Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 197
August 29, 2012
On the road again: Chicon, day 2
Due to work demands, I spent most of today in my hotel room either on email or phone meetings. Still, I can't complain about the day as a whole, as you'll see shortly.
Lunch was a fine blue pig and fig sandwich at Pastoral, a shop I recommend highly. The cheese and the jamon serrano were both excellent, and if I lived here or had a refrigerator, I would have bought a lot of cheese.
In the afternoon, I managed to escape the room long enough to register and say hi to a few friends who were wandering around the hotel.
The big treat of the day, though, came late, when by luck my request for last-minute tickets to Next came through and I was able to eat dinner at Grant Achatz's wonderful second restaurant.
If you're a foodie, you already know all about Next and can skip this paragraph. If you aren't aware of it, the basic idea is that three times a year--what it calls "seasons"--the restaurant does a completely different menu that the chefs design around a theme. The first four themes were Paris 1906, Thailand, childhood, and El Bulli. Each was a huge hit, and entrance to the restaurant became harder and harder and harder. You don't reserve a seat; you buy a ticket. Thousands of people fill the online lottery to buy year-long season passes. And so on. The rules get more complex, and the chances of getting in lessen from there.
After I was lucky enough to score tickets for tonight, we grabbed a cab and headed to Next to enjoy the menu on the current theme, Sicily. Having eaten once before at Achatz's first restaurant, Alinea, and having seen pictures of and read about Next's seasons on El Bulli and childhood, I was prepared to eat any number of strange foods built loosely on Sicilian cuisine.
Instead, what appeared in multiple amazing courses were dishes built to evoke eating in the home of a Sicilian family--one whose cooks were amazing. I'll go into the individual dishes another time, but suffice to say that from the antipasti to the pasta to the fish to the amazing pork shoulder, everything we ate was delicious and clearly in the Sicilian tradition. I loved it all. My only regret is that I do not own tickets to every Next season; each would, I am confident, be worth the additional cost of flying to Chicago.
If you can ever wrangle a chance to eat at Next, do it. I am confident you won't regret the choice or the cost.
Lunch was a fine blue pig and fig sandwich at Pastoral, a shop I recommend highly. The cheese and the jamon serrano were both excellent, and if I lived here or had a refrigerator, I would have bought a lot of cheese.
In the afternoon, I managed to escape the room long enough to register and say hi to a few friends who were wandering around the hotel.
The big treat of the day, though, came late, when by luck my request for last-minute tickets to Next came through and I was able to eat dinner at Grant Achatz's wonderful second restaurant.
If you're a foodie, you already know all about Next and can skip this paragraph. If you aren't aware of it, the basic idea is that three times a year--what it calls "seasons"--the restaurant does a completely different menu that the chefs design around a theme. The first four themes were Paris 1906, Thailand, childhood, and El Bulli. Each was a huge hit, and entrance to the restaurant became harder and harder and harder. You don't reserve a seat; you buy a ticket. Thousands of people fill the online lottery to buy year-long season passes. And so on. The rules get more complex, and the chances of getting in lessen from there.
After I was lucky enough to score tickets for tonight, we grabbed a cab and headed to Next to enjoy the menu on the current theme, Sicily. Having eaten once before at Achatz's first restaurant, Alinea, and having seen pictures of and read about Next's seasons on El Bulli and childhood, I was prepared to eat any number of strange foods built loosely on Sicilian cuisine.
Instead, what appeared in multiple amazing courses were dishes built to evoke eating in the home of a Sicilian family--one whose cooks were amazing. I'll go into the individual dishes another time, but suffice to say that from the antipasti to the pasta to the fish to the amazing pork shoulder, everything we ate was delicious and clearly in the Sicilian tradition. I loved it all. My only regret is that I do not own tickets to every Next season; each would, I am confident, be worth the additional cost of flying to Chicago.
If you can ever wrangle a chance to eat at Next, do it. I am confident you won't regret the choice or the cost.
August 28, 2012
On the road again: Chicon, day 1
Though Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, doesn't open registration until tomorrow, I flew up early to get settled, accommodate some work, and get set for a little activity on a still-unannounced project. I haven't spent enough time in Chicago to be able to claim I know it at all well, but I like it, and it's a great food city.
