A Surprise Thanksgiving
No plans Thursday. Gail and I intended to spend the entire day in our robes, playing bridge online, taking naps and generally puttering. Fate intervened when Harry Siter called up and asked if we wanted to join him at Rob and Dave’s house. Then, of course, he had to call Rob and Dave to see if it was alright, but fortunately there was room., so we headed off to Vallejo.
First, though, I had to think of something to bring. Harry told us he had a large white truffle to make hors d’oeuvres with, and I could hardly show up with a Sara Lee cake or a dozen Krispy Kremes. Something elegant was required, and there wasn’t much time to be creative. I got a bright idea–devilled eggs topped with caviar. Little tiny eggs on top of big ones. Off to the store to pick up the fixings:
Fish eggs by any name.
I cooked the eggs at home, peeled and cut them and made the stuffing, then took all the different parts to assemble when we got there. I’ve never found a way to transport the eggs without making a mess otherwise.
Upscale snack food
It was a good try, but Harry topped me with his truffles on popovers, and then topped that with caviar of his own.
Even more upscale snackitude. The little brown sliver is white truffle.
The package the truffle came in was pretty stunning all by itself:
Yep, four grand a pound for fungus. Notice that they bought 0.04 pounds.
Robin proved you can be creative without breaking the bank–daikon radish kim chi, asparagus and potato chips:
A little fall foliage in the background to set the scene.
We snacked, some drank, there was dancing and carrying on:
Celebrating the day.
Eventually, of course, Thanksgiving has to come down to eating. The turkey was presented:
Sticking with the classics here.
Handsome Harry took up position to be Father and carve the meal:
What is a holiday meal with a catastrophe? We were ready, the turkey wasn’t. The oven had failed in its sworn duty, and the bird wasn’t cooked sufficiently, so back it went. Since we’re all very cool California people, we just carried on with a vegetarian meal–sort of.
Exceptionally good yams, with spinach and bacon.
There was enough thick cut bacon in the yams to satisfy any carnivore. They were fantastic.
The modern version of cranberry sauce.
There was something they called cranberry sauce, but it wasn’t cylindrical and clear, with ribbing showing on the sides, so I don’t really recognize it. Apparently it was fresh cranberries and oranges, and everyone liked it even though it wasn’t Ocean Spray.
So we ate yams and dressing and cranberries and green bean casserole until we were stuffed, then the turkey finally came out of the oven and we ate some meat. Maybe a lot of meat.
After that we had pecan pie. Pumpkin pie. Apple pie. They were all created by different people and it would be rude to not try each of them. I’m never rude.
That’s the story of how a planned day of nothing but online bridge and puttering became a splendid feast with friends, and for that I’m thankful.
Spontaneity is its own reward
Sitting in my office this morning, doing the crossword before Gail and I got ready to go play bridge, and the phone rang. It was Jan Gunn. Her mother is in town, and they invited us to join them on a trip to the Legion of Honor in the city to see the Anders Zorn exhibit and have lunch.
Quickly jettisoning our bridge plans, we put on grown up clothes and went to Orinda to pick them up.
Jan’s mother is some kind of force of nature. She’s 96 years old, plays tennis twice a week, travels internationally every year, has a steel trap mind for finance and is pretty good looking, too.
Hope I look this good in 34 years.
As a young woman, she was selected by the Elgin Watch Company to represent her college, Ohio State, at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, where she was picked up by the John Robert Powers agency to be a model, eventually landing on the cover of Look, Colliers and other magazines of the day.
Tanny (because her baby sisters couldn’t pronounce Frances, and it stuck) lives in Columbus Ohio, where Jack Nicklaus still supports his old school and John Glenn comes jogging past her house. She’s more likely to come out here to visit when the snow falls, but that’s only reasonable.
The courtyard of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I think the glass skylight is an homage to I.M. Pei and the Louvre.
The Legion is another legacy of Alma Spreckles–she bullied the city into giving up the 18th hole of Lincoln Park golf course because it was the perfect site for her museum.
We were there to see the current exhibit, the art of Anders Zorn, a great Swedish painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A self portrait on the left
Zorn was mostly a portrait artist, who worked in watercolor and oil and etching. His talent is huge, as some of the portraits approach photorealism in their veracity.
You can see the impact of the impressionist movement on his work, but I don’t think you could really lump him into that movement.
An oarsman on the Bosphorus.
There is one area of the exhibit devoted to “bathers”, nudes in a stream he painted near his home in Sweden. They are technically superb, but I couldn’t stop wondering to what extent they were socially acceptable pornography in a much more sexually conservative time.
