High end

In what is probably the final celebration of my recent birthday, Chuck treated us to dinner at Artisan restaurant in the newly reopened Four Columns Inn in Newfane.

For decor, they’re doing a modernized take on the typical New England Inn theme. The Windsor style chairs are mismatched but elegant, the color scheme is tone on tone, the art still tends to sheep and barns but with a decidedly contemporary flair.

The food focused on local and seasonal… Chuck ran into some people he knew and saw them eating a hamburger. He was surprised: this is more of a “braised rabbit with wild mushrooms and homemade pasta” kind of place. Ah, they replied, but the beef comes from our farm! All in all, the menu was a nice showcase for the chef’s creativity, well prepared and mostly well presented. The wine list was suitably varied, if unremarkable, and the service was pleasant and attentive.

Chuck, who has been a baker, a wine merchant and wine columnist, and for some years an organizer of food-themed tours in Italy and France, knows from fine dining. At one point, he put down his fork and asked us “is this what you’d call ‘high end’?” Lee and I answered yes immediately, but our discussion continued.

It was an interesting question. By price tag, in this area, definitely high end. Based on the length and detail of the descriptions of menu items, again yes. But the menu tended toward comfort food, less high end than one might find in NYC or Paris. There were no tablecloths, nor a sommelier. The staff uniform was jeans and blue plaid shirts straight out of a high school production of Oklahoma. Most patrons were in casual clothes, just a regular Friday night.

So what constitutes “high end” in this day and age? Is that term even meaningful in the world we live in? As we worked our way through the duck, the rabbit, the baby greens, the second bottle, we never really reached a consensus. We had a special meal in good company, and we were able to relax and enjoy it all without the anxiety provoked by too many forks… High end? Exactly high enough.

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It doesn’t look like much in normal conditions, but during the gullywasher last week this strip mall on Putney Road flooded, meaning the butcher, the fish market, AND the wine store are closed for weeks.

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Super Halloween costume idea: a green tomato that fell out of somebody’s bag and landed in the street. Everyone else will feel inferior to your awesomeness in their lame Donald Trump outfits.

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These yellow mums appeared, fully formed, all over town this week. Must be fall!!

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Cobblestone Hill, Nantucket Town

The picture doesn’t do justice to the steepness or bumpiness of this block. I think Nantucketers who want big SUVs use this road to justify their choices.

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For years I thought ATL was my least favorite airport: too big, too busy, nobody (staff or travelers) particularly happy to be there.

Lately, however, I’ve been going through DTW a lot. It also sucks… Lots of delays, lousy food choices… so it became my least favorite airport.

But today I’m back sitting on the Tarmac in ATL because of something to do with catering.

Maybe they both suck.

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On the death of an industry

The other morning I jogged past this figurehead from the whaling ship RIchard Mitchell. In her 20-year career, she brought back almost 10,000 barrels of whale oil. Think of the costs of producing that oil… Build a ship, hire crews, sail around braving many dangers… Not to mention the karmic costs of hunting whales nearly to the point of extinction. Despite all that, great fortunes were made from those barrels.

But along comes petroleum. The McClintock #1 well outside Titusville, PA (billed as the oldest continuously producing oil well) produced 175 barrels a day at its height, but then settled down to a steady 50 or so. At that rate, it produced as much as the RIchard Mitchell in about half a year. Operating essentially automatically.

And that’s just one well. Today, we have about 600,000 producing wells in the US alone, most of them a lot bigger than McClintock #1. Smelly, difficult whale oil didn’t stand a chance.

An update: it was pointed out to me that a barrel of crude wasn’t quite the same as a barrel of whale oil. Whale oil was mostly used in lamps, like kerosene, and most of what comes out of oil ain’t kerosene. So, an oil well was only 50 times more enticing than whale oil, not 500. Or maybe the numbers are 20 and 200, doesn’t matter: oil’s magic not only killed whaling but spawned THE ENTIRE MODERN WORLD…

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