What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
Food and drink we’ve made or tried, restaurants we’ve eaten at, and general information about the fuel that makes us all go.
With luck, and a signature from the city, Cafe du Soleil will open tomorrow. I could not be more excited!
Rochelle noticed activity (pastry boxes and such) at Cafe du Soleil yesterday, when walking past on her way to Muni. So today I went by around 11am, to see if they might be opening. I saw fresh baguettes in bags, but no people, and the doors were not open.
But after lunch, our contractor went by to have a look, and voila!, the doors are open, and there is bustling activity. I went in, and had a nice chat with one of the owners, and got a beautiful pecan bun.
GraceAnn Walden is probably our favorite of the SF Chronicle‘s current food writers, and her weekly column keeps up on the comings and goings of San Francisco restaurants, restaurateurs, and chefs. This week’s column had news that literally brought tears to my eyes: “Pascal Rigo is opening a place right around the corner from our house”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/11/FDGC2CKG841.DTL.
GraceAnn Walden is probably our favorite of the SF Chronicle‘s current food writers, and her weekly column keeps up on the comings and goings of San Francisco restaurants, restaurateurs, and chefs. This week’s column had news that literally brought tears to my eyes: Pascal Rigo is opening a place right around the corner from our house (2nd snippet):
If a month goes by and Pascal Rigo doesn’t buy something or open a new cafe, I feel like I’m missing something. Well, he’s back at it. Eight months after opening Rigolo, he has bought Movida Lounge at 200 Fillmore St. (at Waller Street) in San Francisco, and will turn it into Le Cafe di Soleil.
Rochelle and I are, shall we say, fond of cocktails. We’ve been known to drink a few, and even make a few for friends and guests. And, we’re always on the lookout for new ones, especially things that are easy to make and serve. This year’s find: Trader Joe’s Organic Strawberry Lemonade.
Rochelle and I are, shall we say, fond of cocktails. We’ve been known to drink a few, and even make a few for friends and guests. And, we’re always on the lookout for new ones, especially things that are easy to make and serve.
The mixer for 2005 is definitely Trader Joe’s Organic Strawberry Lemonade, $3.99, located in the refrigerated juice section in Trader Joe’s. It’s great by itself, but it begs to be mixed with your distilled spirit of choice.
On New Year’s Eve we had a daytime open house and “freecycle” party. I thought I’d post the invite here, since people told us it was pretty amusing…
I wrote previously about our New Year’s Eve open house and “freecycle” party. I thought I’d post the invite here, since people told us it was pretty amusing…
You know that “oh shit” moment at the top of a roller coaster, when you’ve just finished the slow climb up, and haven’t really started the first drop. The point where you’d really like to take just a couple seconds to summon your courage, but it’s too late, out of your hands, and carrying you away whether you’re ready or not?
That’s what buying our new stove was like tonight.
You know that “oh shit” moment at the top of a roller coaster, when you’ve just finished the slow climb up, and haven’t really started the first drop. The point where you’d really like to take just a couple seconds to summon your courage, but it’s too late, out of your hands, and carrying you away whether you’re ready or not?
That’s what buying our new stove was like tonight.
Rochelle found a terrific deal on craigslist.org for a used Viking 48″ stove. Six burners and a griddle, two ovens, black finish. Huge is not the word. (Though, actually, it’s only 8″ wider than our existing stove.) It’s a $6,000 stove when new, and not something we even had dreamed of getting, it was so out of our budget range. We went and looked at it Wednesday night, and wrote a check on the spot. Gulp.
Rochelle’s going to see about finding someone to help us with transport and delivery to our house (hopefully it will fit through the front door!). And we’ve got a lot to do in the dining room and kitchen to get ready for it. But things are in motion now, and we’re too committed to stop until it’s done…
“Look out Michael, here comes the kitchen remodel!”
_Regarding photos of a recent night out…_
“How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t that bad. We all kept our clothes on.”
Regarding photos of a recent night out…
“How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t that bad. We all kept our clothes on.”
Which, if we’re being honest, has not always been the case…
I tried the new Chantico drinking chocolate at Starbucks today. It’s supposed to be richer and smoother and more intense than regular hot cocoa. Or in Starbuck’s marketing speak, a “drinkable dessert with an intense, full-bodied chocolate flavor and silky, rich texture.” It’s not bad.
