Lunch at the Ritz
The 18th green and the ocean--not a bad view for lunch.
If you have a beautiful day and no plans, what better than a ride out to Half Moon Bay and lunch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel? So that’s what we did today.
The ride isn’t all that exciting–over the San Mateo bridge, up the hill, traffic jam, lanes merging, then slow traffic all the way down the hill into the tiny city. Turn left down the coast, pull into the wrong street, ask the gate guard the question she gets 115 times a day, go one more block, turn on the correct street and eventually you pull up at the castle by the shore that is the Ritz. Good looking young guys in argyle sweaters and plus-fours will take your car and you can saunter in just like you could afford to stay there–which you probably can’t. Rooms start at $400/night and keep going up.
We weren’t the only ones to have this idea today, the joint was jammed. Still, they found us a table by a window, and we settled in for a nice lunch.
Trying to eat in a sane and healthy manner, I ordered the Asian Chicken Salad.
What a healthy meal looks like.
Napa cabbage, dressing, cashews, a bit of grilled chicken. I had them hold the mushrooms, of course. Light, tasty, low-cal. What am I doing in this picture?
So I ate a couple of the rolls they delivered–fresh and tasty, and too sweet for Gail. Shouldn’t you serve sourdough in this area? At least I dipped them in olive oil instead of butter, as many calories but no cholesterol.
Gail went for the Chicken Sandwich:
More of a man-sized lunch.
Grilled chicken on a too-large bun (too much bread is becoming a recurring theme on sandwiches these days). Really, really, good french fries.
Service was good, but strange. A waitress who thought the fish of the day was tap-a-lia, which is sort of like tilapia. Couldn’t pronounce the “challah” that the salmon comes on, and it isn’t a roll anyway. Like being in the Enid, Oklahoma Ritz-Carlton.
Soldiering on bravely, we enjoyed our lunch, paid the relatively large tab (including $10 for the parking, which is the discounted rate if you eat there. I’d be afraid to ask how much parking was otherwise.) and ambled out to see the grounds.
The hotel sits right on the shore, surrounded by its golf course. If you don’t chase little balls with big sticks, you can just sit in the comfortable chairs and enjoy the ocean air, have a drink, huddle near the large fire pit, watch the golfers and joggers and bikers who use the trail which, by law, is open to anyone.
Looking back from the shore to the chateau. Gail is back there somewhere.
It's a great place to just sit and relax, people-watching.
You can't see the flame in daylight, but that's a giant fire pit, the better to enjoy the ocean breezes.
We sat, we watched, we wandered a bit, then we ransomed the car back and motored home. Lunch at the Ritz is fun, if you just want a slow, easy afternoon and a good meal. I bet it would be fun in a storm, too, sitting inside and watching the weather crash against the shore and the windows. If we ever get another storm, we’ll have to try that.
Very comfortable food
The very busy open kitchen and chef's counter.
I guess maybe I just like restaurants with “24” in their name.
We loved SR 24 in Oakland, before it’s economic demise. Now we can eat at Table 24 in Orinda, and it’s pretty darned good.
Friday night we ate there with Carol Sue Tracy and her friend Sterling, prior to the big comedy show at the Orinda Theater. It’s a good thing I made a reservation, as the place was packed and people were waiting to get in. Table 24 is the fourth or fifth restaurant to occupy its space in Theater Square, and I hope it stays a long time.
The cuisine is illed as “neighborhood comfort food”, and that seems to explain things pretty well. This isn’t a white tablecloth establishment, it’s a local bistro where you can get a good burger or a good steak without much pretense, served by a capable staff.
Glorious fish tacos for Gail
I had the grilled fish sandwich–a large piece of grilled Ahi on an enormous bun, dressed most differently with slices of some kind of citrus fruit. The bun was really too big, but the citrus salad was an interesting choice. I thought the $5.99 they charged for the side of sweet potato fries was exorbitant, but at least the fries were great.
Carol stealing on of my sweet potato fries
Carol is pretty excitable, and tends to wear her heart on her sleeve, so her reaction to dinner was not completely unexpected.
