Everyone loves barbecue, even vegetarians. But who would expect great barbecue with great sushi? Hiroshi’s Pub has a huge menu, but they somehow manage to successfully pull off about 90% of it.

Hiroshi’s Pub is on Richmond and Chagrin in the same plaza as Moxie. I’m always up for any place with a smoker, and Doug Trattner gave Hiroshi’s a pretty good review. After weeks of trying to persuade Sarah (“An Asian place? Barbecue?”) we finally went there, and we weren’t disappointed.

On our first visit we had the pulled pork sliders ($8.50) for an appetizer, and they were unbelievably good. This was the most melt-in-your-mouth pork I’ve had in Cleveland, although it wasn’t quite as smoky as The Brew Kettle’s. Jonathan also really liked these. We later had the pulled pork sandwich ($6.95), which was a bit more unweildly in a full portion.

One of our favorite dishes was the smoked sausage and cheese platter ($11.95). The various … continue reading

I’ve always loved popcorn. But I don’t love the chemicals and fat that come with movie theater and microwave popcorn. Up until recently we have been popping our corn with oil in a pot on the stove. In a recent Sur-la-table catalog I saw an advertisement for a glass microwave popper and thought it sounded interesting. I looked up reviews on Amazon, and they weren’t favorable so I started searching the Googles for an alternative.

We’ve tried the paper bag method where you place the kernels in a paper lunch bag but found this messy and we don’t usually have paper lunch bags at home. I found an alternate to the glass container or paper bag — a microwave safe bowl with a plate on top. We’ve had pretty good results with this method; however I think the bowls we’re using are not microwave safe because they’re really hot when they come out of the microwave. In short, here’s the method we’ve developed based on … continue reading