I tried the new Chantico drinking chocolate at Starbucks today. It’s supposed to be richer and smoother and more intense than regular hot cocoa. Or in Starbuck’s marketing speak, a “drinkable dessert with an intense, full-bodied chocolate flavor and silky, rich texture.”
It’s pretty good. A little more sweet than I prefer, and certainly no substitute for a true chocolat chaud, but far better than a regular hot cocoa drink, no question.
Would I change the recipe if I was in charge? Absolutely. I’d love a darker, less sweet, more bitter, intense chocolate flavor. But for a mass market product, it seems kind of daring. Given the products available in the US, I get the impression that most Americans want a watered down, dusty, sugary, choco-flavored powder-based drink. The Chantico at least avoids being that, and could actually be too strong for the American palate used to Quick and Swiss Miss.
I hope it’s successful. And I hope that Peet’s offers a competing product, with the differences I expect from Peet’s: darker, more intense. It still won’t be a chocolat chaud, but it’ll be worth getting regularly (I do love chocolate). In the meantime, I’ll probably get a Chantico every other week or so.
2004 was a decent year for us, and as always (at least since I started this blog), I like to take a few moments to reflect on some of the important things that happened.
2004 was a decent year for us, and as always (at least since I started this weblog), I like to take a few moments to reflect on some of the important things that happened.
For me, the thing that dominated the year was my new “job” as a consultant. I’d done some consulting before, but in 2004 I managed to string together almost an entire year of work. Mostly half-time, so it wasn’t quite the income I would have liked, but I was able to pay the bills, and that’s pretty amazing. Really, all the credit goes to my primary client, Nicely Done Solutions, where the majority of my work comes from. They’ve kept me busy, and I hope to keep doing work through them for some time.
That dominated my day-to-day, but my biggest accomplishment in 2004 was my five year wedding anniversary with Rochelle. We have many more of those in our future, if we can both resist the temptation of butter.
Mentioned in the lead paragraph of that NYTimes article is the spreadsheet which Rochelle put together prior to our trip to France in 2002. Since publication we’ve actually had people inquire about getting access to it, so I thought I’d put it online. Some background will help you make the most of it.
Mentioned in the lead paragraph of that NYTimes article is the spreadsheet which Rochelle put together prior to our trip to France in 2002. Since publication we’ve actually had people inquire about getting access to it, so I thought I’d put it online. If you’re impatient, you can find a download link toward the end of this story. But some background will help you make the most of it.
Rochelle created the spreadsheet in an attempt to duplicate the really amazing experience she had using Vindigo on her Palm handheld when visiting New York City in May 2002. She did a lot of pre-trip research, and entered addresses and venues of interest into Vindigo. Then, while in NYC, she was able to tell Vindigo where she was, and get a list of places within walking distance, along with step-by-step directions for getting there. It made her touring the city (while I was locked in business meetings) efficient and fun, while still allowing for serendipity to influence where she went.
However, there is no Vindigo for Paris, or for any city in France. So we set out to try to duplicate the most essential features, by tying every location of interest to the nearest Metro stop and its arrondissement. We thought that this would let us figure out where we were, and then find interesting places nearby. In the end, it was only partially successful for us.
We had the most fun when we used it at the beginning and middle of the day, during breakfast and lunch, to plan where we would spend the rest of the morning or afternoon. When we tried to use it to follow whim after whim, which Vindigo had done successfully, we ended up pretty frustrated.
The other thing that didn’t work out the way we envisioned was the Palm version of the spreadsheet. We managed to download the data into Rochelle’s Palm, and use a micro database called JFile to be able to search and sort it, etc. But without a lot of additional development, having just the table of data was simply too hard to use on a Palm screen, it’s just not wide enough. With a search engine, hand-crafted results and detail pages, cross references, etc., the electronic version could have been pretty good…but even if I had put 20 hours into it, it would still have been nowhere near as good as Vindigo.
In the end, the printout of the spreadsheet was a tremendously valuable tool for us, and we’d never have seen as many cool places without it. And even if Vindigo had covered Paris, we’d still have wanted to pore through all the guidebooks and websites that Rochelle found. We would never have depended on Vindigo’s content. But having Vindigo to organize our own content by precise location, instead of rough chunks, would have been pretty darn cool.
