Good Meal, Weak Greenback

Back West

I know it’s been a week, but I did want to get some stuff in, even if it is just a lit­tle stale. Pam asked me where I’d like to go out to cel­e­brate my birth­day, and after some thought, I set­tled on a place we had been before, but it had been quite a while. It was West, which wowed all of us back in June of 2006, when we ate there with my par­ents, who were visiting.

West is the kind of place where you go for a big-deal meal, the kind where you are cel­e­brat­ing, the food is top-notch in every way, and the ser­vice is always atten­tive and pro­fes­sional. They rou­tinely win all sorts of awards for the food, ser­vice and wine (which are framed and hung along the hall­way on the way to the rest rooms).

Lit­tle had changed from our first visit — and this is a good thing. I started with a Leek soup, which held a del­i­cate sliver of potato in a ring, like the han­dle of a small bas­ket, arched over a fas­ci­nat­ing ‘hour-long cooked egg’ (an egg that had been care­fully cooked over low heat until it was some­where between a solid and a sauce) in the cen­tre of it. Pam had three gor­geous ‘beet sand­wiches’, each made of 2 slices of thin crim­son beet slices sur­rounded local goat cheese, topped with a rasp­berry sauce and lemon shreds. My main course was a duck breast (always my favourite, and after all, it was my birth­day din­ner) with a rich, brown sauce, served over a small mound of chopped kale and some other ingre­di­ent (couldn’t place it) that added flavour and rich­ness. Pam had Arc­tic Char, served over deep green leaves of barely-cooked baby spinach. We each opted for a glass of dif­fer­ent wine, for me a Span­ish red (not a Rioja, another favourite, but close). Pam chose a New Zealand Sauvi­gnon Blanc, a cit­rusy wine my par­ents intro­duced us to years ago.

The kitchen then made a mis­take, and sent Pam a dessert that she hadn’t ordered (and with the ‘Happy Birth­day’ writ­ten on to the plate in choco­late sauce; They assumed it was her hav­ing the birth­day), and shortly later they brought our reg­u­lar desserts — for Pam a pineap­ple tart made with almond frangi­pani (about which I later learned, “There is an unclear lin­guis­tic con­nec­tion between frangi­pani the flower; Frangi­pani, the noble­man per­fume maker to King Louis XIII of France and the food prod­uct.”). For me, I indulged in 3 cheeses, includ­ing a ter­rific goat camem­bert called ‘Juli­ette’ that I had tasted at the food show ear­lier in the year and had been search­ing for ever since, and an absolutely phe­nom­e­nal bleu cheese, a Bleu D’Auvergne. (Now I know that Auvergne is not only good for folk songs but also cheese!). With my cheese, I had a glass of Sauternes, which I’d describe as a bit of con­cen­trated sun­shine, and just as pow­er­ful. I’ve never had much Sauternes, being a big Port lover, so this was a pleas­ant sur­prise. Oddly enough, the wine and cheese were the most mem­o­rable part of the meal, despite the duck being very good (but just not as mem­o­rable). I think I’ve been miss­ing good wine so much that when I get it I really enjoy it.

Loonie Power
Unless you’ve been fol­low­ing the exchange rate between the US and Canada as we have (and for most folks in the US it’s not a topic of con­ver­sa­tion), you might be sur­prised to find out that for the first time in 30 years, the Cana­dian Dol­lar is on par, and on its way to being worth more than the US Dol­lar. Thank good­ness we didn’t wait longer to move up here, or we’d be a lot poorer. When we first arrived, the exchange rate was roughly 1.25 Cana­dian to 1.00 in the dol­lar. That can make a big dif­fer­ence when you’re buy­ing a house or liv­ing off sav­ings from con­verted US dol­lars while wait­ing for work per­mits, etc.

I don’t know how per­ma­nent this exchange rate will be, nor do I have a clue how high the Cana­dian dol­lar will even­tu­ally go. Some say that it will con­tinue to rise, and oth­ers say that the Cana­dian econ­omy (par­tic­u­larly the man­u­fac­tur­ing, raw mate­ri­als and even the local film indus­try) can’t han­dle this, as the for­mer weak­ness of the Cana­dian cur­rency meant that US busi­ness could depend on an auto­matic ‘dis­count’ of sorts for com­pa­ra­ble goods and ser­vices. Nev­er­the­less, as trade with the US is always going to be a big part of the econ­omy here (or at least until Canada can really get its act together regard­ing trade with China and oth­ers), this new world where our dol­lars are worth the same (or more) as US dol­lars is going to take some get­ting used to. The only thing I can add is that it just looks like another fail­ure that Bush, or WPIUSH can claim. There is noth­ing this man touches that does not end up being lost, be it cur­rency value or human lives.

In the near term, I am sure that we’ll be going shop­ping ‘south of the bor­der’ (and I don’t mean Mex­ico), more often. Even gaso­line via Point Roberts might be worth the dis­tance and the wait.