What’s happened recently?

• Lots of eating. Catching up on the local dishes I’ve missed for years, like nasi briyani, nasi goreng, roti prata. Interesting – it’s been mostly Indian and Malay food I’ve missed out on the previous years I’ve been back. Anyway, I’m somewhat obsessed with the lime juice at the Kopitiam near my place – it’s the best in the country, it really is. I’m also nuts about the nasi lemak stall there. Pls to give me more fried chicken wings??
• Another visit to CUT hellz yeah. (You can read last year’s reviews HERE and HERE.) They have new cocktails. The Fragrant Pear is my new favorite. Sam the waiter is adorable. He provided a constant stream of pretzel rolls and I totally forgot to ask if we could get some to go! (Yeah, they’re that good!) I don’t know if I wanna write a proper review of our dining experience this time. They haven’t really changed the menu since last year, which kinda sucks.
• Kevin Spacey Day. My girlfriend and I saw Richard III. It wasn’t stupendous, but it was good. (I started to nod off during Clarence’s monologue. Sorry – the acting was terrible. And the guy who played Richmond is totally hot, but dude, but take a class, m’kay?) Kevin Spacey didn’t really enunciate when he shouted, so I couldn’t understand half of what he said during the angry tirades.
• RAIN.  STOP RAINING.
• Exchange between my friend and me: “You don’t like my ‘American sass’?” “At least you’re attractive! I can tolerate it!” You know how they say, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”? FUCK THAT. I’m not American enough to be American, and I’m too American to be Singaporean, so my American sass and sensibility are here to stay – I’m not changing a thing. That means going out bra-less (my BFF sent me this great text: “Aunty looking at your nipples”) and wearing Chanel, Hermès and Louboutin on the MRT. If I go to a show at the Esplanade, I will dress up. No, I will not go with the flow; no, I will not tone down my accent so that you can understand me; and no, I will not keep quiet when somebody pisses me off or when service is terrible.
• Making a few changes. Okay, the only thing I have to change is my spelling. It’s t-h-e-a-t-R-e, Jenna. Get with the program – I mean, programme.
  Shit.
• Getting the hell outta Dodge. As if Singapore isn’t far enough. I’ll be spending most of December out of town. There’s Spain, then a tiny island near Phuket (that won’t be named until I’m back with pictures), and then Osaka, and I can’t figure out where to squeeze Bali in. Probably a weekend in January.
• BFF-loving. Holy crap have I missed my friends. I don’t have that many (quality over quantity), but do I love them like crazy. I’m slowly introducing them to each other, which is really funny because they’re all SO. DIFFERENT.
• Missing the US. Sigh. I don’t wanna talk about it.

So yeah, that’s about it. The final step to my Singaporean-izing myself (the drop of the guillotine, so to speak – watch “Braveheart” sometime) is getting a phone. And I’ve been putting it off and putting it off. My prepaid phone card is my tether to my American life, the only thing that’s temporary, the last remaining door. Once that’s gone… Well, then all of this *gestures to the walls of the flat* is permanent.

Here’s a photo taken from a recent photoshoot. Because at the age of 27, my body is still mutha-bleedin’ hawt.

And in keeping with the process of getting a new life, I’ve been considering changing my blog and getting a .com. It’s kinda dumb because I’ve been too busy lately to blog anyway and I don’t even really update my current Facebook page, so I’d be wasting money that could be better spent on nasi lemak and lime juice.

I update my Facebook page, so if you’re at all interested in my goings-on, go there.

What’s a person’s worth? There are two kinds of worth: monetary and sentimental.

Monetary worth

It’s awful to think that you can put a price on a person, as though he is a drum of oil whose value fluctuates with the economy, with demand, with supply.

What are you worth? A model is worth x amount of dollars; a model determines it by

• market rate (a workable number that tends to be the maximum a photographer is willing to pay and within a model’s acceptable range),
• demand (the more people willing to pay for the model’s services, the greater the rate), and
• personal worth (Linda Evangelista once said, “We don’t wake up for less than $10000 a day.” Then again, she’s Linda fuckin’ Evangelista.)

For a research chemist, it’s

• market rate,
• qualifications (those damned pieces of paper), and
• experience (which can sorta be like personal worth, and an indication of what you are capable of contributing).

But let’s say we’re just talking about you as a person. Not you, the white-collar worker, the daughter of a taxi driver, the wife of a published author.

