Recharge with that? Mac’s Pizza Pub adds car charging station
Mac’s Pizza Pub in Clifton Heights has installed a power charging station so customers can top off their electric vehicles while they have a pizza. And it’s free. There’s a parking space next to the patio where you can pull in your electric car and plug into his dedicated circuit while you go in and have a Macover or a pizza. (May we recommend the potato pizza?)
Owner Mac Ryan uses a Chevrolet Volt for all of the restaurant’s delivery and catering business.
Ryan says many restaurants in other parts of the country provide this service, but his is the first one to do so here. He said it’s not particularly expensive for him: it’s equivalent to running another television.
The recharging station is part of a larger scheme to make Mac’s as environmentally friendly as possible. Ryan hopes to install solar panels on the Pizza Pub building and wind turbines on the taller building he owns next door. Then he could charge cars with zero fossil-fuel use.
205 W. McMillan, Clifton Heights. www.macspizzapub.com
Cupcake Crazy getting a storefront in Silverton
With the help of daughters Lauren and Kristen, Lisa Ebbert turned her lifelong love of baking into a business, Cupcake Crazy, in late 2010.
Things have gone so well for the trio that they’re planning to move from filling special orders from their home to opening a shop, which they’ll do around mid-June. It will be at 7458 Montgomery Road in Silverton, across from Esther Price Candies and just down the road from Kenwood Towne Centre.
The shop’s eat-in area will seat 10-12, with room for 10-12 more in a small party room, plus a few more seats at bistro tables out front. It will have a “fun” but “classy” atmosphere, Ebbert said, with crystal chandeliers and the bakery’s signature colors of teal, pink and chocolate brown.
Ebbert said she plans to offer eight to 10 of Cupcake Crazy’s 40-plus flavors, which include salted caramel, chocolate chip cheesecake, mocha and red raspberry, each day. They’ll also bake cake pops, small wedding cakes and cupcake towers, and they’ll likely branch into more cakes and maybe other baked goods, too. For something a little different, they sell cocktail cupcakes and cake pops: Bailey’s, margarita, pomegranate cosmopolitan and so on. They’ll have a coffee and smoothie bar, too.
They’ll keep taking custom orders, creating new flavors and designs for customers.
Ebbert said she plans to be open from 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
513-984-1100; www.cupcakecrazyincincinnati.com
Queen City Cookies adds truck; new storefront on the way
Queen City Cookies has a new truck, and owner Peggy Shannon is preparing to move into a new space this fall.
She’s moving into St. Pius church, west of Hoffner Park in Northside at 1662 Blue Rock Road. In those 14,500 square feet, she’ll have a retail bakery; a liquor license; a dining area; and a patio designed by Jon Carloftis, a well-known garden designer from Lexington. When she opens, hopefully in October, guests will be able to stop for dessert and a drink or coffee.
www.queencitycookies.com
New menu at Park + Vine includes sandwich named for Heartless Bastards bassist
Melissa Cox Howard, who creates the menu for Park + Vine’s vegan lunch counter, has introduced new summer offerings, one of which is a sandwich named for Heartless Bastards bassist Jesse Ebaugh. (Though now based in Austin, the band hails from Cincinnati.) The Jesse Hee Haw ($6) is Upton’s Naturals BBQ seitan on an open-faced Blue Oven Bakery Froagie topped with organic shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and red onion.
Also new to the menu: It’s a Wrap ($6), ginger hoison baked tofu, carrots, colored peppers and cabbage with Mae Ploy sauce rolled in a rice wrap; and the Varucka Organic Vegan Blueberry Smoothie ($5).
Returning menu items include The Rubinator, Missy’s BBQ Sammy Sliders, macaroni and cheese, Hail Caesar and Raw! Raw! kale salad.
11 a.m.-2 p.m. weekdays.
1202 Main St., Over-the-Rhine; 513-721-7275 or www.parkandvine.com
Rock Bottom beer takes gold
You have another opportunity to get a taste of the gold medal-winning beer that Mitchell Dougherty, the brewer at the Cincinnati location of Rock Bottom Brewery, brought back from San Diego.
Dougherty took gold in the wooden barrel-aged category at the 2012 World Beer Cup for Sarah’s Two-Headed Buffalo. It’s Rock Bottom’s Buffalo Gold Ale aged in a Buffalo Trace Bourbon barrel for 4 months. It’s named for the two buffalo-named products and for Dougherty’s girlfriend Sarah, who he says is a “raving fan” of bourbon-aged beers.
He’s doing another batch; watch Facebook and Twitter in about a month.
The World Beer Cup, held by the Brewers’ Association, had a field of 3,921 entrees from 799 breweries representing 54 countries competing in 95 categories.
10 Fountain Square Plaza, Downtown 513-621-1588.
