This was more fun when I was 11
Not Hawaii in general, just one small part of the trip.
Brad is a golfer, and wanted to try the course here which is on a list as one of the top 100 in the world. So today he set off to play the Makai Golf course, and Gail went with him to drive the cart and see what trouble she could cause.
Brad and his chauffeur (chauffeuse?)
I went with the rest of the gang to beach to go snorkeling, at the far end of the island at Tunnels Beach.
Getting to Tunnels there is only one road, two lanes, which has a pair of one lane bridges.In California, these would have lights and signals and perhaps automatic barriers to control the traffic. Hawaii just puts up these signs explaining how to take turns like adults:
The right way to keep things orderly.
As the road narrows and peters out, you notice a swarm of cars parked, people walking, tents set up on the side of the road: you must have arrived at Tunnels Beach. There is a huge reef here which makes the snorkeling fantastic.
Fantastic, that is, if you are young, limber and in good shape. I’m none of those things, and just had a miserable time trying to get into the water in swim fins. Then trying to get out of the water in swim fins. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t sit down. It was all work and no play. I should stick to snorkeling from a boat. Or just sitting on the boat having a cold drink,not snorkeling, and looking at the sky.
Here’s the sky. Why didn’t I just enjoy it without trying to fight the entire Pacific Ocean?
Tunnels Beach, Kauai.
There were pretty birds here; there are birds everywhere on this island. A constant cacophony arises from all the wild chickens (no natural predators). I saw this little one, and another mostly identical one with a brown head, working together, playing, cooing, pulling up strings and twigs to make a nest.
Just more of the glorious wildlife of Kauai
Pulling myself from the pounding surf and incoming tide, it was time to leave. Brad and Gail were caught in a hellacious rainstorm, and had decided to call it a day after 9 holes. The rain was so hard that the course offered him a rain check for the other 9, so he’ll be back there tomorrow or Sunday.
It’s back to the hotel to write and nap and look forward to dinner. Life is good.
Off to Breakfast
Breakfast is included here, so Gail and I wandered up to give it a try. This hotel is built on the side of a cliff–the lobby is on the 9th floor and everything goes down from there. We’re on the seventh floor, the pool is on the first.
The tables are all outside, the better to enjoy the balmy tropical breezes. Even in the rain it is pleasant to sit (under the cover of the upper floors) and enjoy the weather.
The morning buffet is a mostly standard hotel offering. The scrambled eggs with goat cheese and broccoli were excellent and different, the rosemary potatoes were absolutely first rate. The St. Regis has even learned how to keep eggs benedict warm without being dried out in a chafing dish.
Then I saw these signs below the trays of breakfast meats:
Being gluten free is a pretentious fad in most cases–there are a tiny number of people who have celiac disease and genuinely must avoid gluten, the rest are just trying to look cool or don’t understand the reality of the situation. I think anyone who can’t figure out that BACON has no gluten should probably enjoy a BLT and go back to school and learn what gluten is.
The high point of the meal for me was dessert. You don’t often get dessert with breakfast, so I was a happy camper to see the white chocolate bread pudding. You can top your own with chocolate, caramel, pineapple, and whipped cream. Every meal should have dessert.
Chocolate on the left, caramel on the right. Joy everywhere.
Kauai is famous for its wild chickens, but there are many types of bird here and none of them seem to be afraid of people. I saw this on sitting on the water pitchers. I have no idea of what kind of bird it is, but maybe my cousin Nick will help us out.
We’re off on adventures today, so a good breakfast is important. Stay tuned.
Postcards from the Islands
A good hotel concierge is worth her weight in gold. Not only does she know all the restaurants in the area, and can find one that fits yours tastes, but she has oodles of pull and can get a table for 7 on short notice where you and I would never have a chance. Jody, here at the St. Regis, did a magnificent job for us last night, directing us to Postcards Cafe, a tiny local restaurant that was exactly what we wanted.
The perfect time of night
Postcards is quite small, in what was probably once a barely a cottage. The decor is Hawaiian homey, the staff don’t wear uniforms, there are napkins but not tablecloths. Most everything on this island is casual; Postcards fits right in.
The menu is local and healthy–there is no meat at all, just seafood and veggies. We started with a pu-pu platter, a variety of appetizers including taro fritters, seared ahi, crab cakes and “seafood rockets”, little cones filled with oceanic goodness.
