Read, Drink, & Be Merry

First Dinner, Last Post

2009-02-27T13:26:00.000-05:00

At the tender age of 4 weeks we took Elias out to dinner for the first time. It will come as little surprise to many that we chose Can-Can for this auspicious occasion. Alas, you will not read about it here. Read, Drink, & Be Merry has pulled up stakes and has moved to a new home. It is still under a bit of construction but is ready for visitors. In future you will find me at:

readdrinkandbemerry.com

The new site will also be aggregated by the new site, Eating Richmond. This site was created by RVA Foodie, Matt Marinara and myself. Actually, Matt did most of the heavy lifting, Jason did most of the recruiting, and Mrs Foodie, Karen, did a bang up design on the site. I've been a little preoccupied as of late with the new baby, corporate tax year closing and such. Basically I got everyone drunk a lot. But hey, every organization needs a party planner. Everyone did a great job and the site looks to be a lot of fun.

I will keep this site up but no longer post to it. In a month or so I will shut it down and delete the blog. All previous post and comments have already been moved to the new site.

I have decided not to aggregate my new site to RVA Blogs. The past year has been fun being part of that community. I've made a lot of friends and sparred with a few others. The conversation has been fun. Laughing with Jack and laughing at Meade. It's been a real asset to the community. Nothing against Ross and all the hard work he put in creating such a wonderful meeting place but the explosion and cacaphony of the commercial sites has caused me to lose interest in visiting RVA Blogs of late and wading through the RTD psuedo blogs, ET's daily food offerings, and the new trend towards the top blog posts turning out to be real estate ads. I understand Ross is working on a RVA Blogs 2.0 and when that rolls out I will rethink this decision.

In the meantime I hope you follow me over to my new blog or at least over to Eating Richmond. If not then...

I'm so glad we had this time together
Just to have a laugh and sing a song
Seems we just got started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say, 'So long.

Skol! *tugs ear*

Tip Your God Damn Waiter.

2009-02-18T12:27:00.000-05:00

OK, so Foodie and Jack have dueling blog posts about the minefield that is tipping in America. On one hand you have Jack who would be happy if you tipped at 150% of what you ordered after having multiple items disapear from the check and on the other you have Foodie who would thinks it's all a racket and will have every dollar pried from his cold, dead hand. Tiny exageration, but then you have the prevailing notion provided a while back by a local 'artiste' who said waiting tables was a job that could be done by monkeys. Of course this is the same guy who longs to return to an earlier era of civility and priviledge so he could live a life of cultured leisure provided by the sweat of others.

Sad but true. There are a lot of people out there that think waiting tables, or tending bar, is a job that could be done by our simian cousins. Actually, if a waiter has done his or her job right it should seem that way. You shouldn't be aware of all the work and chaos that has to occur to get that drink and plate of food to your table. It should all be seamless.

You'll never know about the arrival 2-3 hours before opening to polish silver and glass ware. To fill the sugar caddies and salt and pepper shakers. Coffee stations set up and ice tea brewed. A couple hundred napkins must be folded for various purposes, lemons cut for fish and menus checked for stains. In some places the front of house staff is required to double as prep cooks. Cutting veg, soup and salad stations and the joy that is raw bar. Live lobsters unpacked or garlic butter made. All for an amazing federally mandated wage of 2/3 of minimum. Except that was 2/3 back in the early 80's. As the minimum wage has increased restaurants have gotten exclusion waivers and the wage has remained at $2.13. As the cost of Latin American immigrants has gone up many of their duties have been foisted off on the lowest paid people on staff, the waiters.

I've heard often how people wish they worked in a restaurant so they could eat the wonderful food everyday. Bullshit. The staff is fed whatever is left over from a special that has been running for the better part of a week or 'bribe food' provided gratis by food suppliers vying for the chefs business. More likely you get a plate of frozen prepared chicken wings, pasta with a sauce that expired yesterday, or a 'stew' of tough meat that has been marinated in vinegar to cover the flavour it acquired after being forgotten in the back of the walk-in. For his trouble the owner pockets a $10 deduction per staff member.
Note - I have worked in a couple of family restaurants where, while we did not eat food from the menu, we actually ate exceptionally good and interesting food.

You won't know the careful dance that is played with the dingbat hostess so the waiter get's a fair share of decent tables and doesn't sit empty till the height of the rush when she 'remembers' you exist and seats your entire station at once leaving you spinning in circles.

You'll miss the fun of trying to get to the crowded bar and get the bartenders attention to get your cocktails (that you've ordered one at a time because it's too much trouble for everyone at the table to make a decision at once). No offense to Jack, but if it's busy the bartender makes more off the customers at the bar then the herd of waiters clamoring between the brass rails. The smart waiters bribe the bartenders not with cash but pilfered food. Since a bartender often misses or has to rush through the daily 'meal' to take care of the early birds they tend to appreciate this.

With drinks in hand you will now interrogate the waiter on the details of the menu. A good waiter will know how each sauce is made, all the details of each plate. A mediocre one will at least be able to bluff. And while every waiter can be stumped on a detail they will at least try to make you feel like that is an important question that must be answered.

Once you have placed your order, with all the dish changes and substitutions, you will never know what is about to happen to your poor server. For some odd reason the chefs will always think that all these changes to their dishes were made, not at the request of the diner, but at the waiters behest. You will never know the string of obscenities and insults hurled at the waiter so that you can have something that isn't even remotely on the menu. That's OK, that what the waiter is for.

If at anytime during the meal something does go wrong you should never know about the waiter begging the dessert chef for something under the table for you or trying to get the manager, who is more interested in hitting on the 18-year-old hostess, to at least get involved and make things right.

You should never know any of these things. You are there for dinner. The waiter is there to make that a relaxing and comfortable evening. And when you are gone you won't know about the extra hour or two cleaning up the messes left behind so that the place will be ready for another day.

For all this, and more, you leave them a tip. Please don't think, however, that they keep all of it. If you leave a tip by credit card the house may keep up to 5% of the tip, or even more, to cover credit card costs (even though it's less then 2%). Food runners, bus boys, bartenders, bar backs, even the occasional manager takes a share of that tip. If you leave a substandard tip who do think has their tip cut? The waiter. Everyone gets their share regardless. It is actually possible for a waiter to lose money on a table - not a happy prospect. Then there are the state and federal governments. They base your income estimate based on sales percentages. Got stiffed? Tough titty. You still get to pay taxes on the table.

So, how do I tip. I start at 20% and work from there. Somebody order ice tea and asked for lots of refills? That's worth more than 20% of 2 bucks so I'll add to the tip. Special requests or making the waiter run back and forth? Couple of more bucks. Waiter standing around chatting when I've got hot food but no silver? Subtract a couple. Rarely have I tipped less than 15% and I've only stiffed two waiters in my life. Usually it comes out to more than 20% and I don't subtract for the sales tax. That's just chintzy and I assume that part is going to all the support staff. Hey, I've even given Jack a bad tip and he gave me a free drink. Of course I was low on cash, told him I owed him a drink or two and provide him with a free book every now and then.

In Europe waiters make a living wage, and have benefits. People tip but the waiters do not rely on that to live. Could that work here? I doubt it. The current system is too entrenched and the odds of the owners paying professional waiters their worth is slim. RVA Foodie may hate pretentious waiters but I can only imagine his reaction to dropping a couple of bills in a nice eatery while being served by an ex-McDonald's counter girl who is snapping her gum and rolling her eyes.

I loved waiting tables. It was controlled chaos at it's best and my job was to ensure that you were blissfully unaware of all the work, politics, and just plain bullshit that went on to provide you with a nice an relaxing meal. I think everyone should be required to work a year in a restaurant - preferably one in a tourist resort - before they are allowed to eat in them. Sure, some aspects of the job a monkey or even Meade could do, but you really wouldn't like the result.

New Foodie In Town....

2009-01-19T21:33:00.005-05:00

Finn welcomes his little brother to town...

While Finn came in at 10'6, the new guy comes in at a paltry 9 pounds 3 ounces and 20 inches. The arrival at 3:23 today was without complication and mother, baby, father and brother are all doing fine.

The name.... Elias Fox Jones.

Elias is my middle name, the middle name of my Grandpa Dave, the first name of my Great-Grandfather. Also shows up as a middle name of a small multitude of other relatives.

Fox is a family name from M's family and has nothing to with us being nerds, fans of the X-files, nor as a misguided tribute to a local food writer.

I am sure there will be many more pictures to come that will be only of interest to close friends and family! :)

Dad & Son

Live Blogging From Stronghill Dining Company....

2009-01-08T10:30:00.005-05:00

Kind of. Since I won't post this till I'm finished it's more of hit by hit series of thoughts on the new 'hot' spot in RVA.

Cold, windy night. Finn went to his first dentist appoint today and as a treat got McDonald's. M did as well. She said she would cook whatever I wanted when I got home or I could just pick something up. Wasn't really in the mood for fast food and restaurant food doesn't always travel well, especially on a night like tonight. So, I decided to stop at Stronghill since it was on the way home and find out what all the fuss was about.

The restaurant is full of nice soft woods and exposed brick-work. It reminds me of establishments in the Pacific Northwest rather than Richmond. For such a cold and rainy night they had a pretty good crowd. Between the brick and the wood the acoustics are nice. Just loud enough to know your not alone but not the din of Can-Can. I would describe the place as warm and relaxed.

For a cocktail I ordered a Hendick's and Tonic. The bartender poured the drink and excused himself to go see if they had any cucumber for the drink. Nice touch knowing that cucumber goes better with Hendrick's then lime.

Just ordered an appetizer.... Fried Frog Legs (from the special board).

Served on a grilled pineapple with a jicama salsa on top. The smell is fabulous. The legs are juicy and tender. They would be perfect except they seem to be a bit bland. A little seasoning or salt would have made them perfect.

For a wine I ordered a bottle of Layer Cake Primitivo. Very nice.

Notes on the staff. They all seem very professional (career people not college students making some drinking money) and it looks like they frequent the establishment across the street quite often.

Dinner ordered.... Pan Seared Venison Medallions - the perfect dish for a cold wet night...

The wife, at home, and I are IM'ing as I eat. See.... I'm not a lonely diner... :)

Went to use the rest room. Nice back of house. Quiet professional sounding kitchen. Someone really thought this design through.

Entree arrived. Wow! The venison is more like twin fillets rather than medallions but cooked a perfect medium rare. Sitting on a bed of navy bean puree with onion and garlic with rosemary is a nice departure from the usual berry based sauce for venison. To top it off is one of the most amazing side I have ever had.....

Okra and tomato with bacon. The okra is not overcooked to the point of a Campbell's soup veggie, the tomato gives colour and a little bit of flavour, the bacon crispy and smoky. The venison was good but I would eat a bowl of this.

For my very, very, very, very pregnant wife at home I order a slice of the chocolate peanut butter pie.... She'll have to give you feedback on that.

Bottom line... We are going to try to squeeze one more dinner into the schedule before the new baby arrives... I think we'll be coming back here.

Baby Business...

2008-12-29T12:46:00.000-05:00

Since the begining of this pregnancy the doc has given us a due date of late January, the 28th to be specific. The last few ultrasounds gave us indications that Baby E may be a rather large kid. Not a big surprise as Finn came in at 10-6. The biggest difference would be that while Finn had a rather large head Baby E seems to have very long legs. Good thing the school he's going to go to has a decent basketball program...

Anyway, the bottom line is the doctor has moved the target date up by a week with the caveat that if he starts to drop we are to make our way immediately to the hospital. I suppose we should probably put the crib together....

Restaurant(s) On The Road To Ruin.... Part #2

2008-12-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

I had said last week that 'the restaurant that shall not be named' was being kept afloat by banquets and large parties. Seems the situation is a bit more dire. They've been able to snag all that business this holiday season by offering the party coordinators a 'double your dollar' promotion. Hey, I'd eat there if it was 50% off. OK, I wouldn't... but I would definitely walk out with a case or two of wine. The normal next steps in the death spiral would be early bird specials, kids eat free, and finally an all-you-can eat buffet. Last person to leave the building please blow out the candles....

In slightly more sad news we may be losing a real gem on the local scene. Sources tell me that unless business significantly improves or a white-knight investor steps in Sensi may be closing their doors in the first quarter of 2009. That would be a real shame. The food is excellent and may be some of the most creative we have here in RVA. Millie's, Lu-Lu's, and deLux are all good, but like so many other places in RVA, there is a distinct sameness to their dishes. Sensi uses a whole different taste palate and really raised the bar for food here. My only real complaint with Sensi would be the dining room seems a bit like they never finished the space. Regardless, here's to hoping they survive.

It's even possible we could see the closing of a third restaurant in that area. Morton's is considering going through a contraction in 2009 and the Richmond location is under preforming. While I'm not a huge fan of chains all this does not bode well for the Richmond dining scene. Unless you are looking for a new space... Then there may be some nice pre-outfitted spaces coming available....

What's Wrong With RVA Blogs?...

2008-12-17T17:49:00.000-05:00

There have been some grumblings of late about RVA Blogs. It was bound to happen when you put that many people in a room. Most of the discourse is pretty civil with opposing views discussed in an appropriate manner. Others, like one vitriolic right wing site, use name calling in the place of debate and I really don't know what to make of the homophobic nazi skateboard punk site.

My issue is with the explosion of commercial sites and pseudo-blogs (articles from media sites package to look like a blog) drowning out the voices of the people of Richmond. If I want to read 'Mash Up Crew' (an amateur attempt by the RTD to be cool and hip) I'll go to their site. Same with InRich and the flood of other 'blog' postings Media General is foisting upon us.

The other commercial sites are harder to judge. Personally, I get annoyed when I click on an interesting title only to find out they are really just trying to sell me something or promote their business (and no, my business blog is not aggregated on RVA Blogs). On the other hand, sites like VA Family Law blog don't seem to really be selling anything and are really quite interesting.

There is an interesting discussion starting over on Urban Richmonds site. Sadly he no longer seems to be aggregated. Go on over, read and join the discussion. In the discussion Ross says they are going to be working on a redesign for the aggregator for 2009. It will be interesting to see what they come up with. I had been mulling for a number of months leaving the aggregator. I'll hold off on that decision to see what they come up with.

Oh... and welcome back Urban Richmond!!!

Restaurant On The Road To Ruin....

2008-12-15T14:11:00.000-05:00

Looks like we may be soon losing one of the more well-established restaruants here in RVA. The end brought about not by the economy but rather by poor decisions and management in-fighting.

The restaurant here was created to revive a well established name that had closed in a northern city after years of decline. The place was a hit. No reservation, no table. Food and wine flowed freely and diners indulged to their hearts content. Success, though, can lead to overreaching and overextending. Several more local restaurants were opened or partnered with and plans to reopen the flagship up north were put into motion. As the managing partner withdrew to these other projects (we'll call him 'Journey') problems started popping up. On-site managers were not given the authority to make decisions and routinely had their choices overruled based on back-room gossip. Frustration set in and, while restaurants always have a fairly high level of intrigue, this one was becoming toxic.

In the midst of this commodity prices started spiking. Rather then raise prices a couple of signature items disappeared and, when the menus were reprinted, a key word was missing - Prime. Of course, rather then tell the customers they were now being served Choice, no mention of the beef grade was present on the menu. Guess they were hoping no one would notice. People did. Other shortcuts started creeping in. Not enough turtle meat in the soup to make it last another day? No problem. Dice up some chicken and throw it in!

The head chef, working from his open kitchen, would yell, cuss and swear at the staff and give a running commentary on the guests walking by. Personally, if I heard a member of staff say about my wife as we walked by 'I'd let her sit on my face and take a crap' there would be a bit of a scene... Some chefs should just not work in kitchens where they are exposed to the public.

As the re-opening of the original restaurant was repeatedly delayed a series of temporary managers served their time in RVA. With no vested interest in the local establishment they were the definition of the term 'empty suit'. One General Manager was ousted in a palace coup by another manager who immediately went from being effective to a 'sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen' by spending his time snapping the hostesses G-strings. Slacker staff put more energy into gossip and theiving, while the management turned a blind eye, and harder working staff members left as they realized all the delayed promises would never be filled.

Customer traffic dwindled. The drop in beef grade. Pasteurized crab from Indonesia. Frozen farmed shrimp. Turtle soup made with chicken. When your paying premium prices one should expect to receive premium ingredients.

The mother restaurant reopened and, while it is still operating, is doing so under bankruptcy protection. The family partner's (we'll call them the Cabs) and Journey's relationship became strained. Banquets and parties (brought in by a very competant banquet manager) keep the place alive in RVA but the Cab's and Journey's inability to gain a consensus on the direction of the restaurant have come to an impasse. Journey and the foul mouthed chef have threatened to shut the place down and open a new eatery in the West End - leaving the remaining staff to their own devices. Senior staff, reading the writing on the wall have left or are keeping the resumes updated.

Rumours of a Fall closing did not come to pass. Personally, I think the Holiday season followed by the legislature coming into session are just to lucrative to pass up. If they are to close, my guess would be to see a sudden appearance of a padlock right after Valentine's. After that date I would not use cash to pay for a banquet deposit... use a credit card, just in case.

Note - I will not post any comments using the restaurants actual name or any of the players involved. Use pseudonyms.

Why yes.... I am still alive.

2008-12-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

I've received a number of emails and comments asking about my current silence. Suffice it to say that after my little health scare in October I seem to have had my writing impulses removed, pharmaceutically.... I do have a couple of posts in the works and, if the economy improves, may actually start going back out to eat...

For those of you who cared.... Thanks.

For those of you waiting for me to stir the shit... Failed mayoral candidate (and not really a bad guy) Robert Grey did just say 'Hi' to me (by name!!!) and is sitting a few bar stools over having a martini...

National Pastime Grill - Look Before You Bite....

2008-11-10T14:06:00.005-05:00

Sports bars. Ugh. Typically they exist not for the food but for the game. You get the impression that more thought and effort goes into TV placement and daily game selection then into the food. You could even make the argument that the food exists only to soak up the alcohol so the customers can order another round or pitcher. Not being a huge sports fan, nor being able to remember the last time I ordered a pitcher of beer, I usually avoid sports bars. My last visit to one, Home Team Grill , found weak drinks (albeit cheap) and inconsistent food. Sometimes, however, the situation - or the craving - makes the decision for you.

At the Gaylord Hotel, on Maryland side of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in the National Harbor, there are a number of choices for dining to choose from. We, of course, just really wanted a good burger. Based on that, and the need for speed, we decided that National Pastime Sports Bar & Grill was the choice for the afternoon.

The restaurant itself is big and airy. Very modern and slick with a theatre size screen showing five games with additional TV's over the two bar areas (they even have a golf simulator). Since the entire hotel is smoke free the usual smoky blue haze of sports bars was absent. While the place was busy the entire staff was smiling and pleasant. Amazingly so. From the waitress, the busboys, the bartenders - even all the managers I ended up speaking with during our visit - every person we came in contact over the weekend was a pleasure to interact with.

The menu reflected the upscale nature of the hotel. The usual items like quesedillas and ribs augmented with offerings like blackened rockfish and panini. We, however, were here for the burgers. In this case all their burgers were 1/2 pound Kobe beef - with a promise of cooked perfectly to order. So, with 86 Richmond in mind, I took the plunge for a medium rare burger.
To start we had a plate of shrimp tempura with a spicy thai chili sauce. For a sports bar the price was a bit much at $11, even in an upscale hotel, but the plate came out with 10 jumbo shrimp on it so it turned out to be a pretty good value. The shrimp were good but had a lingering greasy flavour. My guess was the oil temp wasn't quite high enough or they had been put in too quickly after another dish had been fried. Moshi-Moshi serves a better shrimp tempura but these were adequate. The thai chili sauce was surprisingly like one that M makes at home so we had no complaints there.

Soon after we cleaned the plate our burgers came out....

Apologies for the crap quality of the burger picture....

Let's start with the good. Kobe beef is very fatty and makes for a greasy burger - but greasy in a good way. The fat in the meat has an amazing flavour and this burger had flavour. I had ordered the swiss, mushroom and caramelized onion. I kind of wish I hadn't because I could tell this was beef that was good enough to stand on it's own and, joy of joys, the chef had hit medium rare very nearly dead on (M had ordered hers medium and I thought it looked a bit closer to medium well but she thought it fine and that's who really matters).

Now the not so good. The buns were egg rolls. Tasty unto themselves but with Kobe beef your dealing with way to much moisture for the bread to hold together. Add to that the moisture of the cheese, mushrooms and caramelized onions and the whole thing was coming to pieces on me before I got halfway through. It might have worked better had I flipped the burger upon receiving it, so the larger top could soak up the juices, but I didn't. They really need to use a more substantial bun that can stand up to the Kobe.

The fries were forgettable. It's sad when you have a high quality main product and then use low quality sides. Should've been fresh or hand cut.

Now the bad.... As I had the swiss mushroom and M had the bacon BBQ we both removed our tomatoes from inside the burgers. Halfway through my burger I noticed one of our tomato slices had a rotten interior. The very center was a mushy dark brown. At first I thought it might be some of the BBQ sauce but M had requested it on the side and a closer inspection proved it to be rot. Ugh. So, with my hamburger disintegrating further after each bite and a rotten tomato on the table my appetite abandoned me.

The waitress was horrified and the manager was very nice. Offered dessert, we declined.

For a sports bar this was a pretty nice place. They seem to be able to serve a medium rare burger, something that way too many restaurant cannot. If they get a more appropriate bun and fix the fries they have the base for a world class hamburger.

Oh, just in case, if you have a sandwich there be sure to inspect all the ingredients. I can only imagine had we not removed the tomato...

Package Shook!

2008-11-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

M went in for her monthly check-up and the joy that is testing for gestational diabetes. Nothing like not being able to eat and then drink the equivalent of soda syrup followed by the repeated drawing of blood. At least the tests have gotten better. The first time I was checked for diabetes, in the 80's, it required urine and blood samples every hour for eight hours. By the end I looked a bit like a junkie.

Anyway, while she was going through all this her doc, who had noticed her name on the list this morning, hijacked her for another go with the ultrasound. This time he was able to identify a few features and make the call. So, with that we are able to upgrade Zygote to Baby E.

Oh, you want to know the gender?.... It's a boy!

Bookstore Piet Has Voted.

2008-11-04T11:09:00.000-05:00

Amazingly in less than an hour.

M left the house around 6:30 and I stayed home to sleep in... I mean watch Finn. She called to wake me up a little after 7 to let me know how long the lines were so I dragged myself into action. Oatmeal for Finn while I showered and then we were off. Dropped Finn off at school and then the long haul to our voting precinct.

We live in an oddly gerrymandered district. One would think that we would vote at Norrell, it being only a couple of blocks from our house. Nope. Perhaps we should vote at the library on North Avenue. Nope - although we do drive by it on the way to our precinct. No, we drive up North, down Brookland Parkway and down 1st, passing a number of other precincts to get to our rather remote spot - a firehouse that doesn't even serve our neighbourhood. Normally this difficult set-up accomplishes it's nefarious task of voter suppresion by increasing the difficulty of voting, but not today.

I arrived in the light rain and took my place in line. The atmosphere was upbeat but there were a lot of questions being asked. It was surprising how many people, some older than I, who had never voted before and were unsure what to do. The newbies were helped by various poll workers while others walked around extolling the virtues of their respective candidate. The most interesting person I met there was Art Burton's daughter - seems we have a common friend - RVA Foodie. She reffered to him as her 'home boy'.

The level of confusion was evident as I entered the firehouse. Just because the letters A-K and L-Z may give you the impression that you have split voting population in two it doesn't really work that way. One line was much longer than the other. Not to mention the fact that splitting the voters in two may have been a good idea in the past it may have been prudent to form three or even four line to help move things along.

A poll worker at the door was directing people to their assigned lines but for some odd reason kept pulling all the J's out to the side. So, there we sat. Feeling a little singled out and unsure what to do. She returned and moved us to one of the many, overlapping, confused lines in the firehouse. Watching the whole scene I started mapping out how, if I was a bad person, I could jump lines and possibly even vote more than once. Hopefully they were paying closer attention then it seemed and even if I were so inclined to beat the system the odds of failure were pretty high as the few of us with white skin stood out just a tad.

It was about this time that I passed M as she was waiting for a voting machine. She had been there for nearly two hours at this point. She informed me that it had taken her an hour to get where I had gotten to in a little under a half hour. Guess it paid to sleep in a bit...

The first signs of real trouble appeared as I approached the registrars desk. A young Arab gentleman, who barely spoke English, didn't seem to be on the voter rolls. He had looked nervous the entire time in line and I would be lying if I said people weren't giving him unpleasant looks. The problem was pretty evident to me - the id he kept waving about listed him as a resident alien. My guess is that he wasn't on the voter rolls as he wasn't a citizen.

As he was pulled to the side I stepped up and was told I was in the wrong line.... Yep, we were in the line for L-Z. I informed the poll officer that this is where I had been told to go and that the five or six people behind me were also J's and had been told to stand in this line. No problem, she said, just step to the front of the other line. My turn to get dirty looks from others....

So, I was off for yet another line - this time for the voting machines. In the past we have had three machines in our precinct, although usually only two are functional. Today we have a whopping four. Sad. We really needed at least five to keep things moving although maybe more people working the voter roll books might have made it work even better.

A couple of minutes later and I was at the electronic machine. Obama, yes. Warner, yes. Jones, yes. Burton, yes. Two additional votes were cast but there were no opponents. Both of these people should have been challenged. Ellen Robertson, I voted for her but feel she has ingnored the district for a while now. Perhaps someone will step up and challenge her next time. Same for Bobby Scott, I voted for him but would have voted against him had there been a challenger. He has been an empty suit for quite some time now.

So, my duty done, I headed off to open the store. Now the real waiting begins.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T22:30:00.000-04:00

Pastor Piet and Sister M with a bun in the oven...

The Dark Knight at The Book Room!

I don't think we had costumes this good when I was a kid...

Achieving Mediocrity - Jimmy John's

2008-10-28T17:32:00.000-04:00

Normally I wouldn't have anything to say about a fast food chain restaurant. Lately, however, we seem to have had an explosion of new chain arrivals in RVA. Many of these places most of us have never heard of. You do hear a few people waxing nostalgic about some of these places from their college or home town days but for the rest of us it's a guessing game. Today I decided to try one of these new places out.