Let’s just talk about you: you, the free spirit; you, the lover of food and love and life; you, the animal and nature lover. Let’s just focus on you as a person: you empathize with the troubled, you value family and friendship, you try your damnedest to take are of your soul. You give selflessly, you give and you give and you give so much that someone has to tell you that you have to stop. You give your time, you give your energy, you give your love. You would drop everything to aid a friend in need, to see a friend who needs to see you. When they are not the same, you choose doing the right thing over what makes you happy. You are a pleaser; when you bring happiness to the people you care about, you are happy; when everyone is happy at no one’s expense, it must be the right thing to do.

How much are you worth? Ten thousand dollars? A million – no, a billion dollars? What if “priceless” is the wrong answer, and you absolutely must put a price tag on your person?

What is your past worth? All the shit you’ve gone through to get to where you are, even if it isn’t where you want to be? Always settling for less and less because you are unable to afford more; all of those sleepless nights and restless days trying to figure out what the hell to do with yourself after everything had gone wrong? Scratching your head for days, standing at the motherfuckin’ fork in the road, wondering which road to take… or having only 5 seconds to make the decision?

What’s the price of you, now? Your ability to make people happy, the love with which you do what you can to help the people you care about? Trying to fix your own goddamn problems because no one else can? Thinking that you’re doing right when people are saying you’re doing wrong… or that you have been wrong the entire time? Busying yourself with idiotic things to distract you from the task at hand because it’s too difficult to deal with right now?

And how about your future? Your potential to give? The skills you have to offer, the talents you have yet to show, the good you have yet to do when you know it’s in you? The best you who is trying to break out when the people you want to impress are looking for something else? Or maybe the you who is already out there, but no one is interested?

If people were on store shelves, how are they categorized? Perhaps they are categorized by income level and education, even by their nationalities – the history of their nationalities or their current power.

When you envision everybody in the world on store shelves, do you imagine yourself sitting on the shelf or as a shopper looking at what’s in stock?

How willing are you to hand someone the pricing gun?

Sentimental worth

Let’s say that the value of a person is not in dollar signs, but in actions other people are willing to do for that person.

For instance, “I will die for you.”

OH really? Now, under what circumstance are you willing to die for me? Would you die for me if your life had a price tag of thirty million dollars and I was hard-up for cash? Is your life worth my life, and vice-versa? What are the terms and conditions attached to that statement?

Imagine a homeless man. He is old, maybe he abuses alcohol. He has no family, or at least none he can remember or none who knows he’s even alive. Would you die for him? Why or why not? Maybe you wouldn’t because you don’t know who he is, you have no connection to him; because he is just a boozer, who contributes nothing to society but money to the liquor store and filth to his city.

Is your mother’s person worth your life? She gave birth to you, but you didn’t ask to be, and your life has not been that great.

I know what you’re thinking: WHAT A SHITTY THING TO SAY.

But listen here, you hypocrite: somewhere out there, that homeless man has a son who has grown up hating his father for leaving him when he was an infant because his then-wife was a real messed-up bitch and kicked him out of the house at gunpoint or else, and who can’t be bothered to spend his time and resources looking for the man who gave him life. That homeless man was a good man who has tried and failed – failed at death and failed at life so now he just exists, existing until he is indiscernible from the ground he lies on begging for change.

Now you take all of the people involved in this pretty little picture – the homeless man, the liquor store owner who keeps taking his money for booze, the homeless man’s angry son who won’t reconnect with his father, the homeless man’s ex-wife who kicked him out of his son’s life, your mother who began your life that you don’t even really like, and you, the person who is judging everyone here – and tell me whose life is worth the most.

Let’s throw the water on the slate here, erase everything. Let’s sit down and start over.

Consider you. Your value is based on what you mean to other people.

A model’s value, when not counting bills, is based on how many photographers are willing to shill out time and hard-earned money for her. Pretty dang straightforward, if you ask me.

How many times have you been stood up by a person you called your “friend”? Look – you’re not even worth the 1 hour to chat with you over coffee, you’re not worth the 30 minutes and 3 bucks and endless street, bridge and train crossings it takes to get to you. You’re not worth the text message to tell you he won’t show up; you’re not even worth the brainpower to think of an excuse for why he won’t show up.

