Bibibop

Bibibop in Grandview Heights brings the fast-casual approach to Korean food. Much in the model of Chipotle, diners pick a format (bowl, salad or rolled sandwich) and have the staff behind the counter fill it up with their choice of fresh produce, sauces and toppings.

Charley Shin, the founder of Bibibop, is also involved with other restaurants like Charley's. There is little similarity between the sandwich chain and Bibibop.

The decor at Bibibop is fun. There is seating for about 50 inside the restaurant, and like other fast-casual eateries, service is efficient. 

The veggies behind the counter were of exceptional quality. Ingredients include white or purple rice, noodles, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, corn and jalepeño, daikon and a delicious mildly spiced organic tofu. There are three different sauces, all of which are vegetarian. The bowl is a sort of Westernized take on classic bibimbop.

The edamame were fairly ordinary. The soybeans lacked salt. Other than this minor shortcoming, the overall experience was great. 

Ajumama

Ajumama is a Korean street food cart that specializes in items that are a little deeper on the menu than simple kimchi and bibimbop. Proprietor Laura Lee makes delicious food that possesses a heart full of Seoul (soul).

The signature menu item is a pajeon, a Korean pancake with green onions and a variety of different fillings. The pancakes are made with egg; there is no vegan option.

The Nelson is a pajeon made with mixed vegetables. The veggies were different on two different visits. Both times they were prepared with green onions. There was roasted corn in the pancake on a second visit. The soy vinegar sauce gives the pajeon a salty, savory explosion of flavor.

Sometimes, a vegan rice porridge is on the menu. I have not sampled it.

The hodduk is pretty much the best dessert that I had never heard of before trying it this summer, and I am not certain how I lived this long without one. It is a soft pocket stuffed with nuts and molten brown sugar. It's hard to eat just one.

Ajumama seems to be a fixture at Dinin' Hall in Franklinton on Wednesdays this month. It can be tracked down on other days on Facebook and Twitter. 

Moshi Sushi Bar

Moshi is an upscale sushi joint in Bexley that offers contemporary takes on rolls as well as Pan-Asian fare from Korea, Thailand and Japan. It adds a nice touch to the Bexley dining scene.

This restaurant is a collaboration between Bexley resident Moshe "Moshi" Mizrachi and the father-and-son team of Song and David Kim. It gives Bexley a modern Asian spot in a similar style to Lemongrass or Nida's in the Short North.

The staff at Moshi Sushi Bar addressed vegetarian concerns appropriately. The menu doesn't have piles of vegetarian options, but there is enough variety to give diners different options.

The miso soup is vegetarian, prepared without bonito. There are about five different vegetable sushi rolls, a couple of salads, a tofu steak and a few meatless noodle dishes.

The miso soup has a deep green color that hides an unctuous, savory character. Small pieces of tofu pick up the flavor of the broth and the fresh scallions.

The fried tofu is served with a sweet hoisin sauce and an herbal-infused soy dip. Half of the tofu cubes are fried crispy without breading, and the other half are tempura battered with a crunchy panko coating. The hoisin-based sauce adds a great barbeque flavor to the dish.

The sushi rolls are artfully prepared. Vegetarian options include some of the usual suspects (avocado rolls and cucumber rolls) as well as some rolls with more complex groupings of ingredients. The veggie roll had cucumber, asparagus, carrots and kombucha squash. The O-H-I-O roll consists of avocado, cream cheese, fried sweet potato and asparagus fried in a walnut panko tempura with a sweet miso sauce.

The O-H-I-O roll was a great mix of flavors. The cream cheese and avocado add a rich, savory element to the sweet taste of the miso and potato. The crispy breading adds a great texture to the sushi roll.

The color of the veggie roll is striking. There is a rainbow of flavor accompanying its many shades. The smaller avocado roll was well-constructed if slightly uninspiring.

The decor at Moshi is modern and understated. Service was friendly and capable. There is a full bar with sake and cocktails.

While Moshi is excellent with a number of vegetarian options, be forewarned that it rates on the expensive end for sushi in the Columbus area.

Moshi Sushi Bar

Urban Belly

Urban Belly is Bill Kim's flagship establishment. It is a Pan-Asian restaurant with communal dining arrangement specializing in dumplings and noodles. It is a cool spot in a strip mall on Chicago's Northwest side.

I spent a good deal of space singing Chef Kim's praises in my review of his latest operation, Belly Shack. He generates a great deal of buzz because his restaurants are fun and offer a lot of bang for the buck.

