It's not hard to figure out where my love of food and eating springs from: The back kitchen of my Italian grandfather's butcher shop in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Some of my most primeval memories are of t  

There aren't too many restaurants that call out their riskiest meal options right on the menu. Not so at Riverside Korean in Covington where, under the heading of "Adventure Dinner," are three vagu  

Velocitization. It's a term traffic engineers use to describe what happens when you drive fast for an extended period: Your sensory system attunes to your speed, you cease to realize how fast you'r  

At first I thought, it must be me, experiencing a rough culinary re-entry from last week's vacation, taste buds out of whack from a week of eating my way across Paris and the south of France. (Let   

If you're like me, the toughest part about dining out can be choosing what to eat. Mapping out a winning meal can be a decision-making challenge, with an internal monologue going something like this  

I felt a trifle silly when I arrived at Mirage for dinner the other evening. Not knowing anything about the place, I had phoned ahead to reserve a table. Make a note: Mirage is definitely not a ca  

Restaurants are like relationships -- it's all about the right fit. Midway through dinner at Parkers Blue Ash Grill on a recent Friday, I realized that things between Parkers and me really weren't   

It takes courage, blind faith and a different business model to open up a new restaurant at a location where one has just closed its doors. McFadden's Restaurant & Saloon, which opened in March dow  

I have an aversion to casual dining chains like Tumbleweed and O'Charley's that is second only to my deeply rooted dislike for Wonder Bread, suburban housing developments and anodyne television sit  

A few years ago, on a trip through beautiful, windswept Joshua Tree National Park, I was amazed by the oases there -- mysterious, mossy places, cooled by breezes and shaded by palm trees from the b