the reluctant food critic returns (to places of yore)

I read with interest the Isthmus snippet about the changing Madison restaurant scene. Like any vibrant town, Madison has its share of closures and openings.

And yes, I am looking forward to the South-American-Asian-influence in the kitchen of the about-to-be-opened The Local at the tip of King Street (remember when that used to be Café Europa maybe some half dozen eateries ago?).

Perhaps even more so, I am eagerly awaiting the new Italian place on Sherman. The chef hails originally from Marsala, Sicily – one of my favorite destinations from this past summer. He can’t be bad. Everyone in Marsala Sicily knows food (unless he was thrown out of town for his wimpy approach to cooking… let’s hope not).

But I wonder if the new is going to be taking us away from that, which is already there. Mind you, there are some Madison favorites that I never could wrap myself around with the enthusiasm of everyone else. I don’t mean to knock down some of the State Street standbys, but come on – let’s not argue good food. Comfort food, maybe, but when the need for comfort passes so does the need to return to any of them.

Still, there are the fairly new spots that have too many empty tables for comfort. I do not like to eat at a place that has empty tables. It makes me feel that the entire waitstaff is participating in my conversation.

Take Crave off of State Street. Now, you may have issues with Crave. I may have issues with Crave. But I remember how it provided the one cheerful moment of an otherwise bleak November 2nd 2004. I sat in a daze, munching meat loaf, drinking red wine, hearing the quiet voices of those around me. I survived that day in part thanks to that meat loaf.

Last week, I went back to Crave. I go there with daughters sometimes when they are in town. It seems a “girls’ night out” type of place. Besides, it was Monday and Sardine and Cocoliquot were closed.

Empty. Two, maybe three other tables occupied. Oh oh. Have we shifted our fickle hearts and pointed them elsewhere?

In the meantime, it is Friday and I cannot get a reservation for Sardine. I call just as the office opens and am given options normally reserved for a New York day-of-eating conversation. “No, sorry, nothing then. Would you like to come in at 5? (no!) Maybe I can fit you in at 9:15…" (maybe not)

I have better luck at Cocoliquot. I get a 7:15 table. Is this a good thing? Well, I remember being treated to a dinner there several weeks ago on a Wednesday. The place was only half full. Half full also means half empty.

On this night it is buzzing and so I buzz with it. Come on, it’s a perfectly fine place! They have improved the menu considerably since their opening moments a year or two back.




The snails in pistou are fantastic. The sea bass is perfectly prepared and the fries (unlike at the otherwise fine Sardine) are not brittle from overfrying.





I would do something about one section of their wine list – it cannot be that you only have a Long Island rosé left for the summer! But that’s just me. A summer menu without a nice Mediterranean rosé is like a concert without the music.

There aren’t many places in Madison where four people can eat well, drink wine and walk away without spending most of that month’s paycheck. Cocoliquot, thanks for having us. We wont forget you. We’ll be back. Right after we do another run over to Sardine.



Cocoliquot: eating at the bar is also an option

not tonight dear, I have a headache

It’s not true, really. I’m not a headache type. I get headaches when I neglect to ingest a latte in the afternoon. Never for no reason. Yes, of course, the biggest came with my brain explosion some ten years back. Nonetheless, if I ever use the headache excuse, there’s reason to doubt the sincerity and veracity of my words.

And I have to say, today was filled with interesting moments. Bloggable moments. Ones that point to the absurdity of life and even more so – the absurdity of my own thought processes.

Still, I am not up to the challenge. Tonight I will put my feet up, open a box of Raisinets and read Ruth Reichl’s “Garlic and Sapphires.” It’s Saturday, give me a break.

notes on a thursday

…politics on the radio. I listen to the discussion of the case decided today (concerning warantless tapping) and I look out the window. Separation of powers… Like this?




… shopping for food. At this time of the year everything is photogenic. I hear on the radio that in Russia, restaurants have great difficulty getting quality ingredients. Not so in Wisconsin.




…the rain came down today. I took Mr. B to work. Mustn’t get my new Mr.G wet and bothered. There must have been great anger and hostility within my yellow-fendered friend because he let me down. The two lattes that I balanced on his back…





…spilled. And when they did, he chose that moment to drop the chain. Therefore, in the evening, I stuck my tongue out at him and borrowed a car. It did rain, after all.

on competition

Walking home, I pass several trucks in close proximity to each other. I am mulling this one over: how limited is the marketplace? If there wasn’t a Pepsi, would Coke double its sales?







