The Falls Report: Niagara Falls

In reality, words do not do justice to Niagara Falls. This three-cascade (Horseshoe, American and Bridal Veil) wonder of nature, the most visited waterfall in the world and one of the world's largest in terms of width and water flow rate, is really best described in visuals, whether it be in person, video or, in this case, pictures. Luckily for me, my spouse and my parents, we hit just about the best time for visiting: just after the last big influx of tourists (the Labor Day weekend) but before the weather started taking a turn toward chillier temperatures.

Anyone visitor to the Falls, and particularly first-timers, should try to view them from both sides of the border (note: if you choose this option. bring your passports - you are required to present them to inspectors when crossing the United States-Canada border.) The American side of the falls, particularly at Niagara State Falls Park at Goat Island ($10 entrance fee) allows you to get the closest to all the falls as well as the rapids immediately before, but the views are generally from a sideways angle. Horseshoe Falls is also viewable at less of a sideways angle, but the prevailing winds this day and the overwhelming mist from these falls made this a drenching experience for all who to ventured even remotely closely to the edge of the overlook.

(Top) A rainbow-enhanced view of American & Bridalveil Falls from Goat Island
(Bottom) The rapids and mist that greeted us from the Goat Island view of Horseshoe Falls

In addition, Goat Island also has the "Cave of the Winds" option, where those determined to get soaking wet can pay a separate admission fee for a raincoat and the opportunity to descend on to wooden pathways around and near the base of American and Bridal Veil Falls (as it was a cool blustery day, we chose not to partake in this option.) Another point of interest, for those with a scientific streak, is the statue of Nikolas Tesla, the inventor of numerous things including the alternating current electrical power system (not surprisingly, the Niagara Falls area was one of the first areas in this country where people attempted to harness the power of the rushing water into electricity.) This statue, a gift from the former country of Yugoslavia to the park in 1976, is now a topic of much debate due to its possible relocation to the nearby city of Buffalo.

The Tesla Statue, and a rain-shielded guidepost to the Cave of the Winds attraction.

A river-level view of where Cave of the Winds participants end up

The Canadian side ups the ante by giving you the panoramic, head-on view of all three of the falls, as well as a view of the colorful curtain that the falls create at night through some carefully-placed lighting. In addition, area ups the ante in the scope and number of super-touristy attractions available to the area's visitors as compared to the U.S. side. Most of these attractions, mainly concentrated in or surrounding the Clifton Hill region, may not be everyone's bag of tea. However, I figure the appreciation factor for these sideshow attractions goes higher for those with bigger families and/or larger tour groups.

Panoramic views of the three falls, including the view of American Falls at night

You can find it all (for better or worse) in the Clifton Hill section of Niagara Falls, ON

One attraction that we would say is a must at least once for any visitor is the boat cruises that take you to the base of all the falls, whether it be the Maid of the Mist (American side) or, in our case, the Hornblower Cruises on the Canadian side. Here, the slightly off-peak period of the year again made it easy to acquire a walk-up ticket ($19.95 CDN) at the time that worked out best for our group, and the relative lack of passengers made traversing around the boat for multiple angles of the falls fairly easy. This is perhaps where we found out why the Rainbow Bridge (the main connector between the U.S. and Canada here) is named such: you almost couldn't help but have a rainbow or two pop up in your visual field.

River level on the Hornblower Cruises' trip to the bases of Niagara Falls

Our family visit to Niagara Falls was in reality fairly short, but nonetheless a more than worthwhile visit for all. Though it may be somewhat obvious to say, anyone considering a trip of more than a couple days to this region should investigate the multitude of tourism-oriented websites and resources that tout region-wide discount passes to various attractions and other visitor incentives (for us, the local AAA Office in Worthington had such passes available should we have had the need.)

2019 Update - No notable changes in social media links needed.

Niagara Falls State Park (Visitor Center)

332 Prospect St (Google Maps)
Niagara Falls, NY 14303
(716) 278-1796
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Hornblower Niagara Falls Cruises
5920 Niagara Parkway (Google Maps)
Niagara Falls, ON  L2E 6X8
(905) NIA-GARA
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Kain Na Tayo! Manila Flavours (Niagara Falls, ON)

The one thing I miss the most in my move out here to the Buckeye State is my family, and more specifically, the proximity to my family. Throughout most of my life, my immediate family has been at worse only a few hours drive away. Nowadays, it's more like several hours away by way of airplane, making getting together in person more of a rare occurrence.

This is why I was especially thrilled when my parents were able to travel here for their first visit ever to this region. Along with the in-laws meeting each other for the first time ever (which went swimmingly well, like my spouse and I thought it would), we acted as erstwhile tour guide for them during their stay. This included a little road trip to both the American and Canadian sides of the Niagara Falls area.