First, let me say that being hungry while driving around Short Pump is an exercise in overload. Everywhere neon signs beckoning you with key words like 'gourmet' or 'brick-oven' trying to tell you that they serve the same food as the other guy in the next shopping center but that they've got a special 'twist' on your average pizza, or sandwich, or whatever. The result of all these choices, at least for me, is something akin to 'deer in the headlights'. So, I fell prey to one of the keywords while driving aimlessly and decided 'gourmet sandwiches' would be the way to go.

Designing a Jimmy John's wasn't that difficult. Post-industrial minimal with faux-snarky signs to fill up all the blank white spaces (I did think the 'No Hippies' sign was a bit odd and possibly insulting to hippies...). As I approached the counter I was hit with a bit of anxiety. If you go to some fast food places on a regular basis you know the routine, what to order, where to stand, where to pick it all up. As a newbie I tried to take it in as quickly as I could without looking like an complete simpleton. The line moved quickly and I arrived at the register before I could get more of a basic idea of what I wanted. I stuttered out an order, paid, and then stood there foolishly not knowing what to do next. Tentatively, I reached out and asked if I should just take a soda cup - the cashier looked at me with an expression that said 'Duh!'

So, cup in hand, I wandered around trying to figure out the set-up. Found the soda machine, filled up and then grabbed a table - if there are napkin dispensers in this place they were beyond my ability to locate. The sandwich assembly line was moving fast and someone kept out calling out sandwich descriptions. Since the don't give out order numbers I can only imagine the potential for confusion if more than one person ordered the same thing in the middle of a rush. Could get ugly.

In an amount of time that I could describe as 'just barely quick enough' considering the number of customers my sandwich name was called out. I unwrapped my sub and took a bite. The applewood smoked ham was very good, the provolone was tasty, the lettuce crisp. We had the making for a pretty decent sub. The problem was the bread. Tough and chewy it kept threatening to squirt the fillings out on to the table as I bit down. It was very similar to the bread at Fuddrucker's - doughy and devoid of flavour or character.

The result was a bland sandwich - certainly not the 'gourmet' advertised on their sign. Had I known the menu better I probably could have ordered better. Different toppings might have made it more interesting and when was the last time that you actually had to order a pickle? The sandwich I had at Coppola's a couple of weeks ago was far superior in all respects and, while I haven't tried the behemoth battleship sandwich's at Black Sheep, I bet they're better tasting and a better value.

All this got me to thinking. Basically anything they have to offer out in the chain riddled traffic mess of Short Pump can be got better and for the same or less at any number of our locally owned restaurants in the city. So, the next time life finds me out in Short Pump and feeling a bit peckish I shouldn't waste my time looking for some mediocre attempt at 'gourmet' food but instead run quickly back into the city for the real deal.

Trader Joe's Is Trying To Kill Me... Or Maybe Sarah Palin Is...

2008-10-23T13:23:00.000-04:00

Had a bit of a health scare over the last week or so.

It all started while relaxing after dinner one evening. Basically an inability to take a deep breath. A bit like someone had stuffed my chest full of cotton balls. I've had a couple of bouts of this ever since I quit smoking four years ago. As my lungs have repaired themselves I have become very sensitive to spray cleaners. One good whiff and breathing is suddenly a chore. This, however, was different - it was spontaneous. An hour later it was gone and I put it out of my mind.

A week later, while relaxing after dinner, it happened again. Laboured breathing. Can't fully inflate lungs. WTF? What was causing this. First thoughts were that I may have developed a full blown food allergy. I'm allergic to a whole host of things but the only thing I really need to avoid is grass (hence the complete lack of a lawn at our house). Maybe one of these minor allergies had lobbied for a promotion to the majors.

Since I had cooked both meals I went over the list of ingredients used to find any commonalities. One items stood out - a new bottle of Grapeseed Oil from Trader Joe's. A little checking online led me to see a lot of conflicting information. Some swore by it to help cure allergies while others added it to the list of things to avoid if you have a nut allergy. Having a nut allergy would suck. I enjoy snacking on them and use peanut oil on a regular basis. Decided to not use the grapeseed oil anymore and take a wait and see attitude. Didn't have to wait long.

Wednesday, relaxing after dinner, it happened again. This time we got to add a whole new symptom - flushing. Have you ever had a niacin pill? It dilates all your blood vessels causing you to flush bright red and tingling all over. So, here I am, unable to breath, all my nerve endings firing and looking a bit like I'm about to be served at The Hard Shell with a side of drawn butter. Since dinner didn't involve any grapeseed oil or other nut products I went back online to see if I could nail this down.

Can I just say here that the Internet isn't always a good thing. Sometimes you get just enough information to scare the shit out of yourself and, frankly, who ya' going to call at 11 at night?

Possible diagnosis were pretty ugly. Reading about pulmonary embolisms, diabetic ketoacidosis or the possibility of cyanide poisoning sent me downstairs for a glass of wine. Who was going to run my store if I had to spend a little time at St Mary's? Time progresses. My breathing got a little easier and off to bed to try to get some sleep.

The next morning renewed my worries. Deep breaths were difficult and I was still flushed. A call to my doc got an 11:30 appointment although subsequent calls to find someone to keep my store open were not quite as successful - this is what happens when you employ VCU students who are taking some of the same classes... what do you mean you both have to take the test today?... Guess VCU professors aren't that flexible...

So, I closed my store for a bit and trucked over to my docs. They were concerned. A whole lot of questions and a lot of poking an prodding. As time went on the questions were less about my body and more about life. New baby coming. Economy sucks. The election is just dragging on and on. House projects. Blah, blah, blah.

The verdict - stress and anxiety.

Pardon? I nearly suffocate myself due to stress? Turns out, yes.

Seems stress hits you where your weakest. For some people that means stress brings on cardiac events. Others it hits their digestive systems. For me - I become hyper-sensitive to my environment. The concern now is to control the reactions so I don't progress to point where it becomes so extreme my airways are completely closed off. Lovely.

So I get to spend this week in a drug induced fog. The antihistamine, Xyzal, is really an old school anti-histamine- makes me loopy. The albuterol helps but I'm not sure how I feel about walking around with an inhaler - didn't the kids who had them in school always get picked on? The hope is to normalize my histamine levels so the stress won't cause me to drop dead while having nut-bread at Can-Can.

If, after the week is over, I'm still having the attacks then I'll get to start going through the fun process of narrowing down what allergens are the one's giving me all the grief. I'm betting that if exposed to Sarah Palin during the scratch tests I'll have an undesirable reaction.

People In Glass Houses....

2008-10-17T12:06:00.001-04:00

I'll see your 'domestic terrorist', and raise you a couple of convictions and Watergate. McCain pal, G Gordon Liddy.

Barack Obama has answered, ad infinitum, all the questions posed by McCain and his surrogates about Bill Ayers. They lived in the same neighbourhood, they served on a Republican funded board together, he attended a 'meet-the-candidate' cocktail party the man threw. Oh, and he has repeatedly condemned actions taken by Ayers. Asking the same questions over and over again and months of digging have produced nothing to contradict Mr Obama's answers. Isn't one of the definitions of insanity taking the same action over and over again expecting a different result?

Liddy, who was convicted for the Watergate break-in (and had plans for a series of bombing and kidnappings), is called 'my old friend' by John McCain. Liddy has thrown fundraisers in his home for McCain (where for a donation you could get a picture with the two of them), made regular monetary contributions to McCain and has had him on his radio show on numerous occasions. On one show McCain said of Liddy:

"I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family. It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Really? Disregard for the law to subvert the political process is one of the principles of this country? Advocating the killing of law enforcement and recommending head shots in case they're wearing body armour is something your OK with? Obama has condemned Ayers Weatherman activities. It sounds like McCain is on pretty shaky ground here.

Of course, McCain has said that Liddy has served his time and should be forgiven. Shouldn't that same message then apply to Ayers? Oh, wait... Ayers was never convicted of any crimes.... Funny, from the way the McCain sounds you would think he had been.

Diversity Rainbow!

2008-10-16T10:40:00.000-04:00

Cause that's how Finn rolls!

The little girl in the red shirt is Milan, she introduces Finn as her husband...

The little boy in green is Finn's bestest friend, Jazz.

Failure Of The 'Main Stream Media'

2008-10-16T08:45:00.002-04:00

This would never make it onto Fox Noise. You only get glimpses on MSNBC and CNN. The BBC gives you an idea. But do we really need Al-Jazeera to truly hold a mirror up to us and show us for who we are becoming as a nation?

It's OK to disagree with someone or even to question another persons motives but the fear and misperceptions represented by these people should give anyone, regardless of who you support, pause. As more and more people fall prey to this rhetoric we should demand of John McCain that, if he truly believes in 'Country First', he should start the healing process now rather than use lies and innuendo to further divide this country. If not, and he looses this election, I suspect he will be remembered not as a 'maverick' but rather a bitter old man who put his ambition above the welfare of the people.

Y'ain't Hirin' Is Ya?

2008-10-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

We're pretty casual at both my bookstores. The extent of the dress code is clothes should be relatively clean and if there is any writing on your t-shirt just make sure it won't offend. Piercings and tattoos are OK. Also, since we are in the book business, a reasonable grasp of the English language is a plus. Sure, we all have our language quirks - I, for one, am a terrible proof reader and since I write at work I constantly step away to take care of customers which leads to some interesting sentence structure - but if you cannot communicate you shouldn't be involved in customer contact.

That being said.... Here are a few tips for anyone out there looking for work...

1 - 'Y'ain't hirin' is ya?'... First impressions are huge and, well, this would leave a lasting one and not in a good way. The young man who asked this yesterday did not seem surprised by the answer, 'No'.

2 - Dressed for a day on the James. While flip flops, jorts, and a wife-beater may be comfortable attire for crawling on the rocks down by the river why would you think it is appropriate for job hunting? T-shirts extolling your 'Johnson', pajama bottoms, and grungy baseball hats with marijuana symbols also tend to be poor choices.

3 - Dressed in a suit? Try to remember to take the suit label off the sleeve. That and a pant hem of staples tend to leave the impression that your going to return the suit as soon as you find a job.

4 - Tattoos & Piercings. OK, I know I said that I don't really care about them but white supremacist facial tats are a deal breaker.

5 - Bathing. At least sometime in the recent past.

6 - Difficult Customer = Difficult Employee. If your a difficult customer, complaining and nitpicking over everything, why do you think I would consider you to be an employee?

7 - Windows work both ways. If you show up early for an interview do not stand outside the store smoking a cigarette and picking your nose.

8 - Even though the interview is over, it isn't over. I keep a bowl of hard candy at the front desk for customers. Stopping on the way out and grabbing a handful and then picking out several more pieces tells me more about you than anything you actually said. Oddly, this has happened on several occasions.

9 - Mister Meaner. Beyond the fact that this should be only one word you really should check your application for spelling errors. Also, the question was only for felonies, not lesser offenses...

And finally.... Don't tell me this would be the perfect job for you since you currently don't have enough time to read. We have down time but this is still a job.

Finn Declares - 'I Love Octopus' - Kobe Sushi

2008-10-14T11:34:00.001-04:00

Is Kobe the best sushi restaurant in town - no. Is it the most creative - no. Is it authentic Japanese - not really. I would describe Kobe as a your basic Americanized ideal of a sushi restaurant. If you want innovative and creative dishes try Viktor's two eateries, Sumo San and Moshi-Moshi. If your looking for your basic gyoza or shumai and nothing too exotic in the way of raw fish, try Kobe. It's just basic - it's our Japanese comfort food. Really, we've been going here for years and have never had a bad meal nor bad service. It will satisfy your cravings for Japanese in a roadside diner sort of way - just ignore the star scenes that look to have been painted on ceilings and wall by 3rd graders...

What was most interesting about this meal was Finn. He actually has a normal meal at Kobe. To start a plate of stir fried onions, a good way to practice his chopstick skills. When our apps come out he usually grabs one or two of the gyoza, shumai and kara age. During entrees he'll gobble a couple of pieces of California roll and then finish with a bowl of miso - drunk through a straw. Every now and then he will have a piece of tuna or a shrimp but it's pretty hit or miss whether he will eat the sushi. There has even been two occasions where he has eaten eel, although I told him it was snake. This visit, was a little different....

I had ordered my 'usual' array of sashimi - scallop, surf clam, tuna, toro, white tuna, salmon and sea eel. I always offer Finn some but he declines most. Tonight he threw me a bit off and tried everything. Not a single funny face. Smiles and exhortations of all things fishy. A little hesitation at the eel, until I told him it was snake, but everything went down. As I ran out of things to try he picked up the little sushi board and asked for... octopus.

M and I discussed this. Was he ready for something quite so chewy? Sure, why not. An order went out for octopus and a little more tuna. The plate came out and Finn grabbed not one of the thin slices but the full piece of tentacle. We waited for the verdict. 'I love octopus!', Finn declared. OK then. Our child really will eat anything. This, of course, was short lived. The piece proved to be too chewy for him after a couple of minutes and he got a very worried look on his face. This didn't really surprise us and we allowed him to spit out the half-masticated piece of octopus into a napkin. 'Too chewy', he said - which, I suppose is better than him saying he didn't like it.

Maybe next time we'll have to truck over to Hana Sushi and see if they have the baby octopus appetizer on special....

"My jaw hurts from chewy octopus!"

McCain - Moments Before Having A Grand Mal Seizure

2008-10-13T11:47:00.001-04:00

McCain - Moments After Jack Serves Him A Jagermeister

2008-10-13T11:44:00.001-04:00

Sarah Palin - Ethics, Schmethics

2008-10-11T12:17:00.001-04:00

You reap what you sow. This fun little dity from Galatians appeals to me as I have a strong sense of karma.

I was watching a clip of McCain addressing a crowd last night when they suddenly started screaming 'traitor' and 'terrorist'. McCain visibly winced. It almost made me believe he didn't intend to split the country further than has already happened under the Bush administration. His admonition of a woman who called Obama an 'Arab' (she said it like an ethnic slur) reminded me of why he had appeal across the political spectrum in 2000. In the closing weeks of this election will we see the return of the 'old' McCain or will we continue to see the angry old man in his last desperate attempt at the prize?

And then there's Sarah.

For weeks she has been making Obama out to be the boogeyman. Terrorist. Traitor. Un-American. Foreign. Watching her campaign makes my memories of Dick Cheney warm and fuzzy. Now we see the stirring of the skeletons moving to open her closet door...

First we have Troopergate. She may not know what the Bush Doctrine is but she certainly learned their tactic of using public office for retribution. This isn't quite on the scale of firing DOJ lawyers for failing to prosecute fictional charges for political gain but it does show a willingness to disregard the law when it is inconvenient. She probably won't face any criminal charges for this but it is very telling. Oh, and the claim that the finding were partisan - the board that found her guilty had 4 Democrats... and 10 Republicans.

Then there's the AIP, Alaska Independence Party. While she was never a 'paid-up' member her husband is. Now there's the rumblings from Alaska that she may be a Republican of convenience. Adressing the AIP convention 6 months ago probably wasn't a good idea. Neither was appointing AIP members to upper echelon posts in the state government. Let's see... Obama lived in the same neighbourhood as college professor Ayers (who doesn't seem to have any outstanding warrants), served with him on a right-wing funded board run by Reagan-era appointees, and has condemned Ayers actions that took place when he was 8 years old. Palin and her husband are involved with a group that is actively working for the disolution of the United States, today. Country First indeed.

Palin also managed to make big news by making a campaign promise to put all government spending on-line because she believed in 'transparency in government'. Small problem. Someone forgot to tell her it is already online (USAspending.gov) on a site created in 2006 from a bill sponsered by.... Barack Obama. Oddly, this bill nearly died a quiet death in committee due to a 'secret hold' placed on it by.... Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. (An earlier hold by Senator Byrd had already been lifted, as well he should have...) In an interesting twist on transperancy - yesterday a judge ordered Palin and her staff to save personal emails as they had been using them to conduct state business in an attempt to circumvent laws designed to ensure transparency. Once again, Palin may not know what the current administrations policies are but she certainly did learn their tricks to avoid accoutability.

Then there's the rumored affair with her husband's ex-business partner. Why were the divorce records sealed? Probably nothing... but this was headline news on the National Enquirer last month. Normally not a go-to source but there was that little Edwards story that they first reported back in 2007... Based on that timeline I only expect this to be news next summer and only if they somehow manage to pull off a win. Personally, I could care less what a politician does in bed. Unless they are hypocritical about it. You know, like Henry Hyde trying to take down Clinton for having an affair with an intern while failing to mention his wife had divorced him for.... having an affair with an intern. I know, I know, it's the cover-up that matters but how many people have been prosecuted for lying about a blow job?

Yep, that Sarah Palin is a maverick. Ignores ethics laws for personal retribution. Believes in transparency, except where it applies to her. Doesn't mind stiring up racial hatred in a country with a historical record of right wing assassinations and bombings.** And, of course, wants to remove a star from the flag.

**Have you notcied that our current home grown terrorists are mainly right wing extremists? - Murrah Federal Building, Assassinated abortion providers, bombs at the Olympics and outside gay clubs... ELF and ALF, from the extreme left, have managed to burn down a few million dollar mansions built in the forest but I'm not aware of them killing people...

Shaking The Package - Full of FAIL - Redux

2008-10-10T09:40:00.001-04:00

In for the 24 week check-up on Zygote.

M has put on a whopping 4 pounds so far. She has, however, expanded to about the same size as when Finn was born. Since he was 10 1/2 pounds we're kind of expecting another oversized offspring. If, on the other hand, the baby comes out at a more reasonable size we still have all of Finn's unused newborn clothes that we were unable to use last time around.

Everything else seems to be fine. Doc Reinhart, possibly one of the most genuinely happy people I've ever met, spent most of the session faux yelling 'What Are You?' at the ultrasound screen - seems he has delivered thousands of babies and has only had a couple of cases where he can't determine the sex. The baby was positioned, as before, with legs crossed and feet tucked up into the crotch. Not exactly the best position for shaking the package.

M has a theory. With Finn we had selected a boys name but were undecided about a girls. Being just like the little helpful kid he has become he decided to 'present' so as to end the discussion. This time around we have selected both boy and girl names so the baby has decided that there is no reason to share. Not sure about that but it's all we got for a theory at this point.

Con Party Dusts Off Klan Hoods For Halloween!

2008-10-09T11:52:00.000-04:00

One would think, early in the 21st century, that we have become a much more enlightened people. That what matters is the substance of the person and not the colour of their skin. If, however, you are part of John Sidney McCain's leadership team here in Virginia, and specifically his campaign chair in Buchanan County as well as being the Treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party, then you may not be aware that it is no longer the 19th Century and blacks are no longer counted as 3/5 of a person.

The person in question would be one Bobby Lee May. He wrote an editorial piece in a paper called The Voice. In it he outlines Senator Obama's 'positions' as he sees them. The jingoistic rant that follows leaves no doubt in my mind about what his bed sheets are used for.

Here's the Column by Bobby Lee May

To his credit, Sidney (did you know he's a closet Australian?), asked for and got Mr May's resignation. Couple of problems linger. Nearly $1 million in business sent to Mr May by the McCain campaign. Seems Mr May is in the business of making political paraphernalia such as signs and buttons and they're still being cranked out. McCain only does the right thing on the surface. He distances himself from an avowed bigot but sees no problem in continuing to do business with him. No different than publicly dismissing his economics guru while leaving attached to the campaign in an 'unofficial' way. You know - Phil Graham, author of the Commodities Modernization Act, that warmed us up with the greed and collapse of Enron before taking us down the road to rampant oil speculation and leading to the global credit crisis and finishing with either a deep and hard recession or possibly even a global depression.

1929 - Banking & Investment Deregulation = Overleveraged Speculation =Market Collapse = The Great Depression

2008 - Banking, Commodities & Investment Deregulation = Overleveraged Speculation = Market Collapse = ???

Of course he's not the only politician who is lining the pockets of this racist. Our dear friend Virgil Goode has done over $100k of business with this 'good ol' boy'. You remember Virgil - the congressman who believes that the 1st Amendment applies only if your Christian. Running his campaign based on racial and religious bigotry is only different from McCain's campaign and Palin's rhetoric for it's transparency.

Bush managed to hold onto power for 8 years through his judicious use of fear. In the closing month of the campaign - with his and the Con Parties economic policies shown to be completely bankrupt - fear, with a little bit of racial suspicion, are the only platforms he has left to run on.

Painting courtesy of Zina Sanders -

Obligatory Whole Food's/Trader Joe's Post

2008-10-08T11:41:00.002-04:00

So now that the mad rush to check out Whole Food's has died down I finally braved Short Pump traffic and drove out there last Thursday. Actually, at a little after 2 in the afternoon, the traffic wasn't overly horrible and the placement of the grocery near to 64 limited the road rage inducing exposure to the usual gridlock of cell phone using SUV drivers who feel that the lane lines are just 'suggestions'.

Having heard horror stories about the overloaded parking lot I grabbed the first spot I saw, even though it was around the corner from the entrance. This was a good choice as there seemed to be a herd of SUV drivers circling the parking lot and wasting gas waiting for a spot that would reduce the number of steps needed to get in - while talking on their cell phones... Amazingly, even with a full lot, the store interior was big enough that it wasn't that crowded. I guess with a store that size it's a good thing those SUV drivers saved their energy.

The first area was amazing - fruits and veg. This past summer I had been disappointed by both Fresh Market and Ukrop's produce. None of it seemed as fresh or as appetizing as in years past. Frankly, I've seen better looking and tasting produce in a freegan's home. Even Ellwood Thompson's produce has been looking a little sad. Whole Food's had a really good looking spread of both the common and obscure - all at really good prices. Artichokes that I had been paying $5 a pop at Fresh Market were half the price at Whole Food's. All the items were also clearly labeled with country or state of origin and, if local, actually named the farm. Nothing wrong with a well educated consumer.

The seafood case was also impressive. Whole snapper and trout - eyes clear and fresh looking - well cut fillets and steaks - again all clearly labeled so you can avoid countries with unsustainable fishing practices. Yellow Umbrella doesn't need to worry but Ukrop's and Fresh Market don't quite measure up.

I was a bit surprised by their meats. At the store in C'ville meats seem a bit of an afterthought. Here, they have a much broader selection and are even aging their own meats in a glass aging room behind the meat case. I picked up some wonderful lamb shanks at $5.85/pound to make some rogan josh at home. The lamb was great and the price was right. I'll still buy most of my meat at Belmont Butchery but Ukrop's is off my list and Fresh Market is on shaky ground.

The cheese section was well stocked and had some unusual items as well as some of my favourites, like morbier. I've stopped buying cheese at Ukrop's and, while their selection is good, have had too many cheeses that just taste 'off' at Fresh Market. Their selection is on par with E-T although they have more domestic choices. Ellwood Thompson's wins this round, though, as when M and I have a bread and cheese night it's something I pick up on the way home and Whole Food's isn't along that path.

I only got a baguette from the bakery but the rest looked delightful and, from my experience in C'ville, the breads live up to the look. Fresh Market's baked goods look good but lack a certain crustiness and often taste like they were made from the same dough recipe. E-T comes close but doesn't quite have the variety.

I didn't peruse their wine selection but they do have a wine bar plopped down in the middle of the store - a fenced off area where you can sit and enjoy a glass of wine dispensed like coffee from a vending machine (ok, it's much more sophisticated than that but you get the idea). It would make sense to me if it were near the entrance but it's way off to the far side. Do you really want to sit and enjoy a glass of wine while your frozen foods thaw and your fresh fish comes to room temperature? Do you bring a friend so you can chat or do you sit alone and contemplate the benefits of acidophilus?

The rest of the store is where you can really get into trouble. It doesn't take too many $20 bottles of olive oil, exotic vinegar, or obscure spices to drive up that check total. I found myself picking up items that I haven't been able to get here in Richmond or, if I do find them, the box or jar is so old and dusty you start checking expiration dates. I went in with the idea to get enough for 3 dinners and managed to avoid going crazy on 'necessary' purchases that would come home and gather dust. I basically got out of there spending less and getting more meals out of it than my bi-monthly trip to Fresh Market. The question is will the low prices on produce and very competitive prices on meats continue or are they just going to just be around during the first few months.

Since I managed to survive my trip out to Whole Food's I decided, yesterday, to follow up and make the jaunt out to the other new place, Trader Joe's. Driving out was no problem - it was leaving. Some guy, either drunk or just a really incompetent driver, had real issues with how to deal with a parking lot - getting a few nasty stares and a couple of fingers from other drivers trying to get out of his way- who then decided it was OK to initiate a u-turn from the right lane thus cutting me off and nearly taking out the front of my car. I leaned my head out the window and posed the query: drunk or mentally deficient?

Anyway, Trader Joe's. Well stocked with mostly their own store brands and heavy on pre-prepared frozen foods. If I were single or didn't care to cook from scratch this would be my place. As it is it looks to be a good place to stock up on snacks or frozen dinners for lazy nights. The fresh produce and meats case were no great shakes. I did pick up some interesting things - frozen dinners, wasabi mayo, kippers - and will update as we try them. The staff, unlike the happy hippy professionals at Whole Food's, were very earnest people who may have been recruited late at night at Alley Katz and had drank too much corporate kool-aid. Nothing wrong with cult like devotion - the cashier inspected all my purchases, made suggestions for my next trip, and had someone replace a bag of chips that had a tear in the bag - but they do make me a bit nervous.

In sum, Fresh Market may be falling off my monthly rotation of shopping trips to be replaced with Whole Food's - and hopefully I will be able to resist the urge to shop for more than just what I need. Trader Joe's may get the occasional visit from us for a few things although I will recommend it to our friend Miles (single and cooking challenged).

Has The Con Party Ceded Virginia?

2008-10-03T11:38:00.001-04:00

Living inside the city limits of Richmond normally gives one an altered view of the rest of the state. Just looking around in 2000 and 2004 the ratio for signs and bumper stickers for Gore and then Kerry to the paltry number of Bush signs would leave one thinking this was a blue state. Step outside the metro area and the landscape changes radically with the Democratic signs becoming fewer and fewer.

This was most evident during a visit to Roanoke during the 2004 election cycle. Seemed like every other car had a sticker for 'W' and the size of some of the banners and road signs was staggering. Most worrisome to me was the tendency to place the signs for Bush along side all manner of Christian inconography in a seeming attempt to say Jesus was a Republican. Always find this a bit odd as, if you look at Jesus' life and the early Christian communities, he would be better described as a Socialist.

