Aida intermission
Radames won the war. Everyone is happy. Pharoh offers him anything, and he asks for freedom for the prisoners. Aids’s father begs for mercy, and is permitted to live ( he conceals the fact that he is king).
Amneris figures out that Radames loves Aida. She’s royally pissed off–since she’s pharos daughter everything she does is royal. It isn’t good to make her mad.
Pharaoh gives Amneris to Radames as a reward. Nobody is happy.
Aida act II
Aida loves Radames, who is betrothed to Amneris, Aida’s mistress. Meanwhile, Radames is off to war to defeat the invading Ethiopian horde. The leader of the invaders is Aida’s father. Small world, no?
A night at the opera
And so the Marx Brothers theme continues. Who can I get to replace Margaret Dumont?
We’re at ATT Park for the “free” opera simulcast. The place is packed, including the entire outfield where people are spread out on their blankets.
Free is a misnomer when you are in a place where the fries cost $7 and the Diet Coke is $5. A hot dog and fries dinner set me back half a C note, but the fries were cold and the service was rotten to make up for the prices.
We got here at 6:30. The opera starts at 8:00, but you have to find a seat and stand in line for your food
We’re seeing Aida tonight, and the show is about to start. See you later
Lessons from the lesser grater
I like to cook, and I’m fairly good at it. Pasta, in any form, is my favorite and my specialty.
Nonetheless, a couple of times a year Gail wants me to to take her to the Old Spaghetti Factory in Todos Santos Square in Concord. She likes the Spaghetti in brown butter and mizithra cheese, and although you would think it’s pretty easy to make at home, Gail contends that I am incapable of properly browning butter.
The Old Spaghetti Factory has been around for about 40 years, and it’s still a monument to good management and ferocious cost cutting. For $9.95, you get a salad, a plate of pasta and a dish of spumoni for dessert. The fancy upscale mizithra dish with garlic, mushrooms and bacon costs an extra buck. I had the basic, Gail had the upscale. A glass of wine, a glass of iced tea, and the entire bill came to $34.94, $40 with tip.
Part of their secret is turning the tables four or five times a night. We sat down, the waiter was right there to get our order. The salads come out almost instantly, the pastas are close behind. He brings the check with the dessert and you have a sit down dinner and are out the door in 45 minutes, sometimes less.
Portions are generous, the food is hot and good. The bread is a fresh baked loaf. The spumoni doesn’t have any candied fruit or pistachios in it, because it’s cheaper that way, but it still tastes fine.
I used to try to make the same dish at home. Toby was a little kid, and in charge of grating the cheese, with me as assistant. That’s where he got the title of “Greater Grater” and I became the “lesser grater”. Fifth graders love cheesy puns almost as much as I do. Sadly, though, I proved to be an inadequate butter browner, so now we just go back to the mother ship of Mizithra cheese.
A Day gambling at the Races
No, this isn’t about a Marx Brothers movie, even if Dr. Hugo Hackenbush is one of my heroes.
Son-in-law Brad is a fan of the races, and so, apparently, is Gail. So we decided to spend a day at Golden Gate Fields, you know we all love to earn money betting.
At first, Brad liked the idea of dollar day–dollar entry, dollar hot dogs, dollar beers. Gail, as is her wont, disabused him of that silly plebeian notion and impressed upon him the wisdom of the turf club and valet parking.
So there we were, sitting high above the track on a semi-cloudy day, enjoying the view, the food, the service and the horses.
Gail had a racing form, the program, and a tout sheet. Long ago she was a habitué of Caliente in Tijuana–horse races in the day time, dog races at night, so she can read all that horsey stuff and pick the winners.
Well, sometimes pick the winners. Gail and Brad had a great time studying the forms and “wheeling” their bets, and she only lost $10 for the day.
Grand-daughter Demi used her boyfriend’s technique–ignore all that, and pick the horse with the coolest name. Needless to say, she was the big winner for the day.
I don’t really understand the concept of the races–you can’t figure out what an animal will do, and if you really want to gamble you could win or lose a fortune with the Best Online Gambling Sites. All day to make 9 bets? I can do that in 8 minutes at the craps table. Of course, some people manage to put their kids through college betting on the ponies, but you have to devote your life to it. I’ll stick with the old admonition: Horse players die broke.
Nonetheless, we had a great time. The food was good, The company was perfect, the view was great, the horses were fun to look at. I’m sure we’ll go again. Maybe next time I can get a “free” hat that only costs $50.
Roya’s Garlic Garden
If there’s a new restaurant in town, we want to try it. Sometimes, that isn’t the best idea.
Tonight we went to Roya’s Garlic Garden, right in the middle of Lafayette (3576 Mt. Diablo Blvd.) in the same place that a half dozen other eateries have been over the last 20 years.
