Category: Restaurants

Tidy Potpourri: Books & More

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Here are notes on two beach reads, my thoughts on a difficult play, and a great restaurant find for birthdays or anniversaries.

LEISURE READING

Karen White’s Flight Patterns is an absorbing novel about family secrets and the tortured relationship between two sisters and a good candidate to take to the beach.  Set in New Orleans and Apalachicola, Florida, a coastal town on the panhandle, it’s multi-layered with twists and turns as the complicated relationships between Georgia and her sister, Maisy, and their mentally ill mother, Birdie, play out against Georgia’s return after 10 years away and the hunt for a missing piece of china.  Birdie was distant and in her own world when Georgia and her sister were children so they were raised primarily by their grandfather and by their grandmother when she was still alive.  Grandpa is a beekeeper and Georgia is a fine china expert who comes back with a client to research china he has that is similar to a piece she thinks she has seen before.  I enjoyed the characters and also learning about Haviland Limoges china.

Footnote: Character Georgia’s research prompted me to search online for more information about my great (or great great) grandmother’s Limoges china which I inherited from my mother.  Based on the markings on the back of the pieces, I was able to determine that it was probably made in 1887, but so far I haven’t located any images of the pattern.

Georgia by Dawn Tripp is a well-researched novel about Georgia O’Keeffe’s early career and her relationship with photographer and artist promoter, Alfred Stieglitz.  Decades older than O’Keeffe, Stieglitz gave her flower paintings wide exposure with an exhibit in the gallery he owned.  Seductive, passionate, and domineering, he was mentor, lover, husband, and philanderer who too often tried to control her and her art.  Tripp’s prose is evocative and sensual and portrays Georgia’s struggle to be seen as an artist (not a female artist) and how her appreciation for what Stieglitz could offer becomes warped over time.  This was the book for the April meeting of our island book club, and most everyone liked it.

THEATER

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.  Our local repertory company, Asolo, deserves much credit for presenting this challenging play.  Written by Kristoffer Diaz and first presented in 2009, it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama and winner of an Obie Award for Best New American Play.  It’s an exaggerated comedy about professional wrestling, as shown on TV, and we had ringside seats.  Literally!  In the small theater, we were in the first row on the floor (no stage) and right at the edge of the ring when it was pushed out for the second act.  The actors rushed by us carefully, never stepping on our toes!

The main character, Mace, is not a star, but a wrestler paid to lose to the big names like Chad Deity.  Mace and an Indian-American friend convince their bosses to let them fight each other, but they are then marketed as “terrorists.”  With undercurrents of racism and the overriding theme of money, this is a loud play with a strong message.  I found the first act tedious and too long, while the second act had lots of action and revived my interest somewhat.  Overall, not my favorite of the season.

SPECIAL OCCASION DINING

To celebrate my birthday, we tried Maison Blanche on Longboat Key.  It’s located in the Four Winds resort.  The dining room is understated with floor to ceiling white drapes lining the walls, a glass tower topped with a large floral display, and tables with comfortable round back chairs. 

With both a 3-course prix fixe menu for $65 and a la carte selections, there is something to appeal to every palate.  I enjoyed the tomato tart to start followed by the sautéed halibut special over pureed spinach with scattered chanterelle mushrooms and then the cheese course.  Actually we shared the cheese course and my spouse’s apple tart dessert.  He had the octopus salad and the red snapper.  This was the best food we’ve eaten in this area and the service was impeccable!

Credits:  Georgia O’Keeffe photo by Bella Orr (ThingLink); all other photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

North Carolina Spring: The Triangle to the Piedmont

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GARDENS

The greens are different in North Carolina and spring is softer than Florida.  We were in Chapel Hill and Greensboro over the Easter weekend visiting my two sisters and their families.  Lots of laughter, plenty of good food, and a chance to wander in several gardens.  All the trees had leafed out, but the shade was between the yellow green (lime) of early spring and the robust hunter green of high summer.  The azaleas were in full flower, iris too, with only the late variety tulips still hanging on.  On our way to Winston-Salem, we stopped in the small town of Kernersville and explored the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Gardens, a small public garden with lots of potential.  The visitors’ center is closed on weekends (strange, we thought), but we’d been told there were still tulips in bloom.  The first beds we came upon were disappointing, but then on another side of the property were beds and beds of tulips still upright and mostly intact.  A pleasing array of color.  In Winston-Salem, we wandered around the Reynolda Gardens, on the former estate of R. J. Reynolds.  Aside from the trailing wisteria, there was more to see inside the conservatory than outside. I was particularly struck by the bold gerbera daisies.

