buttermilk. we used a gray salt with herbs to season it and it was the shit.

here is the awesome brunch. lavine is an amazing cook and you will never leave her house hungry. from top right: roasted potatoes with onions and thyme, chicken sausage, tomato/spinach/yellow pepper omelette, and a roasted poblano pepper salsa. the bread was from panera. she was going to bake her own but it was like midnight the night before and she was researching recipes and i told her not to be crazy.

after watching the us open all day we took a stroll over to pollo campero and brought home snacks which we ate out on the balcony with wine. yes, we are super klassy. now that i think about it, pollo campero was the perfect meal choice because the first time lavine had it was when we went back in 2005 when she came to visit me in new york and we went to the us open. we somehow managed to sneak a whole fried chicken meal for four with sides in and ate the entire thing while we watched roger federer kick people's asses.

whenever i go to chicago and we go to sam's, i always call my mom to see if she wants me to pick her up some grappa. i hate grappa but my mom loves it and she says the one i get there is the best. well so we went to sam's and i called my mom and she started laughing. "guess what, we are coming to chicago tomorrow!" so we met up with her and my stepdad for brunch at the bongo room. i had the blt benedict and it was damn tasty.

after spending most of my life in michigan and new york, it's really hard for me to live in a place where there are no large bodies of water around. i just really miss being able to hop in the car or on a train and be at a beach within an hour or two. my one request during this trip was to spend some time by the water so we hung out at the beach and at millennium park for most of monday.

it was weirdly foggy, almost like the clouds were falling out of the sky.

it was also really humid, so we got really sweaty even though it wasn't actually that hot out. fortunately we found this little place in the park to stick our feet in the water. lavine quickly got over her fear of foot fungus when she realized how good it felt. later on she began referring to it as "the best free pedicure of my life."

we went to check out the deck on the new addition to the art institute, which is free and you can just walk to from this bridge from the park. that chair/sculpture was way more comfortable than you would think and once lavine sat her ass down in it she wasn't getting up any time soon, so i took the opportunity to get some interesting photos, like this one...

...and this one...

...and this one.

i just never get tired of the bean for some reason.

this face fountain thing though, i think i am tired of it. i get that kids like to run in it and all but let's be honest, it's kind of creepy.

we were meeting diego for dinner for his birthday so we decided to get him a card and a bag filled with cheap embarrassing drug store crap. but did you know that cheap embarrassing drug store crap is actually really not that cheap? we are poor so we decided to just take pictures of ourselves with cheap embarrassing drug store crap instead.

hahaha.

the birthday boy reacts to his gift.

diego's birthday dinner was an amazing spread of deliciousness from lao sze chuan. we actually had a bunch of dishes besides this but we already ate them by the time i remembered to take a picture. this meal was awesome and a great way to end the weekend.

orchids at palm court

emily wrote about it a couple years ago when we were doing our joint brunch posts (long time readers of this blog will remember me talking about how the whole reason i started up blogging again after moving to cincinnati was because emily moved away and there was nobody around to blog about brunch), but i just wanted to let you all know that yes, the brunch at orchids at palm court is still awesome.

the decor

the first thing you need to know if you are eating here is that there is free valet parking. do not be a sucker like me and pay to park. they will park your car for free. the next thing you need to know is that at $30, this brunch is a steal. i am serious. you will not get more bang for your buck anywhere in cincinnati, and not just for brunch. think about it, you will probably spend around $15-20 for brunch at most other places, and the quality is not going to be nearly as good (at most places anyway), and you are not going to have an all you can eat buffet of the best shit ever plus all the delicious coffee and freshly squeezed juice you can drink.

the ceiling

when alex and lina were here visiting me last month, they wanted brunch. and not just any brunch. "take us to the best brunch in town," they demanded. ask no more, ravenous asian brunch fiends! obviously there was only one place i could take them. yeah, you guessed it.

the asians

i like this place because of the atmosphere. well that's not the only thing but it's one of them. it's total old school art deco, lots of dark wood and plants and the ceiling is amazing. i don't know how anyone else feels about this but i think although it is a nice place, you do not have to dress up. you can just wear whatever the hell you want. that is one thing i love about cincinnati, you can wear whatever you want whenever you want, and you will still probably look better than at least one other person no matter where you are.

