Tortilla Street Food

Tortilla Street Food is a new food truck that brings the Chipotle approach to Mexican street food. They whip up the usual tacos, burritos, quesadillas and bowls, and all of the ingredients are pictured on the side of the truck, allowing diners to customize their meal.

All of the ingredients from Tortilla with the exception of meats are vegetarian. Toppings include white rice, Mexican rice, black beans, refried beans, fajita veggies, cold veggies like peppers and onions, queso dip, cheeses, a variety of sauces and sour cream.

Overall, the fare at Tortilla is closest in character to California Mexican. It is a good stand in for Chipotle.

Dishes are prepared in the assembly line fashion of fast-casual eateries. The burrito is large enough to be a very hungry person's lunch.

Side dishes include chips and dips such as salsa and guacamole. Tortilla also offers churros with strawberry filling, dusted with cinnamon sugar with chocolate and caramel dipping sauces as dessert.

Spud Bus

Spud Bus was at the Park Street Festival. It sells fresh cut fries with a variety of condiments.

The Spud Bus is based in Reynoldsburg. It operated at a rapid pace.

There are Idaho russet and sweet potato fries prepared in peanut oil. Dip choices include sun dried tomato mayo, parmesan pesto, mustard, nacho cheese and ranch. They are served in a paper cone in a manner reminiscent of Belgian frites.

The standard fries were starchy and lacked crispness. Fresh cut fries are a nice idea, but this batch was imperfect.

The pesto dip was too thick and had a green, medicinal aftertaste. Perhaps one of the other dips or the complimentary ketchup would be better options.

The fries from Spud Bus were unspectacular. The Tatoheads truck is decidedly more fun and flavorful.

Loving Hut

Loving Hut, a large vegan restaurant chain, opened its first Central Ohio location in Reynoldsburg today. The menu is being finalized, and a grand opening is scheduled sometime in the next month.

Upon first examination, Loving Hut's affiliation with spirituality made me a bit apprehensive. It is part of the Ching Hai empire, and she is called the Supreme Master.

When I think of the master, I was somewhat certain that "Bruce" Leroy Green was the master, and he proved this by taking down Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem near the end of Last Dragon.

Luckily enough, the Loving Hut Supreme Master was not obtrusive (unlike Sho'nuff in the video link in the last paragraph). Sure, Supreme Master TV was playing on the flat screen (it is channel 8067 on DirecTV, I would imagine). From the parts of the programming I caught, the Supreme Master is a big fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber-style love ballads, many of which she wrote herself. When the barely noticeable proselytizing was combined with my not-so-secret devotion to show tunes, it all made the experience interesting yet inoffensive.

The decor at Loving Hut highlights vegetarians in history and pop culture. Vegetarian cookbooks fill the dining rooms. The restaurant is much bigger than it appears from the parking lot with two rooms folded into an L-shaped portion of Blacklick Plaza in Reynoldsburg.

While the menu is still rounding into shape, it will feature Pan-Asian dishes as well as American comfort food classics like the veggie burger and a BBQ sandwich. Many items on the menu are made with TVP or other kinds of faux meat products. There are salads and other items made without these ingredients for diners filled with veggie meat trepidation. I possess little fear of TVP.

Prices at Loving Hut are fairly inexpensive. $10 is probably an average order. $15 means you're taking food home.

What I ate: The spring rolls were stuffed with cabbage, carrots and mushrooms, fried crispy and served with sweet and sour sauce. Cilantro adds a fresh touch to this take-out staple.

The pho was a great veggie approximation of the Vietnamese wintertime staple. A mushroom broth is flecked with green onions, cilantro and basil as well as a heaping helping of textured protein, noodles and bean sprouts. The citrus garnish is textbook, and the vegan pho should be a great relief for cold weather as long as it lasts this year.

The BBQ sandwich was awesome. The creamy coleslaw was a great foil to the sweet sauce-covered TVP. The fries were thick and of passable quality.

The smoothies are thick. The blueberry banana smoothie was redolent of both fruits. Loving Hut serves smoothies, teas, coffee, water and no alcoholic beverages.

Loving Hut adds an interesting option to East and Southeast side residents that don't have a go-to vegan or vegetarian restaurant that comes to mind. Residents of other parts of the city will have to visit the international vegan fast casual restaurant on a destination trip or while passing through town.

Loving Hut

Mulholland Brewing Company

You would have to drive a car into me while overcharging me and force feeding me dead animals in order for a brew pub not to pass my (less than) stringent judgment criteria. That being noted, however, Mulholland in outside-the-mainstream Reynoldsburg easily meets my heavily relaxed quality standards.

I read about the place in today's Columbus Dispatch review. I checked the interweb, and wouldn't you know it--Mulholland sells Belgian-style beer and vegetarian food. That means a late lunch for me.

The fringe benefits of a late lunch include the $2 draft beers at happy hour price. Mulholland offers six of their own drafts plus a dozen or so more brews from various local, national and international microbrew operations. The Saison was citrusy with a clean, yeasty finish, and the Imperial Red showed aggressive hop character that is often absent in beers of this style.

I started with the red pepper hummus, which had a great presentation that featured pita triangles and red and yellow peppers surrounding a ruby-hued mashed chickpea and olive oil base. It was quite good.

My main course was a fettucine in a white wine, garlic and butter sauce with sauteed tomatoes, peppers, squash and spinach topped with chunks of goat cheese. It was like a creamy, pan-Mediterranean interpretation of pasta primavera, and it's pictured above.

The other interesting feature of this spot is that it is a more upscale restaurant upstairs and a sports bar downstairs. There are, however, big screen televisions throughout the bar areas on both floors. Think of the upstairs as business and the downstairs as business casual.

The menu does a good job explaining the brewing process, and the brewing equipment is closer than it typically is in most brew pubs, putting patrons within spitting distance of the brewing and fermenting action. I'll definitely be back to check the new seasonal beers. Check out the pictures below.

Mulholland