2008 in Richmond seems to be the same except that I really can't recall seeing any McCain signs and no bumper stickers. Our trip last week to Roanoke was not significant for the number of campaign signs that we saw but that they were only for the local candidates. Lots of Goodlatte and even a few for the doomed campaign of Gilmore but nothing for McCain. Watching cars during the drive to and from I managed to count a total of 3 bumper stickers.

Now I don't think that all these people in SE Virginia are suddenly seeing the light and voting Democratic for the first time. No, I don't think that all these people are going to vote for Obama but they may very well be staying home this year. The lack of effort on McCain's part begs the question: has McCain ceded Virginia or has he not noticed that he is trailing here? Either way I suspect Obama may win here.

My current electoral count (subject to change...):
Obama 375
McCain 163

A Meal RVA Needs - 202 Market

2008-09-30T12:03:00.003-04:00

Richmond has come a long way on the food scene over the last ten or fifteen years. I know my first meal in Richmond was a total disaster - in a cockroach infested fondue place below street level in Shockoe Slip. Since then the bar has been raised by over-rated places like the Frog And The Redneck to current winners such as Can-Can, 1 North Belmont and Edo Squid. Our little city has become a place where you can be proud to take visiting friends and family out to destination eateries. At least until you go out of town yourself.

Vino recently bemoaned the fact that, even with all the upscale sushi places we do have, Ten in C'ville has fish rarely, if ever seen in River City (and nearly as much gunfire...). I hear similar stories of great restaurants (that we don't have equivalents of) from people who travel to Hampton Roads, Norfolk, DC or Baltimore. Then there's the vague feeling that there is not a lot of variety here in Richmond. Look at Millie's, LuLu's, deLux, Helen's or any number of other restaurants that seem to be working off the same food palate as well as the possibility that the chefs all trained under the same person - just look at how many places have 'gourmet' mac-n-cheese right now. Sure, there are differences, but there is certain sameness.

Then there's the service... The professional level I find outside the city makes a number of local places here look like amateurs run them. There are a lot of good servers in Richmond but too many places have not made training and education of their front of house staff a priority. RVA Foodie had a good example recently where the waiter had no idea what he had just brought to the table. Oh, and before RVA Foodie starts - there is a huge difference between professional and pretentious. Even Applebee's requires their servers to know the ingredients on a plate.

So, here we are, on the road visiting the in-laws and in search of a meal in Roanoke. Last visit we had eaten at a place with a wonderful view that was probably excellent when it opened decades ago but was now in need of a makeover. Kinda Roanoke's version of Byrum's, OK but could be so much better. Based on that I had hopes for a good meal but wasn't expecting to be wowed. Well, wowed I was.

202 Market (there seem to be a problem with their website today...) is in the middle of old town Roanoke and is in the midst of upscale eateries, coffee houses, and specialty shops. The building is an old warehouse and you can't help but feel a little thrown when you first enter. The bar is very sleek and modern, almost futuristic. It looked like the kind of place I would enjoy having a drink in but wasn't convinced that it was where I wanted to have dinner. Once led to the dining room I changed my mind. Exposed brick, high backed open booths, dark wood tables. I was reminded of Sensi except that it seemed much more finished. The large flat screen TV's bothered me a bit (we had come to eat not watch TV) until I realized the TV's were showing a live feed from the kitchen - pretty cool.

After ordering they brought out a special appetizer compliments of the chef. I don't see too many places in RVA do this even though it is great way to showcase the chef's skills. The theme for the appetizer was a putting green. A club made out of a ebony toothpick with proscuitto sitting on a bed of powdered proscuitto, a putting green of molecularly pressed melon and a champagne grape for a golf ball. The melon nearly exploded flavour in your mouth and the powdered proscuitto had all the intensified taste without intensified saltiness. A wonderful example of the creativity of molecular gastronomy.

Appetizers came out quickly and there wasn't a loser in the bunch. M had Mushroom Tempura with an Apple Ponzu, L had an excellent Calamari with a Spearmint and Harrisa Dipping Sauce, G had Wagyu Tip Kebab (great inexpensive way to try this type of beef for the first time), and I had the Seared Scallops. On my dish there was also mango and proscuitto. The mango had been pressed in such a way that the flavours were amplified and the piece nearly had the consistency of pasta. The talk at the table was that you could just sit at the bar and order round after round of appetizer and be perfectly happy.

For a wine for the evening I ordered a bottle of Domaine Serene Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir. The waitress, being well supported by the management, let me know that they might be low or even out of that wine. Nice to know that up front rather than after 10 or 15 minutes of searching on their part. Turned out they did have the wine and she did point out the change in vintage rather than try to pass off the change and hope I didn't notice. The 2005 needed a little extra time to smooth out but turned out to be perfect once allowed to breath.

Glancing at the TV's we watched with anticipation as our entrees were plated up...

M had the Filet. Not very exciting in of itself but the steak, cooked perfectly, was served with powdered bacon. The result was all the flavour without the grease. A great combination.

The kids, Finn and his 11-year-old cousin, shared the Parpedelle Bolognese. The dish was excellent, rich and creamy, and the kids were treated well by the staff and owner. There were actually quite a number of families throughout the dining room and even eating in the bar. Nice change from the elitist attitudes of some in RVA who feel that families should be excluded from the downtown eating scene. Frankly the only place I feel is an 'adult eatery' is where the waitresses wear pasties.

L partook in the Paella. Saffron and chorizo with fresh shellfish. This is what Europa strives for in their Paella but comes up short. I don't know what they do to the rice here but both on L's dish and on mine it was possibly the best rice I have ever had. Individual grains, no clumping balls, seasoned perfectly. I would eat here just for the rice.

Both G and I had the Colorado Rack of Lamb. While still good this was my least favourite dish. The lamb was cooked sous vide (sealed in a bag and cooked under water) and while it produced a perfect juicy medium rare the taste was a bit bland. Without the caramelization of direct heat and reduction of moisture to intensify the flavour it was a little disappointing. Sous Vide would work well for he Opah on the menu, or even their twice cooked fried chicken, but not so much here.

To finish we had dessert. For me the usual, crème brulee. The best I have had in years. Exploding with vanilla beans and just a crust of caramelized sugar. Lately, in RVA, I've nearly needed a sledgehammer to get through the plate glass layer of sugar on the crème brulee's.

The closest we have to Market 202, that I have eaten at, is Sensi but I found 202 Market to be more exciting and creative in their food and their hospitality was flawless. Combine that with the cost being less than 2/3's of Sensi and I think it might be worth the drive.

The Men Who Would Be Mayor

2008-09-24T11:31:00.001-04:00

At the close of the mayoral debate last night they thanked the 350 who showed up... Pardon? Must be new math. There was a good turn out (not 350) and a number of interesting people to meet. While Ross, Buttermilk & Mollassas and Tobacco Avenue live blogged nearby there was also Don (Save Richmond), Jon Baliles, FT Rea (Slant.blog) and possibly a few others I didn't meet. There were also five guys running (ok, standing and talking) to be our next leader. They were:

Paul Goldman - Somewhere between Woody Allen and Marty Feldman with a good bit of David Kucinich. While I tended to agree with most of his statements I'm not sure if we would be seeing the rebirth of the downtown area if he had been mayor for the past four years. His is a needed voice to help remind people of the less glamourous spending and projects but I'm not convinced he would be an effective leader.

Robert Grey - Thurston Howell III. I'm still trying to remember the last time I saw someone wearing a blue blazer with brass buttons - it was either a yacht or country club. He. Did. Enunciate. Very. Well. Hard. To. Follow. Speech. That. Is. That. Clipped. Didn't find him very inspiring nor very off-putting.

Dwight Jones - Probably the best speaker of the bunch. Did seem to say a lot without actually saying anything other than buzz words. Struck me as the person most able to take all sides into account and work as a consensus builder. Did manage, unlike others, not to roll his eyes and make faces when things were said that he didn't agree with. He did promise me that he would do a drive by on Home Street to assess the situation in my neighbourhood. I'll be interested to see if he does and if anything comes of it.

Bill Pantele - George Costanza. Showed a lot of disrespect to the other candidates by loudly drumming his fingers on the podium and sighing loudly when someone said something he didn't like. His microphone really should have been turned off when it wasn't his turn. Made some really big promises that would happen starting January 2nd. I liked some of the ideas but we just had a mayor who rules imperially, do we want to go there again. He just didn't sound or act like someone who plays well with others.

Lawrence Williams - I guess there was another guy up there... He kept getting drowned out by Pantele's drumming.

On some issues they agreed, on others they differed wildly. The problem, as I see it, is that with all the different competing jurisdictions (county, city, state) and the divergent interests and needs of the different council districts we need someone who can build consensus and move things forward. Another four years of gridlock and money wasted on infighting could undo the progress made in this city. We need the fiscal responsibility Goldman espouses and the big ideas of Pantele but I think Dwight Jones is going to get my vote.

Random thoughts on some of the issues...

Abandoned Housing - Seems there are about 1700 of them. One idea (Goldman) that was floated concerned seizing them, rehabbing and then making available to city police. Good thought, my neighbourhood's rebirth was kick-started when a group rehabbed about a dozen homes, but who is going to pay for that? I'd like to hear more.

Gilpin Court - Accross the tracks from my 'hood so of great concern. Lot's of ideas but this one looks like it could get ugly. On track to be demolished but where do you put all the people. Concentrating poverty in one spot seems, to me, to lead to despair and crime. Spread them out all over the city and give the kids a chance to break the cycle.

Mass Transit - Pantele kept promising a trolley system for downtown the moment he takes office. Sounds cute but not sure how much that will accomplish. I looked into taking the bus from North Avenue to my store near Broad & Libbie when gas prices started spiking. Best case scenario looked to be an hour and a half trip each way. Ugh. My wish would be for light rail. A East/West Line from CapOne West Creek or Short Pump taking Broad to Downtown or Churchill and a North/South Line from VA Center down Brook or Chamberlayne to the Southside. Add bus lines for each neighbourhood station and you've got a system. Doubt it will happen but as one candidate said - 'we can't keep laying asphalt' (sorry, forgot which one...). I feel the growth of Richmond will be constrained if we don't have effective mass transit and this may be a huge issue as the world runs out of oil. Also curious as to why GRTC serves RVA and Chesterfield but Chesterfield doesn't contribute...

VCU Expansion - They all seem to think it has moved far enough into the downtown area and it sounds like that it might be the end of expansion in that direction. Isn't Virginia Union on shaky ground? Maybe a merger is in order. Doesn't VCU need a football team?

Baseball - While the other candidates argued about location (the Bottom or Boulevard) Lawrence Williams stepped out of the shadows to remind everyone we have more pressing issues. Baseball is a 'nice to have' and would generate revenue (supposedly) but the city will not wither and die without it. Which brings us to...

The Budget - Personally, I was not aware that we may be close to circling the fiscal drain. I didn't think we were flush, but the potential shortfalls the candidates were talking about were large enough to give pause. You look around the city and see the number of projects that are at various stages of completion (or simply holes in the city scape) and wonder what will happen if the money starts running out. Goldman is right about one thing, we need to finish what we've started before starting on too many new things.

Anybody Wanna Heckle?

2008-09-23T11:57:00.000-04:00

So tonight is the RVA News Mayoral Debate. Sounds like a good chance to find out if any of these guys are any good or not.

I'm hitting Tarrant's around 4 for a martini before heading over to the festivities starting around 5:30. Anyone care to join?

Trawling The Bottom - Halligan's, Jack's, LuLu's

2008-09-23T11:56:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, after a rough week, you just want to tie one on. That was me last Friday and I decided to destroy a few brain cells. Wandering about town found me faced with a familiar dilemma - who's open in the middle of the afternoon. I work six days a week but am relieved by one of my assistants at two several times a week. My preference is to be home with the family as M finishes work and Finn gets out of school so my prime 'party' time is from 3-6. Can-Can is a good place, as is Buddy's, but I do like to try new places. Friday my wanderings found me in the Bottom so I parked and went in search of liquid refreshment.

First stop was 'The Cocktail Capital of the World'. Bit of a bust. Jack was there doing prep work and he kinda threw me out. Kidding. Guess they don't open till 4ish so I was a bit early. I always found prep work somewhat meditative. Folding a couple of hundred napkins or cutting a box of limes before the hordes hit the door help you get into a calmer state so when someone requests a strawberry daiquiri ('made with fresh strawberries but could you please remove the seeds'....) you don't stab them with a cocktail fork. I left Jack to find his zen and moved on.

'On' found me wandering into Halligan's, a tiny fireman themed bar on the other side of the Farmer's Market. Decent drinks, reasonable prices, nothing fancy. Often these 'themed' bars are just affectations. Not so here. Seems it is quite the hangout for the cities firefighters. So girls (and any interested boys) who have a fireman fetish, this would be the place to go. It's not really my kind of place but the people were so friendly that I enjoyed myself and would probably wander back in.

While I was there the kitchen staff was expirementing with some possible new additions to their menu (I didn't look at the menu so can't share what they have). Of note would be the fried twinkie. They brought it out and set it on the bar. Everyone looked at it, daring someone else to take the first bite. Turned out not that bad. I did prove that after 25+ years as a smoker and 4 years as a non-smoker your tastebuds do return. Just a faint hint of fish flavour. One cook said he had just put in clean oil that morning but then another said he had fried some fish at lunch. The result was that if they add the fried twinkie to the menu they are going to get a Fry Daddy to cook them seperately.

I also noticed something interesting while enjoying my beverage there. The Farmer's Market, not offically open on Fridays, did have a number of vendors there. The customers? All seemed to be wearing white chef's jackets. Now if it's good enough for them....

After taste testing at Halligan's I returned to Jack's and got what I had been really craving - Tanqueray 10 martini, up with a twist. Good stuff. We chatted for a bit and were soon joined by M and Finn. After a bit we decided some food was in order, bade Jack farewell and walked accross to LuLu's. We had been once last February and it was not bad - except for the stroganoff. Guess it was time to see if they were firing on all cylinders.

They were.

M had the Meatloaf and I had the Beef Loin. Her's was good, mine was excellent. The hanger cut of meat had been grilled and seasoned perfectly and the price was very reasonable. Both came with mashed potato (good) and a mushroom demi. The demi was reduced perfectly and the amount used allowed you to taste the food rather than drown it out.

Finn had the Lobster & Crab Fritters. I still can't detect any trace of seafood in these but Finn likes them so - what the hell.

All in all a good afternoon/evening.... except for waking up at 2 with a hangover.

NOTE - If anyone has any good suggestions for afternoon hangouts - do share!

Quick Hits - Mezzanine

2008-09-19T12:18:00.000-04:00

With Finn now in school I'm finding myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do with myself when I have the afternoon off. Late last week that equated to me driving around RVA looking for someplace to nosh and enjoy a bevvie. Sadly, most places are closed at 3 or 4 in the afternoon so the choices are limited. As I tried to go over the short list in my head I realized I really just wanted to go someplace new. Luck would have it that my aimless travels had me close to Carytown and the newest place to grace the restaurant scene, Mezzanine. My hopes were dashed in that they were not open (currently opening at 5:30). I did, however, get something a little special. The kitchen staff were out sitting on the patio and were in a chatty mood.

I walked away with some interesting information.

The basic theme (if you could call it that - more like a philosophy) is to focus on fresh, local and regional ingredients with an emphais on produce from local farmers. They are not going to go totally organic but are going to strive to pick suppliers who use minimal pesticides and try to avoid growth hormones and antibiotics. Expect the menu to change rapidly, especially in the first few months, as they try different suppliers and see what works and what doesn't.

I really like this approach. Rather than impose a theme on the menu they are going to let it evolve based on results and, quite possibly, feedback. I've seen some places stick to a failed idea and sink while waiting for it to 'catch on'. If the chef here is good (I didn't catch his name) and creative we may very well have some exciting things going on here.

Realizing that you have to walk before you can run they are going to expand their offerings as they work the kinks out (ever been someplace that thought they could do it all on day one and manage to do nothing right?). The chefs all sounded very passionate about food and I've found that attitude often translates onto the plate. If they have the skills we could be seeing some very exciting dishes coming out of that kitchen.

It also sounds like they will start opening earlier as more people come and may have good munchies to help down that afternoon glass of wine or martini on their patio.

The rumour of raw bar offerings is an idea on the radar screen there that they haven't fully fleshed out. Something that perishable needs a good purveyor and a steady stream of customers to avoid bad bivalves. If they decide to add the raw bar I'll be excited to see what approach they take.

So far I like what I see and think they will be busy. That's a good thing. Of course, then there's the RTD reporter who loves the place but seems to imply that it won't be worth going once it gets busy. Personally I prefer restaurants that are inclusive and busy rather than elitist and exclusionary. She must get that from her boyfriend....

Battery Park - Civic Projects & Election Season

2008-09-16T13:18:00.000-04:00

Recently I gave Wilder and the city an ugly grade of D+ for the reconstruction of Battery Park. I'm thinking I may have been wrong in giving out that grade. You see, giving a grade or an evaluation implies that the project is complete and can now be assessed. In reality the project is not complete, the park is not open, empty lots abound with no sign of progress or even real clues as to what to expect. The bi-weekly newsletter the city promised to send after the floods to keep us informed of the project and it's progress? We received two hard copies a couple of years ago (the same exact information with only the dates changed) before it went online. I'm not sure what bi-weekly means to the city of Richmond but it looks like 4 issues in over two years. The last one released claims it's now a monthly, published in June...

I should have given them an 'I', for incomplete.

Four years after the floods started and two years after the collapse of the storm drains and the destruction of the park and $47 million dollars later where should we be? Frankly, a lot further along than we are.

The drains are fixed. While we haven't had a true hurricane deluge to test them the heavy rains we've had recently have produced nothing more than large puddles. Great! Couple of questions though...

When we flooded so did the park north of Brookland Parkway in Ginter Park. Do the new drains cover them or are they the next domino to fall in the whole north Richmond drainage system of Ginter Park-Battery Park-Shockoe Valley & Bottom?

The drain near my house on now depopulated Joshua Street looks to be working fine. Now I'm not a city engineer but shouldn't drains be flush or below ground level? If the concrete lip of the drain is seven or eight inches above ground level.... Kinda defeats the whole drainage thing doesn't it?

The sinkholes have been filled. Personally, I find sinkholes very scary. Has the city ever really fixed the one up in Church Hill from a couple of years ago? The mini-ones that opened up in the park and in the middle of tennis courts weren't that big but have any studies been done to see if there are any more lingering just below the surface and how safe is the neighbourhood as a whole?

The park is not open. The only noticeable work that had been done for most of the spring and through the summer seems to have been reconstructing a brick buidling and installing a prefab (although very nice looking) playgound set. Work has picked up of late, however, with some attention paid to the resurfacing of the tennis courts. I would love to think it was due to my last post on the park but I suspect that our city leaders only read my blog if they are looking for ways to take potshots at each other... Being a bit more cynical I suspect it has much more to do with our upcoming election. I fully expect our council woman, Ellen Robertson, to be knocking on our door in the next few weeks (as she does each election cycle) to ask for our vote. Once she is done with that she can go back to ignoring phone calls and emails from her constiuents. At least with Sa'id Al'Amin we got noticed. Our current empty suit is a bit of a wall flower in city politics.

The park expansion seems to have been forgotten. When the city tore down the two apartment complexes and the dozen or so homes a couple of blocks from my house there was much talk of a community center, gardens, or any number of things. Can't find anything resembling a plan out there (if someone knows pass it along!) and the area is turning into a poorly maintaned grassland. Couple that with the unknown future of Norrell School (at least they didn't send the kids back to a school polluted with who knows what), the unused baseball fields (which they continued to water while we were under water restrictions...) and you start to wonder where all the promises (and the money) went.

Speaking of money.... I had a number of discussions with friends after the first post on all this. One thing that kept coming up was the money and the timeline. One almost has to wonder if Wilder, rather than repair and maintain the drains with city money when the problem started appearing, waited the two years until they completely collapsed so he could apply for Federal money to replace them.... Don't know that's what happened but just wondering and if so, were we an 'earmark'?...

In sum...

We're dry but will everone upstream stay that way?

The park is still closed but the election season has brought a few workers onto the scene and some incremental progress is being made (will it continue after Nov 4th?).

The park expansion forced dozens of people from their homes and now seems to have been forgotten.

Communication is either not the cities priority or not in their skill set.

Millie's - Worth Staying Up Past 7?

2008-09-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

A while back I ruffled a few feathers by suggesting that Millie's brunch, while good, might not be worth the wait for a table. Some people disagreed and said it was worth the wait (that's ok - personally, I still am not sure as the meal was a bit uneven). A number of people waxed poetic about the dinner and declared me wrong. The problem with that is that I was just writing about their brunch, not dinner - so, let's stay on subject, OK? This time I'm writing about dinner so take your brunch comments (if any) over to the other post.

Dinner's out are becoming less frequent for us. With Finn in school and M pregnant if we make it out to dinner it's becoming earlier and earlier. We're not looking for early bird specials but we seem to be calling for opening times rather than closing times. The issue with that is I don't close my store until 7 in the evening. If we eat out on nights I close it tends to be quick or a chain (shudder...) of some sort. There are, however, still nights that we just need to get out for a good meal. Wednesday was one of those.

After the typical debate between M and I (involving a good 15 or 20 restaurants) we decided while circling Shockoe Bottom on Millie's and, once parking was located, entered the restaurant. My first thought, upon entering, was the music was better and not as loud before - good start. We were told that a table would be available soon, unless we wanted the worst table in the place (they didn't actually say that but you could hear the apology in his voice as he pointed out a table flanked by the stairs and the door to the kitchen). Actually, we didn't mind a table in a high traffic zone so we sat there.

As Finn pushed buttons on the table top jukebox we looked over the menu. The waiter approached and told us that they were out of a few items. I liked that. Too often your told about an item being 86'd while your ordering or even later. Nice to see someone making an effort. The other thing I really liked was a nice selection of 1/2 bottles. With M on the knocked up wagon it's nice to be able to order something other than a full bottle that I may very well not finish or take home and forget about before polishing it off. Millie's didn't disappoint and I ordered a nice bottle of Trimbach Gerwurtzriminer - rich flavours of pear and apricot without being too sweet.

To start I ordered the Seared Beef Carpachio. I caught a hint of saran wrap on the first bite but but the rest was great. The spiced tomato puree gave flavour without overpowering and there were none of the stringy pieces in the beef. I thought the yellow tomato salsa a little bland but then I am not a huge fan of tomatoes and M thought it tasty so you be your own judge. (Of course, as I am writing this I checked their web site and they've posted a new menu changing this dish and a bunch of others...).

For Finn we got the Mac & Cheese with Asparagus, Oyster Mushrooms & Foie Gras Butter. Very tasty, although if you have a small child you may want to have them leave off the asparagus - Finn is a little picky about larger green items....

For an entree M had the Tamarind Oven Roasted Pork Loin. Tamarind can be tricky. I've cooked with it before and there is a very fine line between 'needs a little bit more' and 'OMG, I can't taste anything else'. Millie's hit it perfectly and the roasting left the pork moist and juicy.

I had a bit of a quandry for for my entree. They had a Crispy Rendered Duck dish that sounded good as did the Spicy Thai Shrimp. Basically decided on the shrimp as I had just had a great duck sandwich at Can-Can a week or so ago (warm duck, melted brie, sauteed mushrooms on a sweet fruit and nut bread - mmm, yummy.).

The dish looked a little odd to me. The shrimp had little colour, like they weren't cooked, and the noodles looked very odd. They were cooked perfectly, everything tasted great. I especially liked the fact that the spiciness was balanced so that, even though it was hot, you could still taste the individual ingredients. Very enjoyable. I was also very glad that I took a picture of the dish. Turns out it was just poor lighting that made it look odd as the shrimp as well as the noodles look fine under the harsh glare of my flash.

To finish M had a chocolate layer cake and I had the creme brulee. Her's was excellent and mine was good but otherwise unremarkable. Service was friendly and efficient (although I think I could hear them thinking 'why would you sit at that horrible table?' as they walked by. It was actually fine and they all made an effort not to bump into me as they went by).

So, in sum, for those of who find it harder and harder to get out in the evenings - is it worth staying up past 7?... Yes.

Shaking The Package - Full of FAIL

2008-09-12T10:32:00.000-04:00

As M hit 20 weeks we went for an ultrasound and to see if we need to buy new clothes or if Finn's can be recycled. One nice thing about our doc, the same one who delivered Finn, is that he is a very hands on doctor. No pushing the ultrasounds or other things off on techs, he does it all himself. I think that actually saves the patients time as you don't have to wait for one person to come do the test, then wait for the doctor to come and interpret it. Plus, it's just nice to have such an involved doctor.

Anyway, everything seems to be fine. Normal noggin, fluttering hands, straight spine, beating heart, tummy, and legs.... Oh, the legs. While everything else is normal it looks a bit like we have a long legged baby (as opposed to Finn who had a freakishly large head - it's still large but only becomes apparent when your trying to put a shirt that it supposed to fit onto him). Not sure if that means we'll have a tall kid or just a really good hurdler...

The legs also caused a bit on another problem. While Baby Zygote was laid out in a breach position, which allowed a really good look at the whole body, Zygote was sitting, as our doc put it, 'Indian Style' with knees locked together. Not a very good position for 'shaking the package'. Our doc tried jiggling the belly and various other methods to get Zygote to move but to no avail. Guess we'll have to wait another month to figure out what's wrapped up inside.

Mayoral Push Polling In RVA?

2008-09-09T12:28:00.002-04:00

Push polling is a rather deceitful practice that is not so much about gather information as it is about shaping attitudes. Ten to twenty percent of either side of the political spectrum have their minds made up and no one can change them. The vast majority in the middle, however, can be swayed through information or through misrepresentation. Push polling goes after this segment by phrasing a question in such a way as to change your perception, rightly or wrongly, about an issue or candidate.

Ask a normal, thinking person if they believe gays should be fired or denied housing solely on their orientation and the answer will be 'no'. Ask that same person if gays should have 'special rights' and that answer might change. The issue hasn't changed but the person answering the question may think it has.