Though most of today went to working on a plane and then working in a hotel room, dinner was a lovely break. Takashi has garnered a fair amount of favorable attention, so we headed to it and, predictably, opted for the omekase, or chef's tasting menu. The amuse and the first course were both so spicy that the heat overwhelmed the other flavors, and I became worried that the whole meal would go that way.
It did not. From then on, each course was a delicious, interesting blending of different tastes and, to a small degree, textures. Perhaps the most successful dish was the sauteed Maine scallops and soba gnocchi with trumpet royale mushrooms and celery root-Parmesan foam. Each bite of it was warm and satisfying, yet never heavy.
The biggest flaw in the meal came not from the restaurant but from a drunken fellow diner. I'm still annoyed enough that I'll save my rant about him for another time, except for this: When you're eating at a nice restaurant, modulate your voice so only your table has to listen to you.
I wouldn't count this dinner as a groundbreaking or revelatory meal, but I'd eat at Takashi again, and I recommend it to you.
Though most of today went to working on a plane and then working in a hotel room, dinner was a lovely break. Takashi has garnered a fair amount of favorable attention, so we headed to it and, predictably, opted for the omekase, or chef's tasting menu. The amuse and the first course were both so spicy that the heat overwhelmed the other flavors, and I became worried that the whole meal would go that way.
It did not. From then on, each course was a delicious, interesting blending of different tastes and, to a small degree, textures. Perhaps the most successful dish was the sauteed Maine scallops and soba gnocchi with trumpet royale mushrooms and celery root-Parmesan foam. Each bite of it was warm and satisfying, yet never heavy.
The biggest flaw in the meal came not from the restaurant but from a drunken fellow diner. I'm still annoyed enough that I'll save my rant about him for another time, except for this: When you're eating at a nice restaurant, modulate your voice so only your table has to listen to you.
I wouldn't count this dinner as a groundbreaking or revelatory meal, but I'd eat at Takashi again, and I recommend it to you.
August 27, 2012
Want to hear a recording of me reading?
I didn't realize that the fine folks at Balticon would be posting this recording of the reading I did there, but it's now up as part of the Balticon podcast. It runs a little under half an hour and includes not only me reading three chapters from the book but also answers to some audience questions and a little background on how I came up with some of the stuff in it. Check out the recording
August 26, 2012
Hit and Run
I'm not a fan of either Kristen Bell or Dax Shepard, the stars of this movie. Shepard is also one of the directors, and the other is David Palmer, whose work I do not know. Having two directors is a screaming neon warning sign for any movie. In short, I had plenty of reasons to avoid this movie.
Yet I went.
Two things drew me to the theater the other night: The trailer and the early scuttlebutt on the movie made it seem quirky, and in an interview Dax Shepard likened it to Smokey and the Bandit, a truly terrible Burt Reynold film that I nonetheless recall with embarrassed fondness.
I'm glad I decided to give this one a chance. It is a very odd duck indeed, one I should have hated, a film whose two main stars displayed an acting range only slightly broader than the emotional range of my desk, a plot that was just an excuse to bring odd actors together, and all the emotional honesty of a politician stumping for re-election. Despite all that, I had a great time watching it, I laughed frequently and loudly, and I'd love to see an unrated, extended cut make it to Blu-Ray.
The supporting actors were a big part of what worked for me. Kristin Chenoweth was wonderful in every second she was on the screen. Tom Arnold's character had only a few notes, but Arnold hit them all well. Bradley Cooper delivered a wonderfully strange performance as a bad guy with issues.
What worked most for me, though, were the dialog and the story once all the characters were together. Dax Shepard delivered far more as a writer than an actor, though to be fair his limited character was frequently appealing and at times even interesting.
With surprise, I recommend you check out Hit and Run.
Yet I went.
Two things drew me to the theater the other night: The trailer and the early scuttlebutt on the movie made it seem quirky, and in an interview Dax Shepard likened it to Smokey and the Bandit, a truly terrible Burt Reynold film that I nonetheless recall with embarrassed fondness.