Just before you enter the Zorn exhibit, there is a room full of Matisse paintings on loanovao couk from the Museum of Modern Art, which is currently being expanded. I was especially taken by the brightness of the colors: even though the paintings are over 100 years old, the colors are a rich and bright as if they had been painted yesterday.
On the main floor, there is an interesting sight. They are completely renovating a room, and have created a workshop with glass walls so you can watch the artistic conservation/renovation process right there. Definitely something you won’t get the opportunity to see very often, and fascinating to observe.
Then we went to lunch, but that the topic of another post. This post is a reminder to keep an open mind and be free to drop your plans in a second and go on an adventure with friends, you’ll be glad you did.
A reason to like Christmas
I stopped getting excited about Christmas when I learned the truth about Santa. But there is one thing I really like about the season–the Smuin Ballet Christmas Show. Which we got to see last night.
Now you might rightly wonder why there is a Christmas show the week before Thanksgiving, but then you’d have to explain why the Hallmark stores put out the Christmas goods right after July 4th. Beats the heck out of me.
Nonetheless, there we were, well fed from dinner at Massimo, across the street from the Lesher Center, all snug in our seats for the annual event.
This was, I think, the 7th time we have attended. It’s part of the season ticket package, and it’s wonderful. There are some pieces they do every year, there are some that change in and out over time.
The first act is mostly traditional, with classical music and formal ballet. I’ve always been a big fan of Veni, veni Emmanuel, a quiet piece featuring the women of the company. The piece is choreographed so that the footfalls of the dancers become an important counterpoint to the music.
Last night, Smuin veteran Erin Yarborough danced Ave Maria, which was Gail’s favorite piece of the classic section. We’ve watched her, and spoken to her at the receptions, for years. Erin is a delight.
After intermission comes “Cool Christmas”, the second act. Modern music, dance and costuming, with a couple of pieces originally choreographed by Michael Smuin himself that are absolute staples of the show–especially Santa Baby, which is marvelous.
The real reason I love this show, though, is Bells of Dublin, a solo tap dance presented by Shannon Hurlburt.
Shannon tapping out my favorite. Photo from the Village Voice
Shannon is the most senior of the danseurs. He’s 38, about to become a father for the first time, recovering from a torn achilles tendon, and just the greatest tapper you could ever want to watch. He does this dance every year, in his red outfit with the red and white spectators, and I sit there thrilled. Then for the next piece, Belles of the Blackville Reel, he is joined by 5 other men and the tap festival continues. I could just watch 2 hours of that, but the show goes on and builds to the great last performance, White Christmas.
The Smuin will be in Walnut Creek tonight and Sunday, then moves on to San Francisco, Livermore, Mountain View and Carmel. Go see it, any show that makes a curmudgeon like me look forward to Christmas must be great.
Cornell 24, Columbia 9
Mike Bandler went to Cornell.
Chuck won went to Columbia.
This weekend the two met in a football game, so a bet was born.
Chuck hates to wear the Cornell hat.
You have to pay your bets.
My day with Joe McNally
Joe McNally is one of the the greatest photographers of all time. Twenty six years with the National Geographic, the last staff photographer for LIFE magazine, a busy working pro, willing to shoot weddings, corporate projects, advertising, editorial, anything you can point a camera at, Joe’s your man.
Joe’s specialty is light–his friends say he never met a scene he couldn’t overlight. None of this artsy natural light for Joe, he travels with dozens of cases of lights, umbrellas, gobos, cookies, C-stands and anything else you could possibly imagine to create, modify, harness and generally just muscle light into the shape he wants it. Plus a couple of assistants to move everything into position. It’s an enormous travelling roadshow, a complete studio flying a quarter of a million miles a year.
Today, I had the immense pleasure of attending a class he presented on how to use the smaller lights in the service of better photos.
Everything Joe shot immediately showed up on the two big screens. That’s Joe standing in the middle, with the model onstage
I was hardly alone. These classes are put on by Kelby Training, and they are completely professional and hugely successful. The room was sold out, so there were about 700 of us there to learn from the master.
This is a practical course–Joe spends the day setting up lights and taking photos, making spectacular portraits of audience members on the fly while he lectures. His camera is attached to a computer that instantly downloads his shots, then sends them to two huge screens so you can see in real time what is happening–the good and the bad. If something doesn’t work, you know it, Joe knows it, and he then teaches how to make it better.
A successful shot
There is a break after each hour of class–sort of. Joe loves what he does, and often runs over. Nobody complains. Then during the breaks, he doesn’t escape into some hidden ready room, but rather stays right on stage and talks to the mobs of people who come up to ask questions.