How many times have you sat waiting for a phone call that would never come? You are not worth the act of picking up the phone and dialing your phone number – 5 calories at most. You’re not worth the 10 or 20 or 40 minutes of blathering about nothing in particular. The other person does the math and figures you are not worth the battery power, the pre-paid minutes. Doing something else is more worthwhile than talking to you.

Oh no – we are not done yet.

Almost there though.

When you take all of that into consideration, you have to give a value to the actions and give a value to your whole person – what is your maximum value? – because a value has to hit zero at some point. (That’s when you become worthless – like you thought of that homeless boozehound a minute ago.)

You separate the people who mean something to you to those who mean nothing to you. Among the people who mean something – anything – to you, you have to organize them according to whose actions would decrease your worth and determine to what extent their actions would damage your value. Then you take those people who have ever intentionally (or unintentionally but stupidly) done things that have decreased your value as a person and THROW THEM AWAY.

The fact that you have not yet taken your life means that there are people whose actions have increased your value. You are worth more now – to the world, to yourself – because of them.

KEEP THOSE PEOPLE AND HOLD THEM CLOSE.

That is all.

Some photographers think they are the shit. I mean, obviously, by the fact that he even responded to my casting call, he believes that he is “exceptional.”

Yeah, and just because you answer my casting call, it doesn’t mean I will accept your request for a shoot.

Guess when you said you would “love” to work with me, you were lying.

And then Butt-Hurt Photog gets all butt-hurt:

I won’t put his crappy photos here (copyright and everything, as well as to save him the humiliation), but here are some points I feel compelled to make that all photographers could apply in future dealings with models:

• Don’t make assumptions. The reason I chose not to work with him for TF could be one of fifty. Maybe it’s not that he sucks, but his style isn’t what I’m looking for. Maybe I’ve heard from other models that he sucks at giving photos. He didn’t know, but he made an assumption and he’s a jack-ass for it.
• It’s business, not personal.  Attacking my personality is clearly personal. I have no idea where the “full of character and charisma” comes into play here. You are correct to infer that I don’t think his skill can benefit my portfolio, but anything else you or he pull out of that is from the imagination.
• If it doesn’t work out, move on. If a company chooses not to hire you, would you egg its office? You can’t throw a rock without hitting five models or model-wannabes, so if your model of choice won’t model for you for (your shitty) pictures, go find somebody else.
• Don’t be ironic. I am “to[sic] full of myself?” Says the guy who’s all butt-hurt that he got rejected.

I’ve had my fair share of rejections – for every casting call there are 50+ other models answering it, y’know what I mean? – and I have long reached the point where they don’t bother me. The fact is, you never know exactly what they’re looking for, or if there is a person or a panel choosing the models. If you can’t deal with things not working out your way, then maybe you should just stick to something more predictable… like being a garbageman. You can always count on there being garbage, and you can always count on it to stink.

I mean, sure you can still be a model if you have a bad attitude, but you’re gonna suck and you’re not gonna be well-liked and you’re not gonna get work.

Poor n00bs. They’re all, “People tell me I’m pretty I should totally be a model and make a shit-ton of money and do it full-time OMG!”

I don’t blame them. I mean, what a way to make a living, huh? Having a flexible schedule (though say good-bye to weekends, which are when all your non-model friends are free to hang out), getting attention and being admired, having your pictures on bedroom walls and gallery walls and computer desktops – all that is pretty awesome.

Yeah, but um, no.

Everybody starts off being a wannabe. We work for free to build a portfolio the same way students do internships to build a resumé and gain experience.

And if you have ever gone for a job interview, you will realize that saying you want the job position “because the money is good” is, although probably true, NOT the way to nail it.

Which is why saying shit like this on your modeling profile is not the way to appeal to photographers to like you enough to give you money to take your photo.

Especially when your portfolio sucks and you can’t pose for nuts. (And you don’t credit your photographers either!) You’re pretty, you’re curvy, but YOU’RE A NEWBIE.

You’re broke? GET A JOB.

I hear Wal-Mart is hiring.

And similarly, having a crappy resumé does not put you in a favorable position to demand money from people.

Really? You have “some” experience utilizing a single facial expression and you accept “paid assignments only?”

When you get to a point where you start turning paid gigs down because eh, you don’t really feel like working that day and you’re gonna go on vacation instead, then dude, you can do and say whatever the hell you want.

