drewvogel

Chef Romy Jung

I recently received a call from Chef Romuald “Romy” Jung, former executive chef of The Palace Restaurant at The Cincinnatian Hotel. I met Romy while working in his kitchens for GOURMET SENSATION and other events, and have gotten to know him well by bumping into him at frequent chef-crawls (a clandestine operation involving lots of chefs, lots of food, and lots of alcohol). We’d dined at The Palace recently, as written up in this article. Since he left The Palace a few months ago, I’d lost touch with Romy.

But I am happy to report that Romy has resurfaced at Vito’s Café in Ft. Thomas, Kentucky. (The Happy Mouth Supper Club dined at Vito’s Café in November 2005.) Vito’s Café is run by Victor “Vito” Ciepiel, who ably manages the front-of-house operations. Vito occasionally takes to the small stage (which is situated between the two dining rooms, allowing great views from any seat in the house) and sings songs accompanied by a piano. In fact, all of the servers at the restaurant sing — arias, standards, and show tunes. Vito’s Café is known as the “Home of the Singing Servers”. The servers are from local colleges and universities where they’re studying vocal performance, and many go on to future success. Just ask Vito — he’s happy to tell you about their successes! The sound system is nicely managed — the volume of the music and signing never blows you away.

Vito, of Vito's Cafe

The restaurant is decorated in a kitchy-elegant style and the atmosphere in the dining room feels “clubby”, intimate, and relaxed, despite tablecloths over padded tables & cloth napkins. Tables aren’t too close together. Vito does a great job of circulating to all the tables to make sure everything is going well and that diners are satisfied. He also prepares one of their signature items tableside, the Wheel of Parmigiana (Fettucine Alfredo for two, prepared in a giant round of cheese).

The food at Vito’s is top-notch Italian, with a few American favorites added to the mix. Presentations are very nice, and portion sizes are not overwhelming. Prices are reasonable — entrees are in the $16-$29 price range. Vito’s is “kid-friendly” and yet manages to be a good choice for a romantic dinner as well (I’ve seen reviews where people write that they’ve gotten engaged at Vito’s — I’m sure Vito & staff go crazy over them!).

Chef Romy called to let us know that he started a Sunday brunch menu at Vito’s Café on September 21, 2008. He invited us to brunch, so we joined him on Sunday, September 28 for a lovely meal. We were greeted by name by Vito when we walked in (Vito is a tough one to miss — not only does he cut a commanding presence with his broad shoulders, big smile, and ponytail, but he does a great job of making sure you’re welcomed and seated as quickly as possible) and shown to our table near the center of the small dining room. Our server, Peter (a doctoral student at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music), took great care of us (and sang beautifully).

We started with eye-openers — a Pomosa for Wendy (Pomegranate juice & champaigne) and a Kir Royale for me. For brunch, Wendy sampled the Vito’s French Toast which is thick slices of homemade brioche drenched in vanilla pastry cream and studded with raspberries. I tried Café Benedict: two perfectly poached eggs (last week was “Poached Egg Week” in the cooking class I teach, so they’re on my mind) atop English muffin halves with Canadian bacon and a lovely Hollandaise. A roasted tomato cup accompanied my Benedict. Both dishes were delicious — the French Toast was delicious and delicate, and my dish was hearty and satisfying. Simple presentations were attractive and not over-done.

Chef Romy visited the table a few times to chat about his new position and how much he’s enjoying putting his 30+ years of fine dining experience and French training to use in an Italian kitchen. He showed us the new dinner menu which debuts in a few days (and is not yet on their website at this writing), and it looks outstanding. A few standouts to look forward to:

• Gorgonzola Garlic Bread with a white wine sauce
• Celery Root Cannelloni “without dough” — celery root shaved thin and wrapped cannelloni-style around fresh seasonal vegetables
• Warm goat cheese & pear salad
• Wild Boar Ragu — Wendy zeroed in on this dish and would have eaten it right. now. if only Romy had taken her subtle hint (which was, “bring me some of this right. now.”)!
• Lamb “Stinco” with creamy polenta and porcini sauce
• Truffle Risotto… Need I say more?

