Category: Travel

Travels around the world

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.

Jean Pierre’s Bistro

For some time I’d been wanting to try Jean Pierre’s Bistro, a French bistro and bakery in Water Tower Place, the cute shopping village in front of Disney’s Celebration. Orlando doesn’t really have any true French bistros, with the possible exception of  Chefs de France at Epcot, which isn’t exactly convenient—or cheap.

I had some doubts when we arrived at Jean Pierre’s for dinner, because the place was deserted, and quite brightly lit, more like what you’d expect from a bakery or a sandwich shop—both of which it is, during the daytime. So it wasn’t exactly the ambiance I was hoping for from an evening bistro. But the food was everything I’d hoped for.

We started with the house made paté, a cheese plate, smoked salmon, and a salad with traditional French vinaigrette. All were excellent, especially the pate (really a terrine), which was fresh, flavorful, and had a wonderful mixture of spices on the outside. We could have used some soft, stinky cheeses, but I understand why American tastes run to firmer, less fragrant ones, and the half dozen choices were all very flavorful. The salmon was fresh and very smokey, with just the right accompaniments, and the salad was perfect, just like in Paris.

Our main courses were Beef Bourguignon and Chicken in a mushroom and madeira sauce. Both sauces were excellent, and each was accompanied by a rich, creamy dish of scalloped potatoes. A particular highlight was the fresh baked French baguette, which was plentiful and very authentic. As parting gifts the owner bestowed upon us glasses of Muscat and a fresh loaf of this wonderful bread to take with us.

I was impressed that the owner, with little assistance, could turn out such a diverse offering in so little time; and there were at least twenty other dishes we could have chosen. Prices are very reasonable, and the wine list has a couple of nice choices at good prices. It’s too bad his location isn’t higher profile, and that his website is fairly poor, because this is just the sort of French bistro Orlando needs.

Alcorn McBride Christmas Party 2010

We had a great time at the Alcorn McBride Christmas party last night. This year we hired Puff ‘n Stuff to cater the event, and they did a great job. It was nice to have more time to spend with our friends, and to have the house all put back in order at the end of the evening.  My favorite foods were the cheddar and bacon dip, poached salmon, beef empanadas and the mashed potato bar.

We poured a half dozen sparking wines, of which I thought the best were the Piper Heidsieck Brute Champagne, Iron Horse Fairytale Cuvee (the only non-Champagne entrant) and the Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial. The two nectares from Moet & Chandon were too sweet for me.

All of the red wines poured were made by Sparky Marquis from Shiraz, but they were all different. In descending order of my ratings: 2003 Henry’s Drive Reserve Shiraz, 2002 Marquis Philips 9, 2009 Mollydooker Blue Eyed Boy, 2009 Mollydooker The Boxer. Perhaps not coincidentally, that’s also descending order of price!

We were very lucky with the weather. After two weeks of very cold (for Orlando) weather, with some nights dropping into the 20s, Friday was in the mid 70s, and the evening was warm enough to sit outside until after 10pm. The next morning we woke up to rain, so our timing was perfect!

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!

Thanksgiving in LA

We’re spending Thanksgiving week in Los Angeles with Linda’s mom. It’s given us an opportunity to catch up, since we haven’t seen her in two years. Dani flew in from Chicago on Wednesday, and we met her at LAX, where the theme building has been refurbished and has some really cool lighting.

The week is affording us an opportunity to visit some favorite restaurants: El Cholo, Smoke House (world’s best garlic bread), Stan’s Corner Donuts (world’s best donuts), Tommy’s (world’s best chili burgers) and Duke’s (world’s best, um, nothing).

And to try some new ones: La Cachette Bistro, Geoffrey’s, and Water Grill.

For Thanksgiving we had dinner at Craft with Marjorie, Linda’s cousins, Adele and Vicki, Vicki’s daughter and son Leslie and Matt, and Matt’s wife Lauren. It was really a good place for a holiday dinner, because they had lots of large tables, and the food is always served family style. Everything was delicious, especially the veggies, mushrooms, pureed squash and bread stuffing. Dani’s and my favorite dish was the baby brussels sprouts(!) There were also lots of desserts, interesting ice creams (sour cream, a favorite flavor), and many leftovers to take home. We ordered a wonderfully creamy Delamotte Champagne off the list, and we brought a buttery 2006 Ramey Ritchie Vineyard Chardonnay, and a somewhat lightweight 2005 P. Dubreuil-Fontaine Corton Perrieres Burgundy that we’d obtained the day before at Moe’s Fine Wines.