The chairs at the long tables are built from wood from salvaged Indonesian ships. The decor is minimal, understated and inviting. There is a fairly brisk turnover of the seats.

While there are no vegetarian dumplings listed on the menu, Urban Belly offers the squash dumplings prepared without bacon. The dumplings were garnished with daikon, green onions and tangerines. They were stuffed with squash that had a spicy accent. The veggie squash dumplings were a subtly sweet and absolutely sublime.

The Asian egg noodles consisted of a bathtub-sized bowl of delicious noodles, fried crispy on the ends and soft in the middle, in a chili garlic broth with eggplant and tofu cubes. The massive portion provided plenty of satisfying flavors the run the gamut from spicy to vegetal to savory.

The Szechwan wrinkled green beans were a delightful take on a Chinese classic. The rich, spicy sauce was accented with crunchy almonds that add another layer of texture to a dish that already possesses a pile of flavor.

Prices are reasonable, and although there are limited choices for vegetarians, the options are good enough to make Urban Belly a foodie destination.

Urban Belly

Belly Shack

Located in the shadow of the L in the middle of a concrete jungle, Belly Shack is the latest effort from Bill Kim, a heralded chef with much-publicized stints at some of the creme de la creme of Chicago restaurants including Le Lan and Charlie Trotter's.

His latest effort offers Asian/Latin fusion dishes that reflect the combined heritage of Kim and his Puerto Rican wife, and Belly Shack is also influenced by heralded eateries on both coasts.

While the seemingly disparate combination of Korean and Puerto Rican food might seem strange, in the hands of Kim it goes together like white on rice. The Spartan decor and street art style add a touch of whimsy to the Belly Shack.

Vegetarian items are noted on the menu with an asterisk. Choices include a Boricua sandwich, a quinoa ssam salad, tostones, roasted sweet potatoes and a couple of desserts (prepared by another heralded name in Chicago sweets, Mindy Segal).

I started with the tostones, twice-fried crispy plantains drowned in a garlicky chimichurri sauce. While chimichurri is more classically used as a meat or seafood sauce, it has similarities to mojo, the national condiment of Puerto Rico that often accompanies tostones, and it adds another layer of fresh flavor to the dish.

The Boricua sandwich shares its identity with the people of Puerto Rico, who refer to themselves as Boricua, the native Taino population of the island. In Chicago, a Boricua sandwich contains shredded pork between fried plantains. Belly Shack replaces the pork with tofu, adds black beans and brown rice, and serves the sandwich with an earthy red soy-based sauce. The taste is a beautiful marriage of Eastern and Western elements.

Chef Kim is on a roll with his restaurants (Urban Belly being the other). I never knew how much I would like Kor-ibbean (my clever combination of Korean and Caribbean) food before venturing to Belly Shack, but after eating it for the first time, I know that the fateful pairing was meant to be.

Belly Shack

Pei Wei Asian Bistro

Pei Wei Asian Diner is a newer concept from the P.F. Chang's folks that is popping up like weeds (or Starbucks) all across the United States. This is basically a Pan-Asian noodle shop with counter service that makes for a decent power lunch option.

There are a number of vegetarian options marked by the lovely hippie leaf logo on the menu, making the items easy to spot by vegetarians who are incapable of reading (although, come to think of it, illiterate vegetarians wouldn't be able to read the text at the bottom of the menu explaining the veggie symbol's meaning. It is a useful gesture for saving my time, nonetheless.).

The spring rolls were good if uninspiring. The noodle and rice dishes are fairly big portions, and none of the dishes cost more than $9. I tried the blazing noodles, a chow fun noodle dish (a fettuccine-like rice pasta) made with tomato black pepper sauce, broccoli, carrots, scallions, pea pods and cilantro with tofu. The sauce was flavorful and medium spicy, but I definitely would have liked the five inch broccoli stalks and the tofu slabs to have been cut more finely while I was eating with chop sticks. I do possess mad chop stick skillz, but the pieces were so large that I ended up eating in installments off of the sticks or taking down a whole piece in one ridiculous bite.

Then again, it was all made up for by my fascination with people who can't eat with chop sticks. I love watching people labor with the Asian cutlery, and I love it even more when they tap out and have to ask for silverware. In retrospect, maybe they figured something out with these four-inch tofu blocks and broccoli trunks that I hadn't. Maybe I'm really the dummy.

