Saved the best entry for last! Finally, you guys get to see the source of the sandwich that has been hogging my front page. During my visit to Cincinnati, my mother and I stayed with my uncle, his wife, and my grandma. The great thing about this, other than the unconditional love, the company, and me being basically spoiled rotten, is the fact that my uncle himself, is a foodie just like me, okay maybe he’s a bit more than me…… Anyways, on probably the second day or third day we were all gathered together at my other uncle’s house celebrating Eid with a barbecue. On that same day, he and a cousin of mine, Lein, were raving about this place known as Findlay market, which had great food. So, we set a date, and my uncle, 3 of my cousins, and I were going to have a food venture in Findlay Market.
- Starbucks: First thing in the morning, my uncle and mom wanted to take my Grandma out for a walk to get her muscles moving, so we decided a family trip to a super market in Cincinnati called Kroger, would do the job. Luckily for me, they had a Starbucks within the store. It was not the greatest, I ordered a Mango Dragon-fruit refresher, a usual of mine. It was extremely light pink, and did not hold the perfect pink to light purple color ratio it usually holds, and I was not sure if that was because I ordered a venti sized. I was a bit disappointed, but drank it either way. I also got a cookie, that was fine.
- Crab Salad: The second dish, that I had inserted into my stomach was this crab salad that my uncle loves to get from Kroger. Apparently, according to some research that I had conducted, crab salad is also know as a Crab Louis (Louie) salad, or the King Of Salads, either way, this salad had originated in the western region of the U.S. I myself, am not a massive seafood fan, but my uncle was so excited about this salad, that I just had to try it. It was okay, once again I am not a fan of seafood, so my answer may be different than one who absolutely adores seafood and crabs.
- Pho Lang Thang: This place was the star of the show, and why this date was even set. This restaurant apparently had the best Banh Mi in all of Cincinnati. To say that I was skeptical about coming to this place would be an understatement, personally I am not really upon to new cuisines, I enjoy remaining in my comfort zone, but I put my hope in the hands of my uncle, and trusted him. And I was right to do so, we got the BÁNH MÌ GÀ NƯỚNG which is the sandwich filled with chicken. Man, this sandwich is a great food fusion, a combination, of the three S’s: savory, sweet, and spicy, with every new bite. It really was a great sandwich! The interesting difference between culture also showed when I had conducted some research, apparently people in Vietnam would have these sandwiches for breakfast or as a midday meal, I find that surprising because chicken is not usually something that people in the middle east would have for breakfast!
- Areti’s Gyro: Since we split three sandwiches among 5 people, we still had a little bit of room left in our stomach, so we headed to the next destination that had the best Gyros in all of Cincinnati according to my uncle. We had a beef Gyro and it reminded alot of the Shawerma except the few differences here and there like the fact that they used Tziki sauce instead of garlic sauce, and the form of the sandwich.
As you can see, it was one heck of a day.
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