If the UPS hadn’t offered guaranteed overnight, would Fed Ex grow and grow until it became the mad fat cat of overnight delivery?





I was an econometrics major in college, some thirty-five years ago and still I don’t get competition. If you come up with a quality Cola, wont it only improve the crap that Coke pours into its bottles?

If someone else jumped in and delivered packages with greater time specificity, then wouldn’t UPS improve its delivery as well? Sure they would. And I would never again have to chase across town to pick up that which should have been delivered when I was home. Because they would tell me, precisely, when I should be home.

If someone puts out a blog that is quality, no, sorry, QUALITY, then I want to read it. I want you to read it and tell me about it. Reading quality produces quality. Eric, your blog makes me work harder on Ocean. Wow. Janelle and sixty-five, thanks for the tip. Eric, thanks for commenting.

Next to this stuff, Ocean is kid’s play.

on exuberance

I am sitting at an outside table at Borders, inhaling, exhaling. Breath in, breath out. Ahhhh…Only one more class to teach this summer, the sky is brighter than Mr.B’s fenders, no recall problem with my recently acquired Dell battery, no dinner to cook, no weeds to pull – life is good.

In fact, I am tempted to post this photo, taken a few hours back (it is of an outdoor sculpture), just to show how one might depict the exuberance that I feel at this moment.





Exuberance is an under-used word. It is undervalued and its power is underestimated. People talk of being happy, but even that is more of an embarrassment. God, she’s happy. What’s with her, doesn’t she get the pain of others? That’s okay, her time will come. [If this sounds remarkably like something my mother would say, that’s because it is.]

I’ve heard the phrase ‘youthful exuberance’ in various contexts. Such youthful exuberance! (What, before arthritis sets in?) Youthful idealism, youthful exuberance, mature depression, mature macular degeneration.

I happen to have been somewhat of a worrier in the course of my youthful parenting. (I was, by today’s standards, a young mom). I felt exuberant when a daughter smiled up at me, but I worried that she might trip on her own exuberant run and do permanent damage to her sweet, young little body.

With time, I got used to the idea that certainty was elusive and knees get scraped. Yesterday, for example, I felt exuberant on the bike even though the day before I fell off and gashed my knee. [Those damn toe-clips!]

Exuberance can be aspired to, nay, attained even, in spite of gashed knees.

LATER: of course, exuberance, almost by definition, lasts about the time it takes to drink a latte. It’s evening, Tex Tubb’s Tacos have settled in, exuberance trickled out, tiredness replaced it.

beating the duck

Until my summer teaching is done with, I will always feel like it’s me, racing against the clock to put up a post each day here, on Ocean.

Sort of like this guy, whom I watched today, on Lake Waubesa. I took a couple of hours out for an evening bike ride. I was pedaling, the ducks were paddling. From my perspective there on the shore, they had one up on him.




Sometimes I think that the day wins: I cannot keep up, at least not here on Ocean. Lucky me. My day is better than it appears on Ocean. Lucky me.

tidbit

People’s relationship to Sunday is a complicated one. You hate it. You love it. You dread Monday. You dread your life. You feel like you didn’t live up to its potential.

I like not having to teach on Mondays so that Sunday begins to feel like any other day and I do not have to put much thought into what it all means.

But I liked even more Sundays in France where the village began the day with a market, tended to its afternoon hours with a nice big meal and than basically fell into dozing on and off until suppertime. I can handle that.

Today I put myself into the French mode, absent the market. (Find me a farmers market on Sunday in the States and I will personally make an appearance and shop there. Maybe not. But I would think about it.)

I fixed a biggish lunch for a smallish bunch of people. I opened a bottle of rose wine.





I cleaned up, had a strong cup of coffee to fight the post-lunch drooping eyelid problem and counted the minutes til supper.

One might argue that this is not a full day. One would be wrong.

vendor of the week

I could have posted a break for today. I could have. And I admit it, I was tempted. But then I remembered this morning’s market and in its midst -- the garlic guy. He deserves mention. The man of the week – the guy who makes a living selling small amounts of the pungent stuff.

I once thought Madison should be the garlic capital of the world. The garlic man is taking us there, one clove at a time.

sit it out, or dance?

