Gut Check, the column, often reprints news of restaurants opening and closing from its namesake blog. But if you think that's all Gut Check reports, think again. This week, a sampling of some of the other cool items that appear on the Riverfront Times food blog.
As part of "The $6 Gourmet" — my attempt, in these troubled economic times, to find good foods and beverages for rough-ly $6 or less — I've become obsessed with a soda, Boylan's Natural Cane Cola: "Though its flavor is readily identifiable as 'cola,' it has these lovely cinnamon and vanilla nuances that make it much more complex than Coke or Pepsi. It's also less aggressively sweet than those two colas (especially Pepsi), with just the right level of carbonation."
For several weeks now, my colleague Aimee Levitt has been trying to feed her cat, Bess, home-cooked cat food. The results have been mixed (to be generous), but entertaining. In a recent episode, Aimee roasted marrow bone for Bess:
"The marrow bone, when it emerged from the oven, was a thing of beauty, fragrant and sizzling and glistening with fat. What carnivore could resist it? We waited a few minutes for it to cool 'to the temperature of a freshly-killed rabbit,' as author Jeffrey Steingarten puts it. (This temperature was approximate. I've only seen a freshly killed rabbit once, an unfortunate incident many years ago involving our family dog Trixie and a litter of baby rabbits who had taken up residence in the backyard and, frankly, the whole thing was way too traumatizing for anybody to even consider taking the bunnies' temperature, even if we knew that information would be useful one day.)"
Last week RFT editorial fellow Matt Kasper began a series of dispatches from Cicero's famed beer school. Here Matt learns about Anheuser-Busch's new Budweiser American Ale from A-B brewmaster George F. Reisch: "Reisch seemed to be pushing the American Ale for its equal gender appeal. Noting that men, generally, like bitter beers and dislike sweet beers, he said the American Ale is 'round in front' and has a nice bitter taste. Noting that women, generally, like sweet beers, he said the beer offers a sweet taste as well."
Are you opening a new restaurant? Know of a place that has closed? Something else for Ian to chew on? E-mail [email protected].
