Right Now Downtown

RECIPE FOR TROUBLE

While the whimsical spelling of Häagen Dazs looks pretty convincingly Scandinavian (at least, to Ohio eyes), Rolls¨- downtown’s newest eatery, spells nothing but trouble.

What kind of person puts an umlaut over an “s”? The sort of person who gets a fancy degree from the Culinary Institute of America and opens up a barbecue shack. That’d be Walter McNabb; there’s nothing like him. McNabb does things his own way.

While most trained chefs hide away in the kitchen (positioning fricasseed parsley on parsnip coins), you might find McNabb behind the counter taking orders and preparing customer smoothies at his new joint. Call him out for abandoning his fancy education, and he’ll hit right back: “You’re not going to find white truffle oil on flatbread anyplace else downtown.”

Truffle oil? That does sound like a real chef. Still, the result is as addictive as any old school favorite. McNabb explains, “ You can teach some things, but you can’t teach love of food.”

The love shows. It’s in the smoothies, sandwiches and flatbreads. And there’s a whole lot more love coming when he open up his downtown outlet of Cook Shack BarBQ later this month.

McNabb and Rolls can be found at 6 E. Long Street, weekdays from 7am til 3pm.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under Downtown Columbus, Inside 43215. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.