Orsay
1057 Lexington Ave
New York, NY‎
(212) 517-4296‎

Orsay’s a great little gem of Frenchness in New York. From the ambiance, it’s nothing spectacular - just a plain little restaurant with a usual assortment of tables and booths. But the food is excellent and the price is moderate for a French restaurant. The wine list is also relatively uninteresting and moderately priced, but the food! Oh my!

On my last visit I ordered my usual appetizer, entree, and dessert, and everything was done just right. To start I had the Tartare Brittanique, a salmon tartare with walnuts, Stilton cheese, and Yorkshire pudding on the side.The tartare selection is immense and pretty much everything sounded absolutely amazing, especially if the others were as good as the Brittanique. Yorkshire pudding is to die for and the walnuts and stilton added some amazing flavours to the usual salmon tartare. For the entree I ordered the pork tenderloin prepared with wild mushrooms, carrots, and a porcini and huckleberry sauce. Usually pork in America is dry as a bone and tastes like a mouthful of sand, but this pork tenderloin was moist and delicious, aided by the two sauces and real wild mushrooms. The dessert was amongst the best, and I was wonderfully surprised a French restaurant would have such an interesting selection. We ordered a peach soup over cucumber gelatin, pumpernickel croutons, and coconut sorbet. All these flavours were perfect together somehow and I was begging for just a tiny bit more of the cucumber gelatin, the most unusual flavour for dessert ever. The peach soup was served chilled and tied everything together wonderfully so that each bite had a little something extra to send it over the top. Definitely a must try dessert.

While there is no shortage of French restaurants in New York, Orsay does an excellent job of standing out as one of the most creative. The price as with all French places is close to burning money, but the inventiveness of the food and the quality of the presentation are worth it even if the ambiance leaves much to be desired.

Tiber Canyon Ranch
Edna Valley, CA

Olio Nuovo 08/09
Olio Nuovo Lemon 08/09
Late Harvest Tuscan Blend 07/08
Yuzu Flavored Tuscan 07/08
Lemon Flavored Tuscan 07/08

After living in prime olive oil country for the past couple years I have been fortunate to visit a couple of local olive orchards. The most notable of these trips was to Tiber Canyon Ranch nestled in Edna Valley just 15 minutes out of San Luis Obispo, CA. The grounds of the ranch play host to a number of events and weddings throughout the year and the scenery around the area explains it all. California Live Oaks scour the countryside and nestled amongst them next to a large vegetable garden is the hand built barn that houses the olive oil storage drums and tasting room. The back of the barn is an art studio where the owners practice their glass blowing in the off season. If you ever have the chance to visit the ranch it’s a must.

On to the oil. Tiber Canyon produces a few varieties of extra virgin olive oil. The first and foremost is their Late Harvest Tuscan Blend, which they also use as the base for their flavored oils. The Late Harvest Tuscan is a mild, cool, and slightly impersonal oil with a gentle peppery finish. Picking the olives late in the harvest effectively mellowed out the usual bitterness and high pungency found in Tuscan blends, but left a hint of grassiness on the aroma and a mellow lasting peppery aftertaste. If you’re a fan of the olive flavor but don’t like too much spice or bitterness this is a good choice in oil. For something a bit fruitier try Robbins Family Farm’s Late Harvest Tuscan and for something a bit more olive flavored try Olea Farm’s Crescendo Blend.

The 2008 harvest Olio Nuovo knocks the socks off Tiber’s usual Late Harvest Tuscan and if you can find it before it’s all gone I recommend picking it up. The Olio Nuovo has quite a bit of sediment still suspended in the oil and resultingly has a very strong olive flavour, bitter taste, and huge peppery finish. Of the stronger oils, it’s delicious, strong, and complex without being plain punchy like the Pasolivo Tuscan, and I wholly recommend it for fans of strong flavours. The Lemon Olio Nuovo is likewise amazing, and again I recommend it over Pasolivo’s Lemon Flavored, primarily because it’s strong and graceful and the bitterness doesn’t overpower the flavor of the meyer lemon.

The real spotlight for Tiber Canyon is their flavored oils. Based on the Late Harvest Tuscan which I would consider one the better blending oils I’ve tried, Tiber produces Lemon and Yuzu flavored oils. Although limited in production, these oils are exceptional in quality and flavor. My favorite flavored oil overall is in fact Tiber’s Yuzu, which has a distinct rind type flavour that is well balanced and neither overpowers or underpowers the olives. One issue with the Yuzu is typical uses which I haven’t quite captured besides salads, but I’ve heard it’s an interesting ingredient in baking which I don’t really partake in. The Lemon Flavored uses Meyer Lemons and also has more of a rind type flavour than the usual lemon oils. I prefer the Yuzu although the Lemon is more versatile and goes great with vegetable and fish dishes. Enjoy.

