Continuing on from Part One, where I visited the North Market in the Short North district, I ventured a bit further into downtown Columbus and visited a tea shop known as ZenCha.
ZenCha was a very different restaurant experience than I’ve ever had before. While in most restaurants, things are centralized around the dining experience, especially food. Here, at ZenCha, whether on purpose or not, the wait staff was very “hands-off”, giving us a plethora of time to decide our orders from the vast menu. We were given two menus: one, a tea menu, and the other, a food menu. The tea menu covered about 3 pages, front and back, with dozens of teas from half of a dozen different countries. The food menu, on the other hand, was much shorter but had very interesting food choices, such as lavender flavored tea biscuits and weird sandwiches. I ended up ordering a mango bubble tea (not very authentic to the restaurant, mind you) with milk and extra bubbles, as well as an order of chicken dumpling soup. After ordering, we waited about 10 minutes for our tea to arrive, which was admittedly very delicious. I would totally come back here just for the bubble tea alone. Afterward, we had to wait about 30 more minutes for our meals. I enjoyed mine a lot, but the people I went with thought that it was adequate at best.
All in all, I really enjoyed ZenCha Tea, and I would highly recommend trying it out at some point in their time here at OSU – however, it is kind of expensive, so fair warning.
The 3rd place I visited was Hofbrahaus. We went there for my brother’s 21st birthday, and honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of German food, so my expectations were very low. When we got in there, it seemed like an “American authentic” decor, as in a very Americanized version of “authentic” German decor. Then when we ordered food, everything seemed to be Americanized in some way, either slathered in some kind of cheese and virtually the only German thing on the menu being sauerkraut. I was relatively pleased with what I got, however; I don’t think it was authentic German cuisine, but it was called the Bauern Schnitzel. I called it the Barn Schnitzel and the waiter got very angry about that; irregardless, it had Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese, and some weird “Bier” cheese on it – it tasted pretty good, but it also kind of tasted like I had just bought a bunch of frozen food from Walmart.
I enjoyed Haufbrahaus for the most part, but if you’re looking for an authentic German food experience, I would not recommend going there.
The last place I visited was Bakersfield which is way south of campus. We also went there for my brother’s 21st; a bunch of his friends who went on a study abroad trip to Australia visited OSU and stayed for the night, and we got Bakersfield for lunch. To be honest, I had no clue what it was coming in to the place; it was very quirky, and I didn’t understand how the decor was trying to convey Mexican. The service was alright, and the food was very overpriced; the price for basically a miniature taco was $4, so it definitely loses out in that category. But it tasted pretty decently overall, so I was happy with it.
I’d probably advise going against it if you’re a college kid for the simple fact that it’s minimal food for maximum price; it does taste good though.
The main lesson I learned from exploring these restaurants in Columbus is that there is way more cultural variety here than I realized; I’ve been surrounded by standard fast food restaurants and chain restaurants my whole life. Now that I’m in Columbus, and I’ve had exposure to all these different cultures, it’s not necessarily enlightening, but it’s great to explore food that I never have before.