Pioneer AVIC-F700BT
This article should be subtitled: Why card-carrying AARP members should never install a radio/navigation system in a truck.
On the Saturday following the Great Ice Storm of ‘09 here in Louisville, I was driving to run errands after dropping my wife off at a conference and was contentedly listening to the Science Friday podcast off my iPhone via a cassette adapter in my old RAV4’s radio, when suddenly, I was surrounded in the cockpit by the sound of SILENCE! Well, silence and the quiet sound of grinding plastic gears emanating from within my radio. I ejected the adapter and was shocked at how warm it was, so I figured the gears in its case had just tried to seize up and I grabbed the adapter I use with my Sirius Stiletto unit (hard to unplug the adapter cable from the Stiletto’s dash dock, so I used two adapters). A soft click, click, click. Ejected that adapter and tried the CD player; it worked but the sound was distorted as it was when I tried FM and then AM. “It’s dead Jim.”
I am not sure, but I think Toyota uses Clarion head-units in their vehicles, and they are usually pretty reliable if rather uninspired in their aesthetic design and feature sets. About like most vehicles from Subaru, which also used Clarion units. No matter, this parrot was no more and it was time to start researching a likely replacement, that was both affordable and helped eliminate the clutter of wires and adapters and boxes which have seemingly multiplied in the seven years that the RAV has been hauling myself and my collection of electronic gadgetry down the road.
The most pressing need was restoring the Stiletto for my listening pleasure, since I am paying an exorbitant amount in extortion fees — that increased again on March 12th — to Sirius each month and it was going to waste while I was unable to listen to it in the truck. Therefore, the new head-unit needed an Aux-in jack on the front, a more elegant solution than a cassette adapter — if one could find or even want to find a unit with a cassette player nowadays — or using the dock’s built-in FM transmitter in the radio clutter which is the state of the FM band around Louisville. Secondly would be to have a dedicated 30-pin iPod/iPhone connector which would facilitate the playing of such devices as well as charging them while moving on down the road. The ability to control Apple devices from the head-unit would be a major plus as well.
My wife and I share a TomTom One 130
I have long been a fan of Pioneer Electronics since the late 1970s when I bought my first component stereo system and then my first LaserDisc player (I had DVD-quality video from 1980 on) and various other gee-gaws over the years to the present day. For around $250 I could strike most of my bullet points off the list, with the exception of a navigation system with the Pioneer FH-P8000BT
However, early on in my research I had found the Pioneer AVIC F-series radios at Best Buy with the cheapest unit still commanding Pioneer’s list price of $850. These are really some lust-worthy radios for the non-Luddites out there and unfortunately, they have the price tags to match — best price I could find for the low-end one was $650. If one has seen one of the Ford commercials in recent months touting their cars that come equipped with radios that utilize the exclusive SYNC system from Microsoft, that are able to use conversational voice commands (up to certain limits) then you will get the idea. The exclusive part must just refer to car company exclusivity, because the AVIC radios use the same Microsoft OS and have the same voice command capabilities as the SYNC radios. Plus they have a huge touch-screen display, powerful navigation system with text-to-speech to tell you the name of the street to turn on to and lane indicators at the top of the screen to let you know which lane you need to be in to catch your exit on the Interstate, video-capable Aux-in jack (the law requires a connection to the parking brake switch so that video can only be viewed while parked with the parking brake set), a video-capable USB/iPod/iPhone connector (same parking brake restrictions for video) so you can hook up your iPod, your iPhone, a USB thumb drive or even a portable USB hard drive; an SD card slot for video, music playback, and for updating the system firmware. A very nice system, but two things kept me from jumping on the bandwagon and buying a unit for myself; the price and the admonition from Pioneer that recommended PROFESSIONAL INSTALLATION ONLY.
A couple of weeks ago I read that Pioneer had started a $200 instant rebate program for the AVIC F-series radios (which everybody except Best Buy honored as far as I could tell). I decided to look at these units again and found a good deal on the Pioneer AVIC-F700BT
The radio arrived on the FedEx truck on Wednesday afternoon (the iPod cable was a day behind it) so I spent a couple of hours studying the installation guide, scratching head, studying some more, repeat, until I got the gist of what they wanted me to do. I then spent about 90 minutes soldering the wiring together (never been a big fan of wire crimping and I am not half-bad with a soldering iron) and wrapping it neatly. I then waited for the next day and the arrival of the iPod cable.
