Car Park
Mobile AL, 2014.
Ottawa
On our last days of visiting Canada, we stopped in Ottawa as I’d never seen in person the gorgeous capital. The morning after arriving, we walked from our hotel to Parliament Hill.
Construction here began in 1859. The buldings are Gothic Revival.
The Wikipedia entry explains: “The Centre Block has the Senate and Commons chambers, and is fronted by the Peace Tower on the south facade, and the Library of Parliament lies at the building’s rear. The East Block contains ministers’ and senators’ offices, meeting rooms, and other administrative spaces. The West Block is serving as the temporary seat of the House of Commons.”
This fence is called Wellington Wall. About 3 million visitors come to the grounds here each year.
Right now, the area is undergoing a $3B renovation campaign that should be completed after 2028.
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!
Goldee’s Barbeque in Ft Worth — rated #1 by Texas Monthly for barbecue — hosts a brisket class, $700.
The Moshe Safdie model of Crystal Bridges, from a 2015 visit
Art & Object with 10 Must-Sees at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and a reminder that Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman Wilson House was moved to CB in 2014
A milk punch at the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone, 2015
Inside Hook with a report from Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans — espresso martinis and coffee drinks are super in, foams are back and so is the milk punch, tequila is doing a thing…
At Fine Books & Collections, A New Era for the Charleston Library Society, One of the Oldest Libraries in the US: How a Cultural Institution Founded in 1748 Continues to Foreground Access and Discussion
Non-extant: the Beverly Drive In, Hattiesburg MS, 2006
There’s one drive-in movie left in Mississippi — down from 70+ in the 1960s, today there’s just the Iuka Drivein.
The ‘Bending Light‘ exhibit at Women & Their Work, an art gallery in Austin, includes sculptures by Cat Martinez. Among those, her sculpture ‘Africatown, Generational Trauma’ about the Africatown, Alabama community — founded by the survivors of the last slaveship to the US. The exhibit is on through August 22.
The Bama Nut Shop, Brundidge AL, 2006
About peanut patties at Texas Highways
A tour of Pencil & Paper Co. Founder Gen Sohr’s Nashville home at Frederic — and from May, Go Inside a ‘Cotswolds-Meets-New Orleans’ Home
City Pork Brasserie & Bar, Baton Rouge, 2017
A rewind at Oxford American by Cynthia Greenlee on pimiento cheese:
Despite the injunctions of modern eat-local movements, the earliest pimento cheese seems to have been made with Neufchatel soft cheese, a French innovation that got an upgrade in New York, catalyzing the advent of cream cheese. The pimentos themselves may have crossed the Atlantic thrice, first as part of the Columbian Exchange, as Christopher Columbus is believed to have taken them back to Spain from the Americas. They then returned stateside as imports in the late nineteenth century, and the crop got a boost later when a Georgia farmer used his Congressional connections to get valuable seeds from abroad.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s Down South Dining interviews sweet Lee Harper: Lee is an artist and miniaturist from Oxford who recreates and preserves the history of real-life restaurants, bars, iconic juke joints, homes, and more in Mississippi and across the South through her art.
Bryant’s Grocery, Money MS, 2016
Square Books is taking preorders for Wright Thompson’s The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi about the killing of Emmett Till. It’s out September 24. John Grisham wrote, “The secrets of what happened in the barn in 1955 when a boy named Emmett Till was murdered have been buried for decades. The killers were never brought to justice and their allies covered up for them. With a passion for truth and justice, and a fierce determination to dig for the secrets, Wright Thompson has produced an incredible history of a crime that changed America.”
The Selby with a visit to Manuel Cuevas’ store, Manuel Couture, in Nashville.
Lighthouse at Sullivan’s Island, 2013
Dezeen has a piece on Sullivan’s Fish Camp on Sullivan’s Island in CHS. I’ve been there with a friend who has a beach home on SI, and it was already fun — now it’s been rethought by SDCO and Basic Projects so “guests can’t be sure if it’s 1982 or 2024” and yesssss.
Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal
On our walk, we made a point to visit the Notre-Dame Basilica — about 1.2 miles from our stay at the Marriott Chateau Champlain. There was plenty to look at on the way, especially considering this is Old Montreal.
