This week is saddled up with birthdays like a fat man on a scrawny jackass. Three to be exact. Add in Mother's Day. Stir. Shake. Pour out into a glass that's plenty more than half full. Now going on four days without a shower or sleep in my own bed, and two of those days spent in the same set of clothes. Need to go home and relieve myself of this otherworldly, unkempt feeling. There's one more celebration to go, and then it's back to big business as usual. Back to keeping my little personal economy afloat. Feed the stock market stomach. Keep it happy and buoyant. Fend off the credit crunch in my bones, and spend, spend, spend my hard-earned thoughts on this big-box blog.
During all this celebration I had two entirely different, yet equally affecting, restaurant experiences that need attention. For Lisa's birthday, we surprised her at The Better Half in Hillcrest. Not only was this a great experience, it was an excellent example of how a restaurant experience is supposed to be. They were gracefully compliant with my flaky, uh-I'm-not-sure-how-many-people-we're-going-to-have-yet reservations, finally confirming only a handful of hours before the reservation time. Lisa and I arrived for the great surprise and the friendly staff had done a great job of setting up the table with Lisa at the center and taking care of everyone's drinks. We ordered some tasty rose champagne to celebrate and before long had our complimentary amuse bouche. Goat cheese, mushroom, foie gras, and a few other ingredients I can't remember on top of a crostini. The perfect two bites. Lisa and I shared some wonderfully seasoned mussels for the first course, and when we finished off our champagne started a delicious bottle of St. Emilion Grand Cru. Dinner for me was the "pork belly," and Lisa had a superb pork and cilantro pasta that seemed more Spain than France but equally as good. Every dinner I sampled around the table was of the highest quality and incredibly flavorful. I won't go into all of the desserts we had because they were all fantastic, especially the bread pudding. Chef John Roberts came to our table more than once to make sure everything was to our liking and made sure we were happy as we left. Please go to this restaurant. One of the best meals I've ever had.
On the flip side, we ended up at The Vine Wine Bar and Bistro in Alpine for a Mother's Day dinner. The place has a good vibe, and were were encouraged to sit at any table we liked. Our waitress was friendly, and the owners greeted us and wished my mom a Happy Mother's Day. This is where the enjoyable experience ended. After we ordered, it took nearly 30 minutes to bring our bottle of wine to the table, and her presentation of the bottle was obviously amateurish and annoying. There's no need to continually shove the label forward as you taste the wine, during every single pour, and when the bottle goes onto the table make an observable turn of the bottle toward your patrons as if you thought for a second that we already forgot what wine we were drinking. After waiting all this time for a bottle of wine, she neglected to bring out the bottle chiller until we got our salads, and that was 30 minutes after we had the wine. Waiting an hour to get salad is pretty ridiculous in itself, but that glaring neglect was made worse by the fact that not more than two or three bites into the salad she brought our dinner. Are you kidding?!?! Not only was there not enough time to finish our salad, but there was now not enough room on our small table for everything we had ordered, and had to put our wine bucket on the table next to us. As we finished our salad, our waitress was MIA for long periods of time, so we had to stack our plates up in order to get our dinner plates in front of us. The food wasn't bad, I might have actually enjoyed it were it not for the service. To compound the problem, it was about at this time that we noticed the female owner was walking around in bare feet! Ok, so Alpine might not be so refined, but if you're trying to present a nice restaurant, you don't walk around without shoes as if we stumbled into your living room. At this point, we simply wanted to finish our food as quickly as possible and leave, but after the waitress finally brought our check she took another 15 minutes to come back and pick it up. Sadly, this all could have bee avoided if the couple that owned the restaurant had simply helped out during the course of the night. Instead, they walked around and talked to people, but mostly sat on their lazy asses at the bar, watching TV and drinking beer. Once again, we're not in your living room. Do not go to this restaurant. One of the worst service experiences I've had in a long while.
Been listening to Radiohead's "In Rainbows" quite a lot. At first, it was just the only album that was still in my car when I got it back from the shop, but after 10-15 complete rotations, the album has won my affection yet again. I have a very strange love-hate thing going on with that record. I absolutely refused to enjoy it when it was originally leaked, decrying the generic ambient reverb used on Thom Yorke's voice (which I still think sounds ridiculous on some of the songs), and continuously declaring it a step backward for the band, as I thought they were going to make a giant "Kid A-esque" leap forward again. I reconsidered my position again around the time the album was officially released, and restricted myself to listening to the album exclusively for about a week, and it slowly grew on me in a very generic way. I began to appreciate the fact that they were writing good, inventive, pop songs, and started to put my concerns about the production to the side. Standout songs aside, I was now happy with the only Radiohead album that had caused disappointment to wreak havoc on my state of being for a few solid months. After this initial period, I put the album to bed for a while, only listening infrequently at best when teaching a song or two to one of my students. Now listening with fresh ears and a renewed excitement for music, I no longer see it as a collection of well-crafted pop songs, but as a few good pop songs by the best band in the world, and a few great pieces of music that make me happy to be alive - by the best band in the world. Specifically tracks 3,4, & 5 (Nude, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, All I Need to be exact), when played at a volume just a touch louder than bodyshaking, consistently send the most satisfying shivers through my body and restore my faith that there is good in this world and it is more often than not a voice, or a guitar, or drums doing the good. Here's to Radiohead, and humanity.
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