Category: Family

l’Atelier

We saved the best for last. Having been to Joel Robuchon’s l’Atelier in London, we knew it was good, but I had expected his formal restaurant, Robuchon, to be better. However I actually prefer the honest flavors of the simple ingredients at l’Atelier. I also, surprisingly, like sitting at what is essentially a sushi bar, and chatting with the servers and watching the chefs.

Watch my l’Atelier movie

We went on Friday night, and had a great time. One of our servers, a Nigerian named Sunday, was especially nice, and encouraged us to let him make a reservation for us after our show the next night, and so we did. l’Atelier two nights in a row, wow!

Before dinner on Saturday we saw Ka, our favorite Cirque show by a mile. The story line, consistent theming, and amazing technical aspects of the presentation set this apart from all other Cirque shows. My favorite moments are when the huge platform is first revealed and slowly rotates to show the audience what it can do, then when it later transforms itself into a vertical wall. The show has been rearranged since we first saw it, so that the impressive vertical battle—where you feel like you are watching from above—is now at the end, a great way to finish with the best scene.

We finished out meal Saturday with these delicious mini hamburgers. I’d had a hamburger with foie gras and caramelized onions at db Bistro Moderne in New York, but these are much better. The small size—just four bites each—and the wonderful brioche bun make these a little slice of heaven, without being overpoweringly rich. It was a real treat to end out week in Vegas on such a high note.

Mystery Fruit

The ugly tree in the backyard has pretty flowers on it. Linda planted this cutting a few years ago, with the promise that each branch would grow a different kind of fruit. Mostly it grows dead twigs. But this branch has produced a couple of pieces of fruit in the past, plums I think. Usually the squirrel sneaks into the screen room and runs off with them.

City Fire Oven and Bar

Tonight Linda an I went to a pre-opening test run of a new restaurant by the family that created Pebbles, Harvey’s Bistro and Manuel’s. For a first night, things ran remarkably smoothly. It was fun to try some of the dishes we used to love at Pebbles, and we had a chance to provide some detailed feedback to the owner, who provided us with a tour. The decor is nice, with romantic lighting, 1890’s light fixtures and photos, and an inviting looking bar. Nothing about the service or the food would have tipped us off that this was their first night. It looks like a successful concept, and we wish them well for their opening this Monday.

Crepes

Linda fixed crepes tonight, what a creative use of frozen leftovers! Spinach Souffle, curry chicken, and ratatouille. Accompanied by two different Adobe Road zinfandels that happened to arrive today, and a BV chardonnay.

Wine Competition

This was my 20th year judging wines at the Florida State Fair International Wine Competition. There were about 1269 wines from 34 different states, with 25% coming from California.

The event begins Wednesday evening, at the judges’ dinner, when we taste last year’s double gold medal winners. Then, on Thursday and Friday, the 24 judges form eight panels that score about 100 wines each day. This year, for dinner on Thursday, John Henline and I tried someplace new, Tokai Sushi, that was nearby, quite good, and reasonably priced.

There’s also time to see a bit of the fair, which is a strange mix of livestock, competitions ranging  from horticulture to dancing, flea market, and carnie midway. These miniature cows are used as a tax dodge, to achieve agricultural zoning of two head of cattle per acre without requiring much food. They don’t have T-bones, just Teeny-bones.

Saturday is the Best of Show tasting, when the best double gold medal winners are all entered into a popularity contest. It takes a lot of glasses!

This year’s winners in the red and white categories were both from California wineries: Moonstone and Ventana.

Of course, no trip to Tampa is complete with a visit to Berns, and this year I managed two. On Friday night I went with John, Al, and Keith, and we tried ’64 Vosnee-Romanee, ’64 Cote-Rotie, ’73 Inglenook Charbono, ’74 Inglenook Petite Sirah, and ’76 Mondavi Pinot Noir.

On Saturday I met up with Linda and Martin to see Billy Elliot at a matinee. This was my fifth time seeing that show, three times in London and once in Chicago. It’s been interesting to watch it gradually transform itself for American audiences, with minor changes here and there to make it more understandable. An excellent show, and very well received by the audience. I couldn’t help reflect on the absence of children in the audience, even though the cast is mostly children. This was quite different from London, but here the show’s four letter vocabulary is evidently a bit too much for most parents.

After the show Linda, Martin and I went to Berns, where we enjoyed the best wine of the week, a 1959 Chambolle-Musigny, along with a 1980 Cote-Rotie and a 1982 Tanbark Zin(!) recommended by our waiter. By chance I had the same table and waiter both nights, and also by chance Ron and Bev were there both nights, in another room. The Zin made an interesting blind challenge when I sent a glass to Ron, and he passed with flying colors.