Arroyo Grande Meat Company
118 E Branch St
Arroyo Grande, CA‎
(805) 489-2693‎

For those of you in San Luis Obispo that haven’t quite ventured out into the outlying towns and cities, I recommend it. SLO county has a lot more to offer than the selection of run of the mill delis geared towards cheap college students that overpopulate SLO. One such example is the Arroyo Grande Meat Company, a butcher/deli in the Village of Arroyo Grande. The Meat Market specializes in local meats, everything from turkey, to roast beef, to venison salami - all of which are bursting with flavour and are as fresh as you can imagine. Once I was sitting behind the butcher along the creek when a truck loaded with a freshly slaughtered pig rolled up and the hog was hoisted up and into the back door. Talk about fresh meat.

The Arroyo Grande Meat Market has a specialty for sausage with a huge freezer filled with every kind imaginable: German Bratwursts, English Bangers, Texan spicy sausage, and a ridiculous amount of chicken and turkey sausage varieties as well. I tried the Bangers and some Weisswurst, and the fore was good and the latter was excellent. If you’re planning a wienie roast in the near future this is a great stop to stock up and your friends will be jealous of your sausage.

I’ve tried a few of the varieties of deli sandwiches they prepare at the Meat Company. I’ll just say right now that the Roast Beef is THE best meat I’ve ever put in my mouth. And I’ve put a lot of meat in my mouth over the years. Then there’s the turkey which is likewise amazing, full of flavour, and causing my mouth to water just thinking about it. Turkey is one of my favourite meats and I definitely feel that the average turkey lunch meat is made from some ambiguous cardboard manifestation that people pass off as turkey breast primarily because the label says so. The turkey at the AG Meat Company has a wonderful texture, just like real turkey!, and isn’t devoid of flavour and is some of the beset I’ve ever had, comparable only to a restaurant I went to in New England. The only other meat I’ve tried is a highly unusual Venison salami with a slightly pickled flavour and a gamey consistency, an interesting choice if you’re an adventurous eater and worth a taster no matter what.

If you like sandwiches AG Meat Co is a definite stop in the Central Coast. The meat selection, both for the sandwiches and to take home are excellent and nothing beats fresh local food. Nothing.

It’s not too difficult to make a good photo really look great. The first step is my favourite tool of all time, Curves. Curves is a simple way to manipulate the contrast of an image without clipping/losing any data and Photoshop already has it nice and easily setup on the Layers palette.

Just open the Layers palette, click on the little circle that’s half light half dark and select Curves. This creates a new layer that doesn’t edit the original image (as opposed to selecting curves from the edit menu) and the Curves dialog should pop up. It may look wierd at first but it’s very easy to control. I generally like a small grid so hold ALT and left click on the grid away from the line, this should change the grid size. The line represents the contrast curve, the top right for RGB photos is the whites and the bottom left is the blacks and a midpoint which is already set controls the mid-balance. I usually click about 1 diagonal square down from the top right and drag that point up half a square and to the right about half a square more. This brightens the whites without blowing them out as long as the exposure is properly set in the source image. Then about 4 diagonal squares from the bottom left I create another point on the light and slightly move this one to the right, darkening the image with minimal clipping. The overlaying histogram gives a graphic representation of the levels of the image and matching the curve to the image roughly gives a nice contrasty picture. Moving the midpoint left or right controls the contrast of the mid-range tones and should be moved to a desired point.

Then there’s the other second best tool in Photoshop, the unsharp mask. Some digital cameras are already overly sharp, especially point and shoots, but Nikon’s tend to need a little pick me up which I prefer to the alternative. I like to duplicate the source layer, just right click the source image in the layers palette and duplicate, renaming it to sharpen. Then from filters select unsharp mask and jot in 130/1/2. This is a pretty good estimate for sharpening on Nikons for full sized images. Smaller images will require a smaller percentage of sharpening.

Here’s a simple example of what can be done with Curves and Sharpening. Thank you to Charley Johnson for the photograph.