If you shut yourself off to all of the opportunities to learn and improve (yeah, even the ones that don’t pay), if you are so single-mindedly focused on making money from modeling, you ain’t gonna go nowheres. FACT.

You want money? That’s fine – we all do. But the way to make a lot of money is to last long, and in order to last long a model needs the following (at the very least):

• Good manners. Y’know, like your parents should’ve taught you? This means not marching up to a photographer in front of other people and loudly demanding to be paid. You take him to the side and in a pleasant voice and tone ask him very nicely if you could conclude your business transaction. This means saying hello and good-bye to the people who paid you for your time.
• An amiable personality. People underestimate how far a nice personality can take you. Nothing turns people off like being a royal bitch or being extremely boring. There are scores of gorgeous girls out there waiting to take your place, and an attractive personality will set you apart from the others.
• Modeling talent. This is kind of a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. You won’t go far if you have only two facial expressions and are limited to “normal” or awkward poses. Of course, it helps to have natural good looks and a hot body, but if you don’t know what to do with them, you might as well not be there.
• Professional behavior. This means not flaking (saying you will show up but then you don’t without giving warning or canceling) and putting real effort into your photoshoot/event. This means not counting your bills aloud in front of the person who paid you, not getting drunk/high until the event is over, and just being easy to co-exist with.

It’s the brainless wannabes who are as dumb as a doorknob that make the rest of us hardworking models look bad.

And I am determined to look good. Always.

Every time I go, I find something new to love.

A stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean with none of the fog or freezing cold that you find in Northern California. Sunsets are breathtaking.

Why didn’t I find out about this sooner?

I’m a little partial to natural light because it’s so forgiving. (Well, that and ring lights.) Which means every day is CAMWHORE DAY.

Touslage courtesy of the fresh ocean breeze.

One evening, my tour guide drove me up to Rancho Palos Verdes (also known as “PV” to the cool kids), which is where a lot of rich people live. (Condos start at a cool $1.5 mil. Yeah, that’s all.) Huge houses with bay windows and sweet rides parked in the driveways. Oh, and LAWNS. Beverly Hills can kinda go suck it.

It was so cold, but I stayed out there until the sun dipped below the clouds at the horizon. So so pretty.

And then it was back to work. After getting my make-up and hair done by Michael at Alex and Friends in Pasadena, we drove over to a studio to get our shoot on.

Four hours later, we got a ton of crazy-awesome photos, y’all. I must practice patience, but OMG I CANNOT WAIT TO GET THE PICTURES AAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I hadn’t had a single thing to eat since 8 o’clock the night before, so I was starving.  A BURger with a fried egg and bacon satisfies a raging hunger.

To end the weekend, there was a themed group shoot to “celebrate” 9/11. Nothing screams PATRIOT like red, white and blue-colored bikinis and lingerie. As for me, I had red (well, dark pink), white and blue Hello Kitty boyshorts to go with my all-American denim vest for the open shoot.

Ha.

I circled Clint and Drew because THEY ARE SUPERFUNTIMES!! That, and they actually paid attention to what I was doing and posed for my camera.

Clint and I had superfuntimes doing our Gogo Yubari-inspired shoot.

The Hello Kitty skull-and-crossbones patch on my blazer is EPIC WIN, right?? Totally worth the $10.

For photos from this and other shoots, please check out my Facebook fan page! http://www.facebook.com/JennatheModel

Sigh. Time flies so fast when you’re having fun. Before long (and before I got to do everything I want to do), it was time to leave L.A. I made a little stop in Ventura to pick up pictures and say hi to Jim’s puppehs:

Sure, they’re pretty freakin’ menacing when they throw themselves at the door, but once you go inside, they’re so sweet!

Speaking of sweet, I love these two kittehs! Slick (the gray one) is affectionate to the point of needy… which is great for hanging out, not great for trying to get work done. He’s SHO KEWT THO – makes me wanna have my own kitteh.

But for a cool cat to just be a cat, Li’l Hitler there (that’s not his real name, I just keep forgetting what it is) is great.

Then it was time to hit the road for the looooooooooong drive north. I’d taken I-5 going both ways all the other times and I wanted to know what 101 was like.

It turns out that 101 is WAY THE HELL BETTER than I-5. I got to drive along the coast for a while, then I got into mountains and tiny little towns.

