Charlotte and close friends

April 22, 2010

Charlotte

We have returned to North Carloina. Today is friends day. Ben visited an old law firm friend, while John went to see his “auntie”, a close friend of his mother's who is in a nursing home. The drive up from Columbia is flat and boring, 90 miles of freeway and trees. Charlotte is a vibrant business center but the drive out to Matthews where John went this afternoon shows how the recession has hit stores and auto dealers, many are closed up along the main road.

We are in the Westin, a large, comfortable convention hotel where our friend David is the convention manager. We have stayed here before and enjoyed it.

Dinner at the hotel's Ember restaurant gave the chance to the chef to show off his stuff. The whole meal was very very good and esthetically beautiful. We started with a flatbread with various veggies and three cheeses to go with the gin and vodka, then on to the menu for the mains. Scallops with leaks and foraged mushrooms for me, steak for David and a piece of halibut for Ben. To go with: an Oregon pinot noir, Domaine Serene. We even enjoyed dessert, Ben and David with blueberry cobbler, and I several beignets with lovely zabaglione and raspberry jam.

Much family conversation. Although John and David are not blood relations they go back far enough to be almost cousins.

The Owl and the Turtles

April 21,2010

Today was upscale. Not only did we say yoo-hoo to the most beautiful owl we have ever seen (sorry Captain--our owl on the bed) and had dinner at a wonderful restaurant, we ate the best BBQ so far of the trip, at a definitely friendly but country BBQ restaurant near Gadsden.

Let's start at the beginning. I had a luxe southern brek, biscuits with creamed sausage gravy, scrambled eggs (damn the cholesterol), sausage patties and hash, while Ben had yoghurt. Then we nipped into the car for the 40 minute run to one of the quietest national parks we've ever seen, the Congaree National Park.

No admission center, no payment, just a lovely walk in the swamp. And it is some swamp. Cyprus trees 300 feet high, waters teaming with turtles, and a three mile long boardwalk through it all. Our owl, a barred owl, was perched on a tree, perhaps looking for lunch, but mainly pruning him/herself. Our turtles were swimming in a lake formed when the Congaree River changed course. Huge turtles. Some water snakes too. The trees are magnificent, the park boardwalk, elevated about one to four feet off the swamp floor, gives you a chance to see all the variety of swamp life as it revitalizes itself. It's a lovely place, which I had thought it might not be.

Then to lunch at the Big T Bar-B-Que, a small restaurant, of no charm, but the friendliest people making wonderful pulled barbecue sandwiches and fries, though the cole slaw was definitely local style. Finely chopped and sweet. $10 for it all!

Back into Columbia. Ben went off in search of his coffee, which he found to his satisfaction at the Immaculate Consumption coffee shop near the Capitol, half a mile from the hotel, while I napped.

Dinner, well, dinner was outstanding at a restaurant called Momo's Bistro on Devine, which has a chef who studied at Johnson and Wales University. His dishes were superb.

As a starter, though, we had a wine tasting with a rep from Alexander Valley Vineyards in California with a chardonnary (nice, but not outstanding), a cab (nicer), a zin (good) and a Rhone style combination which was superb. Then to dinner.

Ben decided he wanted an iodine fix so managed crab cakes as an appetizer and soft shells as a main. I opted for the house signature dish, a pork shank, done as osso buco, though not cut into pieces, with squid stuffed with Israeli couscous and chorizo as a starter. We had a lovely Oregon pinot noir, from Benton Winery in Willamette Valley. No dessert. A memorable meal.

Tomorrow we will leave Columbia. It's not a destination I would have chosen had we not had two free days, but we did enjoy our days here eating and being toursts. Congaree National Park is lovely and worth a visit. The State House is a trip. The University could never claim architectural prominence, but it is not an unpleasant environment. The local museum was fun with its basket show that's coming to the Smithsonian, and the restaurants we visited were worth it.

And so to Charlotte.

South Carolina: Off to Where the Civil War Bega

We left Durham about 9 and headed south on route 1 missing route 40 and 95 for the trip south. Route 1 is a freeway for about 50 miles and then turns into four lanes divided and then into a gently rolling two-laner with little towns, and slowing speed limits. As you cross the pahnee wuhds of North Carolina, you glimpse the gorgeous golf courses centered around Pinehurst and realize what a boon they are to the local economy, otherwise dependent on the pines in them thar woods.

There are dramatic visuals of poverty and wealth. Manufactured housing is scattered along the roadside, old pickup trucks, and sketchy gardens, with magnificent stretches of pines and side roads leading to the large houses. Each of the towns has well-designated good sections and badsections, generally on each side of the "downtown"---though those centers are generally vacant storefronts done in by the local Walmarts, I should guess.