After the mail run on Thursday, I had all the components to begin the radio transplant operation in the RAV. I gathered all the tools I thought I would need, although I would invariably over the next several hours have to stop and go get something else out of the tool chest as per the Rivers Corollary of Projects Involving a Lot of Tools. I pulled out the old radio and passed the huge amount of new wiring through the opening and began making the various connections. The first wiring task was to run a long wire from the harness through the dash and to the back of the truck and clamp the end to the hot side of the back-up light, for apparently, it is not enough for the GPS part of the unit to rely on signals from the GPS satellites in space to figure out which way the vehicle is going, it also needs to know whether or not said vehicles is in reverse or not — I am still scratching my head on that one. Well, that wasn’t too hard. Next up was hooking up the GPS antenna and for this, I opted not to run it onto the roof of the RAV as I already had the Sirius antenna mounted up there and didn’t want the RAV to look like it was sprouting too many antennas and become the mobile equivalent of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. Besides, I was concerned about water leaks with so many wires being lead through the weather stripping. I just stuck the metal mounting plate on top of the dash and slapped the magnetic GPS antenna on it so it could pick up signals from space through the windshield and hope for the best. End of first hour of the operation.
Probably the easiest cable run was probably the iPod A/V cable to the glovebox, as it only took maybe five minutes. Now it was time to run the cable to the parking brake switch. I would spend the next two hours removing the console to even get access to the switch, lie across the door sill in ever-increasingly ridiculous angles to run the cable down to the switch, more serious bodily contortions trying to gain purchase with my fingers on the very short inch and a half long lead from a wiring harness to the switch so that I could clamp my cable to it and the then put everything back together correctly using the exact number of screws I removed when I pulled the console. A few final four-letter incantations to make sure the spell on it was properly cast and it was time to run the microphone cable out and around and up and through to clip it to my sun visor.
Ok, hook the wiring harness up to the back of the radio, make sure the mass of wires is out of the way of the radio’s cooling fan and push it into place and bolt it in, replace the trim ad dash vents, go and hook the battery back up and did I mention it is only 35° in the garage? Moment of truth and I turn the key and it powers up, but I have to use the special stylus they shipped in the box to reset the radio before I can use it. I wait anxiously for it to reboot and finally I get the warning screen about the proper operation of the radio in a way that will not distract me while I am driving, yada yada yada…
Oh my, everything works. GPS, check. CD, check. iPod, check. iPhone, check. Radio. Radio. Uh, radio? Crap, forgot to hook the antenna up. Pull radio back out of the dash and fish around back there for the antenna lead and plug it in and put dash back together and ten minutes later, I have radio. Four and a half hours to complete the transplant, not counting the prep-work time on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I would be in pretty bad pain from the experience from Thursday till the following Tuesday and could barely walk on Saturday and Sunday. Definitely a job for a younger person.
The only negative I have read about these radios has been how slow they boot up. That was with version 1 of the radio’s firmware and this unit shipped with version 2.0 and the boot time is vastly improved but it not instant on. AM or FM radio, CD and my Stiletto radio playing through the Aux-in jack will start playing in about 7 or 8 seconds from key on, the GPS unit doesn’t fully boot up for 30 seconds or so and the iPod starts playing a few seconds after that. Considering the capabilities of this system, I guess that is a fair trade off. Everything else works as advertised, but I do recommend printing out the 192 page Owners Guide off the CD in the box as it is not the most intuitive thing I have every used. But Microsoft had their hand in it, so you get what you get. But after you get used to things, you find it is a very powerful system with a great GPS system, much better than our TomTom; nice sounding stereo even with my stock speakers. Voice Command works as well as it does in the commercials, but it does have a problem with my slightly southern-tinge accent (what I get for having a father from Louisiana) like when I asked it to play the Eagles, it loaded the Beatles, but it got it right next time.
Bottom-line: Best radio I have ever owned, but not sure I will ever install my own radio ever again.
Tags: "Bluetooth Hands-free", "Car Stereo", "Navigation System", "Pioneer Electronics", AVIC-F700BT, in_dash, iPhone, iPod, Pioneer, Radio, Stereo
While attending a function at the recently re-launched Crowne Plaza Hotel (formerly the Executive West), Lynda and I stopped in at the Blue Horse Café — a somewhat more upscale restaurant inside the hotel than whatever was in there before the renovation. The restaurant and the hotel itself looks much nicer than the last time we were there for a convention, so I do have to give the place good marks for appearances.
We were seated and promptly attended to by our waiter, who took our drink orders and quickly returned with them and took our dinner orders. My wife decided to give the $13 buffet a try and I went over to look at it, and it while it did look very nice, I just wasn’t interested in ribs or chicken, the only meat choices on the buffet. Instead — and I should point out that the menu was lacking in dishes that I would like — I ordered the Bacon Burger, but with explicit instructions to leave the bacon OFF (yes, I am weird in that I absolutely abhor the taste and even the smell of bacon) and to cook it WELL.
