Tag: Restaurants

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Packing List – Maryland

Carl Van Vechten, Billie Holiday, 1942, Van Vechten Collection, Library of Congress

We’re not good at traveling light, but when we went back to Maryland we traveled about as light as we ever have. I didn’t take a guitar. We took no fishing gear. We didn’t take anything we couldn’t carry onto a plane, which did include a book about Northwest salmon and an iPad.  I still managed to take one too many pairs of shoes.

We had trouble getting the car because I’d  changed the plane reservation but not the car reservation and came in seven hours late.  Not only did I change the plane reservation, I had us going home the next morning while we were fishing, but Kris fixed the plane while I waited for Budget to take care of the car.  I use Budget for the fast break, but this time it wasn’t very fast. The Budget counter beat us up for better than an hour.

We never made it to Annapolis for the crab cakes on the harbor side that I’d planned.

As for places in Maryland I’d still like to see, we got the water-side tour of Annapolis, which I figure took care of the Naval Academy, but I’d have liked to see the Antietam National Battlefield: there’s something holy about Civil War battlefields. Along with the civil rights landmarks of the South they may be our only real places of pilgrimage. We didn’t make Antietam, and someday I’ll go back for it.

Driving from Baltimore to Annapolis we realized that Barry Levinson made four Baltimore movies we should have watched: Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights ( 1999).  Next time, or maybe this week.

We did manage to eat at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore for a second time. After we dropped off the car at the airport we took a beat-up and clanking metro train through the city, down past the 50s suburbs, past Camden Yards and the harbor into the hard part of town, the part of town that looks like a city with the nation’s highest murder rate, and finally to a stop in gentrifying Woodberry, one block from Woodberry Kitchen. The couple next to us at the restaurant said there were 220-odd separate neighborhoods in Baltimore, and we saw some from the train. After dinner though we took an Uber to our hotel by the airport. Chickens.

I’ve listened to the Maryland playlist now off and on for a year.  You can’t listen to enough Billie Holiday, and the Low Symphony by Phillip Glass is something special: it sounds like water.  I even liked Eubie Blake’s ragtime piano. Frank Zappa, on the other hand, is just not the thing.

I’m Just Wild About Harry, Eubie Blank and Noble Sissle, 1921, Indiana University.

  • Billie Holiday. Lots of it, but not nearly enough.
  • Bobby Bare, Streets of Baltimore. There’s also a nice version by Gram Parsons, with Emmylou Harris. It’s about an unhappy marriage.
  • Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll. It’s about the murder of a servant.
  • Bruce Springsteen, Hungry Heart. It’s about abandoning your family.
  • Counting Crows, Raining in Baltimore. It’s about rain in Baltimore, and the need for a rain coat.
  • Phillip Glass, Low Symphony. I meant to download more Glass.  It sounds like the Chesapeake.
  • Eubie Blake. Ragtime.
  • Frank Zappa. There was a lot of it, and I listened to it, and wondered why we ever liked him. I guess we were all more juvenile once.
  • Hoagie Charmichael, Baltimore Oriole. There’s also a version by George Harrison, of all people. It’s about a prostitute. It’s used as Lauren Bacall’s musical theme in Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not.
  • Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Baltimore Fire. It’s about Baltimore burning. Like all McGarrigle music it’s terrific.
  • Little Feat, Feets Don’t Fail Me Now. It may be the only happy song of the lot, but Baltimore only plays a cameo role.
  • Lucinda Williams, Trying to Get to Heaven. It’s a Bob Dylan song about desperation.
  • Lyle Lovett, Baltimore. It’s about death.
  • Nina Simone, Baltimore. Written by Randy Newman, and he’s got a version too. It’s about how hard it is just to live.
  • Prince, Baltimore. It’s about police brutality.
  • Talking Heads, Mommy Daddy You And I. It’s about a family car ride, or train ride, or bus ride, or something. It’s one of the sillier moments for the Talking Heads. I hope I never hear it again.
  • Tim Hardin, The Lady Came from Baltimore. It’s a love song about a thief and a lady. It really is a love song though. It’s about poverty and social inequality.

