Turns out Dorothy Parker and I have a lot in common.
Like drinking and talking.
Which I began my evening by doing at my neighborhood joint, Bistro 27, to pre-game before the theater.
Between my week at the beach and Chef Carlos' trip to Brazil, it had been ages since I'd seen him.
We corrected that with some face time tonight, early enough in the evening that the place had not yet filled up.
Vinho Verde in hand, I listened as he told me his concept for a TV show that involved a chef, a front-of-the-house manager and a writer sharing their opinions as they visited every gay bar in the country.
Now there's a career path I could get behind.
As long as I was there, it seemed silly to resist a new small plate of braised calamari over white beans.
The garlic and clam juice-infused beans under the shallot-braised calamari with micro-greens was a flavorful way to kick off my night.
I met some nearby bar-sitters, foodies from Hanover County, and we talked about the local eating scene while they experienced 27 for the first time.
It's always a pleasure to watch as newcomers get sucked into the 27 web, first by Carlos' charm and then by the exceptional food.
Let's just say that I expect that I'll see those two again at my neighborhood bar.
My next stop was at Prudence's house to pick her up for an enlightening evening at the VMFA.
"The Portable Dorothy Parker," a one-act, one-actress play with Broadway actress Margot Avery, drew a sell-out crowd (mostly women or men with women).
Three be the things I shall never attain
Ency, content and sufficient champagne
Most of the performance was laugh-out-loud funny, but for some of us, none more so than her observations about the writing life.
When I was younger, I was already gainfully unemployed.
I called it freelancing.
Amen, sister.
The set was simple - a wing chair with a telephone table, a table for a bar (frequently used) and a desk covered in books and manuscript pages.
But I shall stay the way I am
Because I do not give a damn
Avery used them to advantage, frequently making drinks before collapsing back in her desk chair to answer questions from the unseen assistant.
As Dorothy, she talked a lot about the members of the Algonquin round table and what a boys' club it had been.
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.
It was an audience of Parker fans, quick to laugh at every bon mot, and, like me and Prudence, familiar with many of them.
And while Dorothy drank throughout, her smoking habit was conspicuously absent.
I couldn't decide if this was a nod to the VMFA crowd or a politically correct concession.
Either way, bad call.
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue
Through observations about love, men and life, I consistently found myself laughing most at her comments about the writing life.
The two most beautiful words in the English language are "check enclosed."
God knows that's true.
Once the play ended, we didn't go far, ending up at Deco for a bottle and a bite.
The little restaurant was just about full when we arrived and our server, sweet and eager, told us she'd just turned 21.
Her extreme youth meant that she couldn't tell us anything about the 2011 Cantina del Taburno Falanghina we were considering, but the owner breezed by, assuring us that if we didn't like it, he'd happily drink it instead.
Pshaw.
Crisp, intense and with a long finish, we needed no help from the boss man to polish off the bottle without him.
We made a meal of the Sicilian street food menu, with arancini con carne stuffed with Mozzarella, falling-off-the-bones pork ribs in marinara, and meatballs with currants and pine nuts, a dish I get every time I go.
"All meat?" Prudence asked, raising an eyebrow, as if that were a problem.
As I told her, after an evening of sparkling wit, I'm happy to make do with meat.
Because, as Dorothy, Prudence and I agree, there can never be sufficient champagne.
We make up for that with meat, bone-sucking and long discussions of love, men and life.
The cure for boredom is curiosity
There is no cure for curiosity
Nor would I want there to be.
Showing posts with label deco. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deco. Show all posts
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Weeping for Art
When we last left our intrepid duo intent on a methodical survey of the VMFA, they had finished the 21st-century gallery.
Where better to begin than with abstract expressionism on a late Saturday afternoon with a forecast of thunderstorms?
Especially after last night's Judith Godwin openings and the attendant paintings, it seemed only right to pick up at mid-century to connect up.
And all Judith's action painting cohorts from NYC in the '50s were there: Pollok, Kline, de Kooning.
Moving on, we came to the color field painters.
Morris Louis' "Claustral" was stunning but sly.
The beautiful lengths of color poured down the unprimed canvas had become nothing more than drips by the time they reached the other side.
Not content to deliver the expected, Louis had then turned the canvas upside down so that the drips were at the top.
The dribbles headed upward were a witty visual joke.
