After a year off, we're back in Cincinnati with 3,000 other blanc clad diners. We packed our own food in and set up in front of the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal for music and dinner. We did pretty well for ourselves and disappeared into the night. Not too much else to say.

Check out our other stops at Wurst Bar, The Echo, & O Pie O.

The Festivities
 

Fire & Dance
 

Our second excursion, clad in blanc, invading some small area of Cincinnati. Truth be told…this year's event seemed to sacrifice some of what I enjoyed last year for a more stately location. The setting was beautiful. Enormous fountain, buildings scraping the sky in every direction, an enormous tv with the Reds squeaking by the Mets. The strangest sports bar I have ever been to.

With somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 diners, the square was packed and limited a lot of the strolling around that happened last year. I’m a people watcher and last year there was a lot more show. What we did have was good company and much better food than we did last year. I won’t really talk about how good it was…we made it…but I will show what you can do humping your own meal through city streets and limited to cold options. We did just fine.

The Festivities
 

Festivities Go Down

le Diner en Blanc
 Cincinnatti, Ohio   Date of Visit:  09/07/13   http://cincinnati.dinerenblanc.info/

I was really unsure about this whole adventure. It screams hoity toity and that ain’t me. We were watching an episode of Top Chef Masters when one of the competitive events was for them to cook for tables at something called le Diner en Blanc. The French name only ups the stuck-up sticky beak factor in my head.  While we were watching she looked the whole thing up online to try and figure out what everything was all about. Then she was looking for the closest city to host one. Then she was putting our names on the wait list a year in advance. Then I forgot about it. Then she got an email…we made the cut…and we’re going to the second ever Diner en Blanc in Cincinnati.
 

So, There We Are
 

It is the 25th anniversary of the first ever dinner held in Paris this year and in those 25 years they have spread all over the world. We have an invite. All we know is we are to show up in a Crate and Barrel parking lot at the appointed time, decked completely in white (hoity), load our own table, chairs and dinnerware onto a bus, enter said bus to be hauled to an undisclosed public location. We are to quickly set up our tables and then dine with 1750 other similarly garbed and encumbered folks.

This year the dinner was in Washington Park in the Over the Rhine area of the city. The locals across the street stared agape at the long string of busses disgorging these odd folks who had every makeshift sort of trolley pressed to service to get their stuff to a designated spot. There are a lot of rules and restrictions involved but most of them make sense, like making sure everything you bring leaves with you, no trash left behind…leave it nicer than when you got there.
 

I was sure I would hate the entire experience. I could only imagine being surrounded by people talking about their annual pilgrimage to Paris and how hard it is to be lumped in with all the other uncouth Americans asking for ketchup or droning on about hedge funds. I don’t know if it was the luck of the draw or if my concerns were completely unfounded but we were sitting with some very nice people who were just looking for a fun and interesting night out. There was a nice sense of camaraderie (look a French word) and revelry around our table and it appeared to be endemic. The couple sitting to my left (Hey, Paula and Jeff) were also first timers and we all muddled our way through the evening.
 

Paula, Jeff's Wife Enjoys Sparkles, Both Fire & Champagne
 

I have to admit, I had a pretty good time. The company was great. The food was functional. Next year, if we return we won’t be taking chances, we will stack the table (once you have gone you can sponsor others, increasing their chance of getting in) and we will bring our own food. This trip we had a basket prepared by a local caterer, Jeff Thomas Catering who offered a few different menus. We went with the Paris to Rome option which was successful in parts.

It started with Camembert cheese, country pate, cornichon, grainy mustard and some slices of baguette. It’s hard to go wrong with cheese, pickles, mustard and French bread. The pate suffered from undermixing, leaving some bits unseasoned and some like licking a steak au poivre.
 

How Our Dinner Arrived
 

Neatly Packaged For Dinner In The Park
 

I have had veal tonnato but never turkey tonnato, it is more alliterative and realistically worked as well as calf would have. The nearly mayo thick tuna flavored sauce is really the highlight of the dish anyways. Unfortunately, the turkey was served with grilled ratatouille and pesto tomato penne pasta which really didn’t hold well.
 

Yes, the food could have been better. I don’t know how many meals they had to have prepped for a single event, I know for a fact catering doesn’t always go the way you plan. We will certainly do better on our own regardless, if we do make it back.