Grabbing A Nosh At Nosh Eatery

I first learned of Nosh Eatery & Creative Catering many months ago from my longtime friend and partner in the Veggie-Vegan Project, Paul. We had been discussing potential restaurants to include in the project and Paul had heard that Nosh was to have a fairly good vegetarian and/or vegan selection. He also knew that they would be based out of Hudson, but unfortunately, that was the extent of his knowledge. Fast forward to Labor Day at the beginning of September and I found myself at the annual Taste of Hudson again. Per usual, I made my cursory walkaround of the entire event before deciding which booths I would visit. Wouldn't you know it? Nosh was one of the booths.

Based on the strength of the food at the Taste of Hudson, I finally got around to stopping in for a bite to eat at their actual location. Their storefront was south of downtown Hudson quite a bit and located at 5929 Darrow Road, Hudson, OH 44236. They can be reached at 330-650-6674 and they have the usual trio of a website, Facebook page, and Twitter account so that you can keep track of them.

Nosh Eatery was among a group of four businesses occupying a small building. As usual, the shared parking lot was more than ample and I had little difficulty finding a parking spot. Here was a shot of the storefront for Nosh Eatery:


Once inside, I was asked if my order was for eating in or taking out. After indicating that I would like to eat in, the woman behind the counter gave me a paper menu and told me I could sit wherever I'd like. I picked the table furthest from the front door (to minimize the mixed lighting), sat down and proceeded to study the menu:



In addition to the options on the menu, daily specials had also been chalked onto a board hanging above the coffee machine on the back wall.

I decided to start out my meal with one of the soups du jour, a Bowl of Tomato and Basil Soup:


The soup was piping hot, had just a bit of texture to it, and had a deep tomato flavor. The soup had been pureed, but not completely as there were still small bits of tomato to be found within. The garlic and basil flavors complemented the soup nicely. In lieu of crackers, the soup had come with a small grilled flatbread quarter that had been seasoned with salt, herbs, and of all things, caraway seeds. It was inventive and delicious and if there was anything to complain about for this dish, it was that the dish only came with one of the "crackers."

While many of the sandwiches caught my eye on the menu today, when I saw that today's special was a Philly-style Cheesesteak, I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a try:


Filled with luscious expertly grilled cuts of beef shoulder, caramelized onions and peppers, sauteed Chanterelle, fresh thyme, and Havarti and Gruyere cheeses, this was a sandwich with which to be reckoned. The roll (part of a baguette from Great Lakes Baking Company just up the street) was split, buttered, and then grilled to not only give it texture, but also prevent the roll from "sogging out," a dilemma many other sandwich places have yet to solve. From my first bite to my last, I enjoyed this sandwich immensely. It was hot, melty, chewy, earthy, beefy, and savory. If someone had said, "make a Philly-style inspired sandwich but elevate it," this would be the result. The only criticism I might levy would be that the portion size seemed a little small for $7.75.

Inspired by the flavors up to this point and noticing that Nosh's Facebook page had advertised fresh cobbler today, I asked about the dessert selections. Indeed, fresh Strawberry Cobbler had been baked earlier in the day:


Rewarmed and plated, the cobbler was accompanied by fresh chevre-infused whipped cream and a small scoup of buerre noisette ice cream. The plate was finished with some powdered sugar and small streaks of raspberry coulis. I remember the whipped cream from the Taste of Hudson and while you could taste the goat cheese flavor in that version, today's whipped cream was a bit lacking. The brown butter ice cream, however, was heavenly. The cobbler itself was infused with lots of strawberries and if the cobbler topping had been a bit more cake-like in consistency, it would have reminded me more of a clafoutis than a cobbler.

Overall, I found the cobbler to be just borderline on the sweet side -- a cup of black coffee or an espresso would have cut the sweetness to the perfect amount. That being said, I finished the entire portion and would have no qualms ordering -- or recommending -- this dessert again.

