the champagne bar

"the champagne bar" at St. Pancras train station, waiting for the train to Paris.

24ct. Gold Plated 16GB iPod Touch

I twittered this yesterday, and here's the photo. At Harrods in London, a 24ct. Gold Plated 16GB iPod Touch. 'nuff said.

Dinner at Tom's Restaurant (aka Tom's Place)

Ah, another superb meal in London. This trip is turning tragic!

Tonights choice was Tom's Restaurant, as recommended by an expat friend here in London. We started upstairs at the bar for a drink and snack, then moved to the main restaurant for dinner.

Upstairs vibe was chic and modern, packed with the good looking set of Chelsea. We ordered drinks and a bowl of chips (that's French Fries to you, mate) which were fat and crisp and fluffy and lovely, as well as a small order of their Parmesan Risotto, which was tasty but uninspiring. The flavor of the parmesan and creme fraiche was very nice, however the risotto itself was chalky and undercooked. My friend who joined me for dinner that night is a huge fan of risotto, and didn't think much of it -- and it's one of those dishes I've tried cooking many times and have gotten truly right only once or twice, so I know it's not easy to get perfect. Unfortunately, they didn't quite get it right here.

Chips and Parmesan Risotto

Downstairs however was a completely different story. The food we ate there was to die for. Even though we'd already snacked, I couldn't resist the Seared Foie Gras with Duck Egg, Bacon and Balsamic Jus. While I'll be the first to admit the photo doesn't make it look terribly attractive, and my friend compared it to a Denny's Grand Slam (it's the biggest damn egg I've seen on a plate in a while), it was utterly delicious. The richness of the foie gras with the depth of flavor from the duck egg, combined with the saltiness of the thick cut bacon was, without question, heaven on a plate.

Fois Gras with Duck Egg, Bacon and Balsamic Jus

I can't talk about this dinner without telling the story I twittered on yesterday, involving dumping a glass of water in the name of art. (If you don't follow the twitter yet, subscribe!). I commonly will use a wine or water glass at a restaurant as a makeshift 'tripod'; just something to balance the camera against. As you can imagine most restaurants are quite dark, making photography difficult. So I usually use a glass as a balance point. Which of course I'd been doing throughout the evening here, as I always do. Now I can't quite say that I didn't realize my water glass had been filled, because I watched it get filled. But in the heat of the moment of seeing a photo I wanted to make, I grabbed the glass and flipped it upside down. The full glass. And naturally dumped an entire glass of fresh, cold water all over our table, the floor, and of course -- my leg.

And the photo didn't even turn out that great. :( All in the name of the blog!

But back to the food. Main courses came, and they thrilled nearly as much as the starter. I had the Duck Confit, and my friend dined on Filet of Beef. The duck was superb, with gorgeous crispy skin and delicate fat, the meat perfectly moist with the chewy edges I adore so much to accompany the fatty skin. It was served with potatoes and artichoke hearts, and the artichokes themselves were nearly as good as the duck. Eat your heart out, vegetarians -- nothing makes a perfectly good vegetable even better than coating it in duck fat!! The steak was apparently superb, a point worth noting because my friend doesn't eat rare meat. It's been a point of contention between us where I'm always chiding him for taking a perfectly good steak and murdering it on the grill. He admitted that he had been slowly going more and more red on his meat, and that while this particular steak -- ordered medium (and served French medium, not American medium) -- was the rarest steak he'd ever eaten. And he loved it. Good on you man!

Duck Confit

Fillet of Beef

Tom's Restaurant (aka Tom's Place. Seems to depend on where you look. And Tom's Café is a different restaurant)
27 Cale Street
Chelsea, SW3 3QP
Tom's Kitchen
+44 207 349 0202


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rating: 4 feet
verdict: Absolutely superb. Great ambiance, friendly service (both in the bar and the restaurant), and of course great food. The only reason it's not getting a 5 feet rating is the risotto. But definitely, without question, go.

Vasco & Piero's Pavilion Restaurant. Just change the name to "Incredible Italian" already!

It's not often you get to eat somewhere so good you wonder if you can get back for another meal before leaving the country. This is just one of those places.

