Monday, June 26, 2006

Bodega Presents New Urban Dining

This weekend I finally went to try Bodega. It's been open for a while, but I wasn't really in the mood to try it for a long time simply because it looked like it attracted more college crowd. Upon entering the restaurant, the decor was modern and a little on the funky side. And the crowd was younger and the waitress also looked like a college student. (There's nothing against college student, I was a student once, but I was also aware that college-student-food also emphasized on quantity, not quality.) So I was curious about how the menu would look like. As it turned out, the menu had a more fusion/urban/organic feeling than a regular sandwich shop. Later I found that Bodega was also a wine and coffee shop, so my first impression of the place was that it's an interesting combination restaurant.

The price was not bad, for $6-8 you could get a pretty good size panini with different fixings as funky as your liking plus a side of chips, and for $4-6 you could get some nice appetizers and salads that would start the meal right. I tried the Fresh mozzarella Bruchetta, which had fresh mozzarella, tomato, and pesto sauce on a crusty Italian bread. It was delicious! The fresh mozzarella was creamy and mild, and the pesto was seasoned just right and great with the tomato and mozzarella combination. I also tried the Italian panini, which had ham, salami, provolone cheese, tomato, lettuce, and banana peppers. It turned out to be pretty good. The ham and salami was piled pretty thick and combined with the melting provolone cheese, it fixed us right up after our long walk in the Pride Festival.

The experience was a pleasant surprise and I think I would definitely come back and try their other Panini and salad. The food ranked 3 out of 5 on my yummy scale, and it's worth the trip to come try something new for a change. If you would have some time to chill and would like to spend your afternoon with some hot yummy Panini, please go to Bodega on 1044 N. High Street Columbus, Ohio.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, tell me you got down with a little fair food at some point this weekend. You live downtown, you went to the Pride Parade: if you didn't go to Comfest to get some fried cheese, a smoked turkey leg--at least a funnel cake, for crying out loud!--I've lost all respect.

Angry Asian Food Critic said...

I'm sorry tim, but after being in the Pride festival, it was too hot to go to Comfest, so I only had festival food at the Pride Parade. And seriously, isn't the mother of all festival food in Ohio State Fair?! Geesh...there's no pleasing you, is there?!

Anonymous said...

It's not even really about the food--Comfest is such a wonderful and unique thing that I can't really grok anyone totally passing it over.

It was like ten degrees cooler this year than last year, and the food vendors were better than ever. The weird thing is that I actually ate some surprisingly healthy stuff. A black bean wrap from Dragonfly, a chicken kebab from Firdous, a cucumber-tomato-bean sprout-cream cheese sandwich from Benevolence, gazpacho from Clintonville Community Market. Somehting in that list has to tempt you.

The Wet Donkey from Taco Ninja was the piece de resistance of my weekend: debatably healthy, but indubitably delicious. A massive chicken burrito, sealed on the grill and smothered in nacho cheese. [Gurgle!]

All that mouth-watering food, *in one place*, rounded out with CBC's lovely Honey Wheat brew, band after band of excellent live music, the company of good friends, the dozens of craft booths, and temperatures that were at least ten degrees lower than last year! How can you pass that up?

I'm telling you, I'm one of the biggest wimps about heat there is--I turn the A/C on when it gets above 72 degrees if there's even a hint of humidity--and it was gorgeous out there this weekend. It was much cooler in the park under the trees than out on High St. (Ask Stimuli about solar reflectance and the heat island effect.)

Anonymous said...

i resemble, er resent, those statements...