Short North Restaurant Odyssey

Aaron and I live in an area of Columbus called the Short North (and within that, we live in Italian Village, but I digress). The Short North is located just barely north of downtown Columbus, and is known for its art galleries, shops and restaurants. For several months now, we have been discussing a new adventure. We've decided that we're going to eat at every restaurant in the Short North. We have no time constraints, so this could take 3 months, or a year, or infinity (highly doubtful). We're tentatively calling it the Short North Restaurant Odyssey, but we're open to suggestions.

Photo from www.shortnorth.org

Recently we sat at a favorite bar (the R Bar, not on our journey) and detailed the list of restaurants and the Rules. This was done on cocktail napkins, because you know that's how all great ideas are conceived.

The Rules:

1. Boundaries are Goodale Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the north. We are concentrating only on establishments with a High Street address, or that are visible from High Street. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the geography, this is about a one mile stretch. We will begin at Goodale on the east side of High and go north, cross the street at Fifth Avenue and head south.
2. The food must constitute a "meal." For our purposes, ice cream counts (yay, Jeni's!); a bag of chips does not (sorry, Mike's Grill-that-has-no-grill).
3. No take out. Dine-in only.
4. We must hit every restaurant in order, and we cannot repeat. This means that if friends are meeting at Surly Girl, but Surly Girl isn't next on our list, we can't go. But maybe we can convince said friends to go to the next place on the list. We probably won't get any takers if that's White Castle (because, yes, we have to eat at White Castle), but if it's The Rossi we might.
5. We ARE allowed to eat at restaurants that are off-site. Aaron breathed a sigh of relief that Buffalo Wild Wings is not located in the Short North so he can still get his weekly fix, and I can still go to Chipotle for lunch every Monday.
6. We cannot order the same food. This is already an unwritten rule for us in general.
7. For every restaurant on the list, we must each go to the gym three times, or do some type of exercise activity. This doesn't mean that we have to fit in those three times before we can go to another restaurant, but by the time we get to Hyde Park for a juicy steak (our last stop) we'll have to have exercised 162 times, based on our current count of 54 restaurants. That's right, FIFTY-FOUR.
8. We must walk to each restaurant. Said walking does not count toward the exercise activities in #7 above.

First up: Sushi Rock. We'll be reviewing each experience here, and sometimes Aaron will be the guest blogger. I hope that even if you're not a Columbus-ite you'll follow us in this most excellent journey.


The Gila