zirconium: mirliton = grinning squash from NOLA (mirliton)
zirconium ([personal profile] zirconium) wrote2013-08-08 11:22 pm

The Chef and I

I was a little apprehensive about going to the Chef and I in Nashville's Lenox Village last week. When I bought the Living Social voucher, the word "interactive" hadn't leapt out at me the way it did when I went to the website for more details, and I can get pretty sullen and surly if I'm feeling badgered into more interactivity than I'm in the mood to provide.

But it turned out to be a nice evening, even after I realized I'd totally gotten wrong which Lenox-something the restaurant was located around. (Note to self: do not buy anything via LS before the second cup of coffee. Ever.) The place is more mellow than its website -- I had a lovely sparkling wine (from Cielo winery) with lobster bisque, and halibut with various vegetables. The chef chatted briefly with me about the amuse-gueule (leftover coffee-crusted turkey, brie, and a sliver of scallion), tools for flipping fish, and the economics of serving lamb, but I was mostly left alone to enjoy my food, my notebook, and book in peace, and the room was large enough for the large birthday party behind me to be amusing rather than annoying.

The Chef and I
"Thanksgiving in a bite"

(More cell-phone snapshots here)

Other recent eats:
* fried calamari at the Bosco's in Cool Springs, with iced tea
* buffalo cauliflower at Tavern, with a pint of Left Hand Milk Stout and a pint of Mayday Boro Blonde. And they serve cucumber sticks instead of celery. Rawk!
* chicken, stuffing, corn on the cob, and other sides, prepared by Jase. Happiness is comparing Music City Tent & Events warehouse sale acquisitions (*) while sipping a good pinot noir. :D

(* Jase is a party planner. I used to coordinate events for a cathedral. I don't plan to execute anything ambitious in the near future [at least in that vein], but I did leave the sale with what I'd gone for [5 champagne flutes] and then some [4 martini glasses].)

On the writing front: 2 outright rejections, 4 rejections-by-inference, 2 made-it-through-another-round, and 1 stern-talking-to to stop myself from taking on a new and intriguing but poorly remunerative assignment that would tick me off if I actually let it nibble into the time I already can't spare for [lower 4/5 of Workflowy list]. (But because I am a dreamer, it's nonetheless tucked into that bottom 5th. It'll save me from making the same notes again the next time my magpie brain darts in that direction...)

In the meantime, an item in the top 1/5 is to get enough sleep. So it's off to bed, undrafted [x] and unpasted [y] and unstitched [z] notwithstanding.