cellio | Entries tagged with restaurants

My parents' 50th wedding anniversary was last week, and we threw a luncheon party for them today at Iris and Ivory Tea House in Cheswick (Pittsburgh suburbs). They treated us very well and on that basis I recommend them for parties up to around 70 people (their maximum capacity).

The tea house is closed on Sundays except for private parties like ours, so we were not sharing the place, and the attention of the staff, with anybody else (a concern I had when looking at party rooms in larger places). Michelle, Angela, and Vanessa were extremely attentive, taking care of our every need promptly while never ever being in the way. The room was beautifully set. (We were in the Iris Room, which looks like it could comfortably hold up to around 40 people.)

The food was tasty and well-presented. The tossed salads had plenty of "real" vegetables, not the often-found mound of greens with two cucumber slices and a few cherry tomatoes. The tilapia was flavorful, and I heard good things about the other dishes. There was not as much variety in the roasted vegetables as I'd hoped for, but they were good nonetheless. (The squash-averse might have a different opinion on that.) The portions were filling and not excessive.

They do not have a liquor license but invited us to bring wine (or spirits) if we wanted, on condition that we pour it ourselves. They provided openers and ice buckets for our (white) wine, so that was no trouble at all. They also said we were welcome to bring in our own cake, which we did, though they could have provided desserts.

They are normally open for lunch and tea but not for dinner (except for catering business like ours). So I was in the possibly-unusual position of choosing a party venue without ever having eaten there, but I got a favorable impression from talking with them so I decided to go for it. I'm glad I did; it worked out very well.

Coriander is an Indian restaurant in Squirrel Hill that opened last fall. We finally tried them a month or so ago for the Sunday buffet and I was impressed. I've since been there for lunch once more and hope to try them for dinner sometime. (And more Sundays. And maybe the occasional group take-out order from work. You get the idea. You can play along too, you know. Well, if you're local.)

The buffet ($8.95) has a nice spread of both meat and vegetarian dishes, along with soups, nan, chutneys, and desserts, which they keep well-stocked (I never saw an empty pan) and at appropriate temperatures. I couldn't actually find some of what I ate at the buffet on the menu on their web site, which makes me think they may be trying out new dishes or making things that are seasonal (so they don't want to put them on the print menu). Pure speculation; I didn't think to ask.

The standards are there, of course -- tandoori chicken, chana masala, some paneer, some potato dish, etc. Noticably absent both times were lentils; I thought dal was a fixture of Indian restaurants. (Though I didn't investigate the soups; it's been a hot summer.) The first time I went they had papadun (those thin wafers, one of my favorites); the second time they didn't. Both times they also had some sort of tasty vegetable fritters that I didn't recognize. The menu has one section titled "South India", which makes me wonder if the rest is from the north. (I don't know what characterizes the difference, but you might so I mention it.)

The flavors were nicely balanced with the spicier dishes being spicy but not overwhelming and the mild dishes being mild the way they're supposed to be. I didn't encounter anything hot other than one chutney (which was so-labelled). I'm used to chana masala (that's the dish with chickpeas and spices in a tomato-based sauce) being kind of bland, but theirs is nicely flavored and the chickpeas are not overcooked the way they sometimes are. The nan (flatbread) was tasty with and without the various chutneys (all the standard ones were there).

The rice pudding (first visit) was so-so. The vanilla custard (second visit) was excellent (though I wondered if it should be a little thicker). I have yet to see those cheese balls in syrup that are oh so addictive and probably terrible for me. :-)

The challenge of a buffet, often, is getting drinks refilled, since the waiters aren't coming by to bring you food on a regular basis. Both times I found the service to be attentive; I never ran out of water and plates got cleared away mostly invisibly (while I was at the buffet).

Someday I'll presumably order from the menu and be able to talk about that experience, but when the buffet is an option I'm likely to always prefer that for the variety.

( gaming )

( SCA afternoon )

( cookout )

And tonight, to celebrate Dani's birthday, we went out to Casbah for dinner, where we learned that sitting on their (enclosed) patio during a thunderstorm still poses challenges, primarily acoustic. (But also some dampness because it's not completely enclosed; we ended up asking to move to another table partway through the meal.)

One of Casbah's standard appetizers is a cheese plate. The specific cheeses vary, but you can always get an assortment. Tonight all three of the cheeses we got were clear winners. Dani wrote the names down, though we've tried in the past to find cheeses we've eaten there and it's never worked out so far. Maybe this time will be different, but I'm not holding my breath.

When Chaya, a Japanese restaurant, first showed up in Squirrel Hill the sushi was excellent -- best within reasonable range of my house at the time -- and the portions generous. Over time the portion sizes diminished and the quality wasn't as consistent -- still very good, but combined with them having only seven tables and not taking reservations (just making people wait in line), we stopped going there as often. Then a year or two Sakura showed up and their sushi was just as good, so we stopped trying to go to Chaya.

A few months ago Chaya moved to a bigger location (a block up the road). We tried to go there a few weeks ago but the line deterred us. Last night I gave them another try (no visible line).

( better decor, food decent, portions iffy, service bad )

( Read more... )

Hokkaido is a fairly new (to Pittsburgh) seafood restaurant on that stretch of Browns Hill Road leading from Squirrel Hill down to Homestead. (It's a chain; link is to their corporate page.) Dani and I went there for the first time Saturday night after Shabbat (around 9:30).

