 |
| Gold Ingot Press, Old Mint |
 |
| Hinge detail |
I wasn't going to even do the show, which ain't over, but was feeling a bit of swagger and signed up on the basis of a large sale of a modern painting to an individual in St. Louis. Which promptly went in the toilet. Anyway due to a confluence of events and occurrences I now find myself in the Bay Area for the third time in the last two months and have decided to make the best of it.
 |
| Railing detail, Old Mint |
I am staying at the beautiful home of a friend, who does a lot of business overseas and has the house to die for in the South Bay. A devotee of the craftsman period, the house is the penultimate in arts and crafts paintings, prints, metal and furnishings, with the paintings typically watercolors emphasizing early San Francisco.
I don't think I want to out him, but Arts and Crafts Homes magazine did a full feature on the home about eight years ago. Some homes furnished in this style are heavy and dated, almost parochial in their pseudo-religious devotion to the time of 1905 to 1920. My friend has introduced some very lovely twists, filling the dark areas with light touches of the present, splashes of color, groupings of tenpins and baseballs and other assorted knickknacks that keep the house light on its feet.
Last night Steve and I were invited to dinner by an old friend, a jewelry dealer from Philadelphia and his wife and their cohorts from Scottsdale. They love food like I do and have been chalking a murderer's row of fine restaurants off their bucket list this week, joints like Gary Danko and the like.
Last year they asked me for culinary suggestions and I mentioned the Hayes Street Grill, a solid but unspectacular choice year after year. Not sublime but usually very, very good. I have blogged about the restaurant before and won't get into a heavy dissertation but they are known for their fish.
We met up at the Grill last night and the place was bustling with people, many of the patrons rushing to get an early bite before the performance of the near bye symphony.
After being promptly seated we were met by the tall waiter, bespectacled in his square red glasses. Very cool guy, a touch of east coast brashness, he gave us a rundown on the ins and out of the evening menu.
I don't know where Hayes Street gets it's servers but it wouldn't surprise me if they were from some NBA retirement home. This guy was about 6'3", a small forward, the guy across the way was about 6'7" or better, I would put the whole bunch up against any other joint in the whole city in a half court game.
Lois was thinking about the paella and I suggested she stick with fish. Paella is a great choice when done properly but some restaurant versions are a bit dainty for my taste. I asked our server if the paella was prissy or not and he retorted loudly that they had the most butch paella in town and that it was sort of like drinking a cup of testosterone. Everybody cracked up and she proceeded to order the sand dabs, something I assume you can rarely get in Philadelphia.
Steve ordered the soft shell crab, the available count dwindling by the second. They were out of sardines, his first choice. I settled on the Hoffman Ranch quail and cherry salad and marinated sturgeon from the Columbia River for my entree.
I was less than overwhelmed with the salad. I like quail but I prefer it crispier. These fat little quail sections were a touch gamey and a bit underdone. The salad was sort of plain and the singular components didn't mesh together, merely existing individually on the same plate. Boring.
The marinated sturgeon was excellent. Sturgeon is a fish that is unfortunately getting poached a lot on the west coast by russian criminals for the caviar. They leave the enormous fish gutted by the side of the river and steal the roe. It is something that I rarely see on the menu and had to order it. I had the option of having it accompanied by beurre blanc, olive oil, lemon caper and a few more sauces and stuck with the beurre blanc at the suggestion of our host, so as not to overpower the intrinsic flavor of the entree.
The fish was fantastic but I was a bit taken aback by the presentation, it was delivered on a bare plate without any garnish or accompaniment. A cup of french fries was brought to the table. Last year we raved about them, I think they are cooked in duck fat, last night they seemed dull and unseasoned and kind of mundane.
Joyce, at my right had ordered the dabs at my suggestion and I felt bad because I thought we were getting a boned filet, and it was full of bones and a lot of work. She said it was all right but I think she was trying to be nice and not kvetch.
Sand dabs are awesome when they are done right. These were good but not great. Michael ordered a lovely and relatively inexpensive pinot for the table, just terrific. I don't remember the name but will try to suss it out.
We finished the meal sharing a couple desserts while we told our war stories about getting scammed. Michael and Lois ran into a couple con men in Hungary and I recounted my recent Facebook fleecing. I had the strawberry rhubarb crisp, which was excellent.
The whole meal was good to very good, they really liked the restaurant, I think because it was a loud, ambient, neighborhood place like they might have back in Pennsylvania with such a smart and excellent wait staff. Must be why I come back year after year.
Michael, an early Vista volunteer liberal type who shifted slightly to the right, turned me on to Dynamo Donuts last year and the great ice cream shop across from Delfina. He was raving about the almond croissants at Tartine and I have to try them one day. He picked up our tab last night, a real menschy move that I hope I can soon reciprocate!
***
I have had a couple other nice meals up here as well. The first night my friend K and I went to Luna Park. I had never been before. I had a delicious braised pork chop on a bed of sour cabbage. K had a burger. Ordered a glass of the house cab, which was so bad it was undrinkable. But I liked the place, even though it was weird to feel like the oldest dude in the room, San Fran being a very young city.
Michael L. took me to Chez Papa the second night. He has a condo nearby and is tight with the manager, who hails from Marseilles. Michael mentioned to our pretty and tall server that I wrote about food and they tightened up their game. We got a few things off the menu, starting the meal with a little gruyere muse bouche.