Anyway, the spreadsheet was put together prior to our trip to France in October 2002; some things are now surely out of date. We’ve made no attempt to clean up Rochelle’s unique annotations and categorizations (Rochelle is an information organization specialist), which will likely be meaningless to you. And you don’t get our copies of the guidebooks, where were marked up and bookmarked with color-coded flags, and cross-referenced in the spreadsheet; we used those constantly, too. But if you still think it might be useful to you, here’s the spreadsheet.
Last note: this only covers half our trip, the time we spent in Paris. We also spent a lot of time in the Champagne region. We didn’t make a spreadsheet for that part of the trip, which (except for our first hotel and one meal) was entirely unscripted. Instead some photos and some weblog entries may give you some useful information about that.
Enjoy France!
Rochelle and I were quoted in the New York Times again, this time in the Sunday magazine, in a travel article about people who base their vacations around food, so-called “gastronauts.”
Rochelle and I were quoted in the New York Times again, this time in the travel section, an article about people who base their vacations around food, so-called “gastronauts.” It’s a fun article to read; better do so quickly, before the story disappears behind the for-pay firewall.
It looks like the story might have gotten chopped up a bit in editing, because I am a San Francisco-based software developer, not LA-based. And, while the Klausners may also have done so, I know we told the reporter about our trip to Chicago to eat at Charlie Trotter’s, which turned into a week-long eating binge though much of Chicago’s best-rated food establishments. (Our vacation eating focus is much less high-end these days.)
If I was going to offer once piece of advice to other food enthusiasts who were going to plan a vacation around that passion it would be this: walk everywhere you can. There’s no way you can put everything of interest in a spreadsheet before you get on the plane; walking will take you past things you could not possibly have planned for. And if nothing else, it’ll keep you from gaining too much weight while you’re eating your way through the local food scene.
Rochelle found a new soul food place in San Francisco through the Chowhound.com message boards, Miya, out in the Sunset. They’re terrific.
Rochelle found a new soul food place in San Francisco through the Chowhound.com message boards, Miya’s Place, out in the Sunset. It’s terrific. Our first visit I ordered something I almost never order out: fried chicken. The fellow at the counter said “it takes about 20 minutes” and that was all right with us. Rochelle ordered the smothered pork chop, and off he went to cook.
When our food arrived, I took one bite of the chicken, and I was in love. Rochelle got a bite or two, but that’s mostly because the chef brought out an extra piece he’d cooked for her. I devoured my serving of four pieces, methodically eating every bit of meat off the bones. Rochelle remarked that she’d never seen me eat like that. Amazing fried chicken, the best I’ve ever eaten. (Rochelle’s dish was excellent, too.)
A return trip for brunch was equally satisfying, with my fried pork chop disappearing under a similar attack, and really good hash browns (a rarity in SF). Rochelle loved her biscuits and gravy. Now if they have a great chicken fried steak, Miya will be the only place we’ve found the trifecta which makes for a perfect breakfast for us: chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy, and hash browns.
Miya’s Place is on the corner of Holloway and Ashton, two blocks from Ocean, where the Muni line runs. Parking has been easy, and the place is always less crowded than it deserves to be. Highly recommended.
Austin is a great city. One of my favorite things there is Opal Divine’s Freehouse.
On our trip to Mexico’s tequila region last year, we met the proprietor of an establishment in Austin, Michael Parker of Opal Divine’s Freehouse. Rochelle and I were thrilled to hear about a good place for tequila in Austin, and at the trip’s end, promised to visit him at his restaurant when we flew back for Thanksgiving, less than a month later.
And visit we did! We hit Opal Divine’s our second night in town, and liked it so much that in spite of a compressed schedule visiting Rochelle’s relations we found a way to squeeze it in again right before our return flight.
Opal Divine’s is quite a bar, with a truly fabulous selection of most liquors including tequila, a stupendous selection of interesting beers from here and abroad, and what must be a U.S. Top 5 selection of single malt Scotch — certainly the best I’ve seen (and we have a great Scotch bar in SF, The Irish Bank).
Rochelle and I certainly know how to entertain ourselves in a good bar, but what takes Opal Divine’s up to the next level, to our only must-visit in all of Texas, is the food. Really, there’s no requirement for Michael to have such good food — decent pub grub would be more than enough to make the patrons happy and coming back to drink more.
His food doesn’t need to be outstanding for him to be successful — but it is. We were reminded of that again this evening, when we made everything right with our day by going and having the tasting sampler of Scotch to start (six single malts from all the Scotch regions), and then eating a great chicken fried steak and an incredible patty melt.