Towse: views from the hill

Julian Guthrie, Staff Writer, wrote an article about Rich Shapero for Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Venture capitalist rewrites the starving-author story

With deep pockets and an even deeper belief in his inner Hemingway, first-time novelist Rich Shapero is taking vanity publishing to a new level.

Shapero is part of a self-publishing explosion that has enabled wannabe writers to print books on demand.

[continues]

We’ve bumped into this guy and his gang of book floggers at events in Washington Square Park and down by the Bay. There’s a copy of his book on my bookshelves, but I haven’t cracked the cover yet.

What if all new authors had half a mil to spend on self-promotion? Our weekend art shows and BDSM fairs would be awash with people got up in ram outfits and posing with giant Gumbies.

The article mentioned that Kirkus Reviews — the cutting bloody edge of book reviewing — will begin reviewing self-published books — for a small $350 fee! You can imagine the brouhahah pay-for-review is creating in publishing circles.

Guthrie also mentioned a National Endowment for the Arts survey released earlier this year, which found that the percentage of Americans reading has dropped over the last two decades, but the number of people taking creative writing courses is up by 30%.

Zounds! No wonder POD has taken off. All those creative writers looking for an outlet.

Another stat I came across in the article (and then failed to confirm so I had to drop my numbers by 10K) claimed 165K books published in the U.S. last year — a 37% increase since 2000. This column mulls over the news.

Double zounds!

… and now if anyone pops Rich Shapero’s name into Google, they’ll come up with this blog entry.

That’s how Blatant, Shameless Self-Promotion works.

(Who cares what they said? Did they spell my name right? Did they get the book title right?)

The Telegraph Hill Dwellers were having a 50th anniversary picnic up at Coit Tower, complete with a visit from an antique firetruck with our Fire Chief, Herb Caen, Emperor Norton and Lillie Hitchcock Coit on board. The picnic started at noon. About 10 a.m. we decided to dash over to Bonham’s and Butterfield’s to see what sort of stuff they had up for sale at their SoMa auction. We could make it over, dash around a bit, and make it back in time for the picnic.

But alas. …

Downtown was a huge mess. We came down Hyde and were redirected down Market. All the left turns off Market were blocked. We finally cut over on South Van Ness, but roads were blocked again and again. Obviously there was a party going on that we hadn’t heard about.

People were walking into the street fair area. Butch guys with six-pack abs in tight leathers, some in leather shorts and fringed vests. Gay pride? No. There were other couples with both guy and gal in leathers, hers a micro skirt with a fringed vest, his just leather pants. Ordinary looking folk were also heading in the same direction. We were curious, but not enough so to be even later for the THD picnic than we were.

The only thing at B&B’s that I would’ve bid on was already so close to the auction gavel that an absentee bid would never have made it in on time and I don’t do live auction. We headed home, skirting around the happening south of Market.

Yesterday, we discovered what we’d missed:

21st annual FOLSOM STREET FAIR

Feast your eyes on the world’s largest display of PDA: the leather and fetish fun fair brings after-dark action into the light of day with a mile of spanking booths, leather vendors, slaves and masters, under-the-sun dance stages with some of the city’s best DJs — and things you’ve never dared to imagine. Donation at the gate. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. on Folsom Street between Seventh and 12th streets, San Francisco.

The fair is held the last Sunday in September. This past Sunday was sunny and blue. A good time was had by all, reports say.

Is this one of those “only in San Francisco” things?

I’d bought two eggplants last week and used one in an eggplant-pork stirfry, served with steamed rice.

The other eggplant was showing its age, so I tossed together a quick dinner around it, influenced by Sunday lunch at Slanted Door.

Peel the eggplant. Cut into chunks the size of your terminal thumb joint. Chop up some purple onion. Take the leftover eggplant-pork stirfry out of the frig.