It wasn’t fair to the restaurant: this was the weekend of the Lafayette Art and Wine festival, and they had been swamped all day today and yesterday. They were out of soup, they were out of spaghetti, they were out of cloth napkins, they were out of energy. More power to them, they stayed open and struggled on, accommodating us at ten after 8 when I’m sure they all just wanted to go home and collapse after a huge weekend.
Their version of a caprese salad. Gail's fork stealing a taste.
If there’s anything like a caprese salad on the menu, I’m having it. This one used the tiny bocconcini mozzarella, some greenery and a pungent Dijon vinaigrette. I liked it, although I hope that they can get a better grade of cheese in the future.
Fettuccine Carbonara, in a classic presentation with the raw egg yolk
My entreé was the Fettuccine Carbonara, pasta with bacon and onions, topped with a raw egg yolk that cooks from the heat of the food as you stir it in. It’s always one of my favorites, and I thought the dish tonight was just perfect. Ordinarily, they serve it with spaghetti, but I was more than happy to have the wider egg noodles.
Gail had the House Special pasta–penne with pesto, capers and pieces of tenderloin. She wasn’t all that thrilled with it, but I’m cutting the chef considerable slack given the circumstances.
I liked Roya’s Garlic, and I don’t think tonight was really representative of the best they can do. We’ll definitely give them another chance.
California boy at last
I tell opponents at the bridge table that I’m “just a country boy”, but the truth is that I was born in Brooklyn, although we moved to Los Angeles when I was 7, and Orinda when I was 11.
Some of the things that have happened in the last 10 days or so make me certain that I’m a California boy through and through, so I thought I’d share them.
First, we were at an art show and met a new artist with work we wanted. Because he needed to see our house to discuss exactly what size and color we were talking about, I invited him to dinner on a night we were having friends in already. It seemed right, living here, to add “bring your wife, or husband, or partner, or whatever.” In point of fact, he brought his husband–nothing out of the ordinary for the Bay Area, but we sure aren’t in Kansas anymore.
Then this week we went to another show and went out to dinner at Greens, in the Fort Mason complex, which is a vegetarian establishment. The food is good, unless you are in dire need of a lamb chop.
Heirloom tomatoes and burrata--grown on their own farm
Greens is owned by the San Francisco Zen Center, and their produce comes from their own farm. It’s a beautiful place on the water, looking out at the Marina Green and the Golden Gate Bridge. If they had a decent selection of sweetener for their iced tea I’d give them a top rating, but places that only have the dreaded pink stuff can’t get more than a B- from me. Still, a first class restaurant that holds true to vegetarian principles strikes me as pretty “California only”.
Lastly, Friday night Gail and I, and Iris Libby and Gail Everett, went to Blowfish-Sushi to Die For before the theater. This is an ultra-hip, hyper-modern sushi bar not at 2170 Bryant, San Francisco. They don’t actually have blowfish on the menu (it’s hard to get, hideously expensive and often fatal if incorrectly prepared), but what they do have is spectacular.
Blowfish is not you quiet local sushi bar–the music is loud and techno, the televisions are showing Anime cartoons in Japanese, the waitstaff are young, cool and heavily tattooed.
Two Gails with a plate of sushi
Sushi without the Gails
Here’s an excerpt from a review I found online:
It is imperative to order Chef Ritsuo Tsuchida’s signature appetizer: the “Ritsu Roll“. Slices of a seaweed-wrapped roll of tuna, avocado and tobiko are lightly seared and served with Ponzu sauce and a dipping sauce presented in a martini glass. It seems to be everyone’s favorite. Seeing me scribble in my Hello Kitty notebook, the waitperson came out with some delicious, special, hot appetizers from the chef. The standout for us was the “Mamahasu” – mouthwateringly tender eggplant and zucchini cooked in a yellow miso sauce and shaped inside a five-pointed star made of zucchini that was garnished with edible, purple pansy petals. We also enjoyed a sea bass served with both a red and a white wine sauce, with fruit, nuts and lotus roots.
Presentation is everything. The food is beautiful to look at and the flatware and glasses are very stylish. We enjoyed the hip look of the wait staff including one raven-haired beauty with tattooed arms and silver glitter tights. The action has been hopping every time I’ve been in, so reservations are a must.
Now on to our sushi rolls. A big winner was the “Super Dynamite” roll: hamachi, sake and green onion, wrapped in sushi rice, lightly fried, and topped with a spicy, Unagi chili sauce. Heat was also in effect with the delicious “Blowfish Eye” roll: tuna, flying fish eggs, and cucumber with warm, curried tempura, and a “Spider Roll” which contained warm soft-shell crab. Salmon lovers will enjoy the “Menage a Trois“: salmon, salmon skin, ikura, and tobiko. Vegetarians can enjoy the “Popeye Roll” featuring spinach with peanut sauce.