Food has always played an important role at family gatherings big and small in both our families. My side of the family naturally puts a Filipino flair into this equation, and it seemed natural to try to capture that during this trip if at all possible. Luckily, I was able to scout out Manila Flavours, a gem of an eatery operating on the outskirts of the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

Located in what seems to be a smallish and otherwise unremarkable strip mall, a pretty expansive area greeted us as we walked through Manila Flavours' distinctive red door entrance on a weekday night. The space reminded me of other similar-type Filipino restaurants I was familiar with back in Northern California: there was enough space to easily handle large gatherings, a stage for a live band, and the equipment for karaoke festivities (in fact, a few off-duty workers dropped by during our stay to warble out some tunes.)

From top left (counterclockwise): Sisig, Pancit, Bistek,
the bar area and some wall decor

While Manila Flavours also has Vietnamese standards on their menu, we were here for the Filipino dishes this night. It didn't hurt that the restaurant owners were from Pampanga, one of the regions in the Philippines renowned for its cuisine. We took our time with the menu; it would be easy to over-order here, with the menu containing numerous dishes we were familiar with. In the end, we whittled it down to an appetizer, a plate of white rice, and three of their mains.

For an appetizer, we ordered the Shanghai Lumpia pork eggrolls (15 for $8.95; all prices in Canadian Dollars); these tasty finger food items were happily devoured by everyone prior to our main dishes to arrive.

The two heartier dishes, the Sisig (fried bits of pork parts in chilies, served sizzling in an iron pan; $10.95) and the Bistek Pinoy (thinly sliced strips steak fried up with onions, garlic, soy sauce and lemon or (typically) calamansi juice: $11.95), were quite delectable and universally enjoyed by everyone.

The third dish, the Pancit Guisado (essentially a Filipino chow mein; $11.95) ended up on the bland side. However, a couple squeezes of the provided lemon slices (something that would pretty common regardless) and the judicious addition of soy sauce fixed that issue easily.

Our hosts were quite gracious, appreciative that we had traveled from so far to seek out their restaurant. Take out is also available; several customers came in throughout the night to pickup their phone-in orders.

As we ended up discovering, the Ontario side of Niagara Falls has a number of eateries overpriced for the quality of food provided, especially as you get the closer you get to the falls itself. Based on our experience, Manila Flavours does a fine job with producing tasty Filipino cuisine standards and is worth seeking out by locals living in and visitors to this border town.

2017 Update: All indications (Google, Facebook, etc.) are that Manila Flavours has closed permanently.

Manila Flavours
McLeod Plaza
7000 McLeod Rd (Google Maps)
Niagara Falls, ON L2G7K3
(289) 296-4418

Food Trucks to the Second Power: Challah and Ajumama

Continuing my double food truck posts, and with the season winding down for the year, here are two more mobile vendors who I have grown familiar with during my time here in the Buckeye state:

Challah: This food truck's offerings are advertised on their Facebook page as the owners' reinvention of the childhood Jewish comfort food they grew up with. Indeed, a glance of their typical menu offerings fit that motif perfectly, with items such as the Reuben Burger and their Potato Latkes.

My spouse and I have sampled their menu separtely at various locations around the metro area and have found all their offerings quite tasty. My spouse's favorite so far has been their Smoked Salmon Sandwich ($9), with nicely smoked fish topped with cucumbers, tomatoes and a pleasant herbed cream cheese spread. Meanwhile, Shoshi's Chicken Salad sandwich ($7) has turned out to be a personal favorite of mine, with a nice blend of herbs in a creamy chicken salad filling, topped off with red onions and pickles.

In addition, I found their just-released seasonal Beef Brisket Sandwich with Brown Bourbon Apples special ($9) quite delectable, with plenty of tender chunks of brisket and apples that is especially well-served by its soft challah roll.

Their new seasonal menu also includes their Matzo Ball Soup ($6; weather dependent), which might prove to be the perfect solution to battle the chilly temps. I think I just might have to test that notion sometime in the near future.

I must note one more informational thing before finishing: in our experience, Challah's main food items are generally on the saltier side of the ledger. This may be an issue for folks with salt-intake issues or whose palates are adverse to saltier food items. However, we have never had anything that's veered into the too-salty range for us, and we look forward to sampling more of this food truck's offerings down the road.

2019 Update: Challah!'s Catie Randazzo has been one busy gal, as she has now expanded her food truck offerings into a brick-and-mortar kitchen (Grandview's Woodland's Tavern.) In addition, her efforts with chef Matthew Heaggans has the Brewery District's Ambrose and Eve providing top-ranked comfort food classics.

