Afterglow of a weekend in Columbus, Ohio

Fifteen takeaways from a wonderful wedding weekend last weekend in Columbus, Ohio.

1.   Centralizing everything around a single hotel and cluster of nearby restaurants is the way to go. No shuttling thither and yon. Best of all, the unfamiliar people in the wedding party stop being strangers in short order. You run into them everywhere.

2.   They should make those traditional glasses for Jewish weddings easier to break. The only glitch in the ceremony for Monica’s nephew Justin and his bride Brittany was when time came to crush it. It took the groom a second stomp. Not the first time I’ve seen that happen.

3.   Brittany did her bridesmaids a big favor. They can use their dresses again. On this black-and-white themed occasion, they had to wear black, but they got to choose their own gowns.

4.   The youngest guest charmed everyone. Not quite six months old, the groom’s nephew Noah was sweet and smiley. No crying at all.  

5.   Everyone should schedule weddings on the night when Daylight Savings Time ends. Having that extra hour is a blessing on the morning after.

6.   I want to go to another Cameron Mitchell restaurant. CM did the Friday night rehearsal dinner and the Saturday night wedding party in The Exchange, an event center attached to our accommodations in the AC Hotel by Marriott in Dublin, a burgeoning upscale suburb northwest of Columbus. CM also did the women’s and men’s bachelor night parties on Thursday in the Pearl and the Avenue Steak Tavern, across the Scioto River from the hotel via scenic footbridge, and the Sunday brunch at the Avenue. Inventive food, top-notch service. CM has restaurants across the nation. Nearest to us are the ones in Columbus. (Photo: Hotel from the footbridge.)

7.   Did Cameron Mitchell also arrange the weather? It was perfect. Sunny, dry and unseasonably warm all weekend.

8.   Downtown Columbus is 20 minutes away from almost everywhere. That’s about how long it took to drive to the Columbus Museum of Art in the heart of the city.

9.   The CMoA ain’t as grand as its counterpart in Buffalo, but it has its charms – at least four Picassos and an excellent cafeteria. Plus they’re part of that reciprocal deal with other museums. We got in free.

10.                 Same at the Franklin Park Conservancy and Botanical Gardens. They’re reciprocal too. Compact compared with Buffalo’s botanical gardens, but it’s well-kept and has lots of Dale Chihuly glasswork. Bonus: The route there via Broad Street is lined with 19th century mansions. (Photo: Chihuly at the botanical gardens)

11.                 Field of Corn. A quirky piece of public art on a broad expanse of corporate lawn in Dublin – 109 six-foot-tall concrete ears of corn on what was a farm not so long ago. We saw a photo of it in the CMoA, then I accidentally came upon it when I was out shopping. (Photo: Monica with the concrete corn.)

12.                 Kroger’s. This Cincinnati-based supermarket chain’s big new Dublin store didn’t have Quinn’s peanut butter-filled pretzels, like the Internet promised, but it had a Starbucks and Southern Tier Brewing Co. beers.

13.                 Public radio. Unlike Buffalo, Columbus still has two NPR stations – WCBE (which stands for Columbus Board of Education) and university-based WOSU. I tuned in WCBE, but felt starved for local spot news.

14.                 Like the bride’s gown, all the flowers were white. I wanted to take some with us, but walking out with a window-box-sized table centerpiece seemed like a no-no. I plucked a single white rose instead. It’s still white and bright in a vase on our kitchen counter four days later.

15.                 Also enduring is the ceremonial loaf of challah that was blessed at the Friday night reception prior to the rehearsal dinner. I asked an attendant who was clearing things away if we could take a piece with us. Minutes later he reappeared with the whole thing – a golden monster the length of a French baguette – double-wrapped in plastic. It also lives on, sliced up in our freezer, taking up major space.

On the road again

 Friday 5 November 2021

The plaque at the rest stop Thursday displays the name of the governor and it’s a strange sight. Mike DeWine. Flash to the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and flash right back again. My God, this is the first time I’ve been outside of New York State since the pandemic began.

The occasion? Monica’s nephew Justin’s wedding. It’s in Columbus, Ohio, a place where one might catch sight of Mike DeWine in line at a coffeeshop. To be more specific, though, the nuptials Saturday will be in Dublin, a burgeoning suburb on the northwest edge of Columbus. Although it’s going to be a big wedding, we probably won’t see the governor there.

Getting to this place is simple. Zip west on I-90, turn left just before Cleveland, go south-southwest another couple hours at 70 or 80 mph on I-71 and here we are. A couple times before we turn, the car dings to tell us to watch for ice because the temperature has dropped to 37 degrees. No ice or snow, but we keep running in and out of rain.

Monica proclaims it a boring drive, so she enlivens it with the new David Sedaris book, “A Carnival of Snackery,” on audio, her favorite way to read these days. I take in the scenery, pointing out the bright autumn colors on our corridor through Western New York, then watching them turn back to green the deeper we descended into central Ohio. The rain stops. It gets sunny. Farmers till fields, raising big clouds of dust. October was a wet one in Buffalo. Here, apparently, not so.

We tuck into the sixth floor of the brand new AC Hotel by Marriott on the east bank of the Scioto River and befriend the crew at the desk – a Black porter named Joseph and two guys with accents. Monica asks the fellow checking us in where he’s from. Guess, he says. “Turkey,” I say. Right. He’s pleased. Guess where his sidekick, the other guy behind the counter, is from, he says. “Antarctica,” I declare. No, no, he’s from Turkey too.

For Thursday night dinner, the men and women of the wedding party separate into side-by-side restaurants on the opposite bank of the Scioto – the ladies to The Pearl, the gentlemen to the Avenue Steak Tavern. Although it’s a day short of the weekend, both places are packed. Nobody’s masked.

I sit with the old guys at the end of one of two long tables set up for us at the far wall of the Avenue and get to dine with the man who built both of these restaurants and had a hand in developing our hotel and all the new stuff around it, including the footbridge over the Scioto that connects them all. He’s David Miller, uncle of the bride. We get the best of attention from the servers, the managers and the chef. Appetizers appear immediately and they’re upscale and endless. Steaks are recommended for dinner, but the menu also includes a touch of home. Not wings, the other one. Beef on weck. I can’t resist. Turns out David has Buffalo connections.

There’s an after-party back on the east bank of the Scioto, right across the street from the hotel in a place called Pins – a sprawling bar and pinball game room, the centerpiece being a long wall of automated duckpin bowling games. Here I get a chance to pick up the one article of clothing I forgot to pack – a T-shirt to sleep in. The shirt is black, emblazoned with the head of a tiger with a duckpin in its mouth and a motto: “Always Fast-N-Hard.”

Cheers,

Dale