The last day in San Francisco - lunch at Taylor's Automatic Refresher in the Ferry Building at the Embarcadero - great burger. I had fish and chips the last visit - also excellent. I love a good burger. This was excellent. Awesome garlic fries. Faaaaabulous onion rings. Nice looking milksahkes, too. I am such a sucker for this type of food. After living in Italy for 6 months a few years ago, I craved this type of food over all others when I returned to the states. Also burritos and all things tex-mex. I was so done with pasta; besides, the places that can cook pasta adequately well in this country can be counted on one hand.
Dinner at Limón - an excellent Peruvian restaurant in the Mission. Well-chosen wine list, with lots of good Spanish and German whites that go particularly well with the cuisine. Nice Spanish reds as well - we had Alto Moncayo 2003 and 2004 Condado de Haza. Apps were fantastic, kudos on the ceviche and calamari, and the chicken skewers were surprisingly excellent. (I agree with Tony Bourdain that chicken dishes are on menus for people who can't decide what to eat. Though ubiquitous, chicken is the most wildly inconsistent meal you can have - honestly, how many times have you had chicken at a restaurant and felt it was better than good or even really good, but eye-opening amazing? Once, maybe twice in your lifetime? QED, baby.) Main courses were really nice - a whole snapper was delicious and well-presented (photo, with Alison) and the ribeye was perfectly caramelized outside while still cool in the middle, with chimmichurri sauce. Worth another visit - I was really impressed with the gracious service.
2003 Alto Moncayo, Camp de Borja
100% Grenache - what a lovely thing. Soaring aromas of strawberry, watermelon, oak, red cherries and berries, sweet fruit on the palate, oodles of vanillin oak, and a tremendously well-extracted finish - this is smooth ... turn on the Barry White tape, turn down the lights, and who knows, you might even G.Y.S.! Drink now-2011. (4.0-nb)
2004 Condado de Haza, Ribera del Duero
Loads of blackness - in color (deep purple), fruits (blackberries and black currant) and feel (a tarriness to the whole thing). This is quite lovely - lots of mineral, cracked pepper and American oak - it all packs a wallop, and it has enough tannins and acids to keep it all from fallingto pieces. Drink now-2012. (3.5-nb)
OT: An amazing exhibit at the Yerba Buena Arts Center. Don't miss "Listening Post."
Imagine a concave curtain-like construction, about 30 feet across, like a bead curtain, but suspending small LED screens (4x30ish characters) in a regular pattern across the space. A series of speakers behind the curtain and behind the viewers gives an impression of 3-dimensional aural space. The piece consists of a series of computers trolling through public chat rooms all over the world, pulling snippets of conversation out of the stream, displaying them on the led screens in various ways, with voice synthesizers "speaking" some of the conversation. Occasionally, the screens would all flash waves of messages, alluding to the incredible volume of communication; at another time, an algorithm plucked out messages starting with "I like" (first visit) and "I am" (2nd visit), flashing them onto the little screens and some of them read by the voice one after another. The cycle lasted about 15 minutes.
It is an incredible piece – I am not a huge fan of conceptual art, but this was so haunting, hopeful and lonely in an unselfconscious way that I couldn't help but be touched by it. There was nothing particularly voyeuristic about it (a concern I had before walking in to see it; there's LOADS of bad stuff out there that coasts on smug superiority ...), none of the messages are attributed, none are given any context, none are presented differently from any other. It's mind-boggling, how many conversations are going on at any given time – how many people are reaching out, trying, all the time. The piece was absolutely, completely mesmerizing. I went to see it on two consecutive days, and would have gone a third, except the museum was closed that day. Some other interesting installations as well in those galleries.
I went to the SFMoMA thrice; there's a fabulous Martin Munkasci retrospective of work from 1920s-1950 – a photographer about whom I knew next to nothing except for a few iconic images. Amazing stuff – he was very influential on two of my favorite photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon. Also, an excellent show of Matisse's sculptural work (put in the context of the development of his painting), the usual impeccable selection from their permanent collection of photos, and some seriously weird contemporary stuff. Most of these pieces are just beyond my understanding ... Maybe I need to study more; though figuring out why a pile of 18,000 folded blue work shirts stacked next to an "attendant" erasing lines out of a book, back to front, might be significant ... Leaves me cold. That particular piece (I did NOT make this up) sorta pissed me off – it was definitely the 900 lb gorilla in the room, and got in the way of looking at all the other stuff in that gallery.