If you’re thinking “well surely architecture girl here has better exterior pics somewhere” the answer is oops. But you know how I’m making it up? Interior images.
They’re in the midst of a major renovation that began in 2020 and is expected to last through 2040.
Admission was $16 Canadian, so about $11.75 in USD. We bought tickets on our phone and it was hardly any wait to get inside.
The stained glass windows aren’t bibical scenes — they are of historic events in Montreal.
The pipe organ is an 1891 Casavant Freses and while we were there, it wasn’t so much religious music they were playing — also some Broadway songs and other modern popular music.
It’s a big tradition in Montreal for people to come here for Handel’s Messiah at Christmastime.
The parish church here was first built in 1672 and this building was behind it. It is so large and so intricate that much of it was done 1824-29 but the balance took decades longer.
multiple ways to pay for lighting a candle, including with this device
In the evening, they make available The AURA Experience by Moment Factory and it is apparently an absolutely incredible immersive sight. We already had plans for that night, but next time, we’d definitely consider it. There are also occasional concerts at their Sacre-Coeur Chapel. Definitely on the list for next time.
Baby, Bottle, Love
So much fun public art in Montreal — first, we walked by LHotel where a wedding party was taking pics in front of a Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture
LHotel is in Old Montreal — and they have “the largest private collection of modern and post-modern art in North America.” Besides this Robert Indiana LOVE, there’s a Fernand Leger La Fleur:
Le Mignonisme by Philippe Katerine
and at the National Bank of Canada, we saw, Shary Boyle‘s Scentime
xoxo!
Smoked Meat but Different, Bagels, Heimishe Spreads, Market, and the Big Orange Building
Montreal is known for smoked meat — and I think of Shwartz’s which is where we went last time and probably the best-known place for it. Well, we like to try new places, so we gave Dunn’s a go this time…and it was super close to the hotel too.
Dunn’s Smoked Meat has been around since 1927:
now my favorite thing here was the poutine — the gravy and cheese curds atop the fries, then more meat in this version:
I just had a simple bagel sandwich and Shugie had a reuben, but he’s a real connoisseur and that wasn’t in his top ten. Also, when I hear ‘smoked meat’ — I mean, I’m from Alabama so that gives strong barbecue vibes, right? But the meat here isn’t terribly smoky. At all. It’s yummy, but don’t let “smoked meat” throw you off. They’re not talking what we’re talking in the Southern US.
We of course had to run by St Viateur for Montreal bagels which are different from elsewhere — baked in a wood-fired oven and they have some sweetness in the dough
Shugie and I walked through the neighborhood — a bookstore, a kosher grocery…just munching our bagel as we went…
Okay what else did we eat — Shugie had never had Tim Horton’s so we dropped into one of those and he got just a regular doughnut. Speaking of something sweet, I was hoping we’d have a beaver tail somewhere but we somehow managed to leave without getting one. Sometime, somewhere it would be great to try a nanaimo bar. I may just have to make these things myself one day.
BTW, I have a NYT Cooking subscription and I think I can gift a certain number of recipes to friends each month so if you’re ever looking for something I’m happy to look and see if it’s sharable! xoxo!
Oh! At the kosher grocery, it was fun seeing their selection of salads and sides. Listen, I’m Jewish and I have no idea WHAT Shabbos dip is.
on our way to Ottawa, two other stops — the Jean-Talon Farmers Market
and Gibeau Orange Julep in just the most fun building ever:
More about the building here.
It’s maybe orange juice plus milk and water? Something like that? And not acid at all. Frothy. Definitely different.
xoxo!
Montreal: looks, stays, walks
Montreal! Oh it was so great to see women in pretty dresses again. And the men were so stylish too (skinny pants cut a bit short). I guess I was out of place because I live just almost exclusively in Lilly all spring/summer and then it’s back to vintage J. Crew for fall/winter — just believing in a look makes things easy, I guess. People were dressed so beautifully in Montreal. They really made an effort. These people are not slouching in athleisure like I do on a Whole Foods visit.
