Category: Restaurants

Food for Mind & Body

JWF 2 Comments

HIGH NOTES

Last weekend, friends introduced us to one more of the musical gems that grace our cultural landscape.  In 2004, Toby Perlman, wife of famed violinist and conductor Itzhak Perlman, founded the Perlman Music Program/Suncoast.  This residency program in Sarasota brings together more than 30 young performers (ages 12-24) for about two weeks of classes, concerts and recitals.  We attended the last public event, a recital by some of the students, and were awed and impressed by the level of talent we heard.  So much so that we may need to add these events to our ever growing calendar!

Several friends have been recommending the Amazon series, Mozart in the Jungle, about life in a symphony orchestra, but we haven’t yet watched it.  At Music Monday, June LeBell interviewed Blair Tindall, oboist and author of the book on which it is based.  We saw several clips from the series, learned from Blair that all the actor musicians have to learn to play a little bit, and were treated to her playing.  Now we must watch the series!

  

UNEXAMINED LIFE

Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan.  This is a beautiful novel, one that will stay with you.  It’s an exquisitely crafted portrayal of a Catholic priest assigned to an insular Scottish town in the early 2000’s.  You know early on it will not end happily.  Father David Anderton is a man out of touch with himself and completely oblivious to how he is perceived by his flock.  In his 50’s, lonely, and aching for the affections and good times of his youth, he socializes with a pair of wayward teens, Mark and Lisa, and events unfold in the most inappropriate way.  Anderton’s plight is heartrending even though he brings it upon himself.

The depictions of his housekeeper (and friend) Mrs. Poole, his slightly wacky romance writing mother, his superior Bishop Gerard, and even the townspeople who destroy him are multi-faceted, even tender at points.  There is a fair bit of dialect and a few references to local culture that might not be familiar to all American readers.  First published in 2006, it was named a Best Book of the Year by Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, and Plain Dealer (Cleveland).  Finally, I think my friends Joan and Bruce, in particular, would find it a satisfying and worthwhile read.

LOCAL EATS

Recently we sampled the cuisine at three area restaurants, one owned by a couple whose previous restaurant we really liked, one totally new to us, and the last one we may have visited some years ago.  All were good and all three rate return visits.

Elodie is a small attractive French restaurant created by the Flocards, Elodie and her husband chef, Bertrand, from Aix en Provence.  Their previous restaurant, French Table, on Anna Maria Island was tiny and parking was an issue.  Elodie, located in a shopping center on Manatee Avenue West in Bradenton, has indoor and outdoor seating and plenty of parking.  I thought their red snapper with lime and grilled vegetables was excellent and the chicken forester is one of my favorites.  Only open for dinner.

Flavors of India is on U.S. 41 in Bradenton and a tasty place for lunch or dinner. We dined there at noon and were pleased with the variety on the small appealing buffet.  Two kinds of rice, chicken vindaloo and butter chicken plus several vegetable dishes, goat curry, and green salad with two dessert choices rounding out the selection.  Add in tangy pickles and chutneys and life is spicy.  At lunch, the buffet is a modest $9.99.

Thai Palace.  Popular locally, as they say.  We had to wait for a table for dinner on a Saturday night, but the wait was short and definitely worth it!  Wait staff is friendly and I satisfied my curry craving with a very nice red curry with chicken.  The Chief Penguin ordered his standard test, pad Thai, and pronounced it excellent.  Lots of menu choices and all reasonably priced—we’ll go back!  It’s on Cortez Road also in Bradenton.

Note: Header photo from the restaurant’s website.

More Manhattan: Movies & Meals

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More gorging on films and satisfying meals.  We saw three more movies, the best being Hidden Figures, and returned to a recent restaurant find on W. 13th Street called Gradisca.

Things to Come. While the Chief Penguin saw Neruda, I settled myself in for Isabelle Huppert in L’Avenir, The Future. I much prefer the French title for this film about a professor whose husband of 25 years leaves her for another woman. It’s both an intellectual film, and to me, very French. Both Nathalie and her husband, Heinz, are philosophy professors.  She exposes her students to Rousseau and has had a successful track record of publication, including several widely used textbooks. Nathalie has two almost-adult children and a mother who is both ill and demanding.

When her husband departs and her responsibilities for children and mother cease, she must figure out how to live her life now that she has no ties and is free. Her closest relationship apart from her children is with Fabien, a former student and a radical who has moved to the mountains. The film employs none of the plot devices (an affair, e.g.) one might expect from an American version of this situation. Rather it’s Nathalie’s slowly unfolding journey from resignation coupled with grief and loneliness to a subdued acceptance of life as it is now. It’s subtitled with bits of English and German and an occasionally haunting soundtrack that ranges from classical to American popular music.