The most notorious example of push polling came in 2000 in South Carolina. Trailing after New Hampshire Bush's operatives were getting desperate. Suddenly people were getting phone calls where one of the questions was how they felt about McCain's illegitimate bi-racial child. Even though the allegations were false (he has an adopted child from India) the damage was done and we've been stuck with Bush for the last 8 years. Oddly, I think I would have been OK with McCain in 2000... Now he's a bit like leftovers that have been in the fridge longer than you can remember.

So, here I am, enjoying a nice glass of wine on a Sunday afternoon, watching TV and playing a little Civilization 4- Warlords Edition (Ragnar of the Vikings, Diety level, barely holding my own...) on my new MacBook when the phone rings. Would I like to take a political survey? Sure, I'd love to inject my opinions onto the national scene. Ooops, turns out it is local, for the mayoral race....

Suddenly I feel a bit unprepared. I'm well read on the issues of Battery Park, the shortcomings of the city's school system, and the failures of Doug Wilder but I would be hard pressed to tell you much of anything about any of the current candidates for mayor. While all politics may be local (thanks Tip O'Neil) the noise of the national race has pretty much drowned out the local one. Frankly, I was thinking about voting for Dwight Jones, solely on RVA Foodies recommendation, and, since I'm pretty sure there will be a run-off, paying attention to that campaign.

The questions start with your basic name recognition. OK, while I may not be up on the issues I am on the names. They're asking about three candidates: Jones, Pantele, Grey. Hey! Where's Goldman? Somehow I thought he was a contender. Hmmm...

After a number of general questions they start asking about specific issues. Crime (against it), education (for it), infrastructure (Hello! I live in Battery Park!). Then comes a number of questions about Pantele. Mostly vague questions concerning his stance on the issues. Phrased so vanilla that you can't not agree. Yes, better schools. More police. Less infighting between the mayor and city council.

This was getting long and dull (much like this post...). Not for long though. The questions started becoming a little more specific, and vicious. I'm not going to repeat them verbatim here for fear of misquoting but... For Pantele there were questions about being in Wilder's back pocket, questionable financial dealings, failure to fulfill promises and the like. For other candidates it was negatively phrased questions concerning clergy membership, conflict of interest business ties, and the favourite political slur in RVA - being a slumlord. I was feeling a bit like I was sitting in my new composter...

Finally, came the kicker. The closing and the statement that this survey was conducted and paid for by Friend of Pantele. Really? After some of the questions I was feeling like if I was in the same room I would want to kick him in the shins and there was no real way I would want to vote for him. If he really did finance this then he needs to fire his advisors.

But what if this was something else?

What if this was a push poll? Pantele came out poorly. Jones and Grey muddied. Goldman was never mentioned. Why? If you want to smear your opponents I guess you would want to distance yourself from accusations. I came away from the phone call thinking who would I vote for if not for those three. Then I thought who had the most to gain from the call....

It may not have been a push poll. If it was it may not have been financed by Goldman. What I did learn was that the mayor's race may get interesting after all. That, and I really need to start paying better attention to it.

Election Year Garbage - How Are You Dealing?

2008-09-08T12:43:00.001-04:00

This election cycle seems like it has gone on forever. Kicking off in 2006 it has drug on and on and the rhetoric passed ankle deep quite a while ago. As the networks dig up surrogates with dubious or no connection to the campaigns to fill the time slots the commentary is rapidly becoming ludicrous in some of the attempts to score points. The latest person to join the fray, Ms Palin, and the constant drip of fragmentary information, coupled with her unwillingness to face questions, has sent created such a maelstrom of contradictory information that it would be amusing if it wasn't so serious. While the left speculates and the right ignores the historical record the amount of garbage being produced is astounding.

So with all this crap abounding what is one to do? We decided to counter the shit-storm of crap by reducing the amount of crap we produce. Instead of a carbon off-set a kind of politician off-set.

The first thing we did was start recycling. OK, we're a little late to this particular party but every time we got one of those fun canisters for the pick-up from Waste Management it got stolen. Now that the neighbourhood is a bit more gentrified and other people on the street haven't had theirs stolen we went ahead and ordered a new bin.

Now while the bin hasn't arrived we've already started the process of bagging up cans, glass, and plastic so we will be ready the moment arrives. A reduction large enough for me to be able to watch an hour of MSNBC or ten minutes of Fox Noise each morning with a clear conscience.

The other thing we decided to do was to take part in the city's composting scheme.

So, in the midst of the remnants of Hurricane Hannah, I sent my pregnant wife off to wait in the rain and procure some subsidized compost containers. One for us, one for a friend and one for a birthday present. The line at Willow Lawn was long but they moved very quickly. She still got soaked.

Saturday afternoon saw me enjoying a glass of wine and reading up on what can and cannot go it the composter and all sorts of handy hints. It should be interesting to see what I can do in my yard if the plants are in soil rather than Virginia clay (and in our case contaminated with spilled diesel from an inconsiderate neighbour...).

At the end of the weekend I took a peek into our large city trash canister. We had reduced the amount of crap we produce by over 50%. Quite an accomplishment with only minimal effort on our part. Now I can watch a full episode of Keith Olbermann in the evenings, or five minutes of Bill O.

Now, with the new baby on the way, just need to find disposable diapers that can go into a composter... Probably wishful thinking on my part.

When Foodies Meet, Eat, & Drink, & Drink, & Drink....

2008-09-02T17:55:00.000-04:00

Did it seem a little quiet in a few neighbourhoods in town this last Sunday? it could have been the result of a few very tired kids and their very tired/hungover parents.

To close out the summer we had decided to have a few people over for a 'foodie' potluck. Your basic bring an 'A' game dish or a family favourite. Combine lots of good food with copious amounts of alcohol and there is always fun to be had.

There had been a fair amount of discussion about a certain drink over the course of the summer and how not to make it - the mojito. A certain downtown bar, and big seller of this beverage, seems to be leading the list of misguided attempts at mojito mixing (sorry, Jack). Pre-muddling the mint is bad but their addition of sweet and sour mix just turns it into a mint flavoured rum collins. It's funny that as our restaurant food gets more creative and less prefrabicated that bars are moving in the other direction. In the August edition of Bon Appetit (sorry, not online) is a great article about cocktail construction in Japan. Seems their mixologists pride themselves on making individual cocktails from scratch using fresh ingredients and lots of imagination. Here we seem to be drifting to a McDonalds approach to bartending with premade syrups and mixes. Bit of a shame.

With that in mind I decided to make mojitos (for the first time) from scratch. That afternoon I made a batch of simple syrup, and then set up limes and mint. For each person requesting a mojito I muddled the mint and then addded the syrup, light rum, lime and club soda. Except for the first one (which I managed to make half of in one glass and then finish off in my Rangpur & Tonic - not a good combo...) they seemed to be a hit. Next time I'll need more syrup... and rum.
My first course out was Grav Lax. Made with salmon from Yellow Umbrella and then salt/sugar cured for 48 hours. Served on sliced bread with an espresso dill honey mustard. The lack of leftovers led me to believe it was a hit.
I had orignally planned on cooking something on the grill. A trip last weekend to Carytown with my visiting parents and my first glimpse on Penzy's got me thinking. They had a certain spice that caught my eye - English Prime Rib Rub. The heady aroma of celery, pepper, onions, and garlic got me craving a major piece of beef.

Belmont Butchery provided me with a choice cut of prime rib that I could work with. Rubbed down first with grapeseed oil and then the Penzy spice I opted for the controlled heat of my oven rather than the grill. Fifteen minutes at 500 and then 2 hours at 230 (both on covection roast). During the 30 minute covered rest I made a jus by adding stock and sherry to the pan to deglaze and then reduced over high heat.

There were no leftovers.
Since I didn't use the grill the queue for others was shorter.
Sketchy brought his mythical DragonFish. Using a cute little trick of molecular gastronomy he used a protein glue to reform several pieces of halibut into a piece resemebling a tenderloin. Then, again using the glue, he attached thin spicy slices of chorizo. Roasted over the grill it came out crispy on the outside and moist inside. I could swear that Sketchy managed to achieve umami with this dish, a real accomplishment with fish.

Another fun dish for the evening was made by Koolz. He stuck to his roots and made a meatball dish from a family recipe. Pork meatballs grilled over my infrared then topped with basil and slices of mozzarella. Well spiced and Koolz did well for his first work with the searing temps that my infrared grill puts out. M seems to be aggitating for him to make some ziti and show off his tomato sauce skills. Sounds like a call for a repeat performance.

A late arrival for the evening was RVA Foodie. That was probably a good thing as nearly all of the dishes woudln't comply with his 'meat is murder but fish is justifiable homicide' type of vegetarianism. His arrival did usher in a bout of heavy beverage consumption. As the wives put the kids down we engaged in mojitos and a number of rounds of shots.

In true foodie fashion we had both sweet and savory shots. I pulled out a bottle of akvavit, a Danish tradition flavoured with caraway and anise. Sketchy brought a bottle that he had altered.... Italian Lemoncello that he had unbottled and then carbonated. The thick heavy liquid held the carbonation until it hits your toungue and then bubbles up in small explosions. Both were great but weren't exactly great together and we had some casualties....

Oh, and if anyone was out and about around 2 in the morning in the Fan we are looking for any witness to a 'missing' bicycle trip that someone took... :)

Decision Making By Sarah Palin....

2008-09-01T13:33:00.000-04:00

Click on image to enlarge...

New Photo Of The Con Party's Choice For November!

2008-08-30T08:55:00.000-04:00

Fay Puts The Mayor To The Test - Is Battery Park Safe?

2008-08-28T11:45:00.001-04:00

Living in Battery Park the last few years has been a bit of a challenge.

While all the attention has been paid to The Bottom our storm drains crumbled and finally collapsed under the weight of Isabelle and Gaston.

As the mayor partied it up in Japan I was told by Richmond's finest that if I didn't leave my house (the water was within a block of my house but we sit up so high enough that we were never in danger) they would arrest me and turn Finn over to Family and Children Services.

As we debated whether we could drink the tap water and others were forced repeatedly from their homes after the lightest rains we saw a parade of politicians from Senators to the ever-elusive, and very absent, Rep. Bobby Scott make their obligatory stop for a photo op in our damp 'hood. Ellen Robertson, our council person, hasn't been very present either - except for her weekly spam phone messages. We soldiered on, dealing with detours for our new, above ground, drainage pipes and pumps the size of elephants that blocked our streets.

Rather than admit the boondoggle that is the city owned golf course changed the topography thus turning Battery Park and the surrounding environs into a lake, the city seized homes, rendered apartment renters homeless, and put the problem to the bulldozers. Oddly, some seized homes have been deemed 'safe' and are currently being rehabbed and de-molded. It will be curious to see who gets to buy these homes and at what price....

Then, on what must have been a slow news day for out mayor, the Battery Park project was declared complete last December. Really? The pumps were still there. Sink holes in the tennis courts. Bulldozers and cranes were everywhere. Fences and no trespassing signs would lead one to believe the park not open. The floods, the clean-up crews in haz-mat suits... it all continued. Methink the mayor a bit hasty.

Spring arrived and the gashes in the ground were covered and they seemed to be moving on to cosmetics. The ground leveled, new playground equipment installed. Would we be able to use the park this summer? No. As far as I can tell we only get city work crews 2-4 days a month, and rarely two days in a row. At the rate they're going I would expect the park to re-open about the time Finn finishes college.

So, that brings us to today. As Fay dumps much needed water onto our very brown lawns and for what may be the real first test of the city having spent millions to move water around the very critical 3-hole golf course. The shiny new grates near my house are working well and there is no standing water. Glad to know that bulldozing an apartment complex and displacing all those families had allowed the city to protect the sandtraps for the golf course. OK, I'll admit, I don't miss the apartments. They were a source of trouble but wouldn't it have been easier to dig up a sand trap to rebuild the drains rather than raze a bunch of buildings with people living in them?

Moving over to the park proper, doesn't look too bad. Six months ago the south side of the park would have been under anywhere from 6 to 30+ feet of water after more than 24 hours of rain. Today it looks a little soggy but not too bad. The brand new playground, however, looks like it is sitting in the middle of a lake. Hard to tell from a distance but at least 6 inches of standing water. The question is where did that water drain from? Is it just a puddle? Would you let your child play there? Will the men in the haz-mat suits return?

How did the city and our rock-star mayor do? I guess I would give them a 'D+'.

Had they listened to the residents earlier about water back-ups they could have averted the whole problem by inspecting the storm drains around the park.

The houses were all built nearly 100 years ago and didn't have problems until the city changed the topography of the area for the golf course. Yet, somehow, the city made it sound like we had all built in a flood zone and that we should feel grateful for the buy-outs.

Oddly, while Bush declined to name our area a federal disaster he named an area up in New York one. Same storm. Same number of people effected in roughly an area of equal size. Could it have happened to have been due to us having a Democrat as a Rep and them having a Republican in a tough re-election bid weeks before the 2006 election? Hmm....

Communication during the flooding basically sucked and the police were way too authoritative.

Months of detours really sucked and the city has yet to do anything about adding or upgrading access to the neighbourhood.

We got a really cool red back-pack from the Red Cross with emergency supplies if we are ever stranded in our home.

The plans for the park look to be very family friendly and are designed to reduce the drug activity.

The pace of the work make me fear it may not be done in my lifetime.

The new drainage looks to be working under it's first heavy test.

The all-important golf course is open - without which the water would have just naturally drained into Shockoe Valley....

Out Of Town Guests? Yep - That Means Edo's Squid!

2008-08-25T12:15:00.001-04:00

My dad and step-mom live out in Portland, OR, so their annual visits to see Finn are a bit of a big deal. We try to have one big dinner out for each visit and they have been pleased with the results each time. One year it was Can-Can, and except for a bit of a service flub, the dinner was great. Another year it was just across the street at Lamani**, the most amazing fish eatery in Richmond, it was a shame they were so short lived and their replacements, Durum and Wheezies, have really not lived up to the former glory (that's just based on hearsay as we have been to neither the equally short-lived Durum or Wheezies Kitchen).

So, with the success of the earlier dinners in mind, I decided to go with a sure thing and go with the place that tops nearly every list as the place to take out of town guests - Edo's Squid. I'm not sure why but for some reason I thought they only took reservations for larger parties - I was wrong. Might've been their connection to Mama 'Zu that made me think that but they will take reservations for any size party, just call early as they do tend to fill up... Actually, it worked out well as we weren't looking for a prime time reservation but rather an early one at 5:30. Another little bit of new info I learned is that they do continuous service from lunch through dinner. That's a nice piece of info as I am often out and about in the middle of the afternoon and it is hard to find good (non-chain) places to grab a bite.

Seated at a nice corner table we looked over the menu and the specials board. A round of appetizers to share seemed in order. The first choice was obvious - Fried Squid. A plate heaped with pieces of golden brown, crispy squid parts. This was actually the first time we had the calamari there as they were out whenever we visit. Basically, it was perfect. Tender not rubbery, just enough breading and seasoning. Crispy and moist, not greasy. It didn't come with any sauce (not sure if that was intentional or an oversight) but, frankly, it didn't need any. Finn went to town on these, tentacles and all. Given his druthers he may eaten a whole plate of the little tasties.

To go with that we ordered a plate of the Conch Insalata. Not really sure what I was expecting but it was an interesting looking plate. Slices of conch marinated in oil, vinegar and garlic with capers and other little bits. The conch was tender and tasty, the oil and vinegar well balanced. Given my druthers I could have eaten a whole plate of that myself. It was perfect.

We ordered an array of items to share for dinner. A plate of Veal Marsala (textbook perfect), Penne w/Meat Sauce (excellent), Spaghetti w/White Clam as well as one special - Soft Shell Crabs.

The pasta with clams were excellent. Rich with flavour from the garlic and wine, added texture and taste from pine nuts. It restored my faith in white clam sauce. Of course, and this is not a fair comparison, the last time I had white clam sauce was at Joe's Inn and it was a bit disappointing.

The crabs were a huge hit. Crustaceans, from clams to dungeness, are a big deal in Oregon but my parents had never had softshell crabs. When the plate came out the waitress apologized as they were a bit smaller than usual and offered to take a bit off the bill, we asked if we could have an extra (for a little more) and they happily complied. The fresh softshells were juicy and tasty. A real treat.

Finn had his first real restaurant accident part way through dinner. Sloshed about half his water into his lap. I got a bar towel from a waitress and cleaned the water under the table. Did give me a chance to observe how clean they keep the restaurant, even in the corners under the table. (I'm pretty sure the waitress was happy I cleaned it up rather than expecting her to crawl under the table to do it - does make me remember how many times I had customers expect me to clean up things like that and then leave lousy tips - bastards...) As clean as it was they do go on my list of bad bathrooms. I am not sure if a larger person would be able to turn around in the men's room... Fan architecture at it's best. No idea how they could've made it better though.

Dessert was Tiramisu. Really good and big enough to share.

Don't expect fawning service here and didn't get it. What we did get was all the basics and whatever was needed. Everything was done, water glasses filled, plates cleared. They handled the soft shell crab issue very well (we would never have known they were smaller and it was so nice they said something). People may mistake it for brusque, or even rude (like the mis-perception at Mama 'Zu), but these people are very busy and are not slackers.

It's obvious why this place is the topper for so many lists to take people visiting RVA. I know it's at the top of ours.

**Notes on Lemani. It was a great place, just across the street from Can-Can. They served an array of fresh fish from all over the world - many of them served whole for 2. Nearly all the fish were prepared the same simple way - with olive oil, lemon, sea salt and a little pepper. Sides were huge and excellent. My understanding is they were a victim of rising air freight prices and couldn't maintain the number of fish offerings without a catastrophic price increase. Very sad. We miss them.

Quick Hits - Crunchy Beans, Can-Can & Cats

2008-08-21T13:05:00.000-04:00

Food trends come and go. Sometimes they start out great but get overdone - balsamic vinegar. Sometimes they are poorly thought out - nouvelle cuisine (think overpriced tapas). Sometimes they end up wiping out an entire species - Orange Roughy & Chilean Sea Bass. And sometimes they don't make a lot of sense - crunchy beans. After reading that I was pretty convinced that it was just an error that either the waiter didn't want to fix or was afraid the chef would yell at him. Or at least I did until Saturday...

We had started out the evening at a beer bash thrown by some friends featuring a number of home made beers. I'm actually not a big fan of beer but they had bottled a raspberry wheat beer that was really quite tasty. Since Finn was in tow we had arrived at the very beginning of the party and as it started to fill up we said our goodbye's before it got too crazy. Feeling a bit peckish, and since it was close by, we made the quick hop over to Can-Can.

For quite some time we've been a fan of their scallop appetizer dishes. Almost always on their seasonally changing menu they change the dish often enough so we have yet to get tired of it. Their latest menu, however, was a bit different. Instead of being pan seared they were roasted. Hrmm. I find it relatively easy to pan sear something to the proper temp but I think I would find roasting a scallop without having it raw or a piece of rubber a bit of a challenge. Having faith in the chef there I ordered.

The scallop had been roasted 'au poivre', just enough pepper to add flavour and at the right grind so it wasn't crunchy or just dust. They were cooked perfectly and the difference in flavour and texture was a nice change from the ubiquitous sear everyone else does. The bacon, potato, and corn broth were tasty until I bit down on the English Peas. Firm would be polite. I know, English Peas are supposed to be firmer than Sweet Peas but these took effort to bite down on and were dry inside. Ugh. Firm and crunchy veg are good, firm and crunchy beans and peas - not so much. I enjoyed the rest of the dish so I didn't whine or even really ask and I would order it again. It did make me wonder if we were witnessing a trend starting it's march through RVA. Not quite sure how I feel about it. Guess we'll have to wait and see if it was a cooking aberration or if we'll have crunchiness showing up all over town.

The rest of the meal was great. I really loved the roasted red snapper and the fact that they have carafes of good wine. With M in her present condition I don't always want a full bottle to myself and a 1/2 carafe is perfect. The service was great.

The full moon on Saturday (or there abouts) helped make for good cat catching. Managed to catch four cats, actually four kittens - two sets of siblings. Unfortunately one of the kittens was too young to be fixed but at least he got a good check up. The score, if you keeping count...

5 female/5 males - Trapped Fixed and Released
1 kitten - Too Young - Medically Checked & Released
1 male - Not Healthy or Injured - Euthanized
1 female - Didn't Learn Lesson & Trapped Again
1 female - Didn't Survive Procedure

Next month will be round #6!

Barely Brunch - Helen's

2008-08-18T10:33:00.001-04:00

Back in the 90's I used to go to Helen's as often as I could. I was a huge fan of their rack of lamb and knew I could always have my foie gras cravings satisfied. As the restaurant scene in Richmond became more varied Helen's started falling off my dance card. The last night we ate there was the night of my wife's mother's funeral just after Thanksgiving, 2001. We had a large group of us in their back room late on a cold and nasty night. The food and service was excellent. Right or wrong we didn't go back. The dinner that night had became part of Susan's death ritual and some wounds take time to heal.

Fast forward to August, 2008. RVA Foodie and I were trading emails about going out to our monthly brunch. Several names were thrown back and forth until he mentioned Helen's. I wasn't even aware they did brunch. Perhaps it was time to go back. So, Sunday morning we treked off to Helen's (they do not do Saturday brunch).

With both Finn and Jasper in tow we decided to take the back room so we could relax in case Chef Andy was out and about. The back room is a nice place to have a private dinner with a group, dark and intimate. In the morning light the worn dark purple paint with gold trim seems a bit garish. The table cloths were quite possibly the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Red plastic adorned with fruit. The coverings were actually able to take my hangover up a notch or two...

The menu was pretty basic, I actually thought it a bit short until it was discovered that I had been given only half a menu. There was also some problems with ordering. When we were told items we ordered were not available the waitress mumbled something about some upcoming changes to the menu but wasn't very clear about what was going to happen. Back in the day when restaurant menus had to be ordered from a professional printer one could understand things being still on the menu but no longer available. With todays menus being printed off a computer (or at Helen's typed and photocopied) it's hard to understand why things are not kept up to date.

Mrs RVA Foodie decided to start with the Soup Du Jour. Sweet Corn with Potato & Bacon. The bowl was huge. She said the soup was a bit sweet but she seemed to enjoy. Mr Foodie took a bite trying to avoid the bacon but it turned out the red bits were actually red potato and bacon was infused throughout. The comments on the soup, however, were positive and may have been the best dish of the meal.

Finn had the Blueberry Pancakes. He ate them.

Mrs Foodie had the Quiche Du Jour while Mr Foodie had the Veggie Omelette. The quiche got good feedback but there was some speculation that the crust may not have been made in-house. Mr Foodie ate the omelette but I think he found it a bit dull and would have liked it with some more interesting (read local or unusual) ingredients.

Both M and I had the Sausage Gravy & Biscuit. It was pretty disappointing. The gravy was tepid and very bland. The biscuit had the texture of having been refrigerated and then allowed to sit out on a counter (cold interior, tough slightly stale exterior). The dish comes with eggs. My two fried eggs were rubbery.

Plate presentation was non-existent throughout. No garnishes or real thought as to how the plate looked. The only plate that had any real garnish was the soup and that was a thoughtless clump in the center of thick cut green onions. While good plate presentation doesn't ensure that a dish is good, poor presentation can be an indicator of a kitchen not making an effort.

Service was barely minimal. I expect dishes to 'auctioned' off at Denny's but not Helen's. A lot of it also had to do with us being in the back room. I think they kept forgetting we were there.

I'm curious to see what changes they have in store in and if it is a complete overhaul or just a rethinking of brunch. Since the brunch was so haphazard I'm not sure if I want to see what has become of their dinner service. Also, it is hard to not look at the dishes with a critical eye due to the multiple functionality of their sinks. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye on their Facebook page and see what happens....

Starbucks Nazi - No Coffee For You!

2008-08-15T12:20:00.000-04:00

OK, I'll admit it. As a customer I can be, at times, acerbic. I will not step meekly to the left and accept whatever is thrown at me. If I'm going to let you swipe my Amex card I have certain expectations and if they are not fulfilled... well...

Now, while my expectations are high, they are not unattainable. Just because you have tuna, salmon, and rice on the menu does not mean I can order a sushi plate. It's OK to ask for something off the dinner menu at lunch but when they say 'no' accept it and move on. It's not OK to claim a non-existent food allergy to coerce a chef to leave something off that you simply don't like. I have an aversion to green peppers. If they are in there I can't taste anything else. I've had chefs decline to change the dish for me, whether for the dishes integrity or because it has been prepped already doesn't really matter, but they've then come up with an alternative for me. That's taking care of your customers.

Integrity of the dish. Hmmm. Now that's an interesting concept. A lot of chefs put a lot of thought and energy into creating a dish and some just don't feel comfortable in sending it out altered as it is no longer their vision. You know what? That's OK. As long as they are still able to give people with intense dislikes or food allergies alternatives, their vision is not compromised.

But how far its to far when trying to maintain this integrity?

I know some people take there coffee very seriously. The recent blow up heard up and down the Atlantic seaboard that started here shows the extremes some go to over their preferred cup of joe. Part of this could be the coffee houses creating a chef-like mystique around their baristas in lieu of better pay or benefits instead of what they really are: bartenders without the big tippers. Don't get me wrong, their job is tough. I can, and have, bartended but I don't think I could do the barista thing. Too many variables and I would end up over-caffeinating the nervous and fattening the dieters. But chefs they are not.

Many of the coffees served today have been adulterated to the point where to claim some sort of taste integrity is ludicrous. Can you still tell that it was made with hand picked African beans then brewed with triple filtered water at the perfect temperature after you have added a shot of over sugared syrup and topped it with whipped cream? Probably not.

So, as I started, I can be a bit acerbic when I can't get what I want. My wife, however, isn't. She is, however, pregnant. As a coffee lover this is a little rough on her. Even decaf has a bit of caffeine so she avoids it except for special treats. Like people with food allergies you would think Starbucks would try to accommodate their pregnant patrons by making a frappachino with a shot of decaf rather than regular... You would be wrong. But I should let my wife tell the story.... For that, go here.

It strikes me as bit odd that a company, once focused on world domination but now suffering from a contraction, would try to retain as many customers as possible. I guess, here, I am wrong.

Restaurants In Decline - La Siesta

2008-08-14T12:45:00.002-04:00

There's been a lot of buzz lately about best and worst lists with the arrival of the new Richmond Magazine's Best & Worst list. Some people agreed with the winners while others groused about ballot stuffing by business owners looking for a free plug and an award to put up on the wall. Regardless of the why there are some perennial winners out there that must have been doing something right. According to La Siesta's website they won the award for 10 years straight. Of course the website hasn't been updated since 2003 and the information is hopelessly out of date on the menu, prices, and hours. But, still, they won for 10 years so they must be pretty good....