A tall, older, much older guy comes over to where I am standing.

Dance?
I hesitate. I haven’t done swing since high school in Poland.
Sure.
You from around here?
No, not really. You?
Oh yeah.
Come here often?
This and other places. Six times a week.
Like to dance, huh?
Yeah, though they don’t play the slow ones often enough. People like the fast beat.

We settle into what must be a trot or a two step or who knows what.

Dancing with a stranger is always interesting so long as his palms don’t sweat and he doesn’t wear potent cologne of a distasteful type.

I’m in Chicago only for the night. Earlier, I had gone to the Hopleaf in Andersonville, some blocks north of the Green Mill Jazz Bar. Belgian moulles frites with beer, in a neighborhood that once intended to group together those coming from the blue and yellow country of Sweden.





The Green Mill has a more colorful past, with big names, sometimes not of the music but of the gangster type, passing through it in the last 100 years or so. But on this day, there was only the music, the two older couples dancing, so synchronized that you could tell they had touched each other in this way for years, and the dozen younger types out there on the dance floor, moving fast, spinning in and out of the arms of their partners to the rhythm of Mack the Knife.

where am I? what am I doing?

I had a full day. You cannot possibly expect me to explain it all in a post written five minutes before midnight. I'll say this much: I am not in Wisconsin. More tomorrow, I promise.

a new tickle of the old tattoo

But I love Mr. B! He has seen me through tough times! I was young when he came into my life – barely forty. I have raced down streets and boulevards, with him guiding the way as the wind tickled my tattoo!

Nina, the time has come to put some kick into that pedal. Mr.B held your hand while you found your rhythm. What you need is a Mr. G, with carbon graphite composite frames, attached via index shifting gears to thin and smooth tires to put you over the edge.

I will never let go of Mr. B! Never! Fine, I will give Mr.G a chance, but Mr.B and I will forever ride to Whole Foods and to the Law School together, bags packed with supplies, yellow fender rubbing affectionately against my shin and his own tire.

That was (more or less) the conversation Ed and I had yesterday. And so, in the warm twilight of a summer day, Mr. G, red as a tomato from the farmers’ market, came into my life.

He is smooth as a marble! He sings up hills! Take me home, country roads! Man oh man, take me away!

You want to do one of the Bombay Bicycle Club rides up north of Madison, past the town of Lodi?

I haven’t eaten since morning. I was up most of the night working on my lecture. It is late. I haven’t even a loaf of bread at home to nibble on…Yes!!

It’s seven in the evening by the time we leave Ed’s truck and pedal out toward the Wisconsin River. The loop is less than twenty miles, but I slow things down considerably as I stop to take it all in.












Nina, neither you nor I have headlights… the sun is setting really quickly…
I know – gorgeous, isn’t it?

At a bend in the river, the Merrimac ferry pulls out. A few men throw lines into the river. The sun is a bright orange. I am a bright orange. Mr. G stands out with his tomato red frame.





Maybe we should take a short cut… We’re going only 11 miles an hour and we are still some miles away from the truck…





Relax, Mr. G and I can fly like the wind if we have to. My tattoo will again be tickled by the breeze. Oh, pause for a second! Isn’t that an outstanding looking pig?






It’s dark by the time we pull into the outskirts of Lodi. Outside a local bar, men are throwing horseshoes. We hear the muffle of the metal on the sand and the occasional clang when the shoe hits the pole. We pull over and watch.





Bud Lights clutter the picnic table. The men talk about how in their days they didn’t have the games the kids have today. It is a scene straight out of Languedoc, with horseshoes filling in for boules.





The moon is full, the night is breezy and warm. We load the bikes into Ed’s pick up. He stops at a Kwick Trip to buy a Heath Crunch ice cream bar. I break off a sweet chunk of it. All-American me, no?

It's late: do you know where your children are?

I myself do not know and maybe that is a good thing.

Tomorrow. I'll write more tomorrow. Right now, I am barely sitting up. And the eyelids -- too heavy to focus on much of anything.

Really, tomorrow.

where am I? what am I doing?

where am I? what am I doing?

Valid question. One that I often ask myself.

Late in the evening I let myself be educated on the issue of bikes. Like, why are there $100 bikes, $1000 bikes and $5000 bikes?

