in re:

A few weeks back I was driving down King Ave. here in the Short North and I noticed a store front advertising Empanadas. I thought it must have been a new little Mexican hole in the wall (which would have been sweet) but on my way back I stopped in to see what it was. While it wasn’t hole in the wall Mexican, it was the new ’street food’ concept from the folks as Dragon Fly Neo-V (a vegetarian / vegan restaurant on King). The new concept is vegetarian street food, done simply and cheaply! but with fresh/local/high quality ingredients. Its called On The Fly (although I didn’t know this at the time). The man at the counter spent a lot of time detailing each item and explaining all the components (despite the short menu this took a bit of time). Once ordering two items to try I sat down in the tiny space and enjoyed the vibe of the place (they have a few tables to dine in and have a nice selection of microbrews and wines – a small selection, but nice choices).

The two things I ordered were an empanada (it was after all the reason I stopped in) I had been torn between potato chili and curried veggie, going w/ the potato, only to find I received by accident curried veggie (he offered to make me the other, but since I was torn I took the curry veg). The empanada was pretty good, had a soft curry flavor (not real spicy), and the veggies as well as potatoes and garbanzo beans had a nice texture.

The other thing I had was a falafel, which he noted wouldn’t feature things like tomato (which of course are out of season), instead the salad components would be things like a beet gastrique (beets cooked w/ some balsamic I think I heard), some pickled veggies, a tahini sauce, a yogurt sauce (i thought he said, but if it was vegan than maybe not), hot sauce (homemade), humus and some microgreens (local).

Anyway, I took a photo (at home) that doesn’t do it justice as it was nicely presented before being wrapped in foil and really was quite a nice assembly with the mircrogreens floating on top.

So how was it? Well, I’ll say it was good, it had nice flavors coming from all the components and the microgreens gave a nice spicy bite that came through. The downside was that truly great falafels which Columbus may not have (there is a high standard here, so not reaching it isn’t the end of the world) was not achieved. Falafels were good though and I would definitely go again, the garnishes improved the actual falafel balls.