( Read more... )

Today's mail brought fruitcake goodies from

browngirl, who is way too good to me. Photos of the lovely decorations will be posted after Shabbat.

Today for lunch I went with a group to Little Tokyo Bistro, which has replaced Sushi Two on the South Side. The sushi was fresh and tasty and the portions generous. Ir is the way of local sushi places for portions to start large and shrink over time; I hope that doesn't happen too quickly here. (I don't know how long they've been there, since I get up that way much less frequently since we moved farther away.)

Of the eight of us seven ordered sushi, but we still had our meals in a reasonable amount of time. (I only saw one sushi chef.) The staff members were pleasant.

There was music (American, not Japanese) and it was a little too loud, but they turned it down when we asked them to. There was also a TV showing CNN in my field of vision, which turned out to be distracting, but I didn't ask them to turn it off. (I find that TV draws my eye even if I don't care, and doubly so when there is text. CNN always has a text crawl...) So if you want atmosphere this might not be the place for you, but if you want good sushi, check it out.

Usually mail addressed to "resident" is a write-off, but yesterday we got a letter in a small envelope with a handwritten address to "current resident", which is unusual. Inside was a postcard/photo of our house from circa 1930. The accompanying letter explained that the writer had found it in a scrapbook and since it actually had an address written on the back, she wanted to send it to us, whomever we were, assuming the house was still standing. Neat! So we're going to send back a current picture, along with one of its near-twin two houses up. (Ours and the other house are mirror images of each other.)

The South Side, where I work, has been devoid of Indian food -- until now. Sree's, of CMU lunch-cart fame, has set up a satellite in a kiosk at the end of our block. Yay! An actual restaurant would be better, but I'll take "surprise vegetarian combo of the day" in steamer trays if necessary. It's still pretty good. Qdoba, let's just be friends, ok? :-) (I actually bring my lunch almost all the time, eating out maybe once every couple weeks, but when I do go out it's usually for the pseudo-Mexican salad.)

Quote of the day: "See, in Java, they force you to hack your way through the jungle with a machete. In perl they give you a flamethrower, and afterward you root around in the ashes for the data you wanted. The styles are somewhat different." -

dvarin, here.

You can get almost anything at Amazon (link from

merle_). Be sure to read the reviews.

The digitize-our-albums-and-tapes-before-they-rot project is still mainly in analysis mode (figuring out where to acquire what), though we're grabbing the low-hanging fruit as we see it. This will take some time. Meanwhile, we learned tonight that while you can nominally share your iTunes library with other machines on the local network, you can't actually do much with that -- you can't add non-local files to playlists or iPods, which sort of defeats the purpose, no? (And iTunes has to be running on both machines to even listen.) Just copying the files from one iTunes directory to another doesn't seem to do the trick, either. Sigh. Are we really going to have to import everything CD by CD and track by track (for the downloads) in order to share everything?

( Read more... )

Since coming home from Pennsic I've noticed a new restaurant on my way to and from services on Shabbat. The restaurant is Sakura, on Forbes near Shady, and is where Hunan Kitchen used to be (which is where Zen Garden was before that, Ze'eb's before that, and Sweet Basil before that -- it's an unlucky location for staying power). Choir practice ended early tonight, so Dani and I checked it out.

I had the regular (non-deluxe) sushi platter, and Dani had hibachi beef. Dani liked the beef, which came with vegetables, rice with stuff in it (not plain white rice but more like fried rice), and two different dipping sauces for the meat. The sushi was very good; the fish was quite fresh, the portions were generous, and the rice had the right amount of cohesion while still maintaining a nice texture. (In other words, it neither fell apart nor was overcooked.) The presentation was also lovely, eight pieces of nigiri (?) sushi radiating out from a set of maki rolls in the center. There was almost enough pickled ginger -- which is to say, more than most people would expect or call reasonable. (I'm a ginger fiend.) Much to their credit, there was no stupid little plastic green thing that I suppose is supposed to suggest foliage but never does.

Both dinners came with the canonical salad (ginger dressing; no other options offered) and miso soup. The salad was pretty good; the soup tasted fine but didn't have as much tofu in it as I'm used to. The bowl was also smaller than normal, though not unreasonable.

Because we were, after all, in Squirrel Hill, I asked the waitress if the sushi chef understands the directive "kosher species only". (The one at Chaya does, which is why I thought to try.) She said she didn't think so and that she personally did not, but she'd be happy to help: what can't I eat? I started to answer but then asked if, instead, she could tell me what was on the platter. I also said that if this was too much trouble I would just order a la carte. She said no, she wanted to help me, and everything on the platter was fine anyway with no substitutions needed. (I don't think I've ever seen a platter that didn't come with shrimp before.) I suppose the mix might change from day to day, though, so I might just order a la carte next time. It's not that much more expensive.

The menu had what I've come to recognize as "all the usual Japanese entrees", along with some chef's specials that were unfamiliar (but all involved meat). They might be light on vegetarian dishes; I noticed an udon bowl and a veggie tempura. I didn't examine that part of the menu carefully, though, as I was interested in sushi.

One oddity: Dani ordered green tea and they brought him a pot. Toward the end of the meal we noticed a piece of string between the pot and lid. I hadn't expected a tea bag.