I think I lost my favorite Corpus Christi Hooks cap.

 

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The Monteleone and Oysterology

I remember the first time I saw Kris. She walked past and I couldn’t believe how pretty and bright and lively she was. It worked out well, too.

I also remember the first time I saw the Hotel Monteleone.  I was at a tax and securities law conference at the Marriott on Canal, and walking down Royal I saw the prettiest, brightest, liveliest hotel I’d ever seen. I wondered why I wasn’t staying there. Every time I’ve been to New Orleans since I’ve tried to book the Monteleone, but it’s always full. I thought maybe this would be a final trip to New Orleans, we have so many places to go to get 50 fish, so I made a special effort to get the right restaurants and a reservation at the Monteleone.

The restaurants were great. The Monteleone not so much.

Like I said, the restaurants were great. We had Beignet Friday morning at Morning Call in City Park, which has altogether better beignet than Cafe du Monde. That didn’t stop us though from buying beignet at the Cafe du Monde early the next two mornings, because their beignet is pretty good too.  Morning Call put us near the New Orleans Museum of Art, which has a good early Italian art collection, a good collection of moderns, and an El Greco. It was time well spent.

We ate lunch late, around 3, at Willie Mae’s Scotch House in the Treme. I may never go to New Orleans again, but if I do it will include Willie Mae’s Scotch House.  That’s some great fried chicken, and we were smart enough to order extra for the next day’s fishing. Fried chicken is even better cold. Dinner Friday night was at Commander’s Palace, old school. I had pecan-crusted black drum and the turtle soup–exactly what I’d have had at Brennan’s in Houston, so it felt very homey. I have to say, the service is even better in New Orleans. I wore a jacket because, well, that’s what one does at Commander’s Palace.

Dinner Saturday was at La Petite Grocery.  I had the triple tail.  I’m still working on my 50 fish dinners, but I’m collecting them faster than my 50 fish. Mostly the rest of the time we fished, except of course for the dozen raw at Felix Oyster Bar.

We have a friend who is a bona fide oysterologist, complete with PhD, and anticipating this trip I asked him about oysters in August. He said that the problem with oysters in summer wasn’t that they were more dangerous, eating raw oysters is always risky, but that I would probably be ok if I was otherwise reasonably healthy. Oysters aren’t particularly safer at  60° than they are at 80°  (though I guess the danger of spoilage is less). The problem with summer oysters is that oysters spawn in the summer.

Oysters broadcast spawn, like tarpon, except that they have neither fins nor feet, so they aren’t traveling to spawning grounds. They’re either in bed together or they ain’t. When summer comes around and the oysters are fat and lusty they broadcast their boy stuff and their girl stuff to make baby oysters, and oyster sex leaves them flat and limp and altogether less satisfying than the cool-weather, non-spawned, pre-orgasmic oysters. But flat and limp or fat and lusty I still had a dozen at Felix, and so far I’m not dead yet. They were also pretty great, and at Felix I didn’t have to stand in line at Acme Oyster House across the street. Pro tip from my daughter.

I also had a shopping spree at Faulkner House Books which isn’t a restaurant, but I had to prepare for my future trip to Mississippi, and where else does one buy Faulkner? I also bought some Eudora Welty who I’ve never read.  Mississippi here I come.

But first the Monteleone.  Some things just don’t work out the way you plan.  The Monteleone is in the center of the quarter, a block off Bourbon Street, and for at least a half-dozen blocks the traffic is as bad as midtown Manhattan at rush hour. Then I had to circle the block because there was no place to park at the entrance. Toss in plenty of pedestrians, many with to-go cups and on the wet side of sober, and a brass band and my nerves were fried. The rooms are nice but small, and the Monteleone didn’t have coffee made at 5 am, which is unforgiveable.  The Carousel Bar is famous, and big, but it’s hard to find a vacant chair at either bar or table. There are people everywhere.

