Ah, we go away again...and an update

We leave Monday, June 1, for our fourth northern trek of the year. Two of the others were quick, but the third was quite lengthy, from April 23 through May 3. It included a major Columbia University reunion for John, seeing friends of 40 years, some theater, as well as John's daughter's wedding in Massachusetts.

We drove up and stayed with friends on Riverside Drive in Manhattan in what was a heat wave by anyone's standards. We had dinner at Marseille near the theater where Alice Ripley stars in Next to Normal. It's a rock musical and wonderfully done. Opened here at Arena Stage last year and thence to NY. It is rumored to be much improved in NY. Alice Ripley does a wonderful performance. Ben spent an afternoon with the hunks of South Pacific, really enjoying the revival.

John spent several days at Columbia, doing a bit of continuing education, learning new and different things about technology and the Internet, and we had a couple of good lunches, more important for the conversation than the food!

Together we visited with the Reunionistis at a party above Union Square at one of our classmates. John chatted with old friends, of course, while Ben cemented friendship with his new South African friend, married to one of my old co-workers at WPXI Pittsburgh.

A high point was to take in the Museum of Modern Art with these friends. The museum has been redone since my last visit, and the Futurists, John's favorite, are not all on display, regrettbly. Oh, well. Several are, and they are gorgeous.


On the Sunday afternoon we went to a wonderful performance of Handel's La Resurrezione, by our flutist friend Charles Brink's group, The Grand Tour Orchestra. He is associated with both Opera Lafayette here in Washington and the Four Nation's Ensemble in New York. Four Nation's director, Andy Appel, played the harpsichord for this performance, of a much better piece than the Messiah!

We left immediately for Andy and his partner David's new maison secondaire in the mountains east of the Hudson for two days of rest and relaxation. They are on 15 acres and have views of the mountains, sunsets, stars and fields in every direction. The house, built about 1970, is a work in progress, but lots of space and room for concerts.


After two days there we left for a quick visit to Providence to see John's advisor for his Master's degree at Brown. We had a wonderful dimsum lunch in Cranston, at the Kings Garden. The braised tripe was particularly good so we have since tried it home to great success. From there we spent two nights with our friend Elaine in Bristol. We took a quick trip to Newport for the day, and enjoyed seeing boats being made ready for the water.


Of course the real reason for the trip north was the wedding of our daughter to her long-time boyfriend. On the Wellesley campus where they met 13 years ago. It was a small and lovely ceremony, only six guests, including Ben and John, her mother Lee, and his parents and sister. She wore her maternal grandmother's 1928 prom dress, a cherry red ensemble, off the shoulders, and looked magnificent. We were all very proud and enjoying the event.

She had chosen a point overlooking Lake Waban.Since it was May 1, the leaves on the trees were just bursting out and there was a haze of green over everything. Ben, John and her mother hosted dinner that night at the Kincaid brothers Sibling Rivalry in South Boston, an excellent restaurant owned by the Washington-based Kincaid's with a reasonably priced prix-fixe menu that offered something for all of us from herbivores to carnivores.

We had a quick trip home, stopping overnight in Philadelphia with friends Paul and Linda.

Since then, we have done significant theater:

Giant, at Signature, a new musical based on the Edna Ferber novel made popular by the Liz and Rock film of the same name in 1957. We gave it a roaring A, but the reviews have been mixed. Partly, we think because of the length at four hours. The music by Michael John Lachiuso is very good.

Arcadia, at the Folger, one of Tom Stoppard's best plays ever, examining through two different eras the worth of mankind. Holly Twyford, who starred in the Little Dog Laughed a few months ago at Signature, is a wonderful lead. We gave it an A.

Rock n Roll, at the Studio, also by Tom Stoppard, examining the way man plays on man with a background of the 1968 Czech revolution against the Soviets, including subsquent evens. We gave it an A.

See What I Wanna See, a musical at Signature, with book, lyrics and music by Michael John Lachiuso. Not a great place. Based on the Japanese stories of Rashomon. B- at best.

And now we pack for our trip north again.

Planning for the summer

I had planned to write in the blog over the winter, but we got involved in the whirl of visitors, theater, and so forth Some highlights: we had friends from NY for the Inauguration of President Obama, a really great time. They went to the Mall to see what they could and were electrified by the event.

We had a couple of trips out of town in January, to Charleston, West Virginia, and to Brewster, NY. This was not our first trip to Charleston, where we stayed comfortably at the Marriott and had dinner at a local seafood restaurant in the city's large shopping center.

Our latest major event was to the San Francisco Bay Area, for a friend's 70th birthday party at the Menlo Park Circus, an equestrian club in Atherton. A party not to be forgotten. We spent a day in San Francisco with old friends, had an afternoon at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with a couple of exhibits that brought back the happenings of the 1960s. We lunched at the reputed best dim sum restaurant, the Canton Restaurant at 655 Folsom Street, and dined with family friends at Liberty Cafe, 316 Coleridge, on excellent chicken pot pie, the best we have ever had.

