Who can be more inane, poorly informed and self-contradictory?

Currently in the lead–by a cute, button nose–over Sarah Palin: Michele Bachman.

“My name is Ed Henry.”

As in, dude, I don’t know the man, but I can pretty much guarantee that the President isn’t even the teeniest bit worried about whether there are any “hard feelings” as a result of the way he answered your question.

Ye gods.

Anyone who looks at my last.fm knows that I am a huge lover of Depeche Mode. More so their early albums than the last two or three, but still, they’re right up there on my most-played, and Violator is one of my favourite albumes ever by anyone.

The MD started playing this on his computer a few minutes ago, and at first I thought it was U2. Then I thought it was teh suck. Then I wanted to kill myself, to that metronomic tolling piano chord. I really hope it cleans up/mixes/produces well, as right now I don’t even want to hear the rest of whatever they might be doing.

GAH.

Remember that whole Chilean water rights thing?

My outrage continues.

Go ahead,  it’s a good cause and you know the restaurants need the business too

(Sorry for spamming all available e-outlets, for those who notice.)

Finally?

Hitting Seattle April 27. Onsale next week. The MD and I are considering Lollapalooza, so not sure where the concert budget is on all this, especially since dates are kind of thin on the ground (perhaps they’ll play Lolla as well? doubt somehow that they’ll come to Vancouver but you never know).

FLAPPY HANDS!

Working backwards…Parkside last Friday. 6-course chef’s tasting menu.

Celeriac and cauliflower soup, porcini foam? truffle oil? lush, served with an Italian Bidoli Sauvignon Blanc
The scallop dish with grapefruit, guanciale, fennel, watercress and whatnot, a beautiful Parkside vinaigrette, served with a Hendry rosé
The shortrib ravioli, with a La Quercia Montepulciano
The deer, the lovely lovely deer and red wine reduction, Australian Vasse Felix Cabernet Sauvignon
The steak fiorentina with the most incredible onion ring in HISTORY!, with a Moulin de Gassac Guilhem
The famous lemon tart, which I likely would not have ordered on my own, but which was delicious of course, so glad I got to try it. With mascarpone cream I think? and blood orange sorbet. Served with an Asti Moscato, and then Mr. Stewart gave us a taste of his Tokaji, which was quite quite lush.

Farewell, dear friend. Hope to meet you again one day.

I made a very successful orecchiette with ricotta and basil and tomatoes.

For Valentine’s Day, we stayed in and had a seafood feast. The standout dish was the tarragon crab salad, made with Dungeness claw meat (!!! so spendy! but SO GOOD), followed by the shrimp cakes with lime chili cream sauce. The teeny heart-shaped cheesecakes were not photogenic and hence are not pictured, but were very tasty.

that it is taking a sick day to have some time to blog…not heinously sick, but major headache and backache combine to create a largely immobile Deeb. Perhaps I will feel better later if I have a nap, I hope.

So what’s been up…I joined twitter (@bittersweetdb) and I suppose the so-called microblogging is taking a bit away from the actual blogging. But the feed shows up over here on the right so if you’ve any interest you can just look over there from time to time. Radiohead friends and food geek friends and Philly friends and people I’ve never met can be fun to “follow.” The whole “liveblogging” thing that people do with that damn stupid scrolly window is impossible for me so never mind that but the tweeting is OK. You also find people and media outlets which are just as pompous and tedious on twitter as they are IRL or their primary web presence, or whose web presence doesn’t translate well to twitter…so some people/sites that I have on RSS feed I don’t duplicate on twitter as it’s just a whack of clutter.

But there are surprising people! or at least for me, since I am (voluntarily) shut off from so much media. Stephen Fry is a very amusing person to follow; ?uestlove is a champion tweeter, also entertaining and informative. Cory Doctorow can get on my tits for sheer volume sometimes, and I’m not sure if I’ll keep him or just satisfy myself with my boingboing RSS. I recently found @LaBuca is on twitter! La Buca being the sister restaurant to my dearly departed, lamented and fondly remembered Parkside, which I find I didn’t have a Parkside tag in here, and I ought to have.

Parkside was my favourite Vancouver restaurant for the past 4 years or something, hard for me to pinpoint. But I’ve had some of my best meals ever there, made a convert of the Main Distractor, celebrated more stuff there than anywhere else ever, I think, beating out even La Grolla in Philly. The MD and I went there for one last meal last weekend, had a tasting menu that pleased us in every way, and have resigned ourselves to the undoubted excellence that the next incarnation of the space as another La Buca will offer. We’re booked for our one-year anniversary weekend and I will report. It is a continuation of the Andrey Durbach/Chris Stewart partnership that has spelled restaurant gold in this city for some years now. There are flashier places (God knows) and more self-aggrandizing owners (oh man!) than these two, but for diners who are more interested in the food than the buzz; in excellence of ingredients and execution; in a disciplined and devoted back-of-house and a warm and sincere front-of-house, I haven’t found anyone else who consistently delivers at this level. And even I can afford to eat in their restaurants (there’s also Pied-à-Terre, French bistro style), at least sometimes if not as often as I’d like.

So twitter has brought another intersection of worlds; in a good way I guess!

I think I will post more later, about some of the cooking and eating I have been doing.

I really do.