The Postcards Platter
I had the catch of the day–mong chong. No, I’ve never heard of it before either. But it’s just a mild white fish, served grilled with macadamia butter, pesto rice, ginger/carrot puree and broccolini. I don’t understand broccolini. There is already a perfectly good vegetable in broccoli, why do chi-chi restaurants insist on serving the second rate cousin? On the other than, the ginger/carrot puree was marvelous, both as a vegetable and as a sauce/dressing for the fish.
Grilled Mong Chong with vegetables both great and second rate.
Chloe and Brien shared the sesame crusted Ahi, which is served in a bowl with a Thai curry. It looked good, it tasted good and there were no leftovers.
Sesame crusted ahi in Thai curry
Service was fine, exactly what you would expect in a casual place on the north shore of Kauai. The restaurant loses points for only having Stevia, not Splenda, for my iced tea, but that’s about the worst thing I can say. Everything costs more on an island, everything costs more in a tourist area. Combine the two and expect to pay somewhat more than you would like, but that’s life in Paradise.
Aloha Kauai
We’re off to Kauai for a few days for the holiday weekend.
That means getting up far too early because the only non-stop from Oakland to Lihue, Kauai is at 7:20 am. When the alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m. it isn’t any fun, but how can you complain when you’re going to Hawaii?
Alaska Airlines doles out Microsoft tablets with lots of movies, TV shows, music and games to keep you entertained on the 5 1/2 hour flight. I learned something today– I don’t like the Microsoft tablet. My iPad has me spoiled. The Samsung tables that American Air gives out are vastly better, faster, and easier to navigate than these Microsoft kludges.
Once we got here it was time to pick up the car. I usually rent from Thrifty, because I filled out the paperwork to be a “Blue Chip” member. This doesn’t cost anything and gets me through the process very quickly. Except today, when the shuttle dropped us off and there were 40 people in line, and no sign anywhere for the Blue Chip priority. 15 minutes of waiting later I worked out that the tiny, unmarked area on the side was for Blue Chip members, and then it was a matter of seconds until I had my car.
A car I couldn’t get into because it was wedged in between two other vehicles with no possible way to get in. I had to find a “lot boy” (who was older than I am) to crawl into the car from the wrong side and pull it out of the parking slot. Thrifty gets no points for customer service today.
Driving anywhere on this island is beautiful, and we enjoyed motoring slowly to the far north of the island and our hotel in Princeville. The room wasn’t ready, because it wasn’t even noon, so we went in search of the rest of the family and settled in for lunch at the Hanalei Bay resort where they are staying.
If this was a painting I wouldn’t believe it.
The light around here is great, especially on a cloudy day. You don’t have to be much a photographer when you look across the table and see this:
Brad the son in law
I don’t believe it’s possible to take a bad picture of Kate.
Lunch was fun with Kate, Brad, Chloe, Brien and Demi. The food at the Hanalei is excellent, the kitchen was absurdly slow. So slow that the house gave us 20% off the entire bill because of how long it took to get fed.
These are little servings of ahi poke, on fried nori chips. Itsy bitsy works of art on a plate, and they tasted as good as they looked.
After lunch it was back to our hotel, where the room was finally ready, and a nice nap until it was time to eat again. This could be a long, difficult weekend.
Highs and Lows at the Fairmont
Sunday we went to the Bay Area Cabaret at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel. It was the last show of this season, and featured the sisters Liz Callaway and Ann Hampton Callaway, women who have both made careers out of singing and songwriting.
Liz Callaway and Ann Hampton Callaway
Musical director Alex Rybeck plays the piano and directs the drummer and bass player. The ladies perform for almost 2 hours without intermission, then go out to sell CD’s, sign autographs and pose for selfies with the well dressed, adult crowd.
The next season of Bay Area Cabaret begins in mid September, and we’re certainly going to get season tickets. We’ve enjoyed every show we’ve seen.
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After the show, we went for dinner to the Laurel Court, which turns out to the be main lobby bar of the Fairmont. The buffet dinner was advertised at the last two Cabaret shows, so we thought we’d give it a try.
Dinner is $45, but they promised free parking in the hotel garage, which is ferociously expensive—it costs us $58 to bail the car out after a show and a bite to eat, so it was like they were paying us $13 to eat there.
The bad new is that will have to pay us more than that to return.
We went to eat right after the show, as did a considerable number of other members of the audience. Entering the mostly empty room, we were quickly show to our table, the forgotten. Eventually I tackled a passing waiter, who seemed to be very busy assembling the wine/cocktail card. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to order drinks and then made our way to the buffet.
