We get an unusually hot early June day.
According to my weather widget, it’s 105° F outside. That’s about 40° C for you metric folks.
Yeah, it’s a dry heat. But when the temperature gets over 100° in the shade, it’s also an oven-like heat.
Besides, my weather widget is obviously getting weather information from a cooler part of town. According to the thermometer in the shade on my back patio, it’s 108.3° F. At 2:50 PM.
Good surfing weather.
Use ’em or lose ’em.
The area we lived in in New Jersey had a huge Asian population — and that means lots of good Asian restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, Korean — they were all within 10 miles of our home. In those days, we ate out several times a week and would usually hit one Asian restaurant a week.
I got very good at eating with chopsticks. I’d learned way back when, in Boston on a trip with my friend and her father. We were sixteen and her father was there on business. We stayed in a suite near the Prudential building and would wander around the city while her father was at work. One night, he took us to dinner at Benihana. That’s the touristy teppanyaki steakhouse chain. They handed chopsticks all around the table, but by the end of the meal, I was the only one still using them. Even back then I realized that you couldn’t learn something without trying.
Through the years, I got lots of practice. Whenever I went to a restaurant with a fork and a pair of chopsticks, I’d use the chopsticks. This was good, because sometimes I’d go to a restaurant where the fork was missing. Like when I worked for the New York City Comptroller’s Office right after graduating from college. My partner was Chinese, originally from Hong Kong, and on payday, we’d go to Chinatown for lunch. Lucille (my partner) didn’t go to the Chinese restaurants where the tourists went. She went where the Chinese people went. I was usually the only non-Asian in the restaurant. She’d order food and I’d eat it. Sometimes, she didn’t tell me what I was eating until after I’d had some, afraid that I wouldn’t try it if I knew what it was. But I’ll try just about anything once. She brought pigeon for lunch one day and I even tried some of that. I didn’t eat the head or the feet, both of which were still attached. I do recall asking later if it was a local pigeon — New York has lots of pigeons. It wasn’t.
Lucille used to say that every time you try something new, you add an extra day to your life. It’s something that has stuck with me since those days long ago.
Now I live in Wickenburg and chopsticks are difficult — if not downright impossible — to find. And on the rare occasion when I do eat in an Asian restaurant — usually on trips down to Phoenix or up to Prescott or out to San Francisco or New York — I’ve discovered that my chopstick skills have deteriorated. I need more practice.
I got some the other day at the Kona Grill in Scottsdale. I’d gone “down the hill” on some errands: buy food for Alex the Bird, see a lawyer, visit a jeweler, and see a doctor. Mike had some birthday gifts to exchange and the Scottsdale Fashion Center mall had all the stores he needed to hit. So we met there when I was done with my errands. By that time, I was starved — I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Our first stop was the Kona Grill.
Understand that I’m not a big fan of chain restaurants. They tend to deliver mediocrity. This is especially apparent in the low-end restaurants — the ones where you can get a meal for under $10. I truly believe that places like Country Kitchen, for example, serve prepared foods that they heat up when you order it. Food that was prepared in some big factory and quick frozen or vacuum-packed before being shipped to the local restaurant.
Kona Grill is a chain, but it’s one that we’ll eat in. So are P.F. Chang’s, Macaroni Grill, and Outback Steakhouse. The trouble is, all the new restaurants going up are part of a chain. There are so few independent restaurants. When you find a good one (which is not easy in a place likek Phoenix), you should eat there regularly, just to preserve it. Someday soon, there won’t be any independents left.
We arrived at Kona Grill at happy hour. Mike and I aren’t big drinkers, but the happy hour menu did include half-price selected appetizers, pizzas, and sushi. So we settled at a high-top in the bar, ordered some appetizers and sushi and token drinks, and prepared for a feeding frenzy.
They gave us chopsticks, probably because we ordered sushi. Now I’ve never been to Japan, but my understanding is that in Japan, sushi is “finger food.” That is, you eat it with your hands. (If you’ve been to Japan or live in Japan now and can set me straight on this, please do use the comments link — I’m genuinely curious.) I usually use chopsticks — mostly to get practice — but I’ll use my fingers when I eat big sushi — you know, like futomaki — that you can’t stuff into your mouth at one go. I’ve found that my chopstick skills are no longer sufficient to hold together half a piece of sushi after I’ve bitten into it. (It could also be the sushi chef’s rolling skills.)
Anyway, we enjoyed a good, cheap meal and got our chopstick practice. We also got a chance to walk around a big mall that wasn’t crowded with 15-year-old, tattooed kids on cell phones.
Next week, I’ll be in Mountain View, CA with my editor, Megg. She’s already asked what kind of food I like so she can buy me dinner on the publisher. I’m hoping to get some more chopstick practice then.
Worse than the book?
That’s what the review on Slate said: the movie was worse than the book. I didn’t believe it.
Silly me.
I also poo-pooed Mike’s cousin Ricky, who didn’t want to see the movie because it had only gotten 1-1/2 stars. (I don’t know where he saw that rating.) It couldn’t be that bad, I argued. I’d seen a positive review just that morning on a network news show in our hotel room.
