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.
