Since I'm in the recommending mood...

I have 2 things to recommend:

1. The movie "An Education" is playing at Cedar Lee right now. It's really fucking good. Based off a book by Nick Hornby (you know, that guy who also wrote High Fidelity and About A Boy), it follows the strange affair of a 16 yr old girl in a school uniform and a "worldly" man. In my head, the ending is completely different, but Peter Saarsgard will make you wish you were 16 yourself, and Carey Mulligan as Jenny is completely charming and engaging. It's also surprisingly funny, with Alfred Molina carrying the best lines as Jenny's dad. Nick Hornby writes the only kind of romantic comedies I can watch. The kind of comedies that are actually sad stories, but are funny because you know they are, and actually you're a mean girl. After the movie I said, this is how I would have ended this. And my companion said, that is of course the way any cynic would end it. But it would have been more true. It's still fucking good.



2. Michael Symon's new restaurant, B Spot. I will admit, I was a little underwhelmed when I went to that other one, Bar Symon, in Avon Lake. Probably cause it was in Avon Lake, which is the middle of nowhere. But B Spot, despite it's location in the middle of Christmas Village central, is wonderful and casual. I mean, it's a mall restaurant. If you want to, you can sit in the patio, which is in the mall, and look at the fancy chandeliers and awful post modern rococo disaster which is any shopping strip on Chagrin. But sit inside, and sit at the bar proper, so you can meet Krissy the Wonderful Bartender. Krissy played the "guess which beer I'm serving you" game with flair. The Kentucky Bourbon beer was sweet and warm and perfect for after dinner, by the way. There are all sorts of older women in various animal prints, and young couples that aren't pretty but have money, and therefore found each other. I also found my new favorite burger in the world there, the Red Hot, which has pulled pork, pickled tomatoes, jalapenos, pepperjack, and siracha mayo. The Parmesan fondue chips are amazing. There's a whole array of sauces on the counter, from Coffee BBQ to Balsamic. And there is a PICKLE BAR in the middle of the room. Pickle Bar, where have you been my whole life? Be sure to get a milkshake to go when you leave. The Vanilla Apple Pie Bacon one was fantastic, but I preferred the Chocolate Espresso with broken up beans to suck through the straw. On the little Symon Says....cards in the middle of sauce trays, he describes the types of doneness you can get, with "well done" described as "no pink, sad, hot in the center." That's the kind of burger restaurant this is.

Oh, and I saw them serve an actual wedge salad, which I thought was only for steakhouses in NYC. Cool.