Total sidenote already: we were coming in from driving through New England and that look was everythinggggg in those areas. People in some towns looked like they were cosplaying prep to absolute perfection. Nantucket Reds. Needlepoint belts. Madras. You know. And ohhhh the facade of this shop — Royal Male in Newport RI which is all about English brands. When I can have more than one life at a time, I’m totally using one of them to run some sort of ultra-curated shop in a little town and it’s going to look like Chelsea Flower Show on the front all year. The Churchill Arms will be taking notes.
and before we move back to talking about Montreal which is not New England fab but something else wonderful altogether, if you miss vintage J. Crew, there’s the still new-ish 40 Years coffee table book from Assouline (I haven’t seen it but it sounds like chinos, chinos, chinos) and the lostjcrew insta among others.
I love to walk everywhere so we somehow — now I haven’t even been to Montreal in yearssss — but the Marriott Chateau Champlain was the perfect location last time (Metro stop downstairs too!) and it was perfect this visit too.
In 2005, the rooms looked like this — this year of course they are straight Marriott corporate you-guessed-it with the all-white linens and straight-forward look. Did I take a good picture of that? Absolutely not.
edit: oh wait. I did
And the view?
yeah. So we’re Titanium, so we had concierge lounge access, and we — meaning Shugie especially because teenage boy appetite — enjoyed that for a couple of small plates.
There was a good amount of walking — and so many terrific things we were close to which was easy too.
Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral — those statues on top are the patron saints of the areas around Montreal
Ignace Bourget Monument
South African War Monument
as we walked toward Old Montreal
Montreal, you’re gorgeous but your fire hyrdrants could use a little freshen-up in the aesthetic dept
Tomorrow: Montreal food. xoxo!
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!
a Rural Studio home I photographed in 2010
At Architect’s Newspaper: 30 Years — Catching up with Rural Studio, the initiative that fuels design thinking across Alabama
sign at Spradlin Farm Fruit Stand, Cullman County AL, 2021
At Texas Monthly: how about rather than banana pudding, peach pudding with spicy gingersnaps
pepperoni roll from Graziono’s Pizza, Charleston WV, 2022
From West Virginia Public Radio Inside Appalachia:
Pepperoni rolls have been enshrined as part of West Virginia history through their connection to coal miners. They’re absolutely a favorite and available almost everywhere, but that wasn’t always true. How pepperoni rolls became a statewide convenience store staple might have less to do with coal mining and more to do with lunch ladies in Kanawha County.
Eating poison oak seems like a terrible idea, right?
coconut meringue pie, The Crystal Grill, 2005
Goshamighty. The Crystal Grill in Greenwood closed this month.
We’ve eaten here many times, most memorably at Rosh Hashanah lunch one year with Joe Erber (subject of this well-known photo by our friend Bill Aron). Last time, one of the boys had a shirt with Hebrew on it, and ran into someone from Israel. In Greenwood.
Okay you know how we can tell how bad a hurricane has been by whether the Waffle Houses in that area are open — the Waffle House Index? People in Houston were using the Whataburger app as a power outage tracker since the electric company didn’t provide one.
Object & Art did a piece on 12 African American Artists You Should Know More About, and one is James Washington Jr. (1908-2000) who was born and raised in Gloster, Mississippi. He put on a WPA-sponsored exhibit of Black artists.
In their 10 Must-See Artworks by Indigenous American Artists at the Seattle Art Museum, included is Jeffrey Gibson’s Between Rabbit and Fox. He is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee.
At Bitter Southerner on The Prayers of Curtis Wilkie:
In a house in Cleveland, Mississippi, Curtis would write in Dixie, “I witnessed a scene stored, like treasure, in my mind for more than thirty years.” There, Kennedy watched a child in soiled diapers crawl across a dirty room, eating crumbs of cornbread from the floor. In his article the next day, Curtis wrote:
Flies were swarming. Kennedy knelt by the child and gently stroked his face for about two minutes without saying a word. The boy just looked at him with wide eyes.
“It was a very moving experience in retrospect,” Curtis says. “It was a defining moment in his pilgrimage from working for Joe McCarthy to marching with Cesar Chavez.”
Here’s Curtis Wilkie and Tom Oliphant:
Especially like Jason Holley‘s magnolia artwork for that article, too.