Vasco & Piero's is a completely unassuming Italian eatery (specifically Umbrian, from central Italy) on Poland Street, just a few blocks from the shopping mayhem of Regent and Oxford Streets. We had a group dinner there, table for 10, and the menu is prix fix. Two or three courses, choose from a relatively small selection, and off you go.

My first course was a Beef Carpaccio, which is one of those dishes I truly adore and tend to judge Italian restaurants by. I believe I missed on the menu the detail that it was a roast beef carpaccio, which someone pointed out afterwards, so it was actually a bit thicker cut and basically rare beef, not raw beef, on the plate. But it was very tasty, served with fresh arugula and generous portion of parmigiano reggiano.

Roast Beef Carpaccio

When I joined the table, I was told immediately that "pasta was a must-have" at this restaurant. It's all homemade, fresh and apparently quite good. A quick scan of the menu revealed a few choice dishes, but one stood above the rest -- the Hand Made Wild Mushroom Tortelloni -- so I ordered that.

Ohhh, what a good choice. This may well have been some of the best I've ever had. The pasta was so delicate that it nearly melted in your mouth. It was firm under the fork but like warm butter on the tongue. The wild mushrooms inside were apparently very finely chopped, and once cooked was nearly a paste in the pasta that just contributed to the melted butter experience. I savored every last bite, and my only regret was that there wasn't more on the plate. I could have continued to eat until they rolled me out of there. It was truly that good.

Hand Made Wild Mushroom Tortelloni

Clearly you can't enjoy a dinner this good and not partake in desert. Pana Cotta with Strawberries jumped off the list, and I'm sure my friends who left the table early will see this and be kicking themselves for leaving. It was superb, and even the strawberries which were a bit on the pale side of red, were delicious.

Panna Cotta with Strawberries

Vasco & Piero's Pavilion Restaurant
15 Poland Street
London W1F 8QE
www.vascosfood.com
+44 20-7437-8774


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rating: 5 feet
verdict: A superb meal, with some of the best pasta I've ever had. Definitely worth a reservation your next trip to London. And yes I upgraded this to 5 feet… after some pondering, everyone there enjoyed their meal as much as I did, and I think it's worth the rating.

Belgo Centraal

My first meal in London did not disappoint! A good friend took me to a Belgian eatery tonight, called "Belgo". They specialize in mussels, and it's one of those things where if you'd asked me what I was hungry for, I wouldn't have come up with this in a thousand years. But as soon as he mentioned their specialty, I was suddenly salivating for those plump, delicious orange jewels, with some perfectly crisp Belgian frites and a cold beer to wash it all down. He even tried to tell me other things they served. Why bother? I mean really. YUM.

He warned me on our way there that we may have to wait for a table. He'd checked online and no reservation was available until after 9pm. But he insisted it was worth the wait, so off we went. We were told it'd be a 10-20 minutes wait by the hostess, and saddled up to the bar.

One little bit of "false advertising"… at the bar upstairs, they have an impressive display of bottled beers. However they only actually server from a limited selection in that bar. For the real menu, you have to go downstairs. Owell, two Leffe Blonde's please. The Palm (a beer I've only ever seen in Holland) would have to wait until later. It's a furnace upstairs as the kitchen is right below you with an open ceiling, so all the heat gets trapped in this little waiting bar. But hey, that just makes the beer taste that much sweeter!

Leffe

The beer menu. Impressive.

Our table was ready in under 10 minutes, and we were pointed downstairs by host#1 where hostess#2 took over and guided us to our table. It's a packed place, picnic bench style seating, loud and pungent of cooked mussels and spilled beer. It couldn't be more perfect if they tried.

I ordered a starter "Salad de Poire et Stilton" and the mussel pot "Mariniere Traditionnelle". Both were delicious. The salad was refreshing and just enough to get the belly started, and the mussels were cooked to simple perfection. The fries were deliciously crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside, served with a bit of Belgian mayonnaise. To be completely honest my bowl seemed to be from the bottom of the basket; all the small bits. But they were still delightful and nothing to complain about.

Mussel Pot. Fabulous.

On the way in and out, you pass the kitchen. We took a little walk over the catwalk to peer down to the inner workings; busy place.

Kitchen

And from above

Belgo Centraal
50 Earlham Street
Convent Garden, London, WC2H 9LT
www.belgo-restaurants.co.uk
+44 207-209-3212


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rating: 4 feet
verdict: Delicious. Absolutely would go again. If you like mussels, this is the place to go. Their beer selection is mightily impressive, just head downstairs to drink it!

