Word has it my brother may have changed his plans to drive across France this week – even the fuel shortage and overall chaos – and stayed in Spain. May be a wise idea – and certainly not a bad alternative. I’m wondering how many other vacationers are vacating France – or avoiding it altogether right now.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Best Burger in Iowa City?
A writer for Edible Iowa magazine says the best burger in Iowa City can be found at Short’s Burgers and Shine on Clinton Street, made with local beef and home-baked bun and apparently there’s a $6 Burger special on Monday nights. Don’t forget the hand-cut fries and the Iowa-brewed beer including the venerable Amana Colonies’ Millstream, as well as Court Avenue Black hawk Stout, Old Man River Helles and Dunkel, and Peace Tree Hop Wrangler (I recently tried a Peace Tree sweet corn brew.) Sutliff Cider also gets a nod.
Filed under DINING, Iowa, Iowa City, Uncategorized
chicago restaurants – more!
More Chicago restaurant recommendations – from my sister who’s lived in and around the Windy City for a long time:
· La Sardine (French/small) – http://www.lasardine.com/
Publican – a favorite of the chefs – large tables/communal eating
The Purple Pig – small but awesome food – small shared plates http://thepurplepigchicago.com/ (located on Mag Mile)
Night wood – very cool and hip in Pilsen – great food
Prosecco – great Italian http://ristoranteprosecco.com/home.html; Very good. nice quiet setting.
Frontera/Topolobambo –
Spiaggia Cafe. Very nice. A Barack and Michelle favorite (although they go to the main restaurant, not the cafe).
Sepia. Very good. http://sepiachicago.com/ (This one I was trying to remember last week while in Chicago – been to several times and liked.)
Filed under Chicago, DINING, Uncategorized
bigger better river museum – Dubuque
We enjoyed the National Mississippi River Museum when it first opened in Dubuque in 2003. A recently completed $40 million expansion gets a thumbs up from the DM Register today – which includes a 40,000-gallon aquarium, a huge wall of water with sharks and eels, and a “4-D” theater (the four dimensions apparently have to do with mist, movement and smell…”)
In a poignant nod to the Gulf Oil Spill, the new tank will be empty of fish to give visitors an idea of what a fish-less Gulf would be like. Big bummer, that. There’s also an exhibit on the spill. (One of the exhibits I remember most showed how farm chemical run-off damages the river and water downstream.)
The Register story also recommends the multi-use Heritage trail for hiking, walking, biking and a river cruise on the River of Dubuque paddle wheeler. see: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100626/LIFE/6260302/1039/River-museum-gets-bigger-better
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Boston: places to remember
These come from a recent NYTimes story on stylish Boston:
– Haberdash Vintage – This one might be a bit hard to find since a store based in a trailer that roams around the city. But sounds like worth trying to tack down – full of stuff from the 1950’s through 1980’s. (Although it’s a little distressing to see the 80s’ considered vintage.)
– The Institute of Contemporary Art – billed as Boston’s hippest museum. (Don’t remember it from my days living in Boston – in the early 1980s, aka the vintage era.) Current show is work by a “Mexican tatooist” – you betcha.
– Menton- french italian restaurant, complete with Murano glass chandeliers.
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London (Florentines) – takemewithyou
FLORENTINES!
Yes, I have other work to do but instead I’ve been trying, for almost a day now, to remember the name of a pastry that I first had at Louis Patisserie in Hampstead in, um, 1980. Finally, after too much thinking and googling, it just came to me: Florentine – a round, thin chewy chocolate-coated biscuit covered on one side with nuts and dried fruit. Yum. So if you’re at Louis, the famous old Hungarian tea house, try one. Other London pastry shops will no doubt have them. Or you can settle, happily I hope, for a Cadbury chocolate bar with fruit and nuts (one of my favorites.)