Patriots’ Day.  Some might wonder why we would go see a film about a catastrophic event, but we did and it was mostly an uplifting experience. This film about the Boston Marathon explosions of 2013 is a sensitive depiction of the events of that tumultuous week. The scenes of the actual event are graphic and horrifying, but most of the focus of the film is on the city and law enforcement’s race to find the bombers. Local and state politicians, FBI, and police officers are all portrayed along with the lead, Tommy Saunders, a police sergeant played by Mark Wahlberg.  Saunders is a composite of several real individuals.

I had forgotten some of the particulars of the ferocious gun battle in Watertown and that it took almost a week before the two brothers were located and dealt with. While one critic thought the coda was unnecessary and too long, I found seeing and hearing from some of the individuals injured or involved further testament to the spirit of a city that became Boston Strong. Director Peter Berg also directed Deepwater Horizon, released earlier this year.

Hidden Figures. Off all the films we’ve seen in New York this trip, this was the best! It deals with the long overlooked achievements of three extremely smart and feisty black women. They worked for NASA in Virginia in the early 1960’s when overt racism was the norm. There were separate restrooms and separate coffee pots for black people and, heaven forbid, if women thought they could become engineers or anything other than seemingly low level calculators. The NASA team at Langley is working hard to prepare for John Glenn’s launch.  There’s a key scene when he visits and is being introduced to some of the staff.  The black women are standing off separately and he’s being hurried along past them.  But Glenn slows down and insists on greeting them and shaking hands with several, a wonderful moment of human inclusiveness.

The audience was about two-thirds black and at the end of the film there was a spontaneous round of applause. After photos of the real pioneers appeared on the screen receiving awards including one given by President Obama, a black man in the back of the theater quietly intoned, “our president.” This is a seriously good film with notes of humor as you get pieces of the private lives of Catherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. See it!

Gradisca.  A small Italian restaurant where grandmother makes the tortellini by hand at a small table at the side of the dining room.  Pastas are excellent and the main dishes, especially the veal with fungi, very tasty.  Wait staff are gracious and helpful.

Header photo:  www.cinemablend.com

Big Screen in the Big Apple

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Bingeing. When we are not happily engaged entertaining our granddaughters, we go to the movies. Some might say we binge. Yes, good films come to the Sarasota/Bradenton area, but not as quickly and not all of them. We are now well acquainted with several cinemas in the West Village and are not averse to settling for a hot dog as lunch before the first showing of the day. Here are several of the films we’ve seen so far. More to come.

La La Land. Going in, I knew that this film was being touted as a contender for Best Picture and that it was a musical. In the first 20 minutes or so, I thought, oh no, we’re in for two hours of fluff and the Chief Penguin will soon be snoozing. Not so! Yes, this movie is sort of a musical (the leads do burst into song at emotion-laden moments) and boy meets girl and gets girl (at least for awhile), but it is much more. Scenes of true-to-life conversation and conflict are interspersed along with creative visions of an alternate reality. That the setting is Los Angeles, Hollywood to be precise, only adds to the magic.
Ryan Gosling as Sebastian and Emma Stone as Mia are likable and believable 20-something adults, each aspiring to realize a dream; he to own his own jazz club and she to make it as an actress. I left last week’s performance of Guys and Dolls feeling happy and uplifted. While La La Land is a more nuanced work, I was both entertained and satisfied as it played out. Perhaps it’s a tad too long, but it’s fun on several levels.

Fences. If you know ahead of time that this was first a stage play, then you’ll be prepared for the static nature of this film. It’s probably the one weakness or drawback to it. The year is 1957, the setting is Pittsburgh, and it’s the depiction of one stressed and poor black family.
The acting is powerful, especially the lead performances. Denzel Washington is Troy Maxson, the illiterate, storytelling garbage collector who craves recognition for who and what he is, a husband and father who has a strong sense of responsibility. He also feels responsible for and possibly guilty over his brother Gabe, brain damaged in WWII. Viola Davis is his wife Rose, his staunch advocate and compass who seems to work as hard as he does, but with little appreciation from him of her unexpressed wishes and desires.
Troy’s sons, Lyons, 34, and Corey, 17, are sources of tension and conflict when Troy won’t accept that their needs and wants don’t dovetail with his. And when Troy doesn’t heed his best friend Bono’s wise advice and is promoted at work, he no longer sees Bono every day and the friendship languishes. (Note that Bono is played here by a black albino which confused me since I initially thought he might be white.)
Fences is the best known play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. The world is slowly changing for the better for blacks, but not enough that Troy can or will see it. Moving and messy as only human relationships can be, this is a film worth seeing.