My meal at its inevitable conclusion, my server brought me the check and before tip, it came to $16. While I did question the value of the cheesesteak sandwich, everything I had eaten today at Nosh was fresh, hot, and quite frankly, delicious. As was made evident on the daily specials board, today marked the fifty-fifth day of operation. I'd suggest you give them a visit soon so that they can add many more numbers to that ticker.

Sharing A Meal At One Red Door

As part of the 2010 Taste of Hudson "challenge," similar to the one I created at the 2010 Taste of Akron, I targeted three vendors whose restaurants had yet to be reviewed here on the blog. This year, the three selectees were the North End Restaurant with Chef Jeff Jarrett (who has since departed to open up a new restaurant, Palate Restaurant & Lounge), Blue Canyon with Chef Brandt Evans, and a relative newcomer to the First and Main scene, One Red Door with Chef Shawn Monday who had recently left another Hudson institution, Downtown 140, to open up and run his own restaurant.

Realizing that the restaurant had opened up right around the same time as the Taste of Hudson, I wanted to give him and his staff a couple of weeks to get settled into their routine and work out any kinks in both the front of the house as well as the back. While it seems like it would be great to be the first person publishing a critical review of a new restaurant, often until things calm down and the staff discovers its groove, the experience of eating at a newly opened restaurant can vary wildly.

Five weeks after they opened, I contacted my good friend and public relations/marketing guru Jayni (designer of the awesome business cards for the blog) and asked if she would join me for dinner. After agreeing on a time and date for our meal, when the day finally came, I drove over to Hudson with great anticipation. One Red Door was situated in the First and Main district, specifically where Vue Restaurant used to be located. The address for One Red Door was 49 Village Way, Hudson, OH 44236 and they can be reached at 330-342-3667 or at info@onereddoorhudson.com. They also have a website (Warning: Heavy Flash content with music turned on by default). Free parking was either at curbside parking spots on the street or in the parking garage a five minute walk from the restaurant.

Not knowing how long it would take to get from my job to the restaurant, I showed up thirty minutes before our reservation time. After taking a picture of the front door,


I decided to check in with the hostess to let her know that I had arrived and would be having a cocktail in the bar. After settling down in one of the seats at the bar, I proceeded to order a favorite pre-dinner cocktail, a Grey Goose Martini, up, with bleu cheese stuffed olives:


Execution-wise, the martini was okay. I've had versions of this cocktail where the bartender shook the vodka and ice so thoroughly that a thin, almost imperceptible layer of ice crystals floated on top of the liquid. As you sipped the drink, the finely distributed crystals would instantly melt in your mouth. Today's cocktail, while cold, also came with sizable unmelted pieces of ice which definitely did not melt upon sipping.

The cocktail aside, however, it was listening to the bartender's banter with the other guests at the bar that caught my attention. When I am by myself at a bar (or a restaurant for that matter), I am usually engaged in checking websites or email messages on my smartphone. In addition to that activity, I am usually multi-tasking and listening in to the conversations happening around me. As the bartender was regaling several of the other patrons about a woman who had complained that the service had been off during the restaurant's first week of business, my ears perked up and I tuned in.

"Of course there were some problems," he told the complaining woman. "We've only been open for a week."

I saw this as my chance. "So have all the kinks been worked out yet?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. We've been open for a little over five weeks now and it's all good."

In case you're wondering, gentle reader, I am somewhat playfully using a technique called foreshadowing.

As I continued to sip my cocktail and wait for my guest to arrive, the banter of the bartender actually turned a fair bit crass, dutifully detailing his theory on why his current wife had never gotten pregnant with prior sexual partners. I understand the need to talk to your audience in order to connect with them, but this didn't seem quite appropriate given the surroundings.