I did not know that I could punch my bike shoes into ready and willing pedals (I do not actually have bike shoes), fly like the wind on carbon graphite composite frames, attached via index shifting gears to thin and smooth tires. I did not know this.

So this evening I listened and watched and now I know. I still am attached as can be to Mr. B, but I know why he and I have such trouble making it up hills and mountains. I am like the duck who waddles along knowing her deficiencies. I admire those who have it together and can fly like the wind, even though I feel closer to the duck, staring at the faster, smoother, more together birds and bikes out there.

hidden

Do you want to try geocaching?
Geo-cashing?
Geocaching.
I’m not sure… Does it cost money? Do you make money?
It’s like a treasure hunt: geeks post on the web the exact location of a box…
A lockbox??
…you plug in the coordinates into your GPS (Global Positioning Systems gizmo) and then, using your GPS, you look for the box.
What kind of a box?
It has stuff in it. And you can add something to it, like a picture or some trivial nothing.

The thing is, you may not have known it, but there are hidden treasure chests, ALL OVER THE WORLD, many of them just a mile or so from where you live! But you need a GPS toy to find them.

It is hot, it is humid, it is Sunday afternoon. Ed and I set out.

Ed, you’re going the wrong way. Your GPS toy indicates we need to head south.
There is no road heading south from here. You have to follow roads. You can’t just trample across someone’s potato field.

Fine. The GPS eventually gets us to a path. We abandon the motorbike and head out. The mosquitoes are ferocious. We persevere.

If we ever find this goddamn box it better be worth it! There better be a treasure! I am being eaten out here in the swamps south of Madison!

Suddenly, the little GPS toy starts madly telling me that WE ARE THERE!
I’m standing on a bridge. Before me, a river.





So now what? It says I am within a foot of it. Are you telling me I have to crawl under the bridge?? There's stinging nettle all around!
I am telling you nothing. The GPS is telling you to crawl under the bridge.
(pleading look from me)
Okay, I’ll crawl under the bridge.

It helps to do geocaching with someone who is willing to crawl under bridges.

There is indeed a treasure box. I sit on the bridge and rifle through the contents. Notes, photos, postcards, little things left for others to touch, exchange, share.





I didn’t bring anything to put inside!
You have a purseful of junk…
Okay, I can part with my Whole Grains Card. It has one punch in it toward a free loaf of bread.

On the way back, I see a yellow and black bird, hiding in a field of yellow flowers. Intractable, fleeting, stunning. Chase one treasure, find that and more.

charm

There are some things that are beyond comprehension to those who do not live in Madison.

For example, that you can bike out of the city and, within ten minutes, encounter Monet’s poppy fields. Yes, sure, it will be a black-eyed susans rather than a field of poppies, but still, compare:



(just outside Madison)




(just ouside wherever it is that Monet painted)


All that’s missing (in the first) is the person with the parasol.

And, turn your bike around, head toward the Capitol and there you’ll see Ms. Bee Charmer herself, putting out her ears of corn, picked just two hours prior. There, nestled in between the jars of honey.



"Bee Charmer" corn; the best


Come on, is this real, or is it fiction? It’s Madison.

the last one

You could put on a CD at home, or you could plug yourself up with white strings dangling from your ears, or you could zip along in a car with the radio on. All solid ways of listening to music. Very private, very shut-the-world-out forms of enjoying sound.

Or you could come to the Capitol Square on a clear summer evening and listen to the Chamber Orchestra do their summer concert series.

Last night was the last one for the season. In past years, I would do the blanket and the food and the wine bit. My daughters and I would read, listen, people watch. Truly, it is sublime to witness the light change from pink to deep navy.

This year we chose simply to stroll. Finlandia. Last time I heard it, a daughter was in the orchestra playing her violin. I am sure anyone peering at my face would have detected the same look of dreamy recollections of past concerts and picnic blankets.

Coming together to listen to music and then losing yourself in your own private thoughts. Bliss.



remembering



dreaming



strolling



playing



in the pink light of a perfect evening

crazy, hazy, hot

It’s been so hot that anyone on campus wearing more than the bare minimum looked odd. Of course, some looked equally interesting wearing the bare minimum.





Some people get it right: an iced drink, back toward the sun -- a regular State Street moment.





