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New Orleans

I could go to New Orleans once or twice a year just to eat and listen to the music. I know, in America, that is not an original thought. In fact, a lot of people go there every year, just for that. It’s a little strange that I went most of my adult life without going to NOLA just once, then in the past 7-8 years, I’ve been five times. Plus being in New Orleans feels like you are visiting a foreign country. There is no other place like it in America, and no place with such a rich, cross-cultural history. I mean, Cajuns and Creoles live there now, thanks to the French, Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch pirates casting about in the early 18th Century. The oldest bar in America, Jean Lefitte’s Blacksmith Shop, founded 1740, and is there on the north end of Bourbon Street. The word “unique” was created to describe this blacksmith shop.

At this point and if you are remotely paying attention, by the third visit you know to go to Mother’s Restaurant, established in 1938 with a claim on its sign: “World’s Best Baked Ham.” For reasons unknown, I have not eaten Mother’s ham in the three or four times I have been there. Come to think of it, I know why. How can one resist the combo Po’ Boy sandwich, with oysters and shrimps, and a bowl of red beans and rice? That is what I had with my date on the recent visit, plus a platter of fried blue crabs. These little guys that are a little bigger than the palm of your hand when opened. Enjoy with fresh-squeezed lemon, vinegar, and hot sauce — man that’s eating!

Some of the other go-to places, Cochon and Emeril’s, are good options if you have the nights, but what you don’t want to miss on a visit to New Orleans is dinner at the best restaurant in town.

Located in a historic 19th century French-Creole building in New Orleans’ Central Business District, Restaurant August is a Contemporary Creole restaurant creating unique dishes with a focus on Louisiana ingredients and inspired by classical training and cooking techniques. Upon entering, you can feel the richness of the place, with original architectural details, hardwood floors, soaring columns, mahogany paneling and antique mirrors.

My first father-in-law had a saying about restaurants: “You can’t eat ambiance,” meaning, the only thing that counts when eating out is the food on your plate. While that is largely true, the right ambiance can generate an appetite for sophisticated food, wine, company and conversation. August does that for me.

The first time I ate there, three or four years ago, I was traveling with one of my subcontractors and it was a real estate conference. We were there to have fun together, eat and drink too much, and prospect for new business. It’s always a winning combination. Anyway, I had reservations for four at the restaurant featured in this post, but only my friend and I were going to dinner. When I go to a new city, I research the best restaurants in town and make reservations in advance. If I am going for business, especially a conference, I make the reservation for a couple extra, in case someone, or a pair, wants to join in the dining experience. Thus, I had two extra seats at my table, and a primetime reservation, 7:30. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel near the Concierge desk, reading a newspaper, when a hotel guest was going over dinner reservation options with the Concierge on duty. Nothing was available at the top three or four restaurants in town. I could tell by listening that the lady putting the Concierge to work was a food aficionado. She dressed well, late 50s, put together, attractive enough, and was determined to land a fine meal that night in New Orleans. I could hear the Concierge on the phone, then speaking to the lady.

“No ma’am, nothing is available at any of these restaurants until 9:30. I’m sorry.”

I walked up to the guest and Concierge, and said:
“Excuse me ma’am but I have a reservation for four at August, 7:30 this evening, and only my marketing partner and I are going. We are both straight men, and neither of us are ax murderers. In fact, we don’t even own axes. Would you and I presume, a friend, partner or spouse that you are traveling with, like to join us?”

Her facial reaction exhibited surprise, pleasure and a little fear, all at once.

She smiled and said:

“That is a lovely offer. If you don’t mind, may I ask my husband? I think he is in the bar next door. If you can wait here a minute I will be right back.”

And so this couple from Santa Fe, New Mexico, joined us for dinner that night. The gentleman was in his 60s and in good shape. It’s fair to assume they were rich, as they had been spending some time at their home in the Hamptons and the lady wanted a splendid meal in New Orleans before they flew, private jet, back to New Mexico. They were in NOLA for only that night and my reservation was their good karma. I can’t remember their names right now and would not publish them if I did, but we had a fine time.

After introductions, which included my friend and me sharing our enthusiasm for our visit earlier that day to the World War II museum, our gentlemen guest said:

“If it is ok with you fellas, I’d like to propose that we split the tab on dinner but I get to buy the wines.”

It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

The first bottle came, a French Chardonnay, and it was so good that it is what my friends at Kermit Lynch call “gulpable.” Well that is more or less what my friend did, knocking back the first glass in very short order, perhaps just under 5 minutes. Upon which he exclaimed:
“Damn, that’s the best white wine I have ever had!”

“Well good,” said our new friend and wine host, “because the bottle cost almost $400.”

I was in mid-sip and I strongly resisted the urge to spit my wine out in a laughing fit. As much laughter that there had been in the previous two days and nights, this was the funniest thing I heard in months. That night, with four bottles of wine shared between the four of us along with seven menu items from the kitchen (the other three were all red and equally good), was easily one of the best evenings of my life.

On this recent visit, we started with Scallops and snap peas, and a nice French Chablis. New friends from Barcelona, Cristina and Ernesto, joined us. They are lovely people, she, I think in her late 40s while he is early 50s. Maybe they are both in their early 50s. Good looking and successful in business (her commercial real estate, him the Chairman of Toyota Europe – a small job!), we had the sense we were dining with European, and in this case, Spanish, Aristocrats. Not that we were in awe of them, or that they were pompous. No, not at all. We were all equals and our children are of similar ages… five between the four of us and all in their 20s.

