In Vino Veritas
Wow, what an excellent time I've been having these past few days! I'm really not looking forward to leaving tomorrow and heading home to the Frozen Tundra.
I got together with my friends R and K on Thursday night and had a phenomenal Thai dinner. It's been more than two years since I'd last seen them and it was interesting to catch up on what's been happening with the rest of the talk.bizarre non-cabal.
On Friday, my friend and I saw McCoy Tyner in Oakland. He gave a powerful, nuanced performance, but really needed to rein in the other two members of his trio, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jeff Watts, who reeled off a seemingly endless series of masturbatory solos, and appeared to have real difficulty setting up any kind of a solid groove behind McCoy's masterful piano technique, or even playing in the same key.
Today, we drove to Napa to visit the American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts (COPIA). We spent the entire day there. First we sat in on a small wine tasting featuring a Heritage Blanc de Blancs from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, followed by a presentation on the health benefits associated with squeezing the grape.
Then we endured an excruciatingly awful lecture by food artiste, Sandy Skoglund. [yawn] Is there anything more boring than having to listen to a snobbishly condescending pseudo-intellectual art fag run down the suburban lifestyle? How 1970s. I wanted to like her art, but sitting through that drivel really took away my ability to enjoy it on any kind of intuitive level. I'm also going to have nightmares about being attacked by mannekins covered in Cheese Doodles (Flash site).
After managing to escape out a side door, we sauntered over to Julia's Kitchen and had an extraordinary lunch. I ordered the Chef's Tasting menu along with a flight of three different wines selected by the steward to complement each course of the meal. I also snuck some of my friend's pan-seared Foie Gras with mountain huckleberry brioche charlotte, which was to die for. For dessert, I had the Peanut Gianduja with COPIA's honey vanilla ice cream.
We felt a bit gouty from all that haute cuisine, so we walked around the rest of the exhibits to burn some calories. I really enjoyed Michiko Kon's rather gross photographs of clothing constructed from seafood and chicken parts.
Yeah, there are lots of things I hate about California, but I sure like to visit every now and then. Tomorrow, it's back to the icebox and back on Atkins.