Category: Restaurants

Sarasota Scene: Music & Movies

JWF 3 Comments

HIGHBROW TO LOW BROW?

In the final year of their Verdi cycle (performing all of Verdi’s music over a period of more than 25 years), the Sarasota Opera presented a beautifully staged Aida.  No live elephants, but gorgeous music, colorful Egyptian sets, good singing, and some lovely dancers.  It was a most enjoyable evening and the time flew by, even with the lengthy intermissions.  We went with friends and beforehand had a convivial dinner at Roast, just down the street.  I like the intimacy of the Sarasota Opera House.  The stage is small, the theater not large, and I am more caught up in the unfolding drama than in larger venues.

Last evening we went very early (I won’t admit to how early or my friends will think I’ve become one of “those” senior citizens) to Cortez Kitchen, our favorite “biker bar.”  It does have a bar, but is really a semi-outdoor eatery that serves local grouper fresh from the boat, shrimp, the occasional burger, and even a few sushi rolls.  The spicy shrimp roll is one of our favorites.  It being the weekend, there was live music; hence a large crowd of diners who arrived early and hung on to their tables until Doug Deming and the Jewel Tones took to the stage.  The band was surprisingly good and obviously has a fan base.  We stuck to our table too!

OSCARS

The Chief Penguin and I have already seen most of the Academy Award nominated films with a few exceptions.  Having read the reviews and seen the trailer, I have no desire to see The Revenant.  I’m afraid that it will win the Best Picture award, but I’m rooting for Spotlight, an excellent film about an important topic, and would be satisfied if any of the other nominees besides The Revenant won.

In the interest of being comprehensive, we watched about 20 minutes of Room last evening on our small screen.  I thought the novel was excellent and Donoghue’s depiction of 5-year old Jack convincing.  But, the film was more painful and so we abandoned it in favor of Trumbo, which we viewed in its entirety.  I hadn’t realized that the blacklisting of screenwriters and movie stars went on for so many years, nor had I known anything about the role Dalton Trumbo played by continuing to write and to submit scripts under others’ names.  Only in the late 1970’s did he get recognition for some of his excellent earlier work.  This is a good film and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo) has been nominated for Best Actor.  You will also enjoy seeing Helen Mirren in elegant suits and large hats as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

ORCHIDS

To round out our week, we took our Philadelphia friends to Selby Botanical Gardens and were wowed by the impressive orchid display in the conservatory.  Hanging orchids, orchid walls, and orchid vines—a kaleidoscope of colors.  These waxy blooms plus a yummy pink bromeliad made my day!

(All photos by JWFarrington)

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Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

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DINING ON THE BEACH

A venue for splurges, Beach Bistro in Holmes Beach has an unbeatable setting—literally on the beach—and a dining room that is charming even when filled to capacity.  And this chef delivers.  The food is delicious, something that isn’t always paired with a fabulous view.  We were with good friends and had a table almost at the window, perfect for watching the rolling waves and marveling at the tangerine sunset.  Especially tasty were the roast scallops in a bouillabaisse sauce and the spiny lobster done like escargots with a pinch of sautéed spinach.

MUSIC CONVERSATIONS

There seems to be a focus on opera in the Music Mondays series this year.  This past week we had the pleasure of hearing from Joseph Volpe, former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera.  Mr. Volpe spent his entire career there beginning as an apprentice carpenter and then working his way up the trade ladder to master carpenter and then to assistant manager and so on.  As a child, he spent hours listening to opera recordings with his grandmother.  This, coupled with a bent for things mechanical, helps explain his unusual career path.  It was informative to hear his observations on working with the various singers and how he negotiated with them and their agents to determine what operas might be in the next season’s offerings.  Now retired, Mr. Volpe lives in the Sarasota area and just agreed to take on an interim leadership role with the Sarasota Ballet.

READING THE MORBID

Death is high on the bestseller charts this season.  Years ago, surgeon Sherwin Nuland, now deceased, wrote a fascinating book entitled How We Die, and I had the honor of hosting him for a lecture in San Francisco.  More recently, Atul Gawande, one of my favorite New Yorker staff writers and also a physician, gave us Being Mortal, a compelling and thought-provoking account of end-of life stories and how families and physicians either ignore, or don’t make the effort to understand, what the dying patient would like.  This book was enriched by Gawande’s inclusion of his own father’s last illness.