Arrival. This is a strange movie. Science fiction which we don’t often go see, but more cerebral than one might expect. When twelve space ships containing aliens from somewhere else land around the world, one in Montana, linguistics professor and language expert Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, is recruited to communicate with them. Their language is a graphic one, and Banks and Ian, a physicist played by Jeremy Renner, struggle together to make sense of who they are and why they have come to earth.

The scenes of Louise and Ian suiting up and making the journey into the black space egg and then communicating with the looming, long-armed heptapods in front of a glass wall are appropriately unnerving and even somewhat harrowing. Tension rises when several countries with similar craft threaten to use force against them. How the day is saved is an interesting twist.
Throughout the movie plays with time and how time is perceived. Louise is plagued by visions and memories of past events, or are they really past? The movie takes a short story by Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life,” and expands its scope to create the international crisis. I didn’t fully understand what filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was doing until I read several articles including one in Verge. Telling would spoil the film for you, so I won’t. If your curiosity is piqued, see it.

DINING FIND
It’s easy and tempting to return again and again to just our favorite restaurants, but it’s better to not get into a rut and to try new restaurants. After yesterday’s film at the IFC on 6th Avenue, we glanced at the menu at Tertulia and then wandered in. We had enjoyed very much the food in Spain and thought this tapas plus place looked inviting. And it was.

Warmly lit with brick walls, a long bar and tables in front and an arched dining area farther back, it was just right for lunch on a cold day. We indulged in a glass of sherry (lots of choices here) and then tucked into ham croquettes, a plate of blistered shishito peppers, and some Iberico ham along side tomato bread. We were aiming for a light lunch and this turned out to be the right amount of food. We look forward to a return visit!

Sarasota Scene: Holiday Happenings

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Fabulous Fun.  Asolo Repertory Theater’s production of Guys and Dolls is the perfect antidote for any lingering post-election blues.  Energetic, boisterous, lively, romantic, it’s hard to find enough adjectives to describe the sheer fun of it all.  I had never seen this musical before and was caught up in the music and the fast-paced dancing.   And pleased to discover that I even knew a couple of the songs, ”Luck Be a Lady,” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.”  The subtitle of the work is “A Musical Fable of Broadway,” and reflecting that, the action is set on Broadway and in a Salvation Army-like mission and features gamblers and show girls and the most unlikely of romantic pairings.  It runs until January 1, so if you’re local, treat yourself!

Christmas Concert

Tucked just in from Sarasota Bay, the Church of the Redeemer in Sarasota’s sanctuary is both elegant and cozy.   This week we attended “This Day, a concert of Christmas-related music by the Musica Sacra Cantorum, part of the church’s Great Music Concert Series which runs from December through next May.  This concert mixed the familiar, “The Holly and the Ivy”, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and “Joy to the World” (all verses) with the new and the unexpected.  British composer John Rutter is one of my favorites (“All Things Bright and Beautiful”) and we heard his three-movement, “Gloria,” along with works by John Tavener and the hauntingly beautiful, “Shine on This Shining Night,” by Morton Lauridsen.  Much honored and lauded, Lauridsen’s name and work were previously unknown to me.

Bob Parrish, the choir director, is a warm and engaging presence at the podium.  The program was an ambitious one and at some points challenging for the singers.  But overall, an enjoyable paean to the season.

Fresh Fish

For fresh and tasty fish in downtown Sarasota, I highly recommend Duval’s on Main Street.  We’ve had lunch there a number of times, but dinner perhaps only once before.  This week we took our visiting friend Barb and were delighted.  It’s a place where when you walk in, the décor leads you to expect an acceptable casual meal.  In our experience, the food consistently trumps the ambience.

Two of us enjoyed the grilled red snapper with a choice of sides.  I opted for the lightly sautéed spinach (one of my favorite vegetables) and requested the fried green tomatoes.  They were not technically one of the sides, but were being offered in a modified caprese salad.  Also tasty were the corn and lobster mac and cheese and a Caesar salad (large enough to share).  Our waitress was charming and knowledgeable—the next day we spotted her at the Asolo Theater.  Small world.

 

Header photo:  http://www.bradenton.com/entertainment/article115230988.html; Brass:  Christmas-brass.jpg