The first thing we discovered was a small salad bar, of less interest than you can find at your local Sizzler. A bowl of lettuce, a bowl of fancy greens, some onions, carrots, artichoke hearts and 6 types of salad dressing. The most interesting part was two kinds of smoked salmon–hot smoked and cold smoked. Turns out I like the hot smoked better, so at least I learned something. Still, when you realize the salad bar at your $45 buffet is no match for the salad bar at the Peddler in Gatlinburg, you start to have some doubts about the direction your dinner is taking.
Salads finished, we went back for the entreé. Here’s the first thing I saw:
Not a lot of attention to detail
And how was the dish?
Four types of cauliflower
There were some yams, which I liked. A “truffled risotto” which had too many mushrooms for me to try, but Gail was completely unmoved by. The meat was short ribs, which I liked (after I scraped the mushrooms off) but Gail thought was tough. There was also a cioppino, but I didn’t try it.
The desserts were the highlight of the meal, not only good to eat but works of art.
Orange cakes
Brilliantly decorated tarts
How much do you tip at a buffet? Even an upscale buffet? The service was poor at best, not that there was much for the staff to do. We felt we had to tackle the waiter to get a drink order placed, and the fight to get a check. We bought the show tickets, so Micky paid the dinner bill. I know he’s a generous man, but it doesn’t seem to me that there was much call to leave more than a token gratuity.
Reclaiming the car, the garage tried to charge $25, even though it was clear that parking was included with the dinner and show. We got that issue squared away, but it was another indication that what was once one of the finest hotels in the nation is now just another hospitality factory without soul.
Playing with the camera
It’s no secret that I like taking photos. Photography has been a big part of my life ever since my cousin Nick showed me how to use a camera and develop my own film when I was 12. One of the best things about this blog is that I finally have a place to show my pictures.
Although I take plenty of food and travel shots, what really interests me is people. I’d like to be much better at portraiture. That takes two things: a modicum of equipment and lots of practice. I bought some lights, hung a backdrop and created a tiny studio in my garage, now for the practice part.
I asked my friend Cass to come over and let me play around with different lighting setups and camera angles. Maybe we’d get something worthwhile out of the experience, maybe it would just be practice.
This one isn’t very serious or formal, but the expression is interesting and the lighting is pretty good.
Black and white makes it look serious, and I like the quiet sense of this.
Sometimes you can do more with less light than you can with more. I just keep moving the lights around and trying new ideas.
When TIME magazine needs a photo of Cass, I think they can use this. The day was a success.
And this is my favorite, although Cass thinks the expression is off. I think she looks slightly bemused, which is the way most women look at me.
So the day was a success, but it’s just the first step on a long road. I need more models. Do you want a portrait? Do you have 30 minutes to spare? Leave a comment, call me, see me at the club. I’ll try to make you something you can be proud of.
80 is the new 77
Our friend Irwin “Gish” (grade school nickname that stuck) Lichtblau had a pretty cool birthday party last Sunday. In truth I was surprised to know he was turning 80, Gish is awfully youthful, and always fun to be around.
The birthday boy
The party was in the capacious back yard–Gish seems to own a double lot, with addresses on two streets. The important people were told where the back entrance was, and had our cars taken by a valet. The peasants parked on the main street. Okay, I made that part up. The valet was only for me.
Enjoying the buffet beside the pool.
You can’t have a proper yard without some art:
There were many bridge players there, as you would expect:
Gail
There was family of course. Eldest son David came in from New York, and offered a toast to his dad:
The grandsons played Happy Birthday
Here’s a non-musical grandson, Adam
A birthday party requires a cake. Somewhere in Lafayette there is an incredible bakery, because this was one of the finest cakes I’ve ever enjoyed. And I know cake. I think you know that I know cake.
The grandsons all swore that they didn’t taste the frosting.
Some people enjoyed the cake more than the rest;
It was a beautiful afternoon and a delightful party for a good friend. Happy Birthday Gish.
Dancing the last dance
For quite a few years, we’ve enjoyed the day trips put on by the Art Guild of the Oakland Museum of California. A small cadre of dedicated volunteers does a brilliant job of finding artists and collectors who would welcome a busload of art lovers behind the scenes, and 40 or so grey heads have an excellent and informative day’s outing.
Now, for reasons inexplicable, the Museum has chosen to dissolve the Art Guild; there will be no more day trips.
The trips are far from free, and the museum makes a tidy sum with little overhead. You must be a member of the museum to be a member of the art guild, so there is more income generated. They’ll be losing many of those members, including us, with the death of the Guild and the day trips.