If anyone has ever taken I-5, it is a vast nothingness. In the summer, all the grass is dead, and then there’s that cow-factory that smells terrible (and worse in 100º heat) and houses the most pathetic welfare cases you have ever seen. They’re all scrawny and hundreds of them are squeezed into little pens, and they eat out of long metal troughs. Not a blade of grass in sight.

Highway 101, on the other hand…

It was a scenic drive almost the entire way! I say almost because some towns are just blah, but they’re so small and cute and it kinda takes me back to college days and driving back and forth between Dallas and Houston. But this time, I had disposable income and treated myself to buttermilk pancakes with extra butter at a Denny’s.

Mmmm… butter.

There will be no October trip to SoCal *pout* I have some travel on the books that’ll take me through to the beginning of November, then I’ll be back in L.A. the middle of November. That’s a long time to be away!

I already can’t wait to go back.

My last trip to L.A. was eventful… but not the bad kind of eventful.

The reason that is, is I made time to do some pretty incredible things.

The drive into Los Angeles is always interesting. Some part of I-5 is always closed for some reason. This time, two lanes were closed because a truck had lost its load of LIMES. It took an hour to move a mile-and-a-half.

And when I passed the site of the spillage, IT SMELLED SOOOOOO GOOD!

One thing that annoys me about L.A. is ALL THE FREAKIN’ TRAFFIC. I mean, at ANY time of the day, even like, half-past-two, there’d be a slow-down somewhere.

But on this stretch of road en-route to Ventura, there wasn’t anything like that and I got my first glimpse of some beautiful mountains.

Incredible Thing #1

My trip to Ventura was one of those special things I made time out for. It took me two hours to get there from L.A., and for what?

For THIS:

AW HELLZ YES.

I’ve always wanted the perfect hair-in-my-face photo and FINALLY I got it! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get this kind of shot, considering:

1. the photographer had no clue that it was even a concern for me,
2. my hair covered enough of my face without
   -showing too much of my forehead,
   -covering too much of my mouth and nose,
   -obliterating my left eye,
3. my hair wasn’t crazy messy but just messy enough,
4.  my hair still looked voluminous,

ALL WITHOUT AN MUAH TO TOUCH IT UP FOR ME??

Oh, and there’s the one by Jim Minics (which you would have already seen if you keep up with my Facebook fanpage):

HELLZ TO THE YES.

Dear Jim and Kelly, I think I love you.

Anyway, so I got back into L.A. still covered in baby oil and had dinner with my roomies.

And then after that we had frozen yogurt FTWOMGYES.

Yeah, me and Hello Kitty… It’s a running joke now. And y’know what’s funny? I completely forgot to save the Keropi spoon because I was so happy having procured the Hello Kitty spoon.

Pffffffft.

L.A. is really growing on me. Yeah, it’s a total urban jungle, but there is a lot of beauty if you are receptive to it.

Incredible Thing #2

I’m a sucker for run-down abandoned buildings. Look at this: isn’t it beautiful??

I kept it company for a little while.

This is one of the incredible things I did: I was a tourist in L.A. I mean, it isn’t an incredible feat in itself, but just the fact that I went out and did it on a total whim is incredible.

Usually I’d just head straight back to bed to chill out, but no. I could not.

Incredible Thing #3

Then it was the race back to the coast to catch what was left of the sunset.

Incredible Thing #4

Breathtaking.

See that little parasailer there? FREAKIN’ PERFECT.

And the most fun part of the whole weekend (apart from doing the [cue music] contemplative stroll along the beach) was hanging out with Kai-Kai:

Incredible Thing #5

One conversation went like this:

Kai: Have you been on those things [paddleboats] before?
Me: Have you?
Kai: No.
Me: YOU HAVEN’T??
Kai: No!
Me: Wanna go?
Kai: Okay!

Or something like that. Thirty seconds and twenty bucks later, we were on a paddleboat getting ready to harass us some sea lions bahahaha.

We walked on over to get us some fresh seafood for dinner and I washed down a variety plate of raw oysters with beer AW HELLZ YEAH BEER.

Then it was a long romantic stroll with Kai-Kai along The Strand before heading back home.

When I’m by myself doing my own thing, I just do whatever I feel like whenever I feel like it. There’s something about L.A. that makes me feel powerful and makes me want to seize life and run with it, carpe diem and all that. Being in SoCal also makes me miss having a real social life – granted, it with “industry people,” but the difference between SoCal and NorCal is, in the latter, while industry people are certainly friendlier toward each other, there tends to be very little mingling outside of work. To be sure, I have never been so active on Facebook and suddenly my cellphone receives text messages. Yeah, weird, huh?