Jayni arrived promptly at 6:30 and after a quick return trip to check in at the hostess stand, we were promptly shown to our table and handed the single page menu. I opted to take three photographs, one of each "pane" of the menu:




In addition to catching up with a friend, my dining companion was excited to be joining me on one of my anonymous blogging expeditions and wanted to know all about my "process." I explained that other than trying to taste as many flavors as possible, just order what sounds good. To that end, we agreed to split one item from the Tastes, one from the Flatbreads, and one from the Shared items. When our server finally returned with our drink orders, I indicated that we'd be splitting the first part of the meal. Since the Shared item was a salad, he helpfully suggested that the kitchen could just split it onto two plates. After placing our order, Jayni and I got down to the serious business of catching up, something we had both been too busy to do for quite some time.

It was at this point I noticed the first glitch in service tonight. Other tables had bread plates with bread on them. Ours remained empty. No worries, I thought to myself, I'm sure he'll back around with the bread basket. Sadly, I was mistaken and by the time our appetizers arrived, skipping the bread course just seemed like a foregone conclusion.

First up were the warmed olives with oil and herbs:


Serving plates of warmed olives seems to be a trendy thing to do nowadays as I've seen it at all sorts of other restaurants. Warming the olives, in theory, will help release more of their natural flavor and the fresh herbs used help to provide a counterpoint to their flavor. Tonight's olives were small Nicoise olives and a larger, unexpectedly sweeter green olive (whose name I never got). These were okay and if you're into warmed olives, this would be right up your alley. I, however, was not particularly enamored by them (and to be fair, nor would I be at most restaurants).

Next up was the three cheese marinara flatbread with parsley and basil:


Made with actual Italian 00 flour, I wanted to see what Chef Monday's take on this thin crispy bread would be. When the flatbread arrived, I inspected both the top and the bottom. While there was definitely freshly chopped parsley sprinkled on top, I didn't detect any sign of fresh basil as the menu had suggested. The bottom of the pizza had been browned only to the point where the crust was mostly blond with a spot of tasty brownness every now and again. One of the hallmarks of a nicely cooked pie (or flatbread in this case) is the presence of a nice brown caramelized crust.

I took a bite and while I could taste the sharpness from the cheeses and the richness from the marinara sauce, the flatbread only achieved half of its raison d'etre. While it did have a nice crispy crust, it lacked the chewiness in the crumb that was the hallmark of a really good Neopolitan style pizza. Which, okay, technically it wasn't being called a pizza on the menu, but let's call a spade a spade. It wasn't a bad pie, in fact it was better than average. It just wasn't great.

It was during our appetizer noshing that service issue number two reared its ugly head: refills. Jayni was a Diet Coke drinker and as such, had finished her first glass in no time flat. When the server came over to check on us, she asked him for a refill. When he returned to the table a second time, sans refill, she had to remind him again before he brought her another beverage. Had this happened once during the meal, it would be pretty easy to brush off. However, this happened several times, going from the slightly inconvenient to quite annoying.

Our third appetizer was a poached Bartlett pear salad with hazelnuts and crumbled bleu cheese:


What you see in the photograph was a half portion of the salad as my dining companion and I split this. Both of us felt that the full size salad would've been enough for an entire meal. You may want to keep that in mind should you decide to order this on your visit, gentle reader. The salad was flavorful, the salad greens were dressed nicely in a hazelnut vinaigrette, and the textural balance between the creamy cheese and the crunchy toasted hazelnuts worked quite well. In short, this was a tasty salad. The pear had been properly poached and as such was soft without being mushy and turned out to be a nicely sweet contrast to the tangy and salty elements in the dish.

Having finished our starters, our server now returned to the table to take our entrée orders. Jayni ordered the chicken, which I was also considering, but instead ended up going with the pan seared Grouper with lobster gnocchi and Maine lobster jus. When I asked our server if the kitchen cooked the fish to a specific temperature, he looked puzzled and asked me what I meant. "Uh, oh," I thought to myself. I started to try and explain my question but realized that his continued look of apprehension over this line of questioning meant that for sure there would be a breakdown in communications. I changed my tune and simply said, "However the chef recommends it will be fine."

