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New Columns appear each Tuesday. 23MAY06 Doral Chenoweth writes about the business of restaurants and the food industry in the Columbus, Ohio, Metro area. Reader comments are welcome by telephone. 614-538-1822. Email the Grump: thegrumpygourmet@wowway.com Send food stuff here: iPLATE@grumpygourmetusa.com Send weird stuff here: alferd_e_packer@wowway.com E-mail messages must include name and telephone for a reply. |
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23MAY06 Experience Columbus? Yahoo Has Ignored Us Food is fame. Just ask city promoters in New Orleans, Charleston, SC, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago or Seattle about their restaurants. Do it in that order. With all the troubles in New Orleans, every rebuilding story leads off with the need to save or reopen the restaurants. In our Internet world, city dining guides are being replaced with all sorts of restaurant lists. If you are a Yahoo user and plan to visit New Orleans or Vegas, click into a list of noted restaurant cities - Atlanta to Washington DC. In Ohio, Yahoo users may check out Cleveland or Cincinnati. All that is well and good if we are departing Columbus for a noted food city. The problem with the Yahoo is that Columbus is missing from the Yahoo list of 30 anointed dining destinations. The 30-list is something like a user list seeking comments. Not much info as to the cuisine. But, Yahoo compiles "results" or hits. There are 5,790,000 "results" related to restaurants. In Columbus, there are 3,744 "results." Experience Columbus, you need to get involved. Bars with potato skins and nuts get equal play with the finest restaurants. Experience Columbus? Apparently your planning group is not aware of the fine restaurant vibes we have had in place for years. Columbus for two decades has been the home plate for the world's winningest competition chef, Master Chef Hartmut Handke. Columbus is home to chef and owner Kent Rigsby. Local and national newspaper reviews always allude to the fact that his Rigsby's Kitchen would be top of the line in any major, so-called food city. Columbus has two French restaurants, The Refectory and L'Antibes, each doing what is right for a French establishment. For years they have been destination restaurants. Yahoo ignores Columbus. Totally, other than having you click through five million-plus "results" to get to what Columbus offers, Experience Columbus should get the city recognized. Food fame is the platform. Methinks our city marketing arm is brown bagging it to the office. Let's talk confusion. An outfit called Gayot, available via Yahoo, has a "Hot 10 Restaurants." One of the 10 is an Arena District bar, Frog Bear & Wild Boar Bar. Handke's Cuisine makes the Gayot list. Two not making Gayot: Rigsby's Kitchen and The Refectory. And then we have the Food Paper. Never heard of it? Just as well - Columbus is not a "featured city" with Food Paper compilers. Does Experience Columbus need help when it comes to puffing the city's largest collective employer, food fame? An ad hoc committee is hungry and awaiting the call to puff. |
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Butch's Italian Café update Butch Zurbriggen, that veteran pasta potentate, is back in business and doing fine. His shiny new digs, 2,500 square feet, opened last week at 6395 Gender Rd. in Canal Winchester. It had to be a quiet opening because he's still waiting for a beer and wine permit to arrive. Regardless of lack of two alcohols that go so well with Italian fare, on the Monday eve opening, word-of-mouth caused a lineup at the door. The place seats just 60. Zurbriggen's original café in Whitehall was sold two years ago to his longtime manager, Robin Kefauver, who plans to change the name. A footnote on this tough business: Zurbriggen two years ago budgeted $100,000 to get his new place open. When he served his first platter of pasta last week, he had $200,000 in the operation. by Doral Chenoweth 614-538-1822 |
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