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09 Sep

Restaurant Week Fall 2009: Black Creek Bistro

Author: swampkitty05  //  Category: Columbus, Eating Local, Food Porn, Restaurant Review, Restaurant Week

In foodie circles, Black Creek Bistro has always had a stellar reputation, and has always come highly recommended. So I was fairly sure that my less than ideal experience during Restaurant Week in the spring was an anomaly, and I had all intentions to go back and try it again when food was seasonal. Lucky for me, Restaurant Week Fall Edition was scheduled for right when the best produce would be available, so returning to Black Creek Bistro for a follow-up visit this week was a no-brainer.

Black Creek Bistro Sign

As they did in the spring, Black Creek Bistro is one of the only participating restaurants that is offering four courses instead of three, but with the addition of a couple of new chefs since then, it inevitably was going to be a much easier thing to pull off. I had already made my choices before we even walked in the restaurant door.

Restaurant Week Menu from Black Creek Bistro

I was glad to be able to take a couple of minutes to catch up with Chef Kent Peters, who I had not seen since Taste of the Independents. As I’ve mentioned before, he’s one class act. I have the utmost of respect for the sustainability he incorporates between farm and restaurant – to know that most of the vegetables eaten during the meal were grown on the farm made my little locavore heart happy.

Bread service (not pictured), were run of the mill dinner rolls, but they were nicely warmed and crispy on the outside, and served with a rather delicious compound butter.

To start, I chose the chili relleno, which was a fiery, roasted hot banana pepper stuffed with melted queso fresco, dipped in what tasted like a beer batter and fried until crisp, served on top of a cold ragu of tomatillos and other veggies which added a sweetness, tempered the heat of the chile pepper, and just paired wonderfully. Although the dish was at the very edge of heat level I can tolerate, it still was a starter that I’d look forward to ordering again if it were on the regular menu.

Chili Relleno from Black Creek Bistro

Paul chose the Tri-Color Seafood Carpaccio, in which raw tuna, scallop, and salmon was pounded thin and given a treatment similar to ceviche (with lime juice and olive oil). The roasted garlic was an especially nice touch, but I think the crostini was a bit of a distraction and not even necessary to pull this dish together.

Tri-Color Seafood Carpaccio from Black Creek Bistro

For the salad course, I went for the Heirloom Beet Salad, which topped farm fresh mixed greens with roasted red beets and 4 different kind of heirloom tomatoes. A nice crumble of goat cheese and feta, a flavorful pesto, and cucumbers just made this a perfect example of the farm on a plate. It doesn’t get much better (or fresher) than this.

Heirloom Beet Salad from Black Creek Bistro

Paul opted for the Bistro Salad, which was a nice simple composed salad of mesclun mix topped with strawberries, gorgonzola cheese, red onion, walnuts and a slightly sweet balsamic dressing. While not the least bit complex, it was absolutely delicious.

Bistro Salad from Black Creek Bistro

My entree was a perfectly seared red snapper, paired with a triangle of au gratin potatoes, fresh spinach, and balsamic roasted red pepper relish that was studded with olives. Although I’m not a huge olive fan, the flavor wasn’t overwhelming, and just added a bit of brininess to the dish.

Snapper from Black Creek Bistro

Paul’s entree was the most unusual dish of the evening, a Peanut Butter and Jelly Duck. A perfectly seared breast of duck is sliced, and topped with a slightly sweet berry sauce. The noodles are tossed in a slightly sweet peanut sauce. Combined, the sauces truly do taste just like peanut butter and jelly. The portion size was perfect, because this dish could easily get cloying in a larger quantity.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Duck from Black Creek Bistro

We both opted for the Bacon Apple Tart for dessert – it was a simple apple tart, served with house-made buttermilk ice cream, and sprinkled with crispy lardons of bacon. I love the combination of salty and sweet, and this did not disappoint. I especially loved the ice cream.

Bacon Apple Tart with Buttermilk Ice Cream from Black Creek Bistro

In short, our experience this time around was the polar opposite of our last experience, and I can now see why it’s both a media and local foodie darling. I can see myself visiting much more often, especially during the growing season.

Our server, Katie, was absolutely awesome. Engaging, friendly, non-obtrusive, and anticipated our every need without us even needing to ask.

If you’d like to go: Black Creek Bistro, 51 Parsons Ave, Columbus, OH 43215, 614-246-9662

Black Creek Bistro on Urbanspoon

Read this between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.: ; ‘Customer service’ key to ‘customer service,’ cable finds

The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, WV) May 24, 2010 | Deborah Yao PHILADELPHIA – For far too long, cable customers fumed as they waited in vain for the cable guy to show up. When he did come, sometimes it took multiple visits to fix outages. Some customers grappled with billing mistakes that took months to resolve. And cable prices went up every year.