I'm a big fan of Robert Rauschenberg's combines, those works that combined painting and found objects.
"Co-existence" with its rusty baton and broken pieces of a wooden police barricade was a perfect example of the bridge between abstract expressionism and pop art.
In the pop art gallery, I was charmed by Ed Ruscha's quote, "I wish I'd kept some of my better known works. I weep over that."
Advice for the young painter, right there.
Pop art's ironic embrace of media and popular culture may have been a slap in the face to the abstract expressionists, but it certainly delivered a lighter message and look than its predecessors.
Our final gallery for today's foray was the "painterly abstraction" room with works from the '80s and '90s and demonstrating the much wider range of influences those artists had to pull from.
Sort of the difference in the influences to be absorbed by a post-punk band of the '80s versus how much more could be absorbed by a post-punk revival band of the aughts.
As we sat there admiring the return of a more painterly style, a guard came into tell us we had five minutes to clear out.
Obediently, we exited via my favorite Boulevard entrance.
So now it was 5:00 and time for a late lunch.
Since we were already in the Museum district, we opted for Deco.
My one and only visit had been a disappointment in that the kitchen was out of everything on the Sicilian street food menu.
Since I'm hardly a fan of traditional Italian (the whole rest of the menu), I was hoping for better luck tonight.
And indeed, we found it.
We were the first customers in, so early that they hadn't even turned the music on yet.
I made sure that was corrected toute suite.
It was a decent mix of standards ("The Look of Love," Billie Holiday) and at a volume that provided ambiance but didn't impede conversation.
Choosing wine was more challenging because there were only two red and two whites by the glass.
I'd always prefer at least three glass choices, because what if I wanted something more full-bodied than pinot grigio and didn't want Prosecco?
SOL, as they say.
We asked for the Annalissa pinot grigio and began ordering street food.
Poipettine (meatballs with currants and pine nuts) were meaty and moist, panelle (chickpea fritters) were fried up perfectly and made more addicting with a fresh-tasting pesto and a generous serving of caponata Siciliana (eggplant salad) provided a filling topping for bread.
The vibe was exactly what you'd want on a late Saturday afternoon - rain falling gently outside, standards testing our musical memories and basic street food executed well.
For our last course, we surprised our young server and got a cheese plate of aged Parmesan, creamo cavalli and primo sale, making for creamy, semi-hard and hard selections.
By that time, we'd been joined in the restaurant by a few other tables, all of whom opted to sit in the other dining room, leaving us to wonder if it was something we had said.
Not that we cared.
The company, music and food were right.
About the only thing I could have wished for (had a genie come along) would have been to see the rain dripping up the window rather than down.
But I wouldn't weep over that.
I understand that Mother Nature is no color field painter.
Where better to begin than with abstract expressionism on a late Saturday afternoon with a forecast of thunderstorms?
Especially after last night's Judith Godwin openings and the attendant paintings, it seemed only right to pick up at mid-century to connect up.
And all Judith's action painting cohorts from NYC in the '50s were there: Pollok, Kline, de Kooning.
Moving on, we came to the color field painters.
Morris Louis' "Claustral" was stunning but sly.
The beautiful lengths of color poured down the unprimed canvas had become nothing more than drips by the time they reached the other side.
Not content to deliver the expected, Louis had then turned the canvas upside down so that the drips were at the top.
The dribbles headed upward were a witty visual joke.
I'm a big fan of Robert Rauschenberg's combines, those works that combined painting and found objects.
"Co-existence" with its rusty baton and broken pieces of a wooden police barricade was a perfect example of the bridge between abstract expressionism and pop art.
In the pop art gallery, I was charmed by Ed Ruscha's quote, "I wish I'd kept some of my better known works. I weep over that."
Advice for the young painter, right there.
Pop art's ironic embrace of media and popular culture may have been a slap in the face to the abstract expressionists, but it certainly delivered a lighter message and look than its predecessors.
Our final gallery for today's foray was the "painterly abstraction" room with works from the '80s and '90s and demonstrating the much wider range of influences those artists had to pull from.
Sort of the difference in the influences to be absorbed by a post-punk band of the '80s versus how much more could be absorbed by a post-punk revival band of the aughts.
As we sat there admiring the return of a more painterly style, a guard came into tell us we had five minutes to clear out.
Obediently, we exited via my favorite Boulevard entrance.
