Category: Food

Lots of work activity this week and so the weekend was more precious than normal.  Our main activity was the much anticipated, at least by me,  Nick Lowe concert at the Kessler.

Dinner before the concert was at Nova, the excellent restaurant that Brent found, and a short walk from the theater.  We both commented on the different feel we experience in restaurants like this than our local places – so much more friendly and relaxed.

Have you heard of Nick Lowe?  Do you know the songs “Cruel to be Kind”, “What’s so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding”, “Allison” or “I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock N’ Roll”?  You may not have heard of Mr. Lowe, but I bet you’ve heard at least two of his songs and know them well.  Here’s a video of “Cruel to be Kind” to get you started:

In addition to his songwriting, Lowe produced the best known Elvis Costello albums from 1975 through 1981, Graham Parker, and the Pretenders, among many others.

We both loved this concert and rate it as one of the most exceptional concerts that we’ve seen at the Kessler – right up there with the Marc Cohn show that led us to pick “True Companion” as our wedding song.  Here’s “Peace Love and Understanding”:

The backup band was “Los Straightjackets’, a surf rock band who wear crazy Luche Libre wrestling masks while performing.  They played a few or their songs in the middle of the set, including this version of “Batman” complete with Gogo dancers recruited from the audience:

Here’s one last song from the show, “Allison”, the final encore to an amazing show:

Please go and see the 69 year old Lowe if you ever get the chance – a great gentleman, songwriter and performer.

We spent the night downtown at the classic art deco hotel, the Belmont, and talked about how concerned we are that this classic destination is going to be caught up in the gentrification of the neighborhood and ruined.  There was an amazing view of downtown Dallas at night from our room.

On Sunday morning we explored the newly gentrified area across the street from the Belmont and were happy to find a great coffee shop, the “Houndstooth Coffee” in the Sylvan 30 development.  Next door was a Taco Deli and so we were able to get a “quick bite to hold us over until lunch”.

We had brunch at “Boulevardier” restaurant in Oak Cliff and it was one of our most surprisingly great meals in a while.  I had the “Legs and Eggs” – duck confit with sunny side up eggs served over stone cut grit cakes – yummy!  Diana might have had an even better brunch – lox benedict over an amazingly light brioche.  The hollandaise sauce and the brioche were the best I’ve tasted.

After lunch, we drove home to watch the Cowboys play the Detroit Lions.  After a couple of anemic performances, I wasn’t excited about the game.  However, it turned out to be a great game with a good performance by all aspects of the Cowboys team.  They won by 1 point in the last few seconds – with the rookie kicker winning the game.   Here’s the amazing pass to Elliott from Prescott that almost sealed the game.

An exceptional concert, tasty brunch, and Cowboys win – what a pleasant weekend!

I enjoyed the book “Summer Hours at the Robbers Library” this week.  It was well reviewed and started out feeling very fluffy and inconsequential, but the characters and interesting plot twists sucked me in around the half way point.  The book features varied characters that meet at a library, including a Wall St executive who looses his job in the 2008 financial crisis, a home schooled “alternative lifestyle” girl, and a divorcee trying to escape her prior life.  They all come together to help solve each others’ problems in creative ways.  This is what I would describe as a great vacation or beach read.

I read an interesting post about the album “Solid Air” by John Martyn this week.   Martyn, who died in 2009, was described by the London Times as “an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues”.  I remember a friend in University being a huge fan of Martyn and, as much as I tried, I couldn’t get into the music.  It’s amazing what 3o plus years can do to your musical taste – I’ve been  really enjoying the record this week.  Here’s “May You Never”:

And to finish out the post this week, here’s a picture of my oldest child resplendent in the kilt and accessories he purchased on his trip to Scotland last week.  Apparently this was the outfit he planned to wear to see “The Phantom of the Opera” in San Francisco this weekend.

A similar routine again this week to the last couple – Diana working in St. Petersburg, Florida Wednesday through Friday and me working at home.  There were a couple of differences – Diana got stuck in Tampa due to a thunder storm around the time she was due to take off on Friday afternoon, and I had to drive to the Fort Worth office every day for all day meetings.