The trip out and back on Continental through Houston, to San Jose, was uneventful.

Since then we have stayed home, though we had dinner at Restaurant Eve on Pitt Street, Alexandria, VA, this past weekend. The tasting menu, courtesy of one of our best friends, was just exquisite, with an individual wine to go with each course. Loved it. Could go every night! I will stick my neck out to say that it is the best restaurant we've been to in the area in years. Service, food,wine, setting, all very lovely.

Last year after the great Western progress we did a couple of trips to the beach to see friends: One to Asbury Park where friends Patrick and Michael have bought a restored Victorian and entertain us well, and to Longport, where friends Paul and Linda have a gorgeous view of the water, steps from the front door, where we regularly watch the cloud formations as they skirt the coast over the Atlantic.

This year we look forward to a spring and summer of travel:

To New York for a Columbia reunion, a few days upstate at friends' new home, a visit to Rhode Island to friend Elaine's for lobster, and then to Boston for daughter's wedding. More to come on all that.

Then in June to Cambridge for a Harvard reunion followed by four days on the Maine coast in Ogunquit and Bar Harbor, a trip across the state into Canada and then five days in the Quebec countryside and Montreal.

In August we will revisit Brittany in France, have a few days in Paris, and thence to the Benelux countries for a car trip.

Studio Theater's "Road to Mecca" and Cork Wine Bar

Saturday, October 18. Studio Theater's Road to Mecca finishes its run tonight. It's a dark play about South Africa's rural life, brought to the stage as the plight of a late middle-aged woman, Helen Martins, a real artist, who builds her own garden of statues all facing Mecca and lights her home with candles and reflective glass to brighten her life--all to the astonishment and disapproval of her Afrikaner fellow villagers. This play brings out strongly the need for freedom and imagination. Running along with this is the love the local Dutch Reformed pastor has for her, never requited, and the visits of a young woman, Elsa, from Capetown who provides a mother-daughter role for both of them, badly in need of affection. Another subtext is the issue of apartheid and the effects on the people in the village both African and Afrikaner. A superb play by Athol Fugard written in 1974. Ben and John's grade: A.

Following the excellent production at Studio, we walked up 14th Street to Cork, a wine bar, strongly recommended by the Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema. It's a fine tapas bar with dishes built for two as small portions. We enjoyed a 2005 Beaujolais Fleurie coupled with smoked trout with fennel and mache, duxelles of mushroom with onion spread on toast, then salsify caramelized with walnuts, scallops in a light curried cream sauce and stuffed quail. A lovely meal, highly recommended. No reservations. We did not try the wines by the flight, which looked very interesting. The bar was offering flights of pinot noir and vins crémants. The crowd is younger, and the restaurant is quite loud. Very pretty people. Approximately $40-$50 per person.

Lieutenant of Inishmore & Dinner at Bistro Bis

Friday, October 10, we were bloodied by the Lieutenant of Inishmore, by Anglo-Irish playwright, Martin McDonagh. Set in the 70s on the Isle of Aran, the play is a black comedy about the splinter Irish National Liberation Army and its attitudes about life. Centered on the death of a black cat, Wee Thomas, lovingly owned by the Lieutenant, Padriac, its humor reaches through sexuality, murder, sado-masochism, and general stupidity to engage the audience.

The play is bloody, finishing with hacked bodies in pieces on the stage in a pool of pseudo-blood. It is gruesome, with the blinding of a group of terrorists. It is sad and witty. At Signature Theater, Arlington, VA. A performance that gets Ben and John's A.

Saturday, October 11, we were entertained by friends visiting from Wales with dinner at the Bubens' Bistro Bis restaurant in the Hotel George on E Street near the Capitol. A superb dinner in the restaurant's bar, quieter than the main dining room. Thanks to our friends we enjoyed an Oregon Pinot Gris from Torii Mor Vineyard 2007 to begin, with crab cakes for our hosts, quenelles of seafood for Ben and lobster bisque for me. Following that we enjoyed a Sonoma Russian River Valley Emeritus Pinot Noir 2006, full bodied with lush fruit, joining mains of skate for Ben and one visitor, halibut for the other and sweetbreads zangara for me with spinach. Wonderfully done. They finished with chocolate tortes with raspberries; a small cheese plate of Portuguese manchego-style, Nancy Camembert, and Stilton blue with various crackers and preserves for us. A lovely meal. Thanks to our visitors.

Bistro Bis, in the Hotel George, 15 E Street, NW, Washington. Approx. $100/person.

Obelisk, as fine as ever!

