Happy Trails

Just back home to Bermuda and the hot, sticky weather my first thought after 2 months away was how old Bermuda looks.  Not surprising I suppose seeing as it was discovered in 1609 and being small has been built over for years now, so there's precious little leeway to build big, new things.  Or money at the moment anyway although I do hope that changes soon.

Looking back on our time away though, here are some thoughts:

Chicago

What a great City!

That's it.  Nothing else.  OK, one thing someone told me about was the Architectural Society's city tours and how good they were.  He was right.  And this really leads onto a theme running through the trip which is that exploring somewhere through history brings perspective and so much more enjoyment than simply rolling up and trying to get going.  My son, Ali, recently went to Paris for a friend's wedding and visited some of the museums there which he said he really enjoyed.  I found this pleasantly surprising as I thought the young today don't read that much (if its not on a digital device) and don't care much for history beyond the first 20 second sound byte.

Chicago Board of Trade's throne style art deco building

Museums

Many of the museums we visited had guided tours of displays, events and such like.  Do them.  These tours are provided for a reason.  They are interesting and informative.  If the guides are enthusiastic (and ours were), this translates into a wonderful experience which brings so much more to what you are looking at.

Warning: You are in danger of learning something…

In Montreal, for example, at the Pointe a Calliere Museum -- the museum of the city -- a temporary exhibit was of one district in the City just outside downtown.  I couldn't for the life of me understand why I'd care about some suburb but the tour convinced me otherwise and reminded me that everyone and everywhere has a story.  All you have to do is listen.

I now know for example why Montreal housing is built the way it is -- outside staircases because property tax at the time was calculated on living space, staircases being considered dead space were therefore built outside.  Made no sense of course as with the city being snowed in for 6 months of the year, these staircases were death traps!

Not many people know that.

Baseball

The 2 games we went to were brilliant but make me wonder why there are so many games in a season. 162 regular season games is a lot so teams have to have large rotating squads and make sure they win 52% of their games to make it to the play-offs.  (Watch the movie Moneyball to see what I mean). This means the game can be managed statistically; beat that team, rest the good guys for this other team…

Takes some of the immediacy out of things.  Had we realised the St. Louis game was the final one in a 3-game series against LA and they'd already won the first 2 games, we may not have spent the $100 per ticket to watch a game that was fairly low energy (and importance to St. Louis anyway).

I think this is likely the case with NBA and NHL too.

Bourbon

I was hoping I'd like Bourbon but even the smoothest drink felt like a dagger in the throat to me (just like Scotch too).  But when incorporated into a cocktail such as an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan… whoo-hoo!

Draw daggers…

Old Fashioned and Mint Julep… that's what I'm talking about!

Interestingly as a side comment the barman at our cocktail course said that Canadian Rye whisky is the most popular US drink so that now many US distillers make rye too.  This is permeating into Bourbon making as well where the area in which it was originally distilled (Bourbon county in Kentucky) was expanded to the point where it could be made anywhere in Kentucky and still be called bourbon, and then again further still so that bourbon can be made anywhere… and still be called bourbon.

This would never happen in the EU who make sure that you can only legally get Yorkshire Pudding in Yorkshire.  Mind you the French are highly guarded over Champagne and Cognac so maybe the EU learned it from them.

Movies

We like movies and when away take the chance of spending lengthy periods in the local Cineplex 24 or whatever the local name is.  If you plan properly, you could spend an entire day in one of these places moving from screening room to screening room -- our record was 4 in a day.  The challenge is to find movies you like in the right order.

The biggest irritant is going out to buy multiple tickets and makes me wonder why these multiplexes don't just sell a day pass, or a week pass for that matter.  Double or triple a single ticket and enable movie goers to stay and go as much as they want.  They'd buy stuff at the concessions and probably generate more revenue for the cinema and at the same time obviate the need to hire people to check for those who hop from screen to screen without buying new tickets.

Make the experience better for moviegoers in fact.

