by Polly Cambell
It's the time of the year when I push back from the table, delicately dab the corners of my mouth one last time, go home to flop in the recliner and mentally relive all my meals of the year.
It takes awhile. What with online guides to burgers and Italian food and vegetarian restaurants and Oktoberfest, etc, and my "Polly's New Favorite Thing" column and weekly restaurant reviews, I've cut a pretty wide swath through the food that you can get for money in Cincinnati.
In my year-end reverie, certain dishes stand out from the rest. Croissants I've loved appear to me. I can practically taste that chili soup. I remember chicken tenders at the ballpark and a beautiful evening at Orchids.
Maybe it's just what speaks to me, but I think this may have been the year of the classic.
Many local chefs and food producers have put their talents behind making better versions of time-honored, popular dishes. Why invent something completely new when there's still Peking duck to perfect, or better ways to make a doughnut? Why not take something wonderful from the past that we've gotten used to in a degraded form, like a croissant (yes, you, croissantwiches) and make the glorious, original version again?
Not that there wasn't some unbridled creativity on the loose around Cincinnati, with chefs coming up with tastes never before encountered. That's been fun, too.
Here, then, is a sampling of the best things I ate this year, many of them classics, but not all. If you read my blog or click the Dining button on Cincinnati.com frequently, you may have already heard of all these, but here they all are, cherry-picked for you and in one place.
One Love Pizza from Catch a Fire Pizza Truck
The food truck scene kept on truckin' this year, with new trucks and new places to find them. I got a wood-fired pizza from Catch a Fire in Washington Park and ate it under the trees one day this summer, along with a homemade soda. It was too much for me, but one friend and then another happened by and I shared. ... Good pizza, no matter where it's made.
