Things to do in Toledo area? (Northwood: how much, theater, income)

[MSI Magus]

My wife and I have been living in the area for several years now and find we are getting very bored! We need something new! I am hoping maybe someone here has some suggestions we have not thought of yet. We are big nature lovers and go walking at several local parks regularly(wild wood is probably our favorite). And of course we go to the zoo fairly frequently. We are also obsessed with food and being in our 20s with no kids we have enough income to go out to eat fairly often. I think that restaurants are the main reason we are bored to be honest. While we seem to find new parks from time to time, it seems all the restaurants around here are chains and most of the "originals" in the area are BBQ, Mexican or have let us down(here's looking at you Inkys!). We like asian and other "exotic" food a lot and it just seems to be lacking around here. We also miss access to tons of farmers markets and places like whole foods where we can pick up our own ingredients. We hit the Toledo Farmers market on weekends, but its usually pretty darn rinky dink most of the year and we have not found any others. We make a lot of trips up to Ann Arbor for the restaurants and parks there and we are thinking of branching out to Detroit but we hope maybe someone has some more local suggestions we may have missed! Thanks guys!

[Johio83]

Man, someone complaining about a lack of good restaurants in Toledo? There are a lot of complaints I could make, but the eats would never be one of them. Some I'd highly recommend:
Mancy's (Steakhouse/Bluewater/Italian/Shorty's), Beirut, Packos, Table Forty 4, Mac and Tongs, Treo, Saba's Bistro 1705 in the Holiday Inn (trust me on this one)... if you can get through this list and still say you aren't impressed, then there's just no helping you!

[Johio83]

Wait, I need to add to that:
Burger Bar 419 - get the onion petal appetizer with the blue cheese mustard sauce and a rootbeer float... mmmm... My sister is a vegetarian (please don't let that reflect poorly on me), and is crazy about their portabello mushroom burger.
Grumpy's has fantastic sandwiches.
Star Diner serves up THE best breakfast. Period. Really.
Rick's City Diner has far and away the best french toast I've ever had.

[ferraris]

I think everyone knows about the zoo and art museum, but I'm always surprised to find how many people don't know about the Botanical Gardens. If you like the parks, it could be work a visit.

Maybe going to a show at the Stranahan or the Valentine would mix up the nights out a bit from eating out?

[acealive1]

ahmed's steakhouse on west alexis close to jackman. $18.99 new york strip steak with 3 courses and a side.


theres a few places to go in the area and it doesnt have to be toledo. downtown perrysburg is kinda nice over by the old kroger and also along the maumee river with old cannons still in place!

theres the sundance kid drive-in on navarre in oregon, the maumee indoor theater in maumee is good too. very cheap price wise.


downtown toledo between adams and monroe during the day are great to walk down.

[MSI Magus]

Few good suggestions in there, we have never tried a good 5 or 6 of the named places and a few look interesting when I look them up online.

One quick note though is again its not so much that I said Toledo has no places to eat....I said it feels like it does not have enough great places for us. Yes places like Mancys can be great, but we are in to food with a bit more flare then steak and potatoes or the typical mom and pop stuff you find at a lot of dinners. These places may have great food but our favorite restaurants tend to be Korean, Vietnamese, Sushi and other more exotic stuff. Around here we have found a few Thai places(not the biggest on Thai)but outside that the only other great and at all exotic resteraunt has been Koreana(which is good but 90% of the time we would rather drive up to Ann Arbor to our old Korean joint.)

Ill try a lot of these places like Beirut(been meaning to go there) Table Forty 4 and Saba's Bistro but a lot of the other stuff like Packos and Mancys while quality food are just not for us(well at least not on a regular basis). Toledo may have great food...its just sadly not very diverse.

To the guy suggesting the Botanical gardens, you cant bring dogs there right? Pretty sure this is common sense, but worth asking since we love our 3 pups

[ferraris]

I don't have any idea if you can bring dogs or not; sorry.

If you like international food, have you ever tried Aladdin's Eatery?

[Rebek56]

Right--no dogs in the TBG.

[MSI Magus]

@ferrarisnowday - Have not tried Aladdins. Its been on our list for awhile but we never went because we were assuming it was a Coney Island kind of place. Looks pretty good, but also similar to a lot of other Mediterranean/middle eastern restaurants. We will def give it a shot now though! Personally when we want stuff like that we tend to go to Poco Piati(sp?)over in Levis Commons for flare or this place on Louisanna(sp?) Ave that starts with a Z if we want more simple wraps and Gyros. Moodys in Northwood also has some good options even though its a Coney Island kind of joint.

@Rebek56 - Thanks. We love parks so much both because of the nature but also because we do not have to leave our 3 dogs at home. We will still check out the botanical gardens though! Will be nice for one of those days where we say "screw the dogs, lets do something really different".

[ferraris]

I'm not sure what you mean by a "Coney Island" type of place. Wasn't that a restaurant in Southwyck that just served standard American food? Aladdin's is actually a small chain (maybe 20 locations or so), and I've never been to the one in Toledo actually. The food is above average (not spectacular, but good), and it has a nice vibe for how cheap it is.

Have you ever been to Magee Marsh or Turtle Creek? It's not really a park per se, but you could treat it as one. I've seen people bring dogs there, and it's a nice change from the metroparks because of how much wildlife there is. I don't think there are any paved trails or anything else "park-y", though.