Around the World in 180 Minutes

Everglades Restaurant at the Rosen Centre Hotel hosts a food and wine event about five times each year. We particularly enjoy these events because of their fun and intimate nature, the opportunity to meet interesting people at our table, and their interesting themes. They’re also a good deal, with five course and five generous servings of interesting wines for $65. For my birthday, Linda, Martin and I attended this month’s event, called “Around the World in 180 Minutes.” It was themed like an airplane trip, right down to the boarding passes we were issued to enter:

As always, the food was terrific, the presentations about the wines were kept short and to the point, and a good time was had by all. My favorite course was the salad, which combined incredibly tasty tomatoes with a wonderful vinaigrette that matched the Spanish Albarino beautifully.

The soup course was also impressive, really a bowl of lobster tail and other fish and shellfish with an almost marinara-thick sauce. The desert was also delicious, and the tart mango slices worked beautifully with the Lexia (muscat).

The next event is March 25th, and every course will contain chocolate!

Barry Manilow

Barry Manilow rarely leaves Vegas these days, but last night he kicked off a new tour at the Amway Center in Orlando. This is the second concert I’ve seen there, and the jury is still out on the acoustics, but Barry’s sound man definitely didn’t have a handle on it. I’ve never heard so much feedback in a major concert production. Since this was the first stop on the tour, hopefully they’ll get it straightened out by the next show.

But Barry did a great job. We saw him thirty years ago at the Greek Theatre in LA, and he still has the voice and puts on a great show, even in the face of adversity, which the sound mix certainly created.

My favorite moments were the ballads, but I also really enjoyed seeing four guys play one piano at the same time!

Some excerpts from the Sentinel’s unusually on-target review:

Although Manilow will tell you that the road show doesn’t aim to copy the glitzy production of his Vegas act, there was a decent amount of that showroom pop Thursday at Amway Center, especially in the oversized opening moments and the thunderous, confetti-adorned finale.

The orchestra, about 70 members strong, looked to be having a blast, waving instruments in the air in the opening moments to a pounding drumbeat…

The sound mix was a blaring, muddled mess, especially in the monster crescendos … in the early going. Equally frustrating, Manilow’s voice almost disappeared when he dipped into the lower register in the understated moments…

And the man was working the room. He prowled the stage energetically, if awkwardly, belting out songs to the back row with crazy arm gestures that might have been showbiz semaphore decipherable only to veteran casino patrons…

If Manilow likes things big, it’s not because he can’t do a ballad. One of the night’s most captivating moments also was among the most delicate. Seated on a stool, the singer tenderly offered “When October Goes,” a song that he adapted from unfinished lyrics by the iconic Johnny Mercer.

Of course, Manilow himself has no shortage of songs…

“You didn’t think we’d let you go home without doing this one,” he said, launching into the obligatory “Copacabana.” Like most everything he does, it was over the top.

Ratatouille

The dish, not the movie.

Sauté zucchini in organic garlic and grapseed oil spray.
Add onions, variety of bell, red and yellow peppers, green onions, fire roasted diced tomatoes, dash of hot sauce, seasoning salt, fresh terragon. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Pretty tasty, and it freezes.

Tilapia with Caramelized Apples

This was a weird idea that turned out well.

Ingredients:

Tilapia filet
Apple, sliced
Onion, chopped
Cup of white wine
Splash of milk
Seasoning salt
Grapeseed oil spray

Caramelize the apples and onions, add white wine and milk, reduce, set aside. Sauté the Tilapia. Dump the apples and onions on top.

Tasty!

Rock of Ages more like Gravel

For a decade we held season tickets to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, which hosted some of the best productions in the Southeast, but then they terminated their affiliation with Broadway Across America, and stopped getting the interesting touring companies. So, for the past two years, we’ve subscribed to the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center in Orlando, a theater with worse acoustics than the average 7-Eleven restroom.

Once again last night, the Bob Carr soundly defeated the audio system (pun intended). But the touring show Rock of Ages has far worse problems than audio. With the exception of the female lead, this was the most untalented cast I’ve ever heard in a national touring company. And her ability to sing and act simply made everyone else look even worse. Honestly, I’ve seen many high school casts better than this one. As the Orlando Sentinel critic noted, we couldn’t tell if they were paying homage to the songs, or parodying them.

The song choices themselves were good, and the on-stage musicians played them fine. But the songs have so little relationship to the show that, even if they had been well sung, they could have provided no emotional tug.

Like In The Heights, the show attracts non-theatregoers. The misanthropes next to me appeared to have never been to a cultural event, talking through the show and occasionally shouting at the players.

While some in the audience did laugh at the bits of dialogue they could understand, it had the feeling of nervous laughter, since the book writer seems to have simply thrown in every idea that came to him (again quoting from the Sentinel) with an emphasis on middle school references to sexual anatomy.

The best thing about the show was the second act, because we were at home, asleep.