Oceanview
16 Chapman Ave
Oak Bluffs, MA‎
(508) 693-1813‎

Martha’s Vineyard is a favourite vacation destination on the East coast. Home of Chappaquiddick, the cliffs of Gay Head, and the film location off the most feared shark movie of all time, Jaws. Most of the island is run seasonally - hotels, restaurants, shops - open in the summer, closed in the winter. But there are some secret local spots open year round with some exceptionally good food and drink. The best I’ve tried was a recommendation from the owner of the B&B I was staying at, The Tivoli Inn.

The Oceanview is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every meal time is packed with local shop owners, contractors, and boatmen. The inside is rather inconspicuous, a bunch of plain seats and tables, a long bar, and a separate dining room only open for dinner. But the food is amazing and the beer and wine menu is extremely well priced surprisingly, like many restaurants on the island. Most bottles of wine are marked up just a few dollars above retail. The beer selection includes some local choices as well.

I’ve visited the Oceanview numerous times and never had anything close to a bad meal. The fried dishes are done perfectly, just to the point where the breading adds crunch but doesn’t overwhelm the flavor. The fried clams and haddock are amongst the best I’ve ever tried. The scrod is a close second, but not quite as tasty as the haddock. As for the lobster rolls, there’s a limited supply available for lunch each day and it’s a downright healthy portion for the usual $15 price tag, coming with fresh kettle cooked potato chips and coleslaw on the side. Some of the best lobster rolls I’ve had are from that restaurant, and that’s coming from someone who isn’t an ecstatic lobster fan. Pair that with a cold beer off tap and you’ve got a perfect Martha’s Vineyard meal. The Oceanview is my favourite New England local dive, a must try if you’re out at the Cape someday.

Vallarta’s
1761 Monterey St
San Luis Obispo, CA‎
(805) 543-0777‎

After meeting the owner of Vallarta’s I was finally inspired to write a review of this exceptionally awful (awful is a terrible understatement) restaurant. I’ve visited Vallarta’s four times over my years in San Luis Obispo and not once have I come close to enjoying my meal. In fact, I generally consider it the worst Mexican food I’ve ever eaten. That somehow doesn’t stop it from being frequented by torrents of college students from CalPoly, although it is within walking distance of the dorms (most likely the only reason it is still open).

The decor is pretty run of the mill, although it’s a little more on the seedy side than most sit down Mexican restaurants. Vallarta’s is known for two things: a giant burrito that is so mammothly bad I wouldn’t consider trying to eat it in one sitting, and a 60 ounce margarita popular on students’ 21st birthdays. From speaking to the owner I know for a fact bartenders at Vallarta’s use only 6 to 7 ounces of tequila in the huge drink (and at least for me that isn’t nearly enough alcohol by volume to warrant ordering it despite its low cost). But I’m a Long Island Drinker and I tend to enjoy tasting the alcohol in my drinks. I’ve heard many college students applauding Vallarta’s margaritas - I generally shake my head at them and walk away speechless.

My last visit I ordered a 16 ounce margarita and tostada bowl with chicken. The margarita was weak and served in a pint glass. The flavour was bland and the salt made it slightly tolerable. The tostada was mushy and made without care. At another restaurant I would’ve returned my food and walked out, but I was with company and had to be respectful of their choice. I’ve tried the giant burrito on a previous visit and tacos, too, and felt the same way about those dishes. If you can help it stay away from this restaurant at all costs. A better alternative is Pepe Delgado’s just down the street which isn’t particularly interesting but at least it won’t make you yak.

Today’s a wet gray day and like all wet gray days I’m tired. When the sun doesn’t break through the clouds my usual energy never rises either and I spend the day perpetually in a state of total uselessness, not motivated to eat, work, think, or act. Often the first wet day I can sleep well for almost 16 hours if I am unhindered, but subsequent days, sleep becomes less appealing and boredom sets in. It is at these moments that that my weather depression is most acute and I pray for salvation, in the form of a change in weather or at least company. Surprisingly gray is one of my favourite shades, but not when nature turns it, then it’s just dreary, dull, and unhappy. Life thrives in the sun and so do I.

The Spotted Pig
314 W 11th St # 1
New York, NY‎
(212) 620-0393‎

I couldn’t tell you from my experience a more charming pub that the Spotted Pig off Greenwich St in West Village. I noticed it one day as I wandered the streets of New York - a perfect 78 degree Monday afternoon, everyone was working, and there I was strolling about, running some gift errands and exploring a great neighborhood. The lower West side, Greenwhich and West Village are filled with charming tree-lined streets with old apartment buildings and crooked intersections. I passed quite a few cafes and wasn’t quite hungry when I spotted the pub on a corner. I really noticed a huge overgrowth of potted plants and only thought it was a restaurant by the couple of tables outside. I kept walking a few more blocks before doubling back to try it out.

