Visiting an old friend
I had to drive from one end of town to the other this morning, and realized I would pass right by the assisted living facility where my friend Hugh Ross now resides, so it seemed only sensible that I stop and visit for a spell.
Hugh was one of my idols when I was a rookie bridge players, and I count it as one of the great boons of life that he became my friend and bridge partner. Bridge may be the most democratic game there is–if I golfed I’d never get to play with Nicklaus or Woods or Els, but I’ve played with a few world class players and against many more.
Serious health issues preclude Hugh from playing at the highest levels of the game, but I got him out to play in local club games a couple of years ago. He still fills in with the other residents of his facility–they surely can’t imagine with whom they are playing.
He looks great, an impressive 6′ 3″ with a magnificent head of hair. His speech is a bit slower, but still has his dry Canadian wit (he’s from Montreal, and attended McGill).
The place he lives seems nice to me He has his own room and bath with cable TV, a good view, family photos and a bed long enough for his frame. There is a day room, a dining room, and a variety of nooks to just hang out in.
Hugh’s wife, Min, visits daily and usually takes dinner with him. I didn’t know it at the time but she was in the same facility, different floor, for a month to get over some issues of her own. She went home today, feeling better.
In about 30 minutes I filled Hugh in on the latest bridge gossip, made small talk about the weather and the quality of institutional food and excused myself before I became a nuisance. One should never keep a man away from lunch hour.
Friends are the important. Make time for them; they would be awfully hard to replace.
Buns si, boobs no
You remember that a couple of weeks ago stamps.com rejected my photo of a marble sculpture because it didn’t meet their standards.
Not being the sort to give up, Gail suggested that we take a picture of the back of the piece and try again.
The same marble from the other side.
Success!! They don’t object to art, or nudes, just boobs. Impressionistic, nipple-less boobs at that.
The American obsession with breasts, and the equating of them with sin, continues to amaze me. Will people never grow up?
Old School Rockridge
A Cote, on College Avenue in the heart of the Rockridge area, has been a safe, solid, go-to restaurant for years. Not modern, not chi-chi, no molecular gastronomy. Your basic French food, done well. We went there Saturday night with our friends Mary and Ted.
The front of the house is very dark, trying for intimacy in a dining room sited right on the street with plate glass windows.
If you walk to the back, take a left and a right, follow through a narrow hallway past the bustling kitchen, you arrive in a splendid patio, half of which is under roof and half under open sky or a retractable cover. The street noise gone, the sky was blue, it was like a French garden in the country. Sit in the back if at all possible.
A Cote has a full bar, so Ted and Mary decided to start with Perfect Manhattans, which my parents used to drink when we went out. In the old day they came with maraschino cherries, which my brother and I would fight for. The modern style is some very fancy upscale cherry, and I wrestled Mary for one of hers. I wish more people would order that drink so I could steal the cherries, they were really good.
The menu has plates both small and large, so you can eat communally or not. We did both, starting with an order of corn and chantarelle fritters for all of us to share. Chantarelles, the only mushroom fit to eat.
Corn and Chantarelle Fritter with some white stuff.
The fritters were excellent. The accompanying “remoulade” neither looked nor tasted like it should–it seemed to be mayonnaise and pickle relish. Tartar sauce without the tartar. Fortunately, the wonderful fritters didn’t really need any sauce.
I had the green tomato gazpacho.
Gazpacho Verde with Scallop Ceviche
I thoroughly enjoyed the cold green tomato and cucumber soup, garnished with avocado. It wasn’t until I looked up the menu to write this article that I realized the little white chunks were scallop ceviche–I thought they were some particularly tasteless cheese curd product. A Cote needs to get more flavor into the scallops or just make the soup vegan.
The restaurant has two signature dishes, and our friends ordered them both. Mussels, and pommes frites (the $8 way to spell fries).
Mussels with Pernot. Pommes Frites behind.
That’s an enormous portion of mussels, which the two of them couldn’t finish. The dish is flavored with Pernod, an anise-flavored apéritif. Dunking your baguette in the liquid is a delight darn near as good as eating the shellfish.
The frites were thin and crispy, just the way Gail likes them. Gail doesn’t believe in ordering fries in a good restaurant, but is willing to try a few if someone else is less constrained.
Gail had a croque monsieur, the French way to say grilled ham and cheese sandwich. If you put a fried egg on it, you have a croque madame. Oh, those wacky French.
Upscale grilled ham and cheese surrounded by caperberries.