The countryside generally undulates, its being piedmont, and is often pretty but never grand. The homes are often surrounded by banks of flowering azaleas and some dogwood. Spring flowers, though, are all gone. There are some pretty lupines along the road.

We stopped in a tiny crossroads of a town for lunch, Sonny's in McBee,SC. Sonny's, according to the waitress, had been owned by a clown collector--much as we collect hedgehogs. But he had filled the walls of his restaurant with clown dolls, circus posters, pictures, cartoons, and masques. Clearly the sign outside got our interest because we backtracked to lunch there. A fine diner lunch: a sub with ham, pepperoni and salami for John and a grilled chicken salad for Ben. $13, Not bad. A place obviously frequented by a wide variety of townsfolk from the real estate ladies to the plumbers mates. As we were leaving a state forester pulled up in her SUV to pick up her sandwich. Very thick Carolina accents made it even more charmin'.


We spent the afternoon exploring Columbia. Yes, we found a coffee shop with acceptable cappucino for Ben, called the Immaculate Consumption, on Sumter Street. My latte was fine.

Then to the State Capitol for a tour along with two full classes of third graders doing their South Carolina history trip.Fun to watch them. Bright kids with bright questions. The Capitol is a fine old building.completed in 1906 after various misfortunes, including being blasted by Sherman's cannonballs during the Civil War when he burned Columbia. Of course there are statues everywhere, including Strom Thurmond. A fine guide who is still learning her craft. Not quite the guide we had in Montgomery three years ago. But she's mebbe 25, and he was certainly 65. The State honors its black citizens as well as whites. The African American memorial was quite moving, including the stowage formation for the slave ships.

We walked back through the University of South Carolina campus, through the famed Horseshoe of buildings that make up their version of Harvard yard.The architecture is not grand, mostly Georgian, but the plantings are beautiful and there is an air of a fine university about the place. At the museum we saw a show on African American baskets and had the pleasure of meeting a basketeer. She's the daughter or grand daughter of the old ladies who used to make baskets on the main street in Charleston where we visited 22 years ago. I am going to see if I have any scannable pictures from our visit of her ancestors when we get home.

We had a glass of cava on the Inn at USC's verandah, listening in on some prosecutors' discussion of the Goldman Sachs derivatives case, which Ben is following with some interest.

We decided that we wanted something light for dinner, so examined the guidebooks in the hotel (The Inn at USC is a very good hotel). The Vista Congaree area of downtown about ten minutes walk hosts two oyster bars. We set out to find them. Raining a bit, but not unpleasantly cold, we found the Oyster Bar Columbia. As we were looking over the menu, a local woman recommended it highly, saying her husband had had the scallops and she the shrimp. With a recommendation like that, how could we refuse to enter.

The OBC is a bit of a physical dump, a long circular bar with several shuckers and servers behind it, but the food was superb. Turns out that our server was a construction equipment salesman by day working nights as a shucker. He knew his job.

The oysters come from Galveston Bay and were huge. About three inches (7 cm) long and juicy. Not quite so delicate a taste as French belon oysters from Brittany, but very very good. We followed a dozen of them with gumbo, excellent, and then some shrimp and scallops with some steamed veggies. A wonderful meal, washed down with a couple of Stiner Texas bock beers.

North Carolina, here we are!

Monday,19 April 2010

Durham, the city that cigarettes built! Now with the old warehouses turned into condos, offices and restaurants, and a major university, and as the City of Medicine, where 20% of the population works in the field, it's living down the image of tobacco.

It's not very large, but it's got interest. We had lunch at the Amelia Cafe in Brightleaf (how's that for tobacco images?) Place, and sat outside in a rather cute little brick warehouse area. The sandwich for me was huge, lots of boiled ham, a bit of salami, tomato, lettuce and mayonnaise for an "Italian" sandwich, with Ranch dressing on my caesar's salad to accompany. Ben had a turkey and cheese crepe. He should have had a sandwich. Heavy. His cappuchino was disappointing. But, the conversation with a local Scouse photog who was shooting pastries at the cafe for its website livened up the lunch. As did the little girl, hamming for him as he took photos.


We drove around Duke, before getting to an appointment at the medical center, pretty enough, and then afterwards had a run around the University of North Carolina. Where Duke is pretentious in it's Gothic architecture, UNC accepts the red brick of Georgian colonial buildings and comes across as a more human campus. Both excellent schools of course.

We took off to a local casual dining restaurant for dinner. The Backyard BBQ Pit on route 55, near Research Triangle Park. Formica tables, booths, no license (I got a beer from the local Food Lion), but the dinner was quite good. Ben had a deep friend flounder and hushpuppies to accompany his okra, while I pigged out on half a sow with sweet cole slaw and Brunswich Stew,a sort of vegetable concoction. Very tasty, but quite sweet. The place closed at 8 having sold out of all its pulled barbecue and all its ribs. I can see why, it was excellent. North Carolinians do tend to like things sweet, though.