You know what I want in a hotel? I want a quiet place. I want to go into the hotel bar and sit down and be welcomed from the moment I arrive. I want coffee at 5 am that I don’t have to make myself. I don’t want French Quarter tourist craziness in the hotel lobby, in the parking garage, or at the hotel entrance while I’m waiting on an Uber. I’m not cut out for the Monteleone. Next time the Columns.

And then of course I screwed up.  I apparently made our reservation for Friday, not Friday and Saturday. When we got back to the hotel late Saturday afternoon we were locked out of our room.

Thank God.

We got on Hotels.com and got a room at the Roosevelt, Huey P. Long’s favorite hotel and a place we’d stayed before. It’s in downtown, on the edge of the Quarter, so outside the craziness. It’s got a good bar, the Sazerac, where I shouldn’t have stopped but did. It’s got bigger rooms. It’s got one of the great lobbies in hoteldom.

These were important life lessons.  If you’re older than 30, don’t stay in the Quarter, no matter how bright and shiny that face. And don’t think you won’t ever return to New Orleans. And go ahead with the dozen raw.

 

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Fifty Shades of Fish

I’m not a horrible fly fisherman, I’m really not. My casts could be better, sure, my hook sets may not be quite the thing, and when I actually hook a fish I may not land it, but I’m not always incompetent. Some days the sun shines. Natheless I’m skunked again in Margeritaville. I’m worn out with Florida, and last weekend I failed to catch any fish.

It wasn’t my fault exactly, and it certainly wasn’t Captain Court Douthit’s (pronounce Dow-thit’s) fault. Court clearly loves Florida and the fish and the sport and he’s investing a big part of his life in it. That’s why people like me need guides: I want to learn something, I need a boat, I don’t know the water or the fish . . . That’s why you pay good guides: they make the investment to know what you don’t and have the stuff that you need that you don’t have. Our first day out what Court had was a plan, and given the weather it was a good plan, but fishing is a sadomasochistic sport, and fly fishing even more so. Some days one’s not the sado. This weekend we weren’t the sado.

We fished the Gulf side out of Dunedin (pronounced Done Eatin’, which in Gaelic means cute shops), not in Tampa Bay. Dunedin is protected by narrow barrier islands, and the other side of the barrier islands, what Court called the beach side, was where the tarpon usually cruised. We weren’t going out there though. We couldn’t have seen whales cruising and the waves were downright scary. Instead we looked for tarpon on the leeward side of the islands. All we found were crusty old guys in boats (“That’s Old Bag of Rocks. He had his driver’s license taken away because he’s blind. He carries a bag of rocks to chunk at jet skiers.”)

The weather was all wrong. For all I know there’s never any sunshine in Tampa, it’s always overcast except when it storms, and the wind always blows hard. Sunshine and calm waters in Tampa may be like hatches: a practical joke to play on unsuspecting Texans. The night before we’d gone to bed during lashings o’ rain and lightning. We figured the next morning on the water it could get bad. It got bad. Before it got really bad Court polled us across a flat looking for snook. I got some casts which landed somewhere near a snook, so of course it turned and moseyed off in the other direction. Mostly we saw a lot of mullet stacked up on the sand.

It never rained but I still got soaked. Coming back through the slop to the marina the waves were fast and high, and we had buckets of saltwater spray us with each wave. It wasn’t cold, and as spa treatments go it was fine. It would have been better though if Court had fixed us a nice cup of herbal tea to go with the salt rub.

It was obvious Captain Court felt bad, but there was no reason for it. He’d taken a risk to get us out on the water and we appreciated it. He said the forecast was the same the next day (pronounced it’s going to be crap again tomorrow and there’s no reason to try the same thing), but that if it wasn’t lightning we should try something else the next night.

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Dunedin is a pretty little town with a pretty little marina that looks like somebody set Georgetown down on the Florida coast. It was charming. At the little marina diner we ate fresh tuna and avocado carpaccio with ginger and lime, called in South Florida tuna poke. Most marina diners would have had grilled cheese or burgers with soggy fries, and the raw fresh tuna was a big improvement. So were the fresh grouper tacos. They also had local beers, and after lunch I took a nap in the car while Kris checked out the shops. Success.