On the bright side, Diana was able to connect with Merry Lee and Jeff, have dinner at their country club, and then spend the night at their lovely new home in Tampa.  She put a lot of work into making sure that her client presentation on Friday morning was successful and so it was good that she was able to relax with friends.  She learned earlier on Friday afternoon that her Mum had been taken to the hospital by paramedics and was very concerned about being so far away from her – Jeff and Merry Lee were a welcome distraction.  We just learned that her Mum could be discharged from hospital this afternoon and Diana will be in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon to make sure she settles in well back at home.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of being in Fort Worth all week to meet up with a colleague for dinner at the Capital Grille downtown.  We walked from dinner to a jazz club called the Scat Lounge.  On the way we passed by Sundance Square and downtown’s most iconic public art, the Chisholm Trail Mural which serves as a reminder of Fort Worth’s rich cultural roots. The three-story Richard Haas trompe l’oeil mural spans the 1908 Jett Building’s southern facade and was completed in 1988 to commemorate the Fort Worth segment of The Chisholm Trail cattle drives of 1867-1875.

I had been reading about the Scat Lounge for the last couple of years and was looking forward to trying it out.  As luck would have it, a band named “A Taste of New Orleans” was playing on Wednesday night, and they were a real treat.  Here are a couple of their performances.

The Scat Lounge is an excellent venue – just the right size and very reminiscent of a New York basement jazz club.

We met Patty and Brent for dinner and a movie on Saturday night.    The movie was quite unique and different than you might expect – a true one of a kind dedicated “To Patty”.  It featured Chad and his exploits over a 24 hour period.  The version we saw was just the initial “rough cut” but a truly hilarious and very clever production.

After the movie, we enjoyed dinner at The Grape on Greenville Avenue (McD’s favourite Dallas restaurant).  I enjoyed the Moroccan Rabbit “Tagine”, Brent the Crispy Pork Collar, and the ladies both had the Steak Frites.  After dinner margaritas at the Blue Goose across the street put the ladies right off to sleep.  What a lovely evening with great friends that we’re going to miss very much.

I finished a couple of very different books this week.  The first, “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford, is part of a trilogy that tracks the life of Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey based writer for a sports magazine.  The book tracks his experiences over a long Easter weekend when he is 38 years old, having recently lost a child and been divorced.

I’ve heard Ford described as the poor man’s John Updike and particularly this trilogy compared unfavorably to Updike’s “Rabbit” trilogy.  I found the writing styles quite different and, with several decades between the settings, the situation and scenarios quite different as well.  I’m not ready to run out and read the rest of the trilogy but do look forward to catching up to them sometime soon.  “Independence Day” from the trilogy won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1996.

The second book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh, was completely different than anything I typically read, and it’s probably good to try new things from time to time.  I had read a positive review in the New Yorker magazine and it was the book club pick at the Wild Detectives book store that I love in South Dallas.

The narrator is a young woman, living in New York in the year 2000, and determined to withdraw from life for a year in order to escape from or cope with her traumas.  The book is incredibly dark but the writing is very good.  I would not recommend this book to the faint of heart.

Here’s a song I heard for the first time this week from the Chris Duarte Group.  It reminds me a lot of “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and has equally good sound and production.

My boss just sent this picture from the Toronto air show this weekend.  What amazing precision and a great picture that he took.

This week was very much a repeat of last week.  A quiet week of work for me at home while Diana traveled to St. Petersburg again for work Wednesday through Friday.  She had a successful but tiring trip and week.

I met Diana’s stepson, John, at the airport on Friday afternoon and took him to Perry’s steakhouse for a drink and a happy hour snack.  He had an 8 hour layover in Dallas between returning from a business trip to Nashville and starting a business trip to Santiago, Chile (which sounds very exciting).  Then Diana met up with both of us at the airport for a little while when she landed and I followed her home.

Diana treated me to dinner at Gregory’s on Saturday night and Brent joined.  What a delicious feast!  I had the weekly special – scallops with crawfish etouffee, goat cheese, and crumbled hatch chile cornbread.  Diana had read about it and knew I would love it.  We started with a gorgeous duck confit – apparently slow cooked for 36 hours – that just fell off the bone.  Diana and Brent both had scallops “sea bass style” – over the lobster risotto that typically comes with my go-to Gregory’s choice, the sea bass.  It’s so nice to have such amazing food available in walking distance from our home.

