Boutari Moschofilero (Μπουτάρη Μοσχοφίλερο) & the Hungry Cat

For her birthday we took my mom to the Hungry Cat, a restaurant I've been wanting to try for a while now. The rationale, by the way, was interesting: she wanted crab, but the only other place to get fresh crab in town is the crabshack on the pier, and we had too many people for that. I would never have thought there would be only two places serving whole crab in SB! Anyway, she had the local crab and my dad had Alaskan crab legs. Hers was apparently tasteless, but Dan and I both thought my dad's was amazing! I had Hope Ranch oysters, Savas had the burger and Dan had the home made chorizo with mussels (which I will have to try my hand at). We paired it all with the Boutari Moschofilero, a dry white wine from Southern Greece, made by a Northern Greece vineyard (incidentally owned by the mayor of Thessaloniki, my home town). The wine was really really good, but in general I expect Greeks to make better white than they do red, so... In any case, I needed a martini with my oysters, but it would have been anti-social to indulge myself. Next time ;-) Overall it was an amazing outing!

Municipal Winemakers 2008 Bright White

We had this with the paella we made for my parents' visit, and not only was it a great pairing, but it also garnered high marks from the Greek contingent. Very nice!

2004 Rosenblum Santa Barbara Syrah

O'B brought this bottle as a housewarming present, and just by the way he presented it I figured I should set it aside and try it later. So we opened it last night to accompany my Greek chicken (which turned out badly, for various reasons) and we were blown away. This wine reminds me of the Longmorn Scotch that made me rethink Scotch. It is very smokey and extremely smooth, just like the Longmorn. The color is a very dark purple, and it's got quite a bit of sediment. It has a lot of ripe dark berry taste, in a good way. I drank half the bottle and didn't even notice it. The next day it was as if it had never happened.

Patagonia Huckleberry approach shoes

Patagucci
Originally uploaded by slampoud

Back in August I made a last minute purchase (at full price, to boot) of a pair of Patagonia Huckleberry shoes. These represent my first Patagonia item of any kind, mostly because their stuff is typically too expensive for me to afford (though now that I've read "Let my people go surfing" I understand why that's the case a little better). This pair was meant to replace my 5.10 Prodigy approach shoes, which had two problems: the soles were showing crazy wear after less than a year of use, and they were too wide to be comfortable. Even as I was trying shoes on, I was impressed with the fact that Patagonia sizes came in increments of half a Euro size. This meant I could get a nearly custom fit, which is a huge deal to me, as my two feet are nearly half a US size apart, causing me a world of hassle. With no break-in period whatsoever, I wore the Huckleberries on my entire trip to Greece, plane to plane, so to speak, with a 2000m full backpack & climbing rack ascent in-between. They fit better than any approach shoe I've ever tried, and I love them. However... and this is a big "but": excellent hiking/backpacking shoes though they are, they are not, in my opinion, sticky enough to be good approach shoes. My confidence on slabs is seriously diminished over what it was in the 5.10s. Ditto my traction on any kind of ice, as I found descending the Owen's gully a couple weekends ago. This is to be expected, I suppose, since the Huckleberries have more durable, hence less sticky rubber soles, compared to the Stealth C4 on the 5.10s. So it seems I've struck the heart of the trade-off: sticky rubber vs durable rubber.
Even though I love these shoes in every other way, the lack of stickiness is a huge con in my mind. What I wanted was specifically an approach shoe (which is what the Huckleberries are advertised as). Tremendous fit! Clearly superior workmanship! But if the approach shoe don't stick ... well, then, what's the point?

Dinner at Epiphany

Epiphany is a restaurant in the same block as another couple of SB's best restaurants (none of which have I been to). One of Dan's colleagues is a foodie, so when it came time to schedule the company Christmas dinner, he picked Epiphany. I had a white bean and duck confit soup, tried the Dan's foie gras, had a roast duck entree and tried Dan's scallops. Dinner was paired with the Ghost Tree Cabernet Sauvignon, which was a great choice but a little inconsistent from bottle to bottle. Everything was off the charts good, except for the martini I had before dinner which was nothing to write home about. I highly recommend the place.

Villa Antinori 2004 Toscana

Dan picked this up last weekend for dinner for just over $20. He really likes dry Italian wines, whereas I go for the sunny, fruity California wines. But I have to admit that when you start spending decent money on wine, it doesn't matter so much where it's from and what it's like, because it's likely to be an excellent specimen. So it was with this one. I fully admit I know jack about this type of wine. It was dry, and a little metalic/earthy, and it needed to breathe for about 10 minutes, and it was astonishingly good.

bison in Banff and the Tinhorn Creek Merlot

I spent the past five days in Banff, Alberta, Canada, initially for work, and then for fun. On the last evening of my stay, after a two day backpacking trip, my backpacking buddy and I decided to grab dinner in town. We'd planned to go to a burger joint, but failed to find it, and I mentioned that I'd accidentally walked into a -- and I quote -- "shi-shi but cool-looking" restaurant the night before that might be worth trying. I located it, noted that it was called "bison" with a lowercase b, and in we went! Marc had venison a la blah blah blah, and I had "the pork dish", which was grilled pork loin, charred pork belly (i.e. a block of bacon), and a risotto of wild rice, corn and cilantro. The food was simply a-m-a-z-i-n-g! This was hands down one of the best meals I've had anywhere in the world. We paired our meats with the Tinhorn Creek Merlot, from nearby Okanagan Valley, which turned out to be an excellent choice, spicy as the wine was. One of my most memorable -- and expensive, but who's counting -- meals to date. Hats off to Canada!