Potter Murder Suspect…

This is a bit morbid, but this headline on the Evening Standard billboard really caught my eye. Seeing this in London, it looks like it's a prop from one of the films. Unfortunately, it's all too real.

Solar Carving

A few weeks ago I drove up the California coast with some visiting colleagues and we stopped in Santa Barbara along the way. On the beach, we met this wonderful man, Brian Chandler, who practices the utterly unique art of Solar Carving. He quite literally etches patterns and designs into wood using nothing more than the power of the sun. With various magnifying glasses, he can burn an illustration at remarkable speed into anything from driftwood to gorgeous fair-trade Brazilian hardwoods.


He's not always there, but if you're down that way, be sure to look for him. His "spot" is in the sand at the start of Stearns Warf. See the Sun icon below.

Brian Chandler
myspace.com/solarcarving
*805) 259-7829


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Welcome to Morocco's. Really?

There used to be a cute Mexican restaurant with a nice little margarita bar at 86 N. Market Street in San Jose, but maybe two months ago it gave way to a new Moroccan restaurant called, creatively, "Morocco's". I suppose there will never be a question of what they serve there.


Last night I tried it for the first time. After a late night at the office, I was pleasantly surprised to see it still open -- apparently they serve until 11pm -- bonus! The place was completely dead inside. Literally we were the only guests. The host was quite cute about it, pointing out that we'd have their staff's undivided attention. This was a Tuesday night around 9:30pm, and it's a new restaurant in the tough upscale dining market of downtown San Jose, so what the heck.

It was "ladies night", so my guest was promptly presented with a complimentary and wholly unique cocktail of merlot, cabernet, vanilla vodka, cinnamon, cranberries (?), and perhaps something fizzy. Bizarre? You bet. Good? Surprisingly so! We were both surprised. My guest insisted it was terrible as she turned away from me hiding the drink from my grasp and sipping furiously at it -- a good sign indeed!

Unfortunately after that, the evening started to break down a bit. Upon questioning the waitress about the size of the tagine's (should we order one or two), we were informed that while the tagine's are usually served with basmati rice, couscous and bread, they were fresh out of rice and bread. OK then. How do you run out of bread in a Moroccan restaurant on a dead-quiet night? Strike 1. Well no bother, we ordered a lamb tagine with olives and potatoes, and a beef with apricots and prunes.

Meanwhile we had ordered a bottle of wine. They won't be serving Moroccan wine for another month, but they had a small selection of California and Argentine wines and the waitress recommended "her favorite on the menu", a Terrazas Malbec Reserva '05. On the menu it was listed as $15; quite cheap for a bottle of wine but hey, if it's a staff favorite, I'm all for good cheap wine. It was OK, really nothing great, but for $15, OK.

As a side-note, the waitress left the foil protruding over the bottle opening so the wine flowed over dirty foil, poured both of us a taster, and then re-corked the bottle after attempting to pour me a FULL glass of wine. Fortunately I was able to stop her from dumping 1/3 of the bottle into my oversized goblet of a glass, which I was already paying close attention to as I'd had to request a clean glass to replace the one with more spots than an aquaphobic adolescent boy that I originally had. Just a little request to all the burgeoning waitstaff of the world; if you're going to serve wine in a restaurant, please learn how to open and pour a bottle? Thanks.

So the food came, and it was actually quite delicious, even without the bread. But there was one, minor, problem. They ran out of prunes. And didn't tell me. The waitress presented my dish and apologized that they were "out of prunes, but they added more apricots to make up for it -- and apricots are better, anyway". Now hold on a second. If "apricots are better", then why are the prunes even in the dish in the first place. And if you're out of them, whey didn't you tell me when I ordered? Or when the chef went to make the dish? I can just hear the internal dialog…

Let's see, one order of beef with apricots and prunes, ah yes. Lovely. OK here's the beef, yes. And the apricots, delicious. Prunes… hm, no prunes. Shit. Well, we've already admitted that we're out of rice and bread. We'll look like complete muppets if we tell him we're out of dried plums as well. I know! More apricots, who will notice! Gosh I'm clever.

