Am back. Have not slept, to speak of, in a couple of days. Have skipped.
Had dinner at Rick Bayless's restaurant Topolobampo. Was...not good. I hoped to do a Meara-like breakdown, but it didn't work out that way. For a $200 dinner, I'd have hoped to find more than one thing to wow about (the Sopa Azteca). And given all the problems, I'd have expected to see more taken off the bill than the entree we sent back. And Bayless was in the restaurant. Disappointing.
Ah well. More details possibly to follow.
What a shame, Brenda!!
I had a lovely dinner in Portland. Cocktails (I had some fresh ginger and peach thing, and my coworker had a basil and grape and vodka thing...we actually ordered the other way around, then tasted them and switched.) Then we split a strawberry and arugula salad--best sweetest strawberries ever! And some kind of cheese. And then I had halibut with apples and potatoes and some kind of cider marinade or sauce or something, and my coworker had scallops and shortribs with this delicious sauce...(I convinced her that sweetbreads in the rabbit were not, in fact, cornbread-esque). We decided against dessert.
Am very sad for brenda.
Perhaps Topolobampo's non-excellence is to balance the (apparent) excellent of Frontera.
You're making me cry. We had - things that should have been so amazing. What we sent back was halibut that was so chewy I can't even tell you. We ate a pork dish that has beautiful sides, but the actual pork was pretty tasteless. They brought out our entrees before the soup and salad - we sent them back. When we did get the entrees - it was like the halibut was overcooked but the pork was clearly not cooked with the sauces and sides - it had none of the flavors.
So we sent back the halibut. When the waitress finally came back for us to order a replacement, we asked for the Alaskan black cod. A few minutes later she came back to let us know that it would take 8 minutes. We said okay, but then flagged her down a minute later - by this point we'd had the first entree for a good twenty minutes and with another ten, we wouldn't be hungry anymore. So we said we'd have dessert instead. Okay, she says, I'll get the dessert menu.
Five minutes later comes back with the goddamn cod. Which looks and smells fucking amazing, but at that point - just no.
So after all this - and these are only the major points. The table was all wobbly, which the waitress commented on (!?!) but did not fix. Etc...
So, yeah, they didn't charge us for the fish we didn't eat. Thanks? We had a so-so dessert, which we paid for, and a couple of cocktails (including the Patron coffee liquer that Lee introduced me to - yum!) Also paid for.
Seriously disappointing.
That is sad.
(I just meant because Frontera was named the best restaurant - now you'd have to wonder who the heck did that?)
Ohio's security plan for back up data tapes containing names and social security numbers of state employees? Send it home with a $10 an hour intern.
Color them surprised when a tape was stolen out of an intern's car?
Where's billytea? I'm watching Nova about an ancient, marsupial lion in Australia.
I was reading up on the marsupial wolf today, thanks to a discussion in, of all places, Movies. I love this:
Its similarity to wolves and dogs is an example of convergent evolution - the evolution of a body shape suited to its role and resembling unrelated animals occupying similar ecological niches.
For some reason, this seems right. So says this "bright".
MSCL fans - Devon Gummersall (Brian, right?) - is going to be in a new Lifetime series with Lili Taylor and based on promos only, it appears that his character is not a serial killer, rapist or any other sort of murderer or violent criminal. (Okay, based on a few seconds of material - but he looked kind of like he was a regular.)
Also, Keri Russell had her baby: River Russell Deary.
I don't suppose it's any more real and meaningful, necessarily, when a celebrity marries a "no one", but it does make me smile. Contractor. Cool.
Kid's still called River Deary, though. That could be dicey.