Service

We went out a lot in the last 2 months.  Pretty much across the board we found that service in bars, restaurants and hotels was excellent but stand out moment goes to the Toque Restaurant in Montreal (see link here).

We were recommended this as being one of the best restaurants in Montreal and expecting it would be French-ish, we went.  Montreal isn't as French as I thought it would be nor was Toque.  It was new, elegant and had some French components to it but it was new American… and very nice too.  I'd ordered a bottle of red wine I thought would be nice and while drinkable it wasn't great and for some reason I mentioned this to the sommelier when he asked.

He apologised and asked if he could change it for us.

I hadn't expected this as it was my poor choice in the first place that I was happy to live with.  I certainly didn't ask him to change it.  He offered.

He also said let him choose a wine he thought we'd like… and he did.  And we did.  And it turned out to be a Serbian cabernet.  Very nice it was too.  The sommelier said he didn't want to tell us first as we'd never have agreed to try it.  He was right, we wouldn't.  I wish I'd made a note of the name as it actually was lovely.

As was dinner and the stunningly unexpected service level.

Luggage

We made some very poor choices regarding luggage in our trip earlier in the year and had cut things down to just the 3 bags … from 6.  Progress certainly but still not perfection.

What were we thinking?

Travelling these days with luggage is a real pain.  Virtually all airlines now charge for luggage -- AA I think was the hold out in the US but they gave up in April when they merged with US Airlines.  Yet another added cost on top of the quoted fare.  Security and Immigration controls are also a pain.  If the US ever increases its Amtrak routing, I'd consider trains more.  No immigration, no travel to/from the airport, no security… sounds wonderful.

Or we could just go tubing…

Cocktails versus Shooters

I like Living Social, the online deal of the day company that promotes events and special offers in your targeted location.  Quite often they have curios that you wouldn't normally think about so that when you go and have a great time, it all makes for a terrific occasion.

Of course being an instructional tutorial on making Classic Martinis didn't do any harm to its potential attraction either.

So when I saw the deal offered by the Bartending School of Ontario (a very grandiose title for a small shopfront on Danforth) called "Martini/Shooter Insanity" for $69 for 2 people, I thought this was a no brainer.

12 others had turned up for the event with at least 2, maybe 3 birthdays suggesting that it would turn out to be a fun evening.  I was a little alarmed to see that we were by far the oldest but the menu for the evening comprised a detailed list of classic cocktails and another page of what seemed like awful concoctions with names such as 'Swedish Pornstar'.  This sounded fun!

The teacher (what do you call a bartender who teaches others? Not exactly school but…) started things off with the Swedish Pornstar -- a mix of melon liquor and a couple of others that ended up looking a muddy green something which was really sweet and tasted like medicine.  I declined but the others, particularly the young ladies along the bar, chugged them straight back and shouted "Whoo-hoo".  This was a theme for the evening as it turned out.

Fortunately we then moved to the classic Martini, although the teacher did ask preferences for gin or vodka -- vodka won.  He told us that vodka was unknown in North America before the 1930's so the traditional cocktails (Martinis, Tom Collins, Manhattan, etc) were either gin or whisky based and that the Classic Martini was (a) gin based, (b) stirred not shaken -- shaking would bruise the gin and dilute it, and (c ) should be served in the traditional Martini glass not the buckets introduced by the Americans later on to super size the drinks.  

James Bond, he said, was a wuss preferring vodka and shaken over stirred showing his clear preference for watered down booze.  Fortunately for the teacher, 007 wasn't there so couldn't put him right in probably robust manner.

So wrong on so many levels: wrong glass, shaken not stirred… I feel used

I like my Martinis shaken as well, incidentally.

Next was a delicious Manhattan, a bourbon based drink that I requested… perhaps I'm starting to like Bourbon after all!  The teacher added a remarkable feature namely that of adding some smoke to the operation by setting light to some hickory chips and using a device to send a focused stream of smoke into the glass before the concoction was assembled…. and shaken.