The Super Dynamite roll the author is talking about was so good that Gail & Gail had 2 of them. It’s too spicy for a sissy like me, but I did some serious damage to the rest of the menu. There’s a reason this place gets a Michelin star–and it’s only a few blocks from Z Space theater, making it a perfect place before or after the show.
So in the course of 10 days I invited a man and his husband to dinner, dined at an excellent vegetarian restaurant and then had raw fish and seaweed at another place. My Brooklyn grandparents wouldn’t understand any of this–I’m a California boy now.
Olive Kitteridge
Gail likes fiction–the more heartbreaking the better. So she seriously loved Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.
It’s an innovative kind of fiction–13 independent short stories all relating to one central character, a bulky, unpleasant, cold, aloof, distant 7th grade math teacher in a small town in Maine, and the lives she touches.
The Word for Word Theater Company is staging two of the stories in Z Space, a theater in the Mission district in the City. Something we often forget is that San Francisco has a very lively “off-Broadway” theater life, with small spaces producing innovative and experimental works at very reasonable prices.
Okay, back to the play. As the name Word for Word Theater Company might imply, this is a very upscale staged reading. The actors are reciting the story as written. So Olive doesn’t just say “Hello”, she says, “Hello, Olive said”. Sometimes all the characters speak in unison. It’s an interesting literary/theatrical conceit, which Gail loved and I thought became somewhat oppressive.
The staging was excellent, with 7 cast members (5 of them members of Equity) performing quite a few roles on an open stage with just a table and chairs, a ramp, and a corner bench/table. Costumes were bright and inventive, transforming the limited cast into a bevy of minor characters.
Gail, having swallowed and digested the book, thought that the ending of the play was considerably softened from the tone of the relevant short story. I’ll just have to believe her, but most people want a happy ending anyway.
Reception to this theatrical work has been exceptional–for a small theater miles from Market street, they are doing so well that the run has been extended until October 10, at least. Go see it if you can.
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
I saved $17,000 this weekend
Well, sort of.
Gail and I went to the Black Cat Cabaret on Friday, and on Saturday the Ruth Bancroft Garden held it’s annual gala, so we hit that one, too.
Gail had developed an interesting habit of bidding like mad at these charity auctions, trying to get the prices up and raise more for the sponsoring organization. Although we are prepared to buy these things if she gets left in a bid, we aren’t really trying to buy most of them.
So Friday she bid on trip to Vegas, and again on the resort in Brazil–and we darned near ended up going to Rio, since she was hanging out there with the high bid for aaaaaaaaaaaages until somebody bid another $100 and took us off the hook.
Then tonight the big item was a cruise. and once again we came within one bid of spending a very expensive week aboard a Seadream cruise ship. She was outbid by $50 on a “martini party”, and we saved another $700.
I suppose that if we had actually “won” (not that the opportunity to spend a lot of money on something you didn’t want 20 minutes earlier is really “winning”) any of these auction items she might have been more circumspect about bidding on the next one; since she skated out just in time in every case, she felt free to keep waving her paddle with gusto.
It’s a good thing I had a double bypass 9 years ago; I don’t think I could survive another charity event without it.
Black Cat Cabaret
Acrobats are great dancers, too
Last night Gail and I went to a charity gala in Sonoma, with our friend Dave Allen from Artefact Design and Salvage. It was a fundraiser for Pets Lifeline, an animal shelter.
“What’s this?”, you’re thinking. “Chris isn’t some big animal lover. The only pets he owns are chickens, so what is he doing there?” Good question, here’s the answer: 1) Dave is a big supporter (he loves animals, and is flirting with one of the leaders of the charity, too. 2) It’s the greatest fundraiser ever. They have some hidden connection I don’t understand, and get Cirque du Soleil to provide entertainment.
Yes, a group of acrobats and entertainers come up from Las Vegas, taking a night off from KA, (their show at the Mirage), to provide jaw dropping spectacular amusement to the dog lovers of Sonoma. Proving once again that it’s who you know that counts.
The evening started with wine and hors d’oeuvres, with some small amusements:
After we were fed and lubricated, we entered a large tent, and the show was on. Here’s a clip of some of the good stuff:
In the middle of the show, there was the inevitable auction. They keep it to only 6 items, so it doesn’t drag on forever. The big prize was a night in Vegas, a suite in the MGM, a fancy dinner and VIP seats and a backstage pass to KA. They ended up selling three of these packages, for $5500 apiece. The full week at a resort outside of Rio de Janiero went for only $4300. Gail threw in a bid just to get the price up and we darned near won it.
The last auction item was a “no-prize”–nothing at all auctioned, just a plea for donations, starting with $5000, which three people went for, then $3000, then $1000, on down to $100. Over $43,000 was raised just that way–I was impressed.
This was the second annual Black Cat Cabaret, and we’ll be sure to be there next year, too. You’re welcome to join us.
Totally Unauthorized 