Festival of the Masters

This weekend is the 35th annual Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney. Linda and Ryan and I went to Paradiso 37 at Pleasure Island. (Ryan is a programming intern from England, working on iPad apps. He’s here for IAAPA.) As always, the food was really tasty, although we couldn’t get Chaz, our favorite server because they were busy. We tried a couple of new things because Ryan is a vegetarian, and I really liked the corn on the cob appetizer.

Afterwards we walked through the festival, which features 150 artists. There’s a lot of rather crude folk art, but there were also some nice things. The emphasis this year seemed to be on jewelry and art glass. Sue Archer, who painted the picture in our foyer some 25 years ago, had a booth, but I didn’t see the guy who sold us the lenticular photos last year.

They certainly had beautiful weather for the event this year, with 80 degrees and a light breeze all weekend. Of course, as a result, there were lots of people there!

Delish New York Bakery

For dinner I made Bacon Wrapped Scallops and Cilantro Lime Rice. That meant a trip to Whole Foods for wild caught sea scallops and uncured hikory smoked bacon. Whenever I go to Whole Foods I like to stop in at Delish New York Bakery for a cup of coffee. (I do this partly because Barnie’s is next door, and I loathe chain store coffee.) The baker here is a true artisan; she showed me photos of some of the fabulous cakes she’s made, including one that looked just like a Louis Vuitton purse—she had to paint on the frosting. Today she was getting ready for Christmas, making samples including this cute little Christmas tree cake that is $4.99. There’s a little Hanukkah cake behind her, too. It’s really great that there are still a few small businesses like this; I should work harder to patronize them.

Hamburger Mary’s

Since it won Scott Joseph’s readers’ poll of best hamburger in Orlando, Tommy and I decided to check out Hamburger Mary’s downtown on Church Street. While the rest of Church Street is still in the early stages of recovering from its demise in the 1990s, Hamburger Mary’s was certainly doing a brisk business. We both had the Barbra-Q Bacon Cheeseburger, and I have to say it probably is the best burger in town: perfectly cooked, with a tasty balance of sauce and a good bun. I would have preferred my bun toasted and the bacon a bit less durable, but I’d give it a 9 out of 10.

Tommy couldn’t resist the deep fried Twinkie for dessert, which actually wasn’t as strange as I was expecting — basically a creme-filled donut.

I wouldn’t say we’re thick, but even though the place’s slogan is “Eat, drink and be Mary,” it wasn’t until the check showed up in a high heeled shoe that we figured out the transvestite theme.

Wine Bottles

We loaded up three cases of empty wine bottles and took them up to one of our favorite restaurants, The Chef’s Table at the Edgewater Hotel in Winter Garden. They’re going to use them to decorate their new dining room. These bottles ranged from the 1950s through 1970s, and included a lot of wines I wish I could drink again! Even with the donation, we’ve still got a full shelf of collectible old ones, dating back to the 1920s. I wish those two 1947 Cheval Blancs still had wine in them!

While we were up there we had a very tasty lunch at the Winter Garden Pizza Company, a place we hadn’t tried before. They definitely have some of the better pizza in town, and their buffalo chicken strips were good, too. The place was much larger than I thought, and was packed.

Afterward, we hurried home so Linda could take delivery of her new treadmill, which has much higher torture settings than the old one.

Del Frisco’s 39 Steps

It’s been more than a couple of years since we’ve been to Del Frisco’s, and it was near the Shakespeare Center, so we decided to have an early dinner there on Friday. Since our last visit they’ve completed the seamless connection of two different buildings, and created a new, large entry hall between them.

I still think Del Frisco’s is the best  steakhouse in Orlando, even with the explosion of competitors in recent years. The difference is that red-hot metal plate that lets you finish cooking your sliced prime strip steak any way you like (and the butter all over it doesn’t hurt, either). The spinach, sauteed onions, and house salad are really better than the other steakhouses’ also. It’s not a low-cal place, and it’s even more expensive than Morton’s, but when you want the best steak, it’s the place to go.

The 39 Steps is a comedic version of the classic Alfred Hitchcock film. It combines the original (fairly inane) plot with zany action made even zanier by the fact that four people have to play all the roles. It becomes increasingly manic, and by the end some of the characters are having conversations with themselves. Monty Python meets Alfred Hitchcock is a fairly good description. One fun aspect of the play was trying to find all the references to Hitchcock’s other films (in the scene at right, he’s about to climb through the “Rear Window”). It was quite amusing, although perhaps not quite as gut-bustingly hysterical as claimed.

Book Purge

Turn your back for just a minute and the library is overrun with books again. Whilst looking for a couple of misplaced ones I purged a hundred or so from the cupboards (I think they reproduce faster in the dark). Most of these will go to Windermere Prep, I guess.

