Month: February 2017

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I’ll Have What Eudora’s Having, And John Folse’s Seafood R’evolution

One evening, we were minus the boys and in Jackson, so Av decided to take me to the Fairview Inn to see if I’d like to stay there sometime in the future (we were staying at the Hilton on County Line Road that evening) — it’s a Bed and Breakfast. The idea was to drop in take a look at the grounds, and have a drink in the Library before having supper at Seafood R’evolution, the John Folse / Rick Tramonto restaurant in Ridgewood.

I told him we could give it a go in the future, but looking at the selection of rooms, I wasn’t especially excited about any of them. It’s not them…it’s me. It feels like one of my college best friend’s mother’s home. Very put together with a lot-lot of carpet, and framed prints, and dishes on walls.

Here, the library, which is appropriately all dark and wood and leather

The menu included drinks named after Mississippi authors including Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Shelby Foote, John Grisham, Margaret Walker, Alice Walker, and Kathryn Stockett. I had the Eudora Welty ‘Belhaven’ which was Cathead vodka, cucumber, Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur

Av had the Willie Morris Old Fashioned, which was made with Maker’s Mark

I did think it was funny that among the non-alcoholic drinks was one named for Mildred Pierce (this was the period in which Faulkner worked on screenplays) as toward the end, Mildred — this is one of my favorite films in the whole world — lets everyone know things have gotten such a way with her that she’s learned to drink “straight”.
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We next had reservations at Seafood R’evolution in Ridgeland, which I’ve been wanting to go to since they opened. We especially enjoy John Folse and Rick Tramonto’s Restaurant R’evolution in the Quarter, so were interested to see what this concept would be like.

Beyond the host desk is the 13-foot raw bar

Seafood R'evolution, Jackson MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Love the buoy chandelier

Open kitchen

First, the bread service

*That biscuit* — yessss
Biscuit at Seafood R'evolution, Jackson MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Av had the shrimp and grits, which was pretty terrific
Shrimp and Grits, Seafood R'evolution, Jackson MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

This evening, I was more interested in the sides than the entrees, so I just ordered the brussels sprouts, roasted cauliflower with peanuts and capers, and cheese grits. So fab.
Grits and Brussels Sprouts and Roasted Cauliflower at Seafood R'evolution, Jackson MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Near our table, the glass wine cellar, which we were invited to walk into and take our time looking over

…and yesyesyes to the oyster-inspired tile flooring.
Seafood R'evolution, Jackson MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Makes me think of ihavethisthingwithtiles on IG.
Which in turn makes me think of the best/funniest thing I found on Tumblr (but this is the main site) all week.

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Raising Museum Lovers

Really looking forward to our next visit to the Dallas Museum of Art — the ‘México 1900–1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and the Avant-Garde‘ exhibit opens March 12.

The boys are going to be even happier, because Dallas has their favorite area for kids to do their own thing — the Center for Creative Connections — and I’m so happy to see that our regular museum visits, beginning when they were babies, have (so far) completely worked out, because they think nothing of going and always look forward to it. And I love it, because their heads are getting filled with big ideas and they realize how different and wonderful the world is. Aaaaahhhhh.
Center for Creative Connections at Dallas Museum of Art//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Last time, they asked us to go to the Dallas Museum two days in a row (and we did) — they spent *hours* making things

Meanwhile, Av reads with them and I get to see every single thing on display

Stephen Antonakos Neon

Fernando Campana Banquete Chair with Pandas
Fernando Campana Banquete Chair with Pandas, Dallas Museum of Art//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Miss Blanche chair by Shiro Kuramata

Also opening this spring: The Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery, beginning April 18. It’s the ‘largest public presentation in the history of one of the world’s most important private collections of Islamic Art.’ and for only three months beginning May 21, ‘Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion‘ will be on display. 
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Parking The Zeppelin / Lunch At Roots And Revelry

Av was going to be in New Orleans for a couple of days around Valentine’s Day, so he took me early to Roots and Revelry, the new 2nd floor restaurant at the Thomas Jefferson Tower in Birmingham — the building that has the last zeppelin mooring mast in the world, apparently.