The drive down was uneventful. Virginia's roads are dreadful, they need a massive investment of funds, which may or may not be the reason the State Troopers are out with their radar every 10 miles or so. Lots of pulled over cars. North Carolina, on the other hand, has superb roads, a driver's delight, except at rush hour, when the freeways are worse than the Beltway.

Tomorrow it's off to South Carolina.

Preparations

We are in the midst of packing and getting ready for our trip. Our destination on Monday will be Durham, North Carolina. From there we go south to Columbia, where we'll stay on the campus of the University of South Carolina, and visit the Congaree National Park.

Winter!

It's now April 2010 and we only made one trip in the past few months, to Columbus during the incredibly cold weather of January. So called that the windshield washers froze in the mountains and didn't defrost for four days. We had a fine visit with Ben's sister.

Since then we have had visitors from all over the country and done lots of theater, entertaining, and enjoying life. We had the pleasure of seeing a friend dance in a ballet, enjoy new friends from Florida, see our friend Elaine before she headed off on another of her world cruises. Along the way we dealt with three feet of snow in one storm, and another slightly smaller blast. That closed up the alley and left us without car transport for more than a week. Not a problem, we closed the door and enjoyed it.

We enjoyed and recommend several restaurants from the last few months:

Veranda at 11th and P NW. Very pleasant on two occasions. The food is very good, the crowd quite pretty and young. We enjoyed both fish and meat dishes there. I do not recommend the bartender's gibsons. I shall stick with beer or wine next visit.

Corduroy, 9th Street, NW near the Convention Center. Exquisit restaurant specializing in American food. From the oysters to the pork bellies, just wonderful. We enjoyed our evening there with our friends Mike and Lamar. Expensive but worth every penny. Even quiet enough to hear people talk!

Cacao on Massachusetts Ave NE between 3rd and 4th. Owners took over Two Quails and have updated the menu. Fine brunches twice with friends John and Jon from NOLA, Elaine from RI and their family here. I particularly enjoy the hamburgers with the frites, Ben the eggwhite omelette.

Zest Bistro, 8th Street SE across from the Marine Barracks: Good fun in a funky, loud atmosphere. Nice wine list, good food from the open kitchen. Noisy but we will go there again.

Theater was also big on our list: We enjoyed Sweeney Todd at Signature, a dark rendition of the opera, Armide by Gluck at Kennedy Center to celebrate, magnificently, the fifteenth anniversary of Opera Lafayette, a local ballet group at Atlas Theater, and I Am My Own Wife, at Signature.

The highlight of Spring was the enactment into law of same sex marriage for DC. Finally after 28 years together, we were able to get married:

Now we are preparing for our "honeymoon," a trip to North and South Carolina, with stops at Congaree National Park and Great Smokies National Park, two days of being pampered at the Biltmore in Asheville, a couple of nights in West Virginia at the New Gorge and then a few days in Pittsburgh seeing family and friends. Reports will begin soon.

October and November

We are now into December and I wonder where the months have gone since we returned from Europe. We have done significant theater: Signature's production of Showboat, which was OK, but not really great. The Washington Post was harder on it than we were; we enjoyed it, but it did not rise to our high expectations. And August: Osage County at Kennedy Center, a road show on its way round the country. An excellent production. You forgot how long it was as Estelle Parsons played the lead and truly excelled. Wonderful.

We had a long weekend up in the Lehigh Valley just before Thanksgiving for one of Ben's cousin's granddaughter's bat mitzvah. A weekend of lovely parties made even better by an afternoon spent winetasting in the valley. We visited three wineries to search for good hybrid wines. We had been introduced to them in Rhode Island and Québec before and wanted to see what Pennsylvania had to offer.

The Vynecrest Winery, near Allentown, was the favorite of the three. Their Lemberger, not a hybrid, is an Austrian grape that produces a heavy, almost shiraz like, wine. We bought two bottles of it. We did, though taste the chambourcin (the locals pronounce it sham-burr-sin), which we enjoyed and a shiraz, which we bought. At Clover Leaf we tasted another chambourcin, which we enjoyed. it is a sweetish wine, similar in some respects to beaujolais. The third winery left us cold. We did not find a dechaunac to our taste.

We also had a jaunt through the Amish country on the way to Allentown. Fine, interesting enough, but one horse and buggy is enough...the farms look prosperous, no electricity of course, but the tourist sites are amazingly prevalent, and let's face it, farm cooking is not grande cuisine.