Regardless of my personal shortcomings, Pei Wei is fairly priced and should be attractive to those with a limited amount of time for lunch that want to eat vegetables for lunch and not deep fried animal goop from Kentuckyfriedbellkingmcdonalds. It is a decent option that isn't nearly as quality control driven as some of the swankier Asian bistros, but probably is economic enough to churn out a consistent business all the same. Check out the pictures below.

Pei Wei

New Music and Bad Science

Today is the day that Radiohead is attempting to turn the music industry on its head. The influential band is releasing their new album "In Rainbows" on the Web, allowing users to pay whatever they want for their latest release, and the song "Jigsaw Falling into Place" is making everybody who paid for Britney Spears' "Gimme More" feel stupid for doing so.

A debate has broken out in the White House over the Israeli response to policy regarding North Korea and Syria. Cheney is on one side, Rice is on another, and Rush Limbaugh is still a fuckwit.

The Los Angeles Police Department is under fire for another controversial bout of violence, this time involving journalists and immigration rights protesters. Why can't the LAPD beat somebody who deserves it (like Lindsay Lohan, Stephen Baldwin or Kwame Brown) rather than their arbitrary pattern of nightsticking the wrong people?

New York is up in arms about the noose found on the door of a professor at Columbia University. While NYC would like to believe that they are ahead of everybody in the world, this incident demonstrates that the city is in fact about one year behind Jena, Louisiana. If they are going to lynch somebody at Columbia, perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have been a more fitting target for this kind of misguided aggression.

The battle between the Western world and people who practice goofy folkloric religions is coming to a head in Holland, where Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of gender discrimination in Islam, faces an uncertain future from extremists because of her comments about Dutch Muslims. When you need violence to prove your point, as is often the case with religious fundamentalists, you probably have no point at all. Hopefully a fundamentalist somewhere can focus their aggression against that tramp Ann Coulter and allow Hirsi Ali to demonstrate what life is like for a Muslim in the 21st century.

Finally, in off-beat news, on the heels of the Nobel Prizes being awarded, the Ig Nobel Awards are given to discoveries that make people laugh before they make them think. This year's winners include studies about the side effects of sword swallowing, Viagra as a cure for jet lag in hamsters, the "gay bomb," making vanilla scents from cow dung, and determining if rats can differentiate between languages spoken backward. Once again, science has proven that no avenue of research is too obscure to garner recognition

All The News That's Fit To Blog

T-minus two days and counting for NFL football. My fantasy team is ready. My Bears gear is in. The experts have spoken. Let's fire up this grill and get cooking.

North Korea is claiming the U.S. will lift sanctions against the country while the U.S. is saying, "No we didn't." I give the Van Halen reunion a better chance at success.

George Bush and his rose-colored glasses are reporting nothing but butterflies and puppies in Iraq. King George, the cockeyed optimist that he is, probably also believes Michigan has a shot at the national championship and that Lindsay Lohan will soon be getting out of rehab and climbing back up the ladder of success.

News crews are all over the Larry Craig story. But there are deeper issues afoot than a Senator looking to get lucky in the men's room of the airport. When is it ethically acceptable to identify a closeted homosexual? Why is the police department patrolling bathrooms when terrorism seems to be a greater threat? Who has the most notches in their Congressional bed posts--Mark Foley, David Vitter or Craig? These questions are tough, and Republicans and the media will have to come up with the answers on their own.

All of those suckers who waited in line overnight and spent a month's rent on Apple's new iPhone probably weren't planning for rival Google to develop a competing product. Rumors are swirling around the Web that the factotum of technology is going to release its own mobile browsing cell phone very soon. All of these companies are modifying Timothy Leary's plan and asking consumers to Plug In, Turn On and Drop Out. I'll be on the outside looking in, thanks.

The trial is coming to a close, and the jury is in on one issue--the Phil Spector trial is weird as hell. The only way a trial could be more crazy is if Verne Troyer stabbed Vin Diesel and Paris Hilton to death with a broken beer bottle and blamed it on O.J. Simpson.

Finally, the weirdest story of the day had to be the tale of 13-year-old school kids in South Africa getting in trouble for taking ecstasy at a school dance. Where do they go to school? Lindsay Lohan Prep? Brittney Spears High? Where does a middle school kid get ecstasy, and who sold it to them? It ought to provide an easy way to shrug off the legacy of apartheid, at any rate.

756 and Counting

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present to you the new Sultan of Swat, the alleged greatest home run hitter of all time, Barry Lamar Bonds. Home run number 756 is sure to draw the ire of sportswriters everywhere. Whatever happens down the line, I hope somebody puts an asterisk next to Bud Selig's tenure as commissioner of baseball.

Temperatures are up across the board in the U.S. lately. Temperatures for the PGA Championship will be greater than 100 degrees everyday of the tournament. My advice is stay inside unless you are trying to win a competitive prfessional golf tournament, and if your name is Rory Sabatini, stay inside anyway.

In Iraq, the sectarian violence will continue to get worse if the Americans stay or if they go predicts former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges. About the only good news in Iraq is that the U.S. has put in a request to receive military assistance from the United Nations. Hopefully the U.N. gets there before things get much worse.

On the other front of the ever-failing war on terror, the Taliban staged an unsuccessful attack on a U.S. army base in Afghanistan. Stress like this could only drive soldiers to do hard drugs...like the cheap, easily available heroin in Afghanistan. This gives the phrase "War on Drugs" a whole new meaning.

On another front of the ever-failing war on drugs, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has asked for aid to fight the powerful drug cartels in his country. Bush promised financial support as well as the tenacious cooperation of the well-armed Ted Nugent and the deeply-indebted Wesley Snipes.

The six miners trapped underground in Utah may have to stay there for a week because of seismic activity and dangerous conditions. I'm curious as to what kind of conditions can be more dangerous than being trapped underground for a week in a coal mine.

North Korea and South Korea will hold a joint summit, bringing the two nations together for the second time in seven years. This could be the most anticipated reunion of the year save for the anticipation of Axl Rose for a future paycheck with a full band Guns N Roses reunion.

Federal authorities are also expected to announce a major crackdown on illegal hiring in the United Staes. They could also try investigating the formerly illegal warrantless wiretapping program and its illegal henchman Alberto Gonzales while they're at it.

A Pun in Hand is Worth Two in George Bush

You're either with us or against us. Never has this statement rung more true than when the entire party ran away from Bush and his policy as quickly as possible. Maybe the Republican Party is full of terrorists, because it seems they're all against Mr. Bush.

Christopher Hitchens penned a tremendous piece for Slate about the impending crisis for the Kurds in Iraq. On the heels of regional strife comes a new enemy straight out of Turkey. Kurdistan is as unlucky a proposal as it gets. It gets even worse that they (unluckily) have to depend on a U.S. President who couldn't spell Kurdistan if you gave him the first five letters. I say give the Kurds Kansas and make those people move elsewhere. They haven't done much with it in the 145 years its been a state. It's time for a new beginning.

That aforementioned President is proposing a 50+ year plan in Iraq that mirrors the U.S. involvement in Korea. Here's hoping the Democrats have a plan that will get us out of Iraq in 48 years at most (just in time for the Chelsea Clinton Presidential campaign).

Doctors have successfully turned mice skin cells into stem cells, and they believe they could perform this transformation on human cells. This takes the stem cell debate out of the pro-life arena and gets it into a more manageable forum. Hopefully they can work on some islet cells to fix my diabetes and some nerve cells in the brain to fix Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease. While they are brewing up these brain cells, it might be helpful if they give some of them to our mentally deficient President and let him pass them around to the administration. The extra brain growth might help Gonzales and Libby remember some things, to be sure.

One of those pesky things that the administration will have to remember is whether or not they have secretly imprisoned 39 people on a human rights list. I keep hoping that blog journal entries are not the type of activity that gets one sent to secret prison. If anybody deserves secret prison, it's Paris Hilton, who is now out on house arrest instead of being scared straight in an unidentified cell in Afghanistan.

The immigrant legislation plodded on with its tenuous support, built upon a 49-48 vote that cut key measures out of the bill. It is interesting that the vote even might have changed if a couple other Senators showed up to vote. I vote that Congress should stop wasting time with immigration legislation and start tackling some real issues. Hopefully some of the newly recognized immigrants can come up with a better plan for an Iraq exit strategy. I'd vote for them if they could.

Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel continued their feisty little tango over global warming at the controversial G-8 conference in Heilgendamm, Germany. The odd couple have vastly different approaches to addressing climate change. Perhaps a ninth voice could talk some reason into W, because Merkel's aggressive German is not soothing the savage beast and his brutish reason.

The daily dose of weird news starts of with renowned architect Frank Gehry designing a playground in New York City. The creator of the Guggenheim Museum in Spain should add a whimsical twist on a childhood favorite. If I go, I'm definitely using some of the newly developed Dutch powdered alcohol before I get on the crazy slide.