The prices seemed comparable to other local Japanese restaurants (a little lower than Chaya), but the sushi portions (at least) were appreciably bigger. (Half-again Chaya's, at least.) I suspect that prices will rise or portions will drop; I don't know if what we had tonight is sustainable. Even with Chaya-sized portions, though, this is well worth going back to. (They can also seat about three times as many people as Chaya, so there shouldn't be as many long waits.)

There were people at several other tables, and a large party in the back, but the restaurant was not noisy. Any music flew completely below my radar (no obnoxious muzak or too-loud radio). The place was well-lit but not harsh. A sign in their window indicates that they have applied for a liquor license.

They have been open since the beginning of August. I plan to return.

Dani forwarded me this interesting article about mustard and ketchup. It's long, but I found it worth reading. Basic question: why are there entire sections in the grocery store for mustard, but there are still only a few players for ketchup? (I'm not much of a ketchup person myself; I generally find it boring. For french fries or burgers or hot dogs, my condiment of choice is brown mustard. I've also been known to dip fries in barbeque sauce.)

When I last went fish shopping the person at the counter informed me that they no longer carry grouper (a versatile fish that I like to cook with), but that what they label as "basa" (not bass) is the same fish. Google tells me that both names are used for the same fish, so I guess this means they've changed their source and the sources used different labelling. My basa fillets were a little thinner than the grouper fillets I used to get, but otherwise it seems to be indistinguishable.

This was good: take basa fillets, put in a lightly-oiled casserole (I used olive oil) and drizzle oil on top, coat with "Auntie Arwen's fish blend" (assorted herbs, garlic, onion, I think paprika), bake at 425 for about 10 minutes, then add thinly-sliced havarti cheese on top and bake just until melted.

I went surfing for a recipe for cold cherry soup (not being satisfied with the one I know) and found something that mostly worked. (Dani has previously described a cherry soup with sour cream; the key word seems to be "Hungarian".) Boil water, pitted cherries, and sugar for a while until the cherries soften; in a bowl beat cream (if the cherries are sweet) or sour cream (if not) with a little flour, stir in some of the hot mixture, and then pour everything into the pot and simmer (don't boil). Chill well before serving. The flour's job, I presume, is to thicken the broth, but even though I beat it with the cream for a while, I got little globs of flour in the resulting soup. Maybe I used too much flour? (I had non-sour cherries, so I used cream. The recipe didn't specify the type of cream; I used heavy and will probably try light next time.)

Tonight after Shabbat Dani wanted to go to Longhorn, a steak house at the waterfront (don't know if that's a chain or a local instance). They have two non-shellfish fish dishes, both salmon. The grilled salmon was very good, and the steamed broccoli was tasty and not overcooked. The seasoned fries were reasonable, though I failed to procure brown mustard for them and had to settle for yellow. I didn't see anything vegetarian on the menu, but I like salmon so I'd definitely go there again.

But next time we'll sit at a table, not a booth. This isn't the first restaurant I've been to lately where the seats in the booths are really far from the table. In some (like Gullifty's), if I sit all the way back my feet don't touch the floor. So I end up having to sit on the front of the seat, with no back support at all. I'm short, but I don't think I'm farther out than one standard deviation. Are restaurants now planning booth layouts around very large people? (Ironically, the very large people I've had occasion to observe seem to prefer tables with chairs.)

My fourth-season Blake's 7 DVDs came last week. In this season they have a new-to-them ship with a computer named Slave. I don't think I had previously noticed that the computer addresses Avon as "master" but the others as "sir". I wonder if Avon threatened it. :-)

Sunday night we joined ralphmelton (birthday boy), lorimelton, and mrpeck at John Harvard's in Monroeville. Dani and I ordered a beer sampler to explore the options; we got the smaller one, which is five five-ounce glasses (your choice of beers). They deliver the sampler on a placemat with a key (so your glasses go on specific places on the mat); I hadn't noticed that the list was ordered from less to more hoppy/bitter until they lined ours up on one side of the sheet. :-)

Tonight's dinner was almost a case of "grandfather's axe": I followed the recipe on the can of coconut milk, except that I used chicken instead of shrimp and broccoli instead of asparagus and onions instead of bell peppers, but it's still the recipe on the side of the can. (Verdict for next time: needs spices; try ginger.)

Dani and I talked about making reservations for an upcoming SCA event (war practice) tonight and we both realized that we're going entirely on inertia. Neither of us is actually drawn to this particular event this year; we're just running on auto-pilot. So we might not do that. Don't know yet. (It was actually Dani who pointed this out; I've become less active in the SCA and am being careful not to influence him in that direction, but he's feeling "eh" about this one on his own. We were just at an event a couple weeks ago, and that seems to have satisfied us both for the nonce.)

At the shabbaton I talked with someone who's currently taking private Hebrew lessons, and she suggested that we share a lesson slot and pair up as partners. I think she's more advanced than I am and I pointed this out, and she said that's fine. We'll probably start this after the ulpan. (Different teacher. She doesn't like the one I'm currently taking classes from and she says her tutor is much better.) This should be quite helpful, and if not, I can drop out and she can go back to what she was doing.

