Author: ohfoodguy

The coronavirus changed our dining plans, and during the peak of the pandemic we mostly ate at home, got takeout, or went to places with outdoor seating. This led us to find Pirate’s Cove when we were grocery shopping in Cincinnati one Tuesday.  It offered both outdoor seating and dining on the water. Most restaurants we found on the water had great views, but their menus didn’t impress. Pirate’s Cove had a menu that reminded us of Hawaii and Caribbean options (along with typical midwestern fare).

From downtown Cincinnati, it was a little bit of a drive, but it was worth it when we pulled into the parking lot and found Pirate’s Cove to be housed in the middle of a marina (the Four Seasons Marina). Parking is easy and you can find the restaurant by wandering the main dock.

The atmosphere is fun and has a nice beach and island/tropical feel. It’s not quite the feel of a restaurant in Hawaii, but closer to a Key West type of feel. If that makes sense. The bar area has a fun sand pit, so you can take your shoes off and put your feet in the sand. Tables are around the bar and Pirate’s Cove occupies the middle part of the marina with breezes blowing across the restaurant.

The menu has a lot of good options. While the typical midwestern fare is found (such as fried pickles), a wide variety of fish and seafood found at tropical bars is also available. These selections are not often found at midwestern restaurants, even those on the water. So, both the atmosphere and selection are inviting and appropriate.

Having been a while since we had coconut shrimp, we had to order it. The shrimp were cooked properly and almost matched the quality and taste we had on the Big Island. While the portion size in the picture looks small, it was more of the basket being big and it was more than enough food. While it seemed odd to pair this with black beans, this was a good combination as the beans were slightly spicy and seasoned well.

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Another treat was the Grouper Rueben, a good option and with good battered fish. This was similar to the quality of other types of fish sandwiches you might find in Hawaii, albeit in a Rueben-style. Their fries are also very good and a good pairing with the Reuben. In addition to these meals, Pirate’s Cove had two additional treats: good selection of beers on tap and sweet potato fries. It’s been quite a while since we had sweet potato fries and it’s a mystery that more restaurants in the midwest don’t offer them. These should be staples since sweet potatoes are common, but they are rarities at most restaurants. The sweet potato fries were a very welcome surprise and were perfectly cooked. We even ordered a second basket. Even our picky kids wanted more. 

Overall, Pirate’s Cove is a great option in the Cincinnati area. While it isn’t riverfront dining, it is on the water and provides a great combination of ambiance and food. In these COVID dining times, it also provides the rarity of open air dining to at least make us feel a little safer. We were very happy that we tried this restaurant and will return again.

We were excited to find a Korean place in southern Ohio/northern Kentucky.  The reviews were highly positive, but that is not always meaningful in small cities. Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, good Chinese and quality Japanese are usually found only in big cities, Columbus and Cincinnati for us.  So we headed over to Maysville on a rainy Saturday to explore.  Maysville has more than food and is a historic town in northern Kentucky with a nice museum and great river views.  So it was a great trip for the family. 

We were impressed with the breadth of the menu and ordered a sampling from a few categories: seafood pancake, Tteokbooki (rice cakes in sauce), and dumplings.  This is likely an atypical order, but it is good to test the boundaries of a restaurant.  A safer order would have been the Korean restaurant staples of bulgogi (Korean stir fried meat) or bibimbap (a bowl of rice, meat and vegetables which you mix). 

We were disappointed when we tried it the food.  It wasn’t the best Korean we’ve had, but it was definitely edible and we enjoyed it enough. The sides were good, not as spicy as most Korean restaurants in big cities, but still very good.

Plating skills are desperately needed; we we got looked nothing like the menu.  The dumplings tasted oily, the seafood pancake was ok but not like we expected and only had a little bit of seafood, the tkeokbokki was very disappointing in both plating and taste.  Overall, the dumplings were edible by our kids, who liked the oily taste.  The OH Food Guy did enjoy the seafood pancake even if it was only a little seafood.  The tkeokbokki wasn’t bad, but wasn’t flavorful at all and it was just plopped on a plate with sauce and no care for presentation.  

The place was empty when we were here (no other customers), but the waiter still forgot stuff we ordered (we’re not complaining).  The food didn’t taste bad, but it tasted nothing like we expected like the Korean places we’ve been to in Asia, Dayton (a lot of Korean diaspora), or LA.  Next time were in the area, we will go with more American fare and wait until we are in Dayton for Korean.

There are different tier of Chinese restaurants in the US, largely: high tier dining (which is mostly in the big cities), traditional cuisine restaurants (which are slowly expanding outside of the bigger cities, following migration), older restaurants (which focused on quality), and mass market buffets and takeout Chinese.  Out of these , mass market buffets dominate in quantity and it is regrettable that the face of Chinese cuisine in the US are these mass market restaurants.  The concept itself isn’t bad, but the temptation to churn out cheap quality and cheap tasting food must be immense and thus these restaurants mostly seem to focus on bland and tasteless food.  These restaurants are almost all the same and there are essentially starter kits for such places.  Why these are popular, the OH Food Guy doesn’t understand and can’t comprehend this popularity; and occasionally, even the OH Food Guy winds up in such places by curiosity or mistake.  

