Maplewood Kitchen:

As David and I have watched downtown restaurants open in the past several years, sometimes we feel like the downtown and Over-The-Rhine areas are part of a life-sized game board of Monopoly.

I’ve long joked that David Falk is trying to own the block 6th and Walnut, with Nada, Boca and Sotto right next to each other. Dan Wright (Senate, Abigail Street, Pontiac) is another participant in the game. Falk and Wright have been very successful -- but there’s another set of players that are making some aggressive moves.

I’m talking, as you may have guessed, about the Thunderdome Restaurant Group.

Bakersfield. Currito. The Eagle. It’s easy to spot the work of John and Joe Lanni, just look for the line of people waiting outside.

Most recently, they’ve ventured south and west, to the 84.51 building on Race Street. Maplewood Kitchen is the newest investment from Thunderdome, and it is quite the investment. The interior of the restaurant is stunning. With each endeavor, Thunderdome has upped their game a little.

Straight out of one of those Restoration Hardware catalogs full of things no reasonable person can afford

If Bakersfield is a bar for devil-may-care young folks that hit tacos hard and happy hour even harder, and The Eagle is a restaurant those same folks can later bring their kids to for a grilled cheese while the adults enjoy a large goblet of high-life respite, Maplewood Kitchen is a place where tastes have evolved a bit: You’re thirty-five now. Time to start ‘eating clean’, even though you don’t know what that really means. Here, have a cold-pressed juice cocktail. Sure, it’s $10, but you’ve got a good job and a 401K. You can afford it. Maybe not more than one, though. You’ve got a lot of errands to do today.

The process is pretty straightforward. Walk through the front doors, solve the Cracker Barrel-esque puzzle to get your menu clipboard off the hook hanging from a brass rail, and make your way to the front of the line, where you can select pastries, juices or other beverages. At the register, place your order (including cocktails) and take your number to your seat of choice.

If you can't get it off the hook slink away in shame and just order the burger

After you’ve had some time to appreciate the decor and the fact that they have put sparkling water on tap, your drinks and food are brought out to you.

We’ve been to Maplewood Kitchen several times now, and have tried a variety of dishes and cocktails.

First, drinks. Cocktails, as I alluded to above, aren’t inexpensive, but cold-pressed juice isn’t a cheap thing to make. The Supergreen Margarita, made with 100% agave tequila, Cointreau, sour mix, and a blend of spinach, pineapple, romaine, kale, parsley and celery juices, is unlike any margarita I’ve ever had before. I was skeptical at first, but did enjoy it and would order it again. The grassiness of the green juice added another layer of complexity to the drink. I felt sort of healthy ordering it, another plus.

How Green? Supergreen.

Next, the Roasted Tomatillo Bloody Mary. David’s the bigger bloody Mary fan, so he tried this one. We appreciated the unique take on the drink, but it needs salt, spice and more acid. The solution for that would be simple-- a splash of green hot sauce, like Tabasco, would do the trick.

Blackberry Lemonade is a crowd-pleaser. Not only is it very pretty to look at, the cocktail is delicious. I’d get this one again for sure.

The cocktail I was most curious about was the Sol Driver, a blend of Tito’s vodka, Grand Marnier, Sol Glo juice, fresh orange juice and orange bitters. This was probably my second favorite cocktail we tried.

Now, the food. Don’t skip the sides. The hash brown is excellent, the bacon crispy, and any place where you can get a side of goetta automatically gets extra points in my book.

Our first visit I opted for the Breakfast Sandwich, David for the Avocado Benedict. The bread for the sandwich I really enjoyed, with excellent ‘holes’ in the ciabatta structure. The goetta needed a little more crunch, but the flavor was excellent. Where this sandwich really goes off the rails is the tomato jalapeno jam. For a savory sandwich, there was a lot of it--and the jam was extremely sweet. While this combo can work well with some dishes, it combined with the mushy goetta for a very strange experience.

Do not pump up this jam

David’s eggs on his Benedict were poached beautifully, although the naming does raise some questions. Traditionally, a Benedict contains some sort of meat or protein - bacon, ham, goetta, etc. While tasty, this dish doesn’t include any of that--or even the traditional hollandaise sauce.

It seems that putting some spin on the traditional Eggs Benedict is standard practice nowadays, but this one pushes the envelope in how many elements you can change and still call something Benedict.  Given the ingredients, it would be more fair to label this a variant of "avocado toast."

I get what Maplewood is trying to do here, but Benedict isn’t supposed to be healthy, it’s supposed to be an indulgence. I would rather have seen the dish try to straddle the divide a bit better. Workaround: order a side of tasty bacon and assemble to your liking.

The burger is delicious. Toppings are well proportioned, the bun holds up and the meat blend is excellent. This is one of our top burgers downtown.

Another great sandwich is the chicken club. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to get a great club sandwich somewhere, but the reality is sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to find. We’ve gotten the club several times now, and have been very happy with the sandwich, also served on excellent 16 Brick ciabatta bread with flavorful piri piri sauce.

Lastly, the Maplewood Omelette and the Bistro Steak and Eggs. We enjoyed the omelette, but the steak & eggs stole the show. Tender steak with a nice punch of chimichurri, toast with delicious jam and some of those spectacular hash browns --if you’re feeling a big breakfast, this is the way to go.

Maplewood Kitchen is a great addition to this corner of Downtown, which has largely been overlooked when it comes to new development (read: get it while you can, retailers and restaurateurs). It's nice to see Thunderdome try something different, as well.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Maplewood.