Heat the wok. Add peanut oil. Toss in the onion and let it sizzle for a bit. Toss in the eggplant and pour a bit of sesame seed oil over it. Toss a tablespoon or so of chopped garlic on top. Toss. Set a while. Toss. Set a while. Toss. Set a while until the eggplant is cooked through.

Meantime, take the jug of ginger-garlic-stirfry sauce out of the frig and pour a bit into a small glass bowl. Add rice wine vinegar and some sesame seed oil. Stirtaste. Add more vinegar if the sauce is still too thick and sweet. Not too much sesame seed oil. A little goes a long way. Add hot pepper sauce for a bit of zip.

Give the eggplant another toss and throw in the leftover eggplant-pork stirfry from the other night. Heat through.

Serve with leaves of Romaine lettuce and sprigs of basil.

Put a couplefew leaves of basil on the lettuce leaf. Add the eggplant concoction. Drizzle a spoonful of the adulterated stir sauce over the contents. Fold the lettuce leaf up like a taco — wrapping it like a burrito won’t work.

Eat.

Repeat.

Ymmmmm.

The Slanted Door

1 Ferry Building

San Francisco

415-861-8032

His nibs has no patience for sitting at the end of a telephone line listening to it ring at the other end. Our schedule’s fractured ‘twixt here and there and we don’t always know where we’ll be on any given day. Getting into The Slanted Door was not an easy task.

We still haven’t made it for dinner — we’re thinking of making a special effort to eat there with our friend Sally, who first raved to us about the place when it was down on Valencia in the Mission District, before it moved to the Ferry Building. We watched the restaurant taking shape, but hadn’t been able to get in since it opened in early April … until Sunday.

His nibs made reservations for 1:15 p.m. I spent the morning racing back to Dale to pull all the stuff I had spread out on the patio by the pool back into my office, to shelter it from unseasonable and unexpected rain. I dashed off after breakfast and made it back with time to spare enough to change and to walk down the Steps and over to the Ferry Building. We arrived at 1:16 p.m.

We had to wait a few minutes for our table, an expected occurence when you’re at the tail end of the lunch hour in a packed restaurant. The folks before us probably dawdled, as we did, over the food. We were lucky enough to get a table for four, with room to spread out. The dining room manager suggested we both sit with our backs to the window that faced toward Pier One, so we could both see the view of the Bay Bridge through the huge windows that face the Bay.

His nibs leaned over after she left and added, “plus it makes it easier to serve us.”

True.

The tables are thick 3″ blocks of rough cut, polished wood. The table next to us had interesting carving designs on the edges caused by sub-bark wood varmints of some sort. The tables were set with simple square off-white plates, a folded white cloth napkin and a pair of dark wood chopsticks.

On the wall opposite us was a huge photograph of a Vietnamese woman. Her head tilted back, she was covering her mouth with one hand. She was laughing, I thought. Just the look of her cheered me. His nibs said, “Maybe she’s sneezing.”

“No,” I answered. “She’s giggling. The photographer said something about how beautiful she is and she’s averting her eyes and laughing behind her hand.”

We decided that the photograph would make a good psychological test. What do you see in this picture?

Our staffer was excellent. He was slim with various piercings and tattoos and a great looking short mohawk. (Most of the male wait staff either had shaved heads or “interesting” haircuts as did some of the female wait staff.) Our staffer patiently explained the menu setup and answered any questions we had. He pointed out that the main dishes come with rice but no vegetables, so if we were wanting a vegetable, we should order a separate dish.

One of the pair of women next to us was trying to decide which white wine to have with their lunch. He brought two glasses to her, each with a couple swallows of white wine in it so she could have a taste test and choose which one she preferred. I don’t often see that.

