While still searching for a new location for a restaurant, Chef Ohlinger has scheduled his Appalachian Global Dinner Series in a collection of area restaurants where he will be serving as a guest chef for the upcoming year.
Three Cities has a nice little piece on him, as well as a tentative schedule for the upcoming year. I don't know about you, but I want to attend all of these. But there are about six that I MUST go to. They are reservation only, and if you want to keep up with what he's doing, like his page on Facebook. He'll have more details on when/where these dinners will be later on.
Ohlinger was the owner/chef at Richwood Grill (formerly Solera), and he's probably made the biggest impact on me of all my time learning about the West Virginia food culture. He schooled me really quickly on why he didn't serve ketchup or pop. And also that meat should not be crazy tender because that means they lived in a box their whole lives, as he would say, instead of out roaming around like happy cows. I think the most important thing I learned from him is that not everything has to, on the surface, just taste great. He wants to give you an experience and make you try things you haven't and push you out of your comfort zone and open you up to new flavors. Anyway, crazy amazing chef. And here's an opportunity to have some of his food while he continues the hunt for a new restaurant.
January / 10th Anniversary Rum and Chocolate Dinner–Single-Origin Heirloom Chocolate Dishes Paired with Small-Batch Rums
February / The Maritimes–Cuisine of Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia
March / The Cuisine of Yemen–Portuguese and Indostani Influences in the Coastal Middle East
March / West Virginia Craft Beer and Global Artisan Cheese–Pairing Local Craft Beers with Rare Handmade Cheeses of the World
April / Appalachian Ramp Lollapalooza–Ramps Thirty Ways: This Ain’t Your Grandma’s ‘Church Social Ramp Dinner Pot Luck Fundraiser’
May / Scottish Keiseki–Japanese-Scots Fusion Featuring a Scottish and Japanese Whisky Pairing
June / Pre-Colonial Appalachia–The Native Cuisine of the Seneca, Shawnee, and Cherokee
June / Edible Music–Twelve Iconic Food Songs Re-imagined as Small Plates Paired with Libations from Twelve Classic Drinking Songs
July / Bolivia: Where the Pampas Meets the Andes–Traditional Bolivian Cuisine Featuring a Pit-Roasted Alpaca and a Spit-Roasted Rhea
July / Highway 61 Revisited–Mississippi River Soul Food: Cool Beer and Haute Tamales
August / Before Myanmar–Historic Cuisine of British Burma
August / One Mile Meal–Pop-Kitchen on a Local Farm: Preparing an Entire Meal Using Only Ingredients From Within One Square Mile
September / Flogging a Dead Horse–The 7th and Absolutely Last Ever Appalachian Deconstruction and Molecular Gastronomy Dinner
October / Wild Appalachia–Modern and Traditional Cuisine Prepared Using Only Wild Fish & Game and Foraged Ingredients
October / 10th Annual Day of the Dead Celebration–Traditional Oaxacan Cuisine Paired with Single-Village Mescals
November / Georgia Meets Georgia–The Cuisine of Asiatic Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains Crossed with the Southern Appalachian Mountain Cuisine of American Georgia
November / Bourbon and Beef–The Terroir of Appalachian Beef: Grass-Fed Beef from Diverse Regions of West Virginia Paired with Single-Barrel Bourbons
December / Sugar and Spice–Following the Global Foodpath of Sugarcane and The Spice Islands Through History
Three Cities has a nice little piece on him, as well as a tentative schedule for the upcoming year. I don't know about you, but I want to attend all of these. But there are about six that I MUST go to. They are reservation only, and if you want to keep up with what he's doing, like his page on Facebook. He'll have more details on when/where these dinners will be later on.
Ohlinger was the owner/chef at Richwood Grill (formerly Solera), and he's probably made the biggest impact on me of all my time learning about the West Virginia food culture. He schooled me really quickly on why he didn't serve ketchup or pop. And also that meat should not be crazy tender because that means they lived in a box their whole lives, as he would say, instead of out roaming around like happy cows. I think the most important thing I learned from him is that not everything has to, on the surface, just taste great. He wants to give you an experience and make you try things you haven't and push you out of your comfort zone and open you up to new flavors. Anyway, crazy amazing chef. And here's an opportunity to have some of his food while he continues the hunt for a new restaurant.