Pi Pizzeria:

It’s not uncommon for us in our intense negotiations about where to eat, to pull out our phones and start perusing options. Usually not five minutes into the process one of us is cursing in frustration. I bet you can guess why.

How many times have you tried to go to a restaurant website to find out pesky, teeny tiny details like when it's open, or take a look at the menu, or (God forbid) ascertain its address, only to find that information buried behind a giant flash object, or on a page that it has no business being on? I just want to know when you open for lunch, dammit. But I’ll never know because you’ve decided to bury your navigation in some sort of monstrous flash carousel that won’t load. Smooth move, ex-lax.

A good menu, much like a good mobile site, can be hard to pull off. As I mentioned, David and I have had a fair amount of experience viewing restaurant websites, and we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the unusable. While some restaurants seem to be getting wise to the fact a mobile friendly site (Nada finally figured it out this year) is necessary, it’s rare to find a restaurant that seems to get it right from the start, just like with a menu.

So we’re happy to report that Pi’s mobile site is one of the best we’ve seen, and the menu isn’t too shabby either. First, the site, designed by Boxing Clever in St. Louis.

Holy crap! Contact information right on the first page! A phone number! A map to tell me where it's located! The menu, front and center! A big button to order online! All in a nice, simple, high contrast black and white theme that is easy to navigate and devoid of clutter or dancing slices of pizza. This is how you do a mobile site for a restaurant, folks.

Now, on to the menu. We’ve tried Pi’s pizzas twice now (once for takeout, once dine-in), as well as a variety of their appetizers and sides.

While takeout is great, if you’re getting the deep dish style pizza, we recommend you dine-in. They’ve got a nice beer and cocktail selection, so that’s a plus.

Exhibit A: Dining in with a nice adult beverage

We tried the Pi Ravs, which were larger than I thought they would be and (I think) made in house. The tomato sauce on the pizza and appetizers from Pi is top-notch and we really enjoyed it.

We also got the not-so-cinis, which are like arancinis except baked, with fontina, mushrooms and kale. I enjoyed both, though the not-so-cinis are probably the healthier option of the two if you’re into that kind of thing.

We tried the kale-ifornication salad, which comes with toasted chickpeas and pickled onions. David’s had it twice now and really likes it.

I also ordered the beer & cheese soup, which was good, but more of a dip than a soup--it was a little too salty to eat on its own.

Sodium doesn't count as long as you don't know how much it has

When Pi first opened, they had a special pizza with goetta and skyline on it. While I think both on the same pie is overkill, I was very pleased to see goetta as a topping--surprisingly, it’s hard to find around here. While I didn’t see the goetta on the menu during our visit, I asked if they still had some and they’d be willing to put it on my pizza.

Our server responded “We don’t have goetta, but we have gorgonzola so that’s kinda the same thing.”

Erm, no. Busted.

After we explained that goetta was a meat and oats combo, not a cheese, and our server admitted he was from Houston and had no idea what goetta was, he went back to the kitchen to check. I got my goetta. I am very appreciative that Pi made the extra effort, and I want to ask them to take it a step farther--to place goetta on the menu as a regular topping.

If you agree, please let them know on Twitter. Together we can make the dream of goetta St. Louis style pizza a reality! Seriously Pi, you’ve already got Graeter’s ice cream as a dessert on the menu. Let’s go whole hog (pun intended) here and embrace the Cincinnati spirit.

David and I will be back to Pi to try the thin crust pizza, and I like that they have gluten free crust as well as a lot of vegetarian options. A thing to note about the deep dish pizzas--they take some time to cook, so if you’re in a rush, call ahead (or order on their aforementioned mobile site) or order some Pi Ravs instead.

Spicy Goetta Pancakes:

There's something comforting about pancakes. Buttery, slightly salty and sweet with maple syrup, pancakes, at least for me, are on the Olympic team of a tasty breakfast.

Sometimes, though, regular pancakes are not enough. Maybe you've had a horrible day at the office, arriving home frustrated and jittery from the coffee you've pounded to try make it through the afternoon. Or maybe you hit it a little too hard with cheap Hudy Delights at a Cincinnati Rollergirls game and now you're hating life (hey, it happens). Or maybe you're depressed because the playstation network has been down for almost a month, or Mark Bittman has announced he's no longer writing The Minimalist column in the New York Times.

All of these situations, and more, are the perfect environment for spicy goetta pancakes. Note that I didn't say pancakes with goetta, which could easily be confused as pancakes with goetta on the side. No, spicy goetta pancakes have spicy goetta pieces inside the pancakes themselves, making a spicy, salty, buttery sweet meal to put you on the road to emotional or physical recovery.

Thanks to the advances of modern technology, you now have two choices for pancakes. While making pancakes from scratch is extremely easy, there is now an even more lazy option. The batter blaster. I imagine pancakes in a whipped cream can won't sit well with everyone, but we've found it very convenient. Especially when I only want four small, silver dollar sized pancakes. At 12:15 AM.

Goetta pancakes instructions:

1. Cook your spicy goetta, making sure it is nice and crispy. Place on paper towel to the side.

2. Put the pancake batter in a greased pan or well seasoned skillet (preferably the one you cooked the goetta in).

3. Drop the spicy goetta crumbles into the pancake batter.

4. Flip once, and remove once fully cooked.

5. Repeat steps 2-4.

6. Put whatever toppings you like on your pancakes (syrup, butter, jam, some award winning gelato) Consume. Let the healing begin.