Firing up the Manhattan

Served with a cherry in classic Martini glasses, this to me was the drink of the night.

"Ooh, never had this before," was the gallery's comment.

"Not bad, but I prefer Tequila shots," was another.

Reminded me of England.

And so the evening then turned… to shooters.  No tequila on display but there was no shortage of other booze which the teacher used in showing us how to make layered shots in a test tube… really.  Apparently in clubs this is the rage but the tubes have to have flat bottoms, not those rounded bottoms that no doubt are remembered from school chemistry lessons.  

Really!

This is because the nanny LCBO believes it encourages people to chug these shots too fast as you cannot put them down anywhere.  With a flat bottom, apparently, you have the opportunity of putting the tube down somewhere and not drinking too fast.  Now, just who is going to savor a drink containing 5+ colors of supreme alcoholic content tasting of Jagermeister … for at the end of the day, that is what all these fancy shots ended up tasting like but with a varying degree of ultra sweetness too.

Our efforts.  Jagermeister anyone?

"Whoo-hoo" as my fellow students said.

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Gastronomy Domine

It is difficult looking back over the road trip to forget a key highlight being the various regional things we ate and drank which are of exceptional note.  Here they are in no particular order:

Chicago Pizza 
Probably the stodgiest thing I've ever eaten in my life.  In London 30 years ago there was a restaurant called the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory (closed now sadly) which I went to often.  Their pizzas were certainly deep dish but not this deep dish!  The pizza takes 45 minutes minimum to cook through but its worth the wait.  It just amazes me how even slim and small people can wolf back immense hunks of this pizza.  We shared a one person pie and left barely able to waddle, let alone walk!

Giordano's deep dish offering

Memphis BarBQ
Memphis BBQ is dry which is just how we like it.  That way you can taste the meat not the sloshed on sauce covering up any fault in the cooking.  It was great particularly when sprinkled with the dry rub after being taken off the grill just prior to serving.  That gave a wonderful extra something to the meat, usually ribs and brisket for us.

Lamb Ribs
Why hasn't anyone thought of serving lamb ribs the same way as pork ribs?  You get the trimmed down, so called French cut, racks of lamb which are nice in their own right.  But just wait and try lamb ribs barbecued the Memphis (i.e. dry) way.  Fantastic.  When you think about it lambs have exactly the same rib set up as pigs so why wouldn't they have spare ribs too?  Well they do and probably its the butcher that knows just how lovely they are so doesn't allow them to get out to the public at large.  He gets to keep them for himself instead.  Don't blame him at all.

Rendezvous BBQ in Memphis' dry rubbed lamb ribs

St. Louis Pizza
The other side of the coin to the deep dish is the wafer thin, hellishly crispy, cut into squares piece of deliciousness that is the St. Louis Pizza.  Lord knows why they do it this way, I am just glad they do.  Just fantastic.  We had one for breakfast one day which is a really good time to eat this type of pizza.  I think any time is good to eat this type of pizza actually.

Toasted Ravioli
What?  It happened by accident when a chef accidentally dropped a ravioli into a deep fat fryer.  OK its fried and anything fried tastes good, right?  We only had it once and it was ... OK.  Crispy for sure on the outside which is interesting but the inside remains a bit on the stodgy side.  Glad to have had it but I won't rush back for more.  And the title... no idea why its called 'Toasted' as its actually deep fried.  Could be because it sounds more healthy to be toasted.

And what we missed, again in no particular order:

St. Louis BQ
This is the wet cousin of dry BBQ with gushing amounts of sauce sloshed all over the cooked meat.  To be honest we didn't try that hard to eat it.

Frozen Custard Pie
Huh?  Just as it sounds except place in freezer and cut chunks off to eat... like an ice cream.  Never saw it.

