Last night Kish and I and Mr. and Mrs. JV had dinner at The Keep, one of Columbus’ newest restaurant options. It’s located on the mezzanine level of the Hotel LeVeque, smack dab in the middle of downtown Columbus.
Given the name, I thought The Keep might have a medieval castle theme, with a wait staff carrying crossbows or broadswords. There was no jousting or armor plating visible during our visit, however. We first had a drink — well, actually two, since none of us were going to be driving home — at The Keep’s bar, which was packed with people and hosting at least two separate holiday parties. We knew we were in a cutting-edge spot when we learned that the people next to us were both out-of-towners who had arranged their first meeting via Tinder. The bar offers lots of different cocktail, wine, and beer options, as well as a limited bar food menu. We skipped the food, since we were going to be eating at the restaurant next door, and enjoyed our drinks and the lively, bustling urban vibe of the place.
The restaurant is a few steps away from the bar. It is modeled as a modern French brasserie, and — to this uneducated wine fancier, at least — it has a very solid selection of French wines, as well as domestic labels. Given the brasserie setting, I felt compelled to start my meal with the French onion soup, which was good and served piping hot, without the overload of bread and cheese that you frequently get with that order. You could actually eat the soup without having to use your spoon to saw through an inch-thick layer of bread and cheese and having the soup splash out of the bowl as a result. My entree was the Guajillo pork cheeks, served with black-eyed peas, collard greens, and corn nuts. It was very tasty, too. As JV observed, the portions are kept to moderate size, so you can be a member of the Clean Plate Club without having to waddle out of the joint, groaning with a mixture of satiation and discomfort. The reasonable portion size also left room for Kish and me to split a really good dessert consisting of a kind of miniature spicy Bundt cake with ice cream.
The ambiance of The Keep restaurant is appealing and has definite brasserie elements, with a central dining counter area and tables and booths spread around. One other thing: as we looked around, we realized that we were by far the oldest folks in the room. That was true in the bar area, too. How often are fun-loving 60-year-olds the senior citizens in a downtown restaurant? Maybe the younger crowd is attracted by the brasserie setting, or the central downtown location, or the prices, which I thought were very reasonable. In any event, it was nice to know that we oldsters had stumbled upon a hip place where the cool kiddie set hangs out. We’d go back, if they let us in.
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