I finished the Paul Simon biography, “The Life”, this week.  The book is almost 400 pages long and I still felt that some important areas were too short.  I would have liked to have learned more about the recording processes and musicians involved in some of his great albums.  That being said, there were many details on the inspirations behind the songs, and the challenges of getting just the right set of musicians and sounds in the studio.  The section on the making of the Graceland (one of the original world music records) album in 1986 was very interesting as it described Simon traveling to South Africa, assembling the musicians, and trying to get the right sound.

One of my favorite passages covered the 2003 Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour (that I saw in San Jose) that included special guests the Everly Brothers.  I remember the Everly Brothers being invited on stage midway through the show as Paul Simon told of them being one of the original inspirations for their music, and particularly remember a fantastic rendition of “Bye Bye Love” where Simon and Garfunkel sang with the Everly Brothers.

Another memorable passage talks about Simon performing at the 2006 New Orleans jazzfest, the first after Hurricane Katrina.  Quint Davis, the organizer of jazzfest, is quoted as saying: “Paul and the music meant so much to everyone that there were a hundred thousand hands in the air and a hundred thousand eyes crying.  The highlight was when he brought out Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas to join him on “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.  It was the most emotional moment that we’ve ever had at the festival.  He wasn’t a musician.  He was a hero.”

Here’s a song that I “Shazamed” from a movie that was playing in the background while I was reading – “Holes” by Mercury Rev from their 1998 album “Deserters Songs”.  I hadn’t heard the band before and some quick research told me that this was their big break through album and included appearances by Levon Helm and Garth Hudson of The Band – no wonder it caught my attention as those are two of my favourite musicians.

At last, a mostly peaceful week at home for both of us.  Diana worked hard for four solid days to continue to come up to speed on her new job, her accounts, and the people that she works with.  I had a couple of busy days with high impact outages and other annoyances.  However, I was able to watch some of the World Cup and particularly enjoyed the Japan vs Belgium and Brazil vs Belgium games.  It’s fun to text back and forth with my friend Judy, soccer referee extraordinaire, in California about our predicted outcomes.  She chose Brazil to beat Belgium and so lost that game, while I chose Sweden to beat England and lost that one.  I’m predicting Belgium wins 2-1 over England in the final.

One of my favourite musical bloggers shared these thoughts about the best footballer ever in his opinion, the Scotsman Alan Gilzean.  He was a wee bit before my time, but this video would support the commentary that follows it:

Alan Gilzean was to use a fine Scots term a supremely canny player. He seemed to have an advanced football radar system that allowed him to know exactly where he was in relation to his markers and his team mates.

He insouciantly brought off feats of skill and technique that other fine players could only dream of – leaving opponents admiringly bemused and teammates exhilarated.

But, with Alan Gilzean it’s not the numbers that you remember it’s the breathtaking elegance of his play – the way he could amaze you game after game with the subtlety of his footballing imagination.

Reading about Gilzean had my mind drifting back to Kenny Dalglish, my favourite Scottish footballer, and his goals for Scotland in the World Cup and his amazing performances with Celtic and Liverpool.

On a sad note, I heard of the passing of Henry Butler on Monday, at the young age of 69.  Butler was born in New Orleans and lived there for much of his life, moving to Boulder, CO after Hurricane Katrina and finally living in New York where he was an active participant in the jazz scene.

I met Mr. Butler on my very first visit to New Orleans, about a year after Katrina.  I was visiting some folks from my State Farm account team and met up with Denny and Anne after dinner.  They took me to the original Rock N’ Bowl and then to see Kermit Ruffins at Vaughans.  Henry Butler was sitting in on keyboards with Kermit and Anne introduced me to  him as she was helping him to a taxi – Butler went blind from glaucoma at a very early age.  What an amazing night that was and what a typical kind gesture from Anne.

I like what the New York Times had to say in their obituary:

Mr. Butler’s music was encyclopedic, precise and wild. He was acclaimed as a member of a distinctively New Orleans piano pantheon alongside Jelly Roll Morton, James Booker, Tuts Washington, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. He was also a forthright, bluesy singer who often used New Orleans standards as springboards for improvisation.

Mr. Butler commanded the syncopated power and splashy filigree of boogie-woogie and gospel and the rolling polyrhythms of Afro-Caribbean music. He could also summon the elegant delicacy of classical piano or hurtle toward the dissonances and atonal clusters of modern jazz. He could play in convincing vintage styles and sustain multileveled counterpoint, then demolish it all in a whirlwind of genre-smashing virtuosity.

Here’s one more song from Devon Allman to finish out the post this week: