Being lazy for tonight. A seven hour belated birthday celebration with old friends gets seven paragraphs.
Art: A docent-led highlights tour at the VMFA begins with the golden hare but is most enjoyable when admiring Gaston Lachaise's "Standing Woman." There's something about an artistic young man doing everything he can to prove to a decade-older woman that he is worthy (including casting her in bronze). It only takes her 10 years and letting him depict her voluptuous body nude to convince her he's worth bothering with. Marriage and sculpture ensue.
Favorite story about this sculpture? Years ago I was at the museum's Jumpin' in July and a woman walked up to me and gestured at "Standing Woman," saying apropos of nothing, "You, me and her, the best bodies here." Ah, but someone immortalized hers, so she wins.
New restaurant: Main Street's newest, Brux'l Cafe, has every table but one reserved (we luckily get it) and a full bar. While I applaud (and order) the recent catch, lobster in garlic butter, the place is too busy for its own good, meaning the servers are more than a bit challenged at keeping up. Given all the great things I've heard about Belle Vie, their last place, I expect it's more that they've just opened this location and are undoubtedly still figuring things out.
Two large croquettes de fromages are stellar, oozing with flavor and textural contrast. Ordering Patron on the rocks costs an extra dollar for the ice? Unacceptable. Not a single bottle of sparkling on the wine list? Hello? Bila Haut Rose helps assuage the absence of bubbles. Music? Lost in the din. Giant screen? Annoying. Bright lights? No ambiance. I've never been to Brussels, but surely it's a lot more fun. My guess is they're still working things out and bumps will be smoothed out in time. A Belgian cafe is a terrific addition to the strip.
The stories: My friends are recently back from Newport and Boston and have scads of tales to tell. Hot dogs and a kite festival in Newport, the charm and dimness of the Isabella Stewart Gardener museum and the best clam chowder they've ever eaten. A colonial wedding and brass band on the beach. It all sounds fabulous.
Dessert: A line out the door and down the block at Shyndigz turns off my friends and we move on. We decide to improvise dessert instead.
House party: DB sparkling brut, dessert partially courtesy of the birthday girl who makes a colossal mess ("Oh, Karen...," the homeowner moans when he sees), Clapton's "Crossroads" for tonight's music history lesson and the big finale: the album that got the former disco babes dancing, albeit not in their platform shoes. Disco thrills some while others sit it out. Not me.
I should be dancing and am. Nobody gets too much heaven in one night. Or do they?
Showing posts with label highlights tour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label highlights tour. Show all posts
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Hoagies and Highlights
Ever since I'd learned about the lobster hoagie being served at Bonvenu's brunch, I've been determined to have it. I'd hoped to find a friend free to join me for brunch, but no such luck.
Two weeks in, I just went solo and now I can say that there was a good reason I was craving it without ever having tasted it.
Sliding into my seat at the bar, I was welcomed back (they're so good about that) and asked if I was in for a cocktail. "I'm here for that lobster hoagie," I explained, without even looking at the menu. She laughed and asked me which side I wanted with it.
I was barely a few pages into my Sunday Post when the object of my desire arrived. The construction of lobster meat, baby spinach, cherry tomatoes and Bermuda onion with citrus vinaigrette in a very large flour tortilla was enormous.
My first questions was whether or not it was big enough. "I see a to-go box in your future," she said chuckling. Clearly she didn't know my appetite. I'd chosen the red-skin potato and bleu cheese potato salad to accompany my hoagie and, good as it was, it was the casualty on my plate.
Chunks of claw meat and body meat were dominant in the wrap, which was too big to get my mouth around. The crunch of the onions was a lovely contrast to the rich creaminess of the rest of the mixture. I was in the throes of lobster love.
I got about two thirds of the way through it and had no choice but to begin dissection. I opened up the wrap and started eating just the contents, afraid I would be too full otherwise to finish. I think I had maybe three bites of that excellent potato salad before calling quits on it, too.
Brunch was a prelude to a highlights tour at the VMFA. I was honestly curious to see what would be considered the highlights of such an amazing and extensive collection now and said so when our guide asked us why we'd come.
"It's completely up to me what I show you," she said. "So I'm going to highlight some of my favorites." I loved that concept; any given docent would give a different tour because there were no prescribed stops.
Our group was small - two couples and me- but a local artist, colorful and vocal, joined us shortly thereafter and added a lot to the commentary. I must have been a little vocal myself because he eventually came over and asked, "Are you an artist?" I'm an art appreciator, I told him..
We began in the 21st century galleries, a fitting place to consider the state of art today. Moving from gallery to gallery, she would pause and talk about various works or, in some cases, just point out galleries and recommend them (Faberge, for instance).
Pointing upstairs, she said that the Impressionist galleries were up there, but we weren't going to visit them. "Cause they're not a highlight," the artistic latecomer joked.
Clearly he'd visited the museum a lot over the years because he remembered former wall colors, which galleries were where in the 70s and other obscure miscellaneous information (like the pool).
I, on the other hand, was able to inform one of the couples, both long-time Richmonders and museum-goers, that the Boulevard entrance is now open. Neither had any idea that it now is, presuming that the 70s closure of that grand entrance was still fact. They were almost as excited about it as I am and I have no intention of ever using any other entrance.
When the tour ended, our little group bade each other good-bye by name and our docent said, "There goes Karen to leave by the Boulevard entrance!" They all looked at me enviously as they headed to their exits.
Hey, it's not my entrance. Everybody should experience the museum they way it was originally intended to be entered.
Listen to me, sounding all old-school about how things used to be. But do give the front door a try; it's a fitting way to enter the grandeur of the new VMFA.
In fact, it's a highlight.
Two weeks in, I just went solo and now I can say that there was a good reason I was craving it without ever having tasted it.
Sliding into my seat at the bar, I was welcomed back (they're so good about that) and asked if I was in for a cocktail. "I'm here for that lobster hoagie," I explained, without even looking at the menu. She laughed and asked me which side I wanted with it.
I was barely a few pages into my Sunday Post when the object of my desire arrived. The construction of lobster meat, baby spinach, cherry tomatoes and Bermuda onion with citrus vinaigrette in a very large flour tortilla was enormous.
My first questions was whether or not it was big enough. "I see a to-go box in your future," she said chuckling. Clearly she didn't know my appetite. I'd chosen the red-skin potato and bleu cheese potato salad to accompany my hoagie and, good as it was, it was the casualty on my plate.
Chunks of claw meat and body meat were dominant in the wrap, which was too big to get my mouth around. The crunch of the onions was a lovely contrast to the rich creaminess of the rest of the mixture. I was in the throes of lobster love.
I got about two thirds of the way through it and had no choice but to begin dissection. I opened up the wrap and started eating just the contents, afraid I would be too full otherwise to finish. I think I had maybe three bites of that excellent potato salad before calling quits on it, too.
Brunch was a prelude to a highlights tour at the VMFA. I was honestly curious to see what would be considered the highlights of such an amazing and extensive collection now and said so when our guide asked us why we'd come.
"It's completely up to me what I show you," she said. "So I'm going to highlight some of my favorites." I loved that concept; any given docent would give a different tour because there were no prescribed stops.
Our group was small - two couples and me- but a local artist, colorful and vocal, joined us shortly thereafter and added a lot to the commentary. I must have been a little vocal myself because he eventually came over and asked, "Are you an artist?" I'm an art appreciator, I told him..
We began in the 21st century galleries, a fitting place to consider the state of art today. Moving from gallery to gallery, she would pause and talk about various works or, in some cases, just point out galleries and recommend them (Faberge, for instance).
Pointing upstairs, she said that the Impressionist galleries were up there, but we weren't going to visit them. "Cause they're not a highlight," the artistic latecomer joked.
Clearly he'd visited the museum a lot over the years because he remembered former wall colors, which galleries were where in the 70s and other obscure miscellaneous information (like the pool).
I, on the other hand, was able to inform one of the couples, both long-time Richmonders and museum-goers, that the Boulevard entrance is now open. Neither had any idea that it now is, presuming that the 70s closure of that grand entrance was still fact. They were almost as excited about it as I am and I have no intention of ever using any other entrance.
When the tour ended, our little group bade each other good-bye by name and our docent said, "There goes Karen to leave by the Boulevard entrance!" They all looked at me enviously as they headed to their exits.
Hey, it's not my entrance. Everybody should experience the museum they way it was originally intended to be entered.
Listen to me, sounding all old-school about how things used to be. But do give the front door a try; it's a fitting way to enter the grandeur of the new VMFA.
In fact, it's a highlight.
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