( Shabbat stuff )

Saturday night as we were trying (and failing) to go to Chaya for dinner, we walked past a new restaurant called Susheli. It looked open and not busy, so we walked in. They said they weren't actually open yet; they'd be open in half an hour but if we didn't already have reservations we'd have to wait. So, some other time -- but does that timing strike anyone else as odd? It did to me, so I looked at the hours posted on the door -- closed Friday for dinner, open Saturday an hour after sundown (demonstrably not true, by the way, but that would be quite ambitious if my guess is right). Could it be? I looked at the menu posted in the window; it included entries like "shrimp (mock)". No immediately-obvious certification, but Dani was getting impatient so I figured I'd check later. So I'm not yet certain, but it's possible that there's now a kosher Japanese restaurant in Squirrel Hill! Whee! (I failed to look for a mezuzah.) Currently, the only place where I can order a sushi platter, as opposed to individual pieces, is Chaya, because they understand kosher versus non-kosher species. But part of the appeal of sushi is letting the chef choose appropriate combinations based on what's fresh, his own creativity, and whatever else. I miss that at restaurants other than Chaya.

I wondered about the name. "Sheli" means "for me" in Hebrew, so if "su" meant something (that implied good food) that would have been neat. But according to Dani, "su" doesn't mean anything, so I guess it's "sushi for me" but only sort of. Assuming that they're trying to do something clever with Hebrew, of course.

After dinner we went to a party at Chez Melton (lorimelton and ralphmelton). We had a good time. There weren't as many people I already knew as at past parties; the Claritech crowd was largely absent (us and two others). It was good to see Kevin again; since the end of the D&D game I almost never see him.

We ended up in a large game of Apples To Apples, which is a good party game. Each player has a handful of cards with nouns on them; in turn, each player draws and plays an adjective card, and other players each pass in a noun that goes with it. The person who drew the adjective chooses the noun he likes best, and the person who played it gets a point. Iterate until a score threshold is reached. It's a fun game that usually moves pretty quickly. This was the first I'd played with the expansion sets, though, and I think they are a net loss. There were a lot of rounds where I felt I didn't have anything plausible and tossed junk, and it was clear this was happening to others too. I suspect that the original game was well-thought-out and then in the expansions they just threw more words into the mix. Part of what makes the game fun is seeing all the clever or funny submissions that show up; when half the submissions are, essentially, discards, it's not as much fun. But even so, a fun game (and we should pick up a copy to have on hand when we host gaming days).

This morning our power went out again, with no obvious reason, but we found that it was out for several blocks, so it wasn't just us. This time it was out for almost two hours. Dani recently deprecated a UPS (not big enough for the computer/monitor he's currently using), so I appropriated it for the VCRs. I've had to reset the VCR clocks three or four times this week; this was the first outage long enough to also take out the programming. (Apparently the model is that the VCR will just get the time from the cable service, so it doesn't need to dedicate battery power to that. But I don't have the right kind of cable service for that.) I wouldn't buy a UPS for the VCRs, because that seems extravagant, but with it just sitting there, neglected... :-)

Most of my bulbs have sent up green bits, it seems, but no crocuses in bloom yet. It seems late for them and early for everything else.

Tonight Dani and I headed for the Indian Oven on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. We were surprised to find it no longer there. Pity; I liked their food and (as you would expect from an Indian restaurant) there were a lot of vegetarian dishes on the menu. (Why do good Indian places keep going under? First Sitar, now this...)

But all was not lost; it has been replaced by a Thai/Filipino restaurant. I wouldn't have thought that a natural pairing, but shrug. The place is Sweet Basil; there is (the waitress said) a Sweet Basil in Lawrenceville and this is their second location. They opened last month. (For Squirrel Hill old-timers, there is no relation to the Sweet Basil on Forbes that was replaced by Zeb's, which was replaced by Zen Garden (the all-vegetarian restaurant that made me happy during its brief existence), which was replaced by the much-inferior Hunan Kitchen, not that I'm bitter.)

We enjoyed the food at this Sweet Basil. Dani got a Filipino sampler that included something chicken, something beef, and something shrimp; I got fried tilapia cooked in chili paste with vegetables. The fish was very good, and the portion was quite generous. They asked me for a spice level and I said 7 (this is my default for new restaurants that do numeric spice scales), and I thought it was a bit mild for a 7 but perfect for fish with chili paste. (I have a side rant about numeric spice levels having nothing to do with this restaurant, but it won't fit in the margin of this entry.)

Dani said his food was good; the portion appeared less generous than mine, but that may be the sampler effect. (Maybe you pay a premium for variety.) The presentation on his was generic -- nothing fancy, nothing bad. The fish was pretty, topped with some sort of small dried noodles and some sort of greenery on top that was arranged, not just dumped. The vegetables were nicely arrayed around the fish. I usually don't notice stuff like this (except in sushi places where they generally make an effort), but this stood out.

We both had soup. I had the tofu-vegetable soup (explicitly noted on the menu as a vegetable broth, so I didn't have to ask). It has a hint of lemongrass in it, and the green vegetables were cooked but not mushy. Dani's soup smelled good (a chicken soup made with coconut milk) and he said he liked it.

Dani's sampler came with ginger tea. We both thought it should have been steeped longer, but it was nice otherwise. They brought a small pot of tea, not hot water and a teabag and not a pot with solids (or leaves) in the bottom.