I, sadly, had the gnocchi with pesto. Sadly because I had a clear and specific discussion with the waiter that I wanted more gnocchi and less pesto–I absolutely did not want a soupy bowl of sauce with some potato dumplings floating in it.
You know what I got. A bowl of pesto and 8 or 10 gnocchi. The pesto was decent, the gnocchi were soft and boring, the dish was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Since it’s a French joint, I guess I can fairly say C’est la vie.
Service was pretty good, except for the gnocchi incident. Prices are reasonable.
The weather gods were kind, and we had a perfect evening with our friends. If you go to A Cote, sit in the back, have the mussels and don’t go near the gnocchi. Maybe you can bring your own remoulade for the fritters, that would be good.
Ribs!
You go to Memphis, you eat ribs. That’s just what you do. Now I sound like a Geico commercial.
Friday night David and I went out for ribs at Charlie Vergos’ Rendevous, considered by many to be the best place for authentic Memphis barbecue. That description works for me.
The Rendevous is on 2nd St, which is a main thoroughfare in town, but you have to walk around the back and down an alley to get in–I thought I was going to have to know the password, too.
The restaurant has been here for many years, and is decorated in totally eclectic style. There are football helmets, long guns, collections of liquor bottles and glass Budweiser Clydesdales. In fact, there is just stuff everywhere you look. The red checked tablecloths carry out the theme, this is a weird, funky, fun joint.
The small portion of pork ribs, with beans and slaw.
I went for the classic–pork ribs. This is the small portion, and it was plenty. Memphis style is a dry rub, so the meat is not dripping with sauce, although there are two kinds of sauce on the table to suit you tastes. The flavor is serious and meaty, not all sweet and vinegary like the wet rib places. The cole slaw is not mayo based, but tart and spicy hot. I was a happy camper.
Lamb riblets
David had the lamb, which was even better. The rub enhances the lamb without overpowering it. Definitely worth a try.
Another benefit of the dry rub:
Dinner is over and his shirt is still clean!
There isn’t much in the way of variety at the Rendevous. You can’t get un-sweet iced tea, so I had to have a beer. They have a moderate selection and I chose a Fireside pale ale from the Memphis Made Brewing company. Since the last beer I had was in Germany over a year ago, I’m not much of an expert but it tasted good to me.
Memphis Made Brewing Company Fireside pale ale
You’d think they would have a selection of desserts to finish off such a manly meaty beery meal, but you’d think wrong. Eat your ribs, drink your beer and hit the road, Jack. What the hell, prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is fun and the food is good. What more do you need?
From there we went a few blocks down to the famous Beale Street to see the crowds and listen to some blues, The cops block off the street every night, there are bars cheek by jowl for two or three blocks each with live music blasting out, people celebrating life, stores selling mementos and tchotchkes, street performers busking and bars that sell booze right on the street, like New Orleans. BB King’s blues hall is on the first corner, to set the tone of one of the great music streets in the nation.
And that was the end of a very long day. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
Death by lunch
David and I spent today sightseeing, and the first thing we did was drive south to Mississippi and have lunch. He found a place called Dale’s, which has been there for 44 years in a burg called Southaven, so that’s where we went.
Dale’s is a monument to southern cooking, but I think I have to live on salads for a week to atone for what I did to my body at lunch.
The restaurant has plastic coated tablecloths and an old fashioned look you don’t see in California.
Sugar shaker and lots of Sweet’n’low. I hate Sweet’n’low.
Observe the packages of “butter”.
Buttery taste spread. Another phrase for yellow salty grease.
The menu has more fried food than I have ever seen. This is the appetizer section:
We ordered the Fried Green Tomatoes, and loved them. They come with ranch dressing, and “Lillie’s tangy tomato sauce”, which is kind of like russian dressing with horseradish. I really liked it. In fact, the fried green tomatoes were probably the hit of the meal.
Fried green tomatoes with ranch dressing and Lillies tangy tomato sauce.
Picking an entree was more difficult, but I managed to pass up on this one:
Chicken Fried Chicken was just too much for me.
I had the fried (what else?) catfish, which came with hushpuppies, creamed corn and candied yams.
The hushpuppies were fantastic, the best I’ve ever had. The catfish was tasteless, the candied yams were like a bowl of sugar and the corn wasn’t much better.
In fact, if you gave a 2 year old a bowl of sugar and a spoon he couldn’t eat as much sugar as this meal contained. The cornbread was sweet. All the food was sweet. I know sugar can be used as a preservative, so perhaps I will now live forever.
David had the fried chicken, and got the largest chicken leg I’ve ever seen.
Fried chicken, fried okra and mac n cheese.
