Thanks a Latte, Brutopia

Let's face it, the heat is coming and it's here to stay for a while. After I haul my cookies up the street to Brutopia, one of my favorite local coffee shops, I'm not in the mood for a steamy cappuccino. It's iced latte season, and I'm going to tell you something shocking: a good iced latte is made with warm milk.

I know. It seems contradictory, but so is an iced latte when you get right down to it. Here's my scientific-ish explanation. Milk tastes sweeter when it's been heated and frothed. Frothed milk = more delicious. Therefore, an iced latte with frothy milk is more delicious than an iced latte with milk straight out of the refrigerator.

Brutopia, a bright, quirky coffee shop on Ludlow in Clifton, offers up a delicious iced latte. It comes in one size. A shot of your favorite flavored syrup, if you like, goes in first. Then frothed milk over ice. Finally, espresso is drizzled through a cloud-like layer of milk.

I spent the better part of three summers making mediocre iced lattes for a couple of different coffee shops. Brutopia does it right. They do a lot of things right, and I'm taking my good time getting around to trying it all.

The baristas are awesome, but know that with only one person minding the store at a time, they get backed up with drink and food orders pretty easily. When a really good iced latte is on the line though, I'll wait.

Breakfast Times are the Best Times

I take breakfast very seriously. In fact, I was re-assessing my life the other day when I was trimming my nails, and I realized that breakfast is probably one of my top five life priorities.

When I get up, I need breakfast. It's that simple. This sometimes becomes a problem when I don't wake up in my own apartment. No matter where I am, though, it's the first thing I want in the morning. Staying at a friend's place? I want breakfast. Trapped in a cave? I want breakfast. If I have to go outside, catch it and kill it myself, I will. Usually, this just means finding the nearest Starbucks, which is always pretty easy, like finding the north star.

I like to keep weekday breakfasts simple. My breakfast ground rules are:

• It must be un-complicated and easy to assemble
• It must be tasty
• It must have coffee
  

Here's a classic recipe I defer to most mornings:

1 piece multigrain toast, blackened
1-ish TBSP Peanut Butter, creamy
1/2 sliced banana

Spread peanut butter on toast. Lay banana slices on top in a checkerboard pattern to ensure that each bite will maintain the proper ratio of sweet/peanut butter/crunchiness. If you're feeling extra dangerous, drizzle a little honey on top.


In fact, there are endless ways to embellish this dish. Whipped cream and nuts? I don't see why not. Sliced strawberries and powdered sugar? Might be kind of weird, but what the hell.

What is your un-complicated, tasty breakfast recipe?

Some Decent Dining Deals

These are probably well-known by now, but here's the rundown on a few of my favorite dining deals across town:

$1 Burger Night: Bar Louie in Newport
They mean what they say, the burger really is a dollar. It's not very flavorful, and it comes with a thimble-ful of shredded iceberg lettuce on a food service bun, but you can load it up pretty cheaply with good toppings. See also: Blue cheese, bacon and mushrooms. Or pepper jack and guacamole. Most toppings are $.50, so you won't blow your budget pimping out your burger. Draft beer is $2.00 a pint too, so the $3.49 you spend on a basket of fries makes it the most expensive item at the table.

Servers are jumping to keep up with the rush of hungry dollar diners, and we waited about fifteen minutes last night for a table at prime time. It's hard to be impatient though when there's a dollar burger waiting for you.

Half Price Sushi: Dancing Wasabi in Mout Lookout
All day Wednesday and Thursday are half-price sushi days at Dancing Wasabi, one of my favorite sushi spots in the city. And if you're wrapping up a night of drinking at one of Mount Lookout's finer establishments, stop by DW for the same sushi savings on Friday and Saturday night from 10:00 pm into the early morning hours.

The wait for a table on half price night is usually long, and since the restaurant isn't much bigger than a dining car, you'll be out on the sidewalk waiting for your party to be seated. Go on a nice night, grab something from the bar and leer at the diners seated at the outdoor tables.

Awesome Daily Happy Hour: Palamino Downtown
This is definitely not news, but I think $5 pizzas and $3 mojitos are worth a big shout-out. Plenty of appetizers are half price, too. Happy hour prices apply in the lounge, 4-7pm. Get there early and get happy.

What's your favorite dining deal?

Foreign Exchange and the Return of the Lunch Box

Remember this? It's plastic. There's a thermos inside with a little cup that comes off the top. It's decked out in Little Mermaid or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artwork, depending on your preference. The lunch box. It had so much right.

Foreign Exchange in Anderson serves up something called a "lunch box" during that special time of day. It's $9.99 of goodness with a variety of options, but no substitutions, please. Choices include several combinations of sushi or spring rolls, salad or miso soup, and a noodle or rice dish.

My lunch box:

• California Roll (with imitation crab meat, argh!)
• Sashimi (chef's choice)
• Salad with ginger dressing
• Red Curry with Chicken, spicy level 5

This was nothing like the sandwich-in-ziploc lunchbox meals of my youth. Not even close. Spicy level five turned out to be right at the top of my spicy tolerance scale - burning, but still a good heat. The sushi was forgettable, sashimi was decent, and the salad was pretty tasty. Comparing it to the house salads at Kyoto and Wild Ginger, I'd put this one on top.