There’s valet parking out front too, for those of us on four wheels.

First of all, these chandeliers are terrific — and the mural here is by Claire Godbee, a local artist.

View toward the bar:

While waiting, we got up and went out on the balcony for views of the city (and cornhole, though we couldn’t find the throws)

Thomas Jefferson Tower, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Thomas Jefferson Tower, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Av ordered the crispy chicken sandwich with chutney and while it was all good, the chutney was *amazing*
Roots & Revelry at the Thomas Jefferson Tower, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

and rather than an entree, I ordered an app and a side: the R and R vegetables (top left) — wouldn’t necessarily get that again as it was heavy and overloaded with ginger and sauce, and the pork rillettes with pickled vegetables and chicken liver mousse which was conversely fab
Roots & Revelry at the Thomas Jefferson Tower, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Afterwards, our server encouraged us to see more of the second floor, where the open area had a selection of more of Claire Godbee’s art (and one of the longest Chesterfield sofas anyone’s ever seen) and this ballroom area

Thomas Jefferson Tower, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Hi!
Av & Me at the Thomas Jefferson, Birmingham AL//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Though Av was working in NOLA on Valentine’s Day, after I dropped the boys off at school, I met a bunch of friends that day at Canterbury UMC as they were hosting ‘Stop Hunger Now’ which is also known as ‘Rise Against Hunger‘ — our jobs were to fill bags with soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, rice, and vitamin packets which altogether serve six people each in areas which are food insecure all around the world. Last year’s bags went to Haiti, and this year, our bags are going to Central America.

Next year, make plans to rock a hairnet with me! It’s easy work, goes by quickly (waaay too quickly! We were having so much fun on our shift!) and it’s a good deed. Yay!
Stop Hunger Now at Canterbury UMC//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Go: Ragnar Kjartansson’s ‘The Visitors’

Though Hunt Slonem’s ‘Antebellum Pop!’ at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge was my favorite exhibit of 2016, Ragnar Kjartansson’s ‘The Visitors’ at the Frist in Nashville was a close second — and it was so beautiful and haunting that it made me cry (not alone), so there’s that.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Its last day at the Frist is Sunday, February 12.

Done in nine video projections over the course of about an hour, eight screens (the ninth on the veranda) show a musician in a room of an old, shabby-gorgeous New York home playing an instrument and singing with all the others — all in one incredible take. They can’t see each other until the end as they come together on the veranda and then walk down the valley.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Over and over, the refrain “once again, I fall into my feminine ways” is sung — it comes from a poem Ragnar’s ex-wife wrote.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

From criticisimism:
…Kjartansson made this piece to reflect, as he says, a period of his life coming to an end…

 A choir is gathered on the veranda and as the piece crescendoes one resident sets off an ornamental cannon. It’s the 1812 Overture rewritten for some protracted marital strife…

As Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe had it:
The work seems to me to be a generational masterpiece. When it screened at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Manhattan last year, it was a tear-away success. Years from now, it may even be remembered as having helped trigger a change in the climatic conditions of contemporary art.

Aside from anything else, “The Visitors” is a triumph of tone. Alive to the preposterousness of its premise — a bunch of hipster musicians from Iceland squatting in a grand home on the Hudson (shades of the Rolling Stones recording “Exile on Main Street” in a mansion on the French Riviera) in order to perform a repetitive, rather unremarkable song — it somehow transforms latent irony into sincere and open-hearted expression.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

From Art in America:
After you’ve heard the “feminine” refrain about 40 times it seems almost liturgical, evoking a state where sorrow, resignation, acceptance and elation coexist. Near the end, the performers, still singing, vacate their separate spaces to move outside, joined by others from the porch. All of them—accompanied by two excited dogs—parade down the hill directly into the spectacular Hudson Valley landscape, and it’s heartbreakingly gorgeous: a sublime musical troupe in the capital of the American sublime.

Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

From the John Curtain Gallery in 2015:

Not to miss. If we bump into each other at the Frist between now and Sunday, we can have a good therapeutic cry together, then walk out joyously into the valley (or at least down Broadway). See you then.

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International House, Rosalie, Root, And King Cakes

At 221 Camp, the International House Hotel is just a couple of blocks from Canal, meaning it’s easy walking everywhere — one night we walked over to 160+ year old Tujague’s (just a few minutes so Av could chat with the owner, who he knows, and is a Bama grad) before a late supper at Irene’s Cuisine, which in all this time we had never been to before, but now that we’ve been, did not have the same fabulous experience so many other people have there. No matter, we had a really great trip.

Very nicely, the gentleman who checked us in comped us a couple of drinks for the hotel bar, Loa. I had the Rosalie, which the menu describes (before actually describing):
Rosalie: Italian saints work overtime; seems they’re always between the Rock and a new hard place. Just as St. Joseph decimated drought she headed off plague in Sicily, and more recently vanquished an anthrax epidemic among the cows of Kenner, for which protection her clients are to this day grateful, toting her life-sized statue lovingly to her home-church at her festival each year. 

 Sparkling local kombucha, cucumbers, aperol, limoncello, brandy, tangerine, Peychaud’s bitters

Going up to the room, this mural made up of tiny tile pieces in the elevatorInternational House Hotel, New Orleans LA

The room was a nice size and comfortable, though not especially colorful or memorable — pretty greige.
International House Hotel, New Orleans LA//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

International House Hotel, New Orleans LA//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Actually the first night we were there (the boys were out of town on their own adventure) we had a celebratory supper at Root as Av’s company had just had a couple of big wins in the span of about a week.
Root and Square Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

I was thinking that we might have a really long supper (we used to settle in to those booths when Root was back in the Warehouse District), but perched on these — I think they may be Tolix Marais or cousins — I think the idea is more to snack and go
Bar Stools at Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Almost always at home, I just drink water, but in New Orleans, if a cocktail looks interesting, every now and then I will indulge. This is vodka, basil, pineapple, oloroso, Mexican vanilla, and (this is what got me) champagne gummies, which…tasted like gummies. hahaha!
Cocktail with Champagne Gummies at Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

As always, we made up a charcuterie board with some duck prosciutto, chicken liver pate, and a couple other items
Charcuterie with (my fave) Chicken Liver Pate at Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Av had the duck and grits which was amazing
Duck and Grits, Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

and I did the snack board: black mission fig (honey-whipped goat cheese, prosciutto), 62* egg (brioche, everything spice, chicken skin), salt cod beignets (pickled garlic aioli, parsley), pimento cheese (cheddar crackers), and wild boar sticky bun (Szechuan peppercorns). I love these little bites — just so much fun to be able to have one or two little bites of such different tastes.
Snack Board: Black Mission Fig, 62* Egg, Salt Cod Beignets, Pimento Cheese, Wild Boar Sticky Bun at Root, New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

We had zero intention of getting dessert, but our server was just so friendly that after we were talking for a while and told her why we were celebrating, she insisted that they bring us a baked alaska, complimentary. It had fennel sorbet, pistachio custard, genoise cake, and herbsaint. So so so nice!

We only had a couple of bites but it was so appreciated.

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Downstairs from Root is its sister restaurant, Square Root, with its only offering being a 16-course prix fixe menu. Fun! Chef Lopez’ latest is Part and Parcel in the CBD, a super-casual sandwich shop in the same building as Willa Jean. 
BTW, the next time I’m at Willa Jean, I’m bringing home their ‘Valrhona caramelized milk chocolate + espresso king cake’ AND the other king cake I need in my life this year is most definitely the babka king cake at Shaya.

If you’re thinking of making a galette de rois this season, my recipe for that is here.

Galette des Rois

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