So I’m heading back tomorrow and I can wait for more epic-ness to be had! And there will be pictures for sure!

(Here’s my entry on last year’s SF Chefs.)

Friday evening definitely had a different vibe… not that I would have dressed any differently.

Never be afraid to be overdressed or the best dressed. Maybe I wasn’t the fanciest-dressed, but there were also a great many people there in jeans and leggings. Whyyyy???

The best thing about an event like this is people who otherwise would not dine at these fancy restaurants have a chance to have a little taste of ‘em… before deciding which one to blow $300 on.

We had a great many bites that night, but these are just my favorites.

Big Jim’s BBQ pork sliders on the top left. So moist, really sweet (Husband thought it was too sweet… yeah, they could’ve toned it down a little), and perfectly proportioned. I hate when there’s way too little meat for the amount of bread there… This was perfection.

Ryan Scott’s little morsel on the top right – the pork rillette on that little cracker – was a winner, as well as a yummy little cracker with cherry tomatoes and raw salmon… from a vendor whose name I don’t remember AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I should remember – I had like four of ‘em!

Oh, and that coconut shake, which came with a little toasted marshmallow, from Roam Artisan Burgers? SO AMAZING. *swoon* So rich and coconutty, thick, not too sweet.

Before I forget: Special shout-out to Trace (the restaurant) for serving the best chocolate cookies ever! They were these little thin wafers, rich and moist, super chocolatey with a sprinkling of salt… We had thirds.

I can’t really say much about the food on Friday night. It was… underwhelming? I was even disappointed by Michael Mina, who put out this little fish (sea bass, I think?) that desperately needed seasoning. Sigh. However, he does have a new restaurant called Bourbon Steak… I shall have to try it out sometime.

The real stand-outs this year were the cocktails. Mmmmmmmmm so many more this year than last year, and wines too! They were so much fun that I had to take a picture of the description.

The Fragile Things cocktail was my favorite of the night. I could’ve had three or four of those… and end up on the floor.

Those little shooters were raspberry vodka shots… with something else in them, naturally, but I don’t remember what.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. Who expects me to remember anything after 2 glasses of wine and 3 cocktails!

During our second walk-around (for second and third helpings, duh!), I saw a celebrity at the Wayfare Tavern table:

DUN DUN DUN TYLER FLORENCE!!

I was served by Tyler Florence hehehehehehe! He gave me food OMG!

I didn’t even know he had a restaurant in San Francisco, then I saw the sign with his name on it during the first walkthrough and was like wuuuuuuuuuuut. But he wasn’t there yet. I’m glad we decided to go around again! We were there for like, 3 hours. Eating, drinking, sitting, eating some more. It was totally worth skipping lunch for.

But here’s the kicker: the difference between daytime and nighttime is in the afternoon, there are food demonstrations! And this time, Richard Blais and Fabio Viviani of “Top Chef” fame are gonna be there!! And Martin Yan?? AAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

*throws tantrum*

Ah well. I think I still prefer the nighttime atmosphere. There was a DJ spinning, then a live band playing oldies, and to follow up a tall Stella Artois, there was that little plate of pork and noodles from the Le Colonial table.

It was a great evening.

San Francisco really has so much to offer – it definitely rivals New York City. There’s fresh local seafood here, organic everything (if you’re into that sort of thing, and many people are), and of course no one does sourdough like SF. It’s a treat to read restaurant menus that indicate the sources are all within a 50-mile radius of here. There’s also something about the culture that influences many chefs to do all sorts of crazy fusion things. I’m proud to be a Bay Area denizen! *sniff*

It wasn’t very long after we sat down that we were given yummy little canapés to nibble on.

The interior reads very “hotel restaurant,” meaning kind of generic taupe-y ambiance sans cheesy red roses in tacky vases (Campton Place, I’m looking at you).

Anyway, it would appear that Cyrus has too jumped on the bubble bandwagon. You have some kind of liquid, you throw in some sodium-something-or-other compound and little globs form. I believe this one was some kind of blueberry liquid. It was delightful, the fruity goodness burst thick and almost fizzy-like!