Just talking to people between lessons
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen McNally in operation, and may not be the last. He’s fascinating, having been everywhere and photographed everyone and everything. He’s got photos he took of Nixon, and he shot this week’s Sports Illustrated cover.
The secret of his success, beside tons of talent and an incredible work ethic, is empathy. The key to making a great portrait isn’t in the technical details, anyone can learn that from a book, or Joe’s course. The key is making a connection with the subject, forging an instant emotional bond with someone you’ve just met and may never see again and who may not even speak your language. Joe is so warm and open, so much a man’s man, the kind of guy you want to have a beer with even if you don’t drink beer, he can instantly relate to anyone.
Just relating to people
It must be an interesting life–I read his blog and his tweets, and Joe is in a different city every day, and hits 6 continents every year. Which would be great, but it must be hard to maintain a homelife.
But I’m supposed to be writing about the class. Joe starts with on light, mounted on the camera. Then off the camera. Then two lights. Then three lights, with colored gels. Then big lights, then little lights again. It all moves at breakneck pace, as he covers a lifetime of skills in 6 very full hours, and still manages to answer every question the crowd comes up with, even the stupid questions from people who clearly haven’t been listening and need to prove their ignorance. (I’m not noted for my patience with stupidity)
There is a lunch break, but a software vendor uses that time to demonstrate their product. The people from Kelby are in the front lobby, hawking book and DVDs and membership in their organization. The class only costs $69, which is a steal, but I’ve never gotten out of one without buying something else. Today I bought the software that was demonstrated at lunch.
I always want to improve my photography, and spending a day with the best there is, maybe the best there ever was, can only help. I learned as much about just being a great guy, about being empathetic, about getting along with people as I did about lighting. And that’s surely worth the cost of admission.
A toast to Dana
Dana King has made the transition from TV star to successful artist. Last night was the opening of her first solo show at the Thelma Harris Gallery in Oakland.
Her work is largely figurative sculpture, but there were paintings as well. She spoke for a few minutes to the large crowd jamming the gallery, talking about the meanings of her work:
Dana is every bit as gorgeous as she was in her TV days.
She had one particular sculpture that Gail couldn’t resist–after the show it’s coming home to live with us.
Twenty Years to Life, by Dana King
You read so much about stuck-up, entitled, self-centered celebrities that it’s an incredible pleasure to know someone as open and pleasant and unassuming as Dana. Damn good artist, too.
After the gallery, we trooped to the other end of the block on College Avenue to the new, hot restaurant Toast, for an excellent dinner.
The bar area, with a big sign in case you are confused.
We had a reservation for 8:30, but there were 8 of us and Toast only has one table for 8. And the people who had it weren’t leaving. We grabbed a table in the bar, ordered drinks and waited.
The house was very attentive and concerned. They bought us a round of drinks and kept us informed about their attempts to get things moving. Eventually, I think they bribed the people holding on to our table with more drinks if they would move to the bar and let us eat, which worked, so we went into the other room.
The sign in the other room. You know where you are in this restaurant.
The 8 of us at dinner
The menu is the usual modern California assortment–some appetizers, some small plates, some large plates. All fresh and local, yada yada yada. The decor is modern casual, with interesting stainless steel tables and a row of booths like an old time diner.
We started with three orders of the apple-brandy spiked chicken liver pate on toast. Each order gave us two small rounds of toast topped with an excellent pate, although I don’t think I noticed the apple brandy. At $4 apiece, this is a deal and a great way to start off.
I had the soup:
If Jackson Pollock was a chef.
This was a puree of red lentils, with yogurt, paprika oil and mint. Excellent, and just the thing for a rapidly cooling evening.
Gail chose a small plate–the meatballs.
A very large small plate
These are spicy pork meatballs. For a “small” plate, this was quite a filling dish. The arugula helps lighten the meal as well as improve the presentation.
Not being a small plate kind of guy, I had the large plate of scallops:
Scallops, beans, cauliflower and wild nettle pesto.
This dish had perfectly seared scallops, roasted cauliflower and cranberry beans, which is all well and good and tasty, but the interesting part was the wild nettle pesto.
1) “Pesto” is a sauce that is pounded in a pestle (the word comes from pestare, to pound) These days you use a food processor, not a mortar and pestle, but it’s the same thing. We tend to think of it only with basil, but you can smoosh up other things to make a pesto, too.
2) They don’t call them stinging nettles for nothing–the tiny spikes on a nettle plant exude formic acid, the stuff stinging ants sting with. But it turn out that boiling them removes the acid and wilts the spike and makes the plant very edible.
The pesto is intensely green, and slightly tangy. An intriguing addition to the dish, if only I knew where to buy nettles. The menu lists these as wild, but I don’t see me out foraging.