As we finished our brunch entrees, Peter quietly asked if we had any room left, because Chef wanted to send something out to us. Remember, kiddies… If the Chef wants to send something out — LET HIM. This is always a good thing. And Romy did not disappoint. He sent a Bellagio Omelet which is chunks of Lobster, fresh thin asparagus tips, Boursin cheese, and diced tomatoes and a side of their house-made Corned beef Hash. Both of these dishes were truly amazing, and despite feeling pretty full we finished them both (remember: eat through that feeling of saitity!).

The brunch at Vito’s is a casual, comfortable, enjoyable affair. The music is nice without being overwhelmingly loud, the hospitality is top-notch, and the food great. And good prices, too.

Vito’s Café is located at 654 Highland Ave. Suite 29, Ft. Thomas, KY 41075. The phone number for reservations (which are strongly recommended, and should be considered essential if you’re celebrating anything) is (859) 442-9444.

Closed since early January 2008, the IRON HORSE INN in Glendale Ohio has recently reopened. The building has a storied history, and it is great to see it open again under new ownership. Wendy and I have dined there twice as guests of the restaurant. This is a “preview-review”. Both of our meals have been in the upstairs dining room, so this review focuses on that space.

The IRON HORSE INN has clarified the vision of the restaurant, envisioning it now as two distinct eateries contained under one roof — downstairs presents a fine dining menu while upstairs has re-adopted the original name of the restaurant “Bracker’s Tavern” (which is slightly confusing…) and offers upscale bar food. It is possible to enjoy an informal meal with a cold beer or a nice glass of wine upstairs or to dress up and enjoy the fine dining options offered in the formal dining room downstairs. The downstairs dining room also features a chef’s table that, while not located in the kitchen, promises as-yet-unknown (to me) special treatment from the chef.

The exterior of the building has been spruced up — and it needed it since it had been neglected. The restfully-colored exterior is invitingly lit and the restaurant beckons with a warm glow. The patio out front is a great place to get a drink and a meal on a comfortable evening. Entering the front doors of the restaurant, you can either climb the short set of stairs to the second floor (an elevator is available and the entire restaurant is handicapped-accessible) for an informal meal or meet the front-of-house manager straight ahead, whose desk is placed at the French-door entrance to the downstairs (formal) dining room. The manager’s desk is imported from Vietnam and is decorated with crushed eggshells (really! — we checked this out with Robin, the owner) and is prettier than you would imagine.

Upstairs, there is a new sitting area just past the top of the stairs that provides a nice place to wait for a table, should the need arise. This new sitting area replaces a small dining room that was wasted space most of the time, and it houses another of the eggshell-decorated furniture pieces. The dark green walls, exposed ceiling beams, and long dark-wood bar of the dining room create a comfortable lodge-y feel. The tables are well-space, so your dining neighbors do not become your dining companions.

The kitchen has received a face-lift with the appointment of Chef Stefan Marcus as Working Chef in charge of the kitchen. His team puts out creative, confident dishes that give testament to Chef Marcus’ years of experience. The kitchen demonstrates restraint — there are no superfluous ingredients or garnishes on the plates. In conversation with Chef Marcus, his enthusiasm for the new venture is evident and infectious. He’s got big dreams for the IRON HORSE, and appears to be in a good position to make them come true.

In our meals there so far, we’ve sampled Jerk Chicken Quesadillas, Crab Cakes with house-made Remoulade, Clam Chowder, Buffalo Chicken Penne with a bleu cheese sauce, and a couple different Paninis with Sweet Potato Fries. Everything has been top notch (standout favorites include the Buffalo Chicken Penne, the Crab Cakes, and the Sweet Potato Fries) and the menu offers sufficient variety to remain interesting for some time. I don’t know if they run specials upstairs or not; on our two visits (one of which was a preview) there were no specials.

They offer “Funny Name Wines” in Bracker’s Tavern, too… an ever-changing selection of value wines with, well, funny names. While I think the idea is somewhat hokey, it seems to work and the couple different wines we’ve tasted have been very good values and reasonably drinkable.