The Silver Palace has been a Chinese restaurant in the Portsmouth, OH area for 10+ years.  While driving by we decided to try it.  At first we were optimistic.  The dining area was clean and nicely decorated.  It was a very pleasant environment and the windows give a good view of the action on the street.  The generic Chinese menu pictures above the counter should have caused some concern since those are usually seen at the generic Chinese take out places.  Digging deeper, the bathroom was not exactly clean and both its floor was sticky and the toilet was dirty.

The menu had some items which sounded reasonably authentic as well, such as Mapo Tofu – which is more common at traditional restaurants.   However, the food that came out was significantly disappointing to us.   We ordered a House Special Soup, Kung Pao Chicken, and Mapo Tofu.   None were particularly good by our measure. 

The broth of the House Special Soup was very yellow, appearing heavily dyed from a generic chick broth mix, and was very salty.  All meat in the dishes gave us a slight taste of freezer burn.  The sauces were heavy and overly sugary.  The tofu was the best part, it was edible even if the sauce was overly heavy.  The Kung Pao Chicken was reasonably spicy, but the flavor profile was not great in our opinion and had the same taste issues with the meat as in the other dishes.

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We did not take any left overs home, it was not worth it in our mind.  Reviews are oddly positive for Silver Palace, even saying it is 5/5 in Ohio, which does not make sense to us since there are many extremely good options for Chinese in Ohio.   This is especially true in Columbus and Cincinnati, but even in Portsmouth we would rank Yamato higher, let alone the superb Jade East, which is sadly focused on takeout since the pandemic.  Overall, we do not plan to come back.  The service was good, but the food was not to our liking.  There is nothing here that we would like to try again.  Any of the dishes here we can, and do, cook at home better.   

Of these groups, Yamato (probably named after the ill-fated battleship) is in the Benihana/sushi vein.  Portsmouth Ohio isn’t know for the quality of its Asian restaurants, with most are basic and forgettable Chinese buffets.  While it’s good that the area has gained more options in the past decade, with sushi and hibachi being added, these are typically generic in nature.  It’s unfortunate that the OH Food Guy places Yamato in that crowd.  But there is both good and not so good here in our estimation; in fact, even if Yamato isn’t the best, it is still very good to have viable sushi and hibachi options in the area.  

Yamato has a well designed and determined menu with many, but not too many options.  The sushi list is actually rather complete and even offers mackerel sashimi (an OH Food Guy favorite as well as a good way to evaluate quality), which is not always available outside of major city sushi restaurants.   The menu includes a good list of appetizers, entrees (mostly Chinese style), hibachi dinners, and two pages of sushi options.  The lunch menu provides a good variety and better prices over dinner, and lunch prices are even offered on Saturday, which is a good treat.  The décor is good, but the floors were visibly not clean when we arrived and we showed up shortly after they opened and were the only customers there.  

We ordered a sampling across the menu:  sushi and sashimi lunch, mackerel sashimi, black pepper chicken (assumed on ordering to be Chinese style), and yakisoba (fried noodles) chicken.  The quality control is decent, but could be improved from our estimation.  The timing of food was good, clear soup and salad came out with our meals, but given a party of four they only brought 2 bowls of each.  While it’s clearly tied to the number of dinners ordered, it would be more efficient and effectively to bring multiple serving bowls for all. 

The salad was decent, but contained sufficiently superfluous water which watered down the salad dressing.  The salad dressing was good, a relatively typical Japanese sesame style which is not common outside of Asian restaurants.  The clear soup had a decent broth, but the mushrooms could be softer it seemed like they were just cut up and thrown in but not cooked.  

The sushi and black bean chicken came out next.  The sushi was relatively good and typical with a mixture of tuna, salmon, imitation crab and more.  The variety and plating were good, but it seemed rather sparse on a big plate.  The texture and temperature of the sushi was all good on the sushi and sashimi lunch.  The California roll that came with the lunch was very good. The extra sashimi order of two mackerel was different though, it was much colder than the rest of the sushi, it appeared to have been recently unfrozen and plated.  It would have been good for the sashimi to have come with sushi rice as well, but that is generally hit or miss outside of more traditional Japanese restaurants in big cities.  

The black bean chicken was much more Chinese buffet style.  It was a crispy chicken which was covered in a heavy sweet sauce.  Despite being “black bean” it was more “sweet and sour” and not spicy at all as “black bean” usually means a spicy black bean sauce.  The fried rice that came with the black bean chicken was, to us, more basic and appeared less of a fried rice and more of a prepared rice mean, such as a Rice-A-Roni.  Overall, this was edible, but not something we would order again.  