January / 10th Anniversary Rum and Chocolate Dinner–Single-Origin Heirloom Chocolate Dishes Paired with Small-Batch Rums
February / The Maritimes–Cuisine of Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia
March / The Cuisine of Yemen–Portuguese and Indostani Influences in the Coastal Middle East
March / West Virginia Craft Beer and Global Artisan Cheese–Pairing Local Craft Beers with Rare Handmade Cheeses of the World
April / Appalachian Ramp Lollapalooza–Ramps Thirty Ways: This Ain’t Your Grandma’s ‘Church Social Ramp Dinner Pot Luck Fundraiser’
May / Scottish Keiseki–Japanese-Scots Fusion Featuring a Scottish and Japanese Whisky Pairing
June / Pre-Colonial Appalachia–The Native Cuisine of the Seneca, Shawnee, and Cherokee
June / Edible Music–Twelve Iconic Food Songs Re-imagined as Small Plates Paired with Libations from Twelve Classic Drinking Songs
July / Bolivia: Where the Pampas Meets the Andes–Traditional Bolivian Cuisine Featuring a Pit-Roasted Alpaca and a Spit-Roasted Rhea
July / Highway 61 Revisited–Mississippi River Soul Food: Cool Beer and Haute Tamales
August / Before Myanmar–Historic Cuisine of British Burma
August / One Mile Meal–Pop-Kitchen on a Local Farm: Preparing an Entire Meal Using Only Ingredients From Within One Square Mile
September / Flogging a Dead Horse–The 7th and Absolutely Last Ever Appalachian Deconstruction and Molecular Gastronomy Dinner
October / Wild Appalachia–Modern and Traditional Cuisine Prepared Using Only Wild Fish & Game and Foraged Ingredients
October / 10th Annual Day of the Dead Celebration–Traditional Oaxacan Cuisine Paired with Single-Village Mescals
November / Georgia Meets Georgia–The Cuisine of Asiatic Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains Crossed with the Southern Appalachian Mountain Cuisine of American Georgia
November / Bourbon and Beef–The Terroir of Appalachian Beef: Grass-Fed Beef from Diverse Regions of West Virginia Paired with Single-Barrel Bourbons
December / Sugar and Spice–Following the Global Foodpath of Sugarcane and The Spice Islands Through History
To round out the DiCarlo's tour, I dragged Lisa to the Wheeling area for two DiCarlo's locations I had never been to: Sherrard and Glen Dale.The Sherrard DiCarlo's is located on Fairmont Pike. I had a little trouble finding it at first, but once we just drove a little further back the road, it was right there. We walked in and ordered our slices -- they actually call them "cuts" here. "1 cut pizza," which confused me, is how they describe their "slices." Anyway, I ordered two and then went to the right side seating area to wait.
There is a good little bit of seating here. In the ordering space, there were a few chairs. The room off to the right has a few tables, but it also is a little shabby looking. It looks like maybe they began to paint but didn't finish. The outlets don't have covers, the walls are different colors, and it could probably overall use a nice shining.
But to be honest, this didn't bother me at all. I was focused on my pieces of pizza. After a little while of waiting, our orders were ready. We took our boxes to the car and dug in.
This pizza, as you can see, has tiny little bits of cheese - not shreds - and the sauce tasted just like I remembered. The very bottom of the crust was a thin crisp and it was poofier above. I really, really liked it. It's similar to what I am used to, and better than most of the pizza I can get locally.Grade: A
There aren't quite as many vendors - but there's still a good bit! DeBerry Farm, Evans Knob Farm, Hawthorne Valley Farms, Sickler Farm, Stewart's Farm and Greenhouse, and Two Cow Farm were all there most recently. AND, there's a new addition - a cow cheese farmer! High Country Creamery is new and has been traveling from Maryland with fresh cow cheese - feta, mozzarella, aged cheddar, curds and havarti. Delicious.
So, go! There's plenty of parking around. There's construction on the side of the church, but see that entrance up there? Go there!
Heston has grown since my previous visits. The winery and distillery has expanded to offer a full-service restaurant. When I was there last, they offered food as part of an event outdoors, but this large restaurant space is new. To get the full experience, Tom and I made reservations for New Year's Eve dinner here after a quick wine tasting in the main store area.
We sampled all of the wines plus the moonshines and some of the other liquors before buying a few bottles and heading next door to the restaurant. While our reservations were at 7 p.m., we ended up waiting until around 7:20 p.m. before we were actually seated. I was pretty unhappy with this, but apparently they had selected certain tables for reservations, and we had been waiting for the couple ahead of us to finish up. Anyway.
When we were finally seated, we waited another 10 or 15 minutes for a server to finally come over and take our drink orders. I must say, I was not impressed at this point. But then the waitress asked if we'd like a complimentary appetizer. Um, uh-huh. We ordered the crab-stuffed mushrooms off their New Year's Eve Menu as an appetizer.The menu for the night looked really nice. A few appetizers - shrimp, crab/artichoke dip, the mushrooms, meat/cheese board. Their soup was a lobster bisque. Entrees were steak, lobster-stuffed shrimp, pasta primavera, chicken bernaise and salmon oscar. Plus a handful of desserts - cake, truffles, bread pudding, bananas foster.
The mushrooms arrived not too long after placing the order (so I feel like I'm finally in the swing of things), and three are delivered to us. Three for $10 is ehhhh. I know they're crab-stuffed, but it's a tiny bit of crab and lots of breading. So, a little pricey there.
But overall, they were pretty good. Mushrooms were cooked well - a little springy still so not totally overdone, and the breading didn't have much crab, but it did have some nice sage flavor.
We were brought biscuits with some whipped butter. Biscuits were warm and light.
For my salad, I got a side of the poppyseed something dressing. Not a bad house salad - some mixed greens, red onion and a tomato or two. The dressing wasn't my favorite - I typically go for a French. But I didn't hate it either.For my entree, I went with the Salmon Oscar, plus mashed potatoes and glazed carrots as my sides. The Salmon Oscar was described as "decadent crab stuffed salmon, paired with asparagus and topped with bernaise sauce."
So, as you can see, the "stuffed" salmon is really just about three pieces of crab on top. I wasn't crazy about the sauce, but I was happy it was fresh crab (not imitation) - just wish I could've actually tasted it and more would've been nice.
The salmon was also cooked well. It had a good flavor, but considering there were only about three tiny pieces of crab on top, I didn't get that "crab-stuffed" flavor I thought I would get. No decadent, rich filling. Just a piece of salmon and with some crab on the side. However, each was good on its own. I just wish they were married like I was expecting.The sides were both very good. The killed the mashed potatoes and savored every last bite. Lots of herb and pepper. The carrots were also very tasty with a nice brown sugar glaze.
Overall - service was spotty, but they made up for it. Salad, biscuits and sides all very good. Main entree not exactly how I expected it, but all components of the meal were good.
Grade: B
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