Me, I’ve been madly teaching. Daily classes, daily lectures to prepare – what can I say, my cooking has turned into a rather monotonous parade of these:

Day 1:



with trout and grilled cheese


Day 2:



with crabmeat and grilled mushrooms


Day 3:



with smoked salmon and grilled nothing


You get the idea. The staple? A glass of rose wine.

double gulp

Doesn’t it sound awesome to say that your child is a quarter century old (today)?

…and I remember when she was just 24…






You’ve done everything else so splendidly, little S, now just stay happy, you hear?
I love you on all days, always.

down by the banks, of the Kickapoo

I have always wanted to go down the Kickapoo River.

I did not say those words. I don’t know much about the Kickapoo River. There isn’t any river, in fact, that I wanted to go down all my life. But I have been itching to kayak again, ever since my delicious run along the rapids of Languedoc last month.

Ed, I say to the man with the boats and good paddling arms, we need to do a river run.

Most people would perhaps not choose to exert themselves on a day when the temps are crossing the hundred degree mark significantly before noon. Most people would enjoy their air conditioning, their ice cold beer or rose wine, their remote controls, or at the very least their back yards, preferably with the sprinkler on.

I don’t have a back yard. To get close to nature, I need to leave town.

Most people, when they do choose to do strenuous activities on a day when the temps are crossing the hundred degree mark very early in the day, set out even earlier. Not me. I have to eat my granola, drink my latte, study any number of things on the Internet. Indeed, Ed and I are famous for starting late on our hikes.

By 11 a.m. we are speeding due west in Ed’s pickup truck, kayaks and bikes bouncing in the back for the several hour trip to the Kickapoo. I feel very regional-seasonal, what with the rolled down window of the old pickup truck, and the radio crackling loudly as it tries to reach for fleetingly available stations.

We leave our bikes at the point where we will finish our trek down the river. We drive up to a bridge some miles up and unload the kayaks.

The Kickapoo has the reputation of being the crookedest river in the world. Maybe. It did seem to twist and turn an awful lot. It’s also not boring. Heavily wooded banks…





…sandstone cliffs, ferns and firs…









And the usual water wildlife. Nothing to get nervous about… [This guy is staring at me, challenging me with his tongue, I swear! Or so it seemed at the time.]





But it most certainly was hot. At times I felt I was floating down the Mississippi, oh somewhere around Mississippi, the state. I doubt the Kickapoo looks anything like the Mississippi, the state, but still, I imagine southern rivers to feel like this on a hot summer day:





In sunny spots, it’s all you could do to keep your clothes on. Empty stretches of river, the hot sun on your shoulders – oh, to be in southern France again and let that wind cool your skin from all sides!





But no. This isn’t the Mississippi, this isn’t the Mediterranean, this is the Kickapoo in Wisconsin.
Oh, watch it! Move! (Does my insurance cover kayak collision with cows?)(Paddle furiously backwards.)







where is everyone?


It was near 6 by the time we reach the landing where we had deposited our bikes. Four solid hours of paddling in the 100 plus plus temps calls for a pause. We are in the village of LaFarge, population 775. Nothing much happening on a Sunday evening in LaFarge when the thermometer is still registering 99 (yep; note the numbers in photo below). Wait, there’s always a bar to be found.

Can you go inside and see what this one is like?
Nina, if I am going inside, I’m staying inside. This isn’t like a restaurant that you check out to see if the décor and menu are appropriate.





Inside, the AC is running hard. The air is a musty cool, saturated with the heady combination of tobacco, beer and fried foods. Gunsmoke is up on the two TV screens. The bar tender comes over to take our orders. He catches our glance up at the screens.

Sorry, not much else on on a Sunday evening.

We order Spotted Cows (the beer), french fries and pretzels. A sign reads “good eats!” Fries seem like the best bet.

Outside, the air is still. I had worried about storms (Will I get hit by lightening? I don’t know, Nina), but sometime when we were out on the river, the last cloud disappeared and the sky turned a solid blue. We bike back along the old highway. The sun is low, the colors are sublime.
















The truck is there, we load up, go back for the kayaks and head due east. It’s dark now – the stars are out. Ed wants to stop for an ice cream bar at a Kwik Trip. Heath Crunch. Save the Last Dance for Me on the radio, sticky everything from the heat, Heath Crunch melting fast in the warm pickup. Am I living the American life, or what?