If you haven’t noticed by now, I tend to eat “bad” food in London – something my kids immediately picked up on during our first trip there together when they were in grade school. (Is this heaven? No it’s London.) They couldn’t believe I was letting them drink orange soda and eat chips (i.e. fries), crisps (i.e. potato chips, preferably salt and vinegar) and chocolate (Cadbury bars and Maltsers, far better than our malted milk balls, although I prefer U.S M&Ms to the British Smarties) – rather than their usual forced diet of fruit and vegetables. As I pointed out to them, it all had to do with the price of the food. And, of course, we were “on vacation.”
Filed under DINING, London, Uncategorized
London eats – takemewithyou
First, a caveat – I don’t eat out all that much when I’m in London because 1) I stay with friends 2) eating out is one of the more expensive things to do in London. (When I lived in London in 1981, I lived primarily on scones that were kindly supplied, free of charge, at the office where I worked.) That said, here are a few haunts – almost all are relatively inexpensive, casual spots:
– Gordon’s Wine bar – This is a sentimental favorite, a short walk from the House of Commons – where I worked when I used to first visited Gordon’s. I returned last year and it was much the same. It’s a short walk north of the Embankment tube station – and you go down into a dark dank cellar (a la Edgar Allen Poe_ for a Ploughman’s (cheese – Stilton or Cotswold; chutney pickle and a big slab of bread) and a kir or kir royale. (There’s other pub grub and drinks but these are my tried and true picks.) A&N – this isn’t too far from your Soho hotel. Just south of Charing Cross tube. 47 Villiers St.
– Neal’s Yard Dairy– The restaurant I loved in Neals Yard, a hidden little courtyard in Covent Garden, is long gone but this famous cheeseshop just outside the yard – at 17 Shorts Garden – is where you can pick up Stilton and Cotswold (for less than Gordon’s) and try to find a picnic spot in central london (maybe Trafalgar square?) I see it’s also at Borough Market now. Near the Covent Garden location is Food 4 Thought, a vegetarian restaurant popular with students because it is relatively cheap and big portions – or used to be. (A&N – you might tell Mike about it.)
– The Standard – This is a longtime Indian restaurant just north of Hyde Park frequented by Londoners and tourists alike. I’ve been going there for 30 years. Nearby is Khan’s (if it’s still there) which is fancier atmosphere but I always preferred the Standard. 21-22 Westbourne Grove (Bayswater Tube, near Hyde Park – which is well worth a wander. See (Princess) Diana’s garden.)
– Rock and Sole Plaice – London is the only place where I eat fish n’ chips – and this Covent Garden-area chip shop is cute. I usually eat the fish called plaice (hence the name) and I put vinegar on my chips. 47 Endell Street (near Drury Lane.)
– Fortnum and Maison or Harrod’s – if you want an over-the-top and expensive afternoon tea. Either way, these are fun shops to wander in – very British. Harrod’s is very very touristy but the Food Halls are quite a sight.
– Covent Garden also has a good outdoor farmer’s market – and fun scene. On the web it doesn’t seem to be open in the evening but I remember going early evening.
– There’s also a fun old pub just south of Covent Garden – I’ll try to remember the name.
– And Louis Patisserie, 32 Heath Street, is my sentimental favorite tea parlor in Hampstead, should you be in that area. (It’s in North London, as is Islington.)
p.s. I seem to have spent most of my time in London eating pastry, fish and chips, ploughman’s and indian food – there may be a reason for that. Was least expensive.
Filed under DINING, London, Uncategorized
Pyrenees-Orientales: Dreaming of
I’m reading a novel set in the Pyrenees-Orientals in the southwest corner of France just above Spain – and had trouble placing this spot on my mental map until a story in today’s NYTimes Travel section of the area just north of it around Carcassonne, the remarkable walled city I visited in 1978 with my sister (who had been living during her junior year of high school in Villeneuve Sur Lot) Turns out I probably went through the Pyrenees-Orientals – during a train trip from Italy to Spain in 1989. The NYTimes mentions some pricey hotels in Carcassonne – I remember in 1978 staying at a nicer-than-usual youth hostel there and spending a late night at a bar/club listening to live music for hours. I’m pleased to report the hostel appears to still be there.
