January 29, 2017

Dear everyone,

I am starting this letter a bit early because a lot has been happening lately.  It is Day 8 (or T- 1453) of the new regime! And his fun-filled first week has been full of the expected! Gag orders on the EPA! Quashing the availability of medical care in the third world! Starting the gut out of the ACA! En masse resignation of senior State Department bureaucrats! Insulting the President of Mexico! Releasing money to “Build the Wall”! Investigating non-existent voter fraud! “Alternative facts” about the size of the inaugural crowd and illegal voting.  Every day, nay, every hour seems to bring new revelations.  There are so many that I am sure that I have already forgotten some - - perhaps this is what he is expecting.  Never fear, Donald, there are people out there keeping score (and hopefully sharpening knives). If you wanted to vote in a wrecking ball (as, to be charitable, I think many of his voters did), you definitely got what you asked for.  Just don’t cry when that ball begins to head in your direction.  Nicola won’t be one of the criers; she is on the knife-sharpening team (or at least the score-keepers), and went to the big women’s rally Saturday downtown.  I hope she keeps up the pressure.

Anyway, Sunday, while watching the debacles that were the pro football semi-finals (here’s to a good game for the Falcons next week against the hated Patriots), I saw a new message on my Facebook feed.  Next Restaurant was opening up a new menu.  I usually glance at these and sigh hopelessly, because the tickets are usually sold out so quickly (There is a single tasting menu at next, and you buy non-refundable (but transferable) advance tickets to the meal, service and tax included), and I have such limited time.  Nevertheless, I opened up their page, and saw that the new menu theme was ’Ancient Rome’.  So our living room conversation went something like: Me “Hey, Next has a new theme….huh, its ancient Rome.  What do you think of that, Lucas?” (Lucas has headphones on and is absorbed with something on his laptop, and does not answer).  I open up the Next reservation menu. “Wow, there are still some slots available.  Don’t I have time off this week Thursday and Friday? (Getting excited) Cindy and Lucas, would you like to go to Next to sample an ‘ancient Roman’ meal?”  Lucas, taking off his head phones “What? I guess so.”  Cindy “We have to ask if Nicola would like to go”  Henry “OK, but call her up right now, because I can see that reservations are already disappearing”  Cindy dials, no answer.  Cindy texts.  I text (“Nicola call in next two minutes”).  Meanwhile, one of the slots I was looking at on Wednesday disappears.  Nicola calls!  Cindy talks.  Nicola is not available Wednesday, but she is on Thursday! There is still a slot open!  It’s done! Then of course, I look at the price of all of this.  Oh well, think of it as performance art, or tickets at the 50 yard line of a football game.

So, I purchased a table for four, as well as a non-alcoholic mocktail pairing with our meal.  We drove up to Fulton Street Thursday evening.  Traffic was surprisingly good, and we arrived early enough for me to go around the block to unsuccessfully look for parking.  The West Fulton street area is now home to lots of restaurants and hipster bars, and it being ‘restaurant week’ in Chicago, there were a lot of people gadding about.  This area, which used to be full of meat packers and wholesale food distributors has changed a lot over the last few years, and now is home to Google’s Chicago headquarters, as well as a few tech incubators.  It still looks pretty edgy and post-industrial at night.

I end up valet parking (the valet service was pretty slow coming in and out), and we make our way to our table.  We had a revolving cast of waiters throughout the night (at least eight delivering food and discussing the menu, and one man just dedicated to pouring our mocktails). On our table was a little written card about Roman dining, and a paperback copy of Apicius called The Roman Cookery Book (with a burnt cover to make at look aged).  Our menu has numbers in parentheses after each dish which vaguely corresponds to recipes in this edition. 

Of course, Apicius’ recipes are quite vague in modern Western terms, and this gives a modern chef a lot of leeway in interpretation of the dishes. (By the way, when Lucas did a school project on Roman cooking a year ago; I think he used this translation of Apicius.  His efforts did not in any way resemble what we had a Next, but in many ways, they were probably truer to what the average Roman was eating).

Well, the meal was very interesting.  It had some good points and bad.  Some of the highlights included gilded shrimp - - the shrimp 'tail' is miced with olives and nuts; under the ship head was some sort of mousse with other stuff

venison under 'glass' (made with  bay leaf extract), with sliced roasted chestnuts and a paste of ?cheese, saffron and dates

oxtails and turnips cooked in a bowl that was placed in hot sand with burning cinammon stick on the side

a dessert that included a meringue fashioned to look like a Roman ruin

and bread cooked at the table in an earthenware bowl full of hot wood coals then covered with an earthenware helmet so it would bake (the bread was tied up in a piece of string, and when done baking, the server pulled the string and neatly quartered the small loaf).  

There was a black truffle wrapped in chicken skin skewered on a miniature sword, all of this balanced on a bowl of roasted vegetable consommé with fermented beets.   Some of the mocktails were also really good - - like the combination of huckleberries, maple syrup, and pickled jalapeno, or caramelized yellow onion and bay leaf.  

Some things I did not like:  Ten different courses is a lot, even if each one is only about three – seven bites of food. Many of the foods had a very complex mix of spices and flavors, and after a while (especially as my appetite lessened), my palate became dull and uninterested in tasting subtleties.   Several of the dishes were accompanied by material that gave off smoke (like the burning cinnamon bark with the oxtails, or the wood fire associated with the bread) that despite good ventilation resided in the restaurant (especially as other tables would eventually receive these items). The different drinks were also all quite interesting and unique, but they had a common theme of being too sweet, and after a while you had no desire to finish your 2-3 ounce pour of yet another fruit juice combination.  

Still, it was great birthday celebration for Nicola and Lucas (shades of Andy and Henry).  Nicola also received some gifts- silicone baking liners, a couple of piping bags and decorating tips.  I know that Lucas will be getting a new watch (probably an orange solar Seiko) as well.

I recently tried to finish a long science fiction trilogy by Cixin Liu, well translated by Ken Liu.  The first volume is called The Three Body Problem.  Liu posits a fairly hostile universe.  His characters are a bit histrionic and mainly serve to advance the plot, such as it is.  The ending is increasing like Olaf Stapledon.  I have also read a collection of short stories by George Saunders, who reminds me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut, but better.  I have also been re-watching the Prisoner series from the late 60’s with Patrick MacGoohan on youtube.  How prescient these were, with themes of mind control, the irreconcilable tension between the individual and society, etc. Times have not changed.

This weekend I went to an aikido seminar.  It was certainly not made easier by the fact that the first 90 minute session we dis techniques while on our knees.  It made sitting in a kneeling position (or getting up after a throw) quite an experience for the rest of the seminar.  Today was especially interesting because we had some outside instructors who are high ranked judo people teaching us hip throws, and another outside instructor from St. Louis who has a very different style of aikido from ours.

As for Trump' latest (Day 10, or T-1451), as of Friday/Saturday I need to add in his disastrous executive order banning certain foreign nationals and refugees from US entry without any warning whatsoever, leaving total chaos.  The ACLU managed to achieve a stay of this order; I’m glad I gave them money this fall after the election! 

Be Seeing You

H.