Excuse the radio silence, nothing's wrong, on the contrary, I just spent a fantastic week in Morocco, Marrakech, to be precise. Wonderfully exotic, definitely a destination I would recommend.  read more »

The day: 26 th July 2008, Dinner. The place: Farnborough Common, Locksbottom Kent BR6 8NF (tel. 01689 854 848) The venue: Chapter One The food: modern Anglo-French The drinks: Good list, good range of prices, mainly French, also by the glass and half bottle. When you read the address, you think it must be impossibly far. But we trust technology, and indeed it takes us about only 45 minutes to drive there from East London , with the Blackwall tunnel and all. We blindly follow the machines instructions, twisting and turning in unknown areas of the great capital, and we finally get to an obviously wealthy and leafy suburb. There is the elegant and very spacious room of Chapter 1. The place is heaving with customers. We dont like seating in small square tables a micron away from our neighbours. The waiter leads us to a small square table a micron away from our neighbours. Butthanks to the wintry wind blowing from a blasting air conditioner what can we do, we like to be hot in summer-, we are upgraded or downgraded, depending how you see it, to a larger round table in a corner.  read more »

Colorful, Crunchy, & Good for You - Pass the Salad Please!  read more »

Here we are in Vegas, in our hotel room at Caesar's Palace, and I have 30 minutes to tell you everything we've done so far before today's epic schedule, the highlight, of course, being my battle with Dr. Melfi .... Let's start with the flight on Wednesday. We flew JetBlue and I'm normally a very good flyer, never getting sick. But for whatever reason, this particular flight turned me a dark shade of green. I was sitting in a middle seat in the very back and the combination of warm air (the plane wasn't particularly cool), the guy on my left dominating the armrest, The Real Housewives of New York City on Bravo and then the sporadic but jarring turbulence (the plane dipped many times and then shook and then dipped again) by the end I was as close to puking as I've ever been on a plane. Craig looked worried but I kept it together, taking deep breaths and finally feeling better once we deplaned. Walking off the plane at the Vegas airport is an immediate immersion into the Vegas experience: there are slot machines, giant posters for shows and concerts and weird ads for restaurants you'd never want to visit. The people waiting for their luggage were slightly older, a bit larger, and what's probably a decent representation of a big cross-section of American society. Sort of the same feeling you get waiting in line at Disney World. After getting our luggage, we almost got into a shuttle that'd take us to our hotel but I convinced Craig to get a cab instead since I thought the shuttle would stop at 1,000 hotels and I would go crazy. So we went to the side of the airport with the cabs, and the line was 8,000 people long. Craig gave me a dirty look but the line moved fast. Ok, skip the boring parts, Adam. We got to the hotel. We checked in. And then, starving, we dove into the Caesar's Palace food court looking for a place to eat. The first place we saw was Spago. Now most people wouldn't think to eat a fast, post-flight meal at a restaurant of this calibre, but this was the Vegas version of Spago and it ended up being the perfect thing.  read more »

I have had very little time, and about as much inclination to write lately. The last few times I've attempted to put something together here, I've gotten a few paragraphs in, and quit. That includes a start on the review...http://www.appetites.us

