For those who care about stars

Tonight was the night: an all-important, unprecedented all-staff meeting took place at L’Etoile. Staff was supposed to throw a birthday bash for Chef O. They did not deliver. Chef O was supposed to spring a surprise on the staff. She delivered.

You must NOT spread the word. You, reader of Ocean, are in a privileged position. You know things that others do not know. Readers with blogs, do NOT link to this. It is just between me and the Ocean readership. In other words, top top secret, reserved for the small handful of the loyal Ocean trackers.

Chef O is going national. She is taking her message of sustainable dining (I do not know what else to call it – it is multifarious) to the world at large. Her ‘job’ at L’Etoile is nearing an end. Her ‘work’ as chef-ecologist is just beginning.

What does it mean for you, the diner? Well, she will no longer be the sole proprietor at L’Etoile. Others will take over the management of the retaurant. Some of us are working frantically to allow the current Chef de Cuisine, Tory, to slip into that role.

There will be changes at L’Etoile. There will be expansion and growth. There will be, with new management, more comfortable chairs to sit in. Construction will begin in winter. Investors and partners are now under review (if you have the bucks, now’s your chance!!). But after this year, L’Etoile will never be the same again. It will be bigger, grander, a flagship restaurant that will make Madisonians proud and will make Alice Waters quiver.

But it will not be the type of place where I could approach the chef-proprietor on the street one day (five years ago) and tell her that she needs to hire me as a line-cook. Future management would, I’m sure, frown on such behavior.

You want the rickety wooden chairs and the staff that voted Green rather than Gore 4 years ago (thanks, guys!)? Go now. In a short while, the food will be probably even better, the ambiance will be much improved, but it will not be the little star I knew it to be when I encountered it 25 years ago when I first moved to Madison and it was just three years old.

It’s the snotty nose that’ll decide the race

I went to lunch with a person who has been politically connected all her professional life. She knows where the winds are blowing. She’s been around. (She is even older than I am.)

We are walking back up Bascom Hill and I ask her: So, well-connected politically-knowledgeable person, what do think? Will Kerry do it? She tells me – the thing is, tight elections are the damnedest thing. I think Kerry may pull it off. You know why? Because of the flu vaccine! Bush was in charge, people are angry. How could this happen here, in America? He had no answer to give them. Kerry was wise during the debate and said nothing, then did his research and now is campaigning on what needs to happen in the future to ensure that we do not have a shortage again! I mean, I’m not getting my shot because I’m not in the “highest risk” category [nc: she is acc. to my charts, but what the hey], but I am going to be damn mad when November 2nd rolls around and I’m home with the flu! Oh come on, your mind was made up before the first campaign slogan was put forth – I retort (you might say that liberal is too gentle a term for her). Yeah – she says – but watch me with a fever and aches and pains at home! I am going to be REALLY mad!

Sixteenth street pre-election diary*

let the sun shine on the left side of the 16th!

In spite of the corporate nature of the photo (Mr. Chrysler just HAD to have the tallest building in NY – so much so, that he kept the top hidden and a secret until the very last minute, so that it would not be outdistanced and so that it would amaze. It did amaze, but shortly after, it was outdistanced anyway, by the Empire State Building), I have to go on the record and admit that which I am sure has not yet become apparent: I love the “L” word! [And it angers me to hear this contempt for it, as reported on the news last night: “GWB is swinging away at Kerry for being a liberal” and on CNN: “Kerry is losing ground now because of Bush’s successful use of the liberal label on the campaign trail.”]

And so now I just have to lay down my cards and say it like it is. When I hear the word “liberal,” my heart soars and flutters with happiness.

Thus on the sweet sixteenth day before the election, let me take this blog into places on 16th street that celebrate the Left.

There is, for instance, the block between fifth and sixth avenues. Here stands the home of Alexander Trachtenberg, an American Communist who was indicted for publishing subversive books and pamphlets; his defense committee included Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois. In general, this block was something of a “Lefty-Red” neighborhood in the 1940s and '50s.

In the next block you’ll find the New York City Free Clinic (run by NYU). I suppose this could be used as a model of health care delivery for the future. Who needs health insurance, let’s all just rely on the liberal lefties to jump in and do some direct servicing for the uninsured, the underinsured and the never-to-be-insured-under-the-GWB-next-4-years.

Then, we come to Union Square Park. The first Labor Day Parade took place here in the XIX century. Emma Goldman was arrested here in 1893 for telling the unemployed to steal bread. A funeral march was held here for the executed Rosenbergs the year I was born.

More? You want more? Corner of 16th and Irving houses the magazine the Nation, that leftie rag!

I could go on. Know where my heart is. With the “L” crowd and I am SO proud of it.

(*see “forty-second street pre-election diary” post, September 22, for explanation of post title)