I enjoyed the little clam gelée. The gelée the clam itself was encased in was clam-my, and it was just perfectly salted and delightful.

Birthdays mean cocktails. (Who am I kidding, any night out means cocktails.) No points will be awarded to the person who correctly guesses the cocktail I ordered (and had two of).

If you guessed the ‘Peach Impediment,’ you’re right! Summertime means peaches and Cyrus used peaches wherever they could. Smart. However, I wish there’d been more peachiness – that basil and the vodka really needed something wholesome to round out this drink.

Why did I post a photo of two pots of butter?

One, I like butter. Two, the pot on the left contains goat butter! I am a new fan of goat’s milk butter – it is so delicious! It’s tangy and light and creamy, with a little less richness than regular ol’ butter. It was amazing on the moist chive scone and other great bread options, among them two kinds of sourdough.

On the right there, you’ll see our first little amuse-bouche with – you guessed it – peaches!

From top to bottom:

My only problem with the sea scallop (with watermelon and coriander broth) dish is sea scallops are so delicate and the sweetness of the watermelon very easily wiped it out. Plus, I was unable to enjoy the meatiness of a well-done scallop because, well, all I got was half a scallop.

The corn and bacon tomago dofu tasted only somewhat corny – there’s just no excuse during corn season – and once you take a spoonful with a little bit of bacon, BAM! it’s all bacon. I was so disappointed.

Somehow, my eyes missed the part about the fois gras torchon being accompanied by a huge-ass pistachio biscotti. This is the sort of dish to have between your last savory course and dessert, not at the beginning of a meal! Ugh… My palate was confused. The torchon was delightful and rich. The cherry (and supposedly ginger, but I didn’t get it) jam spread at the bottom was very sweet and accompanied the fois gras very nicely.

How did the roasted and smoked beets salad rate? You may be surprised to know that it tasted better than my fois gras torchon. It was very well-balanced.

So far, this highly-rated restaurant didn’t seem to deserve its two Michelin stars.

At least, the service was attentive and warm. (At one point, a server came by our table with the wrong dishes and I had to point out that they weren’t ours.) Our server was a very knowledgeable and friendly woman with a sense of humor. As the dinner was a birthday celebration, it was a nice change from the formal sort of service like I experienced in New York.

At this point, it was important to readjust my expectations. The dishes we’d had so far (with the exception of the canapés) were muted in flavor. It would make sense now to stop expecting robust flavors.

Adjustments made, I found the lamb roulade good, juicy. The lovely green and brown layer there did not add to the lamb at all, but they sure made it pretty. The sauce coated the bites of lamb with saltiness and richness that the meat lacked.

I think it was at this point that an awkward Asian female server – the same one who had brought the wrong dishes – came by with a little palate cleanser: some kind of frozen pop. Dammit, I hate being rushed. I also hate being told how to eat my food. She told us to “eat it in one bite.” Yeah, as opposed to snorting it?? She would make another annoying appearance later.

Anyway.

This sea bass with artichokes didn’t seem like sea bass at first bite. The flesh looked cloudy, but that may have been because it was rare. I asked the server if that was done on purpose, and it was. (This was the first time I’d seen and tasted raw sea bass.) Very interesting. I don’t what to make of the combination of fish and bland artichoke. There was so little juice and so little meatiness and they just seemed very separate.

However, my favorite part about this dish was the dashi broth. OMG I CAN DRINK A BOWL OF IT EVERY DAY. Now if only the flavor of the dashi had been inside the fish, it would’ve been a home run! It was warm and perfectly salted and comforting and smooth. If I could redesign this dish, I would remove the fish (but keep the crispy skin, of course), put another half-cup of broth, add more pea shoots, and made it an appetizer. HOME FREAKIN’ RUN.

Husband made a better choice with the beef short rib with mung bean sprouts and cherry tomato confit with hoisin sauce. I usually avoid such dishes because many restaurants go overboard with the hoisin, but this was a beautifully composed dish! The meat was juicy and tender, the cherry tomatoes added a light sweetness while the sauce contributed a rich sweetness. The sprouts gave it a fresh crispness to what would have otherwise been dense. This was a multi-level, multi-dimensional experience for the taste buds.

When I made the reservation, I’d added a little note: “Please put birthday candle on dessert plate.” At most restaurants, that’s what they do for birthdays – Michael Mina, Gary Danko, Chez Panisse, La Folie, all candles.

