Sunday we attended the last Second Sunday on Main for this year. The event is advertised often at the end of mass and we finally had the opportunity to check it out this past weekend. Their website advertises that it is a hip, eclectic neighborhood event, and this was very true. There were tons of hip clothes, furnishings, and crafts on display from various eclectic vendors from the Over-the-Rhine chamber of commerce.

Also on hand we a few different food vendors, a stage with a few different bands playing throughout the afternoon, and even a beer booth. Though we didn’t buy anything during our stroll through the event, Kim did find some ideas for an upcoming baby shower. We also sampled food from a couple of the food vendors, full reviews to come soon. Overall it was a nice afternoon spent downtown. Plus Kim and Trey’s photo made it in the photo gallery on Metromix (photo 15).

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time you know that I enjoy Mexican food. More recently my wife and I have been on a quest for a solid Mexican restaurant close to our new home in Hyde Park. While this wouldn’t fall in the nearby category, La Mexicana in Newport does fall into the solid Mexican restaurant category.

Complimentary Chips and Salsa

La Mexicana was recommended to us by multiple people and we finally found the time to give it a try a couple of weekends ago. We arrived at the unassuming and plainly decorated restaurant just before noon on a Sunday. Immediately chips and salsa were delivered to our table and I noticed a sign across the room stating that the first round was free but any refills would cost us. The chips were fairly standard, but the salsa was delicious! It was refreshing to have a spicy green tomatillo salsa instead of the typical bland red.

Mexican Coke

Whenever I find Mexican Coke on the menu I almost always have to order one. I don’t often drink soft drinks but I make an exception for the sweet taste of Coke make with real cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. Yum!

Torta

For lunch my wife decided to really mix it up and ordered the Mexican sandwich known as a torta. Similar to most items on the menu, you have your choice of twenty, yes twenty, different meat and vegetarian fillings. She went with the pollo, grilled chicken marinated in adobo sauce. The torta is served with lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, and mayonnaise. The sandwich looked so good upon its arrival that I agreed to split halves with her. It tasted just as delicious as it looks and sounds. I was pleasantly surprised by this and would definitely consider ordering it again.

Flag Burrito

I decided to try the flag burrito after a recommendation from a friend. She was right on with this recommendation as the burrito was excellent. I also ordered it stuffed with grilled marinated chicken. Also inside were plenty of rice, beans, lettuce, and tomatoes. It was then covered in both red and green sauces and a few streaks of sour cream. It was a gigantic burrito but we managed to eat every last bit. My wife and I both preferred the green sauce, but both were good. I know at the beginning of the review I said La Mexicana was a solid choice, but it went beyond that is already my favorite Mexican restaurant in the city.

My brother recommended McAlister’s Deli to me as a good spot for a quick sandwich. There was actually a location relatively close to our old house in Denver, but I had never heard of it before. Anyway a couple of Saturday’s ago my wife and I found ourselves within a couple of miles of their Mason location and we decided to stop in for lunch.

Outside McAlister's Deli

The location of the deli is in the epitome of the northeastern Cincinnati suburban sprawl, but I won’t hold it against them. Upon entering the front doors we walked down the center of the restaurant to the ordering counter at the back. An employee asked how many in the party and then pointed at the table where we should sit and pointed out the number on the table. We stepped up to a cashier, gave him our number, and then ordered from the rather large menu.

Spicy Southwest Chicken Griller

My wife went with the spicy southwest chicken griller ($6.99), featuring sliced grilled chicken breast topped with guacamole, fire-roasted corn & poblano pepper relish, pepper jack cheese and chipotle ranch on a ciabatta roll. This sandwich is put on a panini press before being served. I stole a couple of bites and it was good, definitely spicy, but full of lots of different flavors. The price included a choice of side, and she went with the fruit.

Southwest Turkey Melt

I went with the southwest turkey melt ($7.29) with a side of potato salad. This sandwich is layered with smoked turkey, applewood smoked bacon, pepper jack cheese, spicy guacamole and chipotle ranch, then topped with lettuce and tomato on a baguette. I didn’t realize the similarities between what we ordered until the food had arrived, but I was definitely able to taste their similarities. I guess we are kind of predictable with our ordering. This sandwich was also good. The baguette was softer than I was expecting. Most times baguettes from delis are crunchy on the outside, but not this one.

Overall I wouldn’t go out of my way for lunch at McAlister’s but it will do just fine if in the neighborhood.

