My dinner with Daphne
Gail and I are moderately addicted to Dancing With the Stars, the ABC show that pairs semi-famous “celebrities’ with professional dancers, then has an elimination competition until there is only one duo left standing. The celebs range from the hopelessly inept to the almost professional to the seriously geriatric–last year saw Chloris Leachman, at 83, still dancing.
The youngest contestant in series history is on this time–Zendaya (one name only, although her real last name is Coleman), a 16 year old who stars on a Disney program called Shake It Up!, which you haven’t seen if you aren’t a tween aged girl. She was raised in Oakland, where her parents are school teachers, and showed performing talent when she was only 2 years old. Her younger sister sings backup for her and is looking forward to her own show business career.
Zendaya, almost 6 feet of youthful beauty
In yet another example of the concept of 6 degrees of separation, it turns out that our friend Jeanne Ryan is good friends with Daphne, Zendaya’s grandmother. Monday night, Jeanne invited us, Ray Kaplan and Daphne over for dinner and DWTS watching.
Jeanne, Daphne and Gail. You get an idea where Zendaya gets her height.
Daphne was in Los Angeles two weeks ago for the live taping of the show. She reports that the set is much smaller than it appears on television, and that the crowd is coached in how to boo when they don’t like the judges scores.
Daphne, and our friend Ray Kaplan, intently watching the competition
There are a few really good dancers on this season’s show–Zendaya, country singer Kelly Pickler and Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Jacoby Jones. The really bad dancers have already been sent home–Wynona Judd was awful and comedian D. L. Hughley were mercifully dispatched weeks ago. This week, the loser who was eliminated was comic Andy Dick, who really had no talent for dancing, but was genuinely trying hard, if only in an attempt to resuscitate his career, which he threw away in an orgy of drink and drugs. I find him very appealing, but the man can’t dance.
Zendaya is not only a good dancer, but has the tremendous benefits of youth and vigor. This week she and her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, were the third highest scorers, which will keep them from elimination. The scores the judges assign are only part of it–the home audience is urged to vote by phone or text message for their favorite, and these votes are factored in to decide who wins and who goes home.
I spent the evening trying desperately to get some dirt, any dirt, on the show and the cast. No luck. Daphne assured us that the cast all get along famously, laughing and joking with each other all the livelong day. They treat Zendaya gently because of her age. Zendaya won’t wear the outrageously revealing sexy the older women wear, and her partner has vowed to keep his shirt on, unlike the rest of the male dancers.
Val and Zendaya at the end of their paso doble.
Ray brought a case of heirloom strawberries, which we ladled over ice cream and celebrated another successful week for Daphne’s cherished granddaughter. Turns out that the Disney song is right–It’s a small world after all.
Gather thrilled me not
I’ve been hearing about his super hip hot restaurant in Berkeley called Gather, so Sunday night we went there with Jack and Lisa after the theater.
We were not amused, and by that I mean all of us, not just Queen Victoria.
Okay, Jack may have enjoyed it more than most.
Gather is ultra-chic. Local, sustainable, organic, all the current buzzwords. Mostly vegetarian, occasionally vegan, distinctly gluten free, resolutely foodie. It just isn’t all that great.
The service pretty much sucks. I saw one waitress working our half of the room, and she had to help the bussers clear the tables. Perhaps that’s because they have a guy whose job it is to go around to the table with two quart size milk bottles full of water–one still, one sparkling, and fill the glasses. Or if not fill them, then just put a little bit in them, because it is more ecologically sensitive not to put too much water in the glass. I didn’t get it at all.
Here’s an example of their attention to detail–a direct quote from their webpage:
Executive Chef Sean Baker and our kitchen team carefully source only sustainable ingredients and cook whole animal and vegetable.
“Whole animal and vegetable”? If you can’t write a simple sentence, maybe you should hire someone who can.
We had some decent food, it’s true. I enjoyed “Linda’s Asparagus”, nicely cooked asparagus with sauce gribiche (a fancy variation on mayonnaise) and a cooked duck egg. Jack and Lisa had the Batavia and Little Gems salad, with “fermented vegetables”. I have no idea how to ferment a potato, but it tasted pretty good.
Jack ordered the roasted young chicken, he not only seemed to enjoy it but took half home with him. It was served with injera puree, which turns out to be ground up Ethiopian bread which has no gluten. Yes, you can indeed be too hip.
We also had a couple of pizzas. Not the thick, chewy, filling, wonderful pizzas served at Fat Slice Pizza, but exceedingly thin pizzas with overcooked crusts. Lisa had the pancetta with spring onion, egg and wax peppers. They just break an egg on top of the pie and it cooks along with everything else. This was the better choice.
