36 hours in Columbus … if you are a foodie with eclectic tastes
There’s lots of barbeque and catfish in Columbus, as columnist Richard Hyatt likes to note. Yet, there’s so much more. Fort Benning, more than any other institution, has had a cosmopolitan effect on food in Columbus. Soldiers who’ve served all over the world bring back tastes they hope to satisfy here. So has immigration, especially from Mexico and Korea. Among the choices: From Southeast Asia – Korean, Vietnamese and Thai. West African. Latin American in mom-and-pop stores where Spanish is the first language. Vegetarian based on religious belief. Indian and Jamaican, too. And, there really is a lot of barbeque and catfish.
Here are eight experiences for visiting foodies with eclectic tastes if you have 36 hours in Columbus.
Most are not restaurant experiences. (See this site’s WHERE TO EAT page for restaurant recommendations.) Rather, they are opportunities to explore ethnic food markets, experience the farm-to-table scene, find experts on beer- and wine-pairing, feast from food trucks, locate the best local cookbooks, and so forth.
#1 – Farm-to-table movement on display at Market Days in downtown Columbus
Get an early start at Market Days in downtown. Lots on offer every Saturday, but look especially for these vendors: Pecan Point Farm, “your local grass-fed creamery.” This 145-acre farm in Hurtsboro, AL, is run by George Rogers and Becky Ward-Rogers. They sell dairy, chicken and duck eggs, and pecans in season. Jenny Jack Sun Farm. Jenny and Chris Jackson operate a natural certified, small-scale farm in Pine Mountain, 25 miles to the north, serving a range of customers and markets. For Market Days, these UGA ag graduates pick on Friday what they sell on Saturday. Ask Chris or Jenny how they came to name the farm. My Boulange. This French-style bakery and cafe on 12th Street offers pastries and breads at a table on Market Days. The dozens of Market Days food vendors offer enough free samples for a meal. Honeys, granolas, Amish-style cheeses, raw Jersey cow milk, vegetable juices, pickles and relishes, a slice of beef jerky. Performers too, including a clown who makes balloon art and a caricaturist who draws one-minute portraits. Another Saturday farm market is in Midland, east of Columbus and a third is twice-monthly on Wednesdays in North Highlands, a neighborhood north of downtown.
Get maps and directions: Market Days
#2 – Artisan-made beer, high-end cocktails, key part of the downtown Columbus food experience
The artisan-beer movement has taken hold here. Try these three downtown stops: Cannon Brew Pub, the first to offer its own craft beers, and a favorite among soldiers. Scruffy Murphy’s, an Irish pub where “a pint of the good stuff,” which is to say Guinness, is always on offer. Maltitude, is the most-recent of the craft brewers, with samples in small glasses, cans and up to 64-ounce growlers to go. And, here are four popular, higher-end, after-work, drinks spots downtown: 11th & Bay, Mabella, The Loft and Smoke Bourbon and BBQ. Cocktails, wines by the glass, beer on tap and in bottles at all three. Also, a good selection of after-dinner liquors for later in the evening. The bar tops in 11th & Bay were formed from materials scavenged from the cotton warehouse that was re-purposed as this restaurant. Ask the owner for the details. Mabella and The Loft are owned by Buddy Nelms, the earliest and most important force in development of downtown entertainment.
Get maps and directions: Cannon Brew Pub, Scruffy Murphy’s, Maltitude, 11th & Bay, Mabella, The Loft, Smoke Bourbon and BBQ
#3 – African, Mexican, Asian, Indian markets offer ingredients for ethic cuisine
Reserve most of a day to explore ethnic food markets. Here as elsewhere, cooks who aspire to prepare non-Western cuisine struggle to find authentic ingredients. That’s no longer a problem in Columbus. From the large, chain supermarkets to the mom-and-pop ethnic shops, ingredients abound. Whether it’s fresh vegetables, dry ingredients, prepared flavorings or frozen, it’s available for Asian, Indian, Mexican and African cuisine. Fine to window shop, market owners say, if traveling without access to a kitchen. Note that ethnic food markets, like all, small, independent retailers, go in and out of business. Sometimes they take down their websites, but often don’t. So, call ahead.