Lynda returned with her plate from the buffet and pronounced the all of it excellent — especially the ribs. The veggies that she brought back did look very tasty and I found myself wishing that I had decided to forego the meat and had done a veggie excursion to the buffet line. My burger finally arrived and of course, it was smothered in bacon. I recoiled from it since it was smelled strongly of it and told the waiter to take it back and have it redone and he asked if I could just pick the bacon off, to which I replied, ABSOLUTELY NOT. He reluctantly took the offending burger back to the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned with a fresh burger, sans bacon. The burger was a generous sized patty of beef but the bun was tremendously tall; I don’t think I have ever encountered a thicker bun anywhere. The accompanying fries were presented in a glass tumbler lined with wax paper and of course, they were only semi-warm, being on their second trip out from the kitchen. I bit into the burger — after inspecting it to make sure they hadn’t just peeled the bacon off in the kitchen as it seemed that it hadn’t really taken very long to bring out a well-done burger — and the first bite was overcooked and very dry. I am sure Lynda was wondering why I was staring at it dejectedly and shaking my head. Oh well, better overcooked than not cooked enough and I was starving, so…
The sautéed onions beneath the burger was starting to cause a sliding problem with it starting to scoot out of the bun, so I turned it around to try to even things up and bit in. Bloody raw! Instant appetite-killer! Apparently, the grill chef had thrown the burger on the grill’s hot-spot to expedite the burger’s return to the table, but I am guessing only half the burger made it on there, as I can find no other explanation that could account for how you could get a burger cooked biscuit dry on one side and oozing blood on the other. That was a new experience.
The manager came over and apologized and comped us for my meal and honestly tried to make things right by offering me something else, but my appetite was ruined. I suppose I should cut them some slack, since they have only been open about three weeks, and I hope they get things ironed out before we return next year.
So, it was a split decision from us:
Lynda gave them 10 out of 10 stars.
I gave them 1 out of 10 stars.
Tags: Food, Kentucky, Louisville, Restaurant, Review
I have been setting up a new Forum page for our website this week and I am now taking it live. Hopefully it will be a good place for our readers to interact with us and with each other and perhaps help improve the site. You can find the Forum here and I have also posted the link in the sidebar in the Blogroll and my Links.
Tags: Announcement, Forum
Ok, I have been trying out Twitter for a couple of weeks now and I am still not sure what to think of it. I don’t think I can do justice trying to explain Twitter, so it might be best to just go explore their website and let them handle that task. If any of my readers want to add me as a Twitter friend, I am DougRivers on there and my Twitter page can be found here. You can follow my Tweets there, and if you are on Twitter already, just click “Follow” and you can see what the heck I am up to. Lynda joined for a few days, but she got a bit uneasy with so many people following her, that she had me help her delete the account. I don’t understand why she was picking up so many followers, I have had very few people even look at my Tweets. (Although, my Twitemperature is a Hot 85° (29° C) as of the time of this writing.)
I have been experimenting with a couple of Twitter clients on the iPhone and one on my Mac as well as just posting and reading Tweets in Safari. First up is the Mac client I have been playing with: twirl
twirl is available for Macs and PCs running XP or Vista and requires Adobe’s Air to be installed on your system to work. It supports multiple accounts on Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic. I wanted a dedicated client on my MacBook Pro, rather than relying on going to the Twitter website in Safari to read/post Tweets and I really didn’t want to have to shell out $14.95 for the Twitterrific for Mac client, so I took twirl for a whirl. Unfortunately, it has to be one of the least Mac-like programs I have used in the last couple of years, with TINY, unintuitive buttons in a 2-paned, pastel-framed window. Attractive perhaps, but frustrating to use. After playing with it for a couple of days, I can use it without straining my limited mental faculties, but for something as simple as a Twitter client, I don’t think there should be a period of having to get used to the program’s peculiar user interface conventions in order to utilize the service. I mean, if that was what I wanted, I would be using Windows, and to tell the truth, twirl feels like a bad Windows port. I will continue to use twirl for now, but the search goes on for a decent Mac client that is either free or at least under $10 — can’t justify any larger capital outlays while I a still unemployed — and I can’t really recommend twirl, except for the fact that it free and seems fairly stable.
Next up, I tried out the free Twitterrific client on my iPhone. There is also a Twitterrific Premium app available for $9.99, but I have not tested it, but would be interested in hearing from anyone who has tried both and wishes to tell me about the differences between the two by leaving a comment to this article. Twitterrific is probably the nicer looking of the two iPhone Twitter clients I have been using, with a little bird for an icon and a bigger picture of the little fellow as the app loads up and downloads your Tweets. Tweets are displayed in white text on a black background with the newest ones at the top of the screen, but if it has been a while since you have checked on things, the app opens the list where it was when you closed it and that can mean a lot of scrolling up if you follow a lot of people or if the ones you follow post a lot of Tweets — I follow TUAW and Engadget and with this week’s MacWorld Expo, there have been a LOT of Tweets in my list. The four controls at bottom of the screen are easy to understand, with circular arrows for Refresh, a talk balloon for Post a Tweet, a little page with list on it for the Detailed Info/List View toggle and a little wrench for Settings.