After some time (and still with no bread and Jayni's glass of Diet Coke sitting empty), our dinner plates finally made their way out of the kitchen. In what turned out to be another service hiccup, after removing our salad plates from the table which contained both of our knives, the server never came back around with new cutlery to replace the removed pieces. When our entrées arrived, I had to point out that we would be needing two new knives and it took several minutes for him to return with the proper silverware. I have a funny feeling that with the multiple service mistakes we had experienced tonight, it wasn't necessarily One Red Door's issue, but this particular server.

Continuing forward, here was my grouper:


The grouper had been pan seared on the presentation side (the side you see first) and the crust on the fish was an enjoyable contrast to the soft, creaminess of the flesh underneath. I'd say the fish came out somewhere between medium and medium-well, which meant while it was moist, it could've been just a touch moister. The potato gnocchi accompanying the fish was also caramelized and, just as with the fish, served as a nice contrast to the interior of the small potato dumplings.

The lobster portion of "potato lobster gnocchi" was simply pieces of cooked lobster meat tossed in with the gnocchi. Sadly, the lobster meat was a bit chewy and honestly, other than the Maine lobster jus served underneath the fish, it felt a little out of place. The broth, however was properly seasoned (as was the entire dish) and the sautéed spinach located underneath the grouper was a nice touch. The only real complaint I had about the dish was the perceived value. At $25.50, this was the second most expensive item on the menu and both Jayni and I felt that the portion seemed small for that price point.

Not normally a dessert person, when Jayni suggested that we split one, I quickly agreed. Here was a shot of the dessert menu:


Figuring that Jayni's sweet tooth needed to be satisfied more than mine, I gave control of the dessert selection to her. She picked the Maple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Candied Walnut:


At $8, this seemed on the high side for desserts in northeast Ohio. While the cake had a very good flavor and the crumb was incredibly moist, what Jayni and I noticed almost right away was that there wasn't any textural contrast to the cake. One would assume that if the cake had been adorned with a candied walnut that there would be chopped walnuts inside the cake, too. Not so. Even the carrots, normally added in their crunchy raw state, had softened to the point where they didn't add a contrast either. Don't get me wrong, it was a good piece of carrot cake. But it didn't wow either one of us. The other thing that both of noticed was that there wasn't anything particularly impressive about the presentation; an average size piece of cake, sitting on a white plate sprinkled with powdered sugar and adorned with a sliced and fanned strawberry (albeit a tasty one).

While we did finish the cake, it left us both feeling like it could have been much more than it was.

For the two of us, between tip and tax, it came to $100 (not counting my cocktail earlier in the evening). While I think you will get a tasty meal at One Red Door, the service blips between the bartender and our server were a bit too obvious to ignore. While the bartender may have been referring to the kitchen working out its kinks, I think the front of house staff needs to undergo the same level of scrutiny as the back. With the dish I had tasted from One Red Door during the Taste of Hudson had left me slightly worried, tonight's dinner definitely redeemed them in my eyes. I definitely recommend that you check them out.

A Visit To North End Restaurant

When last I mentioned Chef Jeff Jarrett and the North End Restaurant and Wine Bar in Hudson, Ohio, it was during this year's Taste of Hudson event. Just as with my idea at the 2010 Taste of Akron, instead of trying to do the impossible and eat the food from every single one of the vendors, I singled out three or four restaurants on which I hadn't done any type of formal review and sampled their food as a pre-cursor to an official visit and review. Chef Jarrett's food at the Labor Day festival had really impressed me and my companions and I decided that today would be the day for my unannounced visit. Since Chef Jarrett obviously knew what I looked like, I wasn't sure how long my visit would remain anonymous, but I figured I'd at least give it the college try.