Gail and I had the tomato pizza, which didn’t actually have any tomatoes on it, but some kind of tomato sauce, olives, capers, cashew puree (another of those ingredients you use just to be different) and chili oil. Too clever by half, this pizza just didn’t make it. We also shared a “Five Dot Ranch Burger” with vella cheese, fries and “tomato condiment [gf]” (which means gluten free) . Most places just say ketchup, not “tomato condiment [gf]. Heinz does not have to worry, this will not be the 58th variety. And the burger was overcooked, on a boring bun. The fries were good.
Undaunted, I ordered dessert.
Ricotta Budino
This is sort of like a lo-cal cheesecake, more “sort-of” than “like”. The burnt honey ice cream tasted cold and sweet, but there was nothing burnt honey-ish about it.
We hunted down the waitress, and asked for the check. Eventually, it came, we paid and left. I was not a big tipper. Prices here are pretty high; you have to pay for all that coolness. You sure aren’t paying for the service.
So here’s the bottom line. We spent too much time and too much money for some pretty good asparagus, a pizza I would never allow out of the kitchen at Fat Slice and an overcooked burger not as good as I can get at Burger King (double whopper with cheese, hold the pickle, that’s my way). But we were exceedingly cool and stylish in the process.
Pasta’s Trattoria
Main Street in Pleasanton is turning into quite a delightful place to enjoy dinner. Many of the restaurants are designed with outdoor seating in the front, making the sidewalks as pleasant as Paris or Italy on a warm Spring evening.
We ate last night at Pasta’s Trattoria, a very pleasant locally owned establishment. It was a bit more crowded and exciting than usual, I should think, because it was Prom Night for the local high school, and the place was full of handsome young men in tuxedos and beautiful young women in ball gowns, all glowing with youth and quivering with excitement. Gail thought it interesting that they were seated at tables of 8, with the girls on one side and the boys on the other.
Pasta’s Trattoria is a large place, nicely decorated in vaguely Italianate fashion. The staff are all in black and white, the boss is walking around doing his job in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s your classic friendly local place.
The menu is enormous. Huge. Gigantic. I don’t mean the choices, I mean the sheet-rock sized, plastic covered carte itself. It’s impossible to hold and unwieldy as heck on a table already cluttered with place settings, water glasses, wine glasses and a candle.
The menu choices are pretty extensive, too. Besides pasta and pizza, there is a goodly selection of meat and fish–and the meat I saw passing by looked awfully good. Great big honking slabs of beef on the plate. I was impressed with the looks of it.
Being the healthy eater I am, though, I didn’t have that. I started out with the Caprese salad.
The presentation is beautiful, it tastes just as good.
A stack of interleaved tomato and mozzarella slices, dressed with balsamic vinaigrette and topped with basil leaves and fresh pesto. No finer way to start a meal.
Ooops. Forgot that we really started the meal with the tempura asparagus, which was also wonderful.
Gail had the Tuscan Chicken soup, which was so good she wished she had ordered a bowl instead of a cup.
My entree was the penne with vodka sauce. I thought this dish was merely adequate. The chunks of salmon were clearly from a fish farm and mighty bland. The sauce was thin, and didn’t really have any vodka taste.
There was bread pudding on the menu for dessert, which I was craving, but the waitress was too busy on this evening to get back to us, so we just paid our check and left. Because we were going to the Firehouse Arts Center to see a play, we showed our tickets and got a 20% discount–another good reason to dine there.
Pasta’s Trattoria is a pleasant, reasonably priced place to get an adequate but not great meal while enjoying the sunshine and the people on the street. I’d go there again.
No bull dining
Port Costa is a tiny community of 190 souls at the dead end of a narrow road off highway 4. There isn’t much there–a biker bar, a couple of boutiques, and a restaurant, the Bull Valley Roadhouse.
The Bull Valley has existed in different incarnations a number of times, perhaps the latest can survive longer than most. Good food is never enough to keep a place in business, you have to have a way to get the customers there. Will people go somewhere obscure and hard to find just for a good meal? Just how quirky can you be and still make a living?
Try this quirky–the Bull Valley Roadhouse is only open Thursday through Sunday. That probably makes sense–who’s going to go exploring far enough off the beaten path to keep this place busy on Monday or Tuesday nights?
Things didn’t start well. The wine list is so chi-chi, with a complex collection of wines you’ve never heard of, that Gail couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I ordered ice tea, as always. They brought me something red. I asked what it was. They said it was tangerine lemon tea. I didn’t want fruit juice, I wanted tea. The waitress got mad at me for expressing my desire to have what I had ordered–tea. Thought it was “inappropriate” of me to explain to her that I only wanted tea. I wasn’t pleased.