We both had flan for dessert. It was light (not dense) and neither overcooked nor undercooked. This, too, came on plates with attention paid to presentation.

My fish dinner was $15. Most of the vegetable entrees were about $10; it looked like the meat dishes hovered around $12-15. (I didn't spend a lot of time looking.)

Service was mostly good, except for a false start where our waitress apparently forgot about my soup for a long time. Every table was full when we were there (around 7:00). I hope that's a positive sign and that they'll be around for a while.

Tonight Dani and I tried out a new-to-us Italian restaurant, La Cucina Flagrea in Squirrel Hill (Murray between Hobart and Phillips). I hadn't noticed it before, but it's kind of small so that doesn't mean it hasn't been there a while. (I was unable to figure out what store or restaurant it replaced. If I'm on that part of Murray I'm probably heading for either Chaya or Sushi House/Dumpling House and not paying much attention to the stuff in between.)

They had two specials, black sea bass and a gnocchi dish, so we decided to share those. (Each was around $27 -- not something we'll do often. Pasta dishes on the menu were around $15; I didn't look at the meat dishes.) Each special came with a (specified) appetizer, along with the choice of soup or salad that accompanies all their entrees.

I got the minnestrone soup (after confirming that it was vegetarian) and Dani got the mushroom soup. We both thought our soups were quite good. The gnocchi (in a tomato sauce with basil and cheese, though I forget which cheese it was) was tasty. The two appetizers, foccacia with cheese and peppers and red peppers stuffed with cheese and parsley (I think it was parsley) were decent.

The fish special was, err, unfortunate. They brought a whole fish (black sea bass isn't very large, it turns out; I'd be surprised if it had as much as 6oz of meat on it), which left us with the bones problem. I don't recall how they described the flavoring (they certainly claimed some), but what we got was very bland. It was supposed to come with asparagus but they ran out, so we got green beans instead; I thought they were ok and Dani thought they were decent for green beans (which he isn't generally fond of).

All portions were on the small side for the prices being charged. Overall, we've gotten better food, in better portions, at slightly lower prices, from Il Viletto in Oakland. And that's still in the space of "fancy enough that you'd take guests there", rather than some of the lower-end tasty places around.

Service was somewhat inattentive and clueless. Each entree came on a huge platter (inefficiently used, and they weren't making that up in presentation); there was no room on the table for both platters and anything else. (Our waiter moved the bread, the flower vase, and a couple other things onto an adjacent surface.) We'd said we would be sharing (the menu suggests this), but they didn't bring plates for us to use on the first pass. The fish and beans were part of the same special, but more than five minutes elapsed between getting the fish and getting the beans. (I started to eat the fish so it wouldn't get cold; Dani waited for the complete meal.) It took somewhere between five and ten minutes for Dani to get the hot water to go with the teabag they brought him right away. The gnocchi came without any utensils. We were offered "mineral water" when we sat down (presumably this had a price), but we were not offered just plain tap water. It took a while to get the check. Overall, while I didn't especially feel badly served, I did feel ineptly served. (Also slowly, but some of that appeared to be a kitchen problem rather than a waiter problem.)

The restaurant is smoke-free, which is a pleasant surprise. (It's small; they're definitely under the threshold where they're required to provide a non-smoking section.) The decor was inoffensive (which is all I ask for). One thing I don't usually notice, though: I sat in the most uncomfortable chair I've experienced recently. (And we were there for about an hour and a quarter, alas.)

I wonder how long they'll survive. Squirrel Hill isn't cheap, though I gather that commercial rent for the first year is deeply discounted.

Mallorca is a Spanish restaurant that's located a few blocks from where I work. It's pricy compared to other lunch options (expect to pay around $12-13, not the $5-6 common elsewhere), but it's good food. Usually that doesn't tip the balance enough for me, but it's also plentiful food, usually.

They serve the side dishes family-style (rice, sauteed veggies, and potato chips). The first time I went there alone I was surprised that they still brought full dishes of each side for me. Also, the first time I went there for lunch, they brought me a huge piece of fish for my entree. This was easily two meals' worth of food, which makes the price seem much more reasonable.

So this has become my default place for the lunch before Yom Kippur. I don't know how typical this is, but my body seems to really want huge quantities of protein several hours in advance of the fast, but not immediately before. So lunch features a huge slab of protein and dinner is more carby. But last time I went there for lunch (probably erev YK last year) they'd scaled back: they brought me a plate with a moderate fish portion and the sides on the plate. In other words, a normal meal rather than an excessive meal (which, after all, is usually the right thing to do).

And then in June we were there with family for dinner and the service was horrible. Now granted, there were other things contributing to that not being a pleasant meal, but Mallorca was starting to lose points with me.

Still, there aren't a lot of good options for "huge slab of aquatic protein goodness" around here (bringing my own seems impractical, though I considered it), and anyway it's supposed to be a festive meal, so I went there today. And they brought me a pretty big piece of tuna and a full plate of each of the sides. And the service was fabulous -- very attentive and courteous. I never had to ask for anything after I'd placed my order; water refills appeared before I needed them (and I was drinking a lot of water, as you might expect) and the check was handled quickly. I can't remember the last time I left a 25% tip before today.

So I don't know if I can generalize to dinner, but Mallorca is solidly back on the "good" list for lunch.

