Thursday, June 12, 2008

cooler by the lake

Wasn't the weather this evening nice? I spent most of the day indoors, "working." Headed westward late afternoon, with a quick stop at the Lakewood Library to pick up my weekly 1/2 share from City Fresh. Got a bag of mixed cooking greens, small head of broccoli, some green onions and some garlic that looks identical to green onions, a quart of strawberries, some fresh oregano, fresh cilantro, and fresh lemon balm (which I have no idea what it is).

Afterwards, I headed over to the Cleveland Public Theater to catch their production of "Matt and Ben" and then headed up a dozen blocks or so for dinner at Reddstone on W. 76th. Reddstone is pretty cool - I think I prefer it to Stone Mad, in the same neighborhood - and tonight was the perfect night to chill in their lush brick patio. I had the spicy ranch wings and some pizza, my date had some Asian sirloin noodle bowl and fish; everything was moderately better than average. I was hoping to get the duck confit pizza, but a few minutes after ordering, the server came out and explained that the chef said the duck wasn't up to their standards and he'd much rather prepare something else for me. I'm not sure about the back story there, but I appreciated the honesty and found it pretty compelling.

I'll go back for sure. Reddstone trumps just about any other place in that neighborhood I've visited, with the notable exception of the Happy Dog.

2 comments:

Christine Borne said...

green garlic is wonderful. use it like you would green onions.

lemon balm is related to mint...you can use it in iced tea, or muddle it up a bit and throw it into a pimms cup.

CB said...

Hmm. Sounds good. And I loooove a Pimms Cup. Where's the nearest liquor store to our hood at?

BTW - I was at a party the other night and the guy was serving these delightful, super simple cocktails, 1 shot of cachaca rum, 2 teaspoons cane sugar (it was brownish), and 1/2 lime cut into slices and muddled.