The North End Restaurant and Wine Bar was located at 7542 Darrow Road, Hudson, OH 44236 and can be reached at 330-656-1238. Parking was located in a fairly large lot just outside of the building. From Darrow Road (aka State Route 91), the sign for the restaurant was clearly visible on the west side of the road:


And here was a shot of the entrance:


It should be noted that the market portion of the facility opened earlier in the day, 11 AM every day except for Sundays and Mondays. While the website lists lunch hours, I can assure you that only dinner is currently being served starting at 5 PM on the days that they are already open. I had stopped in one other time to try them for lunch only to discover that while the doors were open, the only item being sold was retail wine and beer. Tonight I decided to stop in at around 5:30 PM on a Wednesday evening. Fortunately, while there was a scheduled wine tasting later in the evening, the number of patrons here for dinner was small.

After being seated, my server left me with the menu:





An interesting thing to note on the menu was that Italian bread was available for $3. I've heard of restaurants that only serve bread upon request or have started charging for the service, but the North End was the first restaurant where I've actually come across this policy. I thought about ordering some of the bread to accompany my meal, but by the time my entree arrived today, I knew that I would be too full to appreciate it. Next time, for sure.

As usual, I decided to go with multiple courses in order to see how well played out the menu was. For my appetizer, I started out with the Crispy Pork Belly:


The fanned slices of ultra-tender pork belly had been plated atop kimchee that had been pureed and then brushed onto the plate. Sitting next to the pork was an arugula salad with a brunoise of red onion, plums, and fresh peaches and dressed with a light citrus vinaigrette. I first tasted the kimchee shmear and was rewarded with a wonderful spicy and sour flavor with a bit of spice aggressiveness towards the front of my mouth. When I combined a bit of the pork, salad, and kimchee puree, I was pleased to discover crunchy (from the seared outer edge of the pork belly), creamy, sweet, spicy, and tangy.

While I thought the salad by itself could use a touch more salt, when everything was combined together and eaten as one forkful, this was an amazingly rich and complex dish. I would have never pictured myself being a lover of pork belly, but Chef Jarrett's take on it was delicious and satisfying. For those concerned about spice levels, I should mention that the heat from the kimchee was quite mild and unless you have a complete aversion to anything spicy, you really will enjoy the playfulness of the dish.

For my second taste of the evening, I settled on a cup of the Soup du Jour, which in today's case was the Lobster Bisque:


When this small cup of happiness first arrived at my table, I was completely taken with its terra cotta color and intense seafood aroma. As I dug into the viscous liquid, I noticed that not only was the lobster completely infused into the soup, but there were additional bits of lobster floating throughout as well. Upon tasting my first spoonful, I was again presented with sweet, salty, tangy, creamy, and spicy, but a different spicy. This time the spice hit me gently in the back of the throat, a sure sign that cayenne chili powder had been used to give this bisque some zip. I found myself eating spoon after spoon of this delicious course until sadly, I reached the bottom of the cup. I'm actually thankful that the bisque only came in the smaller "cup" size as had a bowl of this been placed in front of me, I probably would've licked the damn thing clean and been too full for my entrée afterward.

Speaking of entrées, tonight I decided to try the North End Chicken:


Consisting of an Airline cut chicken breast seared to a wonderful golden brown, it rested on top of shredded dark meat from the chicken, goat cheese dumplings, and various cuts of regular and Dragon carrots. All of which had been enhanced by a pan sauce finished with butter and drizzled with a touch of white truffle oil. I decided to try the sauce first and work my way up to the chicken breast. The sauce was exactly what I expected it to be and I could taste the richness from the butter and the slight zip from the fresh herbs that the chefs had thrown in right at the end before plating. What delighted me was the almost earthy headiness that could only come from a drizzle of the white truffle oil.

The goat cheese dumplings were only slightly tart and were completely tender without at all being mushy. The least successful part of the dish, the carrots, were a tad undercooked. Actually, the smallish coins of carrots underneath the chicken were okay since they were small, but when I cut a piece from the larger varieties lining the sides of the plate, I was surprised to find that they still had a bit of their raw flavor and crunch.