African – Emerich African and Tropical Market, 2038 Fort Benning Road, features mostly dry ingredients for the West Africa cuisine of its owner, Nana Appiah. Up and down the isles are flours, beans, seeds, oils, spices and seasonings typical of home-cooked food in Ghana, Nigeria, Mali and other West Africa countries. Ask Appiah to describe how people from Ghana, her home, make a drink from dried hibiscus flowers, Vimto, and strawberry flavoring. Appiah, who has run the grocery for a decade, also owns the restaurant next door, Normita’s. Try the goat soup.
Latin American – Super Mercado Las Americas, 4101 Hamilton Road, is a brightly lit, 10,000 square foot, full-service supermarket. Fresh fruits and vegetables and fresh fish and meat are offered. Of note are the selection of dried beans and rice, fresh tortillas and baked tostados. Ten varieties of cheese, both hard and fresh. The display of Mi Costenita-brand spices, dried chilies and edible flowers is the most-complete in Columbus: 150 different selections. As the name implies, the store serves a range of Latin American tastes — not just Mexican — including family and household needs. Note, for example, the boys and girls soccer cleats sporting Honduran and Salvadorian colors. A family-style restaurant in the back attracts a strong lunch business. Another choice is Brito’s Market, 2025 S. Lumpkin Road, a long-established, full-service market for Mexican cuisine. Note the selection of Tamilera steamers, indispensable for making tamales.
Asian – Kap Kim’s Oriental Food & Gift store, 3656 Buena Vista Road, is a 30-year-old, full-service market supporting all Southeast Asian cuisine. You’ll find rows of dry, fresh and frozen ingredients, sourced from Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. More than 30 percent of the store’s customers are Korean, Kim says, and the store caters to them. Many options for Korea’s national dish, Kimchi. You’ll find: Earthenware jars (jahng dak in Korean) with lids as small as 12 liters, as large as 35. Fresh vegetables typical for kimchi – cabbage, radish, bean sprouts. And the flavorings, too: Salt, red-pepper powders, ginger, chilis. Once mixed, kimchi is fermented for a week. Short on time? Mr. Kim has several prepared kimchis in the refrigerated case – his biggest seller. Mr. Kim’s seafood is frozen. Want fresh? Squid, prawns, king fish and lobster are offered at SMART market, 1901 Manchester Expressway. The live lobsters, swimming in three tanks, typically sell for less than $10 – about a third less than the supermarkets. Live fish swim in tanks beneath the lobsters.
Indian – Sai Indian Grocers, 6381 Milgen Road, is the city’s long-established market for dry, fresh and frozen ingredients. Deep and Swad brands dominate. Extensive, targeted selection of fresh vegetables. You’ll find flours, rices and lentils. Dried spices. Prepared flavorings like tamarinds, masalas and pickles. Oils and butters. Ria’s Ethnic Foods, 4848 Warm Springs Road, is the city’s newest Indian market, opened in late 2014. The focus is fresh, dry and frozen ingredients supporting north India cuisine. Also, after-school snacks. Like Sai’s, Deep and Swad brands dominate. Like on Facebook for updates on what’s fresh today, what’s new in the store. “We’ll get whatever people ask for,” a clerk said. The newest attraction is a cafe with weekly menus for lunch, dinner and carry out. Catering, too.
Get maps and directions: Eme Rich Afrian and Tropical Market, Brito’s Market, Oriental Food and Gift Store, SMART Market, Sai Indian Grocers, Rai’s Ethnic Foods
#4 – Country Life: A healthy-food mission for four decades
Country Life, 1217 Eberhart Avenue, is part mission, part health-food store and part vegetarian restaurant. It is a ministry of the Uchee Pines Institute, founded four decades ago by two physicians who heal through “science and spirit.” Most come for “the least expensive and healthiest salad bar” in Columbus, as the restaurant boasts. Vegetarian cooks stock up on such bulk-sold foods as herbs, grains, seeds, nuts, dried peas and lentils. They consult vegan and vegetarian cookbooks. And, they take regularly offered cooking classes. Others come for health-related advice, supplements and natural care products.
