A chingao bro! Seriously, the sum total of discourse in this country is porn and politics? What’s the real difference there? Let’s talk something else.
Been travelling throughout the South of these here United States (and a Left-coast trip), and I can confirm that the closer to the equator you get the more likely you are to find unselfconscious food. Local 463 Urban Kitchen in Jackson, Ms…scallops; Adelaide’s in NOLA…Oysters, Crawfish (unusually small last time out, this is the tail-end (heh) of the season and they should be big and not thick –shelled yet); Andrea’s in NOLA…rabbit (Great old-fashioned Italian place, Caprese so everything wasn’t slathered in tomato sauce…but the rabbit (coniglio, I just like saying that - word to the hasenpfeffer) dish was from Ischia near Naples).
All memorable, but not gonna bore you with the details; ‘foodie’ blather has become as noisome as spewed political ignorance and revisionist history. And for the record: No, everyone does not have portable/supportable/wry taste (no matter where you’re from), a good education (no matter how much school you paid for), or a good sense of humor (no matter what makes you laugh personally), but we all think we do apparently. Clear indications to the contrary don’t stop any of us getting a digital bullhorn out and look-at-me'ing till I want to make it stop. Shame…but so, no wonder porn is suddenly a revolutionary topic when opinions are handed out from jaundiced Internet news outlets and apparent knowledge magically seems to be from the mind after a quick Google search with no citation.
Epic Roast House in San Fran, right under the Bay Bridge close to the Embarcadero…among other things, roasted beef bones (for the marrow, think meat jelly), a whole fish for me, yum. I was there with some Louisiana natives, and they spotted beignets on the menu…uh oh cher! The waitress was warned they would be grading if we tried them, shortly thereafter the head chef (Jan Birnbaum) comes out…
he’s some from NO himself, there to defend his authenticity and talk about homecoming plans for Jazzfest the next week. They get to talking, and in short order I heard the names of all the serious places to eat in the Crescent City, small Garden District bistros and cafes doing everything right without a lot of fanfare. Though the accents got thicker as they got homey with each other, I hung in there and made some mental notes. He finally needed to get back into the kitchen, but a slew of deserts came to the table gratis; the beignets got an A, though they were a little fussier than usual (powdered sugar application apparently has gradations)...2nd best apple pie I've ever had. We were in a limo for the evening, so post-feast we wandered through town then around the long three-bridge circuit…warm night, good company and good food, worth a little extra story.
So I now stretch myself from Louisville to the Gulf, from the Mississippi to the Appalachians, with excursions to Mass, Silicon Valley, and Vegas pretty predictably on the agenda. Busy, but oh so much to see and do collateral to the wage-earning. Team-building and consensus creating, paid to cut through bullshit to solutions with as little wasted effort as possible. It’s not what I love but it appears to be what I’m good at...at least I think so till my mgmt silo tells me otherwise. I too have noticed that most of my worth-writing anecdotes are sponsored by my paycheck-facing activities, so I ain’t complianin’. I like my own team, my matrix’d team, helps when you get to build your own.
Bham next week, Vegas the next. Steeltown-South has a good memory or two; a rolling family trip down to NO to pump some money into post-Katrina NO wound us up there… warm, rainy and foggy late afternoon, so I ad-hoc’d us into a nearly empty luxury golf resort for the night. Massive wade-in pool to ourselves, decent room service, and at twilight a bagpiper (female) stood outside our window on a small hill close by in full regalia and played the kind of atmospheric music you can’t pay for. It drifted in the open window all mist-wrapped, moody and perfect… it had to be for us, no one else was there.
Hoping to make some more of those, three is mystically perfect, better than two plus two plus one.
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