The newest books detail the untimely deaths of individuals who are far too young.  When Breath Becomes Air is Paul Kalanithi’s account of his battle with Stage 4 lung cancer.  A neurosurgeon in his late thirties, Kalanithi faces and describes his transition from doctor to patient.  He was someone who had a lifelong curiosity about death and what might be most memorable here are his ponderings about the meaning of life, what makes for a good life, and the decision to create new life, as he and his wife have a child after his diagnosis.  For more, here’s an interview he did in 2014, the year before he died.

The Iceberg by Marion Coutts is the wrenching account of her writer husband Tom Lubbock’s decline and then death after he is diagnosed with a brain tumor.  As her spouse begins losing words, their young son Ev (initially 18 months old) is embracing the world and words as he acquires language.  Coutts is an artist and I am finding her style somewhat too theatrical (who am I to judge, really, since I have never been in her shoes?), but believable nonetheless.  In some ways, it’s the harder book for me.

WHODUNIT?

As a change of pace, I’ve been mildly diverted by Walter Walker’s novel, Crime of Privilege.  Although the book cover reviews call it a thriller, that’s overstating the case.  It’s really a story of a murder investigation by a young assistant DA, set on Cape Cod in the context of the wealthy and powerful Gregory family who can silence people and pressure the police.  George Becket, the lawyer, has a guilty conscience over his own inaction years before in the face of a crime in Palm Beach and wonders if his life and position have all been a set-up.  The precipitating events are clear echoes of those involving the Kennedys.

COLORING FUN!

I included these mostly for Sally and to show the variety of images one can color.

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Tidy Tidbits: Diversions

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COLORING CRAZE CONTINUES

I knew that public libraries had signed on to the coloring craze for adults, but I was surprised to learn (thanks to my younger sister) that research libraries have joined in with a sort of challenge this week. Specifically, they are offering up images from their special collections for anyone to download and color, with the hope that the colorers will then upload their completed pages to Facebook or other social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections. Really nifty idea! It plays into the fascination with coloring and exposes a wider group of people to the treasures in these collections. Participating libraries include the organizer, New York Academy of Medicine, along with Biodiversity Heritage Library,  New York Public Library, Baylor University, University of North Carolina and several others. The contest ends February 5th, but I’d be willing to guess you can still find the PDFs after that date. Sharpen your pencils!

YOUNG MUSICIANS TO WATCH
We had the pleasure, and a pleasure it was, to see and hear sister and brother violist and violinist Elizabeth Beilman and Benjamin Beilman.  They are charming conversationalists and talented performers. Elizabeth was principal violist for the Sarasota Orchestra for two years and recently moved to Salt Lake City to join the Utah Symphony. She’s a graduate of Juilliard. Her brother, Benjamin, is part of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is also pursuing a career as a soloist. He’s a graduate of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Since childhood, they have played together many times and were totally in sync in the several lovely duets they offered us.

It was interesting to hear Elizabeth say that while she initially played violin into high school (beginning at age 5), she ultimately found the viola more to her liking and more intellectually stimulating. Both of them enjoy playing chamber music and stressed how important it was both there and in an orchestra to be very aware of the other players. I also learned that Elizabeth filled in for a violist in Maine one summer at the Bay Chamber series in Rockport (concerts I have enjoyed) which solidified her switch to viola and brought her a very noted teacher.

EATING AROUND
We’ve recently tried two new (new to us) restaurants for lunch, one in Sarasota and the other in Bradenton. Duval’s in downtown Sarasota specializes in seafood and offers a number of tasty and inexpensive lunchtime specials, including a soup/salad/half sandwich option. I sampled the Caesar salad and turkey sandwich (a very large half on a baguette) and my spouse devoured his gazpacho and Caesar salad. Service was friendly and swift, especially considering how busy they were. Good thing I made a reservation!

We also met friends at the Bradenton outpost of Cedar Reef Fish Camp. Located in a strip mall not far from an I-75 exit, but decorated as befits its name, it was perfect for the Pennsylvanians en route to Captiva and surprisingly delicious! Two of us had the daily special of cedar planked salmon (served with rice and some sautéed squash and red peppers) and the others enjoyed the crab cake sandwich and the fish and chips. If it were closer to home, we’d eat there more often!

