Brimful of Dishes on the Northwest Side

The regional cuisines of India were, through circumstance, not something I explored a lot while living in the Bay Area. That changed for the better when I moved to Central Ohio, where the dishes of the numerous Indian restaurants here have quickly become favorites for me and my spouse.

For the most part, the Indian restaurants here, from basic curry joints to more fancy establishments and most recently Indian-fusion places (Indian-themed bowls, wraps and salads from places like Curry Up in the Sawmill area and Lewis Center's Rollz Rice) aren't chains. The Indian-fusion chain restaurant actually has become a more prevalent sight around the US as noted in this May 2016 Eater.com article, but Columbus's biggest Indian chain arrival decidedly does not follow that fusion route in the Michigan-based Neehee's.

Hedging on the Veggies

Vegetables, exotic and more familiar, at Columbus's Saraga International Market

Kids hate their vegetables, right? At least, the conventional wisdom leans that way, but when you look deeper into the matter, there’s not much defining data. One article in the Mirror UK shows people have a natural aversion to green and other “weird” colors, yet an article in The Daily Meal notes Broccoli as one of the most well liked kids' veggies.  Meanwhile, a report found in HuffPost’s Australia posits a double-whammy: a natural human instinct to avoid off-putting bitter or sour flavors plus a lack of instinct to like veggies in the first place.

However, there are plenty of articles to be had about the strategies and hacks a parent can use to get their youngsters to actually eat these generally nutrition-laden foods.

Would any of those have worked in my case? Who knows, but I could tell you that a vegetable's texture played a bigger role than than the taste, and still does to a certain extent. Mushy vegetables (peas for some reason were a notable exception), especially those used in the traditional soup-based dishes my parents would make, were enjoyed as much as my parents' Andy Williams or Perry Como albums - tolerated, but nothing more. On the other hand, green beans and carrots, like my mom's Tom Jones' albums, offered more snap, so I favored them more. And corn and potatoes, from fries to baked to mashed, proved much like Santana's "Abraxas" (on 8-Track cassette to boot) album - they could be repeated ad infinitum as far as I was concerned.

Food Truck Dossier: Sobremesa

Food Truck: Sobremesa

My First Thought: Pretty snazzy trailer...and vegan to boot?

Reality: This relative newcomer to the Columbus food truck scene (starting up roughly during the winter of 2016) features Venezuelan Rafael Simo, who escaped the corporate world to follow his dream of "making good food that would be worthy of a conversation between old friends, family, lovers or even strangers", and touting itself as "Columbus’ first Latin-infused, plant-based mobile food service", as described on its main website.

Based on the menus I've seen at Sobremesa's stops, Simo is following through on that dream in spades. Sobremesa's dishes that are most definitely plant-oriented, with nary a hint of meat in the ingredient listings.

Belle of the Bowl: Brassica

Back in when I lived in the Bay Area, I always made a point to visit the Liba Falafel food truck whenever it was feasible. As good as the falafel itself was, their unique toppings (all made from scratch by truck owner Gail Lillian) found on their so-called "falafel bar" (including but not exclusive to spiced carrot ribbons, cardamon and dill pickles, and harissa hot sauce) elevated your sandwich or bowl to unexpected heights.

Lillian has retired the truck as of 2016, but her falafel and toppings bar lives on at her brick-and-mortar location in Oakland, CA. I would love to try their brick-and-mortar one of these days for nostalgia's sake, but that pursuit I admit has lessened significantly when Brassica arrived upon the local Columbus scene.