by Christina Waters | Feb 23, 2007 | Food, Home, Travel |
Yes, it was snowy in Manhattan last week! Beautiful, crisp and COLD. But that didn’t stop me from devouring all the food and art the law would allow.
Central Park, as you can see (that’s the Dakota, where John Lennon lived, in the background) looked gorgeous. I drove through it on my way to breakfast at the Neue Galerie‘s decadent Cafe Sabarsky. Pastries lined up like it was Vienna 1923 all over again.
The Neue Galerie, art lovers will recall, is the
jewelbox mansion on 5th Avenue (at 86th) that Ronald Lauder (Estee’s son) transformed into a home for Austrian and German artwork. The current exhibition includes four rooms of furniture, textiles, wallpaper – the works – designed by the Wiener Werkstatt’s Josef Hoffman (the Viennese equivalent of Charles Rennie MacIntosh). (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 22, 2007 | Art, Home |
Erin V. Sotak: Squeeze – A cunning and curious installation dealing with pomegranates — lots of them — fills the Sesnon Gallery up at Porter College, now through March 17, 2007. Open Tues – Sat, noon to 5pm, the Sesnon continues to offer sensory-cerebral treats for those who like their artworks more edgy than not. Sotak’s work explores loss, decay and the passage of time in ways that often border on the playful and delicious. Not for those who like it tame. Sesnon Gallery – the link gives ample info to help you get on up to the UCSC campus and dive into this juicy installation.
by Christina Waters | Feb 8, 2007 | Home |
Looks like there is life after India Joze after all. The spacious Center Street Grill makes a terrific design statement. Already attracting a lunch and dinner following, this spot packs even bigger visual punch at night — when the glowing ochre and terra cotta walls provide a bold hit of sophistication. Huge abstract paintings, creatively-placed track spotlighting, and acres of well-tended plants make it one of the nicest interiors in downtown Santa Cruz. And let me praise the care taken by the management not to cultivate a generic look. Plenty of small touches make Center Street Grill seductive. Good-looking polished wood furniture, table lamps, velvet curtains framing doorways, even intelligently-placed mirrors and custom grillework all work to maintain a sense of dining identity and intimacy — no small feat in this over-sized restaurant. Right, Christina. But how is the food? Read on. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 8, 2007 | Food, Home |
Time for a little grousing about rude restaurant behavior — from the management’s point of view. Ted Burke has been running a mighty successful establishment — Shadowbrook Restaurant — for decades. He’s seen it all in the rude patron department. But here’s what’s got him seeing red a week before Valentine’s Day. “Too many people interested in dining on St. Valentine’s Day,” Burke said in his recent email, “will make several reservations around town — this happens on New Year’s too — and decide at the last minute which one they want to keep …and then not bother to cancel any of the others.” (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 8, 2007 | Art, Home, Travel |
I’ve never met a museum cafe I didn’t like, and the Art Museum Cafe, run by Giuseppe Restaurants at La Jolla’s lustrous Museum of Contemporary Art, is no exception. Housed in a corner wing of the Robert Venturi-revamped, seaside mansion, the Cafe offers glamorous al fresco dining under the wisteria-draped pergola, or in the frescoed dining room. So completely Italian is this setting, watched over by the drop-dead handsome Giuseppe himself, (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 1, 2007 | Home |
O’Mei entrepreneur, Roger Grigsby, shared this gem with me. He overhead a former waiter approach a table about a month ago and actually ask the patrons, “You guys hangin’ in there OK?.” A true indication of just how genericized ordinary language has become.
I am about to give up my crusade to ban “you guys” from public communications, especially since I attended a lecture last week at Cowell College and heard the distinguished guest speaker begin his remarks with, “How are you guys tonight?”
Even ruder was the family I observed dining at Avanti two weeks ago, who allowed their “darling” 3-year-old to scream, bang spoons, wriggle (more…)
