by Christina Waters | May 7, 2007 | Food, Home, Travel |
Despite my motto, “The East has ceased,” it was a delicate springtime that greeted me in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week. Dogwood in bloom, azaleas purple through the tracery of pale green just beginning to burst into sight – really lovely. That’s the grey-green Atlantic Ocean you see on my masthead this week. And there was terrific food and some memorable museum-going. But it’s nice to be home.
Fans of the bizarre and medically wierd will definitely want to visit Philadelphia’s venerable Mutter Museum. Founded as part of the august College of Physicians by close personal friends of Ben Franklin’s several hundred years ago, the extraordinary teaching museum has been updated and expanded over the years. Today the collection of medical oddities, mostly housed in an old Victorian library lined with glass display cases, still packs a macabre punch. Yes, two-headed babies, mesmerizingly grotesque skeletals remains, and all that, but the museum is especially strong in its collection of rare and antique surgical implements. Makes me wonder how any of our ancestors survived! And if as a kid, like me, you were fascinated by Eng and Chang, the original Siamese twins, you’ll find much here to satisfy your curiosity. Claudia and I absorbed as much as we could before heading off for lunch. That evening, we sampled the new Susanna Foo dining room in Radner. (more…)
by Christina Waters | May 5, 2007 | Food, Home |
Downtown Santa Cruz’ impossibly chic and appealing boite, Soif, continues to make us happy. Wine-wise, we’ve been having lots of fun with whites from Slovenia, and reds from Sicilia. Food-wise, the Soif kitchen — under the guidance of chef Chris Avila — references the season with a luscious roasted cauliflower gratin that is downright irresistible. Small plates of those sensuous fresh sardines, boquerones— on a thick slab of aioli-topped crostini, make magic with glasses of anything involved the syrah grape. Ditto the crostini topped with sauteed arugula. A substantial appetizer of super-sized sea scallops on a bed of that amazing cauliflower, kept us company last week as we sampled our way through some excellent red wines.
Soif host, Hugh Weiler sets the tone (pictured above with server Ceci Coon, who like all the house staff, manages to be sensitive, charming and informed – all at once).
by Christina Waters | Apr 22, 2007 | Movies |
Even the eloquent face and supple voice of Anthony Hopkins can’t save this Absolut vodka commercial masquerading as a cinematic thriller. Even though Ryan Gosling, as the rising legal star assigned to prosecute the murderer, has done his homework at the Don Johnson School of Acting, he can’t create a character out of this embarrassing waste of art direction. When was the last time you thought you’d grow nostalgic for Tom Cruise? The Firm was a real thriller involving the demimonde of attorneys and criminals. But Gosling is no Cruise (a sad comparison to begin with). And Fracture‘s director, Gregory Hoblit — a career producer of TV cop shows like L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues — is no Sidney Pollack.
The star of this new exercise in visual glamor is the architecture of Los Angeles. The Disney Center, Malibu, the moody orange glaze of Hollywood sunsets, and especially the Brentwood estate that forms the crime scene for this superficial psycho-study — all conspire to look fabulous, but stop short of providing anything more than costly eye candy. Cinematographer Kramer Morganthau does give us some exceptional moments, superb overlapping reflections through skyscraper windows down to the streets below, and one bit of sinister poetry in which we see the murderer’s reflection in the viscous pool of his wife’s blood. But it’s not enough.
The story starts out laden with brisk promise. Hopkins, a wealthy architectural engineer, confronts his cheating wife in their staggeringly well-appointed mansion and shoots her point blank. He then coolly summons the police, goes to jail, and decides to defend himself against hot-shot LA district attorney Gosling. Now the film isn’t creative enough to actually show Gosling being a courtroom hotshot. We just hear his co-workers saying that he is, and he struts around a lot waving his cell phone. At this point we should hear the buzzer go off: Warning: film school assignment. Film noir dumbed down to film grey. Not a pretty sight.
Fracture trashes every opportunity to engage our emotions. Gosling finds himself in ever more lame and preposterous situations — not the least is an unconvincing sexual attraction between the hotshot and a senior law firm barracuda, played with a complete absence of expression by Rosamund Burke, whose face appears to have been genetically engineered. Whoever wrote these parts had never encountered an actual heterosexual alliance. All in all, nine (9) producers combined their best stuff to bring to the screen a thriller without tension, a courtroom drama without courtroom drama, a feature-length film without a script, and an homage to films like Vertigo, Jagged Edge and The Postman Always Rings Twice made without any working knowledge of film history.
I would walk two miles to watch the clever tricks of Hopkins, who manages to avoid repeating his Hannibal Lector mannerisms and forges a new variety of chilly evil. If viewers insist upon seeing him as Lector, that’s not his fault in this film. His lyrical Welsh accents do their best to craft some semblance of meaning into a script that appears to have been left unfinished. Even Gosling, whose character actually reads Dr. Seuss out loud in order to pad some of Fracture‘s lengthy gaps, looks like he’s ad-libbing. Ad-libbing works on talk shows. Not in slick murder mysteries.
Go out and buy a copy of Architectural Digest. It will contain deeper truths and a hell of a lot more dramatic tension.
by Christina Waters | Apr 22, 2007 | Food, Home |
Steve Spill is an ace photographer, bon vivant and, as it turns out, can whip up some mean curries when he wants. And he wanted to last week, in the professionally equipped kitchen of the King Street bungalow he shares with his Sylvia. Munching pappodoms and an array of lip-numbing chutneys and sambals, we watched as Spill simultaneously surfed a dozen dishes bubbling and roasting and stir-frying on six burners and two ovens. Was he completely in control of the situation? Is any chef? It was often difficult to tell, as everything needed continuous stirring, browning, and turning. From a wall of spices lining one section of the kitchen, floor to ceiling, Spill had retrieved the ingredients that mysteriously merge into the perfumed results. Onions and lamb had been chopped and seeds toasted and crushed, earlier in the day. Thanks to a large trove of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs and a few choice zinfandels, a dozen of us worked through the appetizers and then at exactly 9pm, dove into fragrant dishes the color of sunrise and sunset. My favorites included the crisp chicken kofta, the elegant, fiery mint, cilantro and chili chutney and a sensuous dal that would have done any London curry house proud.
Homemade mango chutney, chili and lime chutney, a South African tomato chutney – these zippy dips were cooled by a succulent cucumber and yogurt raita. To spoon over Spill’s perfect jasmine rice, were fat roast new potatoes – curried of course – a sauteed okra dish called bhindi bhajee, crunchy long beans with tomato, a delectable, tender lamb bhuna and rogan gosht. The latter was a splendid stew of lamb, laced with cardamom and cinnamon and tons of garlic and ginger. Probably many more spices as well. Heady stuff! Can you say “ambitious”? Steve had made even more but my palate eventually gave out after so many big flavors.
I can’t remember the last time a “civilian” chef produced such an impressive line-up of brilliant flavors. The atmosphere was wonderful too. My compliments!
by Christina Waters | Apr 21, 2007 | Home |
In our house, Green & Black’s preternaturally intense combination of dark chocolate, currents and hazelnuts, is considered the ne plus ultra. It rules. Granted this is a chocolate experience with so much gravitas that you really cannot multi-task while you experience it. Your full attention and nothing less is required by this perfectly balanced creation of organic cacao, fruit and nuts. Welcome to our jungle — where the finest sweets can make the difference between existential darkness and going toward the light. Chocolate at once bitter and voluptuous doesn’t come along every day. Luckily it has come along in our lifetime. Not for everyone, it will appeal to those for whom personal preference borders on fanaticism. You know who you are.