Carol's pulled pork sandwich, with the "orgasmic" house made chips.
The chips come either baked or fried, but if you’re going to do it, you should go all the way–fried it was. Carol generally eats like a bird, but she cleaned her plate on this dinner.
The bill for 4 of us, with a couple of glasses of white wine, was about $100, tip included. That’s hard to beat, and I expect we’ll be back. Maybe my lucky number is 24.
My Week with Marilyn
Michelle Williams is transcendent as Marilyn
Acting is hard. Trying to portray someone who is already an icon of our culture is that much harder. For any woman to take on the role of Marilyn Monroe would be daunting, yet Michelle Williams is brilliant as the troubled movie star in My Week with Marilyn.
The year is 1956, and Marilyn is trying to establish herself as a serious, competent actress, not just a sex symbol. She is making The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier, and it isn’t going well. Olivier, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his time, had little patience for intellectualized method acting, and was driven to distraction by Marilyn’s incessant tardiness and her need for interminable takes of the same scene. Marilyn, enormously insecure, accompanied always by her acting “coach” Paula Strassburg who over-ruled Olivier’s directing, was a trial to work with, but the end result was spectacular.
In the midst of all of this was a 23 year old go-fer, third assistant director Colin Clark, a starstruck scion of nobility in his first job. It is to him that Marilyn turns for solace when he husband, Arthur Miller, flees the chaos and returns to New York. For few brief days they share a special time that will ultimately mean little to the movie star and provide a lifetime of memories to the luckiest young man in history.
Michelle Williams is supported in this excellent film by the always Kenneth Branagh, the modern version of Olivier, and Dame Judi Dench. The hero is played by Eddie Redmayne, who succeeds as a warm and gentle young man, and is not overwhelmed by his very noted colleagues.
Gail and I were surprised to see in the credits that Arthur Miller was played by Dougray Scott–5 years ago we attended his wedding to Claire Forlani, and yet we didn’t recognize him at all.
My Week with Marilyn is a tremendously good motion picture, and Michelle Williams turns in the performance of a lifetime. Still playing at the Rheem Theater, go see it.
Those who teach, can
Just twisting an old phrase. Tonight we went to Yoshi’s in Oakland for a benefit concert by a band made up of Oakland Unified School District music teachers. Our friend John Harrington was the trumpet player.
School music teachers are an interesting lot–they are pretty talented musicians, each competent on a variety of instruments, capable of conducting, teaching, composing and structuring a concert or show. Many of them, it seems, have other outlets for performing–as a fund raiser, they were raffling off CDs that they had individually released.
We went with BJ Ledgerwood, just back from 2 weeks in Tanzania, and her friend June.
The good looking members of our group.
The band performed twice tonight, at 7 and at 9. We were at the early show, which had a goodly contingent of young students there to see their teachers perform.
The music was big-band era, with at least on piece written by one of the teachers, and it was as completely professional as you would expect.
Clarinets in this photo, but these guys played saxophone, percussion and flute, as well.
Not being part of the in crowd, we didn’t have reserved seats and were off to the side, so we never really got to see our friend John. I went to the back of the room to get this photo–John is the guy with the trumpet dead center in the back.
Letting it rip for the house.
Music departments need money, and they sure aren’t going to be getting it from the state–or the city, since the Oakland school district is pretty broke. It’s a measure of the devotion these teachers have that they are willing to do this, not for their own benefit but for their students. I’m glad we went.
Flying low
Like flying used to be. Without the glamor, of course.
We were scheduled to come home on the 3 pm flight, but Gail wanted to get back earlier. I call Alaska Air, and they said we could get on the 10 am flight, but the fees would be over $500, more than we had paid in the first place. Not an attractive offer.
Then the agent told me that if I called within 6 hours of the flight time of the new flight, the change fee would be only $25 apiece. That was more like it, but it meant that I had to set my alarm for 5 this morning to call the airline. The things I’ll do for $500.