Erik has been more clingy than usual lately. I'm vaguely thinking "for about the last month"; I wonder if it's been since Pennsic. I didn't notice it immediately, if so. I wonder what it means. (He is especially clingy when I am working at the computer, alas.)

Last night Dani and I went to the Coldstone Creamery for the first time. (Yeah, we're slow -- but let it never be said that we are slaves to fashion. No, I don't think you were going to say that anyway.) The ice cream was good but maybe not as good as the price would suggest. We couldn't help thinking that while it would defeat their gimmick, a blender would speed up processing of the customer queue.

Seen at work: "Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Today was our company's annual retreat, where we close the office and go do company-focus-building stuff in a secluded cabin or the like. It's a good idea, but I don't think we actually needed to go as far out of the city as we did this time. (This was a new location for us.) It took almost an hour to get there. I'm really glad I hitched a ride, because some of the signage was quite poor and I probably wouldn't have found the place on my own.

We actually have budget for conferences; I wonder what it would be most beneficial for me to attend. (I didn't get my act together for SIGDOC this year, which is happening as I write this.)

Two more bite the dust. Not entirely, but for the ways in which we use them.

Sunday we decided to go to Dave & Buster's for brunch. They no longer have the brunch menu -- it wasn't working out for them, they said. I suspect that a lot of "not working out" boiled down to them not opening until 11:30AM. They have a lunch menu on weekdays, but on Sunday you can now only order off of the regular menu -- which is ok but nothing to make a trip for. (And darn it, I liked their huevos rancheros and am not sure I can duplicate them.)

Tonight we made the usual post-choir-practice trip to Gullifty's, where we found a band with much more amplification than the space called for. We couldn't talk without shouting. So we left, and on the way out asked if this was a regular thing for them now. No, they said -- just on Mondays (8 to 11PM). We eat dinner at home most of the time, but on Mondays after Dani is done with choir we generally go out in order to be social.

But hey, on the positive side, we've been to the Indian Oven (fairly new, on Murray) a few times and it's pretty good -- not as good as Sitar, but it has the advantage of existing, which Sitar no longer does. But later-night options nearby with parking are kind of limited.

Thursday night Dani and I drove to Silver Spring to spend Purim and Shabbat with friends. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad Dani decided to go with me. (And not just because that meant he drove through the foggy mountains at night. :-) )

( Read more... )

Today I had lunch with some former coworkers at Abay, an Ethiopian restaurant in East Liberty. This was my first visit to an Ethiopian restaurant, and I would gladly have further encounters with the cuisine and with this particular restaurant.

They offer sampler platters of the "choose N from column A" variety, and after trying to decide how to populate several, we finally said to our waiter: "Can you just bring us four samplers, two vegetarian and two not, using your best judgement?" This worked very well; I got to sample eight different vegetarian dishes, and while I can't name any of them, I'd be able to identify most of them on a future visit. The spicy dish with red lentils was especially tasty.

Everything comes served on bread -- a large, flat, thin, doughy bread covers the plate and then they pile the food on top of that. (They brought us extra bread on the side, too.) Trenchers, but with less structural support. Sops, perhaps. The bread was nice on its own but better covered in the juices and sauces from the rest of the food.

Their tea was nice, too. I usually don't particularly notice tea, but I guess this was spiced a little or something.

Service was good, even with our large group. They actually had a round table that could seat a dozen, and that was more pleasant than sitting at chain of two-person tables.

We were running short on time and thus skipped dessert, but I noticed several interesting options there. I would have gotten the ginger sherbet if we'd stayed.

Friday night was our "mostly musical Shabbat" service, which we're now doing on the first Friday of each month (except maybe not in the summer). We have a home-grown band, now, which is fun. Some day I may join them. (I'd bring the drums, not try to play dulcimer. There would be too many logistical challenges around transportation and tuning for the dulcimer to be feasible.)

Saturday we went to the AEthelmearc Academy (SCA event), which was held at Seton Hill College (universtiy?) in Greensburg. It's a really pretty campus. (Looked to be pretty unfriendly to wheelchairs; I'm glad a local member who was using a wheelchair last year isn't using one now.)

Dani spotted a poster on campus advertising a field trip to Giant Eagle and WallMart. The campus is not exactly downtown, so while you could walk to those locations, it'd be a shlep and you wouldn't want to do it carrying groceries. So this makes sense, but it never would have occurred to me.

The event was pleasant. There weren't many classes that particularly interested me, but I ended up at some that were pretty decent. One of the classes I specifically wanted to attend got cancelled, unfortunately (instructor didn't make it to the event). The overall feel was pretty casual; I've seen university-style events that were higher pressure for the instructors, but this didn't seem that way.

The school provided the food. It was very good for catered food -- not really medieval in content or ambience, but no one expected it to be (given the catering) so that's not a problem. It did look like they ran out of some things before everyone got through the line; I assume this is due to the too-common SCAdian tendency to take large portions.

At the end of the day they put out some fruit and bags of potato chips/pretzels/etc, and there were a lot of leftovers. I noticed that our college students were grabbing some extras; when the autocrat announced that people should take the leftovers home, they went into full starving-student mode. It was kind of cute -- kind of like Halloween, sack and all. :-)

The event ended around 6:30 (no feast). We failed to find a local restaurant without a long line, so we just headed back to Pittsburgh. (Well, first we bumbled around a little, because the directions to the site didn't reverse neatly and, ahem, some drivers just won't ask for directions. But we found the highway entrance and all was good.)