first course

the other thing that i like about this place is the food. now normally i am not a huge buffet person. call me crazy but i am not a big fan of eating old cold sneezed on bacteria laden food drowning in oil. but this buffet is not like that. they have juicy and delicious rare roast beef, sliced fresh for you at a carving station with mustard, au jus, horseradish, and mayo. they have huge perfectly poached shrimp, precracked tender sweet crab claws, creamy whitefish salad, and three kinds of smoked fish (salmon and i think trout and something else, i can't remember). they have an omelet chef with all the toppings you could want. they have both eggs benedict and salmon benedict, and the eggs are actually still runny somehow even though they are pre-prepared.

me and lina's dessert course (there was also a second course in there... i forgot to take a picture)

they have the best bacon and sausage and ham ever. there is a whole table of salads, both fruit and vegetable, plus a charcuterie tray. there is another whole table of breads, including servatii's pretzel bread sticks and croissants and pastries. there is also a full spread of savory foods (portobello ravioli, veal cheeks, four cheese risotto, and buttermilk fried chicken were just a few of the options on the day we were there). and there are two tables covered in mini desserts... tarts, little cakes, bread pudding, chocolate covered strawberries, pots du creme, eclairs, everything.

alex's dessert course... he is smart

the ridiculous thing about all this selection is that it is all. good. i am not kidding you. you cannot go wrong. everything is delicious and hot (or cold) and fresh and perfectly prepared. i do not know how they do it but i don't ask questions, i just eat. like i said, this is an amazing deal for $30. the service can be a little hit or miss but you are getting your own food so if you have to wait a bit for juice or whatever, who cares. i absolutely love this brunch.

p.s. one awesome final detail about orchids: they also do an afternoon tea on saturdays which i have never tried but is definitely on my list.

grand finale

for emma's birthday, she wanted to have brunch at her favorite brunch spot... grand finale in glendale. i had been to grand finale before, but just for dessert, so i was excited to try their brunch since i had heard so much about it. many cincinnati natives claim that it is the best brunch in town.

we made a reservation so that we would not have to deal with long wait times. fyi, you can only make a reservation there if you have at least 8 people. this was great for us because when we got there, they were quoting wait times of an hour.

the party crew

the atmosphere and the crowd were exactly the same as my first visit... quirky and old. mostly older people or families, almost everyone was dressed up (but nobody was stylish), and the decoration of the room we were in (and every other room) was flowery, 80s-ish wallpaper, random knickknacks and pastel colored paintings, and lots of curtains/doilies/tablecloths/etc. to me, it's ugly. to emma, it's nostalgic and cute. it's all a matter of perspective.

i don't care how ugly a restaurant looks though as long as the food is good. unfortunately, grand finale was not up to the task. i think a big part of the problem is that their brunch is a buffet. i normally avoid buffets like the plague (except for the amazing brunch at the palm court which you can read about on emily's blog) because food that sits out just is not usually that good.

grand finale's food is just not that good. they have a respectable spread (multiple meats, biscuits and gravy, little quiches, eggs benedict, fruits, lots of desserts, etc.) but nothing really stands out as actually being good. there were sausages floating in vats of lukewarm oil. the eggs benedict were completely cooked to the point of being hard and dried out. the sausage gravy was like thick paste. the crepes filled with various toppings were kind of tough. the cinnamon rolls were dry. you can check out the brunch menu here if you want.

my plate... looks better than it tasted (and it doesn't even look that good)

other things were ok. the bacon was crisp but not overcooked. the cheesy grits were yummy. the potato hash was pretty tasty. the dessert spread was excellent and delicious (little mini tarts and eclairs). fyi, if you want pancakes or waffles, you have to order those to your table. i didn't try any of those and nobody really talked about them making me think they were just ok.

the service was average. our server was nice but clearly had too many tables. we had to wait forever to even order coffee and we had to keep asking to get it and our water glasses refilled.

one good thing about grand finale (if you are into this kind of thing) is that it is very family friendly. we had two babies at our table, which meant that we had to kind of eat in shifts and people kept coming and going and moving around and passing babies. nobody minded this at all, which was nice.

emma's mom, emma's baby, and emma. they love grand finale.

the price? $15.95, which included a glass of juice. coffee was $1 for as much as you wanted and mimosas/bloody marys were $2.50. i had coffee so my total with tax and tip ended up being around $22 i think.

this was too much for a brunch that i did not really enjoy. i don't mind because it was for emma's birthday but i would not go back on my own. it was fun to see my friends and celebrate emma's birthday, but it was not relaxing and the food was not very good. the place felt very chaotic with people getting up and sitting down and servers running around like chickens with their heads cut off. although i still think grand finale has good desserts, i will not go back for brunch (unless someone else is paying of course... haha).

is anyone still out there?

