restaurants Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Where do I go when it’s safe?

food and film

Kevin, who is from my home county, though I don’t think we met until college, asks what should be a simple question:

Where is the first place you are going when it’s safe to go out?

Of course, not everything will open up at the same time. The thing I miss the most, singing in the choir, is going to take a while longer than other activities. So, it’s a toss-up between going to the movies and going indoors to a sit-down restaurant.

Now there have been some cinemas open around here with a limited capacity. I’m not feeling at all comfortable with attending. Maybe by the time I take my second COVID shot, I’ll feel differently. Yet, watching movies from home is a lesser experience.

I have some HBO channels, though not MAX; Amazon Prime, and Apple TV. So I have the capacity to see films at home. I just don’t have the discipline to treat films at home as I treat movies in a place I have to sit in a dark room with strangers. And it’s been true for over 40 years.

As for restaurants, I’m not doing that indoors either. Or for that matter, outdoors. When the weather was decent, there was a row of outdoor dining options at the end of Madison Avenue, only a couple blocks from here. Not only did I never patronize them, when I needed to go to the local CVS, but I also made a point of walking on the other side of the restaurants.

Now, I did do takeout occasionally, and sometimes I’ve been anxious about buying THAT, depending on the size of the unmasked crowd I had to wade through. Besides, takeout is not sitting in a restaurant, with its ambiance. There’s a huge difference between being served by a waitperson and taking food home in metal containers.

Hometown

Right before the lockdown, I was planning a trip to my hometown of Binghamton, NY in late March. I wanted to see the court transcripts of the trial involving my grandmother Agatha Walker (later, Green), who levied charges against my biological paternal grandfather, Raymond Cone. These records are only available in paper form, not electronically.

Kindness, civility, conscience, injustice, protest

“Restaurant owners routinely deny service to obnoxious Yelpers, noisy children, and even critical restaurant reviewers—this is the norm. These are not protected classes.”

I’m still deciding what to think about the correct responses to injustice.

Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor of Theology and President (1998-2008) of the Chicago Theological Seminary wrote Do Not Tolerate the Intolerable: Public Shaming Can Be a Justice Action. “Jesus of Nazareth publicly shamed those leaders he saw were committing injustice in his time, calling them out (Matt. 23:13). Jesus didn’t hesitate to be confrontational. ‘You hypocrites!’ he cried out.”

She points to Professor Gene Sharp, “often called the ‘grandfather of nonviolent direct action,’ who compiled a list of 198 Tactics for The Politics of Nonviolent Action. “Both publicly ‘taunting’ officials and withholding services are on the list.”

I get that. Still, one has to be strategic in this manner. Some of the suggestions from the Sharp list, such as not voting, I’d oppose in the US in 2018, yet would have supported in Russia, when Putin eliminated any real opposition.

Some actor named Hugo noted, and I agree, that actor Robert DeNiro cursing out some guy during the Tonys was a bad strategy. “Sinking ships aren’t saved by succumbing to anger… Progressive change isn’t brought upon society through verbal abuse. Decency and maturity are more effective — a levelheaded, well planned and swift takedown of a demagogue…”

In that manner, I’ve come to understand the owner of the Red Hen restaurant: “Several… employees are gay, which is one of many groups of people targeted by the Trump administration. They were uncomfortable to see the president’s chief propagandist in their midst, so they called the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, who drove in from home…

“They wanted Sanders to leave. Wilkinson did not attempt to publicly embarrass Sanders. She asked her to step out on the patio, where she explained why she wanted her to leave. The reason… why millions of Americans know about what happened… — is that Sanders used her government Twitter account, which has more than 3 million followers, to try to ruin The Red Hen, which seats 26 people.

“Sarah Sanders is a bully. Any discussion about her that raises the issue of civility is nothing but an intellectual exercise by people who aren’t worried enough about the harm her boss, the bully in chief, is inflicting on this country. Trump attacked The Red Hen on Twitter, too. Of course he did.

“Civility requires mutual respect. The Red Hen employees apparently understood this. If someone spends her days making clear her disregard for you and her willingness to harm you by parroting her boss’s bigotry, no one should expect you to act as if it doesn’t matter when she’s not talking into a microphone.”