After we dropped off our passengers Dani and I went to Indian Oven, a newish restaurant in Squirrel Hill. It replaced Platters and is, alas, no longer kosher. It has a significant vegetarian and adequate vegan menu, though.

We both got samplers (meat for him, veggie for me), and we both liked the food a lot. Service was a bit slow due to a sub-optimal waiter:customer ratio. But I'd definitely go back. The vegetable korma (ordered at a spice level of 7) was nicely zippy and not mushy. The mattar paneer (one of my standard benchmarks) was nice but not excellent. The raita was very good, as were the green and red chutneys. The spiced tea (with cream) was evocative of chai.

This afternoon I finally took down the sukkah. Sometime before next year I'm going to take the vertical poles to be cut down a foot or so (a friend has the relevant power tool for cutting metal tubing), so that next year I won't have to do awkward things involving a ladder to put it up. I don't need my sukkah to be 8 feet tall; 7 would be fine.

Tonight was a pleasant dinner with ralphmelton and lorimelton. Dessert was a nice pumpkin cake with whipped cream; Lori mixed some powdered ginger into the cream before whipping it, which added a nice effect. I'll have to remember that. (Ok, whom am I kidding? When's the last time I whipped cream rather than buying it that way? But hey, I might...)

We sometimes have baby namings at Shabbat services. This week we had one (for a family I don't know); the two mothers and their other two children gathered on the bima along with the newest addition to the family. I did not hear anyone say anything about the makeup of the family, either negative or positive -- it was just another family. That's refreshing.

The morning torah-study group reached the part in Numbers where God gives prophecy to the seventy elders so Moshe won't have to do everything himself (this is near the end of chapter 11). The text tells us that in addition to the seventy, there were two men -- Eldad and Medad -- who also got in on this, though they didn't join the others at the tent of meeting. Joshua hears about this and gets upset, apparently because they're encroaching on Moshe's territory or something. But since prophecy is clearly something that is done at God's instigation -- or, at the very least, with God's cooperation -- how could that be? I don't see anything in the text to imply that Eldad and Medad did anything; it's not like they were stow-aways or something. My read is that they were in the camp going about their business and -- blam -- they were prophesying. We didn't get to most of the commentaries today, so we'll return to this next week.

This probably means we`'re going to also talk about the people gorging on heaven-sent quail next week, because that's next in the text. My rabbi pointed out the coincidental timing with Halloween. :-)

Someone said that the Christian denomination whose members sometimes "speak in tongues" are basing that on this. Apparently (and I welcome correction here!), the idea is that when God talks to you it transcends language, and you say things that sound like coherent text to you but gibberish to everyone else. I'd heard of speaking in tongues before, of course, but didn't know it was tied to the idea of prophecy. (I wasn't sure what it was.) I always thought the point of prophecy was to convey God's words to everyone else (the prophet is just a vehicle), which would require doing so in a language your listeners understand. If this description of speaking in tongues is correct, that seems to be something that's about the speaker personally (and God), not about a message to the community.

Tonight after Shabbat we went to Hunan Kitchen, the successor (or reincarnation, or something) of Zen Garden in Squirrel Hill. It's no longer a purely vegetarian restaurant, but there are still plenty of vegetarian dishes on the menu. The meal was good except for the sizzling-beef incident. Someone at another table ordered something that comes sizzling in a skillet; apparently something went wrong and the dish emitted a great deal of smoke only after it got to the table. Everyone in the place was coughing. It was actually kind of funny, as the cough migrated outward from ground zero. (We weren't affected for the first minute or so, but then we were a little.) I didn't notice what happened to the dish in all this.

Tonight at the opening reception I spent some time talking with Bob Newman. In doing the "so what does your company do?" thing, I told him about CoMotion and CPOF and he seemed very interested. He sees what we do as "design of communication" -- not all communication involves words, after all, and the principles that apply to organizing data are sometimes the same ones that apply to organizing documentation. This is a good point. (Unbeknownest to me, the "DOC" in "SIGDOC" actually changed from "documentation" to "design of communication" a couple years back, in part to attract a broader audience.)

It turns out that Bob is the chair of next year's conference, and the theme is "documenting and designing for pervasive information". He would like to see a paper submission from us. Now maybe he says that to all the writers, but it's worth thinking about. (And the conference doesn't conflict with the high holy days next year either, so I could theoretically go.)

After the reception a couple guys from SAS in Raleigh and I headed out for dinner. One of them had been to Memphis before, so we let him guide us to Beale Street. It's hard to tell from just tonight's data points, but my tentative conclusion is that vegetarians are just SOL in this town, or at least on Beale Street. (I haven't looked into the hotel restaurant yet.)

The hotel is pretty spiffy, especially for the price ($95 plus tax). I have a two-room suite with microwave and fridge, though there are no dishes so I assume the microwave is intended for frozen dinners or something. There's a TV in each room (which is two more than I need but there's plenty of space so I don't care), and free network access (wired) in the room. The one downside is that my room is just off the lobby and it's noisy in the outer room, but the noise doesn't seem to carry into the bedroom so I don't care all that much.