Michael had the beet salad, I started with a tuna tartare with lime foam. He had the beef cheek and I went with the lamb. His was better than mine and mine wasn't bad. They threw in a strawberry sorbet at the finish. I will try the place again. There are so many good restaurants up here.
*
There are two Gertrude Stein shows opening up this month in San Francisco this month. We caught the opening of the show at the Jewish Contemporary Museum, the morning of the preview. Lots of great paintings of her and Alice by Picasso, Marsden Hartley, photos from Man Ray and Sir Cecil Beaton, the show was very interesting.
What I loved the most was seeing all of her books opened up and actually reading her. I knew her as an icon but not an artist. She had a word repetition style that actually evokes a lot of power. Shades of Breton and the dadaists and a forerunner to the cut up work of Burroughs and Gyson. I recommend catching the exhibit if you can.
*
I am learning a bit more about South San Francisco, nicknamed The Industrial City. Exploring its nooks and crannies for the first time in my life. Steve was staying at a hotel off Grand and we found a breakfast dive near the Sanitary Bakery called Ed's. A spartan workingman's diner, lots of grease on the ceiling but an honest breakfast. The guys on the old chrome barstools looked like they came out of central casting for a Rockwell painting. Edible, enough.
*
Leslie flew up yesterday afternoon and rented a car and drove up to Marin to be with her friend Cathy. Tonight we join up with a few chef friends and drive to our friend Denis Kelly's, the cookbook writer and classic's professor, for dinner. He is cooking a whole pork shoulder and is throwing a party for a buddhist poet from Denver who is staying with him. Should be really fun.
Tomorrow is our 17th anniversary of marriage, 21 years together, and we are going to eat at our favorite spot, Creola, after the show. I was so happy to see Leslie when she dropped by the show yesterday, she is the most important person in my world, I love her with all my heart and I am so lucky to have found my soul mate. We will drive home together on monday.
4 comments:
only seventeen? what a pussy. Happy anniversary brother,
'buzz
Robert:
At the ages of 80 plus my lady and I don't go out to dinner much. We do go to lunch. Our favorite place for lunch is In and Out Burgers. It is just right, size and taste. The time before our last visit there we stopped at Black Bear Diner on the way. We feared we would not be able to find a parking space; its parking lot is always full. Maybe there are locations of In and Out that have empty parking spaces, but the Davis location nor the Vacaville location.
The Black Bear burger I ordered was good; large, lots of fries, lettuce, tomato and onion on the side, a pickle spear. But the problem with it is that it is too large for us old folks. Colleen leaves half of the lunch she gets, but me, I am a fat man. That means I can't leave anything on the plate. So I finish my burger, fries, and other stuff, and feel guilty. Though I am a "fat man," that means its my metabolism and my personality. But I lost weight; I am at 175 and holding, which is just about right for an 80 year old 5' 9" man who still lifts weights and rides an exercise bike.
But back to In and Out, its burger is just the right size. Colleen has one, I have one, we share an order of fries, made of real potatos [potatoes?] and coffee. We are satisfied and don't feel guilty. And we only had to wait five minutes in the lot until someone else pulled out and we were able to park.
Last night we went to one of our favorite places, Chevy's. I don't remember whether it is also located in Southern California. It is Americanized Mexican. We had a coupon; the second entree would be $3.99. But Colleen chose the three course meal deal, which nullified our coupon. That gave us salad or soup, a two item Mexican plate, and desert of either Flan or ice cream. We each had one, ordering different beginning and end courses and sharing them. We also ordered a gigantic pomegranate margarita with two straws.
Of course, we couldn't finish the entree course. So we each got a take out box and brought them home for lunch or dinner tonight. (Normally I don't eat lunch, but only breakfast and dinner. Colleen doesn't eat breakfast. So that means when she is here I have three meals a day.) One of the nice things about Chevy's for us is that we can drive there and back on empty country roads. That means that if I make a slight error driving, which I don't do, but might, there are no highway patrol cars watching. Sharing a margarita, even a giant margarita, doesn't make me reach point o-eight, but does leave a small odor of alcohol on my breath. But we got back without incident.
But today the take-out box food goes down the garbage disposal. Colleen and both woke up with upset stomachs. That doesn't necessarily means the food was bad, we each had a chile releno as one of our entree dishes--and that may just have been too much pepper for our older stomachs. But we will recover.
About 8:00 p.m. I received a call from my sister, your mother. She was bragging about how much she likes her "jazzy," which I assume is an old folk's scooter. She also complained about the air fare to Toronto to attend a grand daughter's wedding. When I left her about a month ago she didn't need a walker to get around; now a scooter! Somehow I feel the availability of electric scooters is one of the reasons Medicare is going to run out of money. Prescriptions are given on demand and there are always ways to sell stuff at a profit. Probably the only way to ever get Medicare under control is to make every old person sign up for a Kaiser type HMO where Kaiser gets so much a month and gets no more whatever it must do, like my open heart surgery-8 years ago. Still working fine.
The above, all of it, is not copyrighted, so you may use it any way you wish, or any portion of it, like telling the world how your uncle likes cheap restaurants.
NORM
i love your uncle Norm's comments; he seems so bighearted and sensible...you missed a most unusual day in Fallbrook: a cold and overcast morning gave way to rain at midday, then a sunny, windy and clear starting at around 2:00...safe trip back.
swear to God i was at Albertsons yesterday and there in the self serve checkout line was a guy who looked exactly like Gertrude Stein, his face that is, but i didn't have the nerve to tell him of the resemblance, he probably would have punched me out.
Post a Comment