(Just fyi to my brother: Villeneuve sur lot is 2.5 hours northwest of Carcassonne and Sarlat is 1. 5 hours northeast of Villeneuve. Confused? Best to look at a map)
The novel, by the by, is “Rat” by Fernanda Eberstadt, about a teen-ager growing up on the wild and windy Mediterranean Coast, a landscape so vividly portrayed that it seems like a major character. Reminds me a bit of the atmospherics of another novel about a teen-ager growing up on the southern French coast – “The Last Life” by Claire Messud.
Filed under France, Uncategorized
Paris – takemewithyou
Everyone seems to be going to France. Now my friends Art and Nell are heading to Paris – so here’s some restaurant and hotel and neighborhood suggestions…. Be sure to book the restaurants well in advance. It certainly was necessary when we were last in Paris four years ago.
We stayed at the Hotel du Palais Bourbon, 49 rue de Bourgogne – small comfortable affordable hotel, good location on the Left Bank near the Rodin Museum.
As for restaurants, here are two that my dear friend Johnny Apple suggested for us – L’Epi Dupin, a small gourmet place (www.zagat.com/Verticals/PropertyDetails.aspx?VID=8&R=69318); and La Coupole, a famous old bustling art deco brassiere (great steak tartar, oysters and other seafood on ice. It’s a huge place and we had a great table right in the middle of the crowded dining room where the waiters prepare the steak tartar with great flourish). Looks like you can book online at http://www.lacoupoleparis.com.
As far as what to see/do it’s good to hit some of the tourist hotspots during your first trip to Paris. Visit the Musee d’Orsay – home of my favorite painting by Manet i — “Olympia” ; Notre Dame; the Tuileries et. al.
My favorite thing is to to pick a neighborhood and walk – the Left Bank (where the hotel is); the Isle St. Louis (a small village on an island in the middle of Paris, with great ice cream at Berthillon), Montmartre and the Marais, a neighborhood we hadn’t explored much before our last trip. The Marais has a fantastic free museum of Paris history (Carnavalet Museum)and a Jewish neighborhood complete with delis and synagogues. Sort of like a French version of NYC’s lower east side. Also well worth a visit are: Victor Hugo’s house and the lovely Place des Vosges .
In the Bastille area, we went to a great farmers market – the Bastille Market, an indoor and outdoor place loaded with cheese, tapenade, bread, pastries. Next time, I’ll use some of those bikes now available on Parisien streets. see: http://www.parisdigest.com/museums/museecarnavalet.htm
On the posh right bank, do not miss La duree Royale, at 16 rue Royale, a 19th century tea salon, one of the prettiest places to each some of the world’s best macaroons. It always reminds me of my mom, who first took me there in,um, 1978 or so.
Filed under France, Uncategorized
Loire Valley – takemewithyou
Yes, I know I was going to share more info on Dordogne – and I will eventually – but my brother is in need of Loire Valley info so here goes. We stayed in the village of Chenonceau at a very pretty and affordable hotel called La Roseraie, http://www.hotel-chenonceau.com/again with a good restaurant. (There was a fancier hotel across the street but we liked our’s just fine.)
The hotel was in the shadow of the amazing Chenonceaux chateau (www.chenonceau.com) which we toured. There are many chateaux (don’t know the plural form) to visit and after careful consideration, for reasons I can’t remember now, we chose this one and it was spectacular, built right into a river, complete with a moat, gorgeous formal gardens and a long entrance lined with ancient Sycamore trees.
We picked in a nearby tiny village called Sache (i think). Also went to the town of Chinon which has a lovely Medieval section with half-timbered buildings and a castle (natch) with high ramparts. Also liked the town of Amboise.
Filed under France, Uncategorized
TakeBetsywithyou 