Epcot First Bites

This is the first year for a new event at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. It’s called First Bites, and it gives you the opportunity to sample some of the food and wine that will be on the promenade, but in the air conditioned comfort of the seldom-used Wonders of Life pavilion.

I can’t say I really recommend this event. At $200 a head (thank God we didn’t pay that) it’s very overpriced. There were a dozen foods, a few of which were very good, a few of which were impossible to eat, even with table seating. Particularly indestructible were the grilled bread served with several dishes, and the Korean beef. There were also a dozen wines, but the only truly good one was the Chateau Ste. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon that was only poured as part of a seminar.

Probably the single best food item was the tiny white chocolate pumpkin truffle, which was served during the cooking seminar. So the two best items won’t even be available to Food and Wine Festival guests.

The “ambiance” of Wonders of Life is also questionable. It’s basically an abandoned attraction that has been repurposed with tables and chairs, but the bright spotlights pointed this way and that don’t really create a pleasant environment.

I felt sorry for the four piece jazz combo that played to an empty seating area for an hour. The event came to a sudden end at 8:45, when we were driven from the building by the deafening and talentless Taylor Dayne.

Noteworthy Dishes:

Korea – Lettuce Wraps with Roast Pork and Kimchi Slaw

Tasty but not at all spicy. The Korean beef dish had a wonderful spicy sauce, but the beef was inedible.

Singapore – Shrimp Cake with Singapore Noodle Salad

Like several of the hot dishes, it was a bit startling that the underlying noodles were chilled, but I really liked them. Some said the fish sauce they were made with was too salty.

Puerto Rico -Asopao de Pollo

That’s chicken soup to the rest of us. The green olives in it were delicious, not overpowering.

Ireland – Lobster & Scallop Fisherman’s Pie

Basically mashed potatoes on top of mixed seafood. This is a large, filling dish, and is probably the smartest buy out on the promenade.

South Africa – Seared Beef Tenderloin with Sweet Potato Puree & Mango Barbecue Sauce

This had way too much sauce, but the elements were very tasty. The Australian lamb served at the same table was okay, but another of those hot dishes served on top of jarringly cold starches.

Orlando Magical Dining Month

Today marks the last day of Orlando Magical Dining Month (although last night was our last foray, since tonight we’re going to “First Bites,” the opening event in the Epcot Food and Wine Festival). During September, a wide array of Orlando restaurants offered a special three course dinner for $30. At some of them it was quite a deal. Although we were out of town for most of the month, we did have a chance to try Morton’s, Nine 18, Big Fin, The Boheme and Ocean Prime. (We also went to Everglades for a wine dinner and Season’s 52 for lunch, but not as part of this event.) We enjoyed all of them, but Big Fin (the only one new to us) is the place that sticks in our memory. We liked the casual atmosphere, good food with a Cajun twist, and friendly service.

Wine Syndicate – 1961 Bordeaux

Our Wine Syndicate group met Saturday at the Bull & Bear in the Waldorf Astoria. It was one of our best tastings ever, focusing on the 1961 Bordeaux vintage, perhaps the best of the century. The two vintages of Chateau Haut Brion were the overwhelming favorites, with the 1961 Haut Brion widely being awarded 100 points and scoring a unanimous first place. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened. The chef really rose to the occasion, preparing a tasting menu that outdid the fancy Gordon Ramsay restaurants we recently visited in London. Quite a surprise, coming from a steakhouse!

The Wines:

1966 Ch Pichon Lalande,
1966 Ch Montrose,
1961 Ch Haut Brion,
1962 Ch Pichon Baron,
1961 Ch Lynch Bages,
1962 Ch Margaux,
1961 Ch Lafite (tenth),
1961 Ch Mouton Rothschild,
1966 Ch Haut Brion

Everglades at the Rosen – Four Seasons of the Vine

Martin and I (Linda has a cold) went to the periodic Vine & Dine event at the Everglades restaurant at the Rosen. They always do a nice job at these events, which allow the chef to experiment outside of his normal menu. I like the venue, because the group of about forty guests is divided into four or five long tables, which allows you to meet some other wine and food enthusiasts, but avoids the giant round table syndrome that bogs down a lot of social events. Wines were provided by Southern Wine & Spirits, and consisted of a refreshing Elderflower champagne cocktail (made with Proseco, elderflower liqueur and a twist of lemon), a very good Chilean Chardonnay, a Sardinian Vermentino, Argentine Malbec and a Moscato d’Asti Proseco. The food was themed after the four seasons: asparagus, shellfish, pheasant, snow eggs. The dessert of snow eggs was the best; they are balls of meringue that have been poached rather than baked, served with a delicious and complex Creme Anglaise. A fun event. The next one is on my birthday.