sorry for my miserable lack of posts lately. i'm not dead, just super busy and exhausted. i spent the weekend in detroit for the final four, where i watched my spartans kick uconn's ass on saturday only to get completely, embarrassingly destroyed by the tarheels on monday.

my awesome friend lavine got us last minute tickets on ebay and we had what i can really only describe as by far the most amazing sports event experience of my life. watching my team play in the final four in our home state? unbelievable. this even beats the time we snuck an entire pollo campero fried chicken dinner for four (for the two of us) into the us open and gnawed on drumsticks and plantains while watching roger federer kick everyone's ass.

this was one of the best nights of my entire life. yes we were in the nosebleeds.

the game on saturday night was beyond description. the energy in ford field was amazing, 2/3 of the 72,000+ fans were there for the spartans and we were all loud as hell. i screamed so much that i lost my voice and got lightheaded. it was so much fun. monday was another story but at least we made it to the championship game!

my metro detroit food highlights of the weekend:

• lou's deli in southfield. get the counterman's treat: "Corned beef, Swiss cheese, cole slaw, Russian dressing on an onion roll." you can thank me in cash. i accept paypal.
• the breakfast club in farmington. get anything. it's all awesome. go for the tomatoes au gratin as a side. yummo! (sorry, that just slipped out. i promise it will never happen again.)
• vicente's cuban cuisine downtown. best cuban sandwich outside of miami (other than zingerman's although, to be fair, vicente's is more authentic). maduros that are so perfect you just marvel at them. amazing cuban food in detroit? yes my friends, the dream is now a reality.
• la marsa mediterranean cuisine in farmington hills. the detroit area la shish restaurants used to serve the best hummus i ever tasted in my life and chicken with this dipping sauce that was literally crack mixed with garlic. for years they were having problems with tax fraud and then rumor spread that they were sending money to terrorists in lebanon. thousands and thousands of metro detroit residents ignored the problems and continued to pour their hard earned dollars directly into funding al qaeda simply because they could not live without this hummus. then la shish got shut down in 2008 and the city mourned. but no worries, the food carries on at la marsa, which somehow got its hands on all the la shish recipes.
  
• jamaican curry, rice and peas, coleslaw, and lemon cake cooked by lavine and cindy and my mom's roast rosemary chicken. good luck finding that, suckas!
  

it was an awesome food and sports weekend. however, i barely slept. we drank bottle after bottle of wine, talked 24-7, and went to bed no earlier than 2 am every night. i also visited my family and tried to keep up with work email/voicemail. so it was crazy.

then i got back to work on wednesday and the shit was hitting the fan all over the place. hence no time to blog. i promise i will do better. don't leave me, readers!

melt

last weekend the stars aligned and i finally got my wish for brunch at melt! i met up with jeff (who has a blog but it is anonymous so i do not know if i am allowed to link to it here) to celebrate him moving to my hood and us being awesome blogger buddies and we talked all things cincinnati and ate delicious brunch. yay!

your gateway to northside brunch awesomeness

melt, if you have not been there, has an awesome vibe. jeff said, "i don't know if i am cool enough to be here." as for me, i am pretty much not cool enough to be anywhere so i don't let that bother me. i just nerd it up wherever i happen to be. melt is in northside and has lots of fun local art, chalkboards all over announcing specials and regular items, big windows letting in lots of light, plants, etc.

jeff had: Vegan Southern Sausage Melt $8.75 – One big fluffy vegan biscuit sandwich with a vegan sausage patty, smokey "cheeze" & chives

jeff's food... thumbs up!

i had: Lover's Fiesta in a Basket $8.75 – One poached free-range egg with fresh spinach, tomatoes, onion, jalapenos, cilantro, & white cheddar in a multigrain toast "basket"

my food... thumbs up! (thumbs not pictured)

both were delicious. well i think his was... he devoured it before i could even think to demand a taste. you also get a side with it. he got fruit (grapes, pineapple, i can't remember what else) and i got roasted potatoes. it was a huge serving and they were perfectly roasted... dark brown and almost caramelized on the outside, while soft and hot on the inside, with lots of rosemary. mmmm. i also got a huge as many refills as you want coffee, which is required if i am going to be even slightly coherent through a late morning/early afternoon weekend meal.

i could hang out here all day and probably would if that did not make me seem creepy

note to vegetarians: melt is ridiculously veggie friendly. they have all kinds of fake meat. probably one of your best bets in the city.

as if a fun atmosphere, great service, and tasty food were not enough, melt serves brunch on both saturday and sunday! what more can you ask for? well, i guess really awesome meals at times other than brunch. oh wait, they have that too! ok, i'll stop. but only if you promise to go eat at melt.