Ricky was stuck with us — he missed his flight on Sunday morning and called us to rescue him from the airport. We dragged him to dim sum in Fort Lee and around New York’s SoHo and south Village — which he seemed to enjoy — and then to the Battery Park Regency 11 Theater for the movie.
A few weird things about this particular theater. First of all, it’s on the 5th (or so) floor of the building. You buy your ticket at street level, then proceed up a series of escalators, one of which takes you at least two floors up. The escalators run along the east side of the building where windows look out — right at Ground Zero. (More on that in another post.)
The movie was boring. It seemed to follow the book pretty closely — I read the book about two years ago, so I don’t remember it perfectly well. What’s weird about the movie is that the book is so widely read that you’d expect everyone in the theater to know the punchline — that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who bore his child after the crucifixion. Yet that punchline wasn’t delivered until more than halfway through the movie. I guess it makes sense because it was probably delivered halfway through the book, too. But when the information was presented in the movie, I felt like saying, “Yeah, and…?” As if there should be more. But there wasn’t.
I think Tom Hanks’s acting capabilities were completely wasted on this movie. There wasn’t much real acting to do. Just deliver the same lines that were in the book — poor dialog to begin with. There was an awful lot of tell rather than show. In the scenes in Teabing’s house, it appeared that Hanks’s character already knew much of what Teabing told Sophie — if that was the case, why didn’t he just tell her before? Of course, this is a book complaint — not a movie complaint — because the movie followed the book. I guess if you make a movie that closely follows a bad book, you’ll end up with a bad movie.
The guy who played Teabing — who also played the bad guy in at least one X-Men movie — did a much better acting job. But I think that’s because his character wasn’t flat and lifeless like the other characters in the book.
Flashbacks were distracting and overused, especially the historic ones. It was like watching a History Channel documentary. You know the kind. Where they get actors to re-enact scenes from history?
I left the movie feeling as if I’d gained nothing from the experience of seeing it.
Ricky said the movie’s music was overpowering. He said that was a sign of a bad movie. I liked the soundtrack, but agree that it sometimes did more work than it should have.
But I wasn’t impressed with the movie at all. It was just a visual representation of what was in the book. And since what was in the book wasn’t anything that needed to be visualized, the movie wasn’t anything special.
Did you see The DaVinci Code? What did you think? Use the Comments link to share your thoughts. I’d be interested in reading what other people who read the book and saw the movie have to say.
A Chinese restaurant with a difference.
When we lived in Harrington Park, NJ, we discovered Baumgart’s, a Chinese restaurant in nearby Englewood. We ate there quite often during the 11 years we lived in New Jersey.
Baumgart’s isn’t your typical Chinese restaurant. First of all, it occupies the space once occupied by a good, old fashioned luncheonette — the kind with a counter and soda fountain. I’m not sure, but I think the old luncheonette had the same name. When we took my grandmother there for dinner one night, she told us that she used to have lunch there years ago while waiting for a bus to or from New York City, where she worked.
I’m not sure if it’s still true, but when we lived in New Jersey ten years ago, you could still get luncheonette food at the restaurant during the day — breakfast and lunch, that is. I’m talking about things like egg salad sandwiches and pastrami sandwiches and ice cream sodas. Mind you, this is a Chinese restaurant with Chinese — or at least Asian — people working at the counter, in the kitchen, and at the tables.
At dinner time, the menu is primarily Chinese food — but not the typical chow mein and fried rice you’d find in a Chinese restaurant. Instead, there are other dishes prepared in the Chinese way — in a wok with Chinese sauces and seasonings. On Friday night, we had noodles with sesame sauce (a Chinese restaurant standard) and a mixture of Chinese eggplant, chicken breast, squid, and shrimp in a tasty sauce. My favorite item from the old menu — it wasn’t on the current menu — was eggplant stuffed with shrimp. They also used to serve broccolli stems sliced into small chunks and marinated in some kind of garlic concoction. It was so different and tasty that most of the folks we took to eat there never even realized they were eating the least desirable part of broccoli.
Some years back, Baumgarts broke through the wall of the space next door and expanded the dining room there. They chose an art deco decor that included old movie posters and pastel colors. Not my idea of good decor for the 1990s and certainly not for the 2000s. But the booths are big and comfortable and the place is bright, even late at night.
We went for dinner at nearly 9 PM, hoping to stay on Arizona time (6 PM) for the entire length of our stay. The restaurant was just starting to empty out after what had probably been a busy dinner hour. Restaurants in the metro area don’t close at 8:30 or 9:00 — that’s when the night is just beginning for many people. The streets don’t roll up, either — outside was a continuous stream of people strolling past, the smell of Greek food from the restaurant across the street, and the sound of life.
After our meal, we shared a baked apple with homemade vanilla ice cream and real whipped cream. On some nights, they also offer fresh baked apple dumplings — if you go there when that’s available, I highly recommend it.
I miss restaurants like Baumgart’s — restaurants that offer more than just the usual fare. It was nice to go back.
But I do miss that shrimp-stuffed eggplant dish.
I return from a long weekend in New York.
Just got back from a 4-day weekend in New York. Our activities included:
Seems like we did a lot of eating. We did. I’m still stuffed.
I hope to write a bit about some of the things we did — and show some photos — later this week. Stay tuned.