Bob had the chicken. Every place serves chicken. This one looked pretty good:
Chicken. Veggies. Dinner.
We didn’t sit down to eat until 9; it was now after 10. Nobody wanted dessert. The staff were cleaning the joint up. It was time to go.
The bill for 8 of us, including tip, was $400, fifty clams apiece. A very reasonable price for a very good dinner.
Toast is pretty hot these days, you’ll want to make a reservation on opentable. Get there early, walk down to the north end of the block, go up the stair and check out the Thelma Harris Gallery. Nothing like art and food to make a perfect evening.
The new tunnel is open!
The fourth bore of the Caldecott tunnel is open. I drove through last night, and here’s the video:
Our new favorite
When the son in law is managing your store, you get to have “staff meetings” fairly regularly at nice restaurants. We met tonight at Farmshop, in Larkspur Landing. There’s a new kid in town, and we have a new favorite place to dine.
Farmshop originated in Santa Monica, and this is their second iteration. Open just 6 months, the place is polished and smooth, running like it has been here for years.
What we have here is classic California food–everything fresh, everything local, modern food pairings and unusual ingredients. The menu changes daily with the availability of the freshest and best. The service is expert–we recognized our waiter tonight from his former job at the Buckeye Roadhouse. Farmshop has clearly found and poached the best waitstaff in the area.
The facility is in Larkspur Landing, a collection of stores just up the street from San Quentin. The sign is small and plain–we drove entirely around the complex without finding it, until daughter Kate stepped outside and flagged us down. One enters through the bar, which is so sexy it made me wish I drank. The high ceilinged dining room is done in warm woods, but is louder than I like. It’s also very dark–I have fewer photos than usual because it was just too dark.
The large open kitchen. The only thing I could easily photograph.
Here’s my theory of restaurant management: Always try to seat guests at the worst seat in the house first. If you can get them to take it, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. This is the reason I end up rejecting the first table they take me to so often. I thought of this as we had the table right next to the kitchen door tonight, even though the place was mostly empty when we got there. It was full by the time we left, but they had no problems with the worst table.
It must be time to talk about the food. The menu lists three pizzas on top, then a dozen or so smaller plates, then the larger entrees.
The pizzas are cooked in a wood fired oven and looked interesting, but pizza store owners rarely order pizza.
The small plates look like you would order them for yourself, but they are served for the entire table. We started with the avocado hummus, which is topped with pomegranate seeds. The accompanying sesame crackers were very thick and hard to break, but the hummus was excellent.
I ordered the stracciatella, a fresh cheese which was incredibly good when topped with roasted stone fruit and served with heavily buttered griddled bread. Next time I may just have 3 orders of this and nothing else.
The caesar salad Gail and Brad planned to share comes in a huge bowl, and is prepared with mixed greens rather than the traditional stalky romaine. The dressing, though, is quite classic with a good taste of anchovy. This dish could easily be shared with 3 or 4 diners.
Gail had the sand dabs. I never order them because I think they are too hit and miss–I’ve seen more sand dabs sent back than any other specific dish, yet I know that they can be wonderful. Tonight, they were wonderful.
Brad and I had the salmon, which was cooked in a way we have not seen. The fish was placed on the grill and cooked until there was a good, dark sear, but not turned. So one side was seared and caramelized, while the other side was essentially raw. This might be a dish for the adventurous, but that works for me.
Seared salmon and smashed beets
The salmon was accompanied by couscous and smashed beets–which isn’t a cute way to indicate mashed beets, but roasted beets that are just smashed, once. I’m not sure what this accomplishes, but they were better than the canned beets mother used to try to get me choke down.
Gail had a side of the smashed potatoes, too. Again, smashed, not mashed. I have no idea what they did to these, but they were unlike any spuds I’ve ever seen. Crispy, crunchy, spicy and basically “Oh my God” good.
Kate had the swordfish, and there were no leftovers. I guess that says it all.
So we had excellent food with first rate service. A lovely location (if dark), a very sexy bar area, a dessert menu without ice cream (not that any of us had room for dessert, but you gotta at least look, don’t you?) I only have good things to say about Farmshop. We’ll be going back soon, this place is too good to miss.
The $1000 cake
Tonight was the Ruth Bancroft Garden annual gala (pronounced gah-la by some, gay-la by others. Take your pick). They told me it was “casual chic”, which I thought meant a silk shirt, patterned silk suspenders and my red shoes. Most of the other men were in coats and ties, which were neither casual nor chic.