The outside must have once been quite grand for a Mexican restaurant. Patios with low walls, a rather large cactus garden, and Mexican themed statues all around. Now you can feel the decay as you walk towards the restaurant. Statues bleached and peeling paint with some leaning at precarious angles where the soil has eroded from underneath. Cigarette barrels with rotting wood. The cactus garden not tended possibly since they last updated the website.

I was a little surprised the lady at the desk greeted us without a trace of an accent and that a number of the waitresses were 'gringos'. It reminded me a bit of Joy Garden, a once fine ethnic establishment that is now barely adequate and in desperate need of a thorough cleaning. An ethnic restaurant doesn't have to have a staff of the same ethnicity nor does having one make them good or authentic but I can't help but feel that there is sometimes a correlation.

We were immediately seated and I couldn't help but notice the number of rooms not in use. Can't recall ever having been to Casa Grande when it wasn't moderately busy but, as it was a Wednesday, maybe it was just a slow night. To started I ordered a Marguerita Espesciale. It was your basic top shelf marguerita, not too bad. I opted for the regular size rather than the 46 ounce one as I wanted to be able to walk out under my own power...

Chips and salsa came out quickly. The chips were ok but a tad stale. The salsa was interesting. It had a deep, rich colour and a very earthy flavour. We speculated that it might have a bit of mole in it but weren't sure. My taste buds are still a bit scrambled after the dental surgery last week and M's pregnancy hormones are scrambling hers as well. It didn't strike me as outstanding but I really liked it for being different than the usual fare at Casa or Mexico which are a bit cookie cutter. The food came moderately quick but not as fast as some Mexican places in town. We dug in.

Finn had the cheese quesadilla. It really wasn't your normal quesadilla. It was more of a soft wrap taco as it hadn't really been grilled. The dish also reflected the creeping American influence that could be found on several spots on the menu. It was served with fries.

M selected the Chicken Chimichanga. Visually it was a stand out, especially when compared to some of the other places in town. Too often Mexican food is slopped onto the plate without a whole lot of thought, not even to what is hot and what is cold. This was constructed with thought to colour and presentation. To top that off M really liked it.

I went out on a limb and had the Shrimp & Scallop Quesadilla. It wasn't quite what I expected. Like Finn's dish it hadn't been grilled so it was more of a soft taco with grilled shrimp and bay scallops with sauteed onions (I had them leave off the peppers). There also wasn't any cheese inside to hold the ingredients together (there was a couple puny shavings of Monteray Jack on top of the lettuce...) so it kind of fell apart on me. The seafood didn't taste strong or fishy and whole dish wasn't bad but I thought it could have been better. Casa Grande has a shrimp dish (I think a quesadilla) that will satisfy your shrimp craving for at least a week....

The highlight of the plate were the refried beans. They hadn't been crushed to a paste and still had pieces resembling beans. The menu stated that they didn't use lard or animal products in any of the veggie dishes (like the refried beans) so veg-heads won't have their diets undermined. The lowlight was the rice. Frankly, had better at my elementary school cafeteria in Oregon (actually, since the cook was Mexican the rice we had there was pretty good...). My guess is the rice here was prepackaged.

As sometimes happens with restaurants as they age they seem to be getting a little lazy and are using prepackaged food rather than making it all in house. On M's plate it was the tri-colour strips of fried tortilla while on mine it was the cream sauce for the seafood with unidentifiable herbs that had been fresh poured from a bottle. That and the 'early bird' specials are signs of a restaurant on the wane. I've worked at a couple of restaurants that were at this stage. The staff all talks about the glory days as you wait for the owners to give up.

This place also hit's my growing bad bathroom list. This one smelled. Basically of old, stale urine. Not very appetizing.

Eating there you can see a few vestiges of what made this place worthy of the Best & Worst list. In a couple of ways I actually liked it because it wasn't like all the other Mexican places in town that all taste strangely like the food came from the same kitchen. I probably wouldn't drive all the way to Midlothian from where we live in the Northside to eat there but if I happened to be nearby I might stop in.

If I could only find a really good taco I would be happy. Los Baez in Salem, OR, made the best I ever had (although time and memory may have made it into something it is not). Their's was made with shredded beef, not ground, fresh taco shell, just the right amount of ingredients so you didn't spill pieces everywhere and the hot and cold remained hot and cold. Good stuff.

Vicodin Trumps World's Worst Pizza Burn

2008-08-07T10:55:00.001-04:00

Have you ever bit into a really hot piece of pizza? You know, the kind of hot where the molten cheese cauterizes a part of your mouth leaving you with a painful hyper-sensitive spot for days to come. Well, I subjected myself to this fun little type of injury on purpose.

Twenty-five years of smoking (I quit 4 years ago), fast living, the 80's, and basic rather than intensive dental care on my part had taken their toll. Constantly bleeding gums and loose teeth were the result and my personal phobia of people with bad teeth combined to freak me out. My dentist decided I needed a different level of dental care and sent me off to a specialist.

The specialist subjected me to a fun little procedure called 'scaling'. Basically an intense cleaning below the gum line. Not a whole lot of fun and, frankly, a bit messy. After several of these cleanings my new dentist informed me that he wanted to preform an additional procedure on me. His new plan was to cut off my gums (!), clean the roots of my teeth and then sew the gums back on. Pardon? The description of this procedure scared the shit out of me and then, to add insult, I was told that my first rate insurance wouldn't cover it completely leaving me owing over $1500.

My dentist seemed a bit shocked when I said 'no' to his procedure and that I thought there had to be a better, less invasive, way. After a bit of waffling he admitted that there was another way but it would take a lot of work on my part. So, for the last 18 months I have had cleanings every 3 months and have overhauled my daily dental care regime. Flossing (everyday) followed by Listerine and then brushing. Yep, that's the 'hard work' I had to do to avoid what I considered to be a really unpleasant procedure.

Earlier this year my dentist was almost ready to declare the infection below my gum line gone. Almost. The years of smoking had caused my gums to recede in places leaving one of my teeth in danger. He recommended a new procedure to help save the tooth (this time a procedure that my insurance would cover at 100%). His plan was to harvest some tissue from the roof of my mouth and graft the tissue onto the gum line of the endangered tooth. I steeled myself for what he described as 'the world's worst pizza burn' and sat down yesterday in the chair for the work to be done.

Physically the grafting didn't really hurt at all (unless you count being subjected to a radio station that insisted on playing too much Daughtry and Nickelback...) thanks to a lot of pain killing injections. Even those didn't hurt thanks to a numbing swab done prior to the needles. Mentally the worst part was being aware of someone cutting a piece of you off. That took way too long although I'm sure it was done much quicker than I perceived it. An hour and a half later, slightly puffy and feeling abused, it was all over.

The rest of the day is a little fuzzy. The joys of Vicodin (ohh, look - tracers!) supplemented by massive amounts of Advil left me phasing in and out of awareness. Reading was out of the question but TV has been interesting as the shows have all blurred together (why were the Project Runway contestants cutting dogs hair?...). Having never taken Vicodin before I can understand it's popularity. The dreaded 'pizza burn' has yet to materialize, not even a dull ache. Hopefully that will continue today as I wean myself off all the pharma.

The worst part? Other than being able to feel the stitches in my mouths is the food. Funny how much you crave bread or something crunchy when all you can have is soup, pudding, and mashed potato. Today I'm hoping to send M over to deLux or LuLu's to get me a nice bowl of mac-n-cheese. I feel the need for something a bit more substantial.

Lessons for the day? I won't preach about the dangers of smoking. I still miss it and probably wouldn't have quit if Finn hadn't some along. The receding gum thing caught me off guard. Hopefully that's the my only take away from tobacco. Floss! Might've been able to avoid all this if I had. Question your doctor! I'm hesitant to say my dentist recommended the first procedure for monetary reasons. More than likely he was just looking for a quick fix thinking I wouldn't be willing to make the effort. The sad part of that is the 'quick fix' is a big part of our culture here and I am not sure that is a good way to deal with our health issues.

Well, time for me to return to my fog and take another Vicodin... Pretty colours...

The Neighbours & The Dead Body - Part 3 - The Fallout (House For Sale!)

2008-08-04T10:55:00.001-04:00

It's been several months since the unnoticed dead body in the illegal rooming house across the street caused a bit of an uproar in our 'hood. Sadly, there seems to be no interest in uncovering the events that lead to the death. At first I thought it might be due to his colour but I suspect it has more to do with his socio-economic status and involvement with drug dealers. Who cares about another dead junkie? Somewhat of a sad indictment on the police, the media, and us, the community, when we can judge some people to be of less value. His suspicious death will probably only be of value if someone higher up the 'food chain' of drug dealing can be connected. Otherwise it may very well languish and be forgotten.

The whole incident did get the house onto the city's radar. A very determined housing inspector finally got access to go inside the house about a month ago. Sitting on my side porch enjoying a martini I was able to witness the slumlord being taken to task for multiple violations on the outside of the house with (I'm guessing - due to the nearly two hours they spent inside) an equal number of problems inside. I was a bit dismayed when I heard the owner tell the inspector 'thanks for going easy on me' which made me wonder what he might be getting away with.

The days passed. No work was done on the house. Drug dealers and 'working ladies' busy as ever. Looked like nothing was going to change. That is... until I noticed something strange one afternoon last week. A very determined looking lady (you know the type - bluetooth earpiece affixed to her head...) was crawling all over the property with a couple of men taking measurements.... Interesting.

Seems the city had denied their application to operate legally as a rooming house. They could operate as a rental property if they made some major renovations but now that the city has the owners on their watch list it they are inspecting all their other properties as well so it looks like they are opting to divest. May be a hard sale, unless they let it go for a song, as they've made to many half-assed repairs (many without permits or inspections) and not thought things out (like replacing the plaster with drywall but not bothering to upgrade the electrical while the walls were down). House flipping is still happening in our neighbourhood so we're hoping somebody sees the value in a house with 6 fireplaces in an up and coming area.

The city is allowing people to live there in the meantime, under a few conditions. They have to reduce the number of people to five (we think there may have been as many as 10 people living there) and one room on each floor has to be opened and converted into a common area. They also have to keep the front door unlocked so if the police want to enter they can. A couple of the drug dealers, thinking this bad for business, have since moved out.

Now we're waiting for the 'For Sale' sign to go up. Hopefully it won't be on the market too long. I can handle construction traffic. It's junkies to lazy to get out of their cars sitting in front honking their horns that get on my nerves.

Finally, under the heading of 'be careful what you wish for', there's the feral felines. The cat colony has gotten as large as it has due to their feeding of the cats. I put out a little bit of food a couple of times a week (mainly for a couple of orphaned kittens living in our bushes) but am not sure if I want to put out food every day or for the whole population. There is almost always three or four cats on their front porch and I have never been able to trap any of those. I seem to just get the stragglers living on the edges of the colony. When the house sells or when the boarders are forced to leave the cat colony is going to be in for a bit of a shock. Hopefully, with all the cats I've had fixed, the population is sustainable. Just have to wait and see.

Oddly, we just had a knock on our door (M is at home today). A police officer and someone from the RRHA (Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority) asking if someone called the police... M said no and they went on to the next house. She had the impression they were checking out the interior of our house. Fishing trip for other rooming houses in our 'hood? Perhaps, I just don't know why someone from the RRHA would be with out on a random police call. Anyone else have a better idea?

Cafe Rustica - Chef Andy Howell Hates Kids & Bloggers

2008-08-01T09:34:00.003-04:00

Where to start.... Hmmm. How about with the chef's words himself.

Dear Bookstore Piet person- Since when does a “wish list” become “intolerable behavior?” You sound a little defensive of your well behaved child...the one that took the liberty (with parents okay) of dancing in the isle of my restaurant one night (you’ve written about it...go ahead, take a stab). While it was a darling display for you, it’s not a ritual that we would allow adults to engage in, and as a frequent diner in the city, not something that I want to put up with when I’m paying for a meal. Time to get over your self-important blog and realize that not everyone enjoys your kid. There are plenty of places that cater to the needs of youngsters and there are plenty of places where people go to get away from youngsters...you really need to learn the difference.

--
Chef Andy

Let's start with professionalism. I'm also a small business owner and while I've been tempted to write about a few of my more 'special' customers I would never do such a thing. Even if the person in question never read the item other potential customers might and make decisions based on my attitude towards my current clientele. From someone, like Chef Andy, who is in the business of hospitality it's very telling.

Finn's behavior... He sat through the entire dinner. He did not scream or make other noises. He did not throw food or other items. During dessert he started getting restless and stood at the end of the table. An older single gentleman eating at the bar started making funny faces for him so Finn did a little jig for him and we allowed it as it was at the gentleman's request and there were no other tables close by. He took off and headed for the kitchen (where you laughed and offered to put him to work as I took him away) at which time I placed him in a seat at the bar while I closed the tab. Both incidents lasted, what, a minute or two before we stepped in? I've seen adults more disruptive and much louder after a couple of glasses of wine. We're aware he is 3 and has an expiration. When he starts getting restless we take into account other diners and wrap things up. If you read my blog I am quick to throw Finn under the bus if he does misbehave.

Oh, and if he was so disruptive why would both your waitresses comment on how well behaved he was?

There's also been a couple of interesting comments floating about out there. One by someone who claims to have been out twice and seen us. The person claims Finn was throwing things and carrying on and such. Had that happened I would have written about it as well as about me removing Finn from the restaurant. As it has never happened the person is trying to insert him/herself into the debate by being a bit 'creative'.... Another claims I've let him sleep on the floor or wherever. For the record (and in the blog) he's fallen asleep twice, in booths as toddlers are wont to do.

Self Important Bloggers vs Self Important Chefs - I write this blog for my friends and family. Sure I have a number of readers beyond that circle but am I trying to promote myself? No. My business? No (if I was I'm doing a really bad job of it as it is not mentioned very often except in very general terms). Do bloggers have any power? Not really but they do tend to be very chatty people and will share slights and insults. In a contracting economy and people being more careful about discretionary spending that may be enough to keep a few people away from your doors. I know we won't be back.

Lemming Parade - Part 2 - The Black Sheep

2008-07-30T10:30:00.002-04:00

Finn survived his second day of school. Seems he did a slightly better job of listening and participating than the first day and the frustrated student teacher has finally realized he is 3 and just needs to be indoctrinated. M picked him up from school and dropped him off for the afternoon at the store where he read VERY quietly for the whole afternoon. Later that evening, though, we faced a dilemma - what to eat for dinner? Seemed we really didn't have anything to eat at the house and neither of us really felt like shopping for groceries.

After a bit of debate we decided to hit The Black Sheep - the newest and quite possibly most talked about restaurant in town(I can't possibly link to all the write ups so go here where they are all aggregated). The question would be - Is It Worth The Hype? We decided to take the scenic route there, turning the wrong way on Marshall (it's west of Belvediere not east....) but finally arrived around 8. For a hot, humid and very muggy Tuesday in Richmond it was packed. Literally. Not a table was to be had. To top it off the ac had failed and it was nearly the same temperature inside as out. Since it's such a tiny place, there is no bar, we were basically left standing in the middle of the restaurant. This was complicated by Finn's condition from a long day...
It does bring up an interesting point. If your lingering over coffee (which I really couldn't understand drinking a hot beverage in that heat) do you cut your conversation short so that people waiting (4 parties) can sit and eat. I really tried not to stare at them but somehow kept on making eye contact with them. We did do what I thought was the right thing (after waiting ~25 minutes) and let the two two-tops have the vacated tables that were pushed together leaving us waiting for a couple of more minutes for a booth which was more appropriate for us.

Finally seated we looked over the menus. The wine list (they do not serve hard alcohol) is short but well thought out for the menu. In the heat of the dining room I couldn't handle a red and really wanted something more refreshing. I spotted the Original Sin Hard Cider and ordered that. Turned out to be a nice and cool choice for the heat. During dinner I wanted something non-alcoholic and had noticed they had quite a variety of bottled sodas. Keeping with their down home theme of the menu they had sodas that you wouldn't find at Ukrop's but rather at a general store in the country. Nehi's and spicy giner ales. Bottled Coke. I selected something called a Sundrop. M said she used to drink it as a child when visiting her family down in Franklin. It was a bit like 7-Up with a bit of OJ and was actually made with real sugar as opposed to high fructose corn syrup. It was quite enjoyable but be careful. While the average soda is usually in the 120 calorie range this one packs a whopping 190!

The menu features sandwiches and comfort food favourites like stroganoff and chicken and dumplings. The entrees each come with a side. When we ordered we kept on coming up against things that they were out of. Just a suggestion... The servers knew they were out of things as we ordered. Tell people up front so you don't have to linger while they select something else. The place was packed and the waitresses were all very busy but they seemed to be spinning their wheels quite a bit and have been working more efficiently.

M selected a basic salad feeling it was too hot to order anything else. Large and green it was tossed in a green goddess type dressing. She liked it but it didn't really stand out except as very reasonably priced.

I ordered the Pork Cutlet. Pounded flat, breaded and served with VA ham and melted swiss over a bed of egg noodles with peas and sliced carrots. It was nearly to hot to enjoy but enjoy I did. The pork kept it's crispiness even with a little sauce on the plate. The ham added a little saltiness but not too much (I'm usually not a fan of the salt lick that is called Virginia Ham). The noodles light and delicate. My only complaint would be there were a couple of scorches on the edges of the cutlet giving me a couple of burnt bites. Not bad enough to send back but they may want to work on quality control a bit. With this dish I had a side of the broccoli salad. Served cold and tossed in a spicy oil. Nice contrast with the pork (really wanted to try their deviled eggs but it was not to be).

After the entrees we decided to stay for dessert. M wanted the peanut butter pie but once again they were out of an item. She opted for the upside down pinapple cake. Dripping with juices she made short order of that. I had the profiterole with almonds and honey. Not sure what I was expecting but it wasn't this. Think a puff pastry cut in half, stuffed with ice cream and topped with sliced almonds and swimming in honey. It was huge and I really needed a knife. It was good but a little too cloyingly sweet to finish. Recommend this one to share (and don't forget to get a knife...). Finn had the butterscotch haystack. These were very nice (pretzels and peanut candy coated in butterscotch) and Finn was very protective of his little take away bag.

We spoke with one of the owners as we were leaving. Seems they want to build a back deck for more tables once their 'cash flow improves'. I couldn't imagine there being a cash flow problem based on how busy they were but she said that while they were getting busier not every night was this packed. Here's to hoping the cash flow does improve. The food was good, the service friendly, and while there are still a couple of kinks I can't think of many places that I can feed us all that well for under $50 (including tip).

Think I'll have to try breakfast there sometime. RVA Foodie says the coffee is good!

Kinda, Sorta OK - Home Team Grill

2008-07-29T11:20:00.004-04:00

Monday was a bit of a red letter day - Finn's first day of school. Yes, I know it's July, school shouldn't be starting quite yet. Actually it's just a summer school program but, to me, it's still school. Since Finn hasn't been in daycare or other structured setting the school had recommended that he take a couple of their summer programs to start the acclimation process. So, after reviewing the offerings, we signed him up for two programs. This week is Foods of the World - just what a budding foodie needs - cooking for 3-5 year-olds.

I picked him up at noon and everything seemed to have gone well (we found out later that he was more interested in doing his own thing rather than what the rest of the group and one of the student teachers may now be rethinking her career choice...) and decided to take him out for a treat. That left me in a bit of a dilemma. Where to go? Can-Can is his fav but they don't make gougeres at lunch and I really didn't want a fussy toddler on my hands. After a little thought I decided upon Home Team Grill - burger, fries, and possibly ice cream. So, off we went. There was a bit of a problem when we arrived....
I thought he might have woken up when we got inside but he climbed into the booth and...
I figured that he wouldn't sleep but too long so I ran out to my car, got my computer, and settled in for a little internet browsing (they have free wifi) and computer gaming with my bevvies and munchies while Finn slept.

The menu was what one would expect of a sports bar. Lots of fried food, sandwiches, and salads that may have more calories and fat than you should consume in a day. Frankly, it wa what I had a hankering for. I spotted their much touted (on the menu anyway) potato skins and ordered a plate to go with my G&T.

The drink arrived first and was a tad weak. Is that a bad thing? Not here. While we weren't there for happy hour the happy hour prices are rock bottom ($2 highballs 4-6/$3 7-9). If your planning a long drinking session or are there to watch a 3-hour game you don't want to be falling out of your chair too quickly.

While waiting for the app I looked over the space. Lot's of big screen TV's, brick, sports stuff and a really cool vaulted ceiling with exposed beams. The snob in me bemoaned the fact that this wasn't a more upscale restaurant in this space but not everyone can be Cafe Rustica or Verbena and Home Team Grill probably does more business than the others combined. This place joins my list of restaurants with bad bathroom designs. Cafe Rustica has ceilings for midgets in theirs, Hard Shell has the poorly placed air dryers and HTG has an oddly placed urinal that leaves you horribly exposed if someone opens the door...

The skins arrived and.... Meh. Their uniform shape makes me think frozen. Too much potato left on the skin, fried to a complete dryness, green onions cut too big and from the root rather than the stalk. Each bite overpowered by the flavour of fried chicken. Tasted like they needed to change the oil. The bacon, however, was quite good.

Finn started to wake up and was not a happy camper. With the taste of chicken flavoured potato skins still lingering I decided it was time to go. Finn, fussy as he was, would have none of it, he wanted his promised burger and fries. So we stayed. The waitress, very nice and constantly trying very hard to upsell, was helpful in getting the TV above us changed to a cartoon channel for Finn. She must have hit the wrong button because she ended up changing about half the TV's in the place but as there really wasn't anyone there nobody minded. This did confuse me a bit later when I looked up and started to wonder why they were advertising for Valtrex on Nickelodeon but it turned out they had changed all the other TV's back.
To go with Finn's burger and fries I decided to order a sandwich, The Seattle Mariner. Kind of a hybrid of a Sailor and a Reuben. When the plate was put down in front of me I tried one of the fries first.... Ugh. Instead of crispy they were leathery. I realized they had two problems with the oil back there. Not only was it old and contaminated with too many lingering flavours the temperature was set too low. This meant the fries (and the skins) spent way too long in the oil trying to cook. One would think that if your going to specialize in fried foods you would have a good fry cook. Finn ate most of his fries (hey, he's 3) but not with his usual gusto.

The sandwich was... really good. The knockwurst, the corned beef, the swiss. Greasy in a very tasty way. I had asked for no saurkraut (just not a fan) and they don't put 1000 Island on it so it was missing a little something. I asked for some brown mustard. The waitress at first said they didn't have any but decided to go check. They did and the sandwich was complete. It wasn't as good as some other places, Boychick's comes to mind, but it was satisfying. Of course it could just be because I love brown mustard so much.... Still, it was good.

While the problems with the fried foods were a little disturbing for a sports bar they seem to be able to cook some things and I bet they would taste even better after a lot of alcohol consumption. The drinks are cheep and the waitresses are friendly (the managers need to be careful about the playful banter they engage in or they may be faced with a sexual harassment suit by a disgruntled employee...). If your looking for basic bar grub and a place to hang out with your friends (at someplace other than a national chain) this might be a good choice.

******************

Addendum - Got some off-the-record info from current and former employees.... The theme of what I'm hearing is that there are some real consistency issues with the food. So much so that the same dish may not resemble the same dish from previous visits. I guess at the very least it is a place to get lots of cheap drinks.

Misleading Restaurant Names - Rowland Fine Dining

2008-07-25T11:35:00.002-04:00

When a restaurant goes to the lengths to include the words 'Fine Dining' in their name one tends to approach with a few expectations. Lemaire, The Dining Room At The Berkley, or even the now-defunct Le Petite France comes to mind. With that in mind I was a bit surprised when the RVA Foodies invited us to join them for brunch at Rowlands. Mr Foodie typically eschews stuffiness (often present in 'fine dining') so I was intrigued.

In anticipation of the visit I decided to visit their website to find out what to expect. Turned out it didn't help. They trumpeted the fact that they were now open on Sundays but neglected to list their hours as well as any semblance of a brunch menu. Bother. The dinner menu gave a few clues but you never really know how they will translate their dinner vision to brunch.

We arrived at Foodies house and hoofed it across the foot bridge over the downtown expressway. Stepping into the restaurant we were a little dismayed to see the place empty even though it was already after 11. Did their lack of info on the website hurt or was their something everyone else knew that we didn't? After a bit of table jumping (due to pregnant belly and baby carrier) we settled in and looked at the menu.

The usual suspects were missing. No Eggs Benedict or variations there of. Actually only two egg dishes on the whole menu (Frittata Du Jour and a Egg & Proscuitto Sandwich). The bulk of the menu was pancakes, waffles, and the like with the addition of a number of savory items most likely inspired by their dinner menu. Additionally they had a couple of specials - while no one ordered it the chocolate crepes sounded really good. Other items, like the fish, sound a little like leftovers from the night before. The waiter said they had a couple of pieces of this and a couple of that and you could select one of several cooking methods. I am sure it was all fresh but left over fish leaves me a bit wary.

Once settled we ordered coffees and drinks. Our waiter was... well, distracted. Frankly I thought he might actually still be a little drunk from the night before. His service was fine, albeit at a very slow pace, but he mumbled a lot and his sentence structure could be described as meandering. Oddly, both M and RVA Foodie recognized him from the Village Cafe although they seemed to think he had lost a lot of weight.

After quite a pause the drinks started arriving. First my mojito. It was listed on the menu but I think the waiter (who was doubling as bartender) had not made one before thus causing the initial delay. It was actually pretty good, RVA Foodie was neutral thinking it too sweet. Much better than the pre-muddled mess with sweet and sour that Jack is mixing at his new gig at Havana 59 (not his fault, IVV and I declared them bad prior to his starting there). It did have an odd flavour that I couldn't quite place. Kind of like a hint of papaya or mango. Regardless, it was tasty.

As we were sipping our drinks and stirring coffees Virginia (one of the owners and resident baker/dessert maker) brought out a plate of mini muffins for the table. It was like having a plate of muffin tops! They were delicious. While not on the menu they really should be (ok, free is good but having a cup a coffee and a basket of those while reading the paper at one of their outdoor tables....). Finn probably could have eaten the whole plate had we let him.

