Crumpler's packed.

Crumpler's packed.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Tetanus' injected. Chloroquine's quaffed.

Dumpling Man will probably stay behind for safekeeping. (OMG whadya mean you don't know the Dumpling Man of the East Village? Many thanks forever to Rahul, who introduced us.)

Posting by cameraphone from home where I'm packing for Chiapas and the Petén.

historic marker

That building to the right with the Chinese lanterns? That's the Legendary Palace in Oakland, CA (shot the week before last) where once upon a time b1-67er and I had legendary dim sum (almost entirely by accident) and the World's Best Mechanical Engineer refused to eat his greens (but had no problem putting away the pork) and later I'd shoot a bunch of pics at the Oakland Bonsai Gardens just for fun that Mastercard would pay four hundred whole dollars to use as part of their online Priceless Picks campaign.

Honest. All true.

And if it weren't for Flickr that last part wouldn't even have happened. (Thanks, Flickr.)

But Flickr had nothing to do with the dim sum.

Which was legendary.

cinderella story

I had the great good fortune of meeting up with my aunt M and her partner M (M&M) for dinner at Broder’s in Minneapolis Sunday night, on my way to a business meeting the next morning. (And yeah, the butternut squash ravioli in a sage butter sauce topped with spiced walnuts was pretty much out of this world. Did I mention the sage butter sauce? Yeah. Blast off.)

I’ve been feeling so lonesome for family out here in the Midwest, and a little bit silly for forgetting that my aunt was right next door, but that’s been remedied, and it’s been *so good* to catch up and hang out and talk about things that matter with someone whose life intersects mine in one of those Venn diagram kind of ways -- shared family, places, and passions; different perspectives, variable angles, always illuminating.

The theme that we kept circling around over dinner like Io around Jupiter was the courage it takes to be yourself -- really really really be yourself.

M (my adopted aunt M, M’s partner) shared a story of a friend of hers who came out late in life. Prior to summoning the courage to leave her ultra-conservative husband and embrace what she knew to be true about herself, she wrote a little note and carried it in her shoe. I don’t recall the exact language, but the gist was declarative, something like: “I’m actually interested in women.”

She wanted it to be there, so that it would be found in case she died while living the life she found herself constrained in. A life that was not entirely true to who she knew herself to be. A life that imprisoned her.

In case she died, she wanted people -- anyone, “Goodwill even”, M said -- to know: “This is who I really am.”

And she carried it, wore it, walked on it daily. In her shoe.

Hearing the story leveled me. Living like that. Knowing what you needed to do. The silent calling out, hidden from everyone else, until you’ve summoned the courage to live out loud. And then, finally: doing it.

Without the payoff the story’s a tragedy. A scrap of paper that falls to the floor at the Goodwill.

With the payoff it’s just right.

Makes me wonder about the messages I've hidden in my own shoe.

ladies who lunch

Cheating on the event[1] lunch to grab my own down the road at Osaka, a tiny little pocket of a place on Michigan Avenue (a block South of the Art Institute) that makes magic out of an incongruous juxtaposition: Sushi & Fresh Fruit Smoothies.

Today's lunch: sake sushi with avocado and tamago maki, accompanied by a peach/mango smoothie.

The fish with sushi thing has a strange way of spilling across boundaries at Osaka: they have a crab and mango roll -- which I tried once and was sorry I had -- and they offer avocado in their smoothie assortment, which I've been assured pairs beautifully with mango.

Maybe next time.

The background music is the only juxtaposition that *doesn't* work at Osaka -- today it seems the Beatles have collided with one of those music boxes where the ballerina spins when you lift the lid.

But I'll put up with quite a bit for a lunch like this.

Posting by cameraphone from the Loop.


[1] A Forrester Forum on social networking -- more to come on that one.

alinea

So the Chicago restaurant, Alinea, was named the best restaurant in the country by Gourmet Magazine.

Here's how it works: you have two menu choices, one is $125, the other is $175. I don't think that includes wine.

Clearly the surroundings and the presentation are stunning, but one has to wonder: How do you get some of this stuff into your mouth?

('Cause me? I like to eat my food. But that's just me.)

Here's what Wired said about Alinea back in May:

[Chef Grant] Achatz is a California cuisine alum:
He spent four years in Napa Valley working for freshness
fanatic Thomas Keller at the French Laundry, possibly the
best restaurant in the US. [Ed. Not anymore.]

For Achatz, though, the new frontier is preparation. He has
turned to lab equipment and industrial food additives,
pursuing quirky juxtapositions of flavor and texture.

(...)
Some of these no-dishes make you laugh out loud; others
seem needlessly weird. But they're all beautiful.

From the May 2006 issue of Wired

The funky implements that Alinea uses in their presentation -- works of art in themselves -- were designed in collaboration with Martin Kastner and are available through Kastner's design company Crucial Detail.

Hot scoop via Andrew at Gaper's Block -- that nice young man who said such sweet things about my Kamin pix.

Update: The General Manager of Typepad hung out with one of Alinea's principals over the summer -- he gave them a nice little shout out on his blog, this is sippey.