The inside was even more charming than the outside. To the right of the entrance was a tiny bar, maybe seven or eight stools long and it looked a century old. Brick pillars adorned with turn-of-the-century old illustrations of pigs stood about the middle of the dining room. A large mirror on the back wall had specials - food, beer, and wine - hand written along its edges. Really excellent music was playing moderately loudly over the stereo. I sat to the right of the entrance where pull-out tables lined a bench running the length of the wall. I was comfortable and cozy surrounded by armies of potted plants amongst the window sills.

I ordered a pint of Old Speckled Hen Ale - one of my favorite beers that I’ve tasted ever. A rich, creamy, very malty, English-style ale with a delicious foamy head and almost textureless micro-bubbles. I had one of the appetizer specials (which they call pub snacks) - a single duck egg, medium boiled, halved, with salt, pepper, chili powder, targa, and really great Italian olive oil. One of the simplest, best appetizers and wonderfully easy to mimic at home (something I do with eggs almost every Sunday morning). For my main I was torn between a baked Caprese sandwich and the Cubano. The waitress recommended the Cubano and it was good, although on a second visit I would have chosen the other, or the burger which I’ve heard is one of the best. The Cubano used a fresh Italian bread, chewy crust and flavorful, with fried pulled pork, a Swiss-tasting cheese, and jalapeno relish. The portion was healthy and came with a very, very, very lemony side of greens which by itself was overpowering but paired with the fatty pork was very complimentary. I got a second beer, an Apollo Brewery Heff. I’m not a huge Belgian beer fan (God forbid!) so I only marginally enjoyed it’s hoppy, well-carbonated flavour and texture. It reminded me of a less sweet Blue-moon although it’s quite highly rated. After the meal I was downright stuffed from the food and beer and it took me quite a few blocks of walking (and a wonderful nap at home) to settle my stomach.

The Spotted Pig was supremely satisfying and I would love to go back again with some company. The prices are a little high for a pub, but the ambience is well worth it. A huge bit of New York’s old pub culture charm is tucked away in that little place and single-handedly made New York a much more pleasant place to be on that Summer afternoon. Not bad for a cozy corner pub.

Fallout 3 is finally what I’ve been waiting for - an RPG with guns - combining the best aspects of a RPG and a FPS. The game combines classic Bethessda gameplay and structure in a future/retro game world based on the fantastic Fallout universe, and it rocks. I completed the game in about 40 hours and felt that I hadn’t explored nearly half of the game’s locations and wish there was an option to continue playing following the end of the main quest line.

What makes Fallout 3 so great is it takes off where it’s earlier distant cousin, STALKER, left off in graphics, game play, and style. Similar elements of radiation effects, post-apocalyptic storyline, and projectile guns are prettied up, easier to use, and given a more interesting retro twist. Unlike Oblivion, the towns I’ve so far encountered aren’t populated by the same generic 15 people duplicated tons of times (at least for the named characters). One interesting new element Bethesda included from their previous titles (not new to the Fallout universe however) is the VATS system of targeting, pausing combat and allowing the player to focus attacks on specific body parts with a limited number of shots. VATS is especially good for players who like to sneak and attack from hiding, since it gives specific chances to hit and sneak attacks automatically give critical strikes. For those players of Knights of the Old Republic, this system will be very familiar. Besides VATS, the rest of game play takes it’s pages straight out of Oblivion, which worked very well then and now. Character AI and movement likewise hasn’t changed much although often I have the feeling that the aiming system is over-defined and a direct shot with many weapons has a high propensity to miss from even short ranges (one of my major dislikes with COD4 and enjoyments in Crysis is the realistic feel of the weaponry). To balance the poor aiming system, Fallout 3 has some very inventive custom-built weapons missing from most modern shooters including: the Rock-It launcher capable of shooting any random debris you accumulate in the wasteland, the Railroad Gun which fires super sped railroad spikes and has a great train whistle sound effect, and the bottle cap mine which causes massive damage upon impact at the cost of exploding bottle caps, Fallout 3’s currency. A note on the custom built weapons is their lack of stopping power at higher levels. If I had designed the game I would have implemented at least a few of the Steampunk inspired custom weapons at higher levels with a wider distribution of ammunition, especially considering the weapons are made from junk parts. Another good improvement from Oblivion is less occurrences of auto-scaling enemies, it appears that most enemies are fixed at a small range of level and even their weapons tend not to change significantly, so if an area is too difficult at first, returning after a level or two makes it significantly easier and less redundant.