Here is the fun part of this story–our flight home was on a 2 engine turboprop, on Alaska’s subsidiary, Horizon Air. The flight doesn’t take any longer, and it much more enjoyable, at least if you have a window seat.
We cruised at 23,000 feet, a full two miles closer to the ground than the jets fly. The view was spectacular, high enough to see the wide vista while low enough to see details.
Approach to Oakland took us over Orinda; I got a kick out of seeing the house I grew up in and Miramonte High School.
I’m hardly interested in going back to when it took eight hours to fly from St. Louis to Los Angeles, like it did when we moved out here in 1958, but today sure was fun.
Seattle Spaceneedle
Just found the right place to stand to get a photo I really like.
Max Hipness
We’re in Seattle overnight to visit the kid–except that he’s almost 22, a college senior and not a kid anymore but a grown man. It’s been a pleasure watching him grow and mature, and now he can share Gail’s wine with dinner. I don’t feel any older, how did he get so big?
Anyway, we’re staying at the Hotel Max, a place so hip it hurts. Built over 100 years ago as the Hotel Vance, it was a downtown Seattle landmark for the large neon sign on the roof. In 2005, it was rebuilt as the Max, with original art by local artists simply everywhere. They boast almost 400 pieces of very modern art and photography in the hall, rooms and elevators.
What they don’t boast is size. Remember this is 100 year old building, and they used to build them small. The rooms are petite, delicate, picayune, diminutive, tiny, microscopic. I’ve never seen such small rooms. Henny Youngman told jokes about rooms like this. Fortunately, I brought along my widest wide angle lens:
The room. Notice the utter lack of space.
Now the toilet. Not the bathroom, there is no bath in this cubbyhole:
That's it. All of it.
Now the bathroom. You’re seeing the whole thing–the door is flat against the wall.
The entire 'bath" room. it is approximately 5 feet square.
The most amazing feature is the “closet”. I use that word advisedly because the space in question is only about 8″ deep. The hangars hand at an angle, almost parallel to the rod. It’s astonishingly creative.
That shelf holding the iron is as deep as the closet gets.
There are other features that intrigue me. There is a mini-bar, of course, and then there is a basket of goodies for sale. Most modern hotels offer to provide a razor or toothbrush if you forget to pack yours. This place offers a little razor kit, with a fancy, hi-tech razor made of recycled materials, for $20. A similarly packaged toothbrush is $15. Most interesting is the “intimacy kit”, a small tin filled with a condom and a couple of love oils for the bargain price of $30. Valet parking was $30. Good thing I got the room on Expedia for a very reasonable $112.
Don’t take this wrong–we’ve stayed here before and knew what to expect. We enjoy this quirky, hip bastion of modernism, and will likely stay here again. We just don’t expect spaciousness.
So I’m contrary
Chinese for people who don't really know Chinese
I was at a national tournament once, in someplace like Cleveland or Kansas City or Birmingham, Alabama, and a group of us were going out to dinner. Somebody suggested a Chinese place, and I just flat refused–I live in the Bay Area, where we get the best Chinese food in the country, if not the world, and can’t imagine looking for great Mongolian beef in a town famous for chili with cheese, or ribs, or the production of steel.
I thought of this today while eating lunch at P. F. Chang’s. Why, in an area full of fantastic, genuine Chinese food, does this monument to homogenized, de-fanged, commercialized, middle of the road, mass produced blandness not only exist, but get to charge premium prices for sub-adequate food?
P. F. Chang’s is a high-volume mass merchandiser of middle of the road food for people who don’t really know or like good Chinese cuisine. They have systems and accountants and process engineers and a human resources department. They don’t have a ounce of Asian soul.
We were met at the door by a young woman who demanded to know my name to write on the check, then called me “Chris”. Okay, so I”m an incipient old fart, but I don’t need some 23 year old who doesn’t know me addressing me by my first name. She also had the headset to her phone hanging out of her ear, so she could ignore people in the most professional way possible. We were led to a table by the back wall; Gail was sitting on a banquette that was a good 3 inches too low for the table–who designs these places? We moved to a table with two decent chairs.
