Breakfast and Disclosures

First, breakfast. Plum Creek Poultry eggs (cooked in a bit of duck fat from one of their ducks--the black specks are pepper, the eggs are pristine) and Nitrate free Organic Berkshire bacon, both picked up at the Shaker Square Indoor Winter Market. Nothing special about the OJ, bread, or butter.

Now, on to the disclosures, and I'll add something to the "About" section in the near future. As of late I've developed some food related economic relationships around Cleveland. For example, I'm a vendor at the aforementioned Winter Market, which I unabashedly recommend all the time. I do that because it's a great market, and in my opinion it's a cornerstone for good food in Cleveland. I don't discuss my stand at the Market. Additionally, discussions have been had and small relationships established with some of the restaurants mentioned here. As far as that goes, every place I've been in touch with regarding business has been a place whose food I enjoy (pre-relationship or non-relationship) and whose philosophy I agree with or can live with. Also, we're not talking about big dollars here.

This disclosure is particularly timely after the Wine Supper referenced in the previous post. The Supper was great. Not flawless, but very, very good and a real treat. I'm hesitant to give a full review because I don't trust my own neutrality, but it's fair to say that the pizza, fish, cheese, and dessert courses were all right on. The suckling pig in the baby animal course, however, could benefit from being tweaked a bit. I also would've killed for a cup of coffee at the end, but it was kind of late so that may have just been me. Also, my table had a great server, but there were times where it would have been nice to have a few questions answered, and one staffer who was pouring wine, who knows why, blatantly poured a wine from a previous course rather than from the current course's selection. That was strange, particularly since he realized what he was doing, and it was a wine supper. After we mentioned that we noticed what had happened, the situation was remedied at our table--the less observant folks one table over were not so lucky. All in all, a great dinner that is sure to be even better as the Bar Cento staff gets used to hosting these things. After all, this was the first such dinner they've done there. I can't wait till the next.

I guess I couldn't help myself with the review. At least there was a disclosure.

EDIT - After rereading this post I realize it may seem like I didn't enjoy the wine dinner all that much. That's not the case at all, I just got rambling on the few things that bugged me, which is to say that just about everything else couldn't have been much better. It was certainly one of the most enjoyable dinners I've had in Cleveland, or just about anywhere else. And as for my gripe about no coffee, they were giving the stuff away after I took off.