Now it might be the cable customer’s turn for revenge.

Cable TV operators are trying to treat their customers better. Consumers now can get a 30-day money-back guarantee from at least two major cable companies. Soon, subscribers might set specific times for technician visits and get their orders confirmed in writing.

These sound like simple or even obvious steps, but they address longtime complaints about the cable TV business.

Cable companies are forced to do it because of intensifying competition from satellite TV and phone companies that offer video – and from people disconnecting subscription TV services altogether to watch videos online.

It won’t be easy to change a poor reputation that was captured in a 1996 “Seinfeld” episode in which Kramer retaliates against his cable company by telling the technician he’ll be home between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. but then doesn’t show up. In 2007, a Virginia woman was so upset at Comcast Corp.’s customer service that she smashed a keyboard with a hammer in a Comcast service center. this web site comcast service center

Cable’s customer-satisfaction ratings have been among the worst of any industry. In the American Customer Satisfaction Index, based on surveys of U.S. households, the four largest cable TV providers – Comcast, Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications Inc. and Charter Communications Inc. – have averaged 59 on a scale of 1 to 100 since 2004, even with some improvement in this year’s figures. In the last comparable rankings, cable TV came in below airlines, a business with byzantine fare rules, new fees for baggage and horror stories of passengers trapped for hours on planes.

First, cable TV companies tried appealing to customers with discounts. Although overall cable service prices were rising, the companies offered bundles of TV, Internet and phone plans, and threw in some freebies and other promotions. But that only slowed customer defections.

Now, cable companies are trying to do more.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV provider, is making incremental changes that it hopes will collectively improve its reputation. It’s offering a 30-day money-back guarantee on all services to unhappy customers and a $20 credit if the technician shows up late, even if he had called to say he’d be late. It also is testing a service that lets customers call to get the technician’s estimated time of arrival. in our site comcast service center

Cox, the country’s third-largest cable company, is testing the idea of letting customers set service appointments at specific times rather than two-hour windows.

The trial is limited to New England and only for the first appointment of the day, at 8 a.m. If successful, the service will be rolled out nationally and eventually to cover the entire day.

“No more scribbled notes on a pad by the phone,” said spokeswoman Anita Lamont.

That would be welcome news to Marc Pachtman, a lawyer in Boothwyn, Pa., who tussled with Comcast for about 10 months over several issues, including charges on his bill that were higher than the cable package he thought he ordered.

Pachtman said he was charged $51 for cable TV and $46 for Internet after being told it would be $45 for TV and $35 for Internet. He also paid $42 a month for phone service, but Comcast got that right.

Eventually, after several calls to Comcast, he got a refund and a six-month promotional plan that combined TV, Internet and phone services for $94 a month, down from $140.

“I had to do a lot of jumping up and down,” Pachtman said. “If they would be forced to confirm things in writing, it should standardize their programs to the point so there’s no variation to what customer representatives can say.” Deborah Yao

5 Responses to “Restaurant Week Fall 2009: Black Creek Bistro”

  1. Jared R. Says:
    September 9th, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Do you KNOW that chili relleno was a banana pepper? I was under the impression that it was a Hungarian wax pepper because of its spiciness. If not, that was the hottest banana pepper ever.

  2. columbusfoodie Says:
    September 9th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    From speaking to the chef, I understood that it was a hot banana pepper (there are hot & sweet varieties, and the hot ones are really hot), although even I don't think they're sure themselves. It was a last minute substitution, the first set of peppers Chef Peters had brought from the farm were even hotter, and deemed unable to serve because of the heat after they tried them.

  3. Jared R. Says:
    September 11th, 2009 at 4:39 am

    Banana peppers and wax peppers are closely related. Wax peppers look like banana peppers but are hotter, about one-third as hot as a jalepeno. I've never experienced a banana pepper that hot. In terms of Scoville units, wax peppers are five times as hot as the hottest banana pepper. I grew wax peppers this summer, and as somebody who made chili rellenos with wax peppers, my inner sleuth says the Black Creek rellenos tasted more like wax peppers. But what do I know?

  4. Jared R. Says:
    September 11th, 2009 at 4:39 am

    Banana peppers and wax peppers are closely related. Wax peppers look like banana peppers but are hotter, about one-third as hot as a jalepeno. I've never experienced a banana pepper that hot. In terms of Scoville units, wax peppers are five times as hot as the hottest banana pepper. I grew wax peppers this summer, and as somebody who made chili rellenos with wax peppers, my inner sleuth says the Black Creek rellenos tasted more like wax peppers. But what do I know?

  5. columbusfoodie Says:
    September 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    You're probably right, they are hotter than even the hottest banana peppers I've had (this coming from someone who pickled hot peppers this summer.

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