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.