Good morning from Licking County!
So far on our invited visit, we’ve hiked through Dawes Arboretum, sipped beers at Homestead Beer Co., shopped and tasted root beer at the Canal Market District, and more. You can catch up by reading about the first part our adventures here, and about our fun dinner experience at Snapshots Lounge.
During dinner at Snapshots Lounge, owner Lucas Atwood told us about his other concept, Snapshots Coffee & Kitchen. We made a stop there the following morning to discover great breakfast sandwiches plus biscuits and gravy. Read about that visit here!
After first breakfast at Snapshots, we traveled back into Granville for the Granville Farmers Market. The city closes off the stretch of Main Street north of Broadway. This layout nicely complements the row of shops, restaurants, and museums along Broadway.
We picked up some produce and flowers, and OF COURSE I found donuts.
The donuts were sold by Doughasis, a dedicated 100% vegan bakery. One of the employees recommended the custard-filled donut, so I snagged that. It honestly weighed a pound, and although I consider myself a hardcore carnivore, that didn’t stop me from loving this pastry. It was top-notch: generously piped full of custard, good structure, lovely balanced sweetness. Weeks later and I’m still thinking of it.
Doughasis (great name, btw) started a couple years ago at the Granville Farmers Market, but they’ve been popping up around Columbus at Virtue Salon, Two Dollar Radio HQ, Eden Burger, Bexley Natural Market, and more. Go find them.
Granville’s “downtown” is nicely organized, with a good collection of restaurants and shops, and wide sidewalks to accommodate the crowds. Placing the farmers market on the side street is a smart move, as the foot traffic flows easily between the brick-and-mortar businesses and the market vendors.
We stopped for coffee at Village Coffee Company, one of those coffee shops that’s straight out of the 90s, right down to the Milky Way lattes and Highlander Grog. We noted other shops and eateries for future visits.
Our last stop for the day was Three Tigers Brewing. Three Tigers has long been on our list, and I was excited to finally visit them.
Located down Prospect Street in Granville, the brewery is a joint operation: one side houses the bar, brewery, and offers full sit-down service; the other side includes the kitchen and offers counter service from Mai Chau.
Owner Scott Wilkins connected with us and shared a flight of their beers. Just like our visit to Homestead, I collected stamps in both my Columbus Ale Trail and Licking County Beer Trail booklets.
Scott also shared bites off the Mai Chau menu. The eatery started (and continues) as a food truck, inspired by Scott’s and his wife Ashley’s travels abroad, where they fell in love with Vietnamese fare. The menu includes banh mi sandwiches, pho, rice and noodle bowls, wings, and steamed buns.
Kudos to the summer roll and the wings. Scott suggested the Thai chili seasoning on the wings, and it was a delightful mix of sweet and hot.
We also tried one of each of the steamed buns: tempura shrimp, fried pork belly, Thai burger, fried mushroom, karaage-style fried chicken. All nicely constructed and very well seasoned.
Three Tigers is a cool spot that we’ll most certainly be re-visiting, especially for their Sunday brunch. They also feature live music and kitchen takeovers.
I think support for Three Tigers and their community is especially important right now, with the recent passing of their head brewer Patrick Gangwer. Their fellow breweries really banded together to support Patrick’s family through fundraisers and special events; some have even stepped in to brew beer so Three Tigers can keep Patrick’s recipes on tap. You can read about it here.
With that, we wrapped up our invited visit to Licking County…
But that’s not all! A couple weeks after our trip through Explore Licking County, we had a free Saturday with the boys, so we returned to the county to check out more spots.
As we drove in through Johnstown, we took a quick detour to finally visit Copia Farm. We’ve been working with Copia for a couple years in exchange for their amazing eggs. They recently set up a farm store, where you can buy eggs, meat, lard, and other products directly from them.
Although they’re not open to the public for tours (yet), Dan was kind enough to take us on a quick tour while Caitlin and the rest of the team were busy packing fresh eggs.
He took us down to one of the mobile chicken coops, where we met the ladies as well as their two guardians: Possum and the surprisingly shy Mr. Porkchop (seen here with Dan).
Copia practices regenerative farming, where the chickens graze freely in a confined area that’s moved three times a week, so as they eat and poop, they’re helping improve the land. Follow them on Instagram and you’ll see how the process works.
The result is healthy, happy chickens who produce wonderful eggs. As Dan took us to one of the coops, they were still collecting eggs for the day. He quickly put our boys to work, collecting more eggs and even rounding up a couple stray chickens.
After our visit to Copia, we stopped by Branstool Orchards. They’re usually known for their peaches, but their 2019 crop was frozen out, so they planted sunflowers and held a mini sunflower festival. We visited the festival, mainly to see our friend Sara and her new business Full Circle Source.
We hung out with Sara, visited a couple other vendors, and bought some goodies (fry pies!!) at Branstool’s market.
Then it was on to Utica to visit Velvet Ice Cream. The family behind Velvet has been making ice cream for over a century, and Ye Olde Mill has become a destination for ice cream, tours, and events.
We snagged ice cream cones and walked the grounds a bit, even snagging a horse-drawn carriage ride.
If you’re able to visit during the week, you can join one of their free public tours, which includes seeing the production facility in action.
And what goes better with ice cream than beer? After our time at Velvet, we hit up another Licking County brewery, Trek Brewing in Newark.
Trek Brewing is kinda funny. The space is an old Damon’s, so it feels huge for a new brewery: giant parking lot; patio with room for a food truck; spacious interior with a bar, plenty of tables, and TVs. We sampled a couple flights and found a few beers we enjoyed in the mix.
And then we finished by introducing the boys to Snapshots Lounge. We had enjoyed our last experience enough that we thought it was worth a second look. The restaurant was much quieter this time around, so we easily found a table in the garage/dining room. We tried more specials, like a colorful caprese salad and a slice of their amazing cheesecake. Read more about Snapshots Lounge here.
And that wraps up our recent adventures to the county! We still have more spots to visit: more breweries, more parks, more historic sites, Buckeye Lake, the Earthworks. We’ll certainly be back soon!