Challah!
Various Daily Locations
(614) 579-0601
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Ajumama: I have admitted in the past that, for no particularly good reason, I haven't really actively sought out Korean food, despite all the indications that say it would become a favorite of mine if I gave it a shot. Based on my first encounters with Ajumama's offerings, I may be getting my butt in gear in short order.

The first thing one might notice about this truck is the display of shiny trophies along side the order window. In Ajumama's case, they are a sign of the excellence this mobile food vendor has produced for local food truck customers since their debut as a food truck in 2012. In fact, a nice chronicle of Chef Laura Lee's hard work to perfect her offerings can be found at this series of posts over at the Seoul Eats website.

Ajumama's offerings line up with the popular Korean-American fusion theme started with food trucks like Kogi in Los Angeles. Unlike other similar trucks (I was familiar with the similar Seoul on Wheels back in San Francisco,) Ajumama has stayed away from the Mexican food motif and focused on Korean street food basics with some American-based twists, as in their very popular Bulgogi Cheesesteak Sandwiches ($8; Korean BBQ with "kimcheese" and onions on a hoagie roll) or a Kimchi Hot Dog ($6; served with spicy mayo, cucumber kimchi and a vegan or beef/pork hot dog from The Good Frank.)

As tempted as I was by those, I was determined to try out the more distinctly Korean street food items on my first visits, all around some variations on the old reliable pancake. The Pajeon Dak, an egg-based pancake which reminded me a bit of my dad's Filipino egg-based beef and potato tortas. These beauties, filled with green onions, zucchini, soybean sprouts filled with sesame soy chicken with mushrooms, provided a unique and scrumptious blend of flavors that was accentuated well by the soy and vinegar dipping sauce. The bag of specially-blended OH! Korean BBQ flavored chips ($2) was also quite good, and I spent the rest of the day finishing off my bag.

On a return visit, I went with the Hodduk, which closely resembles a traditional breakfast pancake. Their Bulgogi Hodduk (2 for $7) reminded me of when I would wrap pancakes around my sausage links as a kid. Except in this case, the bulgogi was stuffed within the pancake itself, making this pleasantly savory item the bonus feature of being preeminently portable.

2019 Update: Instagram was added to the social media links below.

Ajumama
Various Daily Locations
(614) 859-6119
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Bagels and Locks (Pt. 1): The Soo Locks and Cup of the Day

A tour boat gets a rise from the locks, sandwiched
around views from the Soo Locks viewing platform

The quaint Sault Sainte Marie (referred by locals as "The Soo") is the oldest city in the state of Michigan, having been a gathering place for native peoples for many years before French missionaries Claude Dablon and Jacques Marquette set up a mission in the area in 1668,

This area proved of prime importance due to its location; the St. Mary's River, the one and only connection between the greatest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior, and neighboring Lake Huron, flows through this area. The rapids of the river, by which the city name received its origin, consisted of a 21 feet drop over hard sandstone in a short ¾-mile-long stretch (the original pathway of the rapids can still be seen on overhead pictures.)

These rapids made larger trade vessel navigation through this area impossible and forced traders to portage their loads past this obstruction (Portage Road, which runs through downtown Soo, marks the original portage path which traders used to transport their goods.)

The foundation for the modern-day Soo Locks, which drew us up to these northern climes on our recent Michigan trip, began in 1797, when a lock was created on the north shore of the river to handle trade canoe traffic. Currently, a parallel set of four locks (three of which are operational) run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and a small lock run by the Canadian government on the northern shore of the river.

The Soo Locks Visitor Center has various informative displays about the development of the locks, including a interactive display of boat traffic and expected arrival times along the lakes. The latter is important, as it is the processing of these vessels through the engineering marvels that provide the main attraction for visitors to the area.

The multi-level viewing platform at the visitor center provides the perfect venue for watching ships both big and small creep into the lock. All manner of spectators were here this day, from old salts long retired from their seafaring days down to the goggle-eyed children, staring in awe as a big lakes freighter demonstrated Archimedes' Principle in real life before their very eyes.

Like the processing of ships through the locks, the general speed of life in Soo seems to be slow and deliberate. This feeling was not too different within Cup of the Day, one of the town's few places to hangout and grab a cup of java, Whatever morning rush may have been there had long gone by the time we stopped by for a quick bite.

Cup of the Day features a pretty typical selection of breakfast and lunch standards at relatively inexpensive prices (there are only a couple items on the menu that break the $7 barrier,) The coffee featured is from a Michigan based roaster (Paramount Coffee out of Lansing) and the bagel sandwich and coffee (the small cup goes for exactly $1) we ordered did a perfectly acceptable job of waking us up and giving us some quick morning nourishment.