Our day wasn’t done, and except for the diner and the nap it didn’t get better.  Not only did we get skunked and drenched, the Astros lost to the Rays. The Rays are a fine young team, and the Astros’ offense was dead, their defense was sloppy, and Gerrit Cole pitched subpar.  The stadium also lived down to its reputation. The crowd (pronounced the stadium was mostly empty) was friendly and the food and beer was surprisingly good. There were a lot of Astros fans, and also some Rays fans, but it was sparsely populated. I found a Tampa friend from my favorite Astros fan site just by looking. He was pretty much sitting next to us. I had prime seats that I’d bought as soon as tickets went on sale. He’d bought his tickets that morning. Not much demand.

Saturday morning there was lightning and rain. We went to the St. Petersburg fine arts museum, which was small but nice enough and which had some fine Asian pieces, and the St. Petersburg history museum which houses the world’s largest collection of autographed baseballs. By game time the weather had cleared enough to fish the underwater dock lights for snook and baby tarpon, 20 to 40 pounds. We’d have some visibility to spot fish against the underwater lights. Kris was all for it, and I’m all for Kris.

* * *

Kris asked me where we were going to eat in Tampa, and I told her Hooters. Actually, I told her that there was a famous national restaurant chain founded in Tampa and that we should go there. She asked which one and I said I can’t remember the name.

“What’s it famous for?”

“Breasts.”

“Chicken?” I hadn’t considered chicken.

“No, lady breasts.”

“Twin Peaks?” No. “Hooters?” That was the one. “I guess it’s because of all the owls in Tampa,” she said.

I know Hooters was founded in Tampa because six years ago my friend Patrick was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Patrick has his peculiarities.

The first day he left the convention for food, but every civic volunteer suggested Hooters. It was founded in Tampa. What good Republican wouldn’t want to go to Hooters? Patrick wouldn’t want to go to Hooters. After the third or fifteenth Hooters suggestion someone suggested a Thai restaurant.

Now I’m stealing Patrick’s story, and it is one of the best stories ever. Ever. Patrick, if for some odd reason you ever see this forgive me, but I can’t resist. It’s the best story ever.

When Patrick got back to Austin from Tampa he called me. “You won’t believe who I met in Tampa! Mark Naimus!” “Who?” “Mark Naimus!” “Who is Mark Naimus?” “What are you talking about! You know Martin Amis!”

Each Texas delegate had a straw Stetson, blue jeans, and a Lone Star Flag pearl-snap shirt. It was a handsome ensemble. Then-governor Rick Perry autographed Patrick’s Stetson on the font brim, and future-governor Greg Abbott autographed it on the back.  When he went into the Thai restaurant in full regalia Patrick spotted Martin Amis at the bar. Now think about that for a second: it wasn’t somebody you or I would recognize. It wasn’t John Wayne or Elvis Presley or Paul McCartney. It wasn’t even Stephen King. It was Martin Amis. Patrick, who’d just finished Lionel Asbo, recognized Amis and introduced himself.

Amis was covering the convention for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Patrick told Amis that he’d just read Lionel Asbo, and then they talked about Laurent Binet’s HHhH, a French novel that had won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and which they both admired. It’s a very good novel which of course I hadn’t heard of. Martin Amis autographed the crown of Patrick’s hat, and I’m pretty certain it is now the only cowboy hat anywhere autographed by Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and Martin Amis.

The next day Patrick was on the floor of the convention and a runner tracked him down. Mr. Amis was making a film of the convention for the Daily Beast. Mr. Amis was wondering if Patrick and other members of the Texas delegation would agree to an interview. Mr. Amis would come to their motel to film the interview.

So when Patrick called me bubbling about meeting Martin Amis I said Patrick, you know what’s going to happen. Martin Amis, sardonic, liberal, witty, is going to shred you. No no Patrick insisted. We talked by the pool about books for an hour!

“It was great!’ Ok, Patrick may not have said it was great, but you could tell he surely thought so.