TVA Wheeler Dam, Tennessee River, 2021
The TVA has a map of trails they manage — 180+ miles, and 16 of the trails run through nature preserves which they call Small Wild Areas.
visit with Allan Benton, 2010
At Garden & Gun:
Meet the New Heir to Benton’s Country Ham: Why Allan Benton’s son quit medicine and settled into the smokehouse
It’s $2M these days for a 1900 Victorian a couple of blocks from the Square in Oxford
Alexa, show me a very decorated Natchez home
Imperial Hotel | Jack Hadley Black History Memorabilia. | Capital Project | Thomasville, Georgia
Pierce Chapel African Cemetery | Hamilton Hood Foundation | Project Planning | Midland, Georgia
Unita Blackwell Freedom House | The Lighthouse | Capital Project | Jackson, Mississippi
Alonzo Chatmon’s Juke Joint | The Mt. Zion Memorial Fund for Blues Music and Justice | Project Planning | Water Valley, Mississippi
George W. Hubbard House of Meharry Medical College | Friends Of Hubbard House | Capital Project | Nashville
Simms/Gray-Lewis Cottage | Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum | Capital Project | Houston
The Pine Grove Washington-Rosenwald School | AMMD Pine Grove Project | Project Planning | Richmond, Virginia
Claude B. Dansby, Benjamin G. Brawley, and John H. Wheeler Halls at Morehouse College | Morehouse College | Project Planning | Atlanta
Kenneth G. Neigh Dormitory Complex at the former Mary Holmes Community College | Dream Center Golden Triangle | Project Planning | West Point, Mississippi
Universal Life Insurance Company Building | South Memphis Renewal Community Development Corporation | Project Planning & Limited Capital | Memphis, Tennessee
Azurest South, Amaza Lee Meredith Home and Studio | Virginia State University Alumni Association | Project Planning & Limited Capital | St. Petersburg, Virginia
architecture friends: is Azurest not Streamline Moderne enough that people are calling it that? I get that it has severe angles, but I’m feeling it from some of the windows and the ‘portholes’
from our visit to King of Prussia, 2024
Lafayette 148’s pre-fall is inspired by Martien Mulder’s photographs of Marfa.
Eater New Orleans with 20 Restaurants where dessert steals the show and tickled that I’ve been to nearly all the places listed — especially going to agree with Saba. They don’t mention this dish and I’m not sure if it’s on the menu right now, but their warm chocolate babka with hazelnut gelato and blackberry sauce was one of the best things I ate in all of 2018.
The fig blondie at Coquette was one of my fave things from 2016!
They mention the bread pudding at Commander’s of course but I like the one I make here at home better (and so often I’ll use the recipe from the old Dreyfus Store — contact me if you’d like it)
and the mile-high pie at Jack Rose is yes yes yes (though this pic is from Caribbean Room, before it turned into Jack Rose)
Was Brennan’s bananas foster on the list? Of course.
And Antoine’s baked alaska — Antoine’s made one for Shug’s first birthday cake!
Vacation with an Artist gives people the opportunity to stay on-site and learn beside an artisan — one is making quilts with two women in Gees Bend.
Here’s one quilt available from Crate & Barrel from their collab with JoeAnn Pettway-West.
the Hunt Slonem: Antebellum Pop! exhibit at the LSU Museum of Art was my favorite exhibit of 2016
Huntopia, the Hunt Slonem garden exhibit (the first one ever) is on view at the San Antonio Botanical Garden through November 3, 2024.
From Texas Monthly: Welcome to Hot Katydid Summer
at the beach in New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago
hydrangeas from Touro Synagogue, Newport RI, 2024
Happy summer! It’s going to be Canada week here on DFK next week. So much terrific to share from Montreal and Ottawa! xoxo!
Weitzman, Barnes – and that terrific “oh I know that one” feeling
This is the second year that we’ve spent time in Philadelphia — we went over the holidays last year too. Shugie attended a week-long program geared for high school students at Temple University, and when picking him up for a few more days there and the New England trip, we did some fun things including a great visit with family in Bryn Mawr, some time with Eli’s gf and her family and a nice Independence Day party, and a visit to Weitzman and the Barnes Foundation, a museum I’ve wanted to see forever.
Just a few pics from the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (which btw has a terrific giftshop)
great to see a display of Huntsville
little display cabinets for Estee Lauder items (below) and on Steven Spielberg and others
pretty sure Shugie and I liked the political section best
And the Barnes Foundation. The Barnes!! Gorgeous. And of course the interesting-interesting thing about the Barnes is that it’s by order of the Foundation’s trust that the displays not be rearranged from Dr. Barnes’ instructions. When the museum moved to downtown Philadelphia several years ago:
The court order allowing the foundation to relocate the collection to Philadelphia specified that the pictures were to be hung exactly as they had been in suburban Merion, in galleries that had to duplicate the configuration and the proportions of Paul Cret’s.