This, then, is a report on the last of the day trips. There might be one more scheduled, I’m not sure. The Art Guild is no more.
The group got on the bus at the Museum and drove just a few minutes to the home and studio of artist Lynda Dann. We started out in her fabulous garden, which was decorated for the occasion with her paintings.
Lynda in her garden
The house is full of her art, and includes her studio:
Rows and rows of acrylic paints
Lynda is always looking for strange and rare object to include in her art:
Her collection of esoterica to paint
A particularly nice painting gracing the fence outside. It seems to blend perfectly with the garden.
From Lynda’s house our steady bus driver, Pete, took us to the Orinda estate of Sharon Simpson. Her late husband, Barclay Simpson was the founder of Simpson Strong Tie, inventing a brace, or gusset, that revolutionized the building trades. The Simpsons have been tremendous supporters of the arts, and their home is a living museum.
The formal garden around the house are as spectacular as the inside, and that’s where we started. The conditions of our art tours prohibit photographs inside collector’s homes, so I have lots of exterior shots.
The red is the reflection of a lady’s coat.
I don’t know what these flowers are, but I like them.
Looking down from the house, you can just see the head of David. That’s no accident
A full size David created out of Simpson products. It sits in a tiny alcove all by itself.
A very small Bufano sculpture. The nose is chipped from when it fell over.
Blue dog, with pups. By Marc Chatterly
Sometimes flowers just catch my eye.
Finally we finished with the magnificent formal and informal gardens, and worked our way to the front doors–which are also works of art.
Sculptured front doors by Stan Dann, Lynda Dann’s father.
The house is everything you might think it would be, and we consider ourselves fortunate to have had the opportunity to see it. The greatest benefit of the Art Guild has been the access to private homes and collections that we would never get to see otherwise.
After lunch at the Orinda Country Club, we motored to the last stop of the day–the new Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BMPFA). The old building was seismically unsafe, the University had a printing plant they weren’t using, the Simpsons had a bunch of money to donate to get things started, and Voila! you have a state of the art museum.
Even the security staff are works of art.
The opening exhibition, called Architecture of Life, “explores architecture as a metaphor of life”. I guess that makes sense, but the truth is that while I love the new facility, the current exhibit didn’t move me much. There were a few pieces that I appreciated:
Wire sculptures crocheted by Ruth Azawa
I liked the way this piece used the space of the museum to define different urban and suburban areas.
Citys
Cityscape with house and gray energy, by Chris Johanson
This is a temporary mural in the main entryway. It’s huge, perhaps 20×50, and all created onsite:
There is a room of Asian art, with this wonderful Buddha:
There is a small, dark room where only 6 people are permitted at a time. It contains plexiglass boxes into which the artist placed two different types of spiders and then preserved the varied webs they spun. It may or may not mean anything, but it’s interesting to look at in any case.
Gail and I have noticed that museums almost always have very good cafes. Although we didn’t eat there, I liked the look of the restaurant on the second floor, projecting out over the sidewalk on the Center Street side of the building. I was particularly taken with the table which includes a planter box:
Large communal table at the museum cafe.
And that was the end of the day, the end of the tour, the end of the Guild, the end of our opportunity to see inside studios and private collections. I’ll miss our days with Ruth, Candy, Arline, Jeanne and all the other tour leaders who put these trips together. I’ll miss the places we got to see that we’ll never be able to see again. I’ll even miss Pete, the bus driver.
Chinese food done right
I went to China in 1989, which seems like yesterday but time keeps flying. One of the people on the tour asked our guide where the best Chinese food was, and we got the answer “San Francisco”. I think that may still be true.
Last night we went to dinner at East Ocean, in Alameda, and had a meal as good as anything I ever had in Asia.
East Ocean is an enormous establishment on Webster street. There is a vast sea of tables, from tiny 2-tops to classic round banquet tables for 8, 10 and 12 topped with lazy susans to facilitate sharing the meal family style. All of the tables have white tablecloths and napkins, western silverware is available on request, the waitstaff are dressed formally. East Ocean is a class joint, and obviously host to many parties and celebrations.
We were there for dinner, but they are apparently justly famous for excellent Dim Sum at lunch. That’s where they bring cart through the dining room loaded with a huge variety of dishes and you just pick what you want. At the end of the meal they count the plates and figure your bill. It’s a fun experience and you get a wide choice of dishes to try.