Personally, I wish they would just do away with the Refresh button and have the app just go out and check every few minutes for new Tweets. The Post a Tweet button is pretty straightforward, with a text box for your 140-character posting, a close button to cancel the operation if you can’t think of anything worthwhile to say — something a lot of people out in the Twittersphere should avail themselves of — a toggle button for regular Tweets (a talk balloon), Replies (a backward curved arrow) and Direct Messages (a little envelope). Next is a little camera button to post picture Tweets. The little circular crosshairs next to the camera button sends up a location Tweet to let your friends/Followers know where you are, or in my case with my 2G iPhone, hopefully within a mile of my current location. Then you have the character count so you know how much of your 140 character allotment you have used up for the current Tweet. Finally, you have send button to post your little gem of information online. The Detail Info switch brings up the selected Tweet with buttons below to Reply, see your Favorites, view User Info on the poster of the Tweet, Post a Tweet, Refresh or return to the List View. The little Settings button lets you change a few options for the app and is also where you go to enter your Twitter ID and password.
It is a nice enough app, but I really don’t like that doesn’t open at the top of the list when you open the app and doesn’t go to the top when you Refresh either. The little sounds it makes when you launch it or refresh the list is just a little too cute for my taste — can be turned off in the Settings, but I like to have audio notifications — and can be embarrassing in a group setting. Also, this app is ad supported and the ads appear as Tweets and I just find this wrong. But I really can’t knock it on price, so if that is a consideration, then give Twitterrific a look.
Last up is Tweetie, a $2.99 app that is a bit more capable than Twitterrific — as well as easier to type. Tweetie has two different themes (Chat Bubbles and Simple) to give you a choice of looks — they are selected in the Settings which is found in the iPhone’s Settings Pane, rather than in a Settings area within the app itself — and after trying both, I think I prefer the Simple theme, but to each their own.Tweetie also lets you set up multiple Twitter accounts— why one would want to is beyond me. There are more controls in Tweetie and I think they are organized much better than the other two clients I have looked at for this article. When you open the app, you find yourself in the Tweets page (at least if you have only one account like myself), with a button at top linking to a page with your various accounts to the left, Write a Tweet button to the right (with options to do Picture and Location Tweets), a Refresh button right below them — it refreshes automatically every little bit anyway, so this button is slightly redundant — and below that is the Tweet list. Along the bottom of the screen are buttons for Tweets, Replies, Messages, Favorites and More.
Most of those buttons are self-explanatory, but More takes you to a new page where you can look at your Profile (review your recent Tweets, search your Direct Message, remind yourself of exactly who you are following and who your followers are); Go to User to search for Twitter members by Screen Name; Nearby to see who is Tweeting near your current location; Trends to see what people are Tweeting about and finally Search, but I have not used it yet, so I don’t know what you can search for with it.
I find Tweetie to be the easiest to use of the three clients, it doesn’t make any cute bird noises, I can search for other people on Twitter and add them to my Follow list or stop following them from within Tweetie, I can see what people nearby are Tweeting about, and if I click on an url (usually a tinyurl link), the built in browser is much better than the one in Twitterrific. So, after two weeks of Tweeting, I am going to give the nod to Tweetie.
I am still new to Twitter, so I have probably made a great many errors in Twitter etiquette, so please forgive my ignorance.
I am experimenting with Twitter. You can follow me @DougRivers on Twitter.com or going to my page at www.twitter.com/DougRivers. Hopefully, my activity on the blog will be reflected automagically with tweets on my Twitter account.
My apologies for the hiatus for the last couple of weeks. I was traveling and then I came down with a case of the flu. Thankfully, I am now feeling better and am getting ready to start publishing again over the next couple of days.
I believe it was last Friday morning when I started seeing the fevered buzz about the imminent release of the updated version Google Mobile App for the iPhone with Voice Search and every other news/rumor site on the interweb had embedded the above YouTube video from Google. I quickly lost count of how many of the bloggers were prognosticating that it should be out ANY MINUTE NOW. So like the dutiful geek that I have become, at any opportunity I could find throughout the day Friday, I checked the Updates tab in the App Store with heightened anticipation of the arrival of the magical application. With somewhat reduced anticipation, I did my hourly checks of the App Store through the day and into the evening on Saturday. By Sunday, I was in a somewhat lessened state of enthusiasm as I made my somewhat more irregular checks of the App Store. I think I only checked twice or thrice on Monday, so diminished were my hopes of seeing the mythical App from Mountain View any time soon.
