Rev up your appetite for Restaurant Week

2/10/2013

Restaurant Week Toledo is such a good idea it lasts almost a week and a half. No mere calendar can keep it down.

This year, the event will run a full 10 days. That’s enough time to eat a breakfast, lunch, or dinner at each of the 27 participating restaurants, choose your three favorites, and then go back to them for one final meal.

Now in its third year, the event will begin Feb. 21 and run clear through to March 2.

The idea is simple and irresistible: Each restaurant will offer full-meal specials for lunch or dinner or both for $10, $20, or $30 (the exception is Plate 21, which will have $5 specials all day long).

For instance,10 bucks at Manhattan’s at lunch will get you a grilled chicken breast and provolone sandwich or a turkey BLT with avocado; both sandwiches come with chips and a soft drink. Twenty dollars for dinner at Maumee Bay Brew Pub will produce an appetizer of either crispy duck wings or chili cheese fries, an entree of either barbecued beef brisket or grilled walleye, and a dessert of a Mud Hen Pie (“coffee ice cream mixed with caramel fudge on a cookie crumb crust topped with chopped toffee and chocolate syrup”).

If you want to shell out 30 bucks for dinner at, say, Mancy’s Steaks, you can have your choice of jumbo sea scallops, tournedos Oscar (filet mignon, with Alaskan king crab) or a New York strip steak.

Along with the restaurants already mentioned, the participating establishments include: Bar 145, Barr’s Public House, The Blarney, Bobby V’s, Burger Bar 419, The Café at Oliver House, Caper’s, Gradkowski’s, ICE, La Scola, Loma Linda’s, Mancy’s Bluewater Grille, Maumee Wines and Bistro, Mutz, Poco Piatti, Registry Bistro, Rockwell’s, Rosie’s Italian Grille, Shorty’s True American Roadhouse, Tea Tree Asian Bistro, TREO, Ventura’s, and Zinful.

For more information, visit restaurantweektoledo.com or call your favorite restaurant on the list — or one you’ve never tried before.

And when you go, don’t forget to tip your server as if you were paying full price.

Beer. Wine. As always.

Sometimes, the workers here in the writing division of MorselCo. feel that we need an entire department devoted solely to keeping track of beer-and-wine tastings in the Greater Toledo area. But then the administrative battalion reminds us that we can’t afford new hires due to unexpected losses in some of our far-flung bureaus (most notably, we are experiencing downward trends in buggy whips and sales of coal to Newcastle).

So we wipe the sweat from our brows and soldier on.

And it is worth it, we figure, to bring to you news of the February tastings at the Middle Grounds Market. As always, beer tastings are Thursdays from 5-7:30 p.m. and wine tastings are Thursdays and Fridays, also from 5-7:30 p.m. The cost is $10 to sample six beers, or $15 to sample six wines.

Because Thursday is Valentine’s Day, the store will feature samples of chocolate and dessert beers, with chocolate and dessert wines on both Thursday and Friday. Feb. 21 and 22 will see tastings of Pedro Romero Sherry — there will be no beer tastings that week. Pennsylvania beers will be featured Feb. 28 (please, don’t let there be Iron City... please don’t let there be Iron City...), with thief wines from the Pacific Northwest available on Feb. 28 and March 1.

Price line

Weekly readers of this column — and if you are a weekly reader of this column: Hi, Mom! — will know that the Weston A. Price Foundation believes humans reach their healthiest potential when they eat whole foods and animal fats.

And that is why we are so fascinated by the next class in the Toledo Chapter of the foundation’s Healthy Living Series. On Feb. 26, from 6-8 p.m., they are going to talk about vegetarianism. By definition, that means no animal fats.

The class will discuss how to make vegetarianism work, how to fine-tune a vegetarian diet, and information about the ecology and sustainability. In addition, they will issue some cautions about the diet. Raw food treats will also be served.

Next month’s class, held March 26 from 6-8 p.m., will be more along their usual lines. They will talk about how a diet of whole foods can help prevent cancer.

The classes are held in the Fellowship Chapel of Grace Lutheran Church. As always, the class is free but donations are welcome.

To register for either class, call Kris Johnson at 419-320-2309.

Items for Morsels may be submitted up to two weeks before an event to food@theblade.com.