 
  

EATING AND SHOPPING

It was a family tradition for many years that every Hancock Reunion (held in the summertime) included a ham dinner.  That was roast ham served with scalloped potatoes, a vegetable such as green beans or corn, and, most likely, a green salad.  For dinner with my sisters, their husbands and my niece and her husband one night, it was potluck style.  Ham provided by the hosts was the centerpiece (Honey-baked), along with a salad of greens and herbs from one sister’s garden, and a porcini mushroom rice dish from my niece and nephew, followed by brownies and lemon squares for dessert.  Times do evolve; the previous generation would not have related to those mushrooms!

In Kernersville after the Ciener garden, we had lunch at a small place called Bistro B.  Their claim to fame seems to be specialty wine dinners with a set menu and also a nice selection of tapas.  Our lunch was simpler fare, but very satisfying.  I had their grilled chicken panini while others enjoyed a classic Reuben and a Cubano sandwich.   All were enhanced with beer from their wide range of choices.

Pittsboro is a very small town south of Chapel Hill.  Founded in 1787, it’s the county seat for Chatham County.  Along with some attractive historic buildings, it boasts a street of arty shops and an old-timey soda shop.  It was the S & T Soda Shoppe that drew us back for our third or fourth visit.  Re-created to look old fashioned, it has a wooden counter and a series of booths and tables.  Menu items are mostly sandwiches and burgers and a host of ice cream flavors.  Their tuna melt on sunflower bread is consistently good as are the hot dog and the cheeseburger (my choice).  We were there on Good Friday and followed our post working life rule of “always be early.”  Arriving at 11:30 we had our choice of booths.  Half an hour later, the place was packed with family groups waiting.

After lunch, we did the shops—that is, my sister and I.  The men mostly sat on one of the several benches on main street.  Several shops include artists’ note cards and other gift items along with painting and sculpture.  French Connections is a treasure trove of French fabrics and table linens, statues and art work from Africa, lawn art, and baskets, while Circle City Books Music, ostensibly a used bookstore, had more new books than one would expect.  

I’ve touted this other bookstore in the past, but it’s such a great store, I have to mention it again.  It’s McIntyre Books in Fearrington Village (a bit south of Chapel Hill) and it’s a wonderfully well-stocked independent bookseller.  We spent a good hour browsing and then, of course, buying!  I picked up several paperback novels for myself, a children’s book for my granddaughter as well as several note cards.  Simply heaven!

On our last evening in North Carolina, we were back in the Triangle area and enjoyed a lovely dinner at a small French restaurant, Rue Cler, in downtown Durham.  We had the place mostly to ourselves and appreciated host Ryan’s warm welcome and friendly, efficient service.  The black North Carolina sea bass entrée I had was superb!  The fish was sautéed and served on a bed of spinach and capers with roasted potato cubes crusted with grainy mustard.  Equally pleasing were the scallops of salmon with béarnaise sauce and the beef.  To start, some of us had the house green salad, while others liked the frisee with French fries and the onion soup.

Images:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Sarasota Scene: Films & Food II

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The Sarasota Film Festival continued. We saw several more films, two very intense, painful to watch, and one that was disappointing.  We then sampled the offerings at Beulah, another restaurant new to us. 

FLICS

Clash.  This Egyptian film covers one day and night in 2013 and a group of individuals involved in one of the many riots between the pro-military and the Muslim Brotherhood after the ouster of President Morsi.  Two journalists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other citizens at the protest are rounded up and forced into the back of a metal police van.  They are of different social classes and religions, adults and a few children, some separated from their family members, and they are trapped together in a horrific environment.  The film is loud, painful, and seems to go on forever.  The truck is shot at, it is hot inside, the individuals fight and bicker and some get hurt.  People cramped in another police truck nearby die from the heat and the crowding.  If one of the aims of good cinema is to transport you to someplace you’ve never been before, this film puts you squarely in that van.

 Katie Says Goodbye.  Far from the clanging and clamor of Cairo, this film is set in the spare desolate Southwest.  The sky goes on forever and there is little besides cheap trailers and a small diner and gas station.  Teenager Katie is kind and almost demure.  She waits tables at the diner, but also does double duty as a prostitute servicing locals and truckers passing through; it’s how she supports herself and her deadbeat mother.  When she becomes involved with a new guy at the car repair shop, an ex-con, aspects of her life begin to unravel.  Katie is a strong and complex character in a world of not-so-nice people.

The movie is raw and powerful and I found myself rooting for this determined, yet guileless young woman who lived midst adversity.  The film was well received by the audience and we had the chance afterward to be part of the Q&A exchange with first-time director and writer Wayne Roberts.