We chose a chinon (cab franc) from Domaine Baudry, a Loire wine. The wine list was replete with rieslings, which apparently pair well with Vietnamese foods. His nibs mentioned that the current Wine Spectator has a spread on Slanted Door, paying tribute to their reknowned wine list.

crispy imperial rolls

The roll comes cut into 1″ slices on a serving dish with sprigs of mint, a mound of glass noodles, a dish of dipping sauce and lettuce leaves. You take a lettuce leaf and layer the mint, piece of imperial roll, and noodles on the leaf, roll it up and dip it in the sauce. Or dip the roll in the sauce before you roll up the lettuce. The lettuce leaves were too small for the fillings, but the tastes of the shrimp and pork with the mint and sauce were superb. Finger food and messy, but delish.

Vietnamese crêpe

Like the imperial roll, you package bits of the crêpe up with sauce and mint in a lettuce leaf. The crêpe was light and crunchy on the outside and packed full of pork and shrimp, bean sprouts and onion. Cut the crêpe into manageable pieces, package it up. I preferred to spoon the sauce [a different sauce from the imperial rolls] over the lettuce contraption before I wrapped it up, but dipping the wrapped leaf would work too. The lettuce pieces weren’t large enough to do a thorough wrap and, again, this was finger food and messy.

Perhaps we should’ve chosen a completely different sort of appetizer for our second, but both were so good, we didn’t care.

grilled five-spice chicken with tamarind dipping sauce

The chicken is served with steamed jasmine rice, served in a lidded bowl with a sprinkling of green onions on top. The rice was wonderful. The chicken and the tamarind dipping sauce were tasty, but gave me no reason to opt for the dish again the next time we’re back in lieu of trying something different. The menu looks like it would be wonderful to work through dish by dish.

spicy organic haricot vert with honshimeji mushrooms

The beans were skinny, small, uncut beans. Delish. Spicy, but not too. A repeatable dish. Definitely.

The women to our right had been watching as each of our dishes arrived, asking us what the dish was and asking whether it was vegetarian. I pointed out that the imperial rolls and the Vietnamese crêpes both come in vegetarian versions.

When the beans arrived, they said, those look like beans. Where are they on the menu?

At the top of the Vegetables section, I replied. Then realized that if you don’t know what an haricot vert is, you’d probably miss knowing what was being offered.

The lunch was wonderful and we were ready for a dessert to share. We had a hard time choosing from the dessert menu but finally decided to be adventurous and try

Thai basil panna cotta in mango soup

This dessert was incredible. The panna cotta was excellent and the Thai basil flavoring was intriguing. I, for one, despite my love of basil, forget that it is a kissing cousin to mint. This dessert reminds you. The mango soup had chunks of mango in it and was a perfect foil for the panna cotta. I’m going to have to try to create something similar for home meals.

Along with dessert I had a hot Vietnamese coffee, which I’d never had before, and his nibs had a pot of Liu An tea. The Vietnamese coffee is served in a glass with an inch or so of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom. The coffee is dripbrewed on top of the milk, which is thick enough that you’re left with a two-toned glass of milk and coffee when the coffee is through brewing. Take the long-handled spoon and stir up the concoction. Drink. If you order the coffee iced, it comes with a separate glass of crushed ice and you pour the coffee over the ice when the brewing is complete. We were both happy with our choices of drinks — perfect endings to a delish meal.

Some two hours or so after arriving, we walked out, stopping by the Ferry branch of Book Passage on our way home.

We will definitely be exploring Slanted Door’s expanded dinner menu some time, hopefully not too far in the future.

Lüx

2263 Chestnut Street, between Pierce and Scott

San Francisco

Dinner M-Th 5:30-10:00 p.m. F-Sa – 11 p.m.

415.567.2998

Last Friday night we made reservations for dinner at Lüx for 9 p.m., late enough to give us time to change after work and make the fifty-minute walk over. We walked in on the dot of nine and had a table within seconds. We hadn’t been since June 8th, when we’d popped in on their opening night with our youngest.