A couple of days ago, Sporting News released their Best Sports Cities rankings, “which look at the 12 months from summer 2010 to summer 2011, are based on point values assigned to various categories, including but not limited to, won-lost records, postseason appearances, applicable power ratings, number of teams and attendance.” Cincinnati was placed in the top 25, which is a pretty respectable showing in my opinion. We sit just behind Denver (+Boulder) and have two fewer professional teams from the four major professional leagues than they do. With the Reds season finished, we are now relying on the Bengals to keep us happy, and so far they have mixed results doing so. The victory over the Bills this past weekend was a nice step though. And the Bearcats of the University of Cincinnati continued their winning ways over long time rivals Miami University.

My fantasy football teams continue to win and went undefeated again this past week! I am now in 1st of 10, 2nd of 12, 3rd of 12, and 1st of 4 in my division (and still the only undefeated team left in the league). I also retained first place in both the professional and college pick’em games. However I fell back one spot to 12th place in the salary cap game. Maybe I should just sell my entire team and start over.

A couple of Friday’s ago my wife and I were staying in for the night and decided to order pizza from Mio’s Pizzeria. It had been many years since I had last had pizza from Mio’s but once our stuffed pizza arrived I immediately remembered it. To go along with our stuffed pizza we had a coupon for a free original crust pizza and we also added an order of breadsticks. We actually wanted the cheese covered breadsticks but the regular ones were delivered instead.

Breadsticks

Speaking of delivery, our driver had a cool little handheld credit card machine to process our order. It was nice not having to give our credit card number over the phone for once. But back to the breadsticks. They were very average in taste and though there were six of them, I don’t think it was worth the $4.99 price tag. I would skip these in the future.

Windy City Classic Stuffed Pizza

On to the star of the night, the Windy City Classic stuffed pizza with Italian sausage, onion, green peppers, and three cheeses. The 13″ large pizza isn’t cheap ($22.99) but it is well worth the cost. Plus the slices of pizza are so large that just two of them is a complete meal. Everything about this pizza was excellent! The mix of cheese was tasty and the sauce was exquisite! Even the crust, which can often be overlooked on a pizza, had a great taste making each slice enjoyable until the last bite. My only complaint was that the toppings on the inside seemed a bit scarce.

Original Crust Pizza

I skipped over the original crust in favor of the stuffed for my first couple of slices, but I did manage to stuff down one slice of this pizza before calling it quits. This 12″ medium pizza would have cost $10.19 without the coupon. Overall this pizza was pretty good, but in my opinion it couldn’t compare to the stuffed. Maybe if I hadn’t had the stuffed pizza first I would have felt differently about this one, but in my opinion it is worth the extra money to get the stuffed and skip the original. It’s delicious!

While in Colorado this past weekend we took advantage of the changing seasons to enjoy a pretty drive and some great hiking weather. We drove the rental car out of Denver west on I-70 to Georgetown. In Georgetown we headed south to go up and over Guanella Pass. When we reached US-285 we headed further west to go over Kenosha Pass before heading back north in Como over Boreas Pass and into Breckenridge. The drive was filled with lots of great mountain views and plenty of aspen trees in their wonderful fall golden color.

From there we headed south on CO-9 to the Blue River area for some hiking. I found this trail description and figured it would be a great afternoon hike. Carrying Trey on my back definitely made the hike harder than it should have been, but I think he really enjoyed it. And it wasn’t really bad, it just took longer than I was thinking that it would. The link above says that this is the best hike in Summit County, and though I don’t know if I would go that far, it was still worthy of an afternoon adventure.

Georgetown on Dwellable

Kim, Trey, and I spent some time in and around Denver this past weekend. The big event of our trip was the 30th annual Great American Beer Festival. This was my 5th time attending the festival and 2nd time at the Saturday afternoon American Homebrewers Association members only session. Overall we had a fantastic time full of mostly delicious and hard to find beers. We met up with a friend of mine and his recent fiancé who had also spent time at the Thursday evening session. It’s now my goal to attend the Thursday session sometime in the future. This is the first session of the weekend, so all the beers are fully stocked and available. Occasionally on Saturday we found some of the beers we wanted to try were already gone.

Like Father, Like Son

In total there were 466 breweries in the festival hall, 2,375 different beers, and 49,000 attendees over four sessions. And even with all of those large numbers the festival still seems to be run so smoothly. I guess experience does pay off. Similar to last year the hot styles on display were sours, which I really enjoyed this year. It seems that as the popularity of these styles grow the quality of the beers produced increases as well. But the American-Style India Pale Ale category is still the most popular of all categories with 176 different entries. I wish I could say that I tried them all, but there is always next year.

My wife and I have  been trying to find a local Mexican restaurant close to our house in Cincinnati to replace Benny’s, our neighborhood staple in Denver. El Toro Mexican Restaurant is only a mile from our new house, in fact we would have walked there if the weather wasn’t bad. They are located in the large strip mall named Hyde Park Plaza, next to Ace Hardware and just around the corner from Kroger. The storefront doesn’t appear very large, but the restaurant is very deep and has seating for plenty. We arrived just before 7:30 on a Wednesday to find the restaurant mostly empty.

