Welcome to LivingSocial: Restaurants

I want to be real up-front about Zio's Italian Kitchen. It doesn't suck, but it disappointed. I think it could have been so much more than it was. A lot of attention was applied to the physical layout of the restaurant. They have an open visible kitchen. It is open and the layout is comfortable. It gets a little noisy but that is a direct outcome to an open kitchen setup. Then there is the food. It was common. Common and not imaginative. Now I know that when restaurants expand and g... (show more)

I want to be real up-front about Zio's Italian Kitchen. It doesn't suck, but it disappointed. I think it could have been so much more than it was. A lot of attention was applied to the physical layout of the restaurant. They have an open visible kitchen. It is open and the layout is comfortable. It gets a little noisy but that is a direct outcome to an open kitchen setup. Then there is the food. It was common. Common and not imaginative. Now I know that when restaurants expand and go from one store to several and spread into other states, villages and parts of the country, consistency among stores becomes a much discussed issue. The management wants to appeal to broad numbers of people. They want each outlet to be the same dining experience as every other store. But sometime consistency means the pop and sizzle that made a dish work originally starts to be leached out. Mediocrity seeps in. I think that is what happened with Zio's. None of these dishes were bad they just did not have anything special about them. My 9 year old grandson liked it, but his standards require that restaurants have Mac and Cheese or Chicken Nuggets. According to him his nuggets were good and the ketchup bottle was full. (show less)

I do not buy shrimp from the trunk of a car, or Rolex watches from watch salesmen standing on street corners. Although I once bought a couple of cases of meat from a one-eyed, door-to-door meat salesman, I generally like a higher standard of permanence and a less murky provenance concerning the products I buy. But no rule is or should be inviolable. Today I had a brilliant dining experience out of a trailer food vender. The site itself was a drab, flat black trailer with a window and a co... (show more)

I do not buy shrimp from the trunk of a car, or Rolex watches from watch salesmen standing on street corners. Although I once bought a couple of cases of meat from a one-eyed, door-to-door meat salesman, I generally like a higher standard of permanence and a less murky provenance concerning the products I buy. But no rule is or should be inviolable. Today I had a brilliant dining experience out of a trailer food vender. The site itself was a drab, flat black trailer with a window and a counter on one side. The inside is jammed with burners, griddles, a huge meat smoker, cutting boards, knives and every tool needed to produce one of the absolute best pulled pork BBQ sandwiches I have had outside of the Chesapeake Bay area. The aroma alone is a treat. The pork I had was smoked and slow cooked. It was moist on the inside and a bit crusty on the outside. The marinade that was used on the meat was caramelized but tasted like it had vinegar, molasses or brown sugar, salt and pepper with a hint of other spices. This is how it is supposed to be done. It was chopped, put on a bun without condiments and wrapped in foil. I got a side of cole slaw because I do not think it is legal to serve pulled pork without cole slaw. At least it isn’t considered something a proper person would do where I come from. I also had the Mac and Cheese. The coleslaw was fresh, creamy and had a nice tang to it. It was a medium chop that I prefer. The Mac and Cheese was good but not spectacular. But the Mac and Cheese is not the reason I went. It has no bearing on why I am going back. It was acceptable and I ate it all. But the shining prize at Smokin’ in Clintonville is the smoked meats and especially the pulled pork. It is an unexpected treat and one of the new Clintonville Treasures. As an instructional aside I feel it is only fair that I let the uninitiated northerner that in the Chesapeake Bay area and the Atlantic Carolinas all the best BBQ Pork places are in questionable areas of cities, in shacks, lean-tos and under tents in the warmer months. It is a dirty, labor-intensive process and we reap the benefits. So I wish it were in a permanent place, but it isn’t. I will continue to enjoy the good food and if one day the trailer drives off to greener pastures, I will still have my wistful memory of a uniquely great regional food in an unexpected place. You have to try this Smokin’ in Clintonville. (show less)