So now it was 5:00 and time for a late lunch.
Since we were already in the Museum district, we opted for Deco.
My one and only visit had been a disappointment in that the kitchen was out of everything on the Sicilian street food menu.
Since I'm hardly a fan of traditional Italian (the whole rest of the menu), I was hoping for better luck tonight.
And indeed, we found it.
We were the first customers in, so early that they hadn't even turned the music on yet.
I made sure that was corrected toute suite.
It was a decent mix of standards ("The Look of Love," Billie Holiday) and at a volume that provided ambiance but didn't impede conversation.
Choosing wine was more challenging because there were only two red and two whites by the glass.
I'd always prefer at least three glass choices, because what if I wanted something more full-bodied than pinot grigio and didn't want Prosecco?
SOL, as they say.
We asked for the Annalissa pinot grigio and began ordering street food.
Poipettine (meatballs with currants and pine nuts) were meaty and moist, panelle (chickpea fritters) were fried up perfectly and made more addicting with a fresh-tasting pesto and a generous serving of caponata Siciliana (eggplant salad) provided a filling topping for bread.
The vibe was exactly what you'd want on a late Saturday afternoon - rain falling gently outside, standards testing our musical memories and basic street food executed well.
For our last course, we surprised our young server and got a cheese plate of aged Parmesan, creamo cavalli and primo sale, making for creamy, semi-hard and hard selections.
By that time, we'd been joined in the restaurant by a few other tables, all of whom opted to sit in the other dining room, leaving us to wonder if it was something we had said.
Not that we cared.
The company, music and food were right.
About the only thing I could have wished for (had a genie come along) would have been to see the rain dripping up the window rather than down.
But I wouldn't weep over that.
I understand that Mother Nature is no color field painter.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
I Do for an Evening
If you're going to go to dinner with a husband, always pick a happily married one.
They make the best company because they have no agenda.
Besides, it had been months since we'd gotten together and he'd missed celebrating my birthday with me.
And we can't start the lead-up to his birthday until we finish celebrating mine.
Okay, so that's my rule, but he graciously went along with it.
I've no doubt he tolerates such peccadilloes solely because I'm not his real wife.
His busy schedule had left no time for new restaurants, so that was priority one.
We decided on Deco in the Museum District once we heard about the Sicilian street food part of the menu.
The tiny bar has backless, red Lucite stools and while they didn't look particularly comfy, we were wrong.
Hubby and I decided they fit our backsides awfully well.
He got his usual heavily bruised martini and I went with a glass of Analissa Pinot Grigio while I heard tales of our time apart.
Biggest laugh goes to the knife skills class he taught where he sliced his finger open and had to staunch the blood running down his arm out of sight of his eager pupils.
The scar was impressive.
Eventually, our server asked if we wanted to order and did we ever.
A look at the menu and there it was, a selection of small plates featuring the kinds of food you'd find on the streets of Sicily.
That's when our server lowered the boom, informing us that they were out of all of them except the salad and the olives.
No meatballs, no arancini, no chickpea fritters or battered cauliflower.
"Where do you want to go to eat?" the borrowed husband asked, not willing to settle for pasta or an entree.
No longer would red Lucite cradle our butts.
Since he was still in the mood for small plates, I suggested Six Burner, knowing he hadn't been in since they went to an all tapas menu.
As a bonus, it was half off wine by the glass night and my favorite man in pumps was bartending.
Some things are just meant to be.
After scoring some Gavi and another bruised martini, this one with three olives on steroids, we began ordering.
Hubby was all but salivating over so many interesting flavor profiles on the menu.
Our first must-have was the crowder peas, butter beans and Hubbs peanuts in sorghum molasses.
Toothsome beans and crunchy peanuts in a sauce best described as sweet and heat made for a dish both us could have eaten a lot more of.
Based on my last visit, we got the huevos rancheros-style calamari with Mexican chorizo and quail eggs.
For the second time, the combination of spicy calamari and sausage with melt-in-your-mouth soft-cooked eggs was irresistible.
Bluefish with sauteed shitakes in sorrel sauce took me back to the Friday dinners of my childhood where we alternated rockfish one week and bluefish the next.
But let's be clear here, my mother never did anything half so interesting as this dish of succulent mushrooms married to beautifully strong-tasting bluefish with a mild (and very green) sorrel sauce.
