Tag Archives: Columbia Steak House

A Feast for the Eyes

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Movie night!

Flicks a la Francais.

It’s been a week of French cinema pour moi.

Janie and I have practically forsaken physically going to the movies. Since the spawning of covid, I don’t think we’ve been in a movie theater more than five or six times. Why should we? We have a big screen, various fire-sticks and subscriptions, a critter, and a convenient parking place at home. Door-Dash and/or the fridge are near to hand.

But a phone call from a wise friend who understands real priorities in life pointed out that Juliette Binoche continues to be fine to observe on a big screen. A date night at the Kentucky Theater ensued.

THE TASTE OF THINGS (2023) is delicious to watch. It’s fun to see Madame Binoche cooking again. I first saw her in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 1993 mesmerizing film; THREE COLORS: BLUE, and then his earlier THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988). A couple of years later I won a huge lobby poster of BLUE on eBay. I still haven’t found a space of suitable vastness to hang it, but I harbor hopes…perhaps a new wing to a house already too roomy for two dreamers. She cooked beautifully for Johnny Depp, Judy Dench, and Alfred Molina in CHOCOLAT (2000). Hell, I even thought she was the best thing in the 2014 GODZILLA – better than the big guy himself.

And THE TASTE OF THINGS is a nice film itself, but like some of Akira Kurusawa’s flicks, perhaps a battle too long. The ballet of the preparation of the opening feast lingered on every step in the kitchen.

Lingered…

Every step…….

I fear I had enough time to tally the pots and pans and utensils with the weary eyes of one whose main contribution in our kitchen is the post-prandial clean-up.

However, if you’re a member of the seemingly burgeoning crowd of people who take pictures of their food, this is the film for you.

I must fess up: I have been charmed but bewildered by this phenomenon.

I wonder…

The glory of a memorable restaurant meal is a recipe with multiple ingredients.

The food is one ingredient, but only one.

The setting is another. Is the room dramatic? Cozy? Huge? Is there a view of the ocean…mountain…desert…skyline…rings of Saturn? Is it on the roof…on the street…by the fireplace…in the kitchen?

Is the company good?

I have had memorable restaurant experiences.

  • Calamari and six vintage ports overlooking the Bay Bridge in San Francisco…
  • A Nighthawk Special in a cavern-like Columbia Steak House at 2am on Limestone Street.
  • Chateau Ausone 1978 in Yvette Wintergarden’s in Chicago.
  • Hot cross buns and café au lait in the snug of the local at Hever Castle on a grey morning.
  • Eggs Nova Scotia in a booth with a wall juke box at the Bungalow across the street from the Nu-Way Boot Shop on Mill Street.
  • Huevos Rancheros in in a sunny diner in Salinas.
  • A Caesar Salad lovingly assembled tableside in Denver.
  • Hot dogs off the right field line at Wrigley Field on a sunny Saturday afternoon. (Phillies lost).
  • Shrimp and grits on an overturned cable spool table, watching a shrimp boat unloading its restaurant resupplies at the neighboring dock in Charleston.
  • Green Chile Won Tons at the Bristol in Louisville after a stunning performance of “Child Byron” at Actors Theatre.
  • Coq au Vin at Café Chantant before slipping downstairs to Le Cabaret on Vine Street.

The food, the time, the place, and most of all the company, is what made these experiences memorable. I wanted to capture each of them forever, recreate the moments for myself, and be able to share them with others. Perhaps that’s why we take our meal photos.

No photo is up to such a task, but the urge to share and relive the good stuff is nothing but admirable.

Turn Yer Radio On

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I was eleven years old when I first started falling asleep to the radio. I still do whenever possible. It’s a sound that assures me it’s OK to fall asleep.

I think those pre-slumber sounds have been important to others in other times…

<<<< Night sound #1 >>>>

The call rang out in the dark. “Post #1 — One o’clock and all is well.” A twenty-something Union prison guard in Western Kentucky was listening and questioning the wisdom of leaving New York for this blue uniform and a nocturnal duty of vigilance over tattered Southern wretches. Still, it was reassuring to hear of the continued existence and thriving of Post #1. He scanned his portion of the prison ground for anomalies and finding none answered; “Post #2 – One o’clock and all is well.” He assumed Post #3 would be similarly comforted…hell, those Southern boys might like to hear a pleasant word as well. >>>>

In 1962, when I was eleven, it was my battery-powered cigarette-pack-sized transistor radio tucked under my pillow, ideally tuned in to a late night baseball game from the West Coast between my hallowed Reds and the despiséd Dodgers or haughty Giants. To drift off to Waite Hoyt’s description of Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson battling Maury Wills and Sandy Koufax, or Willie Mays and Juan Marichal was bliss. If the Reds weren’t available, the local overnight disc jockey, Tom Kimball on WVLK touting “Nighthawk Specials” at Columbia Steakhouse and a mélange of pre-Beatles rock was a pretty good Plan B for a pretty good night’s sleep.

A half-century later, not much has changed for me…

<<<< Night sound #2 >>>>

About two miles from our home, a train whistle rewards our summer-open bedroom window with a long, long moan that croons; “We’re out here travelin’, workin’, carryin’ on…don’t you worry none…we’re here…all’s well.” >>>>

Each night, I pessimistically set my clock radio to play the radio for two hours. Then I proceed to become comatose in about two minutes. I try to find a live sporting event first, then classical music or jazz, then settle for any music or live programming.

