Av and I had tickets to the Randy Newman concert last night in Birmingham at the Alys Stephens Center. We decided to have a nice supper beforehand so we made reservations at Fleming’s, at the Summit. Even though it’s a chain, Fleming’s is supposed to be *really* nice, so we decided to give it a try. Supper really was very, very good.
We started with the ‘smoked Norweigan salmon bruschetta’. The nova was served on toast crisps with a dill cream cheese underneath and diced sun-dried tomatoes on top.
We decided to pass on having salad, so the next course was our entrees. Av had the New York Strip and I had the Beef Flemington, which is a fillet wrapped in pastry. Both of these were excellent……..for wine, I had a glass of the Penfolds South Australia Kalimna Bin 28, 2002 shiraz. Av had a glass of Girardin pinot noir (I think also 2002) – and these, too were wonderful. Our side orders were shoestring potatoes (which they served in a big paper cone) and asparagus hollandaise.
Dessert was a chocolate lava cake and a chocolate/walnut/caramel pie. We both had a little of each, and they were *also* amazingly good.
Everything we had was wonderful. The service was great, and we still had plenty of time to make it to the concert.
—
This was the first time either of us had seen Randy Newman in concert. We had tickets to go, but Av was a little surprised that I was so happy about having the tickets. Although I think most people remember him for the songs he sang in the ’70s, he’s really done *so* much more – songs for movies like Parenthood, Toy Story 1&2, A Bug’s Life, Babe, Pleasantville, Meet the Parents, Monsters, Inc., and Seabiscuit (that’s not even all of them!). He also did the intro music for the show ‘Monk’.
Last night he played lots of songs I’d never even heard before, he did some sing-alongs, and he did some of the songs we all expected, like “I Love L.A.”, “Short People”, “Louisiana”, and “Birmingham”. It was really, really nice. I noticed just now that he’s doing a concert in NYC called “Bringing Back the Music” with the NY Philharmonic to benefit the Louisiana Philharmonic (his mother’s family is from Louisiana, and he still has cousins there). Nice!