Growing up in Columbus, most of the pizza, especially from the small non-chain shops, was pretty much the same -- most characteristically, a distinctive thin semi-crisp crust and cut into small rectangles rather than triangles. I've found that people who grew up anywhere east of here aren't so fond of it though.

When I moved up to Canton (130 miles to the northeast), I found it hard to find my favorite style of pizza; the pizzas were more New York style than Columbus style. The only place to get pizza somewhat similar to my favorite style was Donato's, a chain that started in Columbus in the 60s before spreading and then being bought by McDonald's in (I think) the early 90s; it's not exactly like my favorite shops though (Tommy's, Rotolo's, Panzera's). (I also noticed that all the pizza places up there also served fried chicken and smelled like it. This still seems strange and unpleasant to me.)

Now someone's posted a list of various regional pizza styles, and I now know that Columbus-style pizza is part of a midwestern pizza tradition I didn't know about, which also includes Chicago thin-crust pizza.

Where does your favorite pizza fit on that list?

I used to live two blocks away from Talita's Mexican-Italian restaurant in Clintonville, and loved to eat there.

Saturday evening they're closing for good. "Last Burrito Leaves at 8:30pm on September 15th."

So I'm going there for lunch today, to eat there one last time. (Let me know if you want to come too!)


At least someone else in the family has a restaurant, Talita's Mexican Kitchen in Grove City.

I just have to say that "Fiery Habanero" Doritos have given me a new appreciation for Doritos. Yum.

That is all.

I've gotten really behind on podcasts since Thanksgiving, so in the last couple days I've been working on catching up. I'm still two weeks behind though.

One of my favorite podcasts is Julien Smith's In Over Your Head, out of Montreal. It's ostensibly a music podcast, exposing me to types of music that I normally wouldn't listen to (hip-hop, electronica, maybe some some sort of ambient Euro-pop, and other stuff I can't quite define). But the thing that really keeps me listening is his rants and stream-of-consciousness talk between the music.

One thing he's talked about is a vegan restaurant in Montreal that apparently takes pretentiousness to a new extreme. (You may think Dragonfly Neo-V is pretentious, but I think this one has it beat.) ( Read more... )

The 5-minute rant starts 5 minutes into episode 93. (At around 29 minutes he mentions that there's another vegan restaurant in Montreal that's sort of the feel-good-hippie version.)

They say that orange barrels are the state flower of Ohio, but this is ridiculous....

A large quadrant of our area is under construction, complete with a FOUR-MONTH closing of some streets. (Among other things, they're building the freeway bridge that my company designed.) Other than increased traffic along the surrounding detour routes, this doesn't affect me too much; I only pass the area on the way to work, while poor nontacitare has to find her way directly across it.

However, one of my favorite lunchtime restaurants (a southwestern-style place with the BEST tortilla chips in town and the only vegetarian tamales I've ever encountered) is right in the middle of this mess, and the detour to get there goes through an industrial area on the opposite side from where I work. A couple weeks ago I saw an article about this and decided I'd make the extra effort to go there during the road closings.

So I headed over there today. Navigated the even-more-horrible-than-usual lunchtime traffic around the region, finally made it to the restaurant.... and discovered that during the construction the place is closed for lunch, only opening at 5pm for dinner.

So I went to the Taco Bell drive-through instead.

Oh well, I tried.

I finally finished the last of the bag of "low-carb" bagels I accidentally bought. What is this insanity? "Low-carb" bagels? I want carbohydrates in my bagels! This takes the whole low-carb nonsense to a new low. Of course they were the worst-tasting bagels I've ever had, which is what made me notice the "low-carb" tag on the bag in the first place. That'll teach me to look closer when I'm at the store. Normally that brand (Lender's) is the best that can be found in an Ohio supermarket, and it didn't look like there were any other variants (other than the usual flavors) when I chose these. (It's even harder to find good bagels in Canton than it is in Columbus.)

Someone please let me know when I can go to the store and find real food again. It's bad enough that finding veg-friendly food is difficult without making everything from scratch, and I have to sort past the vegetable soup made with beef broth and the beans&rice made with chicken; I can forgive that, for I accept my minority status as a vegetarian. But now I have to sort past all the reduced-carb "food" too?

Did I mention that the low-carb fad is nonsense?