Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 156

Picking the right comparison for the delightful [ONE] Restaurant

A couple of months ago, I wrote
The answer is a qualified yes, but how qualified depends on the comparison points I use.

If I limit myself to only area restaurants, then I need no qualifications at all: [ONE] remains one of the elite establishments of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area.  Service continues to be a challenge (more on that later), but the food is both inventive and excellent.

The problem is, I don't want to limit myself.  I've eaten in many of the world's very best restaurants, and I believe these chefs have the talent to stand up to any of them.  Bits and pieces of various dishes demonstrate what they are capable of delivering, but one offering justified that belief beyond any doubt: the snowball.

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A group of chefs served us this dish as a special, after-dessert treat.  The serving bowl was ice-cold, and the chefs told us to pick up the snowball with our fingers and eat it in a single bite.  It proved to be a mound of cold joy, a concoction whose flavors of lime (I think) and sugar and other goodies mingled and amplified one another perfectly as it melted in our mouths.

This one bite proves just how much game these chefs have.

The thing is, I want them to make every bite that amazing and delicious, and I think they can.

Not, mind you, that the other dishes were bad.  All were extremely tasty and quite lovely.  My main, for example, featured glazed beef with sweet potato, house-made soy forms, puffed tendon, and other goodies.



As delicious as this dish was, though, the beef was chewy, as if they had gone for a cheaper cut to keep the entree price under $30.  That's a very reasonable business decision, but I still regret it; I wanted that beef to melt in my mouth.

The amuses, a strength of my last meal at [ONE], were much weaker this time, three of them served lukewarm and all a bit doughier than they should have been. 

Again, though, the comparison issue rears its head, because at almost all other Triangle restaurants, those amuses would have been superstars.

I've put off service as long as I can, largely because I liked all the people I met, and all were trying hard, but it simply was not up to the standards of the area's better restaurants, much less the food. The service team felt shorthanded and in the weeds, and the errors were frequent and numerous.  Each and every person was extremely nice, apologetic for all mistakes, and quick to rectify any issues they could, so I hate criticizing them, but if [ONE] wants to hit the levels it has the potential to reach, it must invest in more serving staff and better training for them.

As dinner was ending, I had the chance to chat with C. Paul Jennette, the General Manager.  He gave me his card, so I emailed him earlier and asked if he and the chefs would be interested in creating a special, screw-the-cost tasting menu that would let them show off their complete games.  I hope they choose to take me up on the offer, because I believe the result could be an amazing meal.

Regardless of their response, however, I will absolutely go back to [ONE], and I recommend it highly.  It is indeed one of the best restaurants in the Triangle.

I just want it to aim to be one of the best restaurants in the world.  Succeed or fail, that is the goal at which these chefs should aim their talents.

WTF Machete Kills

If you thought Machete was over the top, or if you felt that director Robert Rodriguez had gone as far afield as he possibly could in his Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse, you need to run, not walk, away from Machete Kills. Its excesses are so far past those of its predecessors that at times it felt as if Rodriguez was trying to find out if there was anything he could do that would stop us from watching Danny Trejo lumber through a landscape of ever-more-insane violence.

For my small group, by the way, that answer was, no. We were in it the whole way, and we weren't backing out. We laughed, we oohed and aahed, we groaned, we recoiled, and we kept on watching. Trejo's stoic manner only served to amplify the scenery chewing of every other person in this movie, and they all chowed down as if to compensate for his restraint. 

I'm not going to tell you about the plot, because, really, what does it matter?  Machete goes places, kills people, and does it again.  On a Friday night after a hard week, it was a fine bit of insane, ultra-violent entertainment that I enjoyed even as I periodically flinched. 

If you walked out of Machete desperate for Rodriguez to turn the volume to 11 in the next film, you must not miss Machete Kills.

In praise of Luther

If you don't already know Luther, it is a BBC show that's aired on BBC America and whose three seasons are now available here in the U.S. on DVD.  I watched the first two seasons some time ago, and I recently completed the third, four-episode season. 

The show is uniformly excellent, with the first season downright superb. Every single cast member delivers the goods in every installment, but the stand-out is its star, Idris Elba.  He storms through the show, a huge, powerful presence who can barely (and not always) contain the flood of emotions that constantly threatens to drown him.  He is mesmerizing on screen. 

I don't want to give away any spoilers, and if you haven't seen the show, I encourage you not to seek them out.  Instead, start at the first episode, sit back, and watch some of the best television available. 

Library happy snaps

Gina was kind enough to take some photos of Tuesday night's library event, so I thought you might like to see a few of them.

First up is our host librarian, Carla Payne, setting the stage for the evening.

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She did a fine job of running the event.

The four of us, all hesitating to answer a question.


I find it difficult to express how much I dislike photos of myself.

It wasn't all hesitation, though.  We certainly did laugh, as Mur and Dave are doing here.


For those who tell me to post smiling photos, here's as close as I can manage right now.


Did I mention how awful I look?

