Stealing A Taste of Wine, and Flint

By Emma Davis

Flint, Mich. - 501 Bar and Grill is hosting a monthly wine tasting event called Wine Thieves. The event costs $25 and is from 3 – 6 pm on the fourth Sunday of every month. 501 Chef Luis Fernandes selects the wine and prepares the food menu.

Around 25 people were in attendance on Nov 22. The crowd mixed and mingled in the 501 conference room as servers opened bottles of wine and filled the buffet table. 

“I was here for the first one last month,” said Mark Miltich, Swartz Creek resident, “and it’s a great little crowd. Luis’s food is always great.”

A Taste of Italy, in Flint

While it may not be in downtown Flint, John's Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant is celebrating 50 years of business. The pizzeria has three locations in the area, but the original location is at 3600 Davison Rd. 


In 1959, John's Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant was opened by Giovanni Bufalini. As an immigrant from Patricia, Italy, Bufalini wanted to bring authentic Italian food to the Flint area. The restaurant is now owned by his son, John Bufalini, after Giovanni's death in 2006, according to The Flint Journal.


I have never been to John's Pizzeria, but I'm certainly intrigued after reading this news. The idea of authentic Italian food sounds great in our ever-growing world of mass-produced food. This could be a nice alternative to Little Caesar's. 

Soup Showdown

After a week-long break from school and blogging, I'm back!

To begin the week I took comfort by staying on campus and eating lunch at The Riverview Dining Room. The Dining Room is an all-you-can-eat buffet for $5.99 and is open for lunch Monday-Friday 11 am - 2:30 pm. 


As usual, The Dining Room was serving two types of soup. On Monday it was Old Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup (pictured top) versus Vegetarian Lentil and Spinach Soup (pictured bottom). 

The Chicken Noodle Soup seemed to be a lot more popular than the Lentil and Spinach. When I served myself at 12:30 pm almost all of the Chicken Noodle Soup was gone, while the later hardly had any skimmed off the top. 


However, I preferred the Lentil Soup. It was different than what The Dining Room normally serves. Most of the time they serve Chicken or Turkey soup and I liked to see something new. 


The Chicken Noodle Soup had a strange taste to it. It had the same taste as The Dining Room's Roast Turkey soup. The entire soup has an overbearing roast meat flavor, which actually might be good, if it tasted authentic. Basically, it tastes like someone put in too much artificial flavor. For this reason, the Vegetarian Lentil and Spinach Soup wins. 

Soyla's Mexican Cuisine: Good food, Poor Service

Today I ate at Soyla's Mexican Cuisine. It's located at 555 S. Saginaw, in the Wade-Trim Building. It's located almost in the center of downtown and is a pretty reasonable walking distance for anyone in the downtown area. 


For $6.99 ( a recent price jump from $5.99) you can enjoy Soyla's lunch menu, from 11 am - 2 pm. There's about eight options that you can choose from and all of them are pretty standard, including tacos (yes, even fish), quesadillas and chimichangas. All lunch orders come with a side of refried beans and rice. They serve Coke products and a selection of imported, bottled sodas. They do not serve alcohol.

My experience today was not the greatest.
If you were following my Twitter feed you saw what happened. Basically, it took 35 minutes for me to receive my order.

Riverview Dining Room: A UM-Flint staple

On Thursday I ate at The Riverview Dining Room, again. It's a great place for students to eat because it's right on campus on the third floor UCEN. The Dining Room is all-you-can-eat for $5.99.

To start I had the Tortilla Soup (pictured right). The soup wasn't spicy, like I would expect it to be, but I didn't mind.

The 411 on 501

On Wednesday I ate lunch at 501 Bar and Grill, located at 500 S. Saginaw in downtown Flint. 

I was surprised by how it busy it was when I first walked in. The restaurant was about half full, filled with what looked like a lot of business people. I found a table for myself and the waitress asked for my drink order. 

OH Blendz

The UM-Flint University Pavilion is home to many eateries. I experienced one of these, OBlendZ, on Tuesday. OBlendZ primarily sells smoothies and grilled sandwiches. 

I ordered a bean burrito (pictured right). The burrito contains a mild salsa, cheese, refried beans and a spicy-sweet rice. All of this is wrapped and grilled in a 12" tortilla.