The chicken was good–David gives it an 8.5. The yellow stuff on the plate tasted like macaroni and Velveeta. I don’t want to know anything about fried okra.
We had to try dessert, because what better way to top off a huge meal of grease and sugar? I had the lemon ice box pie, which is some sort of lemon pudding in a graham cracker crust with cool whip on top. Didn’t care for the cool whip, liked the rest.
Lemon Ice Box pie
David opted for the strawberry pie.
Fresh strawberries, strawberry jam, graham cracker crust and undefined white stuff on top.
The very best thing about Dale’s, though, was our waitress, Keke. Pretty, bright, funny, helpful, not too scornful of a couple of rubes from the left coast, we fell in love with Keke.
The best waitress in Mississippi
If you’re ever just over the border from Memphis and hungry, head for Dale’s. Ask for Keke, get the fried green tomatoes and extra hushpuppies. You can’t go wrong.
My life as a roadie
We landed in Memphis after midnight, and were up at 6:15 to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Batesville, AR.
Eastern Arkansas is flat and rural. I saw more tractor and farm equipment dealers than car dealers, and the car dealers inventory was 80% pick up trucks. The fields are all low crops–they grow soy beans, rice and some corn in this area. Land here is still cheap, which leads to roads with wide grassy shoulders, even small houses on large lots and broad sweeping cloverleafs for minor exits. Traffic moves along swiftly and there are darn few police on the highway.
We got to Batesville, population around 11,000. They have a Kroger and a WalMart, lots of churches and 4 motels. Lyon College was founded in 1872, and is the oldest independent college in the state.
The address we had was for the office of the Family Violence Prevention, Inc., (FVPI) the parent organization of the shelter. The shelter itself, Taylor House, does not publish its address as there is considerable confidentiality associated with the building and its residents. David made a call and we drove a few minutes to an older brick home in a quiet area, and found our location.
The shelter is a 3 bedroom house that once belonged to a doctor. When he passed away, his family donated it to FVPI, and they decided to create a shelter for male victims of domestic violence. After receiving the necessary funding, they managed to turn the building around in 6 weeks and create a facility that can house up to 9 persons. Open less than 1 year, they have already served 17 clients and their usage rate is growing.
People laughed when I said I was coming here to work on a documentary about domestic violence against men, but those who work in the field know that domestic violence knows no gender, and there is as much abuse directed at men as there is against women. It just doesn’t fit the narrative of “men are abusers”, and therefore isn’t talked about.
We were there to interview the director, Patty Duncan, and the manager, Bill Miller. They are experts in the field, and run a very professional operation where the clients are not just given housing but a complete program to help them rebuild their lives.
David is making a documentary, titled “What about the men?” addressing the vast issue of domestic violence aimed at men. I was there to carry things, a task I am well suited for. We set up his video camera and he proceed to spend a couple of hours conducting in-depth interviews with Patty and Bill regarding the genesis, operation and philosophy of Taylor House.
I made sure the lights were on and the fans were off. I’m very good at my job.
Although there are some shelters for women that will accept men, Taylor House is currently the only shelter in the US dedicated to assisting male victims of domestic violence. That is changing, and there are a few more coming line as awareness increases.
Taylor House accepts men from anywhere, but they have no funding to bring clients in. Still, some of their clients have come from considerable distances (although the nearest intercity bus station is 30 miles away in Newport) and they have received phone calls from as far away as the west coast. The demand is out there, the supply must follow.
After we “wrapped” (that’s show biz talk for finishing up) Patty took us out to lunch at the good barbecue place in town.
I drove back in the rain the long slow way, through countless town of 100 to 600 people, noticing dozens of churches, past more auto dealers with yards full of trucks, stopped at a gas station where the cashier was covered in needle marks and had teeth rotting away in “meth mouth”, saw dozen of silos full of rice or beans and yet there were almost no political signs in front of the houses. We saw one car with a Trump/Pence bumper sticker.
Taylor House is an impressive achievement that fills a crying need. Arkansas is lucky to have it, and the organization that created it. This being a roadie is fun–maybe there can be more shelters for men so David and I can do it again.
The vicissitudes of travel
Here I am in LAX. I met up with David and we’re about to have a bite to eat before we get on the flight.
I noticed my bag was hard to pull. Looking down I see that the trusty Hartmann bag is finally falling apart as the wheels are shattering.
Fortunately this is an outer covering to a hard inner wheel so I can still roll the bag. I’ll get it fixed later.
LAX is an insane beehive of people, but the quality is the dining establishments has improved immensely. We had fish tacos for dinner and are now prepared to be crammed into an aluminum tube to hurtle across the country. Oh joy.