It has to be live programming.

Television won’t do the job. Television is visual and I find it hard to fall asleep when my eyes are open. Go figger.

Recorded music won’t do. There’s no currently awake mind behind.

Live programming…that’s the ticket.

Why?

<<<< Night sound #3 >>>>

Sirens pass, shrieking. Hospital helicopters wop and chop overhead. Each heralds an urgent problem. Each assures that responders are responding; “All’s not well, but we’re on it!” >>>>

I think my need goes back to 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the fall of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev got the neighborly idea of putting Russian missiles in Cuba, ninety miles away from the Florida Keys. Jack Kennedy realized quickly that missiles in Cuba threatened to sharply amplify the hazards of a determined Duval Street Crawl beyond a drunken face plant on a Key West sidewalk, a night in the Key West slammer, and your name on page two of the Key West newspaper. The hazards could logically portend an end to Western Civilization which, hard as it is for my acquaintances in the Keys to believe, involves bigger issues than a cold beer (or five) and a well-done conch fritter (one is enough). Kennedy ordered a naval blockade to intercept a missile-laden Russian ship headed for Cuba.

The whole country felt a spasm of fear. A nuclear conflagration seemed eminent.

<<<< Night sound #4 >>>>

My dog farts in bed and sighs. All is well and evidently well-fed. >>>>

My sixth grade classmates and I at Yates Elementary were schooled the day after the blockade was announced in the intricacies of “duck and cover.” We knelt in the school’s halls with our heads down and covered by our hands.

But I had seen images of Hiroshima.

I didn’t raise a ruckus in school about our atomic training, but I was silently and forlornly convinced that “duck and cover” wasn’t gonna cut it.

No, Lexington’s best hope was in the fact that there was no military reason to nuke it. I found a soupçon of solace in that, though it would be a few more years before I knew what “soupçon” or “solace” meant.

But I still fretted about the rest of the world. If the random angry world powers ignored Lexington but obliterated themselves, how would I know?

On the radio of course!

All’s well…

North Lime and the Christians

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I had a totally lovely experience performing Lucas Hnath’s The Christians for AthensWest Theatre a couple of years ago. The script was fine, the direction astute and focused, the cast alert and wicked smart, and the choir – ah, the choir – was on fire.

I could (and still might – just a warning) write a day-by-day description of the happy discoveries of our rehearsal process, but for the general purposes of this blog, let me simply describe the windows of our rehearsal space.

Yes, the windows.

We rehearsed in the cafeteria of Sayre School, a room named “The Buttery”. Every evening we would rearrange the munchkin-scaled tables and chairs to create a space in which we could imagine ourselves in the epicenter of a mega-church. I say “we” but the overwhelming bulk of this furniture-moving was done by our stage manager and assistant stage manager (Paige Adams and Ben Otten) – champions……CHAMPIONS!

For me, the arresting parts of this rehearsal space were the huge windows overlooking the 200 block of North Limestone.

I strove to stay immersed in the religious crucible of The Christians, but I kept being pulled into another Lexington, of other times, by those windows.

  • I had learned long ago that Limestone was originally named Mulberry Street. It was the major artery carrying travelers from Lexington to Maysville, a key transportation leg before the Falls of the Ohio were made manageable.
  • It was also a major lane of vice during Prohibition. To paraphrase an account of the time; “Prohibition became so bad in Lexington that a thirsty man had to sometimes walk a block to get a drink on Mulberry Street.”
  • In the 1960’s and 70’s, it was a mecca for used books and comics. Dennis’s Bookstore and Whittington’s Books were there……what’s so important ‘bout dat? Well…
  • Dennis (MISTER Dennis to me on orders from my Mom) was reportedly diagnosed with a terminal illness in the late 1940’s. He was still going strong in the 1960’s. That’s the kind of terminal diagnosis I want.
  • When Mr. Dennis learned from my mom that I loved mysteries (keep in mind, I was not yet a teenager), he gave her about twenty Agatha Christie paperbacks that weren’t selling well. I proceeded to fall under the happy and gracious spell of Hercules Poirot (David Suchet’s perfect depiction of Monsieur Poirot later renewed that spell).
  • One blessed afternoon, I picked up (for ten cents each) a pile of Marvel comics at Dennis’s, including Journey Into Mystery #83, the first appearance of Thor, the Mighty. You coulda just killed me then.
  • The neon sign directly across the street from my current rehearsal windows flashed me back. I recalled how many late night “Nighthawk Specials” were devoured by my bohemian hippie theatre friends at Columbia’s Steakhouse waiting for the delivery of the Lexington Herald to the newsstand just outside the restaurant with the opening night reviews (remember them?) of whatever local stage production we were currently reinventing for the world.
  • I recalled countless lunch breaks from my high school job at the library (now the Carnegie Center) truckin’ down for a $1.89 lunch special at Brandy’s Kitchen, steppin’ over the sidewalk plaque for Smiley Pete, the town street pup.
  • I recalled seeing a Lexington Repertory Theatre production of The Wager featuring an impossibly young Joe Gatton in a space that now is a fountain. Joe’s performance was good enough in the show to remember and receive his own sidewalk plaque – who could ask for anything more? Well, maybe a better fountain.

In my glass-enclosed time bubble at rehearsal, it was peacefully, blissfully, difficult to remain attentive to the job at hand.

Thank you, AthensWest, for that happy challenge.