Our visit was triggered by an e-mail received from Kitty earlier in the day:

Dear Friends of Isa

Luke & Kitty Sung

Kitty’s e-mail continued on with a look at their revamped menu:

Lüx

a small plate restaurant

Steamed jasmine rice 1

Our staffer informed us that the honey glazed baby back ribs were gone and described a yummy-sounding tiger prawn special. We had a hard time deciding, but finally opted for an O’Reilly pinot noir from Oregon and the following.

Seaweed & cucumber salad with sesame vinaigrette

This was a tasty salad, and I needed something green with dinner, but the salad was not an extraordinary, you’ve-got-to-try-this salad to recommend to friends. If I had it all to do over again I’d go with the arugula, goat cheese and beet salad.

Zucchini & green onion pancake with salmon tartare & dill creme fraiche

This quesadilla-like concoction worked wonderfully. The pancake was cut into quarters with the dill creme fraiche spooned on top, a small pile of salmon tartare was centered on each quarter. This dish was tasty, very, very tasty.

Seared dayboat scallops with sauteed mushrooms & truffle oil

I love scallops. This dish was delish.

Miso glazed butterfish with roasted eggplant & crisp nori

The miso glazing on the butterfish was a wonderful flavor. The small roasted Japanese eggplant was delivered up as slices, smallish rounds about the size of mushrooms. I happen to be a huge roasted eggplant fan. The flavor went well with the miso glaze and the butterfish.

Crispy peking duck leg with peaches, radish, pinenuts & hoisin sauce

This combination was tasty too. We cut the duck leg into pieces manageable with chopsticks and carried on from there.

The food was excellent, as it had been opening night. The added drapes softened the noise levels we’d experienced our first visit. The noise levels our first visit had been nothing compared to the noise levels we’d experienced at butterfly. Butterfly has wonderful food (Kalua Pig with Butter Lettuce Cups, ymmmm) but noise levels were so high what with the DJ music and some loud parties that we finally just gave up on talking to each other the night we dined there.

The Lüx menu is now printed on a lighter color paper than it had been opening night and was more readable. (The fact I’d remembered my glasses last Friday probably helped the readability as well.) We’d liked the restaurant our previous visit and liked it even moreso this visit. We were diving into our last plate, the peking duck leg, when Luke dropped into the seat next to his nibs.

Luke looked at where we were in our meal and asked us if we had any more plates coming. No, we answered. He asked us what we’d had and what we’d liked. I raved about the pancake with salmon tartare. His nibs mentioned the butterfish. Had we tried the tiger prawn special? No, we hadn’t. He asked our server to bring us some from the kitchen and then changed his mind. Had we tried the oysters? No, we hadn’t. “Bring them some of those instead,” he said.

A very pregnant Kitty joined us. She teased us for not mentioning that the e-mail had triggered our visit and thereby qualifying for a free glass of champagne as a “friend of Isa.” They were trying to see what sort of impact the e-mails have because the last time they’d sent out e-mail (when we visited the previous time in early June), they were absolutely bowled-over with the number of “friends of Isa” who showed up for dinner.

In lieu of a glass of champagne, Luke asked our staffer to open another bottle of the pinot noir we’d been drinking and pour some for the four of us then take the rest back to the kitchen for the staff to sample after the restaurant closed.

Fried hama hama oysters with polenta cake, sambal aioli, green onion & cilantro

The oysters were absolutely wonderful. Luke said they were intended to be a single mouthful, and I should pop an oyster in all at once to get the meld of flavors. I found each “serving” to be too big for a mouthful. Maybe if the dish hadn’t been straight out of the kitchen and the polenta had had a chance to cool a bit … Warning. Warning. If the dish is piping hot, cut the polenta cake and oyster in half and take the dish a half oyster at a time or give the dish a chance to cool a bit.

That said, this dish is to die for. No kidding, this dish is so good, that I was vividly remembering the taste and wishing there were some way I could arrange to score some for a morning snack when I was out driving this morning and a hankering hit me.