Cyrus? No no no no no no.

EPIC BIRTHDAY DESSERT!

Allow me to explain the contraption (brought by the aforementioned annoying Asian female server) in the top photo: On that fancy lit-up platform was a vacuum-sealed jar containing warm chocolate chip cookies. In order for the birthday boy to get to his present, he had to turn that there valve that would release air from the gold balloon into the jar!

(The Asian female server felt the need to tell him exactly how to do it. Dude, shut the hell up, will ya? We can figure it out. We both took physics in college.)

And when he got there, the cookies were warrrrrrrrrm and chewy and the chocolate chips were all melty mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Then, we were served tiny chocolate sodas which really hit the spot and were a fun counterbalance to the rich melty goodness of the chocolate chips.

But wait! There was still dessert!

Husband can’t say no to a Thai coffee. When it arrived, it was sitting over a little dish of dry ice. I, on the other hand, got the plum wine cake with strawberry. This was sweet and bright and I loved the contrast of textures. I do have to wonder why it’s so ridiculously small compared to how much Thai coffee Husband got.

Cyrus wasn’t ready to let us go yet. On the verge of exploding (or puking, both equally unpleasant), we were showed a cart covered with dainty delights, from little candies to marshmallows to truffles. Fortunately, they were for our little to-go box, bless their hearts! We could enjoy them later, after more space in our stomachs freed up.

The dessert chef deserves a medal for saving the dinner from being one big expensive and time-consuming (the restaurant’s a two-hour drive from home) disappointment. Inside that cute little jar was coffee pudding and tiny chocolate malt balls.

One last parting gift: a maple bourbon mini donut. If this were three times larger, it would’ve been a really great dessert, served with maybe a little espresso pot-de-creme.

It’s clear that one of Cyrus’ strong points is presentation. The best amuse-bouche is really an appealing and inviting appearance and Cyrus nailed it. I had issues with proportions and flavor combinations here.

The key point to enjoying the dinner is adjusting your expectations. There are no popping flavors here, nothing cutting-edge, no conversation starters; flavors here are a dense, soupy fog that comforts on a chilly summer night. Nouveau cuisine aficionados ought to look elsewhere, though if you don’t feel like cooking and want to be pampered in a cozy atmosphere, this would be the place to be.

The problem with Italian restaurants is so many people think it’s so easy – it’s just pasta! – and so a lot of these little Italian joints pop up, but so few of them are the real deal.

It had potential. The restaurant is this renovated house built in the late 1800s and it felt like we could’ve been down South – a weird place to find an Italian restaurant – and it was roomy and there was even a little “outdoor” area with wooden floors and heaters on the ceiling, which would’ve been nice had the group already there hadn’t been so goddamn loud.

But anyway, the bread was stale and the tables a little too small (see the size of those bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar?), but that’s not terribly important, is it.

Let’s get to the food.

It looks like a whole lotta prosciutto, right? I’d say it was just right. My favorite part, however, is the cherry tomato flowers.

What an eye for detail! That takes skill, y’all.

If there is a fettuccine alla vongole option, I will take it.

It was… okay. The pasta was way too much olive oil and not enough vongole goodness. I have never had a plate of pasta alla vongole that didn’t have a tiny amount of grit and this was no exception. Plus, the clams were too small. So the problem with this dish was just proportion – too much fettuccine, not enough vongole. Sigh.

The mark of a good Italian restaurant lies in its tiramisu. Now, I’ve been to Italian restaurants that did not serve tiramisu. I don’t know what to make of that.

Anyway, for a dessert with so many interesting elements with very individual flavors, this one didn’t have much of any flavor.

I am so serious. Let’s start from the top:

• I put my nose to it to see if I could smell the liquor, but ended up inhaling the cocoa powder and then choking on it. Why they put so much cocoa powder on it is beyond me, and it was clear that there was no liquor in it.
• The ladyfingers were so soggy it had absolutely no texture. It was mush. The whole thing was mush, which is kinda gross. It didn’t have much of any taste either, which makes me wonder if they’d soaked it in plain water instead of coffee.
• The cream part tasted a little bit of sugar and not a whole lot else.

Needless to say, I didn’t finish it.

Service was pleasant, polite, though not confident – like you can tell they’re really trying to provide good service. That’s fine and all, but having a great location and good staff when the kitchen puts out lame food is kind of a moot point?