Marjorie Prime.  Touted by the film festival as “Hot, Hot, Hot,” and starring Jon Hamm (of “Mad Men” fame) along with Geena Davis and Tim Robbins, Marjorie Prime did not wow me.  Instead, I found it flat and very slow.  85 year old Marjorie is failing and suffering from dementia.  She lives with her daughter Tess and son-in-law John.  At times, she relives some of her past in conversation with a hologram of her husband Walter when he was in his 40’s.  She seems to take pleasure in these conversations and John also engages with him, particularly by feeding him specific memories to add to his store of information.  Despite focusing on the role of memory and how memories can be suppressed or altered, and offering up fanciful technology, the film failed to captivate me.  I would call it a failed experiment.

FUNKY AND FUN

Beulah.  With an attractive dining area and mirrored bar shelves lined with green and blue glass pieces, Beulah draws you in.  One side of the menu is a selection of pizzas, the other everything from salads to roast chicken, crab cakes, lamb or veal.  The Caesar salads were generous with lots of Parmesan squares on top (we could easily have shared one).  The Chief Penguin sampled the sausage pizza (good, not great) while I ordered the veal scaloppini with asparagus and a rice timbale.  The veal was done with a butter lime sauce and was delicious!  Beulah has a warm vibe and our waiter was welcoming and attentive.  Definitely worth another visit!  

GOOD READ

Glory over Everything:  Beyond The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom.  While not literary in the way that Colson’s The Underground Railroad is, this novel is a good read full of secrets.  It’s 1830 and Jamie Pyke, a former slave and a character from Grissom’s previous novel, is now living as a wealthy white man in Philadelphia.  Successful in business, he’s gained a reputation as a painter.  His household consists of his faithful butler Robert and Pan, the black teen son of Jamie’s mentor and guide, Henry.  It was Henry who took Jamie under his wing when he fled from Virginia to Philadelphia 20 years earlier.  When Pan goes missing and it’s feared he’s been taken by the slave catchers and sold, Jamie undertakes a harrowing journey to North Carolina to rescue him.

Credits:  All photos JWFarrington.  Header:  coloring detail done from 100 Glittering Mandalas.

Sarasota Scene: Film & Food Fare

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This week is the annual Sarasota Film Festival, a time when we see movies we know little about and dip our toes into unfamiliar waters (appropriate given that this year’s theme is Sea & Be Seen!).  Also we make a point of trying some new downtown restaurants.

CINEMA

The Unknown Girl.  A Belgian feature film in French with subtitles, it’s about a young doctor who doesn’t answer her office door after hours and later learns that the young woman who buzzed her died across the street a short distance away.  Haunted by what might have been different had she answered, she takes it upon herself to try to find out who the girl was and where she was from.  We see Dr. Jenny Davin as a compassionate, caring, and mostly unrufflable individual who goes about seeing her patients, often at home, and then after hours is driven to seek answers about the unknown girl.  Adele Haenel as Jenny gives a thoughtful, measured performance and it’s a film that will stay with you.

Menashe.  After the gritty, grotty streets of a Belgian city, we became immersed in the life of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.  In Yiddish with English subtitles, Menashe focuses on a recent widower who in trying to be faithful to himself while still being an observant member of his religious community, comes up against its strictures.  He wants to have his young son live with him rather than with his brother-in-law’s family, but his religion says he must re-marry first.  We see his fumbled and inept efforts at being an organized parent and his first foray into dating.

 

FRENCH FARE

Le Bordeaux.  Sarasota has many more Italian restaurants than French ones, a surfeit in fact, so it was a pleasant surprise to find Le Bordeaux.  Opened just a year ago, it’s on Main Street across from the Hollywood 20 movie theater, and has some of the friendliest restaurant staff I’ve encountered recently.  The menu includes all the French classics you would expect:  onion soup, snails in garlic butter, duck confit, coq au vin, beef bourguignon as well as other tempting selections.  We enjoyed attractively presented green salads with Brie or chevre on toast followed by said duck leg confit and sautéed flounder with capers and tomato.  The flounder came with a timbale of saffron rice and a somewhat mushy ratatouille.  There is also a very reasonably priced 2 or 3 course set menu with several choices for each course.  Overall, the food was good, but not exceptional.  We will return!  

 

THEATER NOTE

We were at the Asolo production of The Little Foxes recently and it was excellent.  It’s a play I’ve long wanted to see and seeing it makes me think about re-reading Lillian Hellman’s two memoirs, Unfinished Woman and Pentimento.

CREDITS:  Header photo (salad at Le Bordeaux) by JWFarrington; Hasidic Jews photo by J W Kash; Le Bordeaux dining room from their website.