I did eventually get pot of hot tea, and some ice. I asked for sweetener. Asking for “the yellow stuff”, the waitress didn’t know what that meant. This was not some teenager in her first day on her first job. I explained. They brought it.
The lonliest little packet.
That’s right. One packet. Uno. Eine. Ichi (Japanese for 1) They claimed it was the only one in the entire place. I was not amused.
Persevering, dinner was ordered, and things improved somewhat.
Gail and Carol shared the caesar salad, which they make with little gem lettuce instead of the traditional romaine. That’s a good thing for Gail, since she doesn’t care for the large spines in the romaine.
Little Gem caesar salad
The salad was a clear winner. The advertised anchovies were apparently mixed into the dressing enough to be indistinguishable, which made Carol happy.
Jack and I had the potato leek soup, which was awfully spicy but very good. We were surprised at how small the cup of soup was for the price.
Which brings up the issue of portions. The Bull Valley Roadhouse bills itself as “family style”, but it certainly isn’t like any family style eatery I’ve ever seen. They seem to just mean that their portions are marginally larger than normal and people might be inclined to share a bit. This is definitely not like eating in a Basque restaurant where each dish is meant to be passed and shared.
I had the Lamb Sugo, which is just a pasta dish with a lamb sauce. Not some pebbly, gritty bits of ground lamb, but decent chunks of meat, a good ratio of pasta and an interesting dollop of creme fraiche. Not pretty enough to photograph, but clearly good enough to eat. Also quite spicy. I’ve eaten pasta all my life, I don’t understand why anyone would put hot peppers in it.
Gail had the pork stew and polenta.
Gail’s pork stew
The polenta was perfect, she felt the pork was overcooked. I didn’t mind the pork, and was quite impressed with the bright flavors from fresh herbs and cilantro.
Jack and Carol clearly made the best choice tonight:
Buttermilk Fried Chicken
The fried chicken, accompanied by mashed potatoes and bacon-honey gravy, was the star of the evening. It may have been the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. Each order contains 4 pieces of chicken–this dish, at least, is easy to share.
The bar specializes in cocktails from the 1930’s and 40’s. I think it would be interesting, if you like that sort of thing.
The building is intriguing, with chandeliers converted from gas burning lamps of the 1800’s, a wall of old daguerreotypes and other Victoriana. There is a lovely patio in the back, but I don’t think they serve food out there. Yet. The Bull Valley is relatively new, and is still a work in progress.
I have no idea whether or not they will be able to attract enough customers over the long run to make a go of it. Right now, they are basking in great reviews and quite busy. Go to opentable.com and make a reservation if you don”t want to wait for your table.
If you haven’t been to Port Costa, go early, have a drink in the Warehouse (the building at the end of the road on the right), then cross the street for dinner at the Bull Valley. Order the fried chicken. Bring your own sweetener.
Solid and Reliable
The Birthday girls, Demi and Kate
Twenty Five years ago, Gail’s daughter Kate celebrated her birthday by giving birth to a daughter, Demitra Athena Marie Rockas (I love that combination of names).
Monday night, after I flew home from Tennessee and spent the afternoon trying to catch up on work, Gail and I went out to dinner with Kate, husband Brad. Demi and younger daughter Chloe. We chose our favorite Marin restaurant, the venerable Buckeye Roadhouse.
We love the Buckeye. Solid, reliable, upscale and classy, they deliver a great meal every time. Just off the freeway at the Stinson Beach exit, give the car to the valet and enjoy a fine dinner in a setting that will make you feel like old money.
Bruschetta with burrata cheese and smashed peas.
Kate and I are addicted to burrata, so we shared the bruschetta appetizer. The smashed peas are an excellent complement to the cheese; the tiny bit of salad brightened the entire experience.
What Crab Louis should always be.
Gail and Brad both enjoyed the crab Louis. It looks better when served, but Gail broke the rules and started digging in before I could get there with the camera.
Liberty duck breast with grilled apples and satsuma mandarin oranges
My duck was pretty perfect, and the accompanying grilled apples and oranges were a revelation. I’ve never had grilled oranges before, and they were spectacular.
Scallops with piquillo pepper risotto
Demi’s scallops with risotto were a beautiful presentation. Cooking scallops is an art–the difference between nearly raw and seriously overcooked is measured in seconds. The cook at the Buckeye has this down to a science.
The daily special fish–grilled halibut on quinoa.