Another adventure
On board a mostly empty Delta flight to LA, there to meet with brother David and head off to the wilds of Batesville Arkansas.
He’s making a documentary about domestic violence and we’re going to one of the very few shelters for abused men. Yes, men. They exist, and in larger numbers than you think. I’m going along to tote that barge and lift that bale helping out.
If there’s time, we’ll check out Graceland, too. We fly in and out of Memphis to get to Arkansas.
This looks like an interesting weekend. Stay tuned.
Where art grows
Gail and I went off today on an excursion to the home and studio of Leslie Safarik, a ceramic artist who lives in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood off Fruitvale Avenue in Oakland.
It’s just another house from the street, but walking into the front door is walking into an explosion of her craft and others, filling the walls, floors and shelves wherever you look.
Leslie was born in the Bay Area, lived in Europe and South America, came back to go to college at California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA, they dropped the “crafts”) and has for over 35 years made a career of being an artist–she has never held another job.
Leslie Safarik
You’d expect someone whose life work centered around form and color to have some interesting choices in clothing, and you’d be right.
In the back of the house, in what was once a 1 car garage, is her studio. Tidier than most, well equipped to make the relatively large pieces she favors, it’s a professional workspace.
The large collection of glazes necessary to produce her colorful work.
The rest of the backyard is garden and outdoor installation. Artists gotta make art, and it’s easy to get a backlog. I really like how they are all placed, not just stacked up.
We didn’t go with the intention of purchasing anything, this was purely a social visit. Still, something caught my eye. Never having been much of a dog fancier, I was surprised to find myself drawn to this piece. Gail and I think it will work perfectly sitting quietly beside the fireplace in the den–every fireplace needs a dog, don’t you think?
My new pet.
Blow the roof off
Twilight is the time to be here. Notice the partially open roof.
There’s a new place in town, right at the corner of North Main and Mount Diablo. We’ve talked about the Spanish place Teleferico on the second floor, and last night Gail and I went with BJ and Larry to Rooftop, the new hip joint on the third level.
Rooftop is beautiful, with a retractable roof so you can enjoy the beautiful warm evenings while they last. Lots of windows, umbrella shaded tables on the balcony, gorgeous diffused lights on the tables, Rooftop is one of the nicest looking restaurants I’ve ever been in.
The bad news is that it is LOUD. Real loud. Jet engine in your ear loud. Rap concert loud. Brick walls, concrete floors, metal chairs custom by https://naimormetalfabrication.com/, big sound system, my God I’m going deaf loud. We were the oldest people there, and I don’t think we are the target demographic.
Let’s talk about the food. Larry and I had been at a lecture; when we got there BJ and Gail had ordered appetizers.
Castelvetrano olives spiced with hot peppers.
Smoked trout rillette
The olives were excellent and the trout rillette (a dip made with trout, creme fraiche and dill) was wonderful. As usual, the accompanying “crostini” was just yesterday’s bread toasted until it was hard and tasteless. Ritz crackers would have been much better, but the dip was first rate.
The wedge salad sounded good:
The menu lists a blue cheese vinaigrette, but that thick creamy stuff sure isn’t it. Maybe not bad, but decidedly not what’s on the menu.
I chose the ahi tuna tartare as an entree, although it is considered a first course. The portion was quite sufficient, and the presentation delightful.
Tuna tartare and sesame rice crackers
Gail had the lamb meatballs, which is really an appetizer but the portions here are plentiful:
Just as an artist chooses a palette of complementary colors before beginning a painting, a chef decides on a flavor profile for the restaurant, so that the dishes will fit together and the overall menu will flow smoothly. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the operating principle of the Rooftop flavor profile is ‘bland’.
Tuna tartare normally has a zing or a kick. but mine didn’t. It purportedly has ginger and spicy sambal, but their flavor does not shine through. Gail’s meatballs were good, but not great. Larry had a lamb chop that also fit in with the ‘bland’ genre. There isn’t anything wrong with the food, it just needs more punch.
We had a couple of the side dishes, and enjoyed them both.
Crispy smashed potatoes
I never pass up the fried brussels sprouts.
Seriously good sprouts
The portions are very good, and the prices are more than reasonable. Service was pretty good, too.
Overall, I think I like Rooftop, but it’s just too damn loud for me. I don’t like having to shout to be heard. The facility is simply beautiful, the food is decent if a bit on the dull side, prices and portions are quite favorable. If they do something about the noise level Rooftop will be a winner.
Totally Unauthorized 