and the worst restaurant in cincinnati award goes to... cadillac ranch

before i begin this post, in the interest of full disclosure, i would like to let you all know that i am 15 hours, 18 minutes, and 32... 31... 30... seconds away from running in the flying pig half marathon. this is the first time i have ever run in any race other than middle school track meets, let alone a long race, and that combined with the weekend's forecast of all rain, all the time, kind of has me on edge. add in an extra level of personal and work stresses which i have had going on and you have super crabby liz just itching for a fight.

so it is with total bitchy relish, to a degree that is slightly undeserved (if i am being totally honest), that i am about to tear cadillac ranch a new one. but i figured you guys would enjoy going along for the ride. and it's not like anyone is going to feel sorry for them.

most of my awesome running group at the entrance to the flying pig expo

i do not eat at cadillac ranch. i went there once when it first opened and ate the blandest, most boring deep fried array of overpriced crap you can imagine. the patio was nice but the service sucked and the food tasted like deep fried cardboard. the drinks were overpriced and the crowd (juiced up meat heads and orange colored anorexics) freaked me out. i didn't swear it off completely until the whole midpoint fiasco back in september (recap: cadillac ranch backed out of midpoint music festival on the day of the festival and refused to allow bands to play at the very last minute, with no apology or explanation other than that it wasn't bringing in enough people as their usual crotch grinding, beer spilling type dj music).

i already thought the place sucked and although i'm definitely not the world's biggest music fan, i just thought that was bullshit and swore i would never spend another penny there.

fast forward to last night. i was with some of my running friends and we were planning to have dinner at rock bottom after the flying pig expo. we got there and the wait was an hour and 15 minutes for eight of us. we were starving and we considered our options. cadillac ranch was suggested. i voiced my dissent but i didn't want to be That Girl Who Ruins It For Everyone so i agreed to just go there when it seemed that is what the group wanted to do.

things started off promisingly. we were seated immediately when we arrived at about 7:00 and our server brought us the drinks we requested. we put in our food orders (several appetizers and entrees for everyone). the appetizers came after about a half hour or so and were large and tasty. we chatted and enjoyed ourselves in the slowly cooling spring evening weather.

then everything went to shit.

it got to be about 8:15 and we began wondering where our food was. up to that point, we hadn't minded waiting because it was a nice night and we had good company. however, we were really hungry and we all planned to go to bed early to start resting up for the race on sunday. we had all had it drilled into our heads that friday night was the most important night for sleep (since we would be too excited and stressed to sleep well on saturday). our waitress came by right then and let us know that she had messed up and forgotten to take a requested item off of julie's pizza. julie said that was fine. the waitress said, "your order will be right up."

this is how i look when i get really hungry

about ten minutes later, some food appeared. what came was one salad and one burger with fries. we should have had six more meals coming. after about another ten minutes, we encouraged the lucky recipients to eat their food and we began looking for our waitress. she was nowhere to be seen. jenny went looking for her.

at about 8:45 the waitress reappeared and announced some bad news. "the kitchen forgot to make the rest of your food. i had to put the burger and salad on a different ticket but for some reason they don't have your other order." she was unable to tell us when, or even if, we were going to get the rest of our food and she disappeared again.

at this point things were getting bad. we were extremely hungry and thirsty (she was no longer bringing us water regularly). on top of that, the sun had set and we were really cold. soon the waitress came back with the manager. the manager explained that our order had gotten messed up but that they were making our food right now. "how long will it take? 10 or 15 minutes?" asked steve. "oh, less than that, and it is all on me," assured the manager.

at 9:00 a waiter arrived with three things: the two appetizers we had already had, and the burger and fries that had been eaten. "where is the rest of it?" we demanded. "i don't know," said the waiter. when he realized that this food was not what we were waiting for, he began walking away with the food. "wait, wait," we begged. "we will eat it. we don't care. we're starving."

a couple at another table was looking on hungrily. we found out they had been waiting for their food just as long and had not even gotten appetizers. we pleaded with the waiter to give the food to them. instead of giving any of us the food, the waiter walked away with it.

by this point we were starting to go a little crazy. a homeless woman walked up and asked for money. "no, sorry," we said. "please?" she asked. "look we're hungry too!" moaned nathalie. the poor woman slinked away. it was horrible but hilarious. nathalie felt so bad that she later gave the woman money.

just before nathalie bitched out an innocent homeless woman

at about 9:15 no food had appeared. we could not wait any longer. we were famished and we had to eat and go to bed. our success in sunday's race depended on us eating and then getting to bed as soon as possible. i went to the bathroom, where the poor bathroom attendant (who i refused to tip) made the mistake of asking me how my evening was going and got an angry tirade in return.