Finally, shortly after I awoke on Tuesday morning, the App appeared on the Updates tab. I sleepily stabbed at the Install button three or four times before I was successful, punched in my password and waited with baited breath as it installed itself on my iPhone. I clicked the App’s icon to launch it and pondered what to ask the new Oracle I held in the palm of my hand. I brought it to my ear as I had been instructed in the video and when I heard the beep, I spoke, “local restaurants that serve breakfast.” (At 6:15 in the morning, what else would one ask? Food is the second thing that occurs to those of us of a certain age upon waking, and I had already attended to the first thing.) I lowered my hand to watch the screen, which had the sine wave representation of my voice query, the word “Working” above it and the white “rolling caterpillar” below it. After a moment, the caterpillar stopped rolling, “Finished” replaced “Working” and I had my results. Unfortunately, my question had be interpreted once it reached Google’s cloud as “stones that serve breakfast.” Certainly not nearly as dramatic as I had been hoping.
I tried a few more questions and these were actually returned correctly. I suppose I may have been less fully awake than I had thought I was and had slurred or mumbled more than I usually do. Perhaps, this new app just needs to get used my Southern Indiana drawl; I mean, even after 8 years, Lynda still has trouble with it. Still, with further use, it seem to adapt and returned flawless results as I tested it throughout the morning. Still, it wasn’t as bad as the early iterations of the Newtons from Apple.
Among the other nice things in the new release is the fact that the app utilizes Location Services, so when you ask it a question, you receive results pertinent to your location. So, when you ask it to find the nearest Starbucks or sushi bar — to use the examples from Apple’s iPhone ads — you get the ones closest to where you and your iPhone happen to be standing. Likewise, movie listings will reflect what is playing at your local 50-screen ultramegacineplex — which this week would be 15 screens of Quantum of Solace, 15 screens of Madagascar 2, 15 more screens of Role Models and 5 screens of High School Musical XV. Of course, you can still type in your query, but then what sort of self-respecting geek would you be? Also, the updated app now keeps a history of your searches for quick access if you have to come back for another look.
Another new feature they added, unrelated to searches is the App tab at the bottom on the main page to give you access to other Google services like GMail, Calendar, Docs and even Google Earth. There is an Edit button to let you organize the apps in a way that is more conducive to the way you work with them. As a long-time Mac user, I like being able to change things to suit the way I work, which is something that I have always found lacking when I work with PCs unless I want to jump through 47 hoops first to do it. It is nice that Google has imbued the app with this Mac-like touch. I am sure Goodle is working hard to bring a version of this app to other mobile platforms, but I am glad they brought it to the iPhone first.
This works with both generations of the iPhone and the iPod Touch
I already get enough strange looks when I am talking on the iPhone as I am either using my Shure SE210
Ok, I guess it is time to answer the implied question as to whether this app was worth all the hype of the previous four days that while I was talking to Lynda, I had likened being akin to either the Second Coming or the sudden, unexpected discovery of intelligent life in the marbled halls of Washington, DC? Probably not, but it does usher in a new era of voice control on mobile devices and this is what was leading several of the tech pundits last Friday to label the Google Mobile App as the Killer Application for the iPhone. Again, we’ll just have to see how that shakes out. I can tell you that it despite my first query’s less than optimal result, the Voice Search feature is probably better than 95% accurate and will hopefully get even better as they refine their algorithms up in the cloud. Certainly, it is a good bargain since it is free for the downloading. So go ahead and try it out, it is a valuable tool, even on the iPod Touch
This posting marks the first time I have written the majority of an article on my iPhone rather than on my MacBook Pro and using the WordPress Mobile app on the iPhone to do minor edits. Hopefully, I will try this again in the not too distant future, as it could be most convenient to use on the road, especially for shorter postings.
Tags: Apple Computer, Gadgets, Google, iPhone
Impellizzeri’s Pizza. ©2008 Doug Rivers.An extremely dreary Sunday afternoon in the River City and Lynda and I were in search of really good pizza. The previous Friday I had sent Lynda an IM describing the Stuffed Mushrooms ($7.99) from Impellizzeri’s Pizza on Bardstown Road; so it was off into the showery, cold afternoon to get some ’shrooms and pizza. (I’ll share the ’shroom details and a picture with our readers in a few minutes.)
Impellizzeri’s had long been a favorite of ours since we had moved to Louisville some 8 years ago. The problem was, the restaurant was extremely tiny, well beyond cozy and often terribly smoky and the parking lot could be a major pain to get in and out of, especially on a weekday evening. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looks at it in hindsight, they closed their doors; leaving us with one less option for finding a truly great traditional pizza — as opposed to BoomBozz’s gourmet pies — in the Metro area. Finally, after an interminable hiatus, my friend Mike informed me a few months ago that Impellizzeri’s had moved into bigger digs a bit farther up Bardstown Road toward town. A bit longer drive up Restaurant Row — a dozen LONG blocks — but if the food is as good as it used to be, well worth the longer trip.