The menu doesn't have appetizers (bummer) but they do have a number of sides, a couple of which could pass as munchies for the table. On Foodies recommendation we ordered the potato latkes. A large potato pancake with green onion and sour cream seasoned with a heavy dose of black pepper. There was some debate at the table about the al dente nature of the shredded potato. It wasn't undercooked to the point of raw but did have a little crunch. The consensus was that we liked the added texture. Frankly, we liked it so much that one could make an argument of having a brunch based on the sides alone. Say the latke and a bratwurst.

Mr Foodie had the frittata du jour. Feta and spinach (if memory serves). He regaled the taste and the lack of potato filler that dominated the frittata at Bacchus. Mrs Foodie had the Chicken. That dish was a bit of a surprise. It looked like it was half a fried chicken (in 3 pieces). She said it was ok but a little bland. The haricote verte passed muster and the squash casulette was declared excellent. Baby Jasper had milk.

My order came out a bit wrong. I had ordered the Egg Sandwich which was supposed to come on multi-grain, instead it came on a baguette. Didn't really notice until I was halfway through. It was a very nice simple meal. Egg, bread, proscuitto. The bread, as were all the in-house baked goods, was excellent. My only real complaint came at this point in the meal. My dish came with pomme frites. If your going to call a fry a frite it better be good. These were frozen from a bag. 'Nuff said.

Finn had the Belgian Waffle. Crispy exterior, moist interior, fresh berries. Finn was happy even if he was taking pictures like he was Earl Hickey.

M had the real winner of the day. French Toast with Pan-Seared Bananas and Pecan. Baking meets desert meets breakfast. If you were going to create the perfect French Toast this would be it. Enough egg to give it weight and keep it from getting soggy, the bananas seared to heat and caramelize but not so much they get mushy. The crunch of the pecans. A real winner.

To end we all shared the espresso creme brule (how they made it espresso without an espresso machine?...). It may have been a left over from the night before judging by the uneven temperature throughout and was a tad runny but the flavour was good. I was just hoping it didn't have too much caffeine as Finn wolfed a good part of it down.

The words in the name, Fine Dining, may make you think this a stuffy place. It isn't. It's much more relaxed and serves inventive food that we enjoyed. If your looking for a comparison think Dogwood Grille not Lemaire. I think we'll have to give dinner a whirl, perhaps when it's cool enough to sit outside.

Fox's Feral Feline Fiasco - Or Why Sinclair Broadcasting Sucks

2008-07-22T11:45:00.006-04:00

corporation (noun) - An ingenious device to create individual wealth without individual responsibility. Ambrose Bierce

Some companies care about the communities that they operate in. They support programs for the poor and hungry. Unused land gets set aside as wetlands or as parks for the communities. Others just don't give a damn. Sinclair Broadcast Group is a company that doesn't care and doesn't care if you know about it.

Now I'll admit Sinclair hasn't given me warm fuzzies for years. Their attempt to influence the 2004 election with propoganda posing as a 'documentary' was contemptable (note - I don't think either side should be allowed free time like that unless the station, using the public airways, allows an equal response). Their censorship of Ted Koppel's tribute to fallen troops in Iraq shows they care more about ideology than the truth (a very bad sign for a company that transmits the news) and honouring those who gave their lives is an even lower priority. Earlier this year they started playing a shell game with a corporate holding company to skirt the law against having two TV stations in the same market(Fox 35 and CBS 6). And, now, they are killing cats.

Over the years their employees have been leaving food out for a colony of feral cats living on Fox's property. To me that makes them morally obligated to the care of the colony not to mention that the colony has been there for over 30 years, predating Fox itself. Last month Fox started taking steps to exterminate the colony. The Richmond SPCA sprung into action and tried to take steps to stop the killing of the cats. Fox, well, they really didn't care.

Their solution to this little PR kerfuffle was to trap the cats. Did they contact experts in animal welfare or one of the local humane groups? No, they called an animal control company who trapped the cats, took them home, then killed them. Charges are pending. The next steps makes you question their claims that they didn't know the trapper was going to kill the cats. They sent in the bulldozers.

The SPCA moved fast and got video crews from the other TV stations onto the scene. It was then Fox showed they do care about something, their bottom line. Bulldozing cats leading the evening news might make advertisers a bit squeamish. The bulldozers stopped. Finally they came out to say they cared about the colony and would try to do the right thing and work with local humane groups for a solution. Small problem with that statement. A month later and none of the local humane groups have been contacted. Sounds a little like in 2000 when George Bush said he was a uniter and would work across the aisle to bring everyone together.... Whatever happened with that?...

The SPCA and a few other groups have been trying to trap some of the cats. While some of the cats are able to be adopted out many aren't and it is very difficult to relocate feral cats. It also doesn't help that Fox isn't following through on their promise to cooperate with the humane groups and is actually hampering their efforts by putting up No Trespassing sings on the property with the colony.

I suppose it would be one thing if dealing with the colony in a humane way would cost them an inordinate amount of money or effort but it doesn't. Sinclair Broadcast Group simply doesn't care. The public airways are there for the benefit of the people. They use it for an agenda. The FCC restricts media ownership in single markets to ensure balance in information. They use shell corporations to skirt the law. They stifle opposing views. They kill cats.

To save a colony and keep it healthy is not that hard. Once a month I set out a few traps with a little bit of mackerel. Whatever cats I trap go to the vet the next morning. Next we go out to brunch with RVA Foodie and family (we actually don't plan it that way it just seems to happen) and that afternoon we pick up the cats from the vet. Spayed or neutered, vaccinated, wounds treated, de-wormed and even a dose of Frontline. The result has been healthier cats, less kittens and with a higher survival rate, and much less fighting amongst the Tom's plus I don't have to explain to Finn why he can't pet the mauled and dying kitten twitching on our front steps.

Did have some good news at our colony. Last month one of the cats I caught did not come out of the anesthesia. What made that worse was the cat was lactating. We looked for the kittens but couldn't find them. Over the past couple of weeks a cat and kittens took up residence on our back porch. The kittens were less than 8 weeks and oddly the mother was one that we had had fixed 3 months ago. Our guess is she adopted the orphaned kittens. Made us feel a bit better.

This weekend we only caught one cat. An orange tom. He came through with flying colours and was released back into the 'hood yesterday.

The score if your keeping track -

4 female/3 males - Trapped Fixed and Released
1 male - Not Healthy or Injured - Euthanized
1 female - Didn't Learn Lesson & Trapped Again
1 female - Didn't Survive Procedure

See you next month for round #5

Hitting A Wall Of Crab - The Hard Shell

2008-07-21T11:44:00.009-04:00

I love raw bar. Set before me plates of bivalves and crustaceans and I am a happy person. The first restaurant I worked at in the United States, Bart's Wharf in Portland, OR, was a master of raw bar. Huge platters of raw and steamed seafood, most fresh from the Oregon coast, flowed freely. I was never a real fan of bay shrimp but the chef would make me a sandwich for dinner made with fresh bay shrimp. The taste was amazing. Sadly, I've never been able to recreate that simple sandwich. It was a shame the restaurant didn't survive. Run by Bart's kids it became stuck in a timewarp with teal vinyl booths and some of the original waitresses still there from the opening in the early 1950's. They should have been there for the renaissance of the upscale lobster-steakhouse in the 1990's but didn't make it.

True raw bar has gone out of style to an extent and the number of places to find it has dwindled. In RVA the choices are limited. There's some offerings at Bookbinder's but I know way to much about the inner workings of that place to ever eat there again. If I want chicken instead of turtle in my overpriced Snapper Soup I'll order chicken soup.... (maybe, someday, I'll write a bit about my experiences there). There's Morton's and a couple of other upscale eateries but there it is more of an afterthought and not true raw bar where you order plate after plate.

Nope, in Richmond there are only two real choices (I am sure after writing this I will get a few more suggestions....). First would be Can-Can. Bathtub full of ice, shucked and prepared in view of the customer with the added bonus of much better sauces than your standard cocktail sauce. Best eaten at the bar with a martini but don't forget to fill your pockets with pebbles to get a bartenders attention....

The other place would be The Hard Shell, the restaurant that took the wind out of the sails of Awful Arthur's in the Bottom. I've been going to The Hard Shell since it opened. When it first opened it had great food, good drinks, and really good raw bar. For years it was my go-to place, showing up at least once a month. Now, not so much. With all the great new places that have opened up in the past 7 or 8 years we might make it once or twice a year and rarely is it mentioned when we're talking about where we want to eat tonight. Sunday night we needed a place to celebrate a bit. M had become a newly minted Privacy Expert and had the certification to prove it. With gas poking a hole in our dining budget we decided to hit The Hard Shell and indulge in their All You Can Eat crab-fest.

We had hit their Sunday special in the past but I usually didn't do the All You Can Eat special. I'm a fan of Snow Crab (especially when it's 1/2 price) but the crab on the All You Can Eat was some sort of crab (sorry I've forgotten the exact type) that had paper thin skin and unsatisfying meat. Basically the little old lady of crabs. At some point, however, it seems they changed it to my favoured Snow Crab. So, off we went.

It was very packed when we arrived so we sat at the bar to wait for a table. A few observations... The bar was dirty. The staff all looked like they were thinking 'I can't believe I couldn't dump this shift'. I actually saw a customer raise her hand and snap for a server. I think I could hear the snapped at server's eyes rolling... It was a collision of fine dining meets cheapskate hell. We got lucky, they decided to open the banquet room and we got a table in fully air conditioned bliss away from the hoi poloi.

To start we had a few apps. M ordered the Lobster Dip. A ramican of soupy dip surrounded by chips with a presentation by TGI-Fridays. The level of peppers in the watery dip rendered the addition of the lobster moot.

I ordered a dozen steamed clams and a half pound of crawfish. Presentation was again less than inspired and while the little necks were acceptable the crawfish was sub-standard. Maybe I ordered out of season but many had recently molted and the shells were mushy while on others the meat was dark not light and sweet. I didn't finish them.

For an entree M had the Steak & Lobster. Petite filet and a smallish lobster tail. Due to her current condition she had to order the steak medium (she still eats it MR at home when we know the source - Belmont Butchery - and are sure of proper storage and preparation). At that temp the steak was small and disappointing. She declared no more steaks in restaurants until after the baby arrives. The small tail seemed fine, although M said it was a bit gritty like it hadn't been rinsed well, until I got the bill. The dish is listed at 'market price' (I know, we should have asked) and I really think that for $40 the tail should have been a little more substantial.

While she ate I gorged on the All You Can Eat Snow Crab. Nearly 4 pounds of the tasty things. The last plate they brought out had a distinctly overpowering brine smell that brought my gluttony to a screeching halt. The support service for my feast was lacking. Not enough lemons, forgetting butter, no extra napkins. I actually had to ask for a shell cracker since he hadn't brought one out and when he did it had rust marks on it.

The service was mediocre but I have a hard time really blaming the waiter. It is very hard to switch gears from fine dining to turn and burn especially when a lot of people who hit 'All You Can Eat's' are terrible tippers. The kitchen was also collapsing and you could hear servers arguing over ownership of plates in the window. His service wasn't the best but I still tipped at 20%, albeit pre-tax for a change.

They made what I can only describe as an akward and not well thought out change in the bathrooms. Paper towels have been removed to be replaced with air dryers. The placement was bad unless they intended it to be triggered and blow on your back while your washing your hands and while the lack of towels makes it hard to clean a toddler they seem to have forgotten what they serve. A lot of their dishes are steamed sea food and involve dipping said seafood in butter. Add alcohol to the mix and you've got messes. In my case a well buttered goatee. After washing the butter out I really don't want to stick my face in a hot air dryer, a towel will do just fine.

I think The Hard Shell is due for an overhaul. The raw bar at Can-Can seems much more fresh and exciting. Their menu looks the same as it did in 90's, quality is down, presentation perfunctory, and service is slip-shod. I think it may be time to look for a new place for my snow crab fix.

Stealin' My Stuff - Blog Hijackers

2008-07-17T10:35:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Mr Hammond. He was cluing me in to a strange link that had appeared on one of posts on my blog. I followed it and.... someone had scraped and copied my blog onto their site. WTF?! Why would someone want to copy my mundane ramblings and claim it as their own? I have a small but respectable following of readers but c'mon... The vast majority are local and come for the restaurant reviews and while I do have a growing number of national readers who come for the infrared grilling stuff (not that I'm an authority, just an early adopter so there isn't a whole lot of competition) it's rarely more than 100 a day. Still, what are they trying to accomplish?

The site was odd. A vaguely Middle-Eastern woman with no top and rather revealing panties adorned the background of the site and was always present as you scrolled through. Had I been hijacked by a purveyor of porn? No, other than the 'lady' there was nothing else overtly sexual, although as most of the text was in Arabic I could be wrong. Were they using my text (and pictures of Finn!) to sell something? Well, there were movie posters for current movies like Wall-e (with Arabic script underneath) but no active links or offers of sales. The site was a mass of conflicting information. Arabic, English, German, Dutch. I actually wondered if it was some sort of 'terrorist' site hiding secret messages underneath the mess of data (Great, next time I fly I'll find out I'm on some terrorist watch list....) but that seemed a bit far fetched.

The only conclusion I could come to was that it was some sort of trap. Trying to access it ultimately locked up my browser or left residual images as I tried to go to other sites. Shut down, scrub, run virus and spyware programs. Since that seems the most reasonable explanation I am not providing a link to my doppelganger. Google must not care for the site either as you can find it on some searches of my content but it's very buried.

I went through my blog and broke all the links. Seems they had also created some links to this site on some other blogs. RVA Foodie had one or two, I checked some other friends that I link to but didn't see any other offending linkages.

Lesson for the day? Watch your blog. Check who's linking to you every now and then and do Google and other searches based on specific (the more obscure the better) sentences from your content to find any unauthorized copies. Break any links that are suspect on your site so your friends and family don't end up someplace they really don't want to go. You can purchase programs that will monitor it for you for 4 or 5 bucks a month. That's nice but all they do it tell you your being copied. When it comes down to it there really isn't a whole lot you can do.

Of course, once I had thought I had cleaned everything up... I get another email from a different friend last night. Someone else has copied my site! This one seems pretty harmless though, go, look, you be the judge....

A Day In The Life Of A Used Bookstore

2008-07-10T18:45:00.000-04:00

Back in the day, at the credit card company that shall not be named, I was a slave to Outlook. This program told me where I needed to be, whom I needed to speak to, what deliverables I needed to deliver. The only bright side of this was Blackberry's were only for the most senior people at that point so I had to actually find my way to my cube to be told what to do rather than have my minder with me 24/7. Life is a little slower now. With the exception of government forms most things can be done tomorrow afternoon, or not.

A typical day starts with Finn and rolling out of bed around 7:30. M has already left for the day and Finn has magically transported himself from his bed into ours. We used to start out watching CNBC but the business channel has lost my rapt interest as I have divested myself from the markets. MSNBC is our morning wake up choice. Although if something really big is happening I turn to Fox to see how if they are ignoring or distorting. (My fav was the morning Scooter Libbie was found guilty. Fox didn't mention the verdict except in the bottom scroll and their lead was that Osama Bin Laden's capture was imminent...... Reminded me of all the terror alerts Bush trotted out in 2004). After that and a bit of breakfast it's off to the store.

We open at 10 but I usually arrive up to 45 minutes before. Finn spends the early morning trying to figure out where he left his toys the day before while I get the accounting programs up to date with the latest data. The early morning can be a bit busy. People dropping off books for trade, UPS & Fed Ex deliveries, and lots of phone calls. More than a few telemarketers but an increasing number of people looking to sell books. We can always tell when the economy is getting bad and people start getting desperate. Sadly, buying books doesn't work with most used-bookstore business models. Trades, yes. Cash, no. Skyrocketing rents and capital cost overrule that. Only two places in town buy books, Black Swan & Chop Suey, and only under very specific circumstances. If all you've got is current pulp fiction they send you to me and we only do trade credits.

After the lunch rush things get a little quiet and Finn and I try to grab a bit of lunch. The new store has a little kitchenette so our choices are a bit better than in the old space. Murphy is always at work though and the moment I sit down someone comes in with a big box of books from 'grandma's' attic that they don't understand why I am not interested in. Perhaps it is the yellowed crumbling pages or it could be the baby roaches crawling out. Regardless, if you wouldn't buy it why do you think my customers would?

Today we had a nice surprise. Sketchy came by with gifts. A very pretty cake box with cupcakes for Finn and I. Two dark, rich chocolate cupcakes filled with a bittersweet ganache and topped with a salted caramel icing (I probably got the description wrong but that's what I tasted). We were told to allow them to come to room temperature before eating so, against Finn's protestations, they were set aside for a while. When they were consumed later they were wonderful. Just feel sorry for my poor assistant who has to sweep up tomorrow.... (Actually, I cleaned up most of Finn's mess but I am sure I missed a few crumbs about the store).

Late afternoon and into the evening can be a crapshoot. Fewer books come in but more browsers. The music changes from classical to contemporary as the customers get younger. Most of our CD and Tape Audios get sold in this time as people swing by before a big roadtrip. It's also when M arrives from work to take Finn home. It's also around the time that I sometimes indulge in a glass of wine. Chatty owner = more book recommendations = more sales. I thought that was not to be today as I had neglected to grab a bottle of wine from home and had only beer in stock at the store. Not being a big beer drinker this made me sad. It especially made me sad after a particularly strange exchange with a customer, or I guess a non-customer. To my delight someone heard my pain - or at least my 'whine'. Ms In Vino Veritas arrived bearing gifts. A very nice bottle of Layer Cake Primitivo (Zinfandel) - Why, yes, I do have glasses in the back....

Cupcakes and wine in the same day! Being stuck in a bookstore all day, with your kid, reading, eating, drinking.... Days like this (even though sales were really bad...) are the ones you must remember. When the dark gloom takes you it's nice to know you have friends and to recall that you have a life you enjoy.

The day is now winding down. I'll close in an hour, go home and have dinner with the family. Tomorrow I'll get up and repeat.

A Marginally Weird Evening At The National - Weird Al Yankovic

2008-07-09T10:57:00.000-04:00

Too often music venues are run by amateurs. Music lovers with no business experience or people who think it's an easy way to make a quick buck. The National is an example of what happens when professionals get involved. A well trained staff. Clean floors. Very clean bathrooms - that actually work! Honestly, the only complaint (other than being gouged by Ticketmaster) would be that they need to run a phone line out to the T-shirt vendors table so you can charge that $25 dollar t-shirt or $20 mug. If you haven't been go to their site and I bet you can find a show you want to see.

Last night found us at The National to see Weird Al Yankovic. We were running a bit late for the show and when we saw the line for will-call M dropped me off so we wouldn't miss the beginning of the show. Yes, I know. I could've printed the tickets off of the Ticketmaster site rather than having them held at will-call. It just doesn't feel right. I prefer the old-fashioned ticket. As far as missing the beginning of the show - there was no need to rush. A friend had warned us the Weird Al never started on time and he was true to form last night. About 45 minutes late.

The crowd was a little younger than I expected. A lot of teens, tweens, and pre-teens. OK, not an overwhelming number, just more than I expected. Perhaps that was a good thing as the lines at the bar were shorter than other shows we've been to their.

Weird Al started the show with a mash parody of hits over the last few years while playing his accordion. Weezer figured prominantly in this mash. I had heard that Weird Al was a bit of a perfectionist. This was obvious in how well timed the show on staged synched with the video playing above the stage. This began to bother me after a bit. They synched too well. I really began to wonder if they were actually playing or lipsynching. Is it live or is it Memorex? Couldn't really tell.

After the mash he launched into his hits. Every song was completely choreographed, synched with video, and followed by long breaks for costume changes. Actually, if you took out the video filled breaks the hour and a half show probably only had less than 45 minutes of music. Over produced and lacking spontaneity it lacked the joy I had seen in videos of his earlier performances. It was much more Brittany Spears than Dr Demento.

Of course I could just be a bit bitter. We decided to leave a couple of minutes before the end to beat the crowd out the door and missed my favourite song - 'White & Nerdy'....

Food That Doesn't Suck!

2008-07-07T11:59:00.002-04:00

Over the course of this long holiday weekend we managed a number of tasty tidbits. The first was to get the nasty taste of 'gourmet' cookies out of our mouths. To this end M made a batch of real homemade cookies. She searched high and low for macadamia nuts but couldn't find any at Ukrops (perhaps the supply is being diverted for ethanol...). We settled for white and dark chocolate chips. A kind of black and white. Very tasty and welcome after the earlier fiasco.

Saturday night found us the proud owners of a couple of flat irons from Belmont Butchery. Salt and pepper, a quick trip to the grill, a rest, then thinly sliced. Quickly becoming my favourite meal. To avoid taste bud burnout on an oft-repeated meal I decided I wanted add something new to the mix. A recipe from pjpink from River City Cellars for onion rings that she had lifted from Emeril had caught my eye. It's pretty simple and I did it without making Emeril's essence or cheating and buying it:

Onion Rings -
2 Large Yellow Onions - Sliced into 1/8-1/4 inch rings
2 cups Spiced Flour - To taste add salt, pepper, cayenne, thyme, garlic powder, and lots of paprika
2+ cups Buttermilk - Add to this hot sauce, paprika, cayenne

Slice the onions and cover with the buttermilk. Return to fridge and allow to soak for at least an hour. Add one inch of peanut oil to a heavy pan. Heat to 350. Remove onions from buttermilk and dredge in flour. Shake off excess and place in hot oil. Working in batches fry until golden brown on both sides (2-3 minutes per side). Drain. Can be kept in oven to keep warm as long as it is not a gas oven (gas ovens produce moisture and will make the rings soggy).

I had thought about putting some kind of sauce on the table for the rings but it turned out it wasn't necessary. Very tasty! Thanks pj!

To end the weekend we ended up at a cookout hosted by T of Belmont Butchery. While the cookout had been planned in advance the menu wasn't. Seems one of T's customers had ordered a whole pig for their 4th of July festivities. Said customer 'forgot' to pick it up. Personally, I'm not buying it. Since the pig would have to be the centerpiece of your party you don't 'forget' - You chicken out. How this customer shows his/her face at Belmont Butchery again is beyond me and if they ever try to pre-order something T should make them pay in advance. Not more than a few cracks were made about delivering the pig's head to the customer's house and leaving it on a spike in the yard.... People weren't that drunk when I left but you never know how a night progresses. Regardless, the pig didn't go to waste and after a night of smoking was tender and juicy. Wish I had the nerve to try cooking something that big.

On a fun note Bill Foster, of Zed's, was there. I managed not so say anything (never got that drunk at the party) but we did have a whole circle of people having a general bitch session about the poor customer treatment at Zed's. As a number of the people in the discussion were either current or former restaurant people so we got pretty vicious. Good fun but Zed's really needs to work on their reputation if they are to succeed. No one had a single complaint about the food, it was all about the front of house.

All in all a good weekend and a shift out on my belt notch....

Food That Sucks!

2008-07-07T10:49:00.001-04:00

Unless your a hermit, or terminally snarky, you've run into one of these people. You know who I'm taking about. They've got the kid in band raising money for new uniforms. An underfunded library program in need of books or an art class that has no supplies. Perhaps it's for an animal rescue program. A church program to feed the poor or a multi-million dollar mega-church's need to be grander than the other multi-million dollar mega church.

Regardless, they take advantage of your friendship, or the proximity of your desk, to sell you something that 9 times out of 10 you would never otherwise buy. The items are varied. Popcorn. Candybars. Cookies. Sometimes brand name goods but usually no-name products stamped with buzz words like 'gourmet' or 'premium'. Organized corporate 'charity' campaigns that make you feel like your giving when in fact most of the money goes to the company providing the food products.

Where M works, the credit card company that shall not be named, she gets hit up on nearly a monthly basis to buy something for one fund raiser or another. Occasionally the stuff gets eaten, often it gets forgotten and tossed when the expiration is noted to be over a year ago. A while back one of those items, a tub of white chocolate macadamia nut cookie dough, found it's way into our freezer. There it may very well have sat until this weekend when a craving for cookies hit our household.

Out of the freezer and into the fridge. Once thawed (ok, according to M - once it had gone from brick to semi-hardened plaster) onto a cookie sheet and into the oven. Finn and I sat in the kitchen, waiting something sweet and tasty. The wait on the cooling rack was too much to bear and Finn and I dug into the piping hot cookies. Fully cooked but soft and gooey these tasted.... strange. Finn and I started a second cookie. I finished - he didn't. The aftertaste was nearly chemical in nature. Not what you expect when eating cookies. A few minutes of pondering and the cookie nearly came back up on me. Finn crawled into my lap and held on tight.

'Sick', he said.

'Are you feeling sick?', I asked.

'No. Sick cookie', he replied.

It was time for an inspection of this tub of 'cookie' dough and it's ingredients. Some really nasty oils - palm and cottonseed - and.... nothing that you would find in a normal persons kitchen, all chemicals. Reading the label it informed me that you could leave this dough out at room temperature for 21 days. WTF!? What cookie dough is shelf stable for 21 days? And what horrible things might happen on the 22nd? Beyond that it was good in the fridge for 6 months and up to a year in the freezer. A nice aside told me that it could also be thawed and refrozen. Your basic 'night of the living cookie dough'.... Ugh, the 'gourmet' cookie dough went into the trash and the remaining cookies fed the poor birds in the yard.

Sick cookie indeed.

Overlooked Restaurants - Enoteca Sogno

2008-07-03T10:36:00.003-04:00

Wednesday Evening Part #2.

When most of us in RVA get the craving for pasta or seafood cooked in the simple Italian style we think of Mama 'Zu or her sister restaurant, Edo Squid. I've heard the complaints about the style off service, the resistance to reservations, the basic need to move lingering tables out the door. People need to get over that. Those two eateries are quite possibly the closest we get to a top rate restaurant that would be able to compete in NYC or DC. Food that people are willing to line up for day after day, year after year. Transplant those places to a big city and people would understand the need to keep people moving and the goal to please 'all' rather than the 'squeaky wheel'.

We went to Enoteca Sogno with only a vague idea what to expect. The only thing I was sure of was that most of the entrees were under $20. If this went bad then I wasn't out too much. The restaurant is sandwiched in between Cabo's, RVA Foodie's favourite restaurant, and Fieldin's, RVA's premier location for gay male strippers. OK, so it's someplace we all drive by but either don't pay attention or are picking up Lee's Fried Chicken across the street. The dining room is unremarkable, standard Fan brick walls and tables. Even if you've never been here you've been...