BTW, I had forgotten when a baker turned away Joe Biden and received praise from conservatives.

An article in GQ notes: “Restaurant owners routinely deny service to obnoxious Yelpers, noisy children, and even critical restaurant reviewers—this is the norm. These are not protected classes, which include race, religion, disability, and gender, under anti-discrimination laws. Just as posting a ‘no shirts, no shoes, no service’ sign is not equivalent to Jim Crow-era ‘white-only’ policies—there is a wide chasm between bad behavior and immutable characteristics.”
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Read this piece from Tucker Fitzgerald, a “straight, white, male. I have a Master of Divinity from a Christian seminary,” who “voted for W both times”. He addresses his own shift in Intolerant Liberals, which should explain to conservatives WHY we protest.

I suppose, at the end of the day, in responding to injustice, as our Congressman Paul Tonko said on July 4, we need to resist, to protest, to protect, and to heal. There will be differences of opinion about what that means. I’m still idealistic enough to hope that it’s done with love in our hearts.

Times Union review re: Cuckoo’s Nest Restaurant

Does the Times Union not understand that there is nothing quaint about the violent and terroristic “rebel” culture that supported slavery and Jim Crow?

I had not yet seen the review of the Cuckoo’s Nest restaurant when I saw it referred to on Facebook. But once I read it, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Below is my buddy Mark Mishler’s response to the review, and the only things I changed were the reference date and adding the reviewer’s name.

As this mostly terrible year comes to a close, a mostly irrelevant article in the December 28 issue of the mostly insignificant Albany Times Union caught my attention as a tiny example of what could charitably be called complete insensitivity to the history of slavery and racism in the US (and, therefore, a neat little coda to a year filled with a resurgence of violent neo-Nazi and racist activity and apologies for it from those in power.)

The article is a review of a new restaurant in Albany, the Cuckoo’s Nest, which apparently has a “Southern” theme, whatever that means. The headline is “Rebel Yell”. Describing this new restaurant (in what used to be a wine bar), the Times Union reviewer, Susie Davidson Powell, writes that the changes to the previous decor serve to “recalibrate the familiar wine bar with antebellum warmth.”

Does the Times Union not understand that there is nothing quaint about the violent and terroristic “rebel” culture that supported slavery and Jim Crow? Or, that there were many, many people – primarily the African-American people who lived there the time – who did not find the antebellum period in the Southern slavocracy states to be filled with cozy “warmth”? How could this nostalgic elegy for the period of slavery pass the eye of the editors at the Times Union?

I should add that I have no idea whether the views of the reviewer reflect the views of the restaurant’s owners. Maybe the reviewer did not do them a positive service by couching the review in these terms. I look forward – though not really optimistically – to a new year in which the horrors of racism and slavery in this country are fully acknowledged and addressed.

I’ve not been to the restaurant, located where the Gingerman used to be on Western Avenue. (I’d been to the Gingerman several times over the years.) Let me reiterate that this is a reflection of the review, not the restaurant.

Kismet Mediterranean Grill replaces Pine Hills Bruegger’s

Were we going to be their first customers?

There was an announcement back in February 2017 of a Mediterranean restaurant called Kismet coming to my Pine Hills neighborhood. It would be replacing the Bruegger’s bagel shop that had been there for over three decades.

I used to frequent Bruegger’s there, at a site downtown, and up at Stuyvesant Plaza. I liked the sandwiches – my favorite, tuna salad on cinnamon raisin (don’t judge) – but they started to become parsimonious with the cream cheese and the like in the period before they all closed.

On Saturday, May 13, my wife and I walked by the place at the corner of Madison and South Allen at about 1 p.m. The brown paper that had covered the windows was down, the table settings appeared to be in place, but the sign read CLOSED, so we went further that block and had lunch.

Yet by the time we walked back towards home an hour later, the OPEN sign was showing! So we walked in. The server, Colin, jumped out of his booth. Were we going to be their first customers? Well, no. But the place looked really nice, so we said we’d back on Monday, which happened to be our anniversary.

Two days later, return we did, around 6:30 p.m. three or four tables were occupied when we got there. Colin remembered us. The food was delicious; mine was a beef and rice thing with a side salad. And the prices were reasonable.

Indeed, there was a point where most of the tables and booths were filled, mostly with pairs of people, though there was also a party of six. But the service was fine. But the service was fine, and the chef/owner came out to meet people at the various table. The two women at one side of us happened to see that the place was open, but the pair on the other side were friends of the chef from cooking he had done elsewhere and had encouraged him to start his own place.

Apparently, from the Yelp reviews, others were equally impressed by the new restaurant. See much better pics than mine, taken on my Amazon Fire tablet, from the All Over Albany article.

The real short-term failing of Kismet, as Colin acknowledged, is that the website is inadequate. It doesn’t have the MENU, for one thing. Ditto the Facebook page. This, I trust, will be rectified.

The Scenario

Hair in my food?

I found this at something called Monday Mayhem, only the URL spells it “mahem”. Whatever. It’s rather like Sunday Stealing except the lists tend to be shorter. I thought this one from January was rather interesting.

1. You see a strange car pull up to your neighbor’s house every day at lunchtime. You accidentally glance into the window of the house and notice that your ‘happily married neighbor’ is fooling around! What do you do?

Well, it depends very much on my relationship with the neighbor and the neighbor’s spouse. It might be that I would do absolutely nothing at all if I didn’t know them well. If the one fooling around was my friend, I probably would mention it to him/her. If the neighbor’s spouse was my friend, I would almost certainly mention it, not to my friend, at least initially, but to the cheating spouse, with a recommendation to end the affair; whether I told my friend would depend on the actions of the person “fooling around”.

2. You are at the mall and a mom with really annoying screaming little kids is walking in front of you. She goes to give her kids a quarter for the giant gumball machine and she accidentally drops a $10 bill and doesn’t realize it. What do you do?

Say, “Hey lady, you dropped something!” Don’t know how the noisy kids factor into this. Right is right.

3. You get an email from a candy company telling you that they will send you 6 pounds of delicious chocolate if you blog about their product. When you get the product and try it you realize that it is the worst chocolate that you have ever tasted. What do you do?

It’d be one of two things: 1) I just don’t write anything at all, especially if it’s a small company, or 2) I write a negative review, probably filled with qualifiers such as “unfortunately, I found the candy pretty much inedible. I have to wonder: was this just a bad, or tainted batch, or is this what they sell regularly? If the latter, I can’t imagine long-term success.”

4. Texting while driving is one of the most dangerous and annoying things someone could do. Yet, what would you do if you were driving and listening to the radio when the announcer says that he will give $10,000 to the first person with your name that texts a message to him?

Well, assuming I actually knew where my cellphone was, if I were driving, I’d pull over at the first opportunity.

5. You’ve been invited to your boss’s house for a dinner party. It’s dark out and there is poor lighting when you get there. As soon as you get inside you realize that you have stepped in dog poop and you have tracked into your boss’s house. What do you do?

Well, it would depend on whether it was the boss’s dog. If it was, I’d say, “I’m afraid I just stepped into some dog poop” without specifying. Conversely, if I knew for sure it WASN’T my boss’s dog, I’d launch into a tirade about people who don’t curb their pets.

6. You are at a restaurant waiting for your food to arrive. You’ve waited nearly 30 minutes since the moment you placed your order when your food finally shows up. There is a hair on the top of the food. Do you send it back and wait another 30 minutes or do you deal?

I send it back and leave, paying for the drinks and salad already consumed. All the restaurant studies suggest it is the experience, not the quality of the food, that makes the most impact on whether one has a good or poor dining experience. Another half-hour wait would make it a poor dining experience, no matter how good the food was.

7. If you had the power to do so, what would be the one question that you would like to ask anyone who reads this?

Why do they call it “reality television” when the circumstances are so artificial, anything but real?
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Exene Cervenka of the band X co-directed Bad Day (1986), a “20-minute, silent, black & white western to pay tribute to the early days of the one-reel westerns,” starting John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (Blasters), Chris D (Flesh Eaters), Kevin Costner (yes, that Kevin Costner), “now available for digital download on a pay-what-you-will basis…a portion of the proceeds from the film are going to Gulf Coast aid organizations.”