Christmas 2010

We had a lovely Christmas, leisurely opening our packages all day.  The best gifts were homemade. Dani wrapped up a LOST-themed Dharma pillow in DHARMA “Standard Wrapping Paper” that she made herself, and she also gave us a world map she framed herself and inserted push pins into, marking 100 places we’ve traveled to. We had our traditional breakfast burritos for lunch, and then Martin and Nicole came over for Christmas dinner.

Christmas Eve at Victoria & Albert’s

Christmas Eve we went to Disney’s Grand Floridian for our traditional dinner at Victoria & Albert’s. We’ve gone every year for more than a decade. Here, Dani poses in the lobby in front of the jazz band. The enormous gingerbread house is on the left. Downstairs there was a long line to great Mickey and Minnie in their Victorian Christmas garb.

Gingerbread House

Dani’s annual tradition of making a gingerbread house got a bit more complicated this year, as she baked the gingerbread herself. We were all a bit skeptical of whether it would hold together for final assembly, but we shouldn’t have doubted. What a lovely job of decorating it!

Flashback

Last week Linda’s wallet was stolen, which started the process of replacing her credit cards and IDs.

To get a new Driver’s License you now need all kinds of documentation (never mind that you’re right there in the system, picture and all).

The snag she hit was that her Social Security name was still Linda McBride, which didn’t match her license. (Remember when they assured us that Social Security numbers weren’t required, and wouldn’t be used for identification?)

So to get her name changed she needed our marriage certificate.

In looking for it, she unearthed a box of mementos from the 70s, that proved to be quite a time capsule of our college years.

Speaking of IDs, here are ours from our college days.

One of the things I found most striking was the absence of anything to do with computers. Even the tickets and itineraries for our honeymoon were hand written or typed, because travel agents and airlines worked by telephone, with pen and paper.

The only sure sign of computers were the UCLA quarterly registration cards, which were IBM punch cards generated by the university’s sole IBM 360/90 computer. These were folded up to fit in your wallet.

Remember BioRhythms? They were a popular gimmick in the 70s, and there were machines that would print yours for any date you wanted. But even the biorhythm cards would have been generated by a kiosk with dedicated electronics (or perhaps even mechanics) to generate the graphs. Here are Linda’s and my biorhythms for our wedding day. The prospects for sex look pretty bleak.

The saddest thing I found was this page from my 1973 senior yearbook. Each senior got to design his own page (actually, as editor, I had to design the whole book, but that’s another story). I decided to do a collage of things that were meaningful to me. There in the center is my mint copy of Spiderman Number 1, which is worth over a quarter million dollars. Unfortunately, the next year I sold it for about ten bucks.

Anyway, the walk down memory lane was fun. I can’t say youth is wasted on the young; those were good times, too.

England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, New York 2010

By Land and Air and Sea

And so we set out for a three week adventure, first to London, then a peculiar repositioning cruise that will take us to odd places on the way back to New York. Our morning flight from Orlando left us a loooong layover in Atlanta, the price to be paid for free first class tickets on the red eye to London. After hanging out in the Delta lounge we head out over the Atlantic.

Mission Acomplished!

Dani took her chemistry final this morning. While she was away I put up the banner Jackie made for her. She was very surprised when she arrived home to find that, and my lame excuse at cake decorating.

In all fairness, the cake is only about four inches across.

Bombay Indian Grill and Merle’s #1 Barbecue

For lunch I was going to try the local JK Sweets, which is the bizarre combination of an ice cream parlor and Korean restaurant, but it looks like they’re on vacation. So I walked over to Sherman and on a whim went into Bombay Indian Grill, a narrow storefront that used to be a Dunkin’ Donuts.

Bombay Indian Grill is a small restaurant that offers quite tasty and authentic Indian food, and at least at lunch the prices are quite fair. I had the Chicken Korma. There seems to be some disagreement about what goes into Korma sauce, with some places adding spices that turn it pink or red, while others make the traditional white. This was the pink variety, and it was savory and delicious, and mild as advertised. I love garlic naan bread, so I ordered that, rather than the plain naan that comes with the lunch, and took rice instead with my chicken. Both the rice and the garlic naan were excellent, and the two chutney accompaniments — tamarind and cilantro — were perfect. A tiny salad was as also on the plate, really just some shredded lettuce that might have been lightly dressed, but it actually served well to clear the palate. The two fried bits of smashed and breaded cauliflower aren’t really my thing, but they were good with the chutneys. A lot of food for ten bucks. Service was attentive and friendly. There’s free wifi, too, due to the fact that Starbucks is next door! No complaints, and I’ll be back.

Today they’re washing the windows of the condo building (they actually weren’t very dirty), so a guy dangling from ropes is passing by. It’s amazing how fast he goes from floor to floor, dropping down the side. Then I guess he takes the elevator back up!