Alligator and Shrimp Cheesecake
Honestly.  We went to a good cajun style restaurant and this was on the menu.  A bunch of guys came in after we'd eaten and went through a bunch of Louisiana favorites including steamed crawfish, oysters done a variety of cooked styles and this.  Imagine a cheesecake covered in shrimp and alligator and that's exactly what it was.

It would be wrong to talk about eats without what should wash it all down so in no particular order:

Mint Julep
I'd practiced by having a julep with coriander in Cayman a short while before which was ... well ... so when we were in Kentucky we just had to have the real thing that is served in gallons at the Kentucky Derby.  Made with bourbon, mint and sugar syrup over ice, this drink is not to be taken lightly at all.  I cannot imagine drinking more than two of these without the ability to retire to a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Old Fashioned
Made with bourbon, syrup again and something else, I think sweet vermouth, this tastes like velvet and warms you from the inside top to toe within two minutes.  About this time you also lose the feeling in your teeth so probably have another which really is a bad idea without the ability to retire to a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Old Fashioned on the left and Mint Julep to the right

Bourbon
This of course is unfair as there are hundreds of varietals all made with the same loving difference as the finest scotch whiskies.

Negroni
This drink is made to different recipes in different places.  The basic ingredients are gin, campari and sweet vermouth but if you delete gin and add bourbon, you get the Peabody Hotel Memphis twist.  However if you take some port, put it in a barrel for 4 weeks and then add the aforementioned traditional ingredients you get the Missouri Athletic Club twist.  Both are really scrummy and if you are wise, you definitely have another and abandon further plans for the evening but instead seek out a quiet, cool, dark room for a nice lie down.

Barman Robert's Negroni from the Missouri Athletic Club

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On the Road

We managed a reasonable start time to head out to Nashville so decided to go on the backroads instead of the wretched I65 that we endured yesterday.  This meant we would pass through real country where people lived instead of exit something or other with the endless lists of chain hotels, gas stations and food options -- much as I do love Mac Donald's!

Which turned out to be our first stop and an immediate moment of unsurpassed friendliness from the locals.  I managed to drop my fresh coffee all... well, all over, so went back into the McD and asked for another coffee.  The young girl behind the counter seemed surprised I'd be back so soon for a refresher but when I explained she immediately poured another without charge.

I was impressed to be sure but on reflection isn't that really how it should be?  Maybe we've become too hardened by routine poor service and having to pay for absolutely everything, including endless stuff that used to be free.  I know its been a while since we've flown but I still can't get over the advertisement from some airline or other that expounds "The first bag's on us!"  It always used to be, for goodness sake.  They've now started charging for absolutely everything including luggage so to give it away free is nothing more than nauseating, pure and simple.

But thank you young lady and thank you McD.

The country was rather more rolling, this being the Kentucky hill country.  I was on the lookout for illicit stills but couldn't see any.  Not sure I'd know one though.

Jim Bean's still -- quite a big one and not illicit either

However the towns we passed through were all pretty similar in one way, they all had at least 2 churches, one baptist and one other (never Catholic though).  This is solid southern baptist country clearly but the thing that I don't get is how those sometimes tiny towns could support 2 churches yet no other businesses of any sort.  No general store, no bar/diner, no post office.  Nothing.

All the baptist churches had those white spires which differentiated them from the other churches

Sadly most businesses have moved to major road intersections and as everyone appears to have transport, that's where they all head to.  So no small town small businesses, no mom and pop shops.  That's sad.

But I still don't understand the 2 churches minimum per town thing.

We spent a lot of time on the famous highway 61 -- the road from Chicago to New Orleans that Bob Dylan so famously caught with his seminal album of the same name.  This is the route people from Mississippi and the Delta used to travel up to Chicago to find work.

All in all a most pleasant 4 hour drive broken up with some BBQ in a town called Glasgow that did have shops and a BBQ restaurant called Big Moose's before we made it to our hotel in Nashville, the old converted mainline station.  Amtrak stopped coming to Nashville so the railway became redundant here, hence the magnificent hotel.