This laptop is much worse than the one I borrowed this summer in one respect: legibility. More specifically, I can't find any controls, physical or digital, that affect contrast and brightness, and the defaults are harsh (to me). Dell laptop running XP Professional, in case anyone's got ideas. (The "native" resolution is also high for such a small screen, so I've got fonts cranked up both at the OS level and in my apps. But still, the brightness makes it hard to use.)

(For those who've asked, "random bits" are longer than "short takes".)

Last night I adapted a piece of music for (folk) harp for the first time. Mind, I don't play harp -- but I've been around those who have enough to have some basic clues, so when a friend asked me if I could render a four-part a-capella piece for harp and singer for her wedding, I agreed to give it a shot. It was an interesting exercise; harp is kind of like piano in terms of how you think about the hands, but has the twist of also having to plan for when to flip the sharping levers for accidentals. (Doing so requires that you take one hand off the strings, so right after a long note is a good time to do this.)

After I completed my first draft I talked with the harpist. She says she doesn't have sharping levers. Oops; how did I miss that? So I'll see if I can arrange around them. At which point we move from "music that is a subset of the original" to "music that is slightly different from the original". Fortunately, it's rennaissance music and I know how not to do anything egregious there. Still, it's a fun challenge.

One of my cats (Baldur) has taken to meowing persistently in the early mornings (around 6am), almost every day, for minutes at a time. He's 11 years old and this is a recent change (last couple months). I have been unable to correlate it with anything else going on in the house. His last physical was in January and he was fine, and he doesn't do this at other times. Do the kitty psychologists in my reading audience have any theories?

Today my shell-account provider had a scheduled OS upgrade. When they came back online, SSH was behaving oddly for me. It told me the host key had changed (not surprising), and I chose the "accept for this session only" option. (Hey, I'm paranoid -- even though I know that should be ok, I want to see the right things happen before making the permanent change.) At that point SSH bounced me on a permission error (I never got to the password) -- repeatedly. On a whim, I said to just accept the key -- and everything was fine. What the heck? Now that I think about it, though, I'm pretty sure the same thing happened to me a few years ago -- so maybe if I write it down this time I'll actually remember next time.

Asian restaurants tend toward the "spiciness on a scale of 1 to 10" meme. Of course, one restaurant's "7" might not resemble another one's "7" -- or even its own on a different day. But there's a bigger issue: is this supposed to depend on the dish you order? What does it mean to order Moo Goo Gai Pan to a spiciness of 9, or Kung Pao Chicken to a spiciness of 1? If you do that, does the cook just shrug and make the dish normally, or what? (Mind, I have little personal experience with numbers in the bottom two-thirds of the scale...) This thought brought to you by the data-collection effort going on at my place of employment to attempt to determine the pattern, if any, of spice levels at the nearby Thai restaurant.

I enjoyed this entry on the dynamics of ladies' nights at bars.

Why can't people who use auto-reply systems when they're on vacation learn to configure them to not send such messages to posters on mailing lists? Sheesh. For mail that was sent directly to you, go wild -- but if I post to a mailing list with several hundred subscribers, I really don't need to be told about the ten specific subscribers who are on vacation this week.

Turnout for choir practice has been small for a while, and for a few months I've been the only person on my part. I'm actually enjoying that; I think I'm doing a good job with it, and it's easier for me to blend with the rest of my section. :-) (Sadly, we just lost

ommkarja, a fine alto, to the west coast. Hope your drive out is going smoothly!)

Sunday night we joined a crowd at Joe's Basement for dinner to celebrate Ralph's birthday. Mmm, good food. It turns out they no longer take reservations for the Pope Room and our party was too large anyway. I forgot to hunt it down so I could find out what the fuss is about. Given the level of kitsch in the rest of the place, it's got to be pretty impressive!

Sunday morning I was beginning to think thoughts about window air conditioners. Sunday afternoon the temperature dropped more than 20 degrees in one hour. Today brought frost warnings. Ahem. Someone failed to read the spec; this is not normative spring weather.

Someone I know just returned from an assignment in the middle east, where he encountered a peculiar weather phenomenon. He observed that there was a lot of dust in the air and that there was impending rain, and that the latter should take of the former. Well, yes and no -- it rained mud. :-)

I now have evidence that my intermittent "monitor" problems are actually graphics-card problems. I'm guessing the connection is a little loose, because I have found a reliable place on the side of the CPU case where a gentle rap fixes the problem. It's nice to know that the monitor I just replaced (for other reasons) is still in good shape, though. Eventually I'll sweet-talk Dani into carrying it down two flights of stairs and it can replace the definitely-flaky, smaller monitor on the file server. We have VNC running on it so it's not that big a deal, but still...

Monica

two thumbs up: Iris and Ivory Tea House, Cheswick PA

Indian food in Squirrel Hill: Coriander

weekend round-up

Chaya (new location)

restaurant review: Lidia's Pittsburgh (Italian)

new restaurant: Hokkaido Seafood Buffet

food goodies

random bits

random bits

new Japanese restaurant in Squirrel Hill

food (condiments, fish, fruit soup)

random bits

weekend

another new restaurant

new(?) Italian restaurant

Mallorca update

short takes

restaurants

Purim and Shabbat (road trip)

Ethiopian food

weekend

Shabbat (mostly)

SIGDOC, first evening

harp music, and random bits

random bits

Expand Cut Tags

Syndicate