More perfectly cooked seafood. One of the thing they teach in cooking school is getting some height on the plate to improve the presentation. Notice how artfully the halibut is perched atop the quinoa and then topped with the arugula to increase the dimensionality of the dish. Touches like this are the difference between journeyman professionalism and artistry.
Chloe had the same halibut dish. She gets full honors in the clean plate club.
No leftovers for Chloe.
I can’t find a thing to complain about. The service is swift, smooth and professional. Prices are reasonable for the quality of the experience. There’s a good reason the Buckeye Roadhouse is our favorite in Marin County; once you go there it will be your favorite too.
They can’t all be winners
Linda Gross went to a sectional in Reno last week with Nancy Boyd, Cheryl Haines and Lisa Evans. The event was held at the glamorous Boomtown hotel, and she kindly sent along a photo of the haute cuisine they enjoyed.
What passes for food at the Boomtown Resort and Casino
It seems I’m not the only one who can be snarky. I guess you don’t expect any more from the food in Boomtown than you do in Gatlinburg.
Holy Smoke
Okay, I’m home, but not quite finished with Gatlinburg. There’s a place in town called the Christ in the Smokies Museum and Garden. I thought it would be a good excursion to blog about, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I thought, wrongly, that it would be smarmy and political and sanctimonious. I was expecting some sort of a reprise of the Creation Museum I visited just over a year ago. It wasn’t, not in the least. A little cheesy, perhaps, but not political at all.
The Christ in the Smokies Museum just tells, gently, the story of Christ. It isn’t there to proselytize, I should think it exists more as a pleasant place to enjoy ones faith and perhaps teach the children. I’d call it more of an educational experience than a museum.
Visiting here cost me $12.29. There seems to be only 1 employee, manning both the ticket counter and the gift shop. Since I appeared to be the only visitor, that’s enough staff.
The show starts with a 2 minute film telling you how great God is, then a set of door opens and you go down a long hall, where there are about 12 dioramas depicting different events in the life of Christ.
Begin at the beginning, manger, shepherds, Magi and all
Each scene is professionally create and lit. The rich voice of the narrator describes what you see and what the Bible says about it. After a minute or two, the story ends, the lights go down and you stroll down the hall towards the next scene.
John the Baptist
My preconception had been an overly Americanized Christ, beardless with blue eyes. Good for them, I was wrong. Every character, it seemed, looked appropriately Semitic.
What you would expect a man to look like in Israel 2000 years ago.
The Sermon on the Mount
There were scenes with only 2 or 3 figures, but the creators of this place weren’t afraid to make some impressive displays.
If you’re going to show the Last Supper, you might as well copy da Vinci.
This isn’t journalism: there is no presumption of objectivity. They are here to tell a story, and they want you to believe it.
Milking the scene for every last possible drop of drama.
Mary Magdalene at the Resurection
Is Christ getting more Aryan?
So there were a few flaws. Christ seemed to get more Norwegian. In the scene from which we get “suffer the little children unto Me”, there were a lot of fair skinned, blue eyed children–not very probable, but they sell better in Tennessee.
At last, the grand finale:
Boatloads of fluffy cotton gave their life for this scene.
The last scene gives us the Ascension into heaven, and is the only one where there is motion. To the swelling sounds of ecclesiastical music, Christ rises into the sky.
The lights fade out, and the door open to lead you out of the exhibit, into the “gardens” of the museum. Not really gardens, just a large room with a lot of plants. And a hokey sculpture that they claim is “world famous”.
From the gardens you go into a room with what are supposed to be ancient coins that look suspiciously clean and plastic. Posters from Biblical epics line the walls of another room, and then you are out into the gift shop, well stocked with, well, gifts. Nothing Gail would want, but she and I are hardly the typical visitor.
The Christ in the Smokies Museum and Gardens is not exactly the sort of thing that I would expect to enjoy, but I thought it was well done, pleasantly presented and not the least bit political. I’ve certainly gotten less for my $12.29.
Done, finished, kaput
Bob already has our house reserved for next year.
Played the semi finals this morning against Mark Lair, a client and two solid journeyman pros. I thought I played well, so we were only down 50 in the first half. Second half Mike and I were out, and we lost as much again.
That did it for the week. Packed my things and headed on down the road to Knoxville. We played 10 KO matches this week, winning 5, not exactly the batting average we had in mind. Played the BAM teams three times, came in first, third and fourth/fifth. Had a bunch of mediocre food, and overall a great experience.
I have a few observations about Gatlinburg this year. First off, the place is white. White, white, white. In a nation that is 11% black, I think much less than 1% of the people on the street here are black, and 0% of the people employed in Gatlinburg–I have never seen a single black face working anywhere in the town.