And then came the nerdy part of the ordering.
Being a language geek, how could I not choose something that came with an adjective?
King mackerel with awesome Spanish chorizo succotash proved why the modifier had been required.
Yes, the mackerel was delicious, firm and meaty, but that succotash was to die for.
The mixture of butter beans, corn, grape tomatoes and okra tasted like a summer vegetable stand had exploded in our mouths.
Add chorizo to it and we were practically swooning over the party we were chewing.
Completely stuffed, we could only enjoy the dessert menu in audio form.
But I knew I'd made the right restaurant choice when he started talking about bringing the wife there.
Soon, very soon.
If there's one way to ensure a husband enjoys a night out, it's by providing a completely different experience for him than his wife would.
With this particular husband, that's by eating absolutely everything, being an extrovert and not expecting him to call me by 10:00.
I'm only good at it because I can send him on his way at the end of the night.
Hell, I'm a natural for the role of occasional wife.
They make the best company because they have no agenda.
Besides, it had been months since we'd gotten together and he'd missed celebrating my birthday with me.
And we can't start the lead-up to his birthday until we finish celebrating mine.
Okay, so that's my rule, but he graciously went along with it.
I've no doubt he tolerates such peccadilloes solely because I'm not his real wife.
His busy schedule had left no time for new restaurants, so that was priority one.
We decided on Deco in the Museum District once we heard about the Sicilian street food part of the menu.
The tiny bar has backless, red Lucite stools and while they didn't look particularly comfy, we were wrong.
Hubby and I decided they fit our backsides awfully well.
He got his usual heavily bruised martini and I went with a glass of Analissa Pinot Grigio while I heard tales of our time apart.
Biggest laugh goes to the knife skills class he taught where he sliced his finger open and had to staunch the blood running down his arm out of sight of his eager pupils.
The scar was impressive.
Eventually, our server asked if we wanted to order and did we ever.
A look at the menu and there it was, a selection of small plates featuring the kinds of food you'd find on the streets of Sicily.
That's when our server lowered the boom, informing us that they were out of all of them except the salad and the olives.
No meatballs, no arancini, no chickpea fritters or battered cauliflower.
"Where do you want to go to eat?" the borrowed husband asked, not willing to settle for pasta or an entree.
No longer would red Lucite cradle our butts.
Since he was still in the mood for small plates, I suggested Six Burner, knowing he hadn't been in since they went to an all tapas menu.
As a bonus, it was half off wine by the glass night and my favorite man in pumps was bartending.
Some things are just meant to be.
After scoring some Gavi and another bruised martini, this one with three olives on steroids, we began ordering.
Hubby was all but salivating over so many interesting flavor profiles on the menu.
Our first must-have was the crowder peas, butter beans and Hubbs peanuts in sorghum molasses.
Toothsome beans and crunchy peanuts in a sauce best described as sweet and heat made for a dish both us could have eaten a lot more of.
Based on my last visit, we got the huevos rancheros-style calamari with Mexican chorizo and quail eggs.
For the second time, the combination of spicy calamari and sausage with melt-in-your-mouth soft-cooked eggs was irresistible.
Bluefish with sauteed shitakes in sorrel sauce took me back to the Friday dinners of my childhood where we alternated rockfish one week and bluefish the next.
But let's be clear here, my mother never did anything half so interesting as this dish of succulent mushrooms married to beautifully strong-tasting bluefish with a mild (and very green) sorrel sauce.
And then came the nerdy part of the ordering.
Being a language geek, how could I not choose something that came with an adjective?
King mackerel with awesome Spanish chorizo succotash proved why the modifier had been required.
Yes, the mackerel was delicious, firm and meaty, but that succotash was to die for.
The mixture of butter beans, corn, grape tomatoes and okra tasted like a summer vegetable stand had exploded in our mouths.
Add chorizo to it and we were practically swooning over the party we were chewing.
Completely stuffed, we could only enjoy the dessert menu in audio form.
But I knew I'd made the right restaurant choice when he started talking about bringing the wife there.
Soon, very soon.
If there's one way to ensure a husband enjoys a night out, it's by providing a completely different experience for him than his wife would.
With this particular husband, that's by eating absolutely everything, being an extrovert and not expecting him to call me by 10:00.
I'm only good at it because I can send him on his way at the end of the night.
Hell, I'm a natural for the role of occasional wife.
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