as we were leaving the manager reappeared. he tried to get us to stay but we refused. at this point, in a show of grandiosity, he urged us to take two $50 gift cards. yes. two $50 gift cards are supposed to appease eight ravenous, parched, exhausted, anxiety ridden people who have been waiting for shitty food for two hours and fifteen minutes.

i reached my breaking point. i was really proud of myself for keeping my cool for so long but it was more than i could take. $12.50 worth of shitty food at your joke of a restaurant at some future date is supposed to compensate me for two hours and fifteen minutes of hell??? that is not even enough to cover the cost of an entree. insult to injury. go fuck yourself, cadillac ranch.

i stormed up to him as he pleaded for forgiveness. "stop talking," i said. "just stop talking. we do not want your gift certificates. we want food. we are starving and freezing and we are running a half marathon on sunday and the longer you keep talking, the longer it is going to take for us to get some food. we are tired and hungry and we just want you to leave us alone." i turned my back and stormed towards chipotle. he kept rambling but i have no idea what he was saying.

thank you chipotle for not fucking me in the ass

within ten minutes i was enjoying a delicious and satisfying steak burrito bowl at chipotle. my rage had not subsided but at least my hunger was abating. and it was time to put the whole cadillac ranch nightmare behind me and focus on my race. i consoled myself by thinking that, despite spending over 2 hours hating my life in cadillac ranch hell, i still had managed not to waste a penny there.

readers: avoid this place at all costs. and if we have a nuclear holocaust and cadillac ranch is the last place on earth left to eat, i suggest that you also avoid me because i am going to try cannibalism before i set foot in that hell hole ever again.

(all photos courtesy of julie)

so i normally don't post press releases but...

...obviously i could not resist this time. this is awesome.

Chick-fil-A at Houston Road to Host Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner

Special Valentine’s Day Dinner on Saturday, Feb. 13 to benefit the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky

WHAT: Roses are red, violets are blue and Chick-fil-A® Chicken for Valentine’s Day says “I love you!” Show the one you love most how important they are this Valentine’s Day and support an important local charity, by treating your special someone to dinner at the Chick-fil-A restaurant located at 4980 Houston Road on Saturday, Feb. 13 from 5 – 8 p.m.

The restaurant will host a candlelit dinner with a special menu including soup or salad, an entrée, drink and dessert for $20 per couple – with all proceeds from the dinner being donated to the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky. Guests will enjoy music from a live violinist, tableside service and each lady will each receive a red rose.

Reservations for the Valentine’s Dinner are required and can be made by calling Kimberly at (859) 393-5282.

The Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky is a treatment facility for abused and neglected boys, between the ages of 7 and 17, with severe emotional, behavioral and social issues. The Home also provides community based services designed to provide therapeutic interventions and case management services to families with children who are at imminent risk for out-of-home placement. For more information please visit www.chnk.org.

WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 13, 5 - 8 p.m.

WHERE: Chick-fil-A at Houston Road, 4980 Houston Road, Florence, KY 41042 (859) 594-4600

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.

mccormick and schmick's

i don't normally write about chains, but i had drinks and appetizers at mccormick & schmick's last week and i'm currently running a little short on material so i figured i would write about it. i had actually never been there before, but liberal foodie had a gift certificate so we decided to hit it up.

overall, i was whelmed. is that a word? i was neither over- nor underwhelmed. just whelmed. ummm... this is getting annoying. i guess basically i just thought everything was ok. we tried a number of appetizers (reuben sliders, salmon cakes, fish tacos, mussels, spinach/artichoke dip, calamari, and a few other things i can't remember). everything was just ok. it was prepared fine, but just kind of lacking in flavor i guess.

however, it was super cheap. everything on the happy hour menu is between $1.95 and $4.95. there are also drink specials. i just stuck to wine ($5 for 8 oz.), but there were some holiday themed mixed drinks and beer. after liberal foodie's $20 gift certificate, we only paid $30 total including tip for three of us. and we ate enough to fill us up so we didn't need dinner.

the atmosphere was pretty much what you would expect in a higher-end chain restaurant's bar. lots of dark woods, a few tvs with sports on, dim lights. the service was very attentive and friendly.

if you go here, don't expect to be wowed by the food (at least the food on the bar menu... i can't speak for the lunch/dinner menus). however, if what you want is some cheap food to soak up alcohol and ward off hunger pangs while you hang out with friends downtown after work, mccormick and schmick's definitely does the job.

