It's a clunky name. But an interesting group.

CHoNC - Culinary Historians of Northern California - is about six months old, if I remember correctly. They generally meet once per month in Berkeley and have an hour-long talk about food. Then dinner.

j_i_m_r found out about them and we went to their Nov 8 meeting. The speaker gave an overview of the melting pot cuisine she had growing up: her grandparents were Iraqi observant Jews who emigrated to Bombay, then later to Shanghai. In the fifties they went to Vancouver.

The talk was interesting. It's a smallish group of mostly amateur historians. Dinner was at a local Chinese restaurant that was pretty good. JIMR and I were outed by one of the founders when we said we were interested in medieval and Renaissance food; she responded "Oh, SCA?" (But not in a derogatory way.) One of the members was Alice Medrich; JIMR and I managed to not go fanboy on her. Mostly.

I don't want to take the group over with SCA people, but they are always looking for speakers. ppfuf and G-M could redo their Collegium class on feasting, perhaps. If I managed to put together a Collegium class on Ouverture de Cuisine, I might try it out there as well.

In summary, worth going to and worth going back.

A birthday dinner... OF PORTENT!

bonacorsi and I made reservations for Friday evening at Sociale, a "local" Italian trattoria-type place. The dinner was scheduled for 6:30.

About 4:45, we got a call. The restaurant apologized; due to an unspecified "kitchen emergency", they weren't opening that evening. They offered us a credit for a future reservation. But still - finding a new reservation at 5 PM on a Friday? Eek!

After a bit of work with OpenTable we got a 6:15 reservation at Rubicon. A bit pricier than we had wanted to pay, but what the heck. We got changed into nice dining clothes (I wore the pinstripe suit and navy fedora; I needed a violin case to complete the outfit).

Then the taxi didn't show up. We called again and eventually it got there. It was a grumpy old man who complained about not being able to find our address. We don't care - we just want our ride. He also took a less-than-efficient route to the restaurant. Very small tip for him.

Rubicon, by contrast, was lovely. They deserve their Michelin star. After an amuse-bouche of foie gras and another of clear squash soup, we had:
Sashimi of yellowtail with quinoa
Potato and dried Friarelli pepper Agnolotti in a lemon broth
Pancetta-wrapped bass (I want to try making this one!)
Gnocchi with Rabbit sausage
Lamb with a kale ragout
lemon-buttermilk sherbet and vanilla poached quince
cocoa nib crepes.

None of the dishes were huge; we did not roll out of there, but the quantity was sufficient. And I made a point of asking which vegetables came from our CSA supplier.

Now I'm hungry.

Investiture ramblings

Mists Investiture was fine. I would have preferred having the wife there, obviously - but that's life. The feast was tasty food and not so much that I was overfull at the end. ldyanna's marzipan sculpture looked faboo, as well as tasting good. She and I started to have a good talk about next year, before we ran out of time.

Time... I left the house at 7:30 AM and got back around 10 PM. Not as bad as some, but still a really long and tiring day.

I was gobsmacked when mad_duchess organized a chorus of "Happy Birthday" for me near the end. It took me completely by surprise.