The service is very good–profit maximization requires turning the tables quickly. A very nice young woman (much more pleasant than the hostess) took our orders, advised on which of the rib dishes we would prefer, and got things moving.
The food comes out quickly. We started with the hot and sour soup. It was thick and sweet, with a rich strong base utterly unlike any hot and sour soup I’ve ever had, and not in a good way. The ribs Gail ordered were indeed interesting, but not great.
It was when Gail’s pan fried noodles arrived that I knew we were in deep trouble. Whatever they were, they sure weren’t like the Hong Kong style noodles you can get all over, and not an improvement, either.
I had orange peel beef, which had a great orange peel flavor in a too-thick sauce on over-cooked beef.
They refilled my iced tea quickly.
The bill for this no very fancy and not very good lunch was $67, including one glass of wine. Almost $80 with tip. At least twice what a much better meal at Yan’s China bistro, or the Green Garden, or almost anywhere in Oakland Chinatown, would cost.
Still, there they are. Right smack dab in downtown WC, across from Nordstrom and behind Neiman Marcus. People flock in their door all day and night. Clearly, they have the formula to bring in the masses. That doesn’t make the food any better, and I’m still contrary and difficult. But I know good Chinese food when I see it, and I didn’t see any today.
Life is not fair
I think that there is a basic flaw in the universe when one man gets all the good looks, all the cool and huge acting talent, to boot. At least it’s unfair if that man isn’t me, and it isn’t. It’s George Clooney.
The coolest man ever in a really good movie.
Last night we saw The Descendants, starring Mr. Cool himself as an uptight, repressed Hawaiian lawyer, their to a huge plantation. He has two out of control daughters he doesn’t know how to parent, having always left that to his wife. He is in the midst of having to dispose of 25,000 acres of the family estate on Kauai to satisfy inheritance law, and has many dueling cousins to deal with.
Then he finds out that his wife was cheating on him, and contemplating divorce.
He prevails, of course. He’s George Clooney, he can’t lose. The movie gets a little lost in deciding whether it is a comedy or a drama, but nobody is perfect. The scene where he runs out of the house after hearing of the infidelity he is running like a clown in a Keystone Kops movie, and the sound dubbing is ridiculous. Similarly, when he is stalking the putative lover, the scene is shot as though he were Buster Keaton.
Still, I enjoyed the movie. I don’t think it is worth the Best Picture nomination it got, but it was pretty darned good. Our man George ends up with a couple of loving, well-behaved kids, a few zillion dollars and a new outlook on life. Some guys have all the luck.
Photos are where you find them
I’ve been taking pictures since my cousin Nick taught me how when I was 12. In those days I could develop and print black and white film myself, turning our bathroom into a makeshift darkroom.
These days I enjoy having a big-boy Nikon and a slew of lenses. The darkroom has been turned in for my computers and software. Easier to use and they don’t smell bad, either.
I can’t carry the Nikon all the time though, so I wanted something small to keep with me. Yes, there is a camera in my phone, the most popular camera in the country, in fact. There are more iPhone photos on the big photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picassa than all other cameras combined, but I wanted more capability. So I bought a little pocket Canon, the S95, and I love it.
Today we had lunch at Los Jarritos, a tiny Mexican place in the middle of Lafayette. I’ve written about this eatery before, but I didn’t have a great camera with me. Today, I did.
Los Jarritos has the most interesting painted windows I’ve ever seen–they are a faux stained glass, all done by a local artist just with paint. The walls are painted, too. Because I had my little camera with me, I can share them with you.
(the food there is just fine, too. We like it for a quick and easy lunch. The price is right, the service is both fast and good, you’ll enjoy the joint. 3563 Mt. Diablo, between the Roundup and Postino)
Just a window and paint, but the effect is stupendous.
The trompe l'oeil murals on the wall are as good as the windows.
And that’s why I carry my little camera. Hope you like the photos, hope you try the food.
Totally Unauthorized 