chick-fil-a

i like to give my readers what they want. earlier today maggie asked me, "how come you haven't written about chick-fil-a on your blog?" the reason she asked me this is because this guy i work with put his business card in and got picked for 100 free chick-fil-a sandwiches which were delivered to our office yesterday. so we all got to eat them since clearly one person cannot eat 100 fried chicken sandwiches, no matter how good they may be.

it was the first time i had ever had chick-fil-a. "what?" i can hear you gasp. "you NEVER had chick-fil-a???" no, readers. i had not. i grew up in illinois, texas, and michigan, and after college i moved to new york city. there has never been a chick-fil-a anywhere i have ever lived. actually, i think there might have been one somewhere in manhattan, but i had never had it and therefore never bothered to hunt it down. there was so much other fried chicken i needed to eat in new york.

actually, now that i think about it, there probably wasn't any chick-fil-a in new york. my friend k, who had lived in little rock before moving there, was constantly talking about it and bitching about how it could not be found in the city.

so yesterday i had it for the first time and damn was it tasty. the waffle fries were delicious. the cole slaw was pretty much kfc style. and the chicken sandwiches were soooo good. the meat was juicy, crispy, flavorful. whatever spice mixture they use on the chicken is yummy. i also liked that they put pickles on them.

now i was eating one of 100 sandwiches which had been sitting around for probably an hour or so by the time i got one. so the buns and the fries were a little limp. i do not blame chick-fil-a for this and i would definitely go back.

word on the street is that the chick-fil-a people are really religious and the restaurants are not open on sundays. so you have to get your fill of chickeny goodness the other six days of the week. chick-fil-a, i give you two wings up.

red lobster

ok, so i think i have only ever been to red lobster one other time in my life before tuesday night. that was back in college when my friend chad worked there. i have a vague recollection of hawaiian shirts, screaming children, and cheesy biscuits. and pretty much things have not changed.

we went to red lobster after golf because krishna and yagnesh had a gift certificate. little did they know that their crazy family had given them an expired gift certificate with no money on it. apparently the gift certificate had made the rounds through the family for the past several years and ended up with them. this gift certificate had not had value since approximately 1992. ok i am exaggerating. still it was hilarious. who gives someone an expired gift certificate?

anyway, so we actually did end up deciding to stick around. the first thing we ate was a round of lard and crack injected cheesy biscuits. oh my god i needed more. then we all got caesar salad. this was drowning in creamy cheesy dressing. i am sure it was the most heart attack inducing salad i have ever eaten, but i wanted more. we stalked our waiter brandon until he brought us more cheesy biscuits. by this point we were full but we had not even received our main course.

at some point people started singing happy birthday. avani (looks around shocked and confused): "who celebrates their BIRTHDAY here???" meanwhile, at other tables, children screamed, ran around, punched each other, and poured butter all over.

next thing you know we are being presented with huge plates of frozen and recooked seafood drowning in butter. i am not kidding you. i am pretty sure between the biscuits and the butter soaked crustaceans, we each consumed at least a stick of butter. i got "shrimp scampi" and crab legs and i swear to you the shrimp were actually swimming around in the butter. however this did not stop me from eating every last one of them and then drinking up the butter sauce with a straw. ok so i did not do that but i wanted to.

it was around this time that yagnesh announced that he really does not like butter that much. now i LOVE butter so this was totally confusing for me. however, either way, i do not think red lobster is the restaurant for him. yagnesh also did not understand the point of snow crab legs. yes it is a lot of work, but as avani pointed out, it is all worth it for that one big whole chunk of meat you manage to extract at some point in the meal. i also personally really enjoy messy, difficult finger foods. i am going to make a mess either way, at least with crab legs i have an excuse.

after a while our hearts started palpitating and we all felt exhausted from the sheer effort our blood was making to get through our butter clogged arteries. it was around that point that brandon stopped by to ask, "do any of you need dessert?" this odd use of the word "need" sent me into hysterical laughter for the rest of the night. yes brandon, i need a coronary. that whole dengue fever thing a couple years ago just didn't quite satisfy my urge for some time in the ER.

once we left the restaurant and were driving home, krishna and i continued to laugh like maniacs over nothing. i believe we were experiencing some kind of a butter induced high. finally i went home and my belly grumbled all night.

all in all an interesting cultural study into the life of the Average American. i think we all decided that we never need to go to red lobster again, but actually i am not sure i will make good on that promise. i am pretty sure in another 5 years it will seem like a good idea again.