The four of us sat talking for a long time about food and life, the baby that’s due in another three weeks, the three-chef tasting dinner at Manresa the night before, the difficulties of getting people to order sweetbreads and the bill that (if Schwarzenegger signs it) would outlaw foie gras production in California. Turns out both Kitty and I are huge fans of Luke’s seared foie gras dishes. We also talked about Bocadillos and the pigs trotters his nibs and I had eaten there, a different memorable pigs trotters dish that Luke and Kitty had had, our dinner at Bruno Viscovi’s Albona Ristorante Istriano earlier in the week and so forth and on.

I made sure to tell them that our staffer was a keeper. He had not only provided us with terrific service, but he also cared enough about the restaurant to straighten crooked table settings that he’d noticed on his way back to the kitchen. Good staff make a huge difference for a restaurant and this was a staffer they should keep around.

The four of us split three desserts as we continued talking. The restaurant was closed and Kitty still needed a real dinner and a good night’s sleep by the time we said our good-byes. The walk home up over Russian Hill and up Telegraph Hill wore off a small fraction of the calories we’d consumed.

With any luck, we convinced Luke to have a special dinner, a single-night seating for as many “friends of Isa” as the restaurant will hold where he will serve all the dishes he’d love to serve, if he could sell enough of them to warrant their space on the menu — his scrumptious sweetbreads being just one example.

X’d fingers it comes to pass.

Extra fingers crossed that he doesn’t schedule such a dinner for a date when we’ll be unavailable.

Lüx was busy, tables full, several large parties in addition to the couples, folks at the bar, but not anything like as busy as Izzy’s Steak and Chop House on Steiner. We’d walked by Izzy’s on our way over to Lüx and saw the young and the beautiful and the not-so-young and the not-so-beautiful spilling out the door.

I’m torn between wanting Luke and Kitty to have folks spilling out the door and realizing that that sort of popularity would cause problems when we make reservations and that it would be easy enough for Luke to have crowds if he were willing to serve less interesting dishes.

Do we eat at Izzy’s? No, not usually. The last time I ate at Izzy’s was last year when I was over in Corte Madera for the Book Passage Mystery Conference and ate out with some people I’d met at the Conference. Izzy’s menu choices include Caesar salad, prawn cocktail, creamed spinach, scalloped potatoes, six different styles of steak, veal chops, pork chops, lamb chops and more. Good, tasty food, but where’s the adventure there?

We’re just happy, as we told Luke and Kitty, that there are restaurateurs out there who are willing to take a few risks and who enjoy serving up something other than chops and Caesar salads to the likes of us, who enjoy eating something different.

Now, if Luke would only put sweetbreads back on the menu.

Manresa Restaurant

320 Village Lane, Los Gatos.

(to the W off Saratoga Avenue between North Santa Cruz and University Avenue)

408-354-4330

Dinner Wednesday through Sunday from 5:30 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Reservations are recommended

The invitation arrived a couple weeks ago.



Modernista with Friends

The Next in Manresa’s Popular Dinner Series

Join us Thursday, September 16th at 6:30 p.m.

Dinner will be a multi-course tasting menu.

$90 per person with wine pairings available (additional).



How could we pass that up? We put our reservations in and showed up at 6:25 p.m. last night. Esteban Garibay told us we’d be sitting at Table Four and invited us to join the short before-dinner reception out on the patio while the restaurant waited for all the guests to arrive.

Out on the patio, Kinch had two stations serving before dinner drinks. We each decided on a Manresa cocktail: staff added a twist of orange and a bit of sherry to the glass and then filled the glass with champagne.

Wait staff came around with bits of nibbles. I missed one or two, but did get a mango smoothie with black olive madeleine and a taste of the parmesan/cheddar churro-like puff. Right before we were called in to dinner, the three chefs came out to check out the house and schmooze with the customers.

Surprised I was to see a guy I know from rec.arts.mystery, Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. Turns out he and his partner are regulars (every few months) at Manresa and had followed Kinch to Manresa from Sent Sovi. They drive all the way down from San Francisco, have a delish dinner, and drive all the way back. That’s coming a long way for a meal.