Now several months later, we had returned to see how they were doing. We don’t think they have any on-site parking of their own, so we parked on the street a couple doors past the restaurant and strolled back. They now occupy a brick building that is set at an odd angle at the corner of Bardstown Road and Edgeland Avenue. The angle is beneficial as it allows for a front patio with six umbrellaed bistro tables, which not surprisingly, were unoccupied with the temperature hovering around 39° and a cutting wind blowing down the street. It is an attractive old building on the outside and it looks like they put in a lot of work on the interior, which is 4 or 5 times larger than the old place and now has separate bar area. The decor is typical for an Italian eatery, with vinyl checkered tablecloths adorning the tables and booths, but there was no Italian soundtrack coming over the speakers. Queen’s
When we entered, Benny Impellizzeri, the owner was there to greet us warmly as we passed through the vestibule into the restaurant. We were seated at our booth and our waitress was there instantly to take our drink orders — a couple of tall Diet Pepsis ($1.99 each). After a short perusal of the menu, we decided on a couple of appetizers and a pizza. Since this was to be meal so I could write this review, we knew we were going to have a lot of leftover food and it looks like we got two more meals out of it.
Lynda had been drooling (figuratively, folks) since Friday for an order of those Stuffed Mushrooms ($7.99) I mentioned earlier, so she ordered those for herself. Actually, I don’t mind the flavor of mushrooms, I don’t really care to eat them because of their texture, so she had these all to herself. These were fresh mushroom caps that had been filled with garlic butter and homemade Italian sausage, smothered with Mozzarella and Romano cheeses and baked in a oval dish. Our waitress told us there were 5 or 6 mushrooms in an order, but it appears there were 8 or 10 large ones in Lynda’s order. It arrived at the table, bubbling like crazy, very fresh from the oven, with the cheese lightly browned to a golden blush on top. Lynda said they were just wonderful, but that they were swimming in a little too much liquid, which she had the waitress drain off when she boxed the leftovers at the end of the meal.
Stuffed Mushrooms. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
For my appetizer, I ordered the Bread Sticks ($5.99). Since Lynda loves these as much as I do and because it is fairly large for an appetizer, she had to help me with this order. They brought out this large pizza pan with six large bread sticks swimming in a sea of garlic butter, with a dusting of Parmesan cheese and oregano on the bread. The bread was so hot I had to transfer the first couple of bread sticks to my plate with my fork. They must grab the orders straight from the oven and bring them to the tables at a dead run — my back was to the kitchen, so I didn’t see them coming. Wonderful pieces of hot bread to dip in garlic butter. Bread Nirvana!
Bread Sticks. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
We decided to get a medium (14-inch) pepperoni thin-crust pizza ($14.99) for the main course. I don’t think we have ever had their thin-crust before, but I know that I would pit their Sicilian Deep Dish against the best of the deep dish pizzas you find in Chicago — and I have eaten a lot of them up there. Their thin-crust has much more in common with the pie you commonly hear call a New York or Brooklyn pizza, rather than the strange creations on cracker bread that Pizza Hut or Papa Johns calls a thin-crust pizza. The crust, though very thin, was soft and quite pliable, almost foldable like a New York-style pizza and if we had opted for a large (16-inch) would have no doubt been foldable. It was also pleasantly chewy, yeasty with a caramelized aftertaste that a good pizza crust should have. The sauce was more like tomato paste, rather than the watery sauce you get most places, with a full-bodied, herby spiciness that will, without question please discriminating adult palates, but isn’t quite sweet enough I am afraid for most kids. Paper-thin slices of pepperoni sit upon a thick layer of cheese. Unlike a lot places, these pepperonis had not curled up into little bowls that filled with grease that rendered out of the little discs during the baking of the pie. This was an almost grease-free pizza, which is very unusual for a pepperoni pie. As they took the pizza out of the oven, it had received an ample dusting of Parmesan cheese and herbs and had been once more rushed, steaming to our table.
Pepperoni Pizza. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
Our service was quite good with our waitress being right on top of things without hovering over us in an annoying manner. The restaurant was moderately busy when we arrived and was filling up pretty good toward the end of our visit, but the noise level never really got so bad that we had a bad problem with hearing one another, although I have heard that they can get some rowdy bunches in there on busy night and we might run into a problem then. While we will continue to patronize BoomBozz because they are close enough that I can yell in, rather than call in an order and they also serve a different type of pizza, I would have to say that Impellizzeri’s is my favorite pizza restaurant in town. They may be just a little on the high side as to their prices, they are quite generous with their portions — each of the appetizers would be fine for 4 people.
I would really like to try out one of their Italian Hoagies ($7.99-$8.99) or a Pasta dish ($6.99-$11.99) on a future visit. If you have a hard time getting away from surfing the web or are pathologically bound to your work, they do have free WiFi and it was very fast on our iPhones. They also started offering delivery a couple of months ago, but I doubt we can bribe them into delivering anything out 15 miles to us. Sigh.
As we were leaving, Benny Impellizzeri was once more at the door to wish us a pleasant evening. It certainly had been a pleasant dining experience.
10 of 10 stars.
