The Science of Good Taste: CoSi + C-B-C + Ac(tual) BeEr

Before and After: 20 years and still going strong for CBC Restaurant

Reliability can be considered a boring concept in the food and drink world, but frankly I'm good with that, especially if that reliability ventures onto the positive side of the ledger.

Let's start with long time Brewery District mainstay CBC Restaurant. Formerly associated with Columbus Brewing Company via area restaurant maven Cameron Mitchell, CBC has pretty much kept the slightly more upscale than typical brewpub theme, crowd-friendly hangout (plenty of parking as well as an outdoor patio) atmosphere going for 20 years now, long after Mitchell sold the brewpub to its current owners and Columbus Brewing left the space for its current west side climes (Lenny Kolada's Commonhouse Ales now occupies the brewery area in the back of the space.)

Ice Cream Chronicles (Year 3): In Search of Liquid Cold

In one of my favorite science-fiction/action movies ever in Terminator 2, liquid nitrogen played a positively shattering role in what turned out to be the penultimate scene before the finale. The film's antagonist, the experimental T-1000 shape-shifting, liquid-metal Terminator (played menacingly by Robert Patrick), unrelenting in his pursuit to kill the movie's young hero John Connor (Edward Furlong), gets a tanker truck's worth (a postively frozen -320.44°F degrees worth, that is) of this unique substance, which figuratively paralyzes it from moving farther.

The older Terminator model reprogrammed and sent back to protect Connor, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, takes aim at his now frozen-in-place nemesis with his gun and utters perhaps the most famous line in the movie, "Hasta la vista, baby." One big kablam! later, the T-1000 blows apart into hundreds of little pieces.

Little did I know then at the time of the movie's release in 1991, however, that liquid nitrogen could do far more tastier tricks. This chilly fluid helps the folks who run Piccadilly Artisan Creamery in the Cleveland area create some of the more unique ice cream in the state.