The dinner was very leisurely. The restaurant, after all, had all tables being served simultaneously. There’re only so many wait staff you can have before they crash into each other and Kinch’s kitchen is much larger than the one he had at Sent Sovi, but there were still three chefs and various aides mucking around in it. … For a couple of the courses I even had a suspicion that there weren’t enough dishes to go’round and the staff was waiting to clear, clean and dish-up another helping for the couples in the corners.

Ken Parker played flamenco guitar through dinner, moving his stool to various corners of the restaurant so that everyone had a chance to hear his soft playing. The music was a perfect background to the meal.

We chose to go with the paired wines rather than select a bottle. We asked for Los Gatos’ finest tap water. Staff offered a choice of walnut bread or sourdough. Sometime after seven, the dinner began and proceeeded as follows.

clear v8 (bruce)

The vegetable cocktail came served out of a silvery shaker into a martini glass. The cocktail was a deep, clear red-blue violet. We tried to suss out the eight vegetables but only managed (we think) beet, carrot, scallion, cucumber (maybe), green tomato (maybe). Tasty, tasty vegetable cocktail.

a green zebra tomato juxtaposing (james)

The plate delivered four different renditions of green zebra tomato: a dish of green zebra tomato sorbet, a “ravioli” of green zebra tomato with goat cheese, a small glass with warm green zebra tomato gazpacho, and (my least favorite) a slice of green zebra tomato wrapped in gelee. But as it is with the world, when James came by to see what we thought of his creations, the woman to our left said that the gelee rendition was her favorite. I would be hard pressed to decide whether the goat cheese rendition or the gazpacho rendition was my favorite.

Our first wine pairing (a muscadet) arrived.

albacore with fried avocado, macadamias (david)

The albacore was marinated in aged soy and quickly seared. The fish was garnished with fried avocado (really! I’d never imagined frying avocado), scallions and chopped, roasted macadamias. The dish was settled on a bed of avocado sauce. Tasted like there was perhaps sesame oil drizzled on the tuna. Three perfect drops of aged balsamic to decorate the plate. Ymmm.

We’d finished our muscadet by the time they came by with the next dish, so they poured us a bit more.

monterey calamari on vacation in bangkok (james)

This dish was a beautiful sight. The calamari had been dusted with something chili-pepper hot and crisped with its tentacles waving, skewered with a bamboo skewer with a twistcurl at the end. (We’d met our first such skewer at Gerald Hirigoyen’s Bocadillos last week.) The skewer was set in a cut-side-down half-lime for balance. We were told to eat the calamari and then use the lime to juice up the remainder of the plate: marinated grapefruit sections, a coconut-curry foam and marinated calamari rings (I think … or maybe noodles). I took what was left of lime and juiced up my water.

Staff brought a different white wine for the next course, a Spanish white wine.

sand dab pave reconstructed (bruce)

The sand dab was served with capers and lemon rind. The “reconstructed” bit of it was that the sand dab was de-boned and the bones were deep-fried. Then the fish was reconstructed with the bones back inside. The deepfrying made the bones edible, adding a crunchy (and tasty) contrast to the sand dab.

Another top-up on our wine took us to

tartare cone of atlantic cod “bacalao” (james)

The cones were delivered to the table as hand-food. The cones were seasoned with fennel. The cod was lightly salted, seasoned with chili and other seasonings. Another delish dish. (Nothing had failed us yet.)

The foie was coming up and we were each given a glass of a sweet wine produced “just across the river” from Sauternes. Lupiac, maybe?

twice cooked foie gras with quince (david)

The foie gras was poached, then baked. The flavor was like nothing I’d ever tasted foie-wise. The piece of foie gras was nestled in a quince puree. I still like Luke Sung’s seared foie gras the bestest of all, but this foie gras was quite interesting, intriguing. Talking with my RAM acquaintance’s partner after dinner revealed that not everyone is as enamored of seared foie gras as I am. He really liked this dish and much prefers poached foie gras over seared. I, on the other hand, like poached foie gras but much prefer seared. Takes all kinds. This was an novel way of cooking foie gras and a success.

The wine pairing switched to a red wine. (Duh. Look what follows.)

The couple to my left had brought a La Tache to drink with dinner. They also ordered a glass each of different white wines to drink with the fish courses. The couple to my right brought a red and a white with them because they’d been disappointed with the wine pairings the last time they ate at Manresa. I thought the pairings were great. I’d rather have pairings than drink a white all night or a red, what with the variety of dishes we were served. The red that the couple next to us brought was delish. (He poured me some when we were schmoozing near the end of the meal.)

kobe beef tartare on a disintegrating potato (bruce)

This dish was also hand-food. Plates were brought ’round and you took your serving, then gobbled it up. The beef tartare was terrific. The potato was like the best fried shredded potato patty you’ve ever eaten. When James came by to get comments (he seemed to be the designated “how did they like my dish?” comment gatherer), he laughed when I told him the “disintegrating potato” was far better than anything from OreIda I’d ever eaten.

boudin of pig’s trotters with apple (david)

The boudin was yummy. I don’t know if I could’ve figured out the insides were pig’s trotters if Kinch hadn’t said so. The woman to my right asked the guy, “What’s a pig’s trotter?” “A sausage,” he replied.

We’d had pig’s trotters at Bocadillos last week. I guess I really should write down my reactions to that meal. The pig’s trotters there were not disguised in a boudin and were as yummy, if not yummier, than Kinch’s rendition.

Last but not least, we were given a dessert wine to accompany

chocolatebananacurry (deanie)

This dish was a slice of deep chocolate pastry with a crunchy top, served with a banana curry ice cream. The chocolate was amazing — rich, dark, semi-sweet and just enough, not so much that you’d overdose. The ice cream was a good foil and tasty in its own right.

I finished off dinner with a double espresso. His nibs had the blossoming tea ball that he’d had last month when we ate at Manresa.

By this time, the couple to our right was chatting with us about wine, restaurants. What was amazing to us was that the woman at the table had an allergy to onions — poor dear! — and the chefs managed to deliver her dinner, working their way around that wrinkle. Impressive.

We’d also overheard staff asking one of the guests before dinner whether he was allergic to tomato seeds. Imagine serving that many dinners and keeping straight who was allergic to what. The woman to my right had been served a different variant of the clear v8 dish, a different dish in lieu of the boudin, and other modifications. No problem with the kitchen. I thought it terrific that they served her up a great meal around her allergies.

The guy I knew from RAM came over with his partner and the six of us discussed San Francisco and food and wine and restaurants and Bouchercon until we finally looked at our watches and noticed that we were the last people in the restaurant. We said good night, nice to meecha, and everyone headed home.

The San Franciscans had a long drive home. We were home in five minutes or so, a little after midnight. Dinner had taken over five hours. Well worth the time spent. Slow food is good for you.

We’ll be eating at Manresa again before we sell our honeymoon cottage and head up full-time to San Francisco. I doubt if we’ll be as faithful, making long drives down to Los Gatos, after we’re in San Francisco full-time.

(Imagine David or James or Bruce finding this some day and thinking, “That wasn’t what was in it! How could she forget the cucumber? Mango? No! It was passion fruit!” These are the things I remember. My memories may not accurately reflect reality.)

Cthulhu For President in ’04 — Don’t Settle For The Lesser Evil

CNN Money has an article on the new nickel. The TJ profile shows the other side of his face and there will be two different tails sides to the coin.

Trivial facts: the buffalo side, which is returning to the nickel after going missing in 1938 was a James Earl Fraser design, despite North Beach trivia that Benny Bufano did the design and/or posed for the Indian head on the heads side.