1381 Bardstown Road502.454.2711
Tags: Italian, Kentucky, Louisville, Pizza, Restaurant, Review
Oriental House has been a staple on the St. Matthews dining landscape for more than 40 years, and unfortunately, the building looks it. The oriental-style woodwork on the outside has a tremendous amount of peeling paint and appears to be suffering from a little dry-rot. But as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, perhaps it doesn’t serve one well to judge a restaurant by its exterior paint.
I have been driving by the place occasionally for almost 30 years and almost weekly for the last 8 years and had never stopped in to try it out because, well, I knew nothing about the place, and lets face it, it looks a little the worse for wear. Finally, a bit over a month ago, after getting tired of the dramatic decline or the outright closing of the Chinese restaurants we normally frequent, we did stop by at lunchtime to try them out. Actually, Lynda had already been in there a few days prior to our visit with her friends, but this was my first visit and it turned out to be a pretty good experience. I knew I would have to come back with my reviewer hat on and write up a posting.
This past Saturday evening, Lynda took me there for my birthday dinner after I had settled on cuisine du jour, as we hadn’t dined on Chinese for a few weeks. It was only a few minutes after 5, so the dining room was almost empty when we walked in, certainly not as busy when we visited a few weeks earlier — it would be filling up quite a bit before we left though.
The dining room looks pretty much like a hundred other Chinese restaurants I have been in, from Florida to Oregon — and certainly not nearly as nice as some I have visited in say, San Francisco or Chicago — but the interior was obviously in better repair than the exterior. A cashier/carryout counter by the entrance, a scattering of tables and booths for the patrons and oriental artwork/carvings adorning the walls. Nothing fancy, but ultimately, quite familiar.
We both started off with a couple of egg rolls, chicken for Lynda and a vegetable one for myself ($1.30 each). While the price is comparable to what we usually pay for an egg roll at other restaurants around town, these were probably half again to twice as big. Mine had been fried to a wonderful crunchy brown on the outside and the veggies had just been heated all the way through, but hadn’t gotten hot enough to steam away the fresh, crisp texture. Lynda said that hers was very much the same.
Lynda decided to try the Orange Chicken ($9.50), a large platter of fried chicken with broccoli in an orange sauce that had little whole red chilies in it and served with a small bowl of steamed rice. I sampled a piece of the broccoli and found the sauce to have an incredible orange bite to it, with the broccoli to be perfectly cooked — still crisp to the bite with a bright color to it, rather than the pale over-cooked condition you would see in some other restaurants. Lynda said the chicken was very nice and tender and that the sauce had a warm spiciness from the chilies that got a little warmer as you went. Although, Lynda had gone in pretty hungry, she proved no match for the size of this meal and probably left a third of it behind.
Lynda's Orange Chicken. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
Over the years, I have come to favor Mongolian Beef as one of my favorite dishes that I order in a Chinese restaurant and it has become my litmus test to judge a restaurant by. Unfortunately, when I have ordered it here in Louisville, it has been served up as an overly sweet imitation of the dish I have come to love in other cities. What I have gotten at Oriental House is not sweet at all and is more like what I prefer when I order the dish. Thinly-sliced beef — could have been just a tiny bit more tender, but was fine — in a Mongolian brown sauce with green peppers, lots of sliced onions and little slivers of tender bamboo shoots. Again, the vegetables were cooked just right and the sauce was rich and flavorful that started off just a little spicy and grew more so as you ate, until it was moderately hot at the end. I had substituted fried rice (65¢ extra) for the steamed rice and I am pleased to report that it was one of the better bowls of rice that I have had in Louisville; nicely tender and no huge chunks of egg mixed in it, which in my opinion is a textural no-no. I was able to finish off my dish, but it was a very satisfying portion.
My Mongolian Beef. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
On the whole, a very nice meal, with very prompt and efficient service from the waitstaff. Even the fortune cookies were nice and fresh, but they can’t take much credit for those; besides the fortunes were strange and the lucky numbers didn’t hit in the Powerball drawing that night.
9 out of 10 stars.
Not aware of any website for this restaurant.
4302 Shelbyville Road502.897.1017
Tags: Chinese, Food, Kentucky, Louisville, Restaurant, Review
Lynda in front of Calistoga. ©2008 Doug Rivers.For the last few weeks, Lynda and I had been wondering what was being built on the corner of Dutchmans Lane and Dupont Circle and a couple of weeks ago, we finally found out the answer — a sandwich shop/deli/bakery. We of course, were on our way that morning up to Dennys at 11 AM on a Sunday morning in a delusional attempt to beat the church crowd, but we were quite disappointed to find a herd of breakfasters waiting to get in and had also noted a throng back down the hill at Wild Eggs. Dejectedly, we circled around the Village 8 Theater back toward Dupont Circle to go look for something else when we discovered that the new place — Calistoga Artisan Sandwiches — had apparently opened for business during the preceding week.