My first impression was not good. Sometimes you can judge a place by it's clientele. Here we had a mix of people who might be in search of an 'early bird' special and young'uns who may be making their first dining experience outside of Applebee's. Looking closer I realized I might be jumping to conclusions when I noticed a gentleman named Bob at the bar. Normally, 'Bob', is found coordinating wine service at Can-Can. When you find a place where someone with 'good taste' goes you tend to pay attention.

The menu at Enoteca is simple. A couple of veal dishes, pastas with a choice of seafood or sauces and gnocchi. Specials include meats and such. We were pushing Finn's limits, after being out at Havana earlier, so we ordered gnocchi with marinara for him right off to get him occupied. A salad for M and seared scallops for me got us all started.

The seared scallops, 6 of them, were not the huge ones that are popular right now and they didn't have the crispy crust that is the trend. Didn't matter. They were tasty, not fishy, with an excellent texture. Where many places drown the scallops with a balsamic reduction their version excentuated the flavour of the scallops without overpowering them. Add the $22 bottle of Italian Langhe Arneis (crisp without the acidity of a Pinot Gris) and I was very happy.

While we were enjoying our starters Finn got his gnocchi. Heavy dense pieces of pasta tossed in a fresh tomato marinara. I was a little thrown by the gnocchi. The pieces were almost too uniform to be house made. A little questioning found that they were not made in house but rather by a pasta maker in town. They could have lied, they didn't. I want to find this pasta maker to supply my own household.

M had the Veal Piccata. Light on the breading, tender veal, perfectly balanced. Too often Veal Piccata means way too much lemon. Not here. Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

I opted for one of the specials. Soft Shell Crab. I did this with a bit of trepidation but, after several hours of alcohol consumption, was willing to take a couple of risks. Over the years I have worked in too many restaurants and seen 'soft shell crabs'. Frozen and flat, the chefs actually need to inject liquid to avoid serving a piece of dessicated seafood. These arrived at the table and were twice the thickness of most soft-shells that I have seen. The crabs were crispy on the outside, the insides juicy and tasty, even had a bit of the green stuff squirt out on one slice. I couldn't have been happier.

Dessert came next. We selected the cannoli. For some odd reason they sent out the tiramisu. The waiter, who had been attentive all evening, corrected this. Can't say enough about the service. Two waiters, the bartender, and the hostess all worked together to take care of each other and all the customers. Nice change from 'that's not my station' or 'not my job'. Key to this was my espresso. Ever wonder why your espresso is cold in a restaurant? It's because they didn't pre-heat the cup. Here they did and I was able to enjoy a HOT cup of espresso. If only every restaurant paid this much attention.

If you've not been, are scared of the service at Mama 'Zu, the wait at Edo Squid - then this is the place you need to go - NOW.

Jack & Vino Go Down The Hill To Get A Large Mojito - Havana 59

2008-07-03T10:14:00.003-04:00

Wednesday Evening Part #1 -

Another Wednesday, another swim lesson with Finn and a follow up of bevvies and food. Through a bit of creative scheduling Mrs In Vino Veritas and Jack joined us for an early happy hour at Havana 59.

Back in the day (last century...) Havana-59 was a constant hang out for myself and my co-workers from a certain local credit card company. Smoking of over-priced cigars, swilling of single malts (because you know you can taste the difference after your taste buds have been overwhelmed by some Haitian piece of tobacco-weed), and general debauchery. Countless weekends as the 'brunch destination' during recruitment weekends. Yes, this was the jumping off point for several thousand Capital One employees and their status in the dating pool for the more senior staff. With all the company money spent there you really have to wonder how they got into the trouble they did. Why bring the attention of the IRS to a profitable business? Pay the damn taxes and keep printing the money! Greed, the downfall of everyone from Studio 54 to the local bar of the moment.

So, it was with a bit of surprise that I heard a little bit of buzz about H-59 over the last couple of weeks. Did I really want to go back there? Did I really want to spend my own money there (no longer in servitude to Cap-1)? Back in the day it was expensive, inconsistent food, middling service. Not someplace you go on your own dime. What the hell... Let's give it try....

The crowd I was meeting seemed more interesting than the place. Mrs In Vino Veritas and Jack. Add Finn to the mix and it looked to be an interesting get-together. We arrived with Jack already at the scene and the bartenders started the martini's flowing. First impression was bar-keeps interested in keeping the drinks full and the customers happy - a change from the recent experiences at Can-Can. Mrs Vino arrived and we kicked it up another notch.

Drink recap -

Martini's - whether gin or vodka they were done well and had the brands you want.

Mixed Drinks - we had a few - good strong mixes served in glasses without lipstick - always a good sign to me....

Mojitos - disappointment of the evening. They muddled the mint into simple syrup in advance (why?) and let it sit. The addition of a shot of sweet and sour mix killed it completely. In need of a major overhaul, this was inexcusable.

The orginal plan had been to enjoy their upstairs balcony. Relaxing, airy, and a different menu from the main room. Seems they only open it on Friday and Saturday. Kinda sad for those of us who prefer to avoid the amateur drinkers on the weekends. They say that they will start opening the balcony on Thursdays soon... seems a bit late in the RVA balcony season to do that.... should have been open in March.

While I was drinking Finn needed some food. Sadly, the menu that IVV had the other night upstairs was not available and it was a bit difficult to find something for Finn. The first app I chose for him, and me to taste, was the Cuban Spring Roll. The plate came out and Finn dug into the shoe-string fries that came with this. I managed to grab a couple and they were nice, crispy and salty - not greasy. The rolls were impressive. I can't recall many upscale Asian restaurants who could do a roll so crispy with no greasiness. Too bad the stuffing was so sad. Basically a bland pulled pork. Oddly, Finn loved the mustard sauce that came with it. It tasted a bit like mustard infused with gherkins. He spent the next 20 minutes dipping his fingers into it and licking off the sauce.

As the evening progressed Finn got increasingly restless. First he used my cell-phone to take pictures, then IVV's Blackberry for gratuitous button pushing, and then he got hold of Jack's cell... Somehow Finn managed to call, repeatedly, an ex of Jacks. The poor girl, obviously not listening to the 3-year-old babble left on the voicemail (or was that the kind of message Jack leaves?), called back a while later and.....

Jack was an actual gentleman. From what I could hear from his cell she was a bit pissed. He never let on and tried to explain. Not his fault she thought he was looking for a hook-up when my 3-year-old was 'toddler'-dialing.

As Finn finished his Cuban spring rolls I ordered a bit of pizza for him. Sadly this took a little too long and he hit his expiration. The staff at H-59 did a very nice job of humouring him and allowing him to run rampant around a portion of the restaurant. As an odd aside Jack took a lot of joy playing and distracting him. Perhaps there is a whole new population, single moms, that Jack can debauch. :)

Oh, the pizza. Crust like crispy naan bread, cheese, onions, duck bacon. Very tasty.

I think we'll go back.... just not for the mojitos....

Under The Blogger Microscope - Can-Can & Tarrantino's

2008-06-30T11:23:00.003-04:00

Recently there has been much debate about two eateries by the local blogging community. So much so that I am not even going to try to link to all them. Just too difficult with my nearly antiquated Mac that will not allow me to cut and paste links. So if you really want to read all of the reviews and subsequent discussions go here and read, I'll wait.... OK, are you up to speed? Good. Now, let's move on to our adventure....

Finn and I started the evening at Can-Can. After getting more wet in the freak thunderstorm than at his swim lesson we had arrived in a fairly damp condition. We pulled up to the bar and grabbed an extra barstool for the impending arrival of RVA Foodie and our discussion on the dangers of cutting onions. Seems both of us had damged ourselves. Myself while slicing where a slide of the outer ring of the onion sent the knife through the side of my finger down to the fingernail. RVA with the error all of us fear the most - a mandolin mistake. I'm still missing a piece of my thumb from my last careless use of this culinary death trap.

As I savored my Tanq 10 martini I pondered the discussion that had gone on over the last month or so about Can-Can. No real complaints about the food, really mostly raves, it was increasingly inconsistent service - mostly at the bar - that had everyone all up in arms. I quickly realized that I would be a bad judge of the bar service. The managers all know me, or actually they know Finn (I'm just the one who pays his bill), as do most of the bartenders - one is even a customer at my bookstore. Besides that, I tend to be a bit pushy. I won't give them a chance to ignore me. I did notice they had one more bartender on then they usually did at this hour and that they were keeping much more busy than last we were in. Perhaps the scathing letter from In Vino Veritas had done the trick. RVA Foodie arrived, was greeted by the bartender and.... oddly, was not offered a drink. I'm guessing we should call that a fail.

At this point as Finn and I had been there an hour before Foodies arrival and Finn was making the transition from quiet, content and drawing to his strange need to circle the restaurant. The Can-Can staff are very indulgent of Finn and servers and managers played with him and helped me keep an eye on his travels. (Parental Note - Had there been any diners at the tables or had he disturbed anyone trying to eat I was prepared to remove him - as it was just after 5 everyone was at the bar.)

We noshed on some raw bar and one of the managers bent the rules and got Finn some gougeres off the dinner menu. Sensing Finn was ready to go we asked for the check. Although we had asked for separate checks it came combined. Sigh, fail. Honestly, we were never asked if we wanted to order anything, food or drink. Not once was there a spontaneous offer of a drink refill. I suppose if they are going for aloof French service they have achieved their goal. Personally, I think they have quite a bit of re-training to do as they seem to have drifted from their basic level of service they had when they first opened.

Saying good-bye to RVA Foodie, Finn and I took off for something more substantial to eat. Pizza sounded good so it was off to Tarrantino's. Half the bloggers seem to love this new place while the other half have been completely unimpressed by it. Prior to Fridays visit we had eaten with them twice. Once at the restaurant and once by take-away. Eating in-house the crisp was perfect and I raved. Eating at home.... the crust had steamed to sogginess (not sure if that is there fault or the cities founders for building Richmond over a humid swamp...) and we had the most distressing of topping slides. Basically it was a wreck. IVV had eaten there last week and declared the crust soft and the pizza greasy. Time to recheck the in-house, superior in my mind, product.

I ordered two small pies. One a red Hawaiian, the other a seafood bianca. No puddle of grease on either and the crust was perfect. Disappointments? I had a couple. The pineapple on the Hawaiian contained so much moisture that there was a puddle of liquid in the center of the red pizza. That moisture may have been the driver of our topping slide that we had at home. The seafood on the bianca.... the scallops (bay) were firm and tasty, the shrimp were also bay and were lacking. Just this side of fishiness the pizza would have been better served using chopped jumbo shrimp rather than the bay. This was also our first try with the bianca - excellent.

We took the remainders home for snacks. Trying a piece cold that evening I found the crust to still be firm with a bit of crunchiness. So at least we know it travels well after being allowed to cool.

Bottom line - Can-Can needs more friendly engaging bartenders that are more service oriented. The current level of service is more nightclub than upscale restaurant. Pizza at Tarrantino's needs to be eaten in-house, either in the main restaurant or back in the pizza parlor. Do not allow it to steam itself to sogginess. Not even out to the parking lot. They either need to put steam vents in the boxes or we can't do carryout until Fall when the humidity drops down to a more pizza friendly level....

Wasting Time On The InterWebz - 5 Things

2008-06-25T09:49:00.004-04:00

Following the lead of earth2karen and Kelley Stern on a slow Wednesday morning we have '5 Things'...

5 Jobs I Have Had -
Captain/Sommelier, The Barony, Hotel Inter-Continental
Captain, The Mansion, Atlanta, GA
Manager, J.Riggings, C'ville
Compliance Analyst, Capital One
Caretaker of Finn while occasionally selling books....

5 Movies I Can Watch Over & Over -
Starship Troopers - Campy Fun At It's Best
Dune - 6 hour directors cut
LOTR - I/II/III
Brazil
Go

5 Places I Have Lived -
Portland, OR
Kinshasa, Zaire
Laramie, WY
Hilton Head Is, SC
Richmond, VA

5 TV Shows I Love -
Dead Like Me - Bring It Back!
Dexter
Big Love
2 1/2 Men
How I Met Your Mother
Penn & Teller's Bullshit

5 Places I Have Been On Vacation -
Cairo, Egypt
London (4 Months)
Denmark (many, many visits to family there)
Nice, France
Berkley Springs, WV....

5 Of My Favourite Meals -
Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup - There Goes All My Foodie Cred....
Raw Bar & All It Entails
Filet Mignon - Cooked Pittsburgh w/ Bearnaise
Foie Gras
Real Mac & Cheese - Not The Gourmet Fad Currently Sweeping RVA

5 Places I Would Rather Be -
Where Is It Happy Hour? Right Now!
Anyplace Less Humid Than RVA In August
Eating Dinner & Drinking w/ Good Friends
Taking Finn To The Park
In A World Without George W Bush....

Infrared Grilling - Leg O' Lamb & Feral Felines

2008-06-24T11:59:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday we had the Sketchy's over for for a little infrared grilling. Up till now we had only been trying small cuts of meat and fish on the grill and I was dying to try a slightly bigger cut. I called my faithful butcher, T at Belmont Butchery, and put in an order for a 4lb leg of lamb, sirloin end. She came through and I picked up a beautiful piece of meat ready for the grill.

The evening arrived and so did the Sketchy's. Actually it got off to a rather shaky start but you would need to read about that at Sketchy's Kitchen for the full story. After repairing the damage and making the first round of martinis we tucked into the first course of the evening.

Purple Artichokes. I had found these at Fresh Market and they looked interesting. I thought about serving them slightly chilled with a garlic aioli to dip. Thinking back, while at the market, I remembered a slightly frustrating story by RVA Foodie and his attempt to make aioli. Erring on the side of caution I decided to pick up some organic garlic aioli at Fresh Market and save my first try at the substance when I might end up only killing my own family through a culinary mishap. Upon arriving home I noticed that the aioli had expired several days ago. Not a good thing for a mayonnaise containing uncooked eggs. Making the trek back from Battery Park to Fresh Market.... well, if you add up the time, energy, wasted gas, frustration. Should have tried to make it from scratch. Live and Learn.

Back to the artichokes. I steamed them for 45 minutes (a little longer than I would green ones as they seemed a bit tough) with water, wine, lemon and onion. Allowing them to cool for a bit they then went into the fridge to chill further. The result was ok. They were very pretty but, even after the 45 minute steam, were still a bit tough and a little stringy. The hearts were good but I am afraid that if I steamed them longer to make the leaves softer they would have been too mushy. Bottom line, looks good on a plate but not worth the premium over green artichokes.

For the lamb, I decided to get some professional advice and went to Brown, Alton Brown. So he gets the credit for the paste and the basics, slightly altered for my grill, of cooking. I had T at Belmont Butchery prep the lamb for me. Basically debone and butterfly so it was a large flat piece. The next step was to make the rub. In a small food processor I added:

8 mint leaves
4 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons canola oil
5 tablespoons dijon mustard

Blend into a paste. Rub the paste on one side of the lamb, roll it up and tie with butcher's string. To help the flavours even out I did all this the day before. I removed the lamb from the refrigerator about an hour before cooking. When it came time to grill Alton was no longer any help as he used charcoal so I was using educated guesses after that.

I started the heat out at the sear (700+) level. About 5 minutes on each side got the lamb going well. Next I dropped the heat level to the middle of the grill range which should put the temp at around 350. I did 20 minutes on each side (rotating 180 degrees to avoid cool spots) and then checked with a meat thermometer. Honestly, I am hopeless when it comes to meat thermometers. It kept coming up at 150 but I knew that was wrong. I laid down a piece of foil to avoid flare ups and put it on the coolest part of the grill for another 10 minutes. Removed from the grill and then covered for a 15 minutes rest. When sliced it was medium rare, except for a couple of rare slices towards the center. Perfect.

I had a hankering for some sort of reduction to go with it but couldn't find a recipe for what I wanted. Made one up off the cuff with the idea that it would go in the trash if it failed. Took 1 quart of lamb stock (from Belmont Butchery), 2 cups medium dry sherry, mint leaves and rosemary. Placed in a sauce pan, brought to a boil, and then lowered the heat and allowed to reduce to about a cup and a half. It came out pretty good and it took only a little bit to add the flavour I was looking for.

Of course every dinner needs some sort of activity. What could be more fun than drinking and catching cats. So we put out the traps baited with oil infused mackerel. Quickly we had three cats in the traps and safely away into the basement. The next morning they were sent off for their visit with the vet and then returned in the afternoon. Sadly, that evening when I took them a post-op meal one of the cats had expired. A call to the vet at Operation Cat Nip and the consensus was a heart defect, the result of inbreeding in the feral cat colony in our 'hood. The expired cat was also lactating so I checked around the house and in the bushes for any kittens but couldn't locate any.

The tally, if your keeping track, so far:

4 female/2 males - Trapped Fixed and Released
1 male - Not Healthy or Injured - Euthanized
1 female - Didn't Learn Lesson & Trapped Again
1 female - Didn't Survive Procedure

Come back next month for Round #4 of the Feral Feline Hunt!

Let The Artists Starve!

2008-06-24T10:13:00.002-04:00

Do you expect to get paid for the work you do? I do, well I would. Problem with me is that I own a business that is teetering on the edge of profitability. Regardless, most people expect to be paid for their work, whether it be physical or creative.

My sister is an illustrator up in Philadelphia. Like the vast majority of artists she is not exactly wealthy. She actually makes a living at it which is better than many artists who only make enough to cover their materials or less. Like inventions an artists creative output is protected from unlicensed use by copywrite laws. Because of the fluidity of the art world there have been times that companies have used an artists work, for gain or otherwise, and either haven't bothered to compensate or haven't been able to find the artist. In response to this came the Orphaned Works Bill. A corporate created loophole that allows an artist creative output to not only be used without their permission but also without compensating the artist. Sounds to me like someone is trying to skip out on paying a bill.

For a more complete explanation of the bill and how it works check out my sister's blog.

To contact your Senator and Congressman at:
http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

Yawn...

2008-06-18T22:31:00.013-04:00

Frankly, I'm tired of all this. Points were made by all sides and that's enough. I saw something hurtful and said something, some edits were made and now it's slightly different. I don't know if that is good or bad but there you go.

I created this blog as a story of our family and the foods we eat and things we do. I don't regret the post but don't feel it really fits on what this blog is. If you really want to read it I saved it to a word doc and I'll send it to you. Comments are lost in the ether and I won't publish any comments on this post.* I don't really care to hear from people on either side of this debate.

*Except for Genevelyn who came late to the party and since she's a friend is allowed one comment.

Breaking News! Update On Finn's Status!

2008-06-13T12:48:00.005-04:00

Drum Roll.................................................................
Trumpets Blare..........................................................
And.........................................................................
Looks like sometime in late January we will have to change Finn's status from 'only' child to 'oldest' child........

I'm Voting Republican!

2008-06-12T08:31:00.004-04:00

Something keeps breaking the link to this video.... Let me know if it is not working.

I Don't Recall Ants Being On The Menu - Moshi-Moshi

2008-06-10T11:11:00.001-04:00

Lethargy. That's the only way I can describe the way I felt yesterday. Day 4 of our fun little heat wave/ozone alert left me sticky, tired, cranky and feeling like I had taken up smoking again. My HVAC people didn't help as they didn't show up for a scheduled annual check-up that I had for yesterday. Admittedly, my AC was working (to an extent) and they had been swamped with calls from people whose AC was not working at all. Annoying but understandable. So, as I was sitting in a just barely enough cooled house, when M called, the last thing I wanted to do was fire up the stove or oven to cook any food for dinner. We decided what we needed was a nice cold plate of raw fish in a nice cool restaurant....

Sadly, the AC at Moshi-Moshi wasn't up to the challenge. We arrived, ordered drinks and appetizers and proceeded to perspire. The apps were good. We got our favourite, the tempura shrimp (10 pieces, a value RVA Foodie would be proud of) and we tried the pot stickers for the first time. Finn loved them, filled with fresh tasting shrimp, and after a bit of hesitation he started gobbling up the grilled tofu. Great food aside, I was getting a bit worried about ordering raw fish in the heat of this dining room.

Moshi-Moshi still only does huge orders of sashimi (6 pieces for $12-$15) and doesn't have any combo platters on the menu. I grumbled this to the waitress and she produced a sheet of paper from her pocket that outlined some platter options. Eureka! A way to get an array of fishies without ordering way too much food. I decided to go with the mega platter and pass the California Roll off to Finn. The platter had 4 pieces of salmon, 4 of white fish, 4 of white tuna, 4 of albacore, and 8 pieces of chefs selection of sushi. The verdict? It was ok. The pieces were huge, almost too big, but it wasn't too exciting of a selection. For $35 I would have been better off ordering exactly what I wanted even if that meant sushi sizes and giving the rice balls to Finn. I also felt kind of rushed to eat quickly as the fish quickly moved to room temp in the heat of the dining room and went from nice and firm to soft and mushy (moshi?).

Finn ate the California Roll so fast we were concerned he was going to choke himself.

Normally, I order hot sake to go with my little fish bites but even I, who drives around with his seat heater on in this weather, couldn't quite stomach that in this heat. Moshi-Moshi has a very nice list of different sakes that are served cold. I had actually never tried cold sake but, as the descriptions on the sake list were very educational, I decided to take the leap. I chose one that claimed a light pear flavour yet dry rather than sweet. It was exactly as described and was refreshing in the heat. As I was the only one drinking I was concerned about the sake getting warm and loosing it's appeal. The waitress, who did a great job throughout, paused at the dilemma and then came up with a solution to keep my sake cold. She also apologized for the uncomfortable temperature in the dining room. Seems it has been an issue even though they had been assured the system that came with the building was sufficient, they are looking into solutions to the problem. I can imagine it won't be cheap.

Speaking of issues left from the previous occupants of the space....

When Finn finished the California Roll as well as the rice off my sushi he decided to go exploring... I mean, annoy the other guests. After a couple of admonishments he began to play around our table and, like any other 3 year old boy, play with his favourite insect, ants. The ants, which frequently do not survive the encounter with Finn, were all over the floor. This was also the moment I started picking them off my arms and legs. Ugh. A few words with the waitress informed me that they were aware of the problem but hadn't been able to resolve it. Ummm.... Call an exterminator perhaps? Yes, I know, there are much worse insects to find in a restaurant but I still don't like them crawling on me.

Overall? The food was good - still think they can do better on the combo options though. The service was better than our last visit. We'll go back in the fall when it's cooler in the dining room and the ants have gone into hibernation.

Stupidity At It's Best!

2008-06-07T15:03:00.002-04:00

Driving around yesterday I was a bit perplexed.

Between the Ozone Alert and the smoke from the NC wildfires it was, at nearly 100, very miserable. As we were running errands I had turned on the air conditioning and it seemed to be working. The car was cooling down, slowly, but I was still sweating like a pig. WTF?

It all became clear today while driving to work. Seems I still had the seat heaters turned on in my car. Kinda hard to get cool when your butt's being heated. Doh!

Accidental Joy!

2008-06-06T10:44:00.005-04:00

Since we built a new kitchen in our house last fall we have ended up with two refrigerators in our house. Initially, the old one was going to come to my new store when the move was complete but I don't really have a good spot for it. So it has stayed upstairs in our house. Besides being a huge waste of energy it's a bit noisy so it has been getting my nerves. The issue is that it does come in handy. For beer, access to cold sodas with out having to walk all the way down stairs...., and when we have dinner parties. When one is marinating different items, prepping for multiple dishes, and stocking up on adult bevvies, you cannot beat having a second fridge. Carbon footprint be damned!

Last Saturday we had a few guests over so the use of fridge #2 was in full swing. First to let dough rise for the bread the night before and then that day for any number of different things. After the party things slowly went back to normal. Fast forward to last night. Puttering around the house I found myself in the old kitchen and checking the old fridge. Inside I found two forgotten pink boxes. What on earth could this be? Turns out some cupcakes from Veron! The cake was a little stale but not too bad and the frosting was fine. Finn and I were very happy.

Sadly I forgot to take a picture before eating and thought it would be a bit cruel to post a picture of the remains of the cakes.

Still, I should probably unplug that second fridge.

Is Change Always Good? - Popkin Tavern

2008-06-05T11:21:00.001-04:00

Restaurants change for any number of reasons. New chefs, management, or ownership. Flagging sales can be a driver especially in new restaurants who haven't 'discovered' who they are. Sometimes, though, it can be a misguided attempt to be something your not.

Last February we went to Popkin on our way to the circus. The food was basic bar grub. Lot's of fried items, sandwiches, and bits to nosh on. Nothing fancy, except for the ubiquitious cilantro pesto, but they knew what they were. A tavern serving the kind of food drinkers want. Nothing wrong with that and, to be honest, they did a decent job of it. Whoever was manning the fry station knew what he was doing - crispy and clean not greasy and tasting vaguely of something else. It was the kind of place that, in my younger days I may have hung out with friends or popped into eat at in between different clubs. It was with all this in mind that, after a swim lesson with Finn, that we decided to re-enter Popkin Tavern.

The first thing we noticed was a new menu, actually two menus. Uh-oh. I find it to be a bad sign when a restaurant cannot decide on a menu. Different menus for different times of the day, yes. Different menus because they are not sure who their diners are or what they want, no. One menu was a 'Tavern' menu the other a 'Dining' menu. It looked like they were trying to go upscale with moules frites (mussels & fries), fancy french fry combinations (one sounded vaguely like a beef bourguignon with cheese - sounds messy to me and, frankly, not that appetizing), small pizzas and a number of 'hot' entrees that you can find in every trendy restaurant in town that is lacking in creativity. OK, let's see if they can live up to their new image....

Ordered a cocktail. I understand that not every bar stocks my favourite gin, Tanqueray 10, but a bartender should at least be aware of it's existence and be prepared to offer alternatives. A blank look on the face does not inspire confidence in you knowing your product or how to put it together. If your moving upscale you need to have liquors that reflect the new direction and train your staff to do more than pour draft beer. Also, it might be a good idea if they wiped down the fridge doors and dusted the glass liquor shelves more than once a quarter. I nixed the idea of ordering fresh mussels based on the amount of dirt I could see. If you can't even clean your bar how is your live shellfish storage?