For the most part, the IRON HORSE INN feels like an established restaurant, mostly free of the “opening jitters” experienced by some new places. However, on our visits, there have been a few issues ranging from menu grammar & spelling errors (”Tuna Tar-Tar”, anyone?!), the lack of short descriptions (or even just regions) on the “Funny Name Wines” list, and a few service issues (the wrong entrees were delivered to our table on one visit) reveal that this is, in fact, a new restaurant with a few growing pains.

But the IRON HORSE INN is worthy of your visit right now, and will continue to grow and mature through the startup. It might just become your new (old) favorite restaurant.

(We will eat downstairs soon and I’ll post about that.)

Contact the IRON HORSE INN at 513-722-3333.

“It was a nice party. Nobody cried. Nobody threw up.” — James Beard

An interesting review of a party! Apparently, this was one of Beard’s standard reviews of parties, and was quoted by M.F.K. Fisher as a measure of success in her newly-discovered TABLE BOOK, as described in this article on Gourmet.COM.

Finally, some national attention paid to the developing food scene here in Cincinnati!

This time in an article about Lavomatic, which is run by a good friend of mine, Chef Joanne. The article is by David Tamarkin at Gourmet.COM and is worth checking out.

Finally! Since being without power at my datacenter (actually, my computer room (actually, my spare bedroom)) since Sunday, September 14, the power finally came back on last night around 1:00am. Trying to get things back to normal around here…

The webserver is back (obviously), the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is back, and my Network Accessible Storage (NAS) stack … needs some attention. It booted but all the drives (over 1 terrabyte) are not back online yet. That may be part of the NAS’s internal boot-up verification process, or it might be a problem. Will diagnose — and fix — this evening when I am back in Cincinnati (I am currently in Lexington Kentucky).

UPDATE: The NAS stack is back up and running. Doing final configuration checks to ensure that it’s re-integrated into the server network, but it’s looking promising.

Wow! That was… unexpected!

After a LONG time of not upgrading my site’s operating system, various initiatives I am undertaking required me to update from Fedora Core 5 (released March 20, 2006) to Fedora Core 9 (released May 13, 2008).

I was very nervous about this upgrade since it spanned so many versions of the operating system, but I started out with high hopes. I backed up my system to DVD using MondoArchive, an excellent bare-metal backup solution. Then, I inserted the Fedora Core 9 DVD, rebooted, and started the upgrade proceedure only to be told that one of my drives was a bit short of space (249 megs, to be exact).

The solution ended up being repartioning-in-place using a great product from Acronis which handled all the heavy lifting of the non-destructive repartition for me. I repartitioned the particular drive to a size large enough to make sure this particular problem will never surface again.

Launching the Fedora Core 9 DVD’s upgrade procedure a second time worked, using the newly-widened partition… The installer updated 890 files and rebooted successfully (I was worried about it rebooting successfully!)

However, that’s when I ran into two things… First, the webserver failed to launch because of a configuration error. Secondly, I ran into a time limit and we had to leave for dinner with friends. So, the site was down for a few hours while we enjoyed a very nice meal and evening with Brian, Milan, and Erin.

We came home, went to bed, and I was lying awake thinking of how to address the issues on the server. Next thing I knew, my feet carried me in to the server room and I started tinkering. An hour later (and about 10 minutes ago), I got the site online at last. But there is still more tweaking and testing to do… I need to ensure that the changes I made manually that got the site online will “stick” after the server is rebooted, which I will attempt to do after posting this article.

It was immediately apparent that the new operating system is considerably faster than the old one. Cold-booting takes less than 40 seconds on Fedora Core 9. I’m not sure how long it took on Fedora Core 5, but I know it was longer.

I apologize for the downtime, but it was necessary, and moving forward should be considerably smoother from now on. There is still a fair amount to do — applying non-critical patches & upgrades to the system and then another comprehensive backup, but being back online is enough for tonight.

UPDATE: Rebooting works… mostly. After rebooting, I need to enter “dhclient eth0″, “tzoupdate” and “service httpd start” to get things rolling properly. I need to determine how to automate those steps so the system reboots to an online state.

UPDATE 2: I’ve got the system configured properly now, so it boots into an online state.