We parked quickly and went inside in hopes that they might serve breakfast. Fortunately, they do have what looks to be a nice breakfast menu, but unfortunately, they only serve breakfast until 11 and it was now 11:05. Oh well, we will have to get up a little earlier and try them out for breakfast during a future visit.
The interior of Calistoga feels a bit like a cross between a Panera Bread and a Starbucks, with the worst aspects of both thrown out. Lots of colorful wood trim and a fieldstone fireplace are the dominant design cues in the dining area. High backs to the booths help to keep you isolated from the conversations of your fellow guest to either side and also help cut down on the general noise level. The counter area has a few high-tech touches like the menu boards actually being high-definition video monitors that offer a rotating display of nice pictures of the sandwich choices. Speaking of high-tech, Calistoga offers free WiFi to its patrons, like a lot of restaurants today and this is something Starbucks should study closer (even though our iPhones finally got free access there this past week).
On this, the first of our two visits (so far), I have forgotten what Lynda ordered, so the bulk of this review will concern itself with our second visit a week later. (I am still working out the bugs of this review business.) I do know that on the first visit, we both took advantage of their special Choose Any Two deal, where you may choose any bowl of soup, or any half salad, or any half sandwich for $7.99. I picked the Italian Meatball Melt for the sandwich and the Tomato & Buffalo Mazzarella salad (both $7.99 for full orders). Lynda got one of the Pressata sandwiches (Pressata is original Italian name for what we Americans erroneously call a Panini) and I can’t remember if she got a bowl of soup or a salad. The meals come served in a round plastic basket, lined with sandwich paper with the half orders of salad in a white ceramic, moon-shaped dish. My sandwich was just a typical meatball sub served hot on one half of their asiago cheese baguettes, with the meatballs being rather tasty, but the tomato sauce somewhat undistinguished, not unlike the sauce on a Papa John’s pizza. The salad on the other hand was a pleasant variation on a caprese salad; slices of tomato tossed with field greens instead of basil, topped pieces of Mozzarella cheese, shaved Parmigiano cheese and one of the better Balsamic vinaigrettes I’ve tried around town.
A week later, we paid a return visit — again, not in time for breakfast, so we are going to have to work on that motivation deal — to try a couple of different sandwiches and maybe dessert.
This time, Lynda ordered the Chicken Pesto Cordon Bleu ($7.99). It is hot sandwich served on an herbed focaccia bread and has thin slices of grilled chicken breast, Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese and a pesto aioli. Apparently, all their sandwiches are serve with a little bag of Miss Vickie’s Simply Sea Salt Kettle Chips — I am not that fond of kettle chips, but Lynda likes them, so this is a wash. Lynda took a bite of the sandwich and her face just lit up; pronounced it as probably the best sandwich she has ever had — an 11 out of 10, as it were.
Lynda's Chicken Pesto Cordon Bleu sandwich. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
I went with the Roast Beef Helena™ ($7.59). It is one of their cold sandwich selections with a generous stack of lean roast beef, slabs of smoked Cheddar cheese, fresh leaf lettuce, tomato, paper-thin slices of red onion and a horseradish sauce served up on their Asiago cheese baguette. Not being a big fan of horseradish, I asked them to leave it off, but that may have been a mistake as it made the sandwich a bit on the dry side. Perhaps next time I will try substituting the horseradish with mayonnaise, the pesto aioli or even the chipotle aioli. Otherwise, it was a very nice sandwich.
My Roast Beef Helena™ sandwich. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
Dessert is not something we usually think about after lunch, but since they have a on-site bakery, we decided to give it a go. Lynda thought that the Lemon Berry Creme Cake ($5.25) looked like a good idea. It is wedge of very moist lemon cake, full of blueberries and raspberries with a ginormous layer of creme filling through the middle of it. Unfortunately, it was too much for Lynda to eat, but she declared it to be a fitting end to a wonderful lunch.
Lynda's Lemon Berry Creme Cake. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
I went with the Triple Chocolate Cake ($5.25). Moist, rich chocolate cake with a fluffy, almost mousse-like frosting with a thick covering of chocolate chips and shavings on the outside. Can’t think of anything negative to say about it. It is CHOCOLATE after all!
My Triple Chocolate Cake. ©2008 Doug Rivers.
We both think Calistoga is one of the better sandwich shops in town. They also have a location down on Chestnut Street at the UofL Medical Complex, one in Lexington, KY, and three in Florida (Naples/Ft. Myers) and are headquartered in Anchorage, KY. Before we left we saw John Schnatter, founder of Papa John’s Pizza by the counter. He is apparently a co-founder of Calistoga, and with his track-record, it should do well. Since our only complaint is about the lackluster sauce on the Meatball Melt, it deserves to do well.
9 stars out of 10.
4000 Dutchmans Lane502.895.3779
Tags: Bakery, Deli, Kentucky, Louisville, Restaurant, Review, Sandwiches
