Veritas et Venustas

Coffee House Redux II - 04.30.04

Geez, how did I forget this one in my list of coffee houses? The Montague Book Mill has been one of my favorite stops for years.

When I first went there, the bookstore was a Western Mass, hippie-political bookstore (remember Alice's Restaurant?), with cheap books of all kinds and sections for esoteric groups like left-handed, Guatamalan, Lesbian Marxists. They've mellowed over the years, but they still have cheap books and a great building next to noisy waterfall that sounds absolutely wonderful. And they still have an honor-system cafe with good coffee and carbos.

You can take your coffee out to a stone-terrace with plenty of sun next to the waterfall. I've found good architecture books there, along with a few of Jim Kunstler's early novels. And I love the area – check out the Bookmill's local resources guide.

John Montague Massengale AIA

The Morning After

Last night, I went to two receptions, got a little drunk, and walked around Greenwich Village listening to conversations on the sidewalks and in the outdoor cafes.

From 1890 to 1963 or so, Greenwich Village was the Bohemian capital of America. Today, it is the Yuppie Capital, and the conversations I heard cause me to say the following. Learning to deal with money and the material world is one of the purposes of life on earth. Making money is not THE purpose of life.

Stat of the Month

Roger Clemens in April: 5 - 0, 1.95 era (.273 ba, better than 12 of 15 Yankee hitters)

Famous Last Words:

No Yankee son-of-a-bitch is ever going to Houston, you Texas bastards! - George Costanza

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/

click on the title to link to the blog

"Bat's More Like It!"

Yankees 10 - Oakland 8
Yankees 5 - Oakland 1

Up 3 - 0 in the third, Contreras gave up a solo home run and then had a shaky inning. But Jorge talked to him, Giambi speared the third out, and Contreras retired 9 of the last 11 he faced. Tonight Brown goes against Zito. Zito's good, but the Yanks regularly beat him.

Derek is in the longest slump of his career (0 for 32), but this is still the best lineup:

Derek (r)
Bernie (s)
A-Rod (r)
Giambi (l)
Sheffield (r)
Sierra (s)
Jorge (s)
Matsui (l)
Wilson (s)

The only questionmark is Wilson. Is he a better reserve after all? It's too early to tell. He's one of many Yankees starting slowly.

All the sportswriters who pushed Bernie down to the eight spot in the lineup and Lofton to leadoff forget that Bernie and Derek were in the middle of all the Yankee World Series wins.

Coffee House Redux - 04.27.04

I've posted some comments from the TradArch chat line in the comments section of my Favorite Coffee Shops post.

A few places added on April 27:

Black Sheep Deli - Amherst, Massachusetts
Nick's - Amherst, Massachusetts
Hi-Rise Bakery - 56 Brattle Street, Cambridge

And three conditional entries:

Lenox Coffee - Lenox, Massachusetts
Rao's Coffee - Amherst, Massachusetts

Both are best when the weather is warm and you can sit outside.

The third one, Trident, has good books, a nice small menu, and free WiFi. It would be a great place if the owners had a modicum of visual appreciation.

Trident Booksellers & Cafe - 338 Newbury St., Boston WiFi

Travel - It's To Die For

I've been (happily) stuck in a room with a hundred architects for the last few days, unable to blog. Here's a post from another trip, originally made on the pro-urb list:

Some might wonder why I write about lunch at an expensive French restaurant on a discussion list for urbanism. Well, all urbanists should go to Paris. And if they don't visit one of the best French restaurants while they're there, they've missed one of the great experiences of French and Western civilization.

We went to lunch at Lucas Carton, a three-star restaurant in the Michelin guide, because they have a lunch menu that costs considerably less than ordering à la carte: about $55 each when the dollar is strong. We noticed that many of the items on the à la carte menu could be ordered with glasses of wine chosen by the sommelier, and asked if we could do that with the menu. We took several of the wines chosen for the same courses on the à la carte menu, and the sommelier helped us with the rest.

For Americans, it's a unique experience. Lucas Carton has one of the two or three best wine cellars in Paris, and it goes without saying that the sommelier there is a master of his profession. None of the wines he chose were overly famous or expensive, but they were all great. And we discovered that they would refill your glass for free, somewhat like the bottomless coffee cup at HoJo's. In the end, 15 glasses of wine, champagne and port cost about $60 each.

Last March (2001), I had the lunch menu at Alain Ducasse, an eponymous restaurant that belongs to the only chef in the century-old history of the Michelin guide to have two three-star restaurants. The meal at Lucas Carton was even better, and Ducasse, as far as I know, does not have wines by the glass. If he does, he doesn't feature them as Lucas Carton does.

And when you step outside after lunch and find yourself facing the Madeleine, the urbanism is that much better.

Save your centimes and go to a three-star restaurant when you're in France.

Amuses bouches (shellfish in cream sauce)

Lucas Carton champagne

Scallops marinated in olive oil with herbs (for my wife)

Crozes-Hermitage "Mûles Blanche" 1998 - Jaboulet (Northern Rhône)

Scallops in raviolis (for me)

Savoie Verre de Chignin V.V. 1998 - Quenard (Savoie, Chignin)

Saddle of lamb with eggplant in three styles

Bandol Château de Pibarnon 1989 (Provence)

Cheese plate

Pauillac La Fleur de Haut-Bages Libéral 1997 (Bordeaux, Haut-Medoc)

Vanille Mille Feuilles Napoléon (for my wife)

Chocolat "Sanbamb" (for me)

Muscat de Rivesaltes 1998 - Domaine Cazes (Languedoc-Roussillon)

Biscuits and chocolates

Fonseca Port 20 Ans

espresso

Badoit

April 26, 2004 in Food and Drink, Travel, Urbanism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Slow Food: Against the 3,000 Mile Caesar Salad

A very good restaurant in New York City has teamed up with the Rockefellers to make a model farm and restaurant specializing in local food. The Manhattan restaurant, Blue Hill, already specialized in local and Hudson Valley foods, and even grew many of its own vegetables on a farm in the Berkshires belonging to one of the owners. Now David Rockefeller and other members of the family have donated farmland and stone barns at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate half an hour north of the city.

Blue Hill was already one of the best combinations of price and quality in New York City. The Stone Barns promise to be just as good. A story in the New York Times gives more information.

April 21, 2004 in Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Slow Food Guide to New York City

This is one of the best guides to eating in New York City. Buy it from amazon.com.

The Slow Food Guide gives information about markets and greenmarkets in New York City as well as restaurants.

The Council on the Environment of New York City also has listings for greenmarkets in the city, and information on picking your own produce in the Hudson Valley.

April 21, 2004 in Books, Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, April 19, 2004

2 Blowhards dot com

2blowhards.com is one of the best blogs I know of. Here are two interesting posts they have going on now:

Nikos Salingaros, a mathematician at the University of Texas, is writing a guest spot on architectural theory. Earlier this year, Friedrich von Blowhard and Michael (de?) Blowhard interviewed him at length.

At the same time, Michael is writing a fascinating multi-part history of The Structure of Aesthetic Revolutions.

April 19, 2004 in Architecture, Classicism, Culture, New Urbanism, Science, Urbanism, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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