I'm glad I decided to give this one a chance. It is a very odd duck indeed, one I should have hated, a film whose two main stars displayed an acting range only slightly broader than the emotional range of my desk, a plot that was just an excuse to bring odd actors together, and all the emotional honesty of a politician stumping for re-election. Despite all that, I had a great time watching it, I laughed frequently and loudly, and I'd love to see an unrated, extended cut make it to Blu-Ray.
The supporting actors were a big part of what worked for me. Kristin Chenoweth was wonderful in every second she was on the screen. Tom Arnold's character had only a few notes, but Arnold hit them all well. Bradley Cooper delivered a wonderfully strange performance as a bad guy with issues.
What worked most for me, though, were the dialog and the story once all the characters were together. Dax Shepard delivered far more as a writer than an actor, though to be fair his limited character was frequently appealing and at times even interesting.
With surprise, I recommend you check out Hit and Run.
August 25, 2012
Neil Armstrong
I was 14 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Everyone in our house gathered in front of our TV set to watch the broadcast. I was into science fiction and science and UFOs (yes, I know that interest doesn't go with science, but, hey, I was 14), and I was bursting with excitement at the prospect of watching the first human take a step onto the moon.
Mrs. Phillips, a woman in her late nineties who lived down the street, joined us. She had ridden west as a child in a covered wagon, became a nurse, was too old to be a nurse in World War I, and retired into the first house in our neighborhood. She was a good friend who helped me get lawn-mowing customers and who taught me a great deal about how a person should behave.
Right after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon's surface and spoke his immortal line, I glanced around the room. Everyone else was still watching, but only two of us, Mrs. Phillips and I, had tears in our eyes and mouths open in wonder.
Years later, when they announced the first shuttle mission-specialist program, I applied. I was turned down early; having one arm shorter than the other from a very bad childhood break disqualified me. I knew it would, but I wrote an impassioned essay anyway. I had to try. I'd seen a man walk on the moon, and I wanted to do the same.
Neil Armstrong showed up at a few SF-related gatherings, but not many, and none I attended. I never had the chance to meet him or even hear him talk. His influence, though, on a 14-year-old Florida boy was profound, and so I am grateful to him and to all the people who did all the work that made his famous mission possible.
With Armstrong's death, we've lost a national treasure and one of the few humans to have stood on another rock in space, looked up at the earth, and known a wonder still unavailable to almost all of humanity.
Good-bye, Neil Armstrong, good-bye.
Mrs. Phillips, a woman in her late nineties who lived down the street, joined us. She had ridden west as a child in a covered wagon, became a nurse, was too old to be a nurse in World War I, and retired into the first house in our neighborhood. She was a good friend who helped me get lawn-mowing customers and who taught me a great deal about how a person should behave.
Right after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon's surface and spoke his immortal line, I glanced around the room. Everyone else was still watching, but only two of us, Mrs. Phillips and I, had tears in our eyes and mouths open in wonder.
Years later, when they announced the first shuttle mission-specialist program, I applied. I was turned down early; having one arm shorter than the other from a very bad childhood break disqualified me. I knew it would, but I wrote an impassioned essay anyway. I had to try. I'd seen a man walk on the moon, and I wanted to do the same.
Neil Armstrong showed up at a few SF-related gatherings, but not many, and none I attended. I never had the chance to meet him or even hear him talk. His influence, though, on a 14-year-old Florida boy was profound, and so I am grateful to him and to all the people who did all the work that made his famous mission possible.
With Armstrong's death, we've lost a national treasure and one of the few humans to have stood on another rock in space, looked up at the earth, and known a wonder still unavailable to almost all of humanity.
Good-bye, Neil Armstrong, good-bye.
August 24, 2012
On the road again: Portland, day 4
I'm home, which is a very nice place to be indeed. I actually got some sleep last night, nearly eight hours, which was also quite nice.
Most of today went to travel. On these days, I divide the trip into a series of steps, and I focus only on the one in front of me. Get up. Check. Catch up on email. Check. Pack. Check. Shower. Dress. Check out of hotel. Drive to airport. Drop off rental car. Get boarding pass and check luggage. Get to security. Go through security. Check check check check check check check check. And on and on. One foot in front of the other, Marine, as I heard first when I was ten.
