Food Queen

For ten years I've been carrying around an idea -- ok, a fantasy -- for a restaurant at which I would truly love to eat. The restaurant wouldn't be elaborate -- but it would have big tables, comfortable chairs, an attentive, attractive, and knowledgeable staff, and -- most important of all -- a menu designed to suprise and satisfy with a kitchen that delivers the goods. The restaurant would be called “Food Queen.”

Now, given that I'm not in the hospitality business, the chance of me creating this restaurant is zero. Since I live in Washington DC, the chance of me finding a restaurant like this is also zero. And I'm OK with this.

I never expected that I would find such a restaurant. But I have -- and I found not one, but two restaurants that match the Food Queen fantasy. They are all I expected from Food Queen and more.

Both restaurants are in Portland, Oregon. BlueHour is the more conventional of the two. It serves as the corporate kitchen for Portland's advertising community. At the same time BlueHour's menu and staff (both kitchen and hospitality) strike the balance between haute cuisine and comfort. The potential for a pretentious horror of a place is huge. But Blue Hour confounds that expectation.

I've had two memorable meals there -- the first at table, with the DP and our professorial friends, the second at the bar. The drinks are strong, the flavors intense, and it matters not if you're dressed in jeans and fleece or fine Italian woolens and hand-sewn shoes. The menu is smart, not clever, and the food is sumptuous without the pretentious luxury (truffled, Kobe beef hamburgers, anyone?) in which many high-end restaurants indulge. And the restaurant takes up my late friend Jim Brunsman's challenge – no, taunt -- of Portland acquiring the patina of New York with a room that is as elegant as Manhattan's Four Seasons -- but every-so-subtly better and more fun. (Mark Brunsman, if, by some odd chance you’re reading this, call or write. You and Pippa are very much missed.)

If imitation is the sincerest form of appreciation, then I appreciate Blue Hour very, very much. We’ve adopted the ginger gimlet as the house drink for 2006. And the pureed chestnuts that were served with my venison proved equally appropriate with our New Year’s Eve roast goose. The burger is definitely best of show – and to the best of my knowledge, used no truffle or Kobe beef to achieve its greatness.

The Gotham Building Tavern eschews New York style for Northwest vernacular: the wood interior glows in the relatively low light. The restaurant evokes Timberline Lodge without apeing it. But the building that houses the restaurant is an old industrial building in North Portland, in the margin between what was industrial Portland and the wave front of the ever-expanding post-industrial Portland of advertising, new media, and marketing. The building and the restaurant are true to a Portland theme of hiding beauty inside a drab exterior. Somehow, the food and service reflect that same collision and transition of old and new Portland.

The night I ate there (see here) I was full of retail therapy and a deep desire not to be back in my mother’s apartment. I sat at the bar, and started out writing in my journal. The staff quickly brought me around. A wine list was offered; I found a perfect Rhône. The waiter and I chatted about the wine and the menu. I’m not used to having wait staff be truly knowledgeable about food and wine – no offense to waiters, but the chef and maitre’d briefing you on the day’s menu, and possibly the sommelier’s update on the wine list do not make you an expert on food and wine.

The waiter at Gotham was talking about wine. Not about the list – about wine. Like I was a friend – not someone he’s to whom he’s trying to sell a more expensive bottle. And then we talked about food. I confessed that I like to eat at restaurants what I can’t – or won’t – make at home. A second waiter came over. The three of us walked through the menu, talking about cooking, ingredients, and flavors. Finally, I decided on roast marrow bones with bitter herbs, and a fish stew with battered skate, mussels, a perfect scallop, fava beans, and a saffron fumé (I think). (Both were specials. You can see the regular menu here.)

Needless to say, the meal rocked. I was joined at the bar by a very attractive woman, who commented on the bones. I commented on her drink. We started chatting, and we talked more about food, community, sharing meals, and the ritual of the restaurant. It turned out she was married to him. Sweetie, I’m sorry I’ve forgotten your name, but that meal, and our conversation was truly a great experience.

Now, if only Portland were a little closer to Washington, DC.

One up, one down

I wrote at some length about my mother, whose recent adventures in medicine continue, but with a very sanguine prognosis. Mom's home, mom's active, mom has great care and support from her community, and she's even learning to use a cell phone, bringing her almost to the brink of the 21st century. The episode has made me much more secure: Medicine worked, my mom is well-supported in her community, and prayer can make a substantive, positive difference.

Now, my father is quite a different story.

A little background, first: my father and I have a very complicated relationship. His life and mine take very different paths: he is profoundly paranoid, and demands isolation, and I am credulous, and need companionship. He and my mother gave me everything a child needed. He was denied all the comforts of childhood by the untimely death of his mother and by a brutal father and brothers.

I can understand the distance between us. But I am profoundly angry that I have never found a way to maintain a constructive relationship with him as an adult.

I haven't had much contact with him in the last ten years -- well, I walked out of his house when he wouldn't remove the cartridges from a loaded shot gun. He didn't understand how I could be so upset. I have nothing against guns -- hell, I have nothing against any kind of weapon, given the right circumstance. But somehow I knew that gun would be trouble. (I wrote this last week before the Vice-Emperor's President's shotgun mishap. Little did I know that GJC and Darth Cheney shared something in common.)

I was right.

My father suffered a series of mini-strokes sometime last fall. He insisted on being treated at the Mayo Clinic, which did its work and released him. He first went to a nursing home, and then he went home, alone

Now, I knew nothing about this. If I had, I would have been on a plane faster than the Weather Channel on snow in Washington DC. I do medical emergencies really, really well, and understand dimensions of care well, too. My dad should never have been alone in his house. It wasn't and isn't elder friendly.

So as my father tried to hoist himself from his lounge chair, he put his hand on his shotgun, and managed to discharge it into his feet and legs. Thus injured, he was unable to reach the telephone. And so he remained in his house, bleeding, for two days.

When someone finally reached him, he was dehydrated and disoriented in addition to having the trauma of a gunshot wound.

That was November 23.

It's now February 13. Since then my father contracted pneumonia, has had multiple instances of respiratory failure, suffered multiple noscomial infections, has impaired kidney function, and is a very sick man.

And I have no idea what to do.

More to the point, I do know what to do with regard to navigating the health care system. What I don't know is how to work with a parent who is angry, isolated and alone.

Stoned Part I

I'm old enough to have lived through the soul, blue-eyed soul, northern soul, and neo soul genres in pop music. I acknowledge and embrace my love for Marvin Gaye and Arthea Franklin, confess to liking Hall and Oates, respect Robert Palmer, was excited by Macy Gray (before she headed off to her Sly Stone-like exile) and listen carefully for whomever puts themselves as the next soul contender.

So when Lewis Taylor first tickled my ears through the good offices of KCRW radio I took notice, but didn't pay quite enough attention. (What is it about post-it notes scribbled with artist names and CD titles?) Well, this (sorry, may require NY Times Registration -- and TimesSelect, too) kicked my ass into buying the CD. (Yes, kids -- buy, don't download from iTunes -- the production and sound quality demand hearing this in all its glory.). There are a lot of superlatives, adjectives, and comparisons being thrown around about Taylor, but “bloody good” is enough for me. His music is informed by lots of sources, and yet sound nothing like any of 'em. And as a one-man performer/producer, he's crafted a sound that is both polished and rough. No small feat. Is it cutting edge? No. But it is great music that rewards repeated listening.