Fallout 3 does a great job gearing the player up for the game through a graduated learning process experienced by living through important periods of the character’s development as a child. This is a great way to get the player into the gameplay without the usual “Good, now crouch under that ledge by holding shift. Good, now aim down the sight with right click” common in every other first person shooter. The game starts with the designing of the character at birth with a gene projector, the options are numerous but the face looks pretty similar no matter what although choosing from the beard selection of about 100 styles is a formidable time consuming event. Then learning movement and discovering the base stats in a toddler’s book is a simple but imaginative twist for a RPG. Even learning to shoot as a boy with a BB gun draws on a classic stereotype derived from the retro 1950s-era style style of the game.

Then there’s the scenery. There are numerous breathtaking scenes I’ve experienced starting with the emergence from Vault 101 and the view of the Wasteland from a small mountain top. It’s startling and epic, a huge change from the rolling hills of Oblivion and the gray flats of STALKER. The Wasteland design is bleak and expansive and right from the start the player is not given instruction as to the direction to head. My first move upward on the mountain led me into a horrible clash with a mutant Mole Rat, and I was so unready for the outside world I quickly reversed directions leading down into an obliterated town of framework houses and an odd Sputnik looking orb. Game design is key in fantasy RPGs and Fallout 3 excels. The trenches filled with Super Mutants on the Washington Mall and the half demolished national monuments and Capitol Building are the ideal location for Fallout 3 to take place and I loved the immersion.

What makes Fallout 3 really great is the immersion and story. You get to be Mad Max, complete with spiky shoulder padded leather jacket and sawed off shotguns. I’ve gotten a canine companion a la A Boy and his Dog, and I pretty much am free to reek havoc in the Wasteland of Post-Apocalyptic America, nuking towns of innocents to feed my evil doing and saving children from savage Slavers to keep it balanced-ish. The most disturbing bit of evil gameplay in any game I have ever played comes during the main quest when you are asked to fulfill the role of “The Pint Sized Slasher”, an urban legend that terrorizes an ideal simulated community. In many games it is often acceptable, even fun, to indulge in homicidal behaviour, but this really went to far past the edge of bad taste and evilness. For that I applaud Bethesda. The final battle at the end of the game comes rather abruptly and I recommend holding off on the main quest line until you’re completely satisfied with exploration. Once things start rolling there’s little time to slow down the action and if I had only followed the main quest I doubt the game would be longer than 20 hours maximum. The required skill level to access downtown DC does slow down the game and require a little more exploration, but the main quest line is very short and rather well done.

But not to sing complete praise for the game, the graphics are good, but they could be quite a bit better since the Oblivion engine is now getting long in the tooth. The aiming of some of the weapons seems more engineered than realistic, and the radiation effects are barely negative (in fact I gained the ability to regenerate blown off limbs from a bout of advanced radiation sickness and didn’t have any negative setbacks on a permanent level). As a big fan of Oblivion I feel that Fallout 3 is similar enough to draw good aspects from the gameplay and adds some significant enough changes to make it a completely new and interesting game I might actually play again.

Ti Couz
3108 16th St
San Francisco, CA‎
(415) 252-7373‎

A simple place to eat that excels in every way. Ti Couz doesn’t do much besides crepes and salads, but what they do make is simple, delicious, and stands out as one the best amongst the many crepe places I’ve tried. One distinguishing feature are the buckwheat crepes that appear depp, dark brown, with a striking texture and toasty, sweet taste. Another great thing is the cost, a 3 flavoured crepe costs about $10 and is gratuitously sized for a healthy eater - leftovers are a cinch for light eaters.

On my visit I sat in a big bay window with views of Mission Street, very conducive to my favourite activities: lunching, people watching, and conversing. I ordered a tomato, cheese, mushroom, sausage crepe and loved everything about it but the sausage which was sparse and lacking in flavour. The mushrooms were particularly amazing having a wild flavour and texture which can only meean quality ingredients. I also had a delicious chic pea soup which was thick and hearty, a meal in itself.

Ti Couz also has a full bar and an enticing drink menu. I ordered their house special blueberry puree, mint, and vodka mix. A very refreshing drink on a hot day and complimentary to the crepes. I recommend going to this resautaurant for anyone that calls themself a crepe lover and has time on in the Mission district.