So, last week, when I said that Brandon and I didnt really plan , per se, to go to Brussels , I inadvertently left a little something out of the story. What I should have said, in retrospect, is that we did have plans for a vacation, but they didnt involve Brussels. They involved San Francisco. Sometime last fall, we decided that we needed a vacation. March sounded like a good time to aim for - soon enough, but safely past the hubbub of the holidays - and so we started poking around online, looking for airfare to somewhere relaxing. We sort of ran wild with the whole idea, really, mulling over Mexico and Spain and New Zealand, but as you might expect, everything was stunningly expensive. Like, please-pass-the-smelling-salts expensive. So we recalculated and decided that a simple road trip would do. In fact, a road trip to San Francisco would more than do: there would be palm trees and possibly even sun, and we both have family to stay with nearby, and then, you know, theres also plenty to eat. So we started making plans. Brandons father even got in on the action, deciding to fly from New Jersey to Seattle and join us for the drive down the coast. We were going on vacation! To San Francisco! And then, of course, I went out for prosecco and pizza with our friend Olaiya, and she had found cheap tickets to Brussels, and after that, uh, we were going on vacation! To Brussels and Paris! But Brandons dad had already bought his plane ticket, and it would have been cruel to make him cancel. And between you and me, its kind of hard to say no to a drive down the Oregon coast, to the promise of sandy beaches shrouded in fog and root beer on tap at the Rogue Brewery. So we went to Brussels and Paris. And then, last week, we three piled in the car and came, winding through the redwoods and eating way too many M&Ms and jelly beans, to California, where I sit right now, on my cousin Katies couch in Oakland. There are palm trees, and the sun is shining, and though I woke up this morning under a haze of dread, thinking of the loads of work I should have been doing last week when I was instead driving along the coast and eating fistfuls of Easter candy, for a Monday, its not bad. I mean, as Brandons aunt Pam said a couple of nights ago, when we sat lazily around a table in Santa Rosa and played cards for four hours, why do today what can be done tomorrow?  read more »

The day: 29 th February 2008, Dinner. The place: Maso Franch 2, 38030 Giovo ( Trento ), tel: +390461242556 The venue: Ristorante Maso Franch Closest airports: Verona (British Airways) The food: Modern/eclectic fine regional dining The drinks: Good list, strong on local offerings Lavis is a rather unmemorable village 10KM out of Trento, but gastronomically it occupies a strategic position: near many vineyards along a strada del vino (wine route), near Zambana of asparagus fame , and, driving just a few minutes along beautiful Val di Cembra (which begins at Lavis), you reach one of the top Trentino restaurants, Maso Franch. This is an old and history-rich maso (a farm building), which from its origin in the early 19 th century went through several incarnations and renovations, the latest of which operated by the new proprietors, the winemakers Cantina La Vis. In 2006 Maso Franch opened as a relais and high-end restaurant. The operation is run by the Baumgarter family, originally from the neighbouring Alto Adige, with chef Markus leading the kitchen and the rest of the family taking care of hospitality. We first quickly peered into this elegant structure from outside after one of our monstrous mountain walks, still in mountain gear and showing obvious signs of out recent contact with nature. While a horrified member of staff observed us from inside fearful of our trespassing we inspected the menu and were very enticed. Yes, we needed to go back. So here we are, now (just) properly attired, inside the dining room, which is decorated in a modern style with stark lines (compared to more rustic settings such as, say Malga Panna or El Molin ), but still with enough wood to be quite warm. Man qualifies it as Scandinavian while Woman is reminded of the 70s style of Locanda Locatelli in London . Take your pick.  read more »

I think when I was around 13 or 14, I realized that I was never going to be one of the most popular girls at school or one of the "In" crowd. I was a pretty good kid though, and never one to buck the system or flaunt the rules my parents had set out for me. I hadn't yet really discovered boys in any appreciable way and being a "good" girl was still very much what I wanted to be. I can remember the first time a boy asked to walk me home from a dance. I was 14, and I refused to let him hold my hand. Not because I didn't want him to, but because I knew my parents would be watching from the front windows of our house, and I didn't want them to see me holding hands with a boy. I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16, and so I thought they would freak out if they saw me holding hands with a boy, the end result being I wouldn't be allowed to go to a school dance again, for a very long time afterwards. And so . . . I managed to maintain my parents faith in me, whilst at the same time securing my position as a card carrying member of the "Geek" squad. The next few years were hellish, to say the least. The boy went back to school and told everyone about me not holding his hand and that meant to the rest of them that I had to be a lesbian. For the whole rest of the time I was at that school I was haunted by that, and teased mercilessly. Girls didn't want to be my friend, for fear I guess of being painted with the same brush and boys . . . well . . . I got past it, you always do. We moved a few years later, thankfully and I left it all behind.  read more »