The curry was the scene-stealer in the cast. Aside from a few rogue pieces of chicken, it was mostly loaded with peppers and other veggies. Very spicy, very tasty. Then again, I rarely meet a curry that I don't like.

I can't give you a full review of Foreign Exchange. It has an extensive menu for non-lunch hours, with wordy and often perplexing descriptions, and the portion of the ceiling painted to look like the sky is tacky. I like a little bit of tacky here and there, and I definitely liked my lunch box.

Urban Spoon Slot Machine: Gamble for your Dinner

Here's a form of gambling I can support - the Urban Spoon slot machine. Those with iPhones (or envied friends with iPhones) may already be acquainted with this app. It's also available for those of us who are less cool at the Urban Spoon website, and now it's a nifty little widget! This is as advanced as my HTML skills get, folks:

Cincinnati restaurants on Urbanspoon

I get a kick out of this thing even when I'm not deciding where to go eat. Is that a sign that I need help? Probably. Oh well, I can quit when I want.

What I Ate at Taste in Pictures

I spent an hour or so at the Taste of Cincinnati on Monday with adorkandhispork, who helped me overcome my fear of the bus system. I won't waste any more time telling, I'll just start showing:

First priority was the Summer Ale, then the Mythos gyro. Both excellent.

Shanghai Mama's spring roll with mango - suprisingly good. Light, crisp, and sweet.

Curry from Arloi Dee. I passed on the wimpy-looking lettuce wraps. Curry was alright.

Feeling I was reaching my limit, I went for the big knockout - Bella Luna bread pudding. It took me down hard in a custardy, buttery coma for the rest of the afternoon.

Now that we're loaded up on beer and bread pudding, who's ready for a trip down the Fun Slide?

I wasn't. I spent some serious time on my couch in recovery after my afternoon of gluttony.

How I Ate in Chicago

It was obvious that we weren’t waiting for a city bus. We had luggage. We had scones in little brown bags. We looked unhurried. The conductor, who I’d wished would be wearing a little blue suit and cap, approached our cluster. He informed us that the bus would be late. Some rare, unforeseen calamity had occurred on I-71 and the bus was behind schedule.

I bolted for the nearest Starbucks and downed a muffin on the street corner while groups of travelers made chit-chat with each other. A man with huge, hulking shoulder bag informed anyone within earshot that he had a bicycle in his bag and would be biking to his destination when we reached Chicago.

The golden, morning sunshine evaporated into clouds when we crossed the Indiana border. Secretly, I blamed Indiana and not shifting weather fronts.

A few people left when we stopped in Indianapolis. More got on. I surrendered the second seat in my row to a guy who nearly fell asleep in my lap once we were underway. I gave up on the WiFi connection, which seemed strong enough for Facebook but too sketchy to try and do any work.

Imagine a girl running through the streets of downtown Chicago with a sleeping bag and rolling suitcase. Looks kind of funny, right? Now imagine it’s pouring rain and she has no umbrella or coat. That’s downright ridiculous. When the bus arrived at Union Station and my luggage was unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk, I was that girl in the rain.

After a soaked, streetside reunion with my college roommate and a dash through town, we headed out for dinner at a Thai place called Jitlada, just around the corner from Jon's apartment.

Pad Thai sounded appealing. “They serve it with sugar on the side.” Jon had warned me. Sure enough, there was a little white pile of crystalline sugar hanging out next to the noodles. Being of the sweet-tooth-persuasion, this factor elevated the dish from merely good to how-fast-can-I-shovel-this-in-my-mouth good.

For dessert, our server brought each of us a chilled bowl with two lychees inside. I’ve decided to demand two cold lychee fruits after every meal, anywhere. I don’t want a chocolate mint, I’ll just take two lychees, please.

We did the thing that reunited college friends do when they get together – we drank all night. In a buzzing neighborhood with the rain finally gone, this is an excellent way to spend the evening. I recommend it.

…And breakfast arrives sooner than you’d like. We took a walk through Wrigleyville with a Cubs game in full swing, dodged red-faced fans and traffic, turned a few corners and came to the Pick Me Up Café. And that’s exactly what it did for us.

Black coffee. A mess of sautéed potatoes, peppers, tofu, and a good drenching with ketchup. It wasn’t elegant, but it was delicious. I expended all those calories doing these things:

• Walking through the Lincoln Park Zoo (free!)
• Shopping at H&M (not free)
• Watching the fountain at Millenium Park (free!)

That kind of productivity will wipe a person out. Homemade nachos and puppy chow (Remember that stuff? Make some. Now.) rounded out my last night in Chicago.

And there I was, back on the street with my suitcase and sleeping bag, waiting again for a late bus. It arrived, stacked two layers high, which gave me a thrill. I raced for a seat on the top, imagining it would feel like flying once we got up to cruising speed on the highway. Turns out, it’s a lot like being on the bottom floor.

We did have time for a stop at McDonald’s, and as we pulled into the bus parking lot, I felt like a seven-year-old on a family car trip. I ate my filet o fish sandwich on the bus, stretching my legs over the empty seat next to me.

The Filet o Fish isn’t good. It barely qualifies as a sandwich, but there’s something about McDonald’s on a road trip that feels right. The light outside completely faded, we were back on the road and just an hour away from home.