Inside El Toro

We settled into our booth seating and noticed that all the booth tops are shaped like bull horns. El toro translates to the bull, so some care has been made in designing the restaurant. Shortly after sitting down an employee dropped off some chips and salsa and some water. The chips didn’t seem very fresh but they were warm. The salsa was pretty good overall, though most of the time I prefer a salsa with more chunks in it. This was very thin, but the spice was there and the flavor was good.

Complimentary Chips And Salsa

Shortly after receiving the complimentary chips and salsa, our server came by to take our drink order. My wife asked if there were any specials, and fortunately one of the smaller sized margaritas was on sale. We both ordered one on the rocks with salt. When they arrived I was shocked at how large it was. According to the menu there are two sizes larger than the ones that we ordered. The taste was decent. It wasn’t heavy on either sweet or sour, just middle of the road on flavor.

Huge Margaritas

For dinner I went with the combination plate #1, which includes a taco, two enchiladas, and either rice or beans (I chose beans). Overall the food was not good. The taco was completely bland, and though the enchiladas were a little better due to the red sauce on top, they still were bland. The red sauce was simply not full of enough flavor, and their chicken all seemed very dry. The beans might have been my favorite part of my plate, since they actually tasted like I was expecting. For $7.99 the amount of food was good, but the taste needed a lot of work.

Combination 1

My wife created her own combination plate with chile poblano, burrito, and tostaguac. She almost ordered the chile relleno but when she realized it was filled with beef she switched to the poblano, which is the same thing except with cheese filling. The poblano was better than anything else on my plate, but still not very good. It too had the same red sauce on it, which really needs work. The burrito was equally as plain and boring as my enchiladas. While the tostaguac (basically guacamole on a tostada) was probably the highlight of the meal.

Custom Combination

I always thought that it would be hard to find Mexican food that was less flavorful than Don Pablos, but I think El Toro has done it. I really doubt that we will make the effort to return anytime in the near future. Our quest for good Mexican food near our home continues.

Black Out Crowd

Another home game for the University of Cincinnati last Thursday night and another great win! Similar to the other games this season, Isaiah Pead scored the first Bearcat touchdown, followed by a couple of keepers from quarterback Zach Collaros. It was 21-0 before the NC State Wolfpack got on the board with a touchdown of their own. The Cats added a field goal before half making it 24-7.

Here come the Cats!

After halftime UC added another field goal and touchdown before allowing seven more points from NC State, but finished it off with one more touchdown and a field goal to finish at 44-14. I was hoping for a good competitive game after the first few home blowouts of the year, but the Bearcats dominated much of the game once again. Not that I’m complaining. They take on the Miami University Redhawks this coming weekend for the 116th Battle for the Victory Bell. UC has a chance to make it six victories in a row, which would be the longest streak by either team.

My cousin Corey, friend Rob, and me enjoying the game.

While I’m talking football, here is a quick update on my fantasy football games. My teams in the traditional head to head games all went undefeated this week! I’m now in 1st of 12, 5th of 12, 6th of 12, and 1st of 4 in my division (though I’m the only undefeated team left in the league). I also gained 1st place in both pro and college pick’em, but unfortunately I’m out of the survivor game after New England lost to Buffalo for the first time in 16 tries. I moved up to 11th in the salary cap game, so some improvement, but still a long way from the lead.

One last note on sports for the week. I finally made it back out onto the ice on Sunday with my new hockey team. I’m playing with a couple of my good friends who I played with in high school, and even one of their older brothers. Our team played really well together considering it was the first time that some of us had ever shared the ice. I scored our first goal of the season and our team went on to win with four or five goals while also helping our goalie gain a shootout. This should be a great season of hockey.

A couple of Saturdays ago I made my way to Fountain Square for the Cincinnati Beer Fest. Though the lineup of beers wasn’t anything special, especially after attending the Big Band & Bigger Beer Festival just over a week earlier, I did find some awesome food. I had heard of Tom + Chee before but this was the first time I would sample one of their gourmet grilled cheeses. My wife actually made my selection for me and decided on the BLT grilled cheese.

BLT+CHEE

She must know me too well. This was an amazing combination of two sandwiches that I love. It would have been very hard for me to be disappointed, but the sandwich easily exceeded my expectations. It was perfectly grilled and ready for pickup in about five minutes. The cheddar cheese was still warm on the inside and the other ingredients inside couldn’t have tasted any better. I definitely will be back to sample some other sandwiches, including the Flying Pig (roasted turkey, bacon, pickles, and gouda on sourdough) and the hot+spicy (pepperoni, hot peppers, onions, and pepper jack on wheat) just to name a few.