Today in AWP news.

 We went to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, which was AMAZING, you guys:

[exhibit: The Contained Narrative: Defining the Contemporary Artist's Book]

I bought a zillion tiny books, both there and at the book fair.

Then we saw the Mississippi,

which was, frankly, a little bit thrilling.

After that, we went to a fantastic farm to table restaurant that was, as is the nature of such enterprises, also hilarious. Featuring: an improbably wonderful toast course. As in: toast, the bread.

from right to left: toast & toast accoutrements.
from top to bottom (toast accoutrements):
fresh whole milk farm (of course) cheese. honey.
bacon-onion jam. toasted pepitas, fennel, and coriander
seeds. mushrooms. slaw of carrot and celery root.
#fancy.

I also wrote a poem about it.

Lots of pretty people there, reading Rolling Stone, reading Vogue.

At Rockn Fish, in Manhattan Beach. We are sitting on the patio; the historian has his back to the door, which means I am in precisely the spot to observe the comings and goings:

Me: You can't see the exceedingly well-groomed people coming in and out of here.

The historian: Really? (continues eating his artichoke.)

Me: Yeah. Like, just now: tall guy, eyebrows clearly professionally groomed, airbrushed tan.

Velvet blazer. Very well-fitted.

The historian: That could be me.

Me: ...yet tragically, it is not.

Fancy.

Today, after we got up, ate breakfast, returned to our room with every intention of going down to the beach to contemplate the vastness of things, but instead took a little post-breakfast nap, we then got up in time to pursue part 2 of our agenda, which was getting in the car and driving to the Miracle Mile, aka Museum Row, aka the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, aka LACMA, and it was so great.

Reason 1 it was great: I have apparently become expert at navigating the Los Angeles freeways and byways. So we drove to the LACMA like it was our job, and we just got merit pay for doing our job very very well.

Reason 2 it was great: upon arrival, we ate at Ray's, which is kind of a fancy restaurant for a museum. But lucky you, I have taken extensive notes on our dining experience for your delectation and delight. We saw some other great stuff today, believe me, and I wouldn't say this lunch trumped them all. But this lunch was damn good.

First of all: we love to eat at museum eateries. On this we agree. But it turns out that the historian prefers a more democratic eating experience at museums, whereas I like all kinds of eating experiences, but if pressed, must admit that I often enjoy a fancy lunch. This means that, when we both say, "We love to eat at museum cafes," we have different experiences in mind. This is a lesson, by the way, in the instability of language. Woe!

So when we walked in and it was clearly an order-from-the-menu, sit-down type of experience we were about to have, if we decided to stay, the historian briefly demurred. But I clearly had the tragic air of a person about to be denied her heart's desire, so instead, we sat down.

The first item I saw on the menu was this: "Foraged Lettuces."

I said, "Look, we can mock the menu."

The historian said, "No, this is fine," because he had made up his mind to enjoy it no matter if he would rather have had a lovely sandwich with perhaps a fancy bag of chips alongside. And though I felt mildly guilty for my fancy preferences, I thought, oh what the hell. So we turned to serious menu-reading, after ordering drinks (iced tea for me ["We have two kinds ice tea. Plumberry--it's black--or green, it's ginger and peach."] and water for both of us ["Sparkling or flat?"]). See? Fancy.

When they brought my iced tea, they also brought this:

The people, that is four kinds of sugar. FOUR. And all of a sudden, I knew this lunch was going to be awesome. So here is what we had:

The historian ordered a cold artichoke soup, with goat's milk yogurt, fried mint, and some food item that started with a "v" that I can't remember, sadly. It was tart and beautiful. He also ordered a flatbread for us to share, which turned out to be a pizza, a very very delicious pizza, made with taggiasche olives, what must have been the freshest ricotta in the universe, some broccolini, and black pepper.