The mess behind the bar caused me to look around a bit more. Little piles of dirt on the floor. Tables that looked un-wiped, some with a single salt shaker, some with two pepper shakers, some with none (nearly all in need of re-filling and a wash). Sugar caddies with or without sugar, or just the blue stuff, or just the pink stuff and sugar. All this sounds small until you are the guest trying to flag down a waiter during a rush because you don't have what you need already on the table. Eating in a bar I have low expectations. When you start asking $20+ for entrees you need to justify that expense. These are all management issues. You cannot raise your food standard without doing the same with the staff. These was a lot of staff there. All doing sidework... ok, folding napkins.... ok, mainly just chatting with each other.

Speaking of the staff, the oddest interaction went on while I was there. Some twenty-something guy was there and the staff was fawning over him. Both boys and girls seemed to be hitting on him. Since they were all hanging on his every word and were in raptured silence I could hear him prattle on. Sorry, a long pretentious speech on the 'unappealing esthetics' of the ESPN2 logo on the sides of the widescreen TV nearly inspired me to fling my martini glass in his direction. But all these kids were jockeying to be near him, to put their hands on his shoulder, it was all very odd. I'll have to ask Jack about this phenomena. Maybe he can clear it up a bit.

The guy was also the reason that we didn't try an entree or some of the more upscale items. He had the Pan Seared Sea Scallops. Looking at the plate from distance it was a tinker-toy construction of asparagus and scallops held together by a blob of mashed potato. Beyond looking awkward, it smelled, bad. I know a shady scallop when I smell one and, at 10 feet away, it overpowered the tobacco smoke in the bar.

So, this brought us to our food decision. One of their gourmet pizzettes. Basically a 12 inch pizza. I selected the Pepperoni Tomato and Wild Mushroom. The crust reminded me of my baguettes last weekend where I had not kneeded the dough long enough leaving a strong flour taste. The extent of the tomato was the sauce, the pepperoni was unremarkable, the wild mushrooms were oven dried button. Basically, we should have gone to Tarrantino's.

Every restaurant has a personality. The combination of the chef, the management and staff, the food and the decor all add to this. It doesn't matter if you are a 5-star or a greasy spoon, you can serve a good meal when all these factors are in agreement. On our last visit I though that Popkin Tavern had a good idea who they were. The recent changes have upset that balance and I think they have lost their way.

1st Annual Foodie Blogger Grilling Potluck - Or How We Annoyed My Neighbours This Weekend

2008-06-02T11:33:00.002-04:00

It all started with dinner one night with Mr & Ms In Vino Veritas with the thought of grilling 'big ol' honkin' pieces o' meat'. Compounded by an email from Veron about her Hungry Hubby having grill envy. The idea was simple. Fire up the new infrared grill and throw open the doors to a few foodies and allow them to bask in the 700+ degree heat with whatever food stuff they cared to play with. Emails flew back and forth for a few days and then the preparations began and the players arrived. Joining us were Mr & Ms In Vino Veritas, the Sketchy's with little Aidan, Veron & Hungry Hubby, as well as our non-blogger friends Cy-n-Ide (with C4 still on board - so to speak). RVA Foodie was invited but decided to blow a gasket in a futile attempt at aioli instead.

Once everyone arrived, and Finn greeted Aidan (see above picture), martini's were made and the grill fired up. To get things rolling I threw some fillets of grouper (marinated in a Japanese inspired liquid) on the grill. For this dish I used my grilling basket to avoid the fish sticking to the grill. Four minutes later we had juicy grouper for people to nosh on.

Next up to the grill was Hungry Hubby. After a few minutes instruction on the grill itself, HH pulled out a sword and measured the grill. Off to the kitchen he went threading sword after sword with chunks of meat daubing them with some sort of melted butter concoction. The smells that came off the grill were heavenly. The meat came out moist and juicy, the extreme heat having seared all the juices inside. After years of dry, overcooked kebab meat this dish has ruined all other possible attempts at kebab making. HH decided then and there that he was getting an infrared grill and Veron, after tasting the results did not seem inclined to argue.

Next up to the plate was Mr Vino. The Vino's are on a cleansing diet for a short time so they were consuming no animal products. This made for a few adjustments for the evening. I had decided to make my faux mashed potatoes (actually made with cauliflower) for the evening so I had to adjust to make it vegan. Substitute Veggie Stock for Chicken, Soy Milk for cream, Smart Balance for butter, and I actually found a vegan parmesan substitute. The result was pretty good, I think I under salted but no one seemed to agree with me, so there you go. The Vino's had also brought kebab's, but of the veggie variety. We lowered the heat on the grill a bit, didn't want the skewers to burn (they did anyway), spritzed with a bit of olive oil and on to the heat. While this was cooking I added a piece of cedar board and threw on a hunk of salmon with a bit of white wine and dill. Once again all came out well (except for the burned skewers). The veggies stayed moist and, since we kept them moving on the grill, they cooked all the way through without getting too charred.

The next guest chef was Sketchy. He had brought some skirt steaks. The heat on the grill went back up and wrapped pieces of corn added to the upper rack. As skirt steak is so thin these had to be cooked quickly but with lots of contact with the grill to encourage proper charring. Sketchy's steak was a success. Perfect MR, juicy, and lots of flavour. The Sketchy's had also brought tow kinds of homemade marshmallows. One was infused with lavender, the other peach. Great snacking items. Stopped eating marshmallows years ago because they were too sweet and just really didn't taste of much. These were wonderful, especially the lavender. Sketchy mentioned maybe posting the recipe on his blog....

To finish on the grill I had planned a NY Strip tasting. I had got 4 NY Strips - One from Fresh Market and from Belmont Butchery a regular CAB, an organic CAB, and a Wagyu. All were cut basically the same, allowed to come to room temperature and sea salt applied. While they all cooked the same amount of time the Wagyu may have got a little more heat as the amount of marbling caused the grill to flare up a bit. Once cooked they were allowed to rest and then sliced thin. The results? The cheap one from Fresh Market was ok flavour, nothing special, but was a bit tough and had some gristle. The organic had really good flavour but had so much gristle that it was tough to cut and to chew. The regular CAB from Belmont Butchery was a winner, great taste, tender, and no tough spots. The Wagyu was excellent, buttery, tender, melt in your mouth. I would, however, give the ribbon the regular CAB based on the relative little damage it did to my pocketbook compared to the Wagyu.

Veron stepped up to the plate for desserts. Cupcakes, Financiers (little teacakes), and, of course, her macarons. All were delicious and the way we attacked them would make one think we were a bunch of 19th century orphans in London. Yum!

Of course with all this we had copious amounts of adults beverages. Martini's, too many different kinds of wine to count, and akvavit. As the liquor flowed so did the volume on the side porch. My favourite neighbours across the street, the ones with the dead body a few weeks ago, seemed to have their illegal activities interrupted by all the noise and activity. Although there has been change. The drug dealers seemed to have been moved out by the owners and new people moved in. The new profession is not dealing but prostitution. Oh joy.

Lemming Parade - Tarrantino's ~ Non-Veggie Edition

2008-05-23T16:53:00.006-04:00

Seems all the bloggers have been flocking to Tarrantino's for the hottest new ticket to pizza in town. RVA Foodie and Brie weighed in and gave excellent reviews. What more could I add? Actually, a couple of things. With all due respect to RVA and Brie, they're veg-heads, as an omnivore I require a bit more to my pizza pie. There's also something to be said for pizza being eaten on the spot. I love 8 1/2 but doesn't the pizza sometimes end end up more steamed than baked by the time you get it home? So, it was with these questions in mind that Finn & I entered the hallowed halls of Tarrantino's after a canceled swim lesson.

The art on the walls is nice. The rest, kind of thrown together. Above it all, a huge flat screen. I despise TV's in restaurants. I did, however, remember this was a pizza parlor in the making. TV's may not be such anathema here. Besides, the channel was on the Food Network. Ugh, it was Rachel Ray. I looked around waiting for glass to crack and birds to fall from the sky.

The sole employee was a bit surprised at having sit down guests but adjusted quickly. Being cruel I ordered a gin and tonic. By my calculations an employee would end up walking nearly a full city block to go and get your drink at the main bar and bring it back to you. If this ever becomes a full blown sit down operation this could be an issue. If your ordering a cocktail (they'll have a keg or two in the space in the near future) and it's busy be patient and tip accordingly. That's a lot of walking over the course of a six to eight hour shift.

The menu looks a like most other gourmet pizza places although it did make a point of saying that all the sauces and dough were made fresh daily. We (I) decided on one of their speciality pizzas, the Hawaiian. Basically your typical ham and pineapple with an addition of onion. The waiter/pizza man took our order and went to work. Out came the dough and after a few punches up into the air. Finn was enthralled. Cheese was liberally applied, ham freshly chopped as well as the pineapple (canned, but you really can't expect fresh). The onions were sauteed in advance. I found out that onions, mushrooms, and peppers were sauteed and caramelized in advance to add flavour and to enhance their texture. This was looking good! Into the oven it went.

The wait was short and soon we had a rack with a piping hot pizza in front of us. I must reiterate here, eat it here at least once instead of taking it home. The crust was exquisite. The best way to describe it would be very nearly a pastry. Crisp and moist, the freshness of the red sauce and it's spices, the caramelized onions and other toppings could not have worked together better.

Have you ever seen a child eat their favourite bits off a piece of pizza before eating the rest? Finn proceeded to pick off all the pieces of caramelized onion and the joy on his face as he savored each bite was a wonder to watch.

After half an hour the crust softened up a bit. It was still good but you really should eat there. Really. I mean it.

When you look at their prices (very reasonable), the quality of their product, and the fact that they will soon be delivering (You still need to eat there to get the proper experience) you would be right to wonder how and why Pizza Hut and it's ilk are still in business. And to be quite honest, except for their carbonara, 8 1/2 is off our dining card (subject to change once I determine how Tarrantino's crust travels...).

deLux Redux & The Bartender With The Most Amazing Memory

2008-05-22T10:51:00.002-04:00

Finn and I had just completed his first swimming lesson and while he was feeling peckish I was in desperate need of a martini. Heading into the Fan we got a call from M who was heading back from the middle of BFE, I mean West Creek, and she informed me that she was hungry as well. A couple of minutes of different restaurant names and genres were thrown about and we decided it was time to re-visit deLux. We had gone last February and had enjoyed it but for some reason or another had not made it back yet.

The first thing I noticed when we arrived was that they had opened all their windows. It was very nice on such a gorgeous day but I thought they were very brave as there were no screens and flies tend to annoy. The second was the bartender. I didn't remember her but she remembered us, what we drank, and what we ate on our only visit nearly 4 months ago. I was impressed. Drinks quickly in hand (I had to settle for Bombay Sapphire as they still don't carry Tanq 10) we looked over the menu. The verdict was for heavy grazing on an array of appetizers.

WEB SITE WARNING - The web site is a single page that informs you of a full site coming up in March, 2008. They've missed that deadline. The hours on the site and those posted in their window do not match. They no longer seem to be open for breakfast during the week. The pdf menu that you can download off the site is way out of date. They have refined the menu quite a bit over the last couple of months and the old menu does not completely reflect their current style of offerings.

The first appetizer we tried was on a lark and could have been good or really scary. Captain Crunch Fried Shrimp. The menu described the sauce as a lime, rum, and garlic sauce. I would have described it as a Thai chili sauce of sorts. Regardless, the heat of the chili pepper flakes in the sauce and the sweet crunch of the coating on the shrimp were excellent.

At the same time came another app, French Fries Tossed In Truffle Oil with Asiago Cheese. The delicate flavours of the truffle oil, the bite of the Asiago topped off with chopped chives were a nice combination. Two problems with this dish. What's the point of truffle oil if your going to offer people ketchup and cover up the taste? We asked for mayonnaise (an garlic or truffle aioli would have been better!). For $7 I get a bit disappointed if the fries are frozen. For that kind of money and to appreciate the ingredients you really need fresh cut potato. Finn had no complaints with this dish and after finishing the fries proceeded to eat the bits of Asiago left on the plate.

For the next course M opted for the Avocado BLT, which we had last time and had enjoyed. Still good.

I had the Seared Tuna appetizer next. Dabbed with wasabi and served on home made chips it was ok. Not a real stand out and just seemed to be missing something to make it more enjoyable.

With the tuna came a plate of Seared Scallops with Pancetta and Mushrooms. When the plate was set down M commented that she thought it smelled fishy. The scallops did have an odor but I didn't think it was a bad one, just a strong one. The scallops weren't the real large ones that are all the rage but as there were 7 or 8 and they were perfectly cooked I wasn't complaining. The mushrooms got a bit lost in the mix but the pancetta added a smokiness and richness to the scallops. My only problem with the pancetta was that I kept flashing back to this weeks episode of Hell's Kitchen and Matt slicing off part of his thumb while cutting pancetta and the subsequent search for the missing digit (was it just me or did they never find the missing piece of flesh in the pancetta?).

Even if we hadn't enjoyed the food and drink so much we would probably still go back based on the staff. With all the competition for our dinning dollar and when you can find the same or similar dishes in a dozen different places, being remembered and treated well can tip the balance when making a destination decision.

Ever Wonder How Angry You Look When Your Interrupted Using Your Blackberry?

2008-05-22T09:38:00.003-04:00

Finn says - "No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!".....

The Body In Battery Park - 7 Days Later And Something Is Starting To Smell...

2008-05-21T10:10:00.001-04:00

A week has passed since the body of a man turned up in the unlicensed rooming house across the street. Beyond the initial reports of the body having been there for several days prior to 'discovery' this is what we have learned so far:

a) The dead 44-year-old didn't live there.

b) The person who occupied that room and didn't 'notice' the dead body for several days has not been around lately. Speculation among the neighbours is that the body expired elsewhere and was brought to the house.

c) The owners have actually paid the water bill for two months in a row and they currently have running water (it's been cut off twice this year alone - I guess the owners payment on their brand new Mercedes is more important...).

d) The police, having spoken to people claiming to be residents instead of the actual residents, actually have the death listed as a 'pending matter'. Considering the house cleaning prior to their arrival I doubt there was any evidence left and they don't seem to be treating this very seriously. Let's keep the murder rate down through creative record keeping.

New developments for the house include a return of most, but not all, of the normal residents. Drug activity, which was down over the weekend is starting to pick up again. Oh, and a new city agency has them in their sites.

Yep, we've city building and zoning inspectors sniffing around. Normally that makes all of us residents nervous as most of our houses are in various stages of renovation (yes, rain gutters are on my list but I've got other things to do first...) but they are all interested in the 'house across the street'. I don't know what got them started. It may have been my multiple phone calls over the years. It wasn't the body (they didn't know) and it certainly wasn't Councilwoman Ellen Robertson (who only gets really involved with the community just prior to an election - she comes by our house each election cycle, I complain to her about the rooming house, she says she'll look into it, nothing happens.).

Whatever it was the city inspector is pissed. There never seems to be anyone home (he should sit in the middle of the street and honk his horn like all their other visitors/customers) and he can't get in. He says he knows it's a rooming house but they don't have the permits for it and it lost it's 'grandfather' status due to a re-zoning (single-family homes only) of the neighbourhood which went into effect when the house last sold in 2004. The inspector has vowed to shut them down. Of all the people in life I do not want to have annoyed at me it's a city building inspector.

It's kind of sad. The police have allowed a known drug house to continue operating for years and look to be more interested in managing the 'numbers' of the murder rate rather than investigating a very suspicious death. No, instead the most dangerous house on the block will not be shut down by the men in blue but instead by a bureaucrat enforcing regulations. Who needs detectives and forensics when you can just be caught by the red tape.

Striving To Be Serious - Cirrus

2008-05-19T13:59:00.002-04:00

Update September 2008 - Cirrus has closed it's doors. No word on what, if anything, will be opening in it's space.

If I ran a Fan restaurant that was open for brunch.....

a) 11:30 is a bit late to be starting brunch service. Most other places are either well into their first seating by 11:30, some their second, and I bet Millie's is starting their third or fourth.

b) Competition for Brunch in Richmond is fierce. You need a hook, something to pull people in. If your brunch menu is not unique you better be top-notch to get people in the door.

We've not made it to brunch on a couple of occasions due to these two items. With a little kid in tow we usually hit brunch early or late and try to avoid the 12 o'clock rush. We go out of way for interesting menus and may mix the times up a bit, if we can get the same thing someplace else and your not open yet....

The plan for yesterday had originally included going to Broad Appetit. We didn't make it. M wasn't feeling well, it started raining, and we have a slight aversion to big crowds. We sill almost went while running a couple of errands but realized that we had no cash on hand. So Cirrus it was.

We arrived at a completely deserted restaurant. Normally a very bad sign, I guessed all their diners must be over on Broad St. I looked around and immediately missed Dogwood Grille. You could see the old place under the whimsical new furnishings. I'm not sure why owners feel the need to update the old spaces the way they do. The old buildings in the Fan have so much character and style that I would preserve the original as much as possible. I want to ask the current owners in a year or two if all the white (booths, walls, bar) was a good idea or a maintenance nightmare.

The brunch menu looked ok but nothing screamed 'eat me', they didn't even have the vegetarian sausage and biscuits that drew RVA Foodie any more. What was interesting was the appetizer and salad portion of the menu (not shown on-line). Since it was late in the day we decided to share a number of appetizers except for Finn - he gets Blueberry Pancakes.

After a bit of a wait the first items came out. A Spinach Salad for M and Cream of Mushroom Soup for me. Finn and I enjoyed the soup. At first I wasn't sure about it. The mushroom flavour was strong and the sliced one in the soup were still firm but it seemed to be lacking something. I realized it was just mushroom soup, not bacon and mushroom, or onion, or anything else. Just mushroom. It was actually a nice realization and I enjoyed the simplicity. M commented on how nice the salad was. All to often salad are unbalanced by one item or another. Too much of one item and that's all you can taste. Her salad was lightly seasoned and each item spoke for itself. A nice start.

Soon after we finished the next courses started coming out. First was the Crab Stuffed Mushrooms. The best thing I can say about this item was that the mushroom wasn't overcooked and still retained it's firmness. The crab was an over-spiced puree, the slightly fishy flavour overpowered by the heat.

Next came the Shrimp Spring Roll with Sweet Thai Chili Sauce. The plate was beautiful. A pile of sliced red cabbage in the center, large shrimp in the roll showing from the bias cut surrounded by more red cabbage in the roll. The dish showed promise but lacked focus. The wrapping was too dry and the cabbage added crunch but no real flavour. The shrimp in it were good but I felt the dish needed a little more fine tuning to be really good.

Finally cam a plate of Sirloin Sliders with Smoked Gouda and Bacon Mayo and Sweet Potato Fries. The fat content in the sirloin used to make these was high enough to make them very juicy but not greasy. The whole combination with the gouda and the bacon mayo on the little toasted rolls was outstanding. While I am not a normal fan of sweet potato fries, these were pretty good.

I had a hard time judging the service. The waitress was a little shaky and not very confident at the table. Of course we kept talking about the Dogwood Grille and the effortless silver service (in a tropical flowered shirt no less) that they provided. That conversation raised the bar so high that they couldn't compete.

Some restaurants have clear focus and hit the ground running. Can-Can and Hard Shell knew who they were from day one. Others, through good stewardship, can evolve and change to meet the latest trends or to adapt to a new chef. How often has Avalon changed over the years? Cirrus is a restaurant that hasn't yet come into focus. They do some things very well while other items seem not quite finished. The changes on the menu from when the Foodies were there last Fall to today suggest they are evolving and figuring out what works. We'll make another visit to see if their vision has become clearer.

17 Mai - Norwegian Independence Day & The Second Feral Cat Hunt

2008-05-19T11:07:00.003-04:00

You may well ask why we celebrate Norwegian Independence Day every year, especially considering we are Danish. We prefer to look at it as when the Norwegians were granted home rule and we are helping them celebrate their continued success.

Actually, the Charlottesville area is home to a rather large Scandinavian population and many of the immigrants have formed the Scandinavian Ladies Society. They trade books from the homeland, have luncheons with traditional foods, and just basically create a support network for each other. You do have to wonder, though, if their hair and skin were a little darker if their little group might end up on a Homeland Security watch list....

The biggest bash of the year takes place out on a farm near Zion Crossroads. 17 Mai (May 17th) or the nearest Sunday to it is when Hanna Bjorn rolls out the red carpet for the whole community to come. People bring out their best and favourite recipes, beer and drinks from the homeland and even dress them and their kids up in traditional dress. For over 15 years I've been lucky enough to be on the invite list as the child of a Danish immigrant, although I catch a bit of hell for not speaking any of the languages all that well.

The hostess, Hanna Bjorn, is what you would expect of a old Norwegian farm lady. Tough as nails, no-nonsense, chain smoking. She could also drink you under the table. One Christmas her and I sat in someones kitchen and managed to polish off an entire bottle of akavit one shot at a time. Sadly she lost her husband last year. Lennart was a Swedish neuro-scientist and professor at UVA. Prior to succumbing to cancer he managed to have all his lectures and classes videotaped so he could continue to have an impact of students in the years to come. It was due to his departure that, for the first time in decades, the 17 Mai celebration was canceled. There was some concern as to whether or not we would have any more.

A couple of months ago I got the call from my mother. 17 Mai was back on, although it would start in the evening rather than midday. My next dilemma was what to cook. I decided to braise a pork shoulder in apple and fennel. Not a traditional dish but the flavours definitely Scandinavian inspired. The day arrived and, braising done, we headed to Hanna Bjorn's farm.

Norwegian flags were flying everywhere, people were decked out, lots of food and drink, but it was a somber affair. Only about half the normal amount of people, a fraction of the number of kids. The food was good (I can't match some of the frikedeller - Danish Meatballs) but not as good as some years past. Drinks flowed but in a much more restrained manner. Normally we all stand around the flag pole, the Norwegian flag flapping in the wind, and sing all the anthems of the Scandinavians but this year it was only the Swedish anthem in honour of Lennart.

As Finn started wearing out from running with the small herd of kids we decided to leave early. I'm guessing my pork was good as when I went to find the dish it was empty and had been washed, any leftovers snagged by someone else. One the way down the dirt road back to I-64 we wondered about the future. Would the tradition continue or were we witnessing the winding down of an annual event. Next year will be telling. Will it be a return to form or smaller and quieter? We'll wait and see.

The ride home provided some excitement. We left at the same time as the Nordins. Old friends from Capital One on the verge of reverse immigrating. Lars has already packed up and moved back to Norway and Anna-Maria and their four kids will be joining him as soon as school lets out. Driving behind them on 64 we noticed them suddenly steer off onto the side of the highway. I just happened to have her number and called to make sure everything was ok. Seems they had a blowout. After a couple of ileagle u-turns across the medians of 64 we rejoined them. The mini-van had a shredded and smoking tire. Fortunately, M know how to change tires so Anna-Maira and I entertained the kids while she did all the heavy lifting. We were soon safely back on the road and home again.

Once home we checked the cat traps we had left out. We had two takers for our four traps but one had been trapped last month. So one very angry tom-cat went into the basement for a trip to the vet. The score if your keeping track:

2 female/2 males - Trapped Fixed and Released
1 male - Not Healthy or Injured - Euthanized
1 female - Didn't Learn Lesson & Trapped Again

Why I Hate My Neighbours - A Houseful Of People And No One Noticed The Dead Body...

2008-05-15T10:40:00.003-04:00

If I felt the need to deal drugs I would be very low-key about it. When engaging in activities that law enforcement agencies frown upon it is wise to keep a low profile. The neighbours in the unlicensed rooming house across the street seem to have missed this little nugget of advice. I doubt anyone on the block would care one way or another what they were up to if they kept it quiet. Instead we have heavy traffic stopping in front of their house, blasting horns at all hours, questionable individuals standing in their front yard yelling or throwing rocks at windows for attention (obviously none of these people have heard of doorbells or cell phones...).

The number of phones calls made by me and others to 911, the 4th precinct, and various other government agencies has reached the point to make the house a big red blob on any of the local crime maps. So it was no surprise that I was met with boredom or more correctly - 'What have they done now?' - when I called several numbers last night.

Sitting in my kitchen last night I watched as the same green Explorer kept driving down the block. Sometimes it would stop, sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes someone would yell something from the front porch, sometimes someone would run out to the car for a quick chat. Usually when someone runs out to a car you can see a quick pass of cash and small bags. Tonight it was only words that were being passed. Watching closer I noticed small bags and cases being brought out, regular tenants getting into their cars and driving off and many new people arriving. A lot of new people. People we had not seen before.

My calls to the police seemed to produce nothing except a couple of new numbers for me to call during business hours so I was a little surprised a half hour later when I noticed flashing lights in front of our house. Fire Trucks, EMS, police cars. Finn was very excited, I was curious. Something was going down. The evening progressed, we tried to watch Top Chef but kept getting pulled away as something new arrived or left outside (Thankfully we have a DVR and were recording the show). Then there was a knock at our back door...

M had been IM'ing our neighbour, S, and he had snuck around back to come over to our house with news and in hopes of a better view of the house across the street. Seems they had a body in the house. Seems the body had been there for a few days. Seems the police had been scammed....

The police had been told that no one had noticed the body (or the smell). Problem with that is the body was in a room belonging to someone else and he had been around all week. Personally, I would notice a dead body in the room with me, but I could be wrong. So the body was moved in the house or from somewhere else. Prior to the arrival of the police the house was 'cleaned', both literally and figuratively. What do you think was in all the bags and cases removed in the hours leading up to the 'discovery' of the body? The people the police questioned about the body were not residents (We've secretly replaced your paroled and wanted tenants with people having fewer legal issues...) but purported to be - all the real residents left earlier.

One can also not underestimate the stupidity of your average drug addict. You would think he would notice all the police cars parked on the street when he drove up, he didn't. As he stopped and blasted his horn, waiting for someone to run out with his fix, I can only imagine the look on his face as the officers turned to look at him.

Slowly things began to quiet down. The police and EMS left. Scott's Funeral Home's hearse arrived. The body was manhandled down the stairs (rather roughly I might add) and whisked away. Don't know the guys name. Probably never will. I find it a bit sad that the closest he may come to being remembered is right here on my blog. Hopefully he has some family or friends somewhere that will remember him better than this.

The new people at the house will hang out there for a couple of days. The regulars will trickle back and business will resume. And I will still hate my neighbours.