Get maps and directions: Country Life
#5 – These experts pair beer and wine with every cuisine
Many ethnic restaurants without liquor licenses – and some with – permit diners to bring their own beer and wine. But what beer pairs with Korean? What wine with Mexican? Expert advice is available at a pair of retailers in Columbus. For beer, try Maltitude Craft Beer Marketplace at 1031 Broadway. Co-founder Miles Greathouse says the staff is trained through Cicerone at least to the level of “certified beer server.” Many beers in bottles. Better, every beer on pour can be taken out in 32-ounce cans or 64-ounce growler’s. For wine, it’s Mr. B’s at 1358 13th Street. An unprepossessing exterior masks a large, value-priced selection. More importantly, there is Murray Anderson, the house sommelier, who’ll guide you to wines that will pair with any cuisine.
Get maps and directions: Maltitude, Mr. B’s
#6 – Local cookbooks and the lore of Country Captain Chicken
The Galleria Riverside at Bradley Park, 1658 Rollins Way, is the best, single source for locally written cookbooks. Browse the bookcase at the front of the store, noting recipes with local, Southern roots. But note, too, the most-famous “local” recipe in two volumes, for the dish’s roots are ethnic and Indian.
It’s Country Captain Chicken, which Mary Bullard and her cook Arle Mullins served to U.S. presidents and Army generals. Lore has it that General George Patton sent a telegram to the Bullards as he was to pass through Columbus and Fort Benning on his way to World War II battlefields in Europe. “If you can’t give me a party and have Country Captain,” wrote UPI’s Terry Donahue, “meet me at the train with a bucket of it.”
A tangy, curry-laced, chicken-and-rice dish, Country Captain was introduced to the U.S. by British sailors who brought the recipe from India in the late 1700s to the Georgia port of Savannah, Donahue wrote. It gained fame only after Bullard served it to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Patton, among many others, who spread the word.
They were guests of the Bullards in Columbus, in a 3rd Avenue home that today is owned by Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd Sampson. The twenty-room Victorian mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Find the recipes in the Junior League’s A Southern Collection: Then and Now and A Celebration of Great Taste, written by employees of Columbus Bank & Trust. Louise Tennet Smith’s Wonderful Weekends is a local classic, but it has no recipe for Country Captain. Neither does native Maggie Heyn Richardson’s Hungry for Louisiana: An Omnivore’s Journey. But both are in The Galleria and worth a close look.
Another possibility: The Friends of Libraries store in the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road, often stocks The Groaning Board, a cookbook from the living history town of Westville, now relocating to Columbus, “where it’s always 1850.” Not ethnic, per se, but eclectic and old.
Get maps and directions: Galleria Riverside, Friends of Libraries Store
#7 – Take a cooking class as an alternative to dinner, then dine on what you cooked
Enroll in an evening cooking class where dinner is what you’ve learned to make. This is Divine Dinners, 1332 13th Street, with classes for individuals, couples or groups, focusing on seasonal dishes. Country Life, 1217 Eberhart Avenue, offers occasional classes in vegan cooking. Best price of the three alternatives: $10 per person.
Get maps and directions: Divine Dinners, Ariccia Trattoria, Country Life
#8 – Metal lunch boxes exhibited as art in nation’s best collection
One of the nation’s most-important collections of metal lunch boxes is in Columbus. The collector is Allen M. Woodall, Jr. – of an old and distinguished Columbus family – and his lunch boxes fill six tiers of shelves along four walls of his Lunch Box Museum at River Market Antiques, 3218 Hamilton Road. Woodall began collecting in the 1980s and the thousands he owns today are the “largest [collection] in the world,” he says. In 1999, Woodall co-authored The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes, published by Schiffer. Lunch boxes Woodall collected are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “His collection is national in scope, extremely deep, rich in quality and diversity,” Smithsonian curator David H. Shayt told the Ledger-Enquirer in 2001. The game show, Jeopardy, included the Lunch Box Museum as a clue in the category, Odd Museums, in 2015. A sales room adjacent to the museum offers lunch boxes priced from $15 to $520.
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