The chicken itself, as you can see from this shot, was incredibly moist and juicy:


While the breast meat was great, I think I enjoyed the scattered shredded dark meat even more. Either way, I really savored this dish and with all of the components going on, I was happy to see that everything was perfectly seasoned ... which was a good thing since nary a salt nor pepper shaker could be found at any of the tables in the restaurant. By the time I finished my entrée, it was roughly 6:30 PM, approximately an hour after I had first arrived and about a half-hour before the beginning of the wine tasting. When my server approached me about dessert, I politely declined and asked for both the check and Chef Jarrett if he wasn't in the weeds.

Moments later, Chef Jarrett appeared from the kitchen, looked at me and exclaimed, "You were supposed to tell me when you were coming!" I laughed and responded, "No, no. It doesn't work like that." In the end, tonight had turned out to be a completely anonymous visit and I'm glad I had a chance to review the food as if it was meant for any other regular diner. Chef Jarrett and I talked for a few minutes before he had to return to the kitchen to finish preparations for the impending wine tasting.

With tax, my meal tonight came to slightly under $32, which for the three very tasty courses I enjoyed this evening, I felt was well worth the price. Having finally had a chance to eat a proper meal inside the actual restaurant, I am quite excited about returning for many more in the future. If you haven't had a chance to try out the chef's inventive and tasty menu, I would suggest you stop by and give them a chance soon. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[Ed. Note: I contacted Chef Jarrett to let him know when this review would be published on the blog (he asked me to let him know when the review would go live) and he informed me that he has officially turned in his notice at North End Restaurant in order to pursue his own place. As information becomes available to me of the chef's future endeavors, gentle reader, I will be more than happy to pass along these details to you. And, of course, when North End replaces Chef Jarrett with a new chef, you can expect a re-review of the food.]

A Tasty Sampling Of The Taste Of Hudson 2010

It seems as though festivals celebrating the local restaurant scene are now in full force and quite popular. With people looking for a great way to celebrate the Labor Day weekend, there are several popular choices this year from which to pick. In Cleveland, there is both the Ohio Natural Gas Taste of Cleveland (the PR and marketing people need to work on that name, no?) and the Oktoberfest in Berea. If you live closer to Akron than to Cleveland, there is also the Taste of Hudson. About a week ago, I was contacted by good friend and fellow food blogger Kathy from Carano's Cucina and asked if I wanted to join her and her husband, Nick, for a walkthrough of this year's festivities at the First & Main shopping district in Hudson.

Because of our diverse schedules, we drove and parked separately and then met up around 2 PM. Parking was a bit tricky as the parking deck was essentially closed. I ended up finding a parking spot on Atterbury Boulevard, just east of the train tracks. Streetside parking was available for free and I took advantage of it. As I walked toward the area where the festival was being held, I knew that I was heading in the right direction when I saw this sign advertising the festival:


I proceeded to walk to the corner of Library and Park (where the Coldstone Creamery was located) and noticed the first of two booths where money was being exchanged for magnetic striped cards that would then subsequently be used to purchase food. The other booth was located at the corner on the opposite side of the square at the intersection of First and Village Way:


There were actually two lines: one for credit card payments and the other for cash transactions. Needless to say, the line for the credit cards was long and the one for cash was blissfully short. Fortunately, I had brought enough cash with me today that I totally avoided the long lines. I decided that $20 worth of credit ought to be enough to get me all of the samples I would need to write up this entry. The nice thing was that I could always go back for more if I needed it. I didn't specifically ask, but at other festivals similar to the Taste of Hudson, there aren't refunds for unused money at the end of the event, so spend wisely.

After meeting up with Kathy and Nick, we proceeded to walk the entire square, looking at restaurants, menus, and judging whether or not the food looked interesting enough to brave the lines. Instead of trying to write up the twenty or so vendors that were participating this year, I decided to adopt the same tactic that served me so well for the Taste of Akron 2010; I would visit the booths for the restaurants I was interested in doing a proper review at some point in the future.