It has been fifteen or so years since we ate at Obelisk. We'd continued to hear good things about the small Dupont Circle restaurant, on P Street, NW, but had never quite had the occasion to go. That changed this weekend with the arrival of friends from New York who had eaten there 11 years ago and wanted to retry Peter Pastan's fine Italian cuisine.

The restaurant certainly lived up to every expectation.

As a prix fixe restaurant there are minimal choices for the mains, pastas and desserts with the house making your decisions for cheeses and antipasti. Whether you make the choice or the house chooses, all are excellent.

For starters the server delivers a series of five antipasti, ours were creamy mozzarella-like cheese, followed by toast with chopped tomato, a swordfish taste, a roll of various meats sliced wafer thin, and crab with green beans. Coupled with our hosts' choice of a Temerezano (spelling?) white, the evening began beautifully.

Our pastas were excellent. Ben and I both had fettucine with sea urchin, while our visitors enjoyed gortole with lamb ragù. The ragù bettered my own version. The sea urchin sauce was lovely. We enjoyed our first red with this course, a Dolcetto, which was beautifully full, almost too full, to go with the meal.

The mains offered included sea bass, which Ben had, a thick pork chop, which I had, and our hosts had guinea hen. All were wonderful. The chop, in particular, was luscious and nicely pink.

The restaurant then follows with a small plate of three cheeses, all exquisite and dessert, which in our case was raspberry and fig tart.

Our third wine was an lovely, lighter, Barbera d'Alba, which we really enjoyed.

There is no fault to find with Obelisk. It continues to be as wonderful as it has been for many years, 20 to our knowledge!

Bistro D'oc...a fine dinner

Monday, September 15, dinner with friends at Bistro D'oc, 518-10th Street, NW, Washington.

Bistro D'oc is small, very old, in a building across the street from Ford's Theater. It's normally a very touristy street, but at 8pm on a Monday night it was less than busy. On arrival we waited at the bar with an Alsace pinot gris for Ben and Stella D'artois beers for me and our host. We were seated after the wait staff cleaned off a table and along came the board of specials, all very French, and I gather, often representative of the food of the southern part of France, Languedoc.

As an aside, Languedoc means language of oc, which is how the southern French from that region pronounced the word "yes".

We made our decisions: Starters were lamb brains for me, watercress soup, to replace the lobster bisque which had run out, for Ben and our host, and a boudin noir for our fourth. Then the mains were tripe with capers for me, beef small ribs for our host, lamb's liver for our fourth and mussels with frites for Ben. We enjoyed the meals though our host found the watercress soup ordinary. Ben enjoyed his. Our fourth asked for a side of frites, but they tended to be a bit underdone. When told, the waiter did not charge us for them.

The wine list tends to be a bit pricey, but we had a very nice Languedoc syrah and a Gigondas from the Rhone, both about $45.

The atmosphere is very bistro with an old tin ceiling, lots of bright lights and old fashioned chairs and tables scattered about the room. There is a bar with stools and a bay window out to 10th Street. A pleasant room, though we found the lights a bit glaring.

A good meal. If you avoid the wines you can eat reasonably. Probably $40 per person with a drink and tip. Our's was more, of course, because of two rounds of drinks and two bottles of wine.

Ace at Signature Theater

"Ace", the latest production at Arlington, Virginia's Signature Theater is a lovely piece. Its music is good, its acting is superb, the kids who have the leads are superb and the plot line holds your interest. The play is about a mother who had been determined to keep from her son the family history of flying. Her husband crashed and left her pregnant in World War II, her husband's father crashed and left his wife pregnant in World War I. The mother suffers from significant suicidal depression over the thought of losing her son, but in the end decides to fill in the blanks of her son's life.

The sets give a fine illusion of flying, from Sopwith Camels over Germany to Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers over Chiangmai, Thailand when it was occupied by the Japanese.

We don't understand why Peter Marks at the Washington Post didn't like it. Conversations with friends who have seen it add to our feeling that this production will do well. It's a premiere here and will go on, we expect, to Broadway. Our New York brethren will enjoy it.

We have not been dining out much lately.

A couple of weeks ago we spent four days at the Jersey shore staying with friends in their Victorian house in Asbury Park. We "did" the craft fair in adjoining Ocean Grove, where we did not eat deep-friend Oreo cookies. We roasted a bit on the beach during the afternoon and enjoyed a Saturday night fireworks with the sound of surf in the background. We even went out and danced some at the local club, the Paradise Lounge. The crowd was hot enough for our hosts to return to the club after we thought we had called it a night. And the music, though loud, did have a good disco thump to it.

We continued our study of diners adjacent to the New Jersey turnpike. The last, Liberty II Diner, on U.S. Route 130 north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike access spur, near Bordentown, was enjoyable. Very large Greek style sandwiches.