1517 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 548-5525

Chez Panisse is a good restaurant. The food was tasty, the service was excellent, the ambiance was amazing. If someone asked me whether I enjoyed the meal the answer would be a whole hearted “Yes”.

However, if asked whether I would return I’d have to think about it. When restaurants charge minimums of $100 per guest I have to feel wowed, I want to feel as though the experience was once in a lifetime and there’s no other restaurant quite like it, but Chez Panisse left me a little bored and uninspired by their dinner choices. This isn’t to say that everything wasn’t cooked brilliantly, which it was, but for the caliber of the restaurant I expected something a little more and didn’t get it.

Chez Panisse suffers from a debilitating attention to where the food comes from and forgets that what’s always most important is what is served to the customer. Sure there is some level of awe to a chef that pays so much attention to where their food is bought, but can that not be said of all high profile high cost restaurants? Rarely have I been to a restaurant that charged over $200 for two that didn’t have the absolute best ingredients.

In retrospect it’s hard to remember the taste of the food at Chez Panisse and to me that is an automatic failing. I still remember meals I had 5 years ago in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but I can’t remember the taste of the duck or the savory souffle accompanying it at Chez Panisse when I dined there no more than 3 months ago.

My recommendation: wait until something that sounds amazing comes up on the menu before you decide to go there, otherwise it’ll be a good meal, but not an unforgettable one.

The last few weeks I’ve been working late nights fighting to complete this wedding invite set for my sister and her fiance. Finally I’ve got it finished and I’m looking forward to seeing it printed. The theme is a garden party and I went with a rustic 19th century English garden feel. Surprise surprise. Fonts are Henry’s Hand script for the headers, Noir-Et-Al, a turn of the century Mission style for body text, and Mouse Deco, a 30s style uppercase font for the detail text.

The main invite is double sided and folds into a little envelope.

The directions card is also double sided but the back is just a map so I just included the directions side on the blog for now.

And here’s the RSVP. I opted to use name instead of “M” because from what I read people sometimes get confused or annoyed with it, either because they don’t know what M is for or their title is Dr. or something else.

The newest addition to my portfolio is a small informational website for Karen Sullivan, a marriage and family therapist. The site was built using the Expression Engine CMS and open source stock imagery. Plugins include the FreeForm module from SolSpace and a forum by phpBB. I also designed the logo for use on the website and printed materials. Check it out here and let me know what you think.

Also, in the next week or two I’ll be posting recent photos from my friend Christina’s wedding and my sister’s wedding invitations. Stay tuned.

Maybe I’m being a bit unrealistic. Perhaps I’ll give myself till the winter.

Aldous Huxley: A Biography - Sybille Bedford
Now I Lay Me Down to Eat: Notes and Footnotes on the Lost Art of Living - Bernard Rudofsky
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to “Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar - David Wondrich, Dale DeGroff
As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text - William Faulkner
Brave New World Revisited (P.S.) - Aldous Huxley
The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West (P.S.)  - Aldous Huxley
The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs - Karen Page, Andrew Dornenburg
The Constitution of Liberty - F. A. Hayek
The Housing Boom and Bust: Revised Edition - Thomas Sowell
Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy - John Rawls, Samuel Freeman
Capitalism Without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China - Kellee S. Tsai
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Philosophy: Who Needs It - Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
Aldous Huxley: A Biography - Nicholas Murray (Not Pictured)
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance - Noam Chomsky

As some readers may know, my girlfriend and I are moving up to Berkeley soon and we’re deciding what furniture to deck out our new place with. After days of searching through furniture stores, online discounters, and modern design studios, we’ve compiled a list of all the items we love. We split up the items into the priority items we can’t live without, items that are similar that are more affordable if we choose to save some money, items we’d like to have sometime in the future, and items we’d die to have but are just a tiny, tiny bit out of our price range. Enjoy.