Good Stuff In Cincinnati

     "Boy, you eat out a lot!"  remarked a friend who follows my culinary comings and goings on this blog.
     "Wul, no I don't really"  I said defensively, "I mean, not really."
      "Yeah, you do,"  my friend stood her ground.
      Sigh.  Yeah, I do. 
       To whichever cosmic entity I owe and apology to for eating out a lot,  I now say, forgive me for eating out a lot.
       That being said, last Sunday Tommy and I drove to Cincinnati to visit Theresa and Phill,

...and their kitty Dori,

...who, by the way, has her own amusing and widely followed twitter account, @ADoriBear, in case you, like me, are a fan of funny cat tweets.

     Anyway,  our plan was to hit the Ikea store to look for a piece of furniture or two for Tommy's new apartment - I find it passing unseemly that Cincinnati gets to have an Ikea store while we here in the state capitol have none, but mine not to reason why - after lunch at a  neat little pub Phill and Theresa had discovered called Gordo's

     Gordo’s specialty is its gourmet burgers,  one of which Phill ordered, The French,

...topped with brie cheese, bacon and carmelized onions, and which he pronounced delicious, as were his hot steak-cut fries which he graciously allowed the rest of us to pick-plate at will.

     Tommy  had the likewise tasty vegetarian Black Bean burger with a side of lovely-looking roasted veggies.

    However Theresa and I also enjoyed our non-burger choices: 

     Theresa, her artistically-presented and oh-so-fresh arugula salad,

…and me, my yummy, yummy fish tacos.

      But what I really loved about Gordo’s was the outdoor patio,

      ...because as soon as I stepped out onto the plain concrete yard with the wooden fencing on one side,

...and the parking lot on the other,

...I was reminded of some of the little cafes Tom and I ate at in Spain along Camino de Santiago de Compostela (see"And Lighten Your Pack") whose outdoor patios just seemed to be out in the middle of everything.

     I also liked the urban-ness of the place, as if we were in Chicago or New York instead of suburban Cincinnati.

      (Not that suburban Cincinnati isn't nice, too!).

   After our lunch at Gordo's we were sufficiently fueled for an afternoon of roaming around
Ikea -  for me always a pleasant place  to while away  an afternoon,

...fantasizing about my house looking like this,

..and this,

                 ...and this,

...wanting to buy a whole new houseful of cool, kicky furniture, but in the end always deciding against it, always opting instead to spend my portion of discretionary coinage on eating out.