Chalkboard

	Eastside Road, September 13, 2014—

BELIEVE IT or not, I rarely think about this blog while I'm at the table. I don't even remember that it exists. The blog, I mean: the table reasserts itself readily enough. I suppose I've been writing for so many years that I have learned to dissociate the act, as an isolated act, from the continuous activities of life. (For the first time, I contemplate the distinction between act and activity: writing, chez moi, is rarely dissociated from contemplation! But I stray from my purpose.)

When the blog does come to mind while at table it is generally because the iPhone has come out to take a photograph. But except for the occasional photo of a menu, taken not for the blog but as an aide-memoire (no idea why French threatens to take over this post) this rarely happens. I'm too involved with the pleasures of the table (which of course include conversation, gazing, and eavesdropping as well as tasting).

Last night we were with friends at a local restaurant; their first visit, our second. The iPhone came out twice: first in an attempt to read the tiny mark stamped into the very handsome fork aside my plate — I often resort to zoomed-in photos these days; why carry a lens? — then to record the menu.

And why record the menu, if not to recall later, at the writing-desk, what the devil we ate last night? Why, to order some more food, if we're so inclined, this being one of those small-plates "sharing menu" places. Or, I must admit, to remember just what it is we're eating, for composed dishes are getting subtle and complex enough (or my mind vague and blurry enough) that it sometimes requires verbal input to assist palatal information.

Of the menu seen here, then, the four of us managed to deal with

Pork belly biscuits
Crudo of the day (halibut cheeks)
Hamachi crudo
Beef tartare
Chopped salad
Kennebec fries
Squid ink Gigli
Cresta di gallo
Lamachine
Tagliatelle
Scallops
Calamari

and dessert, which is one of the places a return to the menu came in handy. (I regret the dessert menu was not photographed: it had remained, handily, at the table. I think the waitress had by then begun to think we were serious about this business.)

Last time we were here we ate not quite so gluttonously — it was lunch, after all, not dinner. (That was a couple of weeks ago; I wrote about it in a post called Late August.) I think it's a mistake to attack a menu like this voraciously: most of these "small plates" are so deep, complex, and pointed that, taken one after another, then returned to, they begin to overwhelm the analytical palate, to confuse.

I'm not fond of "tasting menus," either. A multi-course meal (by which I mean more than, say, four courses) has to be very well thought out indeed if its parts are not to overwhelm the whole.

Then there's the matter of wine. How can you possibly choose a wine to accompany a series of tastings like this? Even from an enterprising list, which is what you find here, and even profiting from the half-glasses on offer, a very good idea, you'd have to be far more focussed on the task at hand than I could have been last night — distracted as I was by company, preparations for travel, thoughts of jobs unfinished back at the ranch, and the like.

I want to return to this place a few times, just Cook and me, at midday, to deal with single plates. They're too good to throw together.

Ah: the dessert. We remembered that the ice creams and sorbets here were particularly nice, and shared three: Bourbon vanilla, Chocolate chip, Blackberry balsamic. All are quite wonderful; different in texture, deep with flavor. The bourbon vanilla was a creamy mousse-like thing, ingratiating; the chocolate-chip was more of a challenge but a delightful one. The Blackberry balsamic is, I think, quite overwhelmingly delicious, though Cook — who was, after all, a pastry chef in her day — thinks it just a bit too heavy on the Balsamic vinegar. The four of us began to speculate just what kind of plum was used: Santa Rosa? Hitachi? Certainly a Japanese plum, not European; and after all this is the land of Luther Burbank, who experimented so notably with hybrids…

And then Ina said But why are we talking about plums? Surely it's blackberry balsamic, no?

Martinis

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