Chez Josephine

After the always superb lunch at Jean Georges (perhaps my favorite restaurant in the world), we strolled down Broadway, which becomes a giant flea market closed to traffic on Saturdays. Then, in the evening, on the spur of the moment, we went to the revival of La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer. It was fun, as always, but I wasn’t sure it deserved its Tonys; I couldn’t help thinking that parts of the Trinity High School production had been better!

For dinner we walked to Hell’s Kitchen and had an nice French meal in the darkly romantic and jazzy Chez Josephine‘s, with live piano and trumpet jazz. Occasionally a patron would play a set; an elderly black woman really impressed with her sultry voice and lightning riffs.

Sunday morning our three-week adventure came to an end, with Dani winging her way back to Chicago and Linda and I headed back to Orlando.

Michelangelo Hotel

When we saw The Addams Family in Chicago during its test run, the songs were good, but the show was pretty poor. So poor we couldn’t imagine how it made it to Broadway (admittedly we saw it when its star, Nathan Lane was out sick). So, gluttons for punishment, we decided to see it on Broadway. I purchased tickets early enough that even though the theatre was sold out, we had front row seats.

From the first note it was clear that the entire show had been reworked. The first act was completely rewritten, with lame numbers cut, and an almost entirely new book. A new plot (one that actually made sense) had replaced much of the old, with The Addams Family now aware that they are strange, and attempting to be normal for one night (and failing miserably, of course). The songs mostly remained. The audience loved it, and certainly we loved the first act. Less work had been done on the second act, so the show only ended up being good, not great, but it was an amazing improvement. And Nathan Lane is indeed a comedic genius.

Afterward we went to our traditional post-theatre dinner at Sardi’s, which never changes.

I’m impressed with our hotel, The Michelangelo.

A large hallway connects the bedroom and living room.

It’s the nicest we’ve stayed at in the theatre district, with upscale furnishings in the lobby and rooms, and a very spacious one bedroom suite at a reasonable price. It’s just off 7th Avenue at 51st street, so an easy walk to all the theatres and to Columbus Circle for our lunch at Jean Georges.

New York

Just as the sun began to rise we entered New York harbor and a tug boat escorted us past the Statue of Liberty. By 7AM we were docked in Brooklyn. After clearing out of our cabin, we breakfasted in the dining room (for the first time) and then spent a couple of pleasant hours reading and waiting for our disembarkation time in the Skywalker Lounge on deck 16. Oddly, we had the place to ourselves, even though it afforded the best view in all of New York, from a movable high rise that would be there for only ten hours!

This is a photo taken with the iPhone 4 camera, as were about half the photos in this journal. What a terrific upgrade it is.

 

Random Thoughts About This Cruise

On the large Princess ships you don’t want a cabin below Baha deck, because Caribe and Dolphin balconies stick out progressively farther, so there’s no shade and no cover from the rain.

If you have two cabins, you want them on opposite sides of the ship, for both views, but if you have only one, you want it on the starboard (right) side during an east to west voyage, because that’s where the view is. In any event, you want your cabin toward the front, where there is much less vibration.

The large Princess ships offer two cover charge restaurants in addition to the dining rooms: Sabatini’s and The Crown Grill. Consider the cover charge restaurants as a way to get away from the commotion of the dining room. You’re not going to get a great steak at Crown Grill (in fact, the lamb carpaccio and mussels are the highlights) and you’re not going to get great Italian food at Sabatini’s (the Fetuccine Alfredo in the dining room is much better). While the dining room food is definitely middle brow, it’s often just as good as at these cover charge restaurants. But the dining room can be noisy, and the cover charge restaurants offer a respite. On the other hand, making a late reservation in the dining room — say 8 or even 8:30 works just about as well, at no extra cost. Still it’s worth trying the cover charge restaurants at least once each.

A transatlantic cruise from east to west lets you take advantage of the time change. Every day or two you get an extra hour, which makes early morning shore excursions a lot easier to handle.

St. John’s, Newfoundland

We awoke to find our ship had somehow managed to either back into or turn around in The Narrows that fronts State Street, the main street of St. John’s, and North America’s oldest commercial street. One of the oddest things about St. Johns is that it’s 30 minutes off from the rest of the world. The clocks here are one and a half hours ahead of east coast time.

Our five hour shore excursion wasn’t particularly well selected, with two hours on a bus and two hours on a small boat in nine foot seas to spend ten minutes looking at puffins from a hundred yards away.

