Blue Monday Averted

"Geez, Where is everyone? I guess it's Superbowl hangover day..."

So wrote a local restaurant friend upon arriving at work tonight. A quick check of my Facebook events was explicit: No events for today.

So just because everyone else watches a game the night before, nothing happens today? Unacceptable.

I considered and decided against going to UR to hear Schubert's "Winterreisse" performed. It wasn't that a cycle of 24 poems set to music wasn't appealing; rather, it was the themes of abject loneliness, longing for death and glimpses of delusional hope that seemed less than appealing to start the week.

So instead, I decided on Secco for dinner before going to see the RVA big band. Walking in, it was clear that my friend had been right. The place had seats to spare.

As it turned out, things got busier before long as a 2009 Domaine de la Grume Brouilly "Grains de Sable" went down easily and all but begged for food. Tonight's special made that easy enough: braised pork short ribs were piled high on a polenta cake over butternut squash puree with vadouvan, a French curry blend that gave the dish an unexpected kick.

This is one I'd like to see make it on to the winter menu.

Someone nearby came back from the bathroom, commenting, "The kitchen staff is debating different Shakespeare re-enactors." That's my kind of kitchen.

Next came rye gnocchi, shredded pastrami, sauerkraut and Gruyere-whole grain mustard sauce, along with some obvious expectations. And that was the surprise.

If the clear presumption was some sort of deconstructed pastrami on rye, I wasn't feeling it. If, instead, the assumption was a savory combination of pillowy and distinctively stronger-flavored potato pasta with succulent meat and tangy kraut bound lightly in cheese and mustard, it was spot on.

I overheard a girl tell her date that she'd had a happy childhood and that she'd known at the time that it was a happy childhood.  "That's because my Mom is, well, perfect," she explained, smiling nervously. "My Dad, though, he's kind of a mess."

Run, Forest, run. That's a girl fraught with peril, I warn you.

Back at our end of the bar, we ordered more of the delicious gamay blend we'd been drinking and a cheese plate. Pierre Robert, a French triple cream that was better than butter, Barlotta, an Italian with fresh cream notes and a lingering finish and Spanish Garrotxa, mainly because it had been virtually extinct until the '80s.

It's tough to do better than Secco's cheese selection.

And while there are nights when cheese is the perfect finish, tonight wasn't one of them. No, tonight I needed chocolate and that meant chocolate budino with rosemary whipped cream.

While enjoying that, I shared with the staff my recent fact-finding mission across the street. Walking past the restaurant-to-be on the corner across from Secco a few days ago, I'd seen a man inside the construction fence about to go in the door.

Are you ever gong to finish that place, I'd called to him, genuinely curious. It seems like the former Glass and Powder has been  a work-in-progress for eons. A stricken look crossed his face. "This project has humbled us," he said.

Well, that much was clear. And at least I gave the staff a good laugh.

After having made short work of the budino, it was off to Balliceaux for the RVA big band.

Walking in shortly after they'd begun playing, I was happy to count all seventeen musicians in place. There was a shout-out to a guy in the audience who'd just gotten his Sargent's stripes today.

That might seem unlikely, but I knew the bandleader was an army guy, so that seemed to likely be the connection. With a glass of Barbera and seats at the back banquette, we settled in for a night of all Mingus.

Mingus is the default on nights where they have a lot of substitute players because apparently any good jazz player worth his salt knows Mingus. During the first set, one of the trumpet players stood up saying he was going to tell us a story about the group's bandleader, a sax player.

He claimed that the sax player, a long-time military man, had failed his promotion board and was being kicked out of the army.

"I'll tell you a story," the bandleader said, rising from his front-row position with the band and launching into a tale of being a VCU student when his roommate kicked him out. Next thing he knew, his horns and bird were missing.

Accusations were made, counter accusations thrown out and eventually a policeman came and he ended up in jail. And who does a jailed jazz student call with his one phone call but his jazz studies professor?

From there, the band played Mingus' "Nostalgia in Times Square," before bidding farewell to the new Sargent who must have had to be in bed early and left at intermission. Too many rules in the army, son.

The second set was a mix of swinging and slower (although there was no dancing tonight) before the bandleader said, "So we're going to play one more song for you. It's called "G String."

That was a joke; it was Mingus' "GG Train" and it closed out the evening. Even at the set's end, there was still a decent crowd in the room.

Don't tell me there's nothing happening on the day after the big game...or any day. I will prove you wrong.