Pete McCloskey wrote a thought-provoking piece for the San Jose Mercury News yesterday (Friday).

Registration required or use the BugMeNot login:

mercurial@nospam.com

mercury

Don’t know who McCloskey is? The Merc says of him, “Pete McCloskey represented the San Francisco Peninsula in Congress from 1967 to 1983. He earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts as a Marine rifle platoon leader during the Korean War.”

McCloskey’s column starts

Although I’m a lifelong Republican, I will vote for John Kerry on Nov. 2. The choice seems simple under traditional principles of the Republican Party.

I first met John Kerry in the spring of 1971. Each of us was just back from Vietnam — he as a Navy officer and I as a member of Congress — and were appalled by what we had seen there. I found Kerry to be idealistic, courageous and, above all else, truthful to a fault. He demonstrated courage in Vietnam, but as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, the courage to speak against prevailing opinion in civil strife is often greater than that demanded on the battlefield.

[continues]

Update: Turns out the Merc links are morphing and dropping readers onto the Merc front page.

Once you’re there and logged in, use http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/9627228.htm

Unfortunately, the free read expires a week after the column was published. I’ll see what I can do.

Packed up decorative Chinese dishes, pots and figurines, &c., ready to take up to Hill. I knew there was a reason I saved all that bubble packaging. Some day I’d need it!

Moved all the pictures, paintings, posters, photos I’d been stashing behind the coromandel screen out to the room next to the patio. Boxed up those pieces that hadn’t already been boxed up in re-engineered boxes that once packaged six flat and unformed office boxes and lids. We’ll take the boxes up in multiple trips rather than stash them away somewhere until The Big Moveout. A few boxes at a time I can handle.

Once I had the stuff I’d stashed behind the screen out of the way, I shifted the coromandel screen around — in utter fear that I’d push it wrong and it would lose balance, collapse and flatten me while breaking into a zill pieces. The screen is eight feet tall and twelve feet wide — eight panels with your usual tea garden scene on one side and a plant/flower design on the back. A dragon design chases around the outer frame, natch. The piece is Heavy. With a shove here and a shove there, I finally pushed the screen back against the wall in the living room and freed up a foot of space.

I placed a pair of chairs under the paintings of the Joneses which hang on the same wall the coromandel screen is up against. Put a skinny little dropleaf table between them.

Moved the funky Kroehler sofa that matches the chair up in my office in front of the coromandel screen. Moved the sofa that had belonged to his nibs’ grandparents in front of the wall windows that look out over the patio and fishpond. Both sofas are old and worn. Rugs tossed on them cover the worn spots. The sofas are at right angles to each other in the NW corner of the room. Set the nested dragon box and the temple bells in the squarish space formed where the sofas meet.

Next, I moved the Victorian burgundy settee into the space next to the fireplace that we freed up when we took the dragon lamp up to Hill last weekend. The matching chair went on the other side of the fireplace.

Shifted this here and that there, rearranged lamps and tables until everything was where it should be.

I was admiring my handiwork when the cat wandered in from the nap she’d been taking on the guestroom bed. She doesn’t like all this activity and furniture moving about. She wandered in and out of the boxes of magazines and piles of books, sniffed under the sofa and finally settled in her favorite spot to continue her nap.

Except for the boxes of magazines and piles of books that are cluttering up what should be open space, the living room’s about where it should be for now. We’ll have to move everything around again when it comes time for fixup and painting, but at least I have one room taken care of.

We’ll see if our maven thinks the room still has too much stuff in it. Do we need to get the coromandel screen out of the house before we start showing it. Does it take up too much space? Is it too dark? Should we take the chair and settee out? Move the temple bells up to Hill, where they’ll be eventually anyway? Get rid of some of the tables?

Time for me to go back down and start dealing with the boxes of magazines and piles of books, the clutter. Time to start work on the next room.

So much stuff and clutter to deal with.