Header image:  Page from Color Me Stress-Free

Holiday Fare: Food and Film

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CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS OLD AND NEW

When I was growing up, Christmas was celebrated with just my immediate family—parents and three siblings—since the relatives lived many miles away. Dinner then was often half a ham and scalloped potatoes or a reprise of roast turkey and mashed potatoes, both family favorites.  One year we drove to Ohio and Michigan to visit cousins and grandparents which meant we had Christmas three times, something that tickled us kids!

My mother liked to bake and each year made several kinds of cookies: sand tarts or sugar cookies, peppermint kisses, and walnut crescents; also chocolate fudge, foil packages of which her children and grandchildren received under the tree; and chocolate-covered toffee. These were her specialties, but some years recipes from my father’s side of the family crept in—schaben bratle (a rich cookie with ground nuts) and stollen, a German Christmas bread loaded with dried fruit, almonds and cinnamon. Aunt Marie used to make stollen too, but I didn’t like her version as well.

In the earlier years when my great aunts were alive, we’d also receive a box in the mail of homemade German cookies, a holiday treat we eagerly anticipated:  the aforementioned schaben bratle, lebkucken (molasses-based), Springerlie (anise-flavored and embossed rectangles) and simple S-shaped crumbly cookies.  Carrying on tradition, my husband now makes the stollen, drawing on several different recipes to create his rendition. He takes great delight in drenching the currants overnight in cognac before incorporating them!

Since our son is married with a family of his own, we are creating new traditions with a Chinese flavor.   For two years now, we’ve celebrated Christmas Day with his in-laws on the Connecticut shore.  After arriving this year we enjoyed a light Chinese lunch (not really that light) of delicious thin pieces of grilled pork and grilled beef, tasty sautéed cucumber, a hearty healthy green salad with persimmon and avocado slices, soft scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and, of course, rice.

After a brisk walk, followed by some downtime, we decamped to a local restaurant, Fuji, for more Chinese food. Our Chinese relatives do the ordering, in Chinese, of course, and a feast of many dishes quickly appears—everything from green beans to spicy beef with red and green peppers to spicy tofu to a whole fish, and then some. Plus rice!  Dinner is lively and convivial and the Chinese cuisine a welcome and very tasty counterpoint to what we normally eat.  I love this new tradition!

FLURRY OF FILMS

While in New York, when we weren’t with our granddaughter, we binged on films!  These are in the order we saw them, not in order of preference.

The Big Short. Fast paced with flashes of zany humor (a blonde in a bathtub drinking champagne and explaining what a “short is”), this movie based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same title aims to make understandable the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, specifically the home mortgage meltdown. The lead agents are hedge fund operators, wizards, numbers guys, and an oddball eccentric, Michael Burry, MD. It is a compelling lesson in what results when no one is minding the store, in this case, the banks. None of us escaped from being affected by this, whether it was a loss of a home or the sale of, loss of a job, or losses in one’s investment portfolio. Ultimately disturbing to witness so clearly what Wall Street was able to get away with and the callousness with which bankers and investors wrenched profits from ordinary folks.

45 Years. That’s 45 years of marriage and the line waiting to buy tickets for the 10:30 a.m. show was all seniors. Set in the English countryside outside a small village, this is a delicate and nuanced portrayal of a startling shock in what seems like a happy, stable marriage. The wife, beautifully played by Charlotte Rampling, is completely thrown by this event which pre-dates her, and fumes, frets, and reflects on their life. Her husband, played by Tom Courtenay is also good. I highly recommend it.

Carol. Cate Blanchett continues to amaze and impress me.  She is cool and elegant and finally passionate as Carol in this 1950’s period piece about a slowly blooming lesbian relationship. Rooney Mara who plays the younger Therese is luminously hesitant and we see her come into her own both as a woman and in her career as she finds her calling as a photographer. A beautiful film to watch and another one this year focusing on the women; Brooklyn and 45 Years being two others.

Son of Saul. I was reluctant to see this Holocaust film, despite praise from some critics, so definitely don’t go expecting to be charmed.  It is brutal and bleak with some of the most horrifying images I’ve seen on the screen. And loud. As one critic noted, sound plays a very important role, and I would add, perhaps a greater role than the meager dialogue. Motivated by a thread of human compassion toward the boy he considers his son, Saul and his quest liberate the film from total bleakness.

Header photo:  Chief Penguin’s Stollen, copyright JW Farrington