The evening started with the usual silent auction, where you have the chance to spend too much on something you don’t need and then feel good about it. We bought five tickets to an A’s game next year. Why five? I have no idea–that’s what the package was. We bought two tickets to Berkeley Rep for only about 50% more than the box office charges. One justifies this insanity because “it’s for a good cause”.
Closing the silent auction, we trooped into the dining room for the traditional meal of a boring salad, tasteless chicken and some kind of cheesecake dessert. The wine flows freely at these affairs, in the hopes that a well liquored-up crowd will spend more freely. Those of us who abjure the grape are relative pariahs–there’s no profit to be had in providing me with iced tea or Diet Coke. Garden president Mike Rippey managed to rustle up an iced tea for me, then had to deliver it because the guys at the bar couldn’t be bothered. There are 10 people at each table, and we enjoyed the company more than the food.
Finished with the meal, the real business of the evening began–the live auction. Here’s where the organization hopes to raise some serious money. The first items listed were a new wrinkle in the extraction of funds from the sheep, victims, fine and wise guests. There were two incredibly marvelous cakes–one shaped like a coyote, one an exact replica of a succulent garden in a dish (remember that the Ruth Bancroft Garden is a world class succulent repository). These are auctioned off for an insane amount of the elusive spondulicks (yes, I love W.C. Fields) to people looking to make a donation while showing off how much money they can waste. Although the cakes are indeed works of art, and we had just had dinner and dessert, the purchasers grandly cut the cakes and share them with others.
The first cake went for a mere $100, but the second one got into a bidding war and was finally sold for $1000. The purchaser was kind enough to send a slice my way.
A decent size slice–maybe $75 worth of chocolate cake.
The cake was tasty, but you probably wouldn’t spend a grand on it.
Then some more interesting things were auctioned off. A week in a condo in Palm Desert went for $3000. A long weekend in Napa with some golf fetched $1200. Two great seats for the last Niner game at Candlestick went for the bargain price of $3000. Money was raised, egos were burnished, everybody was happy.
We escaped just before the last auction “item”, which is no item at all they just try to get you to raise your bidding paddle and donate to the Garden. They start with $10,000 (not too many takers), then work their way down to $100, when almost everyone is shamed into pungling up a C-note. Good thing we got out when we did.
Gail was on the board for a few years, then her term expired, and they have just asked her to return for another term. We like the Garden, and the friends we have made, so she’s happy to oblige. I guess you’ll get to read about another overpriced pastry this time next year.
The King of Burgers
Definitely not Burger King. In and Out has dethroned BK, by an enormous margin.
Gail had an itch for a burger this afternoon, so we went to the In and Out in Concord, in front of Toys R Us. As is always the case, the joint was mobbed.
The line for the drive through was all the way out of their parking lot, even though they have a person with an iPad walking to each car to place the orders and speed the process. I don’t understand the idea of waiting in your car 25 minutes to get your food, and then not having a decent place to eat, so we went inside. I think it’s a bit faster even if you want to take the food home.
We had to wait just to get into the building because there were so many people leaving, and then the line for the counter reached the door anyway.
You have considerable options for a place that just sells fried meat in a bun, and the staff of enthusiastic teenagers is more willing than able to get your order correct. Say it slow, go over the order with them, look at your receipt. It took more than one try to get my order straight.
Once you have ordered, you now have time to kill. We had ticket number 50. They were calling ticket number 20. This is the crowd waiting to get their food:
This seething mass of hungry humanity was waiting to get the food they had ordered.
One of the marketing gimmicks of In and Out is their “secret” menu, which is no secret at all, it’s posted on their web page. Gail wanted me to order her burger “animal style”, and got this:
Meat cooked in mustard and topped with grilled onions. The extra pickles are Gail’s choice.
I, being the boring guy I am, had everything standard:
A very decent burger.
We were both careful to order our meat medium rare–you’ll get it well done if you don’t ask.
Gail wanted jalapeños. They gave us this:
Some kind of peppers that will still be good in a month. Or two.
In and Out is famous for freshness and quality. The fries are made from whole potatoes peeled and cut right in the store. You can have one patty, or two, or three, or more, on your burger–I was a two patty man in my youth, just one for me now.
The shakes are real milk and real ice cream. There is a reason McDonalds calls theirs “cool shakes”–not enough milk in one to be a milk shake.
This is a great place if you love kids, since there were a zillion of them running around being cute. The crowd definitely skews young family.
There is nothing gourmet or “fine dining” to be found here, but it’s a great burger with excellent service. The price is fair and the place is clean and fun to eat in. Not so good if you are in a hurry, but that’s only because it’s so popular. Sort of like the old Yogi Berra joke about a new restaurant in town–nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.
Totally Unauthorized 