Their activity was interesting, though. They seem to spend most of the day trying to fake out the seagulls running interference at the entrances to their burrows. The gulls make a living by stealing fish from the puffins before they can carry it down their five foot deep tunnels to feed their chick.

On the way back to St. John’s we made two very brief stops, one at pretty Petty Harbour, where a stream competes with the surf for governance of the tiny boat harbor, the other at Point Spear, easternmost place in North America. At Point Spear there is a lighthouse that has been tended by the same family for almost 200 years, and also the remains of a WWII artillery bunker.

Back at St. John’s we had an excellent late lunch at Bianca’s, a French restaurant that reminded us how mediocre the food has been for the past ten days!

Then it was time to squeeze our way back through The Narrows and out into the North Atlantic, where we watched the pilot take his life in his hands leaping from The Crown Princess to his tiny boat being tossed in twelve foot seas.

 

Sea Days

This voyage includes many days at sea. With six days between Greenland and New York, and only one port in between, we’re in no great hurry, cruising along at 15 knots. The weather has been pleasant, with billowing clouds like those in a water color painting, and the only night that really required sea legs was the first one out of Quaqortoq, when the seas were fifteen feet and the spray occasionally hit our deck nine balcony. It didn’t dissuade the ballroom dancers, though, who maintained their cha-chas; we tried it on a calmer night and still found it challenging.

Dani has spent much of her time reading, and has exhausted the supply of books she brought with her. She’s also making a friendship bracelet, which takes a lot more time than you’d think. She’s taken advantage of the flock of on-board paparazzi to have some nice portraits taken.

Linda spends her mornings on the treadmill in the gym, where she works off 750 calories, the equivalent of about five minutes in the dining room. She spends her evenings listening to Eric Stone, the piano player and singer in Crooner’s bar. He was in the original cast of A Chorus Line on Broadway, and his show each night packs in several hours of Broadway tunes (which he performs as mini-shows including commentary and him singing all the parts) and trivia games. She’s also the only gambler among us. She’s experimenting with ways to alter the rate at which you lose money in the casino.

I’ve spent the week with a cold, so other than lunches and dinners and a few hours in Greenland, I haven’t done much. It was an expensive struggle to keep up with the students in my writing classes during the dense cloud cover before we reached Greenland. Weather had a much more deleterious effect on the Internet than did the extreme northern latitude. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, but mostly from saved Instapaper articles on my iPhone. Also Kindl books on the iPad, but the iPad has been less useful than expected. In Evanston it was with me everywhere in the condo, but here on the ship, where it takes several minutes to log in to the Internet and then costs thirty-five cents a minute to stay connected, it’s no longer the instantaneous reference and information tool that makes it valuable. So I’ve mostly used Linda’s laptop because I can quickly open many browser windows at once, load them, and then log off.

Iceberg

"Ice, dead ahead, Captain."

Cruising off the coast off Greenland we spotted several things: A large iceberg, whales (actually didn’t see these, but heard reports), and a bright object in the sky; we hear it’s called the sun.

Passing the Iceberg

I liked this juxtaposition of Iceberg and its mortal enemy, Hot Tub:

Ahhh… nothing like fresh caught iceberg:

Crown Princess Chef’s Table

We had an interesting experience tonight after a quiet day at sea. The Crown Princess Chef’s table is a dinner for twelve offered three times during the cruise. It begins with a tour of the kitchen conducted by the ship’s food and beverage director and the head chef.

There are eleven kitchens on The Crown Princess, including five massive ones. We suited up in white smocks and washed our hands, then toured the various prep stations. Considering the over 500 employees involved in food and beverage service, the environment was surprisingly calm, even though it was dinner time. In an out of the way corner of the kitchen we had Heidseck Champagne and several appetizer courses (lobster cocktail, quiche, foie gras, caviar), then adjourned to a table in the dinning room for carpaccio, lobster risotto, a main course of veal shank, beef and lobster tails, cheese, panecotta and cookies. Yes, there was a lot of food! Also Ferrari Carano Chardonnay, Louis Latour Pouilly Fuisse, and a homemade Limoncello.

The event illustrated what Princess does well and does poorly. Admittedly we are spoiled, having done chef’s tables around the world, and admittedly our companions were very impressed with the food, one couple declaring it was better than they’d had at high end restaurants in Paris. But let’s face it, it was, in Dani’s words, “Outback tries to do a chef’s table.” The ingredients are good, aside from the fact that they all have to have been frozen, but  flavors never come together to create anything more than the sum of the individual components. Yet the service was gracious, almost to the point of being ingratiating, and they gave the ladies roses, very expensive cookbooks, and even took couple and group portraits which they printed and distributed at the end of the meal. On the whole a very interesting, if not culinary, experience.