John hasn't suffered a close-up yet, and Gina went to the trouble of creating some black-and-white shots, so we'll close with John in mid-answer.


Thanks to my fellow panelists, Ms. Payne, and our swell audience, the event was a good time.

Spec-Fic Writers Throw Down In Library War!

Well, not exactly.  We sat for an hour and fifteen minutes, answered questions, and left as quietly as we entered.  Still, I'm working on my New York Post headline writing skills, in case they need to call me up to the show, so I need to practice whenever I can.

As I mentioned in
After the panel, a small group of us headed over to Gonza Tacos Y Tequila for a tasty dinner.  I'd not been there before, but I'll definitely go back if I'm in the area and craving Mexican food.

Now, to write.

My reaction to the Tesla Model S fire

For those who don't follow such things, last week a Tesla Model S ran over a piece of metal debris in the road and caught fire.  The incident made national news, Tesla's stock dropped heavily for two days, and multiple folks emailed me with questions, the more extreme of which ran along the lines of,

"OMG! Aren't you sorry now you bought this over-priced flammable death machine?" 

In a word, no.  I am not sorry I bought the car.  It's still the best car I've ever owned, and it's still the safest car around. 

For Tesla's take on the fire--and a pretty good set of supporting facts--check out this blog entry on its site. 

To go a bit deeper, did I ever think a Tesla was immune to fire?  No.  It has batteries, so fire is possible. 

Did I expect one now?  No.  No one expects the Spanish Inquisition--or a car fire. 

What do I think of the way Tesla handled the incident?  I quite approve.  They gathered data, they wrote the above sensible post, and they seem to be treating the owner well. 

Will I now fear a car fire more than before?  No.  It was possible but highly unlikely before, and it is possible but highly unlikely now.

I remain quite happy with the car.

Come see me Tuesday night (October 8) at the Wake County North Regional Library

Last week's gathering of SF authors
The "we" in this gathering, by the way, includes John Kessel, Mur Lafferty, David Drake, and me.  That's a group of four writers with strong opinions on pretty much every topic, so the discussion should not lack for enthusiasm.  All we need is an audience, which is where you come in.  Bring questions, bring friends, bring milk and cookies (would the library even allow that? why am I on a cookie binge?). 

Let's pack this room and show those rowdy librarians how SF fans rock! 

Runner Runner

Yes, despite its abysmal 8% critics rating (and terrible 37% audience rating) on Rotten Tomatoes, I went to see this movie. Why?
Ben Affleck looked so great chewing the scenery in the trailer.Poker.Ben Affleck's scenery chewing.Really, I wanted to see what kind of bad guy Affleck would be.

I'm sorry to report that Affleck's performance, though good when they let him go crazy, couldn't save the movie.  That's not to say that I didn't have a decent time watching it; I did.  I find enjoyment in almost every movie.  In the end, though, Runner Runner suffered from the same problem that has plagued so many recent films:  It couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

Much of the time, it tried to follow the classic line of a good guy (Richie, Justin Timberlake) who gets seduced by a bad guy (Ivan, Affleck) but who ultimately regains his moral footing and redeems himself.  You can't tell this story successfully, though, if the good guy starts out tainted in the same way that he ends up tainted; that character shows no growth.  Richie here worked for a corrupt brokerage, and the only sorrow he feels about that experience is that the job didn't last long enough to make him rich.

Some of the time, as in that opening and much of the trick-the-trickster ending, the movie tried to be a noir piece, with everyone morally corrupt and no real good guys.  Its tone, though, suggests it couldn't commit to that path, either--though it was closer to this path than the other.

Instead, the plot chugged along, Richie won, and he flew off in a private plane with a beautiful woman (the largely wasted Gemma Arterton) to continue cheating people, though this time without a bad boss.  The end.

As I said, I had a pleasant enough time, but this one was strictly empty calories.

I love this product

Okay, it's also a service, but I love it:  Paper by FiftyThree has partnered with Moleskine to let you create lovely, hand-bound custom Moleskine books.  Check out this video about Book, the product/service.



I know I could color in an ordinary notebook.  I know $40 is a lot to spend for the resulting small product.  I know I could buy a large blank Moleskine notebook for far less.

I don't care.  I still love this idea. 

Now, to find the right idea to go into my first one.

Remember those PT sabbatical charity work videos?

I hope so.  For those who don't, I wrote about PT's sabbatical program and the first video in
Well, the third video is now online, and it features...me.  I admit to finding this more than a little awkward, but I've highlighted all the others, and I believe in supporting the charity (the Shepherd's Table Soup Kitchen), so I figured I should also plug this video in my blog.

I can barely stand to watch myself in video, so I'll have to hope your reaction is better.

Enjoy (I hope).



I particularly like that the good folks at the Shepherd's Table Soup Kitchen don't make you show ID or pass any test or do anything at all to get your meal.  If you show up for lunch, they feed you. 

I'm honored to have had the chance to work with them for a week.