Back to dinner. We began with an appetizer of lettuce cups, which are sort of the Chinese version of the chicken taco with a lettuce leaf filling in for the tortilla. Tiny bits of chicken, green onion, garlic and other non-descript good things are all stir-fried together, then served in a leaf that you roll up as best you can and try not to make too big a mess.
Lettuce Cup
There are items that you just don’t ever see on a menu in an American restaurant. These are pea sprouts, cooked in garlic.
Garlic pea sprouts
The taste is pretty much like spinach, but milder. They are much more tender than today’s vegetable of high fashion, kale. Pea sprouts make a very interesting change from more common veggies.
My favorite dish of the evening was the sirloin steak cubes with Chinese greens:
steak cubes
This dish was very sweet, with just a hint of tang from the green onions. The cubes of steak were quite tender and moist, not overcooked at all. I don’t eat a lot of beef these days, and this was a rare treat.
There was a plate of barbecue pork chow fun, which is noodles and slices of meat. You can order this dish “wet” or “dry”, depending on how much sauce you like. The dry version still had plenty, I think the wet version would be too soupy.
Two abalone dishes were a high spot on the menu; abalone and Chinese greens both with and without sea cucumber. We took an order (without the sea cucumber, which just sounds yucky) home to have for dinner tonight, and it was fabulous. The dark brown gravy makes it look unlike any abalone you’ve ever seen, but the taste is wonderful and it reheated without getting tough. Now that there is a consistent supply of farmed abalone from Santa Cruz it is becoming more common to see it on menus, but it remains quite expensive.
East Ocean is a very good Chinese restaurant whether you have a party of 2 or 12. Service is quick, the food is very good and the prices (except for abalone) are pretty reasonable. I think we have to go back to try the dim sum, too.
Super Duper Upscale Mexican Food
Deftly combining Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo, Kate invited us to lunch in the City at Cala, a place on Fell Street that Michael Bauer thought might just be the best Mexican restaurant in the country. The chef/ower owns two famous restaurants in Mexico City and obviously knows what she is doing.
While it was indeed an excellent meal, the restaurant we went to is clearly not the one he tried. In the first place, his review says that there are no meat dishes on the menu, and that has completely changed. Not that I have an objection to carnitas. I’m just noticing major changes since he visited.
The facility is lovely–a converted industrial space, painted white and lit with huge skylights. Heavy wooden chairs, thick linen that helps hold down the noise, staff in solid black.
The menu is written with the Mexican names of the dishes but no explanations, so your waiter has to describe virtually everything before you can make an intelligent choice.
The table is graced with pickled cauliflower and carrots, green habañero salsa and pickled onions. The onions are HOT. I know that now.
The signature dish is their “Santa Cruz abalone and oyster aguachile with sea beans”. It is a mark of how interesting the other dishes are that Gail managed to pass this one up–she has been known to want to drive to Pescadero to get abalone for dinner.
Instead, Gail chose the carnitas, which is served with black beans and tortillas, becoming essentially a make your own taco meal.
Tacos the hard way
Gail shared with Demi, who ordered the ‘Chilaquiles verdes with chicken and a fried egg’ tortillas fried in chile verde. We first had this dish when staying with friends in Mexico City and Gail has been spoiled ever since.
What they eat for breakfast in Mexico City
Kate and I had the same dish–the Torta. I don’t understand the concept here at all. It was an excellent pork sandwich, partially submerged in a red sauce, and there is no way to easily and neatly eat it.
Kate, the polite one, used a knife and fork, which is slow but tidy. I went the other route, tucking a napkin into my shirt, adding another on my lap, using a third to wipe my hands. I don’t have to pay the linen bill.
Torta ahogada with carnitas and avocado
It was an excellent sandwich, but too messy and too large. I liked the not-overcooked meat, the avocado, the pickled onions and even the sauce it was drowning in. I didn’t like the difficulty or the mess.
After all that food, we didn’t really need dessert until we found out that “Capirotada with strawberries” was bread pudding. Really, this trend to unintelligible menus has to stop. The bread pudding was New Orleans good, eggy and smooth.
I couldn’t keep the troops away before I got a photo.
Cala has a full bar. What they don’t have is any semblance of normal drink service. No iced tea. No diet Coke. No sweeteners except lump brown sugar. The water is served at room temperature, in tiny useless glasses. This is supposed to be hip, slick and cool, but it fails to impress me at all.
Prices are reasonable for San Francisco. There is no tipping, but 20% is added to the bill automatically.
Cala is a very nice restaurant that I would go back to. I wonder if they’d charge me “cannage” if I brought my own diet Coke?
Totally Unauthorized 