For a second dish we had seared duck breast on creamy grits. Our foursome had been to a cocktail reception before dinner and had knocked back a few cocktails, so we held off on ordering a second bottle of wine. But the glaze with the duck mandated that I have something to drink with it, so I had a glass of a French burgundy. Both dishes were delicious. It was satisfying when Ernesto said to me: “You know Gary we have been here (New Orleans) for four days and the food has been good, but not great, and the portions very large. This was just right. Elegant, delicious.”

It was fun night and with people that I will remember now, as I think they are new friends and that we will visit them in Barcelona. Charming. That is the word for Cristina and Ernesto. They are charming people. And at the moment, we are all living charmed lives.

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El Brinquito

The day I moved into the new house I built, September 18, I took the moving crew to lunch. The owner of the moving company, Kirk, was a long-time golf partner at San Geronimo back in Marin. I don’t think we ever intentionally made plans to tee off together at the first hole – we were just part of the afternoon crowd of self-employed men that did our work in the morning and early afternoon and by 3 pm we could be on the golf course. Sometimes Kirk, Vince, Don and I would start on the first hole, and sometimes we’d catch each other on the fourth green and fifth tee box, then play in together. Nothing was planned. Just show up and play. That was an easy time in my life. Marriage was good, daughter was in school and happy, I made a lot of money, seemingly easily, though I know I worked my ass off and over many hours, week in and week out. San Geronimo is closed now. County of Marin’s doing. They think we needed more parkland. We fought a good fight to keep it open as a golf course, but failed. Kirk moved me from San Anselmo to Santa Rosa October 26, 2019, so I called him to move me from the rental on Hemlock Street to the new house on Crestview.

Around noon Kirk said the boys were hungry and asked where a good lunch spot is. I told him there was a Panera and Pollo Loco down at the end of Hopper by the freeway and he said no, we only eat good, authentic Mexican food when we work. I said ok and started thinking about the two good Mexican places I have been to since moving here. One is off Mendocino Avenue to the east of College – I don’t know the name of the street but it is on the way to Draftech, where I got all my blueprints done for construction, and more recently, to make large images of my photography and mount them on foam-core board. My house is largely decorated by photos I have taken during our travels, to Spain, Italy, Canada, the Caribbean, and Australia. I even have a photo of New York City taken from the Brooklyn Bridge, and one from Upstate New York in the country. A common thread among the images is that they feature water, including the NYC shot with the East River near the southern tip of Manhattan. The idea is to replace them every few years with new photos from new places I have been.

The other place is between PBK (Premiere Bath & Kitchen) where I bought all my kitchen appliances and most of my lights, mirrors and bathroom fixtures, and ProSource, where I bought my cabinets and hardwood flooring material. It’s on Piner off of Cleveland but at the time the boys wanted lunch I couldn’t exactly explain how to get there so I drove there with them following. I wasn’t that hungry but thought it was a nice gesture to buy them lunch. We got there just before the lunch crowd, thankfully, because it would have taken a lot longer to get our food. You know it’s a good Mexican place when it fills up by locals – mostly Latinos, Latinas and construction workers. I had eaten there once some months earlier. As we got out of the vehicles I saw the sign and name of the restaurant, El Brinquito. Kirk speaks Spanish fluently, after all those years running a moving company with Hispanic labor, and I asked him what El Brinquito meant. He didn’t know so he asked his two co-workers. One was a stout man of enormous strength – probably my height around 5’8” but weighed close to 220 and didn’t look fat. He was from Michoacán, which is just west of Mexico City with a lovely coastline on the Pacific. The other fella was a large man, over 6 feet and probably 240. A little on the chunky side but he sure could lift heavy stuff, He was from Zacatecas, a mountainous state in the Northwest of Mexico where one of the guys was from when I worked in the bakery in Tustin when I was a teenager.

I’m not sure which one of them told Kirk that El Brinquito roughly translates into “the borderland,” but when Kirk told me the name of the restaurant I was immediately struck by its name – both charming and a little on the adventurous side, and also what it meant to me at this stage of my life, and the coincidence – or maybe it wasn’t, that we would go there for lunch on the day I moved into my new house. Santa Rosa is a bit of a borderland to me, well away from what I know in terms of Marin, San Francisco, the East Bay, and certainly Silicon Valley where I started my career and worked professionally more than any other submarket in the Bay Area since starting my consulting practice in 1998. Perhaps more significant than the physical place, and finding myself now in Santa Rosa, is how I felt about the phrase, the borderland. My life seems to be at the borderland – no longer young, now quite old, no longer married and a family man, but making new friends and completely charmed and in love with this lady I am seeing, no longer grinding away and working full-time as a writer, marketing and public relations consultant, and toying with the idea of a “second act” career wise, which I put into quotations because if I do something else professionally or semi-pro, like building custom homes or pouring wine to tourists at a local winery on weekends, this next “career move” would really be the 7th, 8th or maybe 9th way I have earned money since I was a teenager.

So I find myself at this new place and stage in life, perhaps typical for a man in his mid-60s, single or otherwise. Though maybe not, as I have not approached life in too traditional of a fashion or time sequence to date, so why start now? El Brinquito, my borderland, I embrace you.