Email
Print
FeedHungry for More
A note from the editor
Hence, I did not want to like Veritas Tavern when I first visited in fall 2012. I hoped to show my food-crazy friends that the old ways are the best ways, that there’s no place for syringes and sodium alginate in a kitchen. Instead, I found myself smiling throughout the meal, willingly swept up in chef Josh Dalton’s modern vision of food. We even ordered seconds of the restaurant’s version of shrimp cocktail, which looks like a big square of pasta but tastes exactly (exactly!) the way you want shrimp cocktail to taste.Having grown up in a fine Midwestern home where meat, starch and vegetable were dutifully represented on every dinner plate, I’m skeptical of cooking that messes with the basics. I don’t have the patience to wait for a steak to cook, sealed in a vacuum bag in a bath of continuously circulating hot water, for 72 hours. They say sous vide machines will be as common on our countertops someday as slow cookers and food processors. I say hand me a cast-iron skillet, a blazing burner, a good steak and 10 minutes.
Even if you never make it to Veritas, or if you never get a hankerin’ for a cocktail chilled with liquid nitrogen, you should know that Columbus is a better place because of Dalton and people like Magdiale Wolmark, the intensely committed chef at Till Dynamic Fare.
In starkly different ways—from pushing past conventions to nurturing our regional food heritage—these chefs and others are stretching the boundaries of how Columbus perceives food and the pleasure of dining out.
It’s not always a home run. But how thrilling it is to be in a city where culinary creative minds are experimenting and innovating. And we get to gobble up the results.
That, to me, is quintessential Columbus.
In our “Best New Restaurants” cover story this month, you’ll find ample opportunities to explore new places and flavors around the city, at just about every price point. You’ll meet some of the most interesting people making food in Columbus. You might even be tempted to take the trip up to Veritas Tavern; chances are good you’ll be delighted.
Kristen Schmidt
kschmidt@columbusmonthly.com
@MonthlyEditor