So the video was posted by the Daily Beast, and sure enough, Martin Amis shredded the Republican Party and the convention and in the middle of the film, wearing his Stetson, is Patrick, and Amis treats a delegate to the Republican National Convention with the greatest delicacy, the greatest kindness. And who wouldn’t?

And of course there’s that hat.

* * *

The Astros lost Saturday’s game as well, with some bad luck and some sub-par pitching by Justin Verlander and more dead bats. At 9 that night we met Court in a St. Petersburg neighborhood park to fish the boat slips for snook and baby tarpon. We fished until 4 the next morning.

If you don’t fish saltwater you may not know about fish lights. Bait is attracted to light. Game fish are attracted to bait.  Any light works, but spooky underwater green lights work best of all. I figure that the bait thinks it’s natural plankton luminescence, and being planktivorish it shows up to gorge. It’s not a very good theory, and as far as I know planktivorish isn’t a word, but it’s something. Bait could just be dumb. Or maybe it just likes green.

Did we see fish? You betcha. Looking into those weird nighttime pools of green we saw snook and baby tarpon enough to make any sight fisher happy. Over the seven hours we fished, moving from dock to dock, I must have made 300 casts to fish, at least some of which were in the vicinity of fish. Kris must have made another 100 casts–She didn’t want to come back to Florida so she let me cast more than was my due. Court put us on fish and we tried every fly, small light, small dark, large light, large dark, gurglers, purple things that looked like Cookie Monster, green things, tan things, and back to small white, small dark  . . . Nothing worked until . . . Skip that. Nothing worked.

I had three hits, three, all of which I pulled out of the fish’s mouth with a trout set–don’t tell Captain Court, but I swear I have an excuse.  Nine o’clock is my bedtime. It’s not when I start fishing.

By the next morning we were punch drunk and exhausted and had caught nada, but we’d seen baby tarpon roll by the dozens, flashing up through the green glow and hitting the surface like big salmon taking a fly. Just not my fly. At least we didn’t get a sunburn. Not that the sun ever shines in Tampa.

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When you’ve got two days in a strange place to catch fish there are no guarantees that either the fish or the weather will cooperate, and there are never any guarantees fishing for saltwater fish. If we’d had longer the weather would have cooperated and sooner or later we would have landed a fish, but we ran out of sooner with no later at all. I would fish with Captain Court again in a heart beat. I just hope next time its a bit luckier day. Or a bit luckier night.

* * *

We didn’t eat at Hooters. Mostly we ate at the ballpark except for the marina diner and the first night at Columbia in Ybor City with Kris’s 34-year-ago maid-of-honor and her husband.  I bought some cigars in a random cigar roller’s shop.  I didn’t miss Hooters, and no one suggested Thai.  We didn’t see Martin Amis.

 

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Eastern Grand Slam. May 16, 2018

Somebody somewhere serendipitously caught three different fish in a day and called it a grand slam, probably over beers that very evening.  Grand slam, of course, is a baseball term, meaning that one is spectacularly off the schneid.  It’s usually a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit caught on the same day, but there aren’t a lot of places north of the Florida Keys to catch a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit, so in Texas saltwater it’s a flounder, a redfish, and a speckled trout. For Western trout it’s a cutthroat, rainbow, brown, and brookie. For Eastern trout it’s the same sans cutthroat. It’s all nonsense, but it’s gratifying nonsense.

I caught a rainbow, brown, and brookie on the same Wednesday in West Virginia.  I caught the rainbow and the brown in less than 30 minutes after breakfast before we met Randall the guide.

Earlier at breakfast we sat on the porch at the restaurant and watched this guy on the far side of the river catch and release at least six fish.

Meantimes while he was fishing I had the blueberry pancakes. I suspect that both of us, the guy fishing and me, were satisfied.

The people we talked to in the restaurant were all from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. When we said we were from Texas it was like saying we were from France. Elk Springs seems to be a local draw. It shouldn’t be. It’s a good place, and the blueberry pancakes are outstanding.

