Category Archives: 2) Frequent Destinations

A NYC restaurant that warms my Azkenazi heart!

When I used to work in a newsroom, once a year – right around Passover – I’d issue a blanket warning to my non-Jewish podmates: I will be eating something that looks really disgusting. But I like it – in small portions and only this time of year – so deal with it. It’s called (you guessed it) gefilte fish.

So news of a new restaurant in NYC, Kutsher’s, that makes its own gefilte fish automatically caught my attention (especially since I eat the non-homemade fish that’s packed in a jar, entombed in a grey-yellowish  jellied consume.) The NYTimes reviewer didn’t particularly like the restaurant’s gefilte fish but he gave a thumbs up to other eastern European Jewish favorites of mine like Kreplach soup and matzoh ball soup…so next time I’m in Tribeca (I was there last in September) I’ll try to find the restaurant – Kutsher’s (the owner is connected to the  famous faded Kutsher’s resort in the Catskills.) To see what I”m talking about check out:


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Filed under New York City

southwest airlines comes to Des Moines!!

We interrupt this blog for an exciting long-awaited announcement: Southwest Airlines is coming to Des Moines. So reports Iowa Public Radio. Not many details yet – but Southwest recently purchased Air Tran, which flies from Des Moines to a few places. Now the trick will be getting Southwest to fly here, there and everywhere from Des Moines! And to fly relatively cheaply – in recent years we’ve found that it’s no longer the cheapest option when we’ve tried to fly Southwest from places like Chicago, Kansas City or Omaha.

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Filed under airfare, Des Moines

My first Burmese meal: in San Francisco

What does Burmese food taste like? Judging from the four dishes I had at a superb restaurant in San Francisco called, aptly, Burmese Superstar, it’s a little like Indian and Thai food at times, but at other times, like nothing else I’ve tasted. Which is why my San Francisco friends S and E were so eager to take me to this little but very popular low-key restaurant in the Richmond on Clement Street. (Another outpost is soon opening on Valencia Street – I’m assuming its the foodie neighborhood I was in earlier in the week in the Mission.) There’s also a Burmese Superstar in Oakland and in Alameda.

I loved everything we ate:

  • – Walnut Shrimp – the only non-Burmese dish we ate, I’m told. A lightly battered sweetish fried shrimp served with, yes roasted walnuts and sesame seeds.
  • – Tea Leaf salad – (as “featured on Food Network”) with greens, peanuts, fried garlic,  and what appeared to be fermented tea leaves in a sweetish vinaigrette
  • – A sautéed Eggplant dish (the one that reminded me of an Indian dish) (I’m not sure if it was the eggplant with garlic sauce or the eggplant with red curry sauce.)
  • – A dish with flat noodles, chicken and vegetables (the one that reminded me of a Thai dish). I think it was the dish called Nan Pia Dok*
    –  Coconut rice – jasmine rice made with coconut milk and topped with sautéed onions (again, Indian-esque.)

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On Valencia in the Mission District of San Francisco

So we walk into a cheese bar (Mission Cheese)  in the Mission District of San Francisco and there, sitting the bar, is the owner/operator of  The Cheese Shop, a cheese and wine bar that just opened in my neighborhood in Des Moines. I had just been telling my friend S. about it. How strange is that? Apparently there is a “good food” event going on here – a trade show for foodies – so maybe that’s why he is here. We said hello and wen toff to our respective cheese plates.

Also on or near Valencia Street, we visited Paxton Gate gift shop, Bi-Rite Creamery (for ice cream), Cafe Tartine. We also walked past an old favorite, Delfine pizza.

Yesterday, we went to the Ferry Building for the farmer’s market and strolled by the stalls inside. Produce is far pricier than my friend’s neighborhood farmers market near the Sunset district ($3.50 vs. $1  for a pound of satsumas ) but can’t beat the scenery (overlooking the bay vs. a mall parking lot.) Next stop, Potrero Hill area – had coffee, popped in and out of various shop including Christopher’s book shop (where I got an advance copy of a new nonfiction book I’ve wanted for $1.)  Also walked down the Vallejo steps in North Beach – beautiful.

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Filed under San Francisco, Uncategorized

And away we go….Kona here we come

I’m going a bit nuts trying to squeeze clothes for 16 days – for two destinations with different weather – into a carry on bag. But there are worse problems in the world. I’ve got casual clothes primarily for warm weather in Hawaii – one quasi-nice outfit for Hawaii that will be completely wrinkled when I unearth it from the bottom of my bag. And very few colder weather clothes for San Francisco but hoping I can borrow some things from my friend there if need be. Someone from the Obama campaign just called: “Sorry won’t be here for the caucuses,” I replied.

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Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff in Des Moines in March

Remember the songs “Isn’t always love…” (“that makes you hang your head”…); “Tell me why?;”Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” Sure you do, if you listened to singers like Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt thirty years ago.

Remember Karla Bonoff? Maybe not – but she wrote those songs – and performed them well. I think I last saw  Bonoff in the late 197os in Ithaca, N.Y. when I was a college student.  Many moons later I have a chance to see her again, here in Des Moines where she’ll be performing on March 30 at the Temple for performing arts downtown. I’ll be there if I’m here.

This is my favorite line from a Wikipedia blurb on her: She is backed by her touring band, which includes the now deceased Kenny Edwards (guitar, bass, mandolin, cello, vocals).

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Where to find the republican presidential candidates this week in Iowa!

So you want to see a real live Republican Presidential Candidate here in Iowa? No problem – but do it now.  After the Jan. 3 caucuses, they will be gone – several of them for good.

The Des Moines Register has a very handy presidential candidate tracker where you can see who is where when during the next week. http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/data/iowa-caucus/candidate-tracker/

Tomorrow for example you can see:  Mitt Romney in Muscatine or Clinton. Rick Santorum in Independence or Dubuque,  Newt in Mason City or Algona, Ron Paul in Newton

 

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Filed under Iowa

Stellar defense of Iowa – check out Jane Burns’ retort to Stephen Bloom

As someone who grew up in suburban Detroit, I’m used to watching the place where I live be maligned. Not to mention as someone who later lived in Wichita, Kansas and,  most recently, in Des Moines, Iowa. I have also lived in Boston and New York so I am very familiar with the coastal view of the Midwest, as immortalized in the famous 1976 Saul Steinberg map of the world for The New Yorker.

So Stephen Bloom’s obnoxious stereotyping pf Iowa and Iowans, especially small town rural Iowa, in a recent Atlantic online piece didn’t strike me as anything new – especially since he wrote something similar (for the LA TIMES?) soon after he first arrived in Iowa City some twenty years ago.  But his latest attack has raised a stink here, especially as the Iowa presidential caucuses approach.  One of the best defenses of  Iowa/Des Moines comes from my old friend Jane Burns. see: http://sneezingthrough.blogspot.com/

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Well I didn’t “sleep with Wright” but still…check out my travel story in the Star Tribune

HOT OFF THE PRESS/WEB:

Here’s a story I wrote that ran in the travel section of the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune last weekend. For the record,  I didn’t sleep with (Frank Lloyd) Wright (I’m not that kind of girl…or writer. And he is no longer with us…) but I did enjoy visiting the hotel.

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/travel/135314803.html#

In Iowa, sleeping with Wright

  • Article by: BETSY RUBINER , Special to the Star Tribune
  • Updated: December 10, 2011 – 9:21 AM

In Mason City, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Historic Park Inn gets a multimillion-dollar face-lift.

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Filed under Iowa, London

New italian food (and hotdogs?) old church in Northwest Iowa

La Chiesa in downtown Spencer, Iowa is a new Italian restaurant in an old Episcopal church, so you can eat pasta and pizza in a former sanctuary, complete with  stained glass windows, arched wood beams and a big cross.  So says Family Living, an Iowa Farm Bureau publication (that, full disclosure, my husband edits.) The fare is Italian country – more roasted pork with handmade fettucini and”Pork Belly and Apples Two Ways” than “That’s a spicy meatball.”  No hot dogs that I know of. (Just threw that in to test my theory that people are more inclined to read blog posts that mention hotdogs…)

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Filed under DINING, Iowa