West is Best

My par­ents are vis­it­ing us for a few days, so we took some time out with them to enjoy the city, partly as tourists again. Tomor­row, They’re going to ride the Trol­ley and do some sight­see­ing and Tues­day we might do a lit­tle shop­ping. This morn­ing we went to the Museum of Anthro­pol­ogy at UBC, which I’ve been to before, but I was busy play­ing in a Game­lan con­cert at the time. Yes­ter­day, we spent a lit­tle time chat­ting, walk­ing around nearby Granville Island, and going out to din­ner in the evening. That was a real high­light. West has the rep­u­ta­tion of being one of the best restau­rants in Van­cou­ver (in fact, for 2006, it won for best restau­rant of the year in the Van­cou­ver Mag­a­zine Restau­rant Awards, and the year before that, Best Chef of the year in the same pub­li­ca­tion — it was named as one of the 10 best restau­rants world­wide in the UK Sun­day Inde­pen­dent), and based on our expe­ri­ence, I’d have to agree.

The din­ing room is gor­geous: sleek and styl­ish with­out being stuffy with strik­ing pat­terns of metal on the ceil­ing and a wall of wine bot­tles that takes up nearly the entire north wall of the restaurant.

To start out, I had a Dun­ge­ness Crab and Alba­core tuna appe­tizer, a cool and refresh­ing sand­wich of two per­fectly cut and skinned slices of tomato, filled with a chopped mix­ture of the two fishes, as well as a sort of chunky avo­cado sauce (like a gua­camole), and it was sit­ting in a sort tart, lemony apple and tomato sauce.

My main course was Duck meat — hunks of breast meat and a leg, with onion crusted potato, a huck­le­berry sauce (with fresh huck­le­ber­ries) and one of the most incred­i­ble things I’ve ever tasted: a Foie Gras ‘bon bon’. What’s that? The chef’s inven­tion: a round ball about the same size as tater tot, maybe a lit­tle big­ger. Breaded with a crunchy bat­ter and fried, the mid­dle con­tained an ooz­ing, incred­i­ble bit of foie gras (for the unini­ti­ated, that’s fat­tened duck liver, orig­i­nally a French del­i­cacy that some have called cruel, but upon closer inspec­tion, the prac­tice has been found not to be so bad. In fact, the ducks love being overfed, and despite their obe­sity as they approach the time that they’ll be ready for slaugh­ter, they are actu­ally bet­ter taken care of and lead more com­fort­able lives than most farm ani­mals. My mother, who shares my inter­est in gourmet cui­sine, gave me an arti­cle about the prac­tice, hence my being a bit more up on it these days). Cruel or not, it was unbe­liev­ably deli­cious, and as I said to the waiter: ‘This ought to be ille­gal’ — not for the product’s his­tory, but because it was so good that it really felt more like a con­trolled sub­stance than merely food. For desert I had a local Camem­bert, some warm wal­nut bread, glazed toasted hazel­nuts and some ele­gantly fans of sliced apples. My father, who has a great aver­sion to gar­lic, forced them to impro­vise, and the result was a piece of spring salmon with a lovely white foam that seemed to enve­lope the fish. My mother had squab, stuffed with a minty cous cous and expertly sliced — the meat almost like chicken liver in its rich­ness and tex­ture. Pam had tuna with a ‘decom­posed Salade Nicoise’, as the menu put it (some of the ele­ments of the same, but instead of being tossed together, ele­gantly arranged on her plate like a work of art).

Wait­ers were atten­tive and very well informed, and more than once they went to great pains to insure that every­thing was exactly as each diner wanted. It’s pretty amaz­ing to me that we have a restau­rant that in terms of ser­vice, ambi­ence and food is world class within walk­ing dis­tance. The last time we had food like this was in New York City at Aqua­vit a cou­ple of years ago (and unfor­tu­nately I wasn’t feel­ing well enough to truly indulge). We were all thrilled to be able to share a meal as good as this together.

Deja Vu all Over Again

Photo by Bruce Ben­nett from Canada.com

We real­ized shortly after we arrived in Canada that one of the keys to under­stand­ing Cana­dian cul­ture is to fol­low and appre­ci­ate the sport — no, it’s greater than merely a sport, the Cul­ture of Hockey. Hockey was invented in Canada, and ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ is prob­a­bly the high­est rated TV show in the coun­try. I’ll bet it has been since it first aired. Typ­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion at work in the morn­ing is about last night’s game (although for a lot of the younger pro­gram­mers, these days they’ve been talk­ing about UFC — Ulti­mate Fight­ing Championship).

What was the best way to become a par­tic­i­pant in this essence of Canada? I’m too old to learn to play the game and it is extremely demand­ing ath­let­i­cally. So, being well-informed fans will have to suf­fice. The best place to start becom­ing a real fan is to par­tic­i­pate in the biggest games of the year: the Stan­ley Cup Play­offs — that’s the final cham­pi­onship where the win­ners of the year face off. Since Hockey is so big in Canada, it takes up nearly half of the year to get to that point. While the tem­per­a­ture out­side is balmy, and we’re see­ing mar­velously long days end­ing sun­set between 9 and 9:30, they are still fight­ing it out on the rink. March may be the month of mad­ness for Col­lege Bas­ket­ball, and late January/early Feb­ru­ary may be the time for the Super Bowl, but June is the biggest month for Hockey’s final 7 games. This year it’s par­tic­u­larly good to get ini­ti­ated into root­ing for Hockey in Canada, because the final 2 teams are the South Car­olina Hur­ri­canes ver­sus the Edmon­ton Oil­ers. We get to root for Hockey and Canada! (It’s no stretch for us any­way. Hail­ing solidly from the North­east, we were never big fans of the Car­oli­nas. I know there are plenty of fine peo­ple in South Car­olina, and some beau­ti­ful stretches of coast­line, but I must con­fess that I always asso­ci­ated the state with mon­strous indus­trial hog farms, Jesse Helms — and I know, he was from North Car­olina — OK, Strom Thur­mond, and Big Tobacco.)

