For those of you who are looking for a place to try for Downtown Dining Week but haven’t made a reservation yet, I’ll offer a recommendation: Cafe Keough. Like most participating restaurants, the cafe recommends reservations, but you may be able to get in without them for several reasons. For one, the cafe has been open less than a year and is relatively unknown. Another reason is that it is a huge space that would take a lot of diners to fill up. Also, it flies under a lot of people’s radar because a lot of people tend to not look north of Monroe for places to eat.
Chef Demitrie Phillips posted a photo of one of the Downtown Dining Week menu items, lamb souvlaki skewers over Moroccan cous cous, and it looked delicious. It’s part of their $20.14 “Tapas for Two” menu this week. You get a meze of olives, babaganoosh, and bulgur salad with warm pita to share for the first course, and then for the second course each person gets to choose an entree of the aforementioned souvlaki skewers or shrimp with garlic, mushrooms, peppers, and sherry butter over baked polenta.
Unfortunately I have already heard of one DDW restaurant that is half-assing it, putting out lower quality food than what you would get on their regular menu. I’ll be nice and not name the place, but one of my friends got sick last night from eating there. I guarantee you that won’t happen at Cafe Keough. Chef Demitrie takes too much pride in his craft to do that. I talked with the cafe’s GM last week and he’s really looking at this as an opportunity to impress people who might not otherwise stop in and get them to come back again and again and become regular customers. That’s what Downtown Dining Week is all about! The cafe is on Main Street between Madison and Monroe, in the ground floor of the Number 10 Main apartment building, across Main from Felicia Suzanne’s. Here’s a link to their DDW page. Although I am saying you can possibly get in without reservations, it might not be a bad idea to call and make them if you know you’re going to go.
Aldo’s Pizza Pies is giving away free pizza for a year to one lucky member of its beer league. If you join the league, you get $1 off beers except during happy hour, and upon completion of the quest to drink all 60 of Aldo’s beers, you get a 64 ounce stainless steel growler filled with the beer of your choice. If you want to sign up, bring your ID and talk to the bartender.
Interesting news hidden in an MBJ story about Crye-Leike moving its offices to Midtown: The move will clear the way for the building at the southeast corner of Third and Madison to become a boutique hotel. I have always loved that building’s architecture, which is just beautiful. With the already-existing Madison Hotel, and the Exchange Building being converted into mixed residential/hotel, Madison Avenue is going to become almost as much of a Hotel Row as Union is.
Here’s one for my fellow wrestling fans: Trailer for the upcoming Iron Sheik movie. Sheikie Baby has lived a heck of a life. He was an Olympic athlete, and a bodyguard for the Shah of Iran. He was forced to flee the country when the revolution took place, relocating to the United States and becoming one of wrestling’s top heels. Although he played an anti-American gimmick, he actually loves the U.S. He is one of Twitter’s most interesting accounts to follow, at @the_ironsheik.
Today is “constant Facebook notifications” day for me, also known as my birthday. Thank you to all of my wonderful friends who posted on my timeline. I truly am lucky to have all of you. Usually I show up at Blind Bear at 11 AM on my days off for day-drinking, but I figured I’d be taking up a bar stool drinking a $3 PBR that could be taken by a Downtown Dining Week customer, so I’m staying away until about 1. That’s still the lunch hour, but hey, a man can only go for so long without beer. That’s all for now, back tomorrow.