Perhaps the most unique thing about Cup of the Day is the novel mixing of businesses and philosophies. This may be my first and only visit to a combination coffee house/beauty salon (the space is shared with the owner's business partner's Judy and Company salon and spa) with a focus on "high quality natural food", an/anti-crap-coffee credo (they include a definition for a "McCRAPpuccino" in their webpage Coffee & Espresso terminology section) and a conservative political bent (not surprising for red-leaning Chippewa County.)

2019 Update: Social media links have been updated for Cup of the Day

Soo Locks Visitor Center and Park
(Visitor Center open Seasonally; Park open year-round)
312 W. Portage Avenue (Google Maps)
Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783
(906) 253-9290
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Cup of the Day
406 Ashmun St. (Google Maps)
Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783
(906) 635-7272
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Tapping Into Something Good: Gallo's Tap Room

It's funny sometimes when a planted seed suddenly sprouts to life.

Gallo's Pit BBQ, formerly at the corner of Linworth and Dublin-Granville Road (a space now occupied by the much-talked-about Crafty Pint) had been one of our regular stops to grab some barbecue in the area. It was only when they closed around November 2013 that we found out about their relationship with Gallo's Tap Room located in the mall at Bethel and Olentangy River Roads.

"Okay, I didn't know that," we both kind of said to ourselves as we read of the barbecue joint's demise, and in a way that seemed we would never act on that information.

Or so it seemed: fast forward many months later when my spouse and I were looking for something to eat that would be relatively fast, but wasn't fast food, before engaging in an early evening drive to parts up north. The usual haunts were circulating in our minds but on this day didn't bring up the usual enthusiasm.

"Hey, what about Gallo's Tap Room, the place related to the barbecue place that closed?" my spouse piped-up from seemingly nowhere.

The 1970's-era exterior of this eatery, which is part of the Olentangy Plaza strip mall, might lead one to think of Gallo's as a bit of a dive; the ongoing construction of the nearby and nearly completed Taylor House Apartments (delayed from its original opening date by several months) hasn't helped. However, it was those very same apartments that led the owners of the Tap Room to close their Linworth location in order to concentrate on revamping the menu and expanding the space to handle the expected Taylor House resident traffic. Based on this first visit, those efforts have turned out quite well.

The interior is quite expansive, with plenty of seating and many of the usual bar trappings such as TV screens, jukebox and an area for pool tables, However, there are areas of coziness too such as the main bar area, leaving a customer a chance at privacy or group camaraderie except perhaps at the most jam-packed times.

Gallo's has a nice draft beer list that contained a smattering of Ohio breweries, including Bad Tom Smith from Cincinnati, Columbus' Seventh Son and Brew Kettle from Strongsville. My spouse went with Seventh Son's excellent Strong Ale followed by Bell's Two Hearted, one of her all time favorites. Looking for a lower ABV beer, I opted for a pint of the Sierra Nevada/New Glarus Beer Camp collaboration There And Back and was nicely surprised by how much better it was on tap than the bottled version I had sampled a couple weeks prior.

The Tap Room menu is along the line of a bar food menu with some slightly more novel items such as Pierogies ($7) and Mussels and Fries ($9.95) sharable appetizers, and Santorini ($10.50) and California Pear ($6.95) salads. I ended up ordering one of these slightly novel items this visit with their Big Easy Muffalatta ($8.25), which turned out to be a pretty decent version of the New Orleans classic sandwich.

Gallo's has rotating daily specials related to their bruschetta, portabello, pizza and calzone offerings, and my spouse ordered up the calzone this early evening. We were really pleased to say that this particular calzone ($7), filled with bacon, roasted red peppers, fresh herbs and roasted garlic, was plain and simply good, with a golden brown exterior, just the right amount of salt in the dough and a pleasing mix of flavors in the filling.

We noticed quite a lot of pizzas were being ordered both in-house and take out; our server informed us that they are a notch up in quality compared with the delivery-style pies that reside in the immediate area. The base model whole pie cheese pizza starts at $16.50; slices are also available for $2.50 and up. Based on our experience with the calzone, the pizza has made our "to be tried in the near future" inventory.

Gallo's Tap Room gives Taylor House residents a solid eatery within walking distance. But really, anyone driving near or living within earshot of Gallo's could do worse than to drop by their eatery and give them a tap or two.

2019 Update: an Instagram link has been added to the information below

Gallo's Tap Room
5019 Olentangy River Road (Northwest - Google Maps)
Columbus, OH 43214
(614) 457-2394
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