The first flight was a mixed bag. On the one hand, I was in an exit-row seat, which is awesome. On the other hand, I was on the window, and the guy next to me checked in at six-five and 320 easy, probably more. Even though we leaned as far from each other as we could manage, his left shoulder and my right shoulder became better friends than either of us wanted.
DFW brought the delicious Red Mango parfait, which I ate in a chair with no one touching me. Both were excellent experiences.
On the second flight, I lucked into a first-class upgrade, so I was able to work in comfort and have all the Diet Coke (no Coke Zero, alas) I wanted.
Our flight was slightly over an hour late, but it landed safely, and our bags eventually came off the carousel, so it's hard to complain.
And I'm home.
Most of today went to travel. On these days, I divide the trip into a series of steps, and I focus only on the one in front of me. Get up. Check. Catch up on email. Check. Pack. Check. Shower. Dress. Check out of hotel. Drive to airport. Drop off rental car. Get boarding pass and check luggage. Get to security. Go through security. Check check check check check check check check. And on and on. One foot in front of the other, Marine, as I heard first when I was ten.
The first flight was a mixed bag. On the one hand, I was in an exit-row seat, which is awesome. On the other hand, I was on the window, and the guy next to me checked in at six-five and 320 easy, probably more. Even though we leaned as far from each other as we could manage, his left shoulder and my right shoulder became better friends than either of us wanted.
DFW brought the delicious Red Mango parfait, which I ate in a chair with no one touching me. Both were excellent experiences.
On the second flight, I lucked into a first-class upgrade, so I was able to work in comfort and have all the Diet Coke (no Coke Zero, alas) I wanted.
Our flight was slightly over an hour late, but it landed safely, and our bags eventually came off the carousel, so it's hard to complain.
And I'm home.
August 23, 2012
On the road again: Portland, day 3
After a very, very late night working, morning today arrived entirely too early. The vast majority of the daylight hours went to work meetings, which were interesting but which I cannot, of course, discuss.
Feeling draggy and exhausted, I turned for a pick-me-up to the small Cacao store located in the corner of the hotel. A small glass of sipping dark chocolate beverage later, I was wired for sound and rolling on work. I've never had a beverage that affected me as much as this one, which never fails to buzz me.
Dinner took me to one of my all-time favorite restaurants, Le Pigeon. Owner and star chef Gabriel Rucker was working tonight, so I was able to sit at the bar in front of him and chat off and on as he cooked and I ate. The meal was, as always, delicious. It included my first taste of pork tongue, which was in Rucker's hands rich and flavorful and entirely delicious. As I've said many times before, if I lived here, I'd eat in this place weekly.
Tomorrow morning, I head home for a few days before my travels take me to Chicago and the World Science Fiction Convention!
Feeling draggy and exhausted, I turned for a pick-me-up to the small Cacao store located in the corner of the hotel. A small glass of sipping dark chocolate beverage later, I was wired for sound and rolling on work. I've never had a beverage that affected me as much as this one, which never fails to buzz me.
Dinner took me to one of my all-time favorite restaurants, Le Pigeon. Owner and star chef Gabriel Rucker was working tonight, so I was able to sit at the bar in front of him and chat off and on as he cooked and I ate. The meal was, as always, delicious. It included my first taste of pork tongue, which was in Rucker's hands rich and flavorful and entirely delicious. As I've said many times before, if I lived here, I'd eat in this place weekly.
Tomorrow morning, I head home for a few days before my travels take me to Chicago and the World Science Fiction Convention!
August 22, 2012
On the road again: Portland, day 2
Most of today went to work, as you would expect from one of these trips.
At lunchtime, however, I took a longish break and wandered among the vendors at the mid-week farmers' market near the hotel, cut through a lovely craft shop, and wound my way to the food trucks. After walking the one-block-square circuit of trucks, I settled on a delicious three-cheese grilled-cheese sandwich to which I opted to have them add a fried egg and some thick-cut bacon. Damn, it was good.
A rare lunch-time dessert was a Ruby Jewel ice cream sandwich back on the edge of the farmers' market, a new flavor--dark chocolate cookie with salty caramel ice cream--that was obviously too good to resist.
I ate the cookie while sitting on a bench staring through the slowly rustling leaves of the huge trees at the perfect pale blue sky beyond, an image I captured with my iPhone and will share later, time and bandwidth permitting.