There is as much sugar here as there is fat. I joke that they would deep fry coffee if they could figure out how, but was utterly astonished when the waitress asked Jack if he wanted sugar in his Margarita–he said no, naturally, and I tasted what he got–still extraordinarily sweet. The bread is sweet, and served with honey butter. There is a candy or fudge shop on every corner. “Sweet” tea is the standard. You can gain just as much weight with sugar as you can with fat, combine them and the effect is deadly.
Technology makes a smaller imprint here. While every motel on the strip is advertising free wifi, I noticed that many of the players were carrying old fashioned simple cell phones, not the smartphones that are endemic in California.
Gatlinburg is the only place I’ve ever been where I couldn’t get a single station on the radio.
I bought a Boston Cream pie in the grocery store–had to order it 2 days in advance and still got something with vanilla pudding inside. These people don’t know what Boston Cream pie is.
The goodies they hand out at the tournament hit a level of bad taste rarely seen. The $1 coupons for the concession stand are fine, but the garish, hideous pot holders they tried to give us were ghastly.
They give prizes for winning. We won the BAM teams and got a crisp $2 bill for each of us. It’s a nice touch, I think.
This is a great tournament, beautifully run and hugely successful. I’m already looking forward to next year. I’ll play better, honest.
Back in the semis again
Finally, a decent day at the card table.
The getaway has already begun here. Gatlinburg is within a day’s drive of some huge percentage of the US population, so many people have driven 7 or 8 hours to get here. They start to stream out of town on Saturday to be ready to get back to work on Monday, and the tournament size plummets.
Bracket I of the KO’s was only 9 teams today–three round robins in the first session, two round-robins in the second session brings that down to 4 teams for the semi-finals tomorrow.
We won both halves of the the first session, and in the second session we faced one of the teams we beat in the first. That was good because the other team was Carolyn Lynch and her teams of stars–Mike Passel, Meckstroth-Rodwell, Geoff Hampson and Marc Jacobus. We beat the other team for the second time today, and they lost to the pros too, so we advance to tomorrow’s semis. You know it’s a good evening when you even manage to beat the pro team in one half of the match, although not overall.
Dinner was a culinary disaster. We stumbled into some supposedly “Italian” place. I ordered a linguini primavera which was simply dreadful, and which came accompanied by a plate with three house made rolls quite literally floating in a bowl of oil and garlic. This is not an appetizing presentation.
The other guys ordered a couple of pizzas, which were adequate, I guess. I”m spoiled by very good pizza at Fat Slice, so I wouldn’t dream of ordering it anywhere else.
One more day here, and a very tough semifinal to play in the morning. Home on Monday. Oh boy.
Friday at the Park Grill
Dinner last night was special. The food was adequate, the company was the treat.
Wendy Sullivan, ACBL problem solver.
I ditched the boys and went out with Wendy Sullivan, ACBL Ask Me Girl, meeting planner and general factotum. No sniggering, thank you, Wendy is married, and she knows Gail. too. I just like to have friends in high places, and there is no higher place than Wendy’s good graces for me to stay in.
We had a great time talking about League matters and gossip. I’d tell you all the inside dish, but she said if I repeated any of it she’d call me a liar to my face and punch me in the throat. I don’t think you want to get on her bad side; I’m a little afraid already.
The Park Grill is one of the better places here. It turns out the rest of my team was having dinner there as well, furtively sneaking peeks at me over their salads. Big salads–another huge salad bar to start the meal. I chose the prime rib–this is meat country, might as well relax and enjoy it.
Rare prime rib and sweet potato casserole
Chose the sweet potato casserole, of course. I can get a baked spud anywhere. This one was a trifle heavy on the coconut, but still delicious.
Wendy went for the shrimp:
Broiled shrimp on a skewer
They catch these things in the Gulf of Mexico and freeze them immediately on the ship, so I guess they’re as fresh in Gatlinburg as they would be anywhere else. Anything you can drown in melted butter can’t be all bad, and these were pretty good.
No dessert, unless you count the casserole.
Bridge, you ask? More of the same. Started a KO in the afternoon, played loser BAM in the evening. placed 4/5, which at least makes 3 days in a row we’ve done well in the event.
Here’s some other food news: Judy Keilin sent me this photo of the fried pickles she had the other night here in G’burg:
Judy’s caption for this photo: yecccccccch
Dinner with Wendy is always an event–lots of laughing and hooting at the silly things done by bridge players, and the board, and sometimes the management. The food at the Park Grill is as good as you’re going to find here. Not a bad evening at all.
Totally Unauthorized 