Now maybe that's a bit harsh, but come on! I've had moroccan dishes with prunes before, and I like it! Don't substitute a major ingredient by simply adding more of another! Grrrr… strike 2.

As another curious side-note, my tagine was served on a trendy square plate. Our complementary nibbles of camembert and goat cheese and mixed nuts was on a neat rectangular pate. My guests dinner came on a round plate. She suggested perhaps they ran out of corners.

So missing ingredients and side-dishes aside, the food was actually quite good. The beef was tender and delicious, and the lamb flavorful if a bit dry (although my guest insisted it was just fine). The couscous was average, but not sticky enough to eat by hand. Which brings us to the ambiance…

One of the thrills of Moroccan dining is the ambiance. The multi-colored hanging lamps of glass and metal, the rich colors on the walls, the music, the low light, the sitting on low cushions on the floor eating off a low table with your hands, all seating pushed around the edges of the restaurant to leave room for belly dancing in the middle. Theatrical? Yes. But this is part of what makes Moroccan dining so much fun. This restaurant, however, served all food with knives and forks, seated at traditional western tables and chairs. There is no space for dancing, and while they occasionally have live music, belly dancing is only available for private parties. The music selection was being mixed by a guy permanently on the phone and a Sony Vaio who actually unplugged the audio cable from one computer mid-song and jammed it into his laptop to play something else. The waitress said they were doing the restaurant in this way as "most people don't like to eat with their hands, and this is better". Right.

We were offered a complementary desert to make up for the missing ingredients (my date wanted to order it to see if we got a desert of mixed prunes), but we passed and asked for the bill.

Remember that $15 bottle of Malbec? Try $50. Apparently the menu that the waitress pointed out the wine on was a "per glass" price. $15 for a glass of this wine? Sorry but this isn't Santana Row. It's downtown San Jose. And it's dead. Half of what you pay at the 'row is for the ambience. Strike 3. Now to be fair I bevmo'd it when I got home, and it is a $17 retail bottle. So $50 on a menu is, while on the high-end of acceptable, acceptable. But only at a top-end restaurant. This should have been $35 on the menu, no more. And while it may have earned 89 points from Wine Spectator, I was less than impressed. Maybe give it a few years to mellow. The waitress did insist it was the best wine on the menu. Also the most expensive. Hmm. Anyway, with a $50 bottle, two dishes at $17 each, tax and tip, the total bill was just north of $100. A hundred bucks for an inappropriately recommended wine and three missing ingredient dinner does not a good first impression make.

On the way out, the host asked if we enjoyed the wine. He said it was "his favorite on the menu".

Morocco's
86 N. Market Street
San Jose, CA 95113
http://www.moroccosrestaurant.com/
(408) 998-1509


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rating: 3 feet
verdict: I'm having a hard time rating this. Two isn't enough, but three seems generous. I might go again, if someone asks me. I do want to see San Jose grow culturally, and restaurants like this can help that happen. Lower the prices, train the staff, and stop running out of ingredients, and perhaps it'll still be here in a year. All missteps aside, the food was actually quite good.

One hell of a steak sandwich

I've been making bread (or rather trying to), and with the help of my dad have finally managed to get it somewhat right. I'd say I have a successful loaf, but now I'm striving for the elusive perfect loaf. I'll let you know if I find it.

In the meantime, I took a fresh loaf of bread tonight and made one hell of a steak sandwich out of it. Here we go…

Half a jalapeño pepper, grated nice and fine.

The steak; fresh ground pepper, and that's it.

Torn up mozzarella.

Fresh baked French baguette.

Torn basil.

Olive oil, butter and jalapeño.

Covered pan for the cookin'.

Fryin' up nice-like.

Warm bread, olive oil, mozzarella, basil, salt and pepper.

Wine (of course).

Steak sliced thin.

A little bit of the drippings.

Now that's a sandwich!

Is Iran next?

We've all heard the beat of the war drum against Iran. Does the resignation of Admiral William Fallon, the US military commander for the Middle East, a staunch opponent of war in Iran (did you get that? He's a military commander and he's against war in Iran), mean Bush is one step closer to getting what he wants?

This is an interesting article on Al Jazeera with a couple of perspectives on why he retired. Be sure to read the interview in the sidebar from September 2007.