I could have sat there all day.
Dinner was a delicious, as always, meal at Castagna, where Executive Chef Justin Woodward beautifully merges modernist cuisine techniques with local ingredients. If you live here or visit here, you owe it to yourself to give this place a try.
I'd post more, but it's the middle of the night (despite what the timestamp says), and more work awaits, so I'm outta here.
At lunchtime, however, I took a longish break and wandered among the vendors at the mid-week farmers' market near the hotel, cut through a lovely craft shop, and wound my way to the food trucks. After walking the one-block-square circuit of trucks, I settled on a delicious three-cheese grilled-cheese sandwich to which I opted to have them add a fried egg and some thick-cut bacon. Damn, it was good.
A rare lunch-time dessert was a Ruby Jewel ice cream sandwich back on the edge of the farmers' market, a new flavor--dark chocolate cookie with salty caramel ice cream--that was obviously too good to resist.
I ate the cookie while sitting on a bench staring through the slowly rustling leaves of the huge trees at the perfect pale blue sky beyond, an image I captured with my iPhone and will share later, time and bandwidth permitting.
I could have sat there all day.
Dinner was a delicious, as always, meal at Castagna, where Executive Chef Justin Woodward beautifully merges modernist cuisine techniques with local ingredients. If you live here or visit here, you owe it to yourself to give this place a try.
I'd post more, but it's the middle of the night (despite what the timestamp says), and more work awaits, so I'm outta here.
August 21, 2012
On the road again: Seattle, day 3 / Portland, day 1
Another day in a work trip, another day of which I can say little.
We spent the morning and lunch in the Seattle area, and then we drove to Portland. The three-or-so-hour trip is lovely, though the traffic is almost always what would pass for rush hour back home.
Knowing that dinner would be quite late, and indulging me, we dropped by Salt & Straw, a Portland ice cream shop that has been making a lot of noise.
Boy, am I glad we did.
Salt & Straw may be my new favorite ice cream shop. It is certainly among my top five anywhere. Set in a corner of a corner building in a funky Portland residential-and-commercial area, it greeted us with open walls along most of one side and most of the front. One of the breed of locally sourced ice cream makers, it proclaimed its mission loudly.
As always, click on an image to see a larger version.
Intentions are all well and good, of course, but for any type of food, the proof is in the taste. The range of ice creams available certainly suggested both a familiarity with modern classics and a quirky eye for new flavors.
If you blow up this image and look carefully at the admittedly blurry (sorry second line after the flavor list, you'll see that the shop offers a tasting flight of four ice creams.
Yes, I did it for you, dear readers: I ordered a flight so that I could report with some authority on the ice creams here.
In my defense, I didn't eat it all--but I must confess to having eaten most of it. From left to right, we have here sea salt with caramel ribbons, strawberry honey balsamic with black pepper, pear with blue cheese, and chocolate with gooey brownies. All the flavors were delicious. The weakest, somewhat to my surprise, was the chocolate. The sea salt with caramel flavor blended those tastes perfectly, as did the strawberry, in which the balsamic and the pepper and the citrus all merged into a whole that was vastly better than any of its parts. The best of the bunch, though, was the pear with blue cheese. I was skeptical, but it was amazing, managing to somehow remove all of the rough edge of the cheese and merge it perfectly with the pear.
Fortunately for me, because we were visiting Little Bird, a Portland favorite, dinner was many hours later.
That meal was as delicious as every other dinner I've eaten there. Though my Portland favorite restaurant remains Gabriel Rucker's original place, Le Pigeon (where I will be Thursday night), Little Bird is a fine sibling and stands well on its own right. Tonight's tasty treats included a creamy potato soup with a clam and bacon relish, and my first experience with the Le Pigeon burger. Damn, that was a fine hamburger.
Now, work summons once again, so I will return to it.
We spent the morning and lunch in the Seattle area, and then we drove to Portland. The three-or-so-hour trip is lovely, though the traffic is almost always what would pass for rush hour back home.
Knowing that dinner would be quite late, and indulging me, we dropped by Salt & Straw, a Portland ice cream shop that has been making a lot of noise.
Boy, am I glad we did.
Salt & Straw may be my new favorite ice cream shop. It is certainly among my top five anywhere. Set in a corner of a corner building in a funky Portland residential-and-commercial area, it greeted us with open walls along most of one side and most of the front. One of the breed of locally sourced ice cream makers, it proclaimed its mission loudly.
As always, click on an image to see a larger version.Intentions are all well and good, of course, but for any type of food, the proof is in the taste. The range of ice creams available certainly suggested both a familiarity with modern classics and a quirky eye for new flavors.
If you blow up this image and look carefully at the admittedly blurry (sorry second line after the flavor list, you'll see that the shop offers a tasting flight of four ice creams.
Yes, I did it for you, dear readers: I ordered a flight so that I could report with some authority on the ice creams here.
In my defense, I didn't eat it all--but I must confess to having eaten most of it. From left to right, we have here sea salt with caramel ribbons, strawberry honey balsamic with black pepper, pear with blue cheese, and chocolate with gooey brownies. All the flavors were delicious. The weakest, somewhat to my surprise, was the chocolate. The sea salt with caramel flavor blended those tastes perfectly, as did the strawberry, in which the balsamic and the pepper and the citrus all merged into a whole that was vastly better than any of its parts. The best of the bunch, though, was the pear with blue cheese. I was skeptical, but it was amazing, managing to somehow remove all of the rough edge of the cheese and merge it perfectly with the pear.
Fortunately for me, because we were visiting Little Bird, a Portland favorite, dinner was many hours later.
That meal was as delicious as every other dinner I've eaten there. Though my Portland favorite restaurant remains Gabriel Rucker's original place, Le Pigeon (where I will be Thursday night), Little Bird is a fine sibling and stands well on its own right. Tonight's tasty treats included a creamy potato soup with a clam and bacon relish, and my first experience with the Le Pigeon burger. Damn, that was a fine hamburger.
Now, work summons once again, so I will return to it.
August 20, 2012
On the road again: Seattle, day 2
As most of you know, I can't talk about my meetings on PT trips, so the only part of my twenty-hour day that I can discuss is the dinner.
Fortunately, it was a good one at a lovely Seattle restaurant, Canlis. Canlis was a Beard nominee for Best Restaurant, and its chef, Jason Franey, was a nominee for Best Chef, Northwest. With that level of recognition, I had to give it a try.
When you enter, you can't help but notice the water (Union Lake, I believe) that is visible through the mostly glass wall that runs along the rear of the restaurant. The lovely setting upped its beauty a few notches as the fading sun changed the light washing the water from yellow to blue and then gradually to the darkness of night.
All the dishes I tried were quite good. A poached hen's egg in mushroom foam with Australian black truffles floating on it and bits of veggies hidden below was delightful, warm and rich and happy. The cold foie preparation was a well-executed standard. The small Wagyu steak was the weakest part of the meal, a good piece of beef but nothing to compare to the top-grade Wagyu at, say, Craftsteak in Las Vegas.
All in all, I liked Canlis and can recommend it, but to my taste its food is still not up to such giants of the region as Portland's Le Pigeon, Castagna, and Beast--two of which I'll be eating at later this week.
Fortunately, it was a good one at a lovely Seattle restaurant, Canlis. Canlis was a Beard nominee for Best Restaurant, and its chef, Jason Franey, was a nominee for Best Chef, Northwest. With that level of recognition, I had to give it a try.
When you enter, you can't help but notice the water (Union Lake, I believe) that is visible through the mostly glass wall that runs along the rear of the restaurant. The lovely setting upped its beauty a few notches as the fading sun changed the light washing the water from yellow to blue and then gradually to the darkness of night.
All the dishes I tried were quite good. A poached hen's egg in mushroom foam with Australian black truffles floating on it and bits of veggies hidden below was delightful, warm and rich and happy. The cold foie preparation was a well-executed standard. The small Wagyu steak was the weakest part of the meal, a good piece of beef but nothing to compare to the top-grade Wagyu at, say, Craftsteak in Las Vegas.
All in all, I liked Canlis and can recommend it, but to my taste its food is still not up to such giants of the region as Portland's Le Pigeon, Castagna, and Beast--two of which I'll be eating at later this week.