Today Dani gave her chemistry lab project presentation about a UV light exposure sensor to prevent sunburn and got voted best presentation by her 14 classmates, so she won a Northwestern Chemistry hat.

For dinner we ordered ribs from Merle’s #1 Barbecue. Dani thought there wasn’t goof barbecue in Evanston, but the “spare ribs, falling off the bone, mild sauce” were terrific, as were the accompaniments: corn bread, baked potatoes and very bacony baked beans.

The Cellar

Not much happening here today. Dani’s been reading, and I’ve been installing WordPress on my website. Once it’s up I’ll transfer all these journal entries over from the iPad.

We went to Chili’s for lunch; Dani had a craving.

For dinner we went to The Cellar. It’s a place I’ve passed a dozen times on the walk from The Hilton Garden Inn. It’s a really narrow storefront on Clark, just around the corner from The Stained Glass. What I didn’t realize is that it’s owned by them. It’s a casual place that serves essentially the same food, tapas style. In fact, they had exactly the same special as at the Stained Glass last night, and many of the same desserts. It was terrific, and inexpensive, and everything is served the same way that we order at the Stained Glass anyway. It’s a definite must for your next visit.

A Perfectly (Awful) Musical

We had a quiet day of reading. We went to Kansaku for lunch and had the salmon ceviche roll again. We also had a north shore blvd roll, which was rolled in soy paper rather then seaweed, something I never had before. We had dinner at The Stained Glass, and then went to see Not Wanted on the Voyage at NU.

The show was unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. The score is beautiful, the casting great, the performers flawless, the set and lighting design interesting, costumes great, and direction thoughtful and inventive. The result was terrible. A hundred ideas, none of them integrated, all coming together in a meaningless train wreck. I can’t say one bad thing about the production. It simply should never have been made. I can’t imagine how so much talent could be applied without a foundation. Weird.

Moto

We went to Chicago for lunch, a play and dinner. Lunch was at Petterino’s, in the heart of the theatre district. It’s a lot like Sardi’s, right down to the decor.

After lunch we walked across the street to see Billy Elliot at the Oriental Theater. It was interesting to see it in America after seeing the original London production several times. Minor changes to the presentation and blocking had been made throughout, and there was some background provided in the introductory film clip. All of these changes worked well. The only thing that didn’t quite work was the accents, which seemed to come and go. Overall, the cast was very good, and it’s an excellent show that was very well received by the audience.

After the show we went to Moto, which is just an incredibly fun restaurant, where molecular gastronomy turns things into completely different things, all tasty, and served without any stuffy pretense. It was nice to see them very busy, they deserve it.

Les Nomades

Today was the hottest day so far this summer, at 93. I guess Linda brought both the rain and the heat from Florida. For lunch we walked down to Davis Street Fishmarket, which has a wide range of non-fish items. Incompetent waiter.

For dinner we drove into Chicago and went to Les Nomades, the city’s top rated French restaurant. the five course meal was excellent, and one of the most beautiful I’ve experienced, in terms of the composition of each plate. However, we couldn’t help but compare it to the pleasure we had the previous night at The Stained Glass, at one fourth the price.

A Very Short Cruise with Linda

I rented a car. Because I wanted one with an audio jack (so I could use the TomTom nav program in the iPhone) I ended up with a Toyota Prius. It takes a bit of getting used to driving a hybrid, but it’s a decent car.

I picked Linda up at Midway and we slogged through lots of traffic to get to Topolobampo, Rick Bayless’ high end Mexican restaurant. The guacamole and Linda’s ceviche sampler were particularly good, as was my molé.

We spent a couple of hours at the Field Museum, mostly looking at the Egyptian relics. It’s a good collection that they’ve tried to put in context by creating a fake tomb, but the experience doesn’t really work, and there isn’t any successful storytelling. Also, the signage is not really good for kids or scholars, just sort of wordy but shallow.

We drove to Navy Pier for a dinner cruise. It was a beautiful evening that afforded a great view of Chicago as the sun set. The food was okay, except for the entree, and the Odyssey ship was nice.. They were using only one of three decks, but the live trio played all styles of music. (Apparently on busy nights they have a different band on each deck.) After dinner there were impressive fireworks launched from a barge about 200 yards away.

Books by the Pound

The place that sells used books by the pound, Market Fresh Books, has opened a second location only two blocks from their original spot. The rents must be cheap on theses abandoned storefronts. I bought 12 ounces of book this afternoon.

I fixed a couple of quiches for dinner and to freeze the leftovers. They turned out really good. The ingredients were ham, bacon, brocollini, green onions and the secret ingredient: Chinese five spice.

Chef’s Station

We had a quiet day at home while Dani got caught up on her online chemistry study and prepped for her Monday lab. We walked over to the Celtic Knot for lunch, where I had a ploughman’s lunch, which is cheese, bread and salad. Oddly, the music was Cajun. It’s not a completely authentic Irish pub, though, because it lacks one food we encountered at every pub we visited in Ireland: nachos.

I downloaded a free app for the Mac called Jing, and used it to make a demo video of my ed2go processing app, which I sent off to see if there is any interest in it; it’s sure saved me a lot of time over the past few months.

For dinner we tried a place called the Chef’s Station that is under the train station. They have a nice outside area and it was a beautiful evening. Good food, used to be the highest Zagat rating in Evanston, but I suspect The Stained Glass has surpassed it. On the way to dinner we crossed through a bike race, with the pace car, a hundred cyclists and a chase motorcycle going round and round downtown Evanston.

The Doobie Brothers and Chicago

I walked up to Windy City Garden Center on Green Bay Road. It’s basically a fenced lot with some tables of flowers. My goal was to find some flowers to put into the two planters where the seeds I planted are doing nothing (the third planter now has little sprouts coming up). So I bought a flat of impatiens and carted them back in the wheeled shopping basket and planted them. It’s nice to have a bit of color on the porch. I asked the guy at the garden center if anything I could plant would come back after the winter. He just laughed.

Dani felt good about her chemistry midterm.

In the evening we went to The Stained Glass (superb, as always) and then caught a limo to the Charter One Pavilion on the shore of Lake Michigan to see The Doobie Brothers and Chicago. The important members of both bands are still kicking, and it was a good show, and we had excellent seats, fifth row center (ear plugs required). The best part was the last half hour, when all sixteen members of the two bands came on stage and played non-stop hits.

Brussel Sprouts Are Edible. Who Knew?

I walked down to Jewel and bought their pesticide-laced bananas because they taste better than Whole Foods‘ organic ones. On the way back I spent an hour at Cafe Mozart sipping coffee and reading articles from Instapaper, including an interesting one about an art forger named Biro. Then at whole Foods I picked up supplies to make basil chicken and oven roasted brussels sprouts, which turned out surprisingly good.

Spiaggia

We took advantage of having a car and drove North to Wilmette, a rather tony suburb, where we had lunch at Hackney’s, an old fashioned restaurant that reminded me of the places we used to go when I was a kid. Next door we shopped at Trader Joe’s, and then stopped at Sam’s Club.

For dinner we went to Spiaggia, which is supposed to be the best Italian/Continental restaurant in Chicago, although it is owned by Levy Restaurants, which is a bit worrisome. Spiaggia was good, not life changing. The place is a bit like Per Se, but with an Italian focus. Their tasting menu had an interesting theme, of the development of balsamic vinegar, with each course using a vinegar from farther along in the life cycle. The wine pairings were mostly so-so. It was a nice evening.

James Taylor and Carole King

Dani said that her final exam went well. It took all three hours for her to do it and check it.

We rented a car and picked up the footstools I bought at World Market, which are very nice.

It’s really a challenge to find a place to park the car, though. I think we’ll use it tomorrow and then return it rather than try to figure out what to do with it until Sunday.

We drove down to little Italy and strolled up and down restaurant-laden Taylor street, finally choosing Francesca’s. Great choice. We had an authentic Italian meal, a great bottle of Barbera, and one of the best desserts I’ve ever had, an ice cream and nut and caramel and Oreo crust concoction that combined salty, bitter, sweet, warm, cold, crunchy and soft all in each amazing bite. The restaurant was packed, with many patrons headed for  the same concert.

After dinner, we went to United Center to see James Taylor and Carole King.  What a terrific concert they put on. It’s amazing that he’s 62 and she’s 68! They played for three hours, with their original band from their 1971 Troubador show plus many others. I had forgotten how many hits she wrote, all the way back to 1960. The concert had robotic video cameras all over the arena, high def screens, LED walls, and good sound (for an arena). Yet even with probably 20,000 people, it seemed quite intimate, and it was clear that they were really enjoying playing, and enjoying the enthusiastic audience response. Dani really enjoyed it, too.

Let’s Celebrate By Blowing Stuff Up

A quiet 4th at the condo, particularly since the Comcast cable/telephone/Internet was out for seven hours. It hasn’t been quiet on the street, though, with sirens every 15 minutes or so.  Lots of people busy blowing off their fingers, I suppose.

We grilled burgers and had Dani’s special 4th of July cake for dinner.

Last night there was a Disney-quality fireworks show visible from the balcony. It must have been up at the stadium. Tonight the crowds headed past the condo for the show at Clark Street Beach. It was a surprise benefit of Dani’s condo that we could see the whole show from the balcony. They were really close, and really big.