The initial item on today's culinary agenda was a visit to the booth for Blue Canyon (warning: gratuitous use of Flash) in Twinsburg, Ohio. As it turned out, Chef Brandt Evans had also shown up and was talking with an attendee when we visited his booth:


Both Kathy and I decided to try the Beef Brisket Sandwich with Coleslaw. At only $4, this was a very large sandwich and a very good value:


Here was a shot of the guts of the sandwich, crown removed:


And finally, not to be outdone, the crown of the bun itself:


This was a very tasty offering. The brisket was tender, juicy, and had just the right amount of smoke to it. The sauce used to dress the meat was well balanced between smoke, sweet, and acidic. The bun was fresh and held up to the wet ingredients in the interior. The only real issue I had with the sandwich was that while there were certain bites that contained enough coleslaw to act as a nice foil to the meat, other bites seemed completely devoid of any of the crunchy salad. A simple fix? A bit more coleslaw, please.

Having finished my brisket sandwich, we walked around the square until we came upon the target of my next tasting which just happened to be located directly in front of the new restaurant bearing the same name, One Red Door. They were also serving up a variety of adult tastes today:


One Red Door only recently opened its doors having replaced the much loved Vue Restaurant. While there was around three or four options on the menu, the Macaroni and Cheese with Smoked Brisket at $5 called out to me:


First, the good news. For being held and served out of a chaffing dish, the pasta was in remarkably good shape. It was cooked properly and had a nice chew to it. The smoked brisket was also cooked to the point where it was still tender and easily shredded under the weight of my plastic fork. The sauce on the brisket was assertively smoky, sweet and sour. I do think that Blue Canyon's brisket was a little better, but only marginally so. The bad news was that the cheese sauce dressing the pasta was completely lost in the boldness of the brisket. Even just eating the macaroni and cheese by itself, I couldn't help but think that I would've enjoyed it much more had it been made with a bolder cheese flavor. I enjoyed the viscosity of the cheese sauce, enough that it coated the noodles well, but it was not swimming in a pool of sauce mornay. Overall, while this dish wasn't bad, it was today's last place finisher.

Finally, having made it completely around the entire square and back to where we started, we stopped at the last booth on my agenda today, the North End Restaurant and Wine Bar:


I still had $11 left on my dining card and it looked like I would be rounding out my experience at the Taste of Hudson today with two of North End's menu items. First up, for $4 was the Goat Cheese Stuffed Peppadews:


These were little nuggets of heat, sweet, acidity, and goat cheese flavored goodness all rolled up into one. According to Chef Jeff Jarrett who was working the event today and stopped over to chat with us when he recognized me, these are commonly served right out of the jars in which they are brined. The brine was the reason that each of these little bites had a wonderful hit of acidity. The goat cheese flavor was actually subdued a bit and the mild spiciness from the peppadew rolled around in my mouth as I chewed each morsel.

The final item on my tasting schedule for only $4 was the homemade Potato Gnocchi with Braised Beef Short Ribs:


A combination of potato gnocchi that had been crisped up in a mixture of butter and oil and a braised beef short rib that was so tender it could be cut with only a minute amount of pressure from my plastic fork, the meat literally melted in my mouth. The gnocchi, not to be outdone, had a truly delightful potato flavor to it and the contrast of textures between the soft interior of the pasta and the crusty outer exterior made it a truly delicious bite to eat. Kathy also got the gnocchi and short ribs and she proclaimed her love for the dish as well. Of the three restaurant booths I visited today, this dish was by far my favorite. Then again, I'm a complete sucker for a well executed plate of gnocchi; it's sad that so few restaurants seem to be able to pull off a good version.

As with my experience at the Taste of Akron this year, I know that I can expect some fantastic meals at all three restaurants when I finally get around to officially reviewing them. The Taste of Hudson 2010 will be happening today, Monday, September 6th from 11 AM until 6 PM. While there were plenty of vendors whose food offereings I didn't have a chance to sample today, I would suggest that if you are looking for wonderful food in a fun atmosphere, you make it a point to stop out and pick your own favorites. $20 was enough for me to work my way around the square and it should be plenty for you, too.