I hadn’t taken my camera, so I took no pictures of the first two-thirds of my slam. I was startled by the brown, and kept looking at it in the net for confirmation, but there it was. I wish I had a photo just to prove that I wasn’t lying to myself. It was a brown though, and I’d already caught the rainbow.

I caught the two of ‘em on squirmy worms. Not very orthodox, but fine with me.

Kris and Randall conspired again and took  me away from the Elk River to Kumbrabow State Forest. It’s a beautiful place, deserted on a Wednesday in May except for the three of us, and a group of state highway workers who got lost looking for a highway. We fished a bit of stream and I came to a pool, a tiny pool, a pocket pool, maybe four feet deep and blue as a Caribbean sea. I put on a weighted nymph to get the fly down and hooked my grand slam brookie.  Randall and Kris were standing there watching so I yelled “fish on” and they laughed.

But it was as lovely a fish as ever I caught. I won’t say though that even on a three weight there was much of a battle.

Tiny. Perfect.

We moved to a waterfall where I promptly fell down in the pool below the falls.  Kris and Randall were chattering away and paid me no mind.  Did I say Randall was terse? Kris was chattering and Randall was talking almost as fast–ok, nobody can chatter like Kris in high gear. And she loves a story, both to tell and to hear. Randall and his family and his fishing were to Kris a good story.

And Kris also caught her Appalachian brookie. Who wouldn’t be thrilled?

*  *  *

We piled our rods in the car and left the mountain at three. The lodge had been great, the fishing was great, the staff had been accommodating, friendly, and knowledgeable, the food had been lovely, thoughtful, and well-prepared, and I caught my West Virginia fish. Plus there was a washer-drier. Only 47 more states to go.

The brook trout, by the way, is the the state fish of West Virginia.

One oddity about the Elk Springs Lodge. It is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where radios, mobile telephones, and wireless internet nterfere with the National Radio Observatory.  There is limited and sporadic cell telephone service. Internet is weak connections at the restaurant. If you buy a signal booster the federales will come to your door and make you remove it.

*  *  *

2015 median household income data shows West Virginia as third lowest, ahead of Arkansas (49) and Mississippi (50).  It marches almost lockstep with life-expectancy data. The poorer you are, the shorter your life.

In West Virginia, we passed through nice towns, hamlets really, with nice houses, where I’d think I could live.  The natural spaces between the towns were as often as not extraordinary, but there was also rural squalor dotted in and among the towns and countryside.  I’ve seen rural squalor off and on all my life, and there’s plenty of hard-living in Houston, but in West Virginia it’s on Main Street, nestled up against the highway, not hidden down some side road. Heaven only knows what’s down the side roads.

In Paul Theroux’s Deep South he rails at the Clintons for abandoning the Southern poor. His anger startled me when I read the book, but it rings true. He suggests that the Clintons expect the devotion of the American poor without any skin in the game. Hillary didn’t get that devotion in West Virginia. Trump took West Virginia 69% to 26%.

During the 2016 campaign and its aftermath there was so much written about Hillary and West Virginia and Hillary and the white poor, but bottom line it came down to her disdain versus Trump’s bluster: I doubt if many people believed Trump would bring back coal or otherwise help West Virginia, but at least there was no talk of baskets of deplorables. Hillary, and maybe the Democratic Party, bring nada to America’s rural poor. Trump didn’t either. Maybe no one can.

Trump also carried Mississippi and Arkansas, 58% to 40% and 60% to 34%. Those are landslides where I come from.

*  *  *

One last story about West Virginia. It’s a condescending, stupid story that could have happened anywhere but there you are. It happened in West Virginia, and I can’t resist.

On our way back to Virginia from Elk Springs we stopped at a gas station and I broke down the fly rods in the parking lot while Kris bought bean dip and Fritos in the store. A woman, maybe older than me but I suspect a good bit younger–you couldn’t tell by looking–got out of a beat up truck and said “you’re not going to catch any fish in this parking lot.”  It was that dry, slightly aggressive humor that I grew up with in Texas, so I said something like I won’t know until I try and she grinned and laughed.

She had no front teeth.

West Virginia. You gotta go.