I ordered an albacore salad, which was a variation on a Nicoise. It had cannelini beans with a little bit of broth, rare seared tuna, haricots verts, chopped piquillo peppers, shaved red onion, and--wait for it!--black olive aioli. That aioli was so good, it just about blew my mind.

Also, that iced tea was just about the best iced tea I've ever had, and that's with no sugar added. The sugar was just iced tea scenery. It was iced tea ambiance, and a very good ambiance it was, as it turns out.

So our guy, who is about the most charming waiter known to man, says he hopes we've saved room for dessert. Fat chance, we say to ourselves, but he is charming. So we say, sure, we'll look at a menu. And on the menu, under the name "Citrus," is this:

That is, for your information, an orange marmalade cake, with grapefruit curd, then a little meringue, topped with thinly sliced mandarinquat. With a little fancy sugar. And by its side, a suave spoonful of bergamot sorbet. BERGAMOT. I am not kidding you. It was without peer, and I say this as a person who has made lemon verbena ice cream which is, up until this afternoon, the best ice cream I ever tasted. Also, this is a video because I forgot to set it on a photo setting, and it is sideways because I don't know why. Just accept it, okay? Bergamot sorbet, for crying out loud.

Lastly, although actually this was more like firstly, the utensils and napkin were contained in this manner:

In conclusion: the people, why not go to Ray's?

Expensive dinner.

Today was a rainy day in Seattle, and I wasn't feeling so well, so we mostly stayed in, which has its own pleasures within a vacation context. I'm reading a very interesting book (published by Felony & Mayhem Press, how great is that?), and I also just bought and started that book called French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Both the historian and I subscribe to the philosophy of vacationing that allows for chilling out in the vacation location, as opposed to the "you can read that book when you get home" philosophy, the "action-vacation" philosophy.

Anyway, around dinner time, it was raining pretty hard, so we decided to go across the street to one of the restaurants right on Lake Union. That's alert one, by the way, if you're trying to decide whether a restaurant is expensive--is it right on the lake where there are a bunch of yachts harbored? (Alert two: just look at the prices on the menu, of course.) But we went in anyway, and were seated in a really lovely dining room looking directly out at the lake, where the water was rough and the rain was falling with some intensity, and there was also a Tuesday regatta going on--sailboats, wind, rain, perfect.

The menu was expensive. As in, Ex.Pen.Sive. As in, it kind of made us laugh. But we decided to stay and eat, and ultimately there were some good things on the menu and lots of exquisitely prepared vegetables and salads, not to mention things like mussels and clams in a green curry broth. Not that that hasn't been done before, but it can be done well, and at this restaurant, it was. The salad was made of beautiful local lettuces--truly gorgeous, a purple lettuce that was almost black, with a lemon vinaigrette. It was pretty much a perfect salad, not overpriced, the kind of thing a certain type of restaurant can do impeccably. This was a crab house with a side mission of expensive steak. Anyway: we ordered our food, it was all very good, maybe overpriced by about 20%? Maybe 25%?

But the most hilarious thing about this place was the service. Lots of servers, and a hierarchy of servers and staff, all of whom were very serious about how good your dinner is and that you think so. We had a main waiter, who was excellent. There was a water guy, and then other servers who filled in as water guys when our glasses were emptying. There was a maitre d' host, and then another guy whom I would have pegged as the maitre d'host, except the other guy was clearly that guy, so maybe the intermediate guy was, like, Quality Control. Sort of an entrepreneurial, "is everything at Nirvana level?" guy, an independent source of information. At one point, in the space of about two minutes, we had like four people come by to check on us.

Also hilarious: with the awesome sourdough bread that is ubiquitous at seafood restaurants in Seattle, they brought out a tiny square plate with a triangular slice of sweet butter, over which was sprinkled pink Hawaiian sea salt. I laughed (only after the waiter had left), but it was kind of delicious, and don't think I won't copy it sometime when I feel like being extra fancy at some dinner party of my own.