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.
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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!
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