The yakisoba was a good dish, it was a stir fried noodle dish with chicken and vegetables.  Overall, most of the vegetables were cooked properly and this was a mostly proper teppanyaki style dish.  The plating was basic, it could have been seasoned more with salt, but the OH Food Guy’s wife (OH Food Girl?) thought it was good.  Overall, this was the best dish we had; which is good since we would order it again, but it’s also disappointing since this is a sushi/teppanyaki restaurant.   Service was also good, with the server not hovering, but attentive.  

Paia is notable first for being a plantation town on Maui, second for being the primary stop between Kahului and Hana, and third for being near a nice beach. As such, the town is often busy and full of tourists. Many places in Paia cater to the tourist crowd, but there are some authentic spots which excel.  Cafe Mambo is one such spot.      

While small, Cafe Mambo is one of the great authentic spots in Paia, if not all of Maui. Housed in what looks like an old plantation era store, it has great charm and character.  

It’s small, but well decorated and laid out. The inside is full of reasonable amateur artwork (for sale) and is light and airy. The windows are open and the breeze is comfortable. The staff seem very happy at their work. As do the customers.

The bar at the restaurant is along the whole wall, but still small because it is part of the dining room. It is very well stocked for the size of the place and they have a good variety of beers on tap.  

The food was phenomenal, we tried a seafood soup along with a duck burger.  Each element of each dish was perfect.  The fries had a delicate balance and seasoning.  The croutons for the soup were crispy and succulent.  While the OH Food Guy rarely gets dessert, the waitress was quite convincing. It didn’t hurt that one kids spilled a lot of water and we wanted to make up for it. We were not disappointed. While the 4 year old didn’t appreciate the tiramisu, we sure did. It was not overly sweet like Midwest attempts at tiramisu, but it was perfectly done (as was all their food).  This is a restaurant not to miss.  

Portsmouth Ohio has seen better days, its halcyon days being the first half of the 20th century.  The decline of Portsmouth since the 1960s is a textbook rustbelt story.  Luckily Portsmouth has been changing in the past decade and focusing on revitalization.  Patties and Pints is part of the journey.

Patties and Pints focuses on a combination of style and substance.  The substance, the food, is of course our primary focus here, but Patties and Pints aims to wrap it all in style, in this case the style of a Prohibition era Speakeasy bar.

Opening in circa 2017 in an old commercial building at the corner of 2nd and Court, the style of the building fits the Speakeasy style aim. Built in the 1890s, it has filled many roles.  At first glance, the general feel is that it has been here much longer than reality and few would guess that the building was previously an art gallery (very briefly) and many other businesses in its long existence.   

The bar looks and feels the part, and is worth more consideration.  While the décor fully embraces the Prohibition vibe, the quotes on the wall are banal and generic and not related to the history of Portsmouth or the Prohibition in Portsmouth.  This is a little sad since there are a wealth of Prohibition era stories from Portsmouth that could be put on the walls.  Looking deeper, the aim of the décor further conflicts from juxtaposition of the speakeasy style with basic restaurant supply grade tables/chairs.  But, overall, the result looks good.  

Patties and Pints has a very well stocked bar.  The lighting, ceiling and woodwork do try to fit the theme well. The TV of course doesn’t match, but modernization is expected with historic themes, but the theme isn’t helped by the large Pepsi branded cooler, an obvious relic of the 2010s which would be better off hidden.  

The bar offers a wealth of beers on tap and provides a good selection of regional and national craft beers. As the OH food guy mentioned before, a lot can be learned by the focus of a restaurant serves the basics…in this case we will now shift to food. The offerings are very well curated and the menu does not impose itself on you.  You can find good breadth and depth in the options. 

In the menu, the link to Prohibition is maintained with the names of many items being from mobsters or lawmen.  This is a very nice touch, but also a missed opportunity since they are generic mobsters and not associated with local crime events.  As with the generic décor, this is another unfortunate missed opportunity as Portsmouth has a wealth of history in this area and the history has even been featured in the local newspaper recently.   

In our dining at Patties and Pints, we focused on appetizers and sandwiches as they are known for their hamburgers.  In our visits, we ordered chicken wings, fried banana peppers, and multiple sandwiches. The menu is contemporary American in style and offers a wide range of burgers and Po’Boys.  It would make a nice touch for the Po’Boy to be called a Hoagie to fit with the 1920s era theme, but that is more subtle nitpicking and the the variety is very good.  It is a shame the speakeasy focus wasn’t carried a just a little farther, it would have been a very nice touch to have one or two 1920s era dishes on the menu for effect, such as Italian Meatballs (a quintessential 1920s dish), a Waldorf Salad, shrimp cocktail, egg sandwiches, lemon cake (for a good Gatsby reference), stuffed mushrooms, finger food and canapes, or even mining local cookbooks from that era (mostly now in the public domain, probably) for effect.  But, in the end, this is a good restaurant which fills a much needed local gap between fast food, bar food, and more upscale dining.