The entire museum isn’t just made up of those rooms one thinks of as the Barnes — it’s a nice-size building, and there’s traditional exhibit space, including the one going on through September 8, 2024, Matisse and Renoir: New Encounters at the Barnes
Even though the men were about 30 years apart in age, they had a great friendship. Some of the paintings featured in this exhibit:
Young Woman before an Aquarium, Henri Matisse
The Music Lesson, Henri Matisse
The Venetian Blinds, Henri Matisse
Leaving the Conservatory, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The museum is lovely inside and out
And in the sections recreated as Barnes had them…
The Barnes is home to one of the world’s greatest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern paintings, with especially deep holdings in Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso. Assembled by Dr. Albert C. Barnes between 1912 and 1951, the collection also includes important examples of African art, Native American pottery and jewelry, Pennsylvania German furniture, American avant-garde painting, and wrought-iron metalwork.
The minute you step into the galleries of the Barnes collection, you know you’re in for an experience like no other. Masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso hang next to ordinary household objects—a door hinge, a spatula, a yarn spinner. On another wall, you might see a French medieval sculpture displayed with a Navajo textile. These dense groupings, in which objects from different cultures, time periods, and media are all mixed together, are what Dr. Barnes called his “ensembles.”
The ensembles, each one meticulously crafted by Dr. Barnes himself, are meant to draw out visual similarities between objects we don’t normally think of together. Created as teaching tools, they were essential to the educational program Dr. Barnes developed in the 1920s.
Since there are no labels, the Barnes uses catalogs in each room diagramming the works, and guests are encouraged to use an app with a camera function that pulls up information about each piece
Another fun part of the Barnes is that you’re likely to see several pieces you know already — that sweet “oh I know that one” feeling…and there you are, with the original right in front of you.
Portrait of a Man Holding a Watch, Frans Hals
Vincent Van Gogh, The Postman
Bouquet of Roses, Peirre-Auguste Renoir
The Card Players, Paul Cezanne
Girl with a Polka Dot Blouse, Amedeo Modigliani
Vincent Van Gogh, The Smoker
Portrait of the Red Headed Woman, Amedeo Modigliani
Henri Rousseau, Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest
The Barnes has a great mix of in-person and online classes too.
Back to Bob’s Clam Hut in Maine
We were so so so very glad to be back at Bob’s Clam Hut in Kittery, Maine — I’ve only been here maybe three or four times now but it’s so good that while we were on our way up to Montreal so we couldn’t take her, Suzanne was making plans to meet us and drive up the approx 1:15 from Cambridge.
The last time I took a trip this way and spent a few days with Suzanne, we drove up here too, and stopped at Woodman’s of Essex (since 1914!) in MA for clam strips as a little appetizer for our Kittery lobster rolls. That was just an terrific little vacay for us — we did so many wonderful things around Boston & environs that year including the JFK Library, incredible food (esp incl Aquitaine and Giulia plus treats from Tatte), antiquing, and an incredible-incredible visit to Martha’s Vineyard.
Bob’s isn’t very large and the idea is to enjoy the sunshine by eating at a picnic table. Ordering is dairy-bar style: order at a window, listen for your number and pick up at a different window.
A few things here are market price, and on this day I think we paid right at $30 for lobster rolls. I usually get mine with mayonnaise, but this day I did the melted butter and I’m maybe never going back.
Also, this is the best tartar sauce I’ve had in my liiiiiiife.
The recipe for that is a secret, but the owner gave tips on frying clams (and omgggg their clamssssss) here.
So a lobster roll is kinda…Texas toasty.
Mayonnaise version:
Melted butter version:
Not the same, but lobster rolls are apparently the kind of thing you can just pop into a Maine grocery store and take home already prepared — for $10 right now.
Any of you done a New England fall-is-in-the-air kind of trip? Please message me if you have some fun ideas about the best things to do or way to go about it (hotels/transportation/restaurants/etc). xoxo!
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