I don’t go out to eat lunch much during the week, but on special occasions, it happens. And on this particular friday, it was very special. I met up with two twitter friends. I’d never met them before in my life, but through our shared love of food, despite us living on separate coasts, we met up in South Philly to eat! B got the burger of the week – the octagon burger. It was a hefty grilled angus burger on brioche with mixed greens and tomato, topped with turkey bacon, sliced beets, cheddar, caramelized maple-honey onions, and roasted mushroom-chipotle aioli. As you can see, this was an extremely serious burger. And he got his with polenta frieds. To me, anything with beets on it is good in my book. I’m sure this thing was amazing. What’s probably more amazing is how anyone eats this thing in the first place. This requires a flip-top head.
S’s eggs benedict just plain looks ordinary compared to that crazy burger.
And the eggs benedict also looked sadly boring next to my special sandwich – the shanghai nooner. This was truly an awesome sandwich, one for the ages. It was rosemary-asiago focaccia topped with arugula-pesto aioli, mixed greens, tomato, roasted orange-garlic herb turkey breast, roasted butternut squash hash, red onions, roasted red peppers, melted swiss cheese, and topped with fennel-carrot pear slaw. I tried my best to eat half of it while I was there and I enjoyed every bite. And the sweet potato fries were amazing, especially with a slight bit of powdered sugar on top. It was still good the next day. Whoever thought this sandwich combo up deserves a big hug from me. During a busy lunch rush, we didn’t have to wait for a table and the food came out in decent time. This was definitely a lunch to remember for a long time. Sabrina’s, you never disappoint!

On July 4th, Columbus has an odd tradition called the Doo Dah Parade. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s an excuse for locals to get dressed up in weird costumes and parade about in the heat. In the midst of it all, we got some brunch in the Short North neighborhood at Northstar Cafe. It’s a nice, clean, and modern cafe that emphasizes simple and organic foods. It was a Sunday, and they only had the brunch menu available.

You put in your oder and get a number. You also get your own drinks and your own silverware. When ready, they deliver you the food to you. It’s actually quite efficient.
My mom’s sweet potato and turkey hash. With sweet potato, applewood smoked turkey, red peppers, sweet onions, and two sunny-side-up eggs, we all agreed this was our favorite.

The bro’s Cowboy Breakfast. He got two locally grown, organic eggs over-hard, sausage, and a warm biscuit with jam. I don’t know where my bro’s love for breakfast sausage came for. I don’t care for it at all. This biscuit was huge and epic.

Here are my Cloud Nine Pancakes. These are three huge ricotta pancakes served with real maple syrup and banana. These were excellent, but I could only eat one! I loved that it came with mushy butter that melted on the pancakes right away. This is a very popular spot with the locals and I can definitely see why. It’s great food at reasonable prices, especially for brunch.

I was in Orland to work a trade show with my company. This particular trade show is the BIG one of the year and well, it was rather overwhelming. The space at the Orange County Convention Center was absolutely ginormous. I’d never experienced something of its sheer vastness. The thought of feeding this number of people all day long is kind of mindboggling. There was hot breakfast, but I never made it to that as I was on my feet and working from very early in the day. Luckily, there were stations all around the main show floor with breakfast snacks. I think I took all of the bananas near me and took full advantage of the fruit cups. I only wish they had some yogurt.

The proper lunches were hot and served in the official dining area, which was huge. There were three stations: mediterranean salad, italian, american carvery. And for the three days, it was the same food, every day. Same three options, same dishes at each station. It was disappointing, to say the least. I ended up eating at the italian pasta station every day. The other two stations just did not appeal to me at all. So it ended up being pasta with red sauce and sausage. I wasn’t very impressed. The sausage was ok, but the pasta was overcooked, which tends to happen when you’re cooking for thousands.

In the afternoon, they tended to set out several snack options at various stations. There would be chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. Sometimes, they had donut holes. They didn’t particularly care to have healthy snacks.

On one of the nights right towards the end of the day, they had a little reception thing and offered more snacks as well as beer, wine, and cocktails. More donuts, sweets, chocolates, mini salads, fruits and cheeses, and shrimp cocktail.

I liked these little mozzarella and tomato shooters. I’m a big fan of food shooters it seems!
They even had sushi, fried rice, and pad thai, and takeaway containers, which made it all kind of cute. But overall, it was just ok. The lunch was the biggest disappointment. Keep the same three stations every day, I can understand, but mix the options up a bit. Is it that hard to come up with different pastas for 3 days? I think not!