The first game of the Stan­ley Cup was last night. We did it right, drink­ing beer and watch­ing from begin­ning to end. I have to admit, the game felt some­what famil­iar, at least emo­tion­ally. Let’s see, it started out well, with an early lead, that reached 3 to 0. But the other team fought their way back, and tied the score. In the final min­utes, the Hur­ri­canes not only won the game, but a key player for Edmon­ton, goalie Dwayne Rolo­son was injured and will prob­a­bly be side­lined for the remain­der of the play­offs. In short, it had all the ele­ments of a Boston Red Sox game: Early con­fi­dence, a mid-game crum­ble, a dev­as­tat­ing injury, and final ignominy. Gee, we feel per­fectly at home, at least in terms of the arc of our sports team. Hockey, base­ball, it’s not how you play the game, it’s how you lose, and we had nearly 15 years of learn­ing how to lose in Boston. I only hope that we don’t go 15 years here with­out any team in Canada win­ning the Stan­ley Cup.

Remind me Again Why We Left...

If we ever for­get one of the main rea­sons why we fled the US to the coun­try to the north of it, all we have to do is turn the TV on. It’s not just watch­ing news from the Seat­tle area (we get KING and KOMO, the local NBC and ABC affil­i­ates respec­tively). The drum­beat of mur­ders, shoot­ings and other vio­lence is remark­able when you stop watch­ing it for a while, as we do here. But we still keep track of what’s going on. We watch the Daily Show, with Jon Stew­art, and that gives us plenty of rue­ful humor about the US, par­tic­u­larly regard­ing the cur­rent occu­pant of the White House and his sup­port­ing cast of crooks, scoundrels and morons.

And of course, I also keep read­ing news on the Inter­net, and every once in a while, a story shows up on the por­tal I set as my home­page (myway.com) that gives me a full-frontal reminder of just why we ran for the bor­der. In this case, I can almost hear Jon Stew­art report­ing it on the Daily Show before it airs, in my mind. Shall we tune in?

(Loud cheer­ing and applause from the stu­dio audi­ence)
Good evening and wel­come to the Daily Show, we have a great show for you this evening; our guest will include the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Murtha, whose recent com­ments on the Iraqi con­flict have put him in the head­lines these days. And after all, where would we be with­out head­lines? That was a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, no need to answer.

But first, (big pause), it’s impor­tant to put events in this day and age in in per­spec­tive. Our pres­i­dent, George W. Bush cer­tainly has. How, you say? With what some call a quag­mire in the Mid­dle East, an Immi­gra­tion Bill that is hav­ing a tough time in Con­gress, hear­ings on the Valerie Plame affair, a steadily falling level of approval in the polls… the list goes on… So what does The Decider, in fact…uh…decide to focus on? What press­ing issue could pos­si­bly be the one that puts all of these oth­ers in per­spec­tive? What item is so crit­i­cal, that trumps all of the oth­ers, that it requires the imme­di­ate atten­tion of the Com­man­der in Chief:

Bush pro­mot­ing ban on gay mar­riage
by Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Pres­i­dent George W. Bush will pro­mote a con­sti­tu­tional ban on gay mar­riage on the eve of a Sen­ate vote next week, weigh­ing in on an issue that could rally his waver­ing con­ser­v­a­tive base in an elec­tion year.

Though the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment against same-sex mar­riage stands lit­tle chance of pass­ing, it is one of sev­eral hot-button causes Repub­li­cans are cham­pi­oning to appeal to right-wing vot­ers ahead of November’s con­gres­sional ballot.

Bush planned to use his weekly radio address on Sat­ur­day and a White House speech on Mon­day to push for the amend­ment that would allow states to rec­og­nize only mar­riages between men and women, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said on Friday.

Bush has never made a secret of his views on the issue but has rarely talked about it in pub­lic until now.

“He believes the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage is between a man and a woman,” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters. “The president’s made it clear what he wants. He would like to see the Sen­ate pass the bill.”

The Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee approved the amend­ment along party lines after a heated ses­sion on May 18. Because the mea­sure seeks to change the Con­sti­tu­tion, it must pass both houses of Con­gress by a two-thirds major­ity and then be approved by at least 38 states.

The full Sen­ate will take up the mea­sure on Mon­day with a vote expected later in the week, but the bill’s spon­sor, Col­orado Repub­li­can Wayne Allard, has acknowl­edged he has far fewer than the 67 votes needed to win passage.

That’s right, folks. This was the chal­lenge that Mr. Bush saw fit to con­cen­trate all of that (*ahem*) polit­i­cal cap­i­tal that he has amassed. Why this impor­tant, earth-shaking issue, that he dropped every­thing else to lobby on it? Well we might as well give the stan­dard answer that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion gives as the ratio­nale for every­thing they do:

9/11 Changes Everything.

Some­times this stuff just writes itself.