As always, I had grand dreams of deciding the menu well in advance, doing a practice run of each of the dishes, and having a good enough tactical plan to start dinner on time. And as always, I was still making menu decisions the day of, I did not get a practice run of anything, and the tactical plan was disrupted somewhat by waking up late, brunch going a lot later than planned, etc.
The whole weekend looked to be in peril initially, since the entire East Coast was hammered by snow storms. In fact, Socci had planned to arrive in SF on Wed to hang out with a friend of his, but his flight out of JFK got canceled, and they couldn't guarantee him a flight before Sunday. So, in a display of heroic dedication to the dinner party cause, he took a 19 hour train ride to Chicago, flew from there on Thursday to Long Beach, and stayed overnight in a Travelodge to catch the early flight to SF on Friday morning.
Consequently, the first guest to actually arrive was Socci's GF Carey, whom I had never met. She arrived Thursday night, so I picked her up from the airport and took her to In-N-Out, and from there to Safeway for some of the grocery shopping. Considering we were complete strangers to each other, and didn't have Socci there, we were surprisingly comfortable with each other. She's 22 to his 33, so it's a pretty eye-opening age differential, but on the other hand, Keiko was 25 and I was 35 when we started dating, so I guess it's dangerous for me to be throwing stones from within my little glass house.
After the Safeway, we headed back to SFO to pick up the next guest: Jeffrey. He flew in from Richmond, ready to have another exciting weekend in the Bay Area (see hey-thanks-for-coming-out!). His flight was late, so by the time we got back to the house, there really wasn't time to do any of the cooking prep that I'd planned to do.
The next morning, I had to get up and go get Socci. Once we had him in hand and were back at the house, I was finally able to get started making food. I sent the 3 of them out for a number of things, and started baking. Among the things I asked them to get were champagne, for brunch, and brandy, for one of the recipes. And although they successfully procured these things, 2 of the bottles of champagne and a sizable portion of the brandy ended up being consumed over the course of the afternoon. None of it by me, btw, since I was frantically trying to catch up to where I was supposed to be in the tactical cooking plan.
Thus, by the time the evening rolled around, and we were about to leave for Socci's friend Michael's party up in the city (which we figured we'd hit before heading to the airport to pick up Jill, who was coming from Harrisburg, PA and the rest of the NYC crew, who were scheduled to arrive within 20 minutes of each other in a fortuitous bit of airline flight scheduling) Carey and Jeffrey were totally shitfaced, and Socci was looking a little wobbly. Carey and Jeffrey immediately hit it off because Carey, like Jill, has the ability to identify and instantly become BFF's with any gay man within a 5-mile radius.
So we headed up to a very nice party in SoMa. The 4 of us took 4 different approaches to the party: Socci, who knew several of the people there, had a good time catching up with people. Jeffrey, who was 95 sheets to the wind, sat on the sofa and proceeded to drift in and out of sleep sitting up. Carey, who was 195 sheets to the wind, bounced around the room in full-on Brownian motion and draped herself randomly on people, one at a time, and attempted to engage them in conversations that didn't make any sense, to the point where eventually Michael came up to me and asked who was responsible for her that evening. I did what I always do at such parties- I made a half-hearted attempt to engage people in small talk, which I am not especially good at and which I don't particularly enjoy, in the hopes of blundering into a conversation I actually found interesting. That didn't happen until the end, when we were trying to get everyone together to leave, and I realized by process of elimination that Jeffrey must be in the bathroom, and so I stood in front of the bathroom door and had a 20-minute conversation with the host's GF and a few of her friends. After 20 minutes of talking, I started banging on the bathroom door, and after about 5 minutes of banging, Jeffrey finally emerged, claiming to be perfectly fine.
Riiiiiight.
By this time, we'd discovered that Jill's flight was basically on time, while the NYC crew had been delayed almost an hour, so the fortuitous bit of airline flight scheduling had gone down the drain. So the 4 of us drove to the airport and picked up Jill, and then we went to get her rental car, and then 4 of us went home to the beachhouse and left Socci with my van to pick up the NYC crew.
Back at the house, I got started on another round of cooking, while Jill unwound and Jeffrey and Carey more or less passed out. Eventually, the NYC crew showed up. It was good to see them, and a bit lucky, given all the flights that got canceled out of JFK. A good sign for the weekend.
The next morning I served the traditional Gus breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, fruit salad, and cinnamon rolls. We'd forgotten to put the other bottles of champagne in the fridge, so no mimosas. But we got a late start, and took a long time eating, so it was basically 2pm before I started the day's cooking. That was about 2hrs later than I'd hoped. Not a good sign for an on-time 7pm start.
Still, with plenty of sous-chef help from Jill, and also from Jeffrey and at times some of the NYC folks, we made up some of the ground and actually had dinner on the table not long after 8. That worked perfectly, because that's when Laura and Dmitri arrived. I was hoping L & GA would come, but they couldn't find a babysitter, so GA stayed home, and L came late, arriving for the 3rd course. Here was our lineup for the evening:
1st course: fried masa cups with spicy pork filling, and spiced ground beef empanadas
2nd course: black bean soup with shrimp
3rd course: jicama salad with oranges
4th course: meat and vegetable stew with rice
5th course: slow-roasted pork in banana leaves, and spice-rubbed baked fish
6th course: almond-flour torte with mixed berry compote
Amazingly, with the prior planning and prep, plus significant amounts of sous-chef assistance, the entire dinner was done by 1145pm, the swiftest and earliest-ending dinner party ever. The downside of moving so quickly was that we only went through 8 bottles of wine, but the bright side was, we were able to get out of the house the next day by 2pm. Last year, Ed was still fetal at 5pm the day after.
Naturally, I forgot to give Jill my camera to take some pictures of the dinner party. I don't know why I even bother owning a camera- I never remember to use it.
Sunday, the original plan was to get out of the house in time to stop at the wine store in SF before heading over to our 2pm brunch reservation at the Cliff House. We needed a stop at the wine store because on Saturday afternoon Alex and J-Rob had taken a group there to get the wine for the dinner party, and a few of the bottles turned out to be bad, forcing us to go into the leftover wine from last year's dinner party, plus some of what I bought on last year's Napa trip. I didn't mind at all consuming the wine from my stash, but it was offensive in principle that the store had sold us several expensive bottles of bad wine.
Unfortunately, we didn't end up leaving the house until 215pm, so we had to go straight to the Cliff House. It happened that this was the weekend of the Mavericks surf contest, so beach traffic was nightmarish. By the way, because of the El Nino, the waves in HMB have been spectacular all winter, and they had record surf at mavericks. In fact, a rogue wave came overall the seawall and literally swamped the judges' tent and dozens of people. None of them drowned, but a few had to be hospitalized with broken bones (you can hear in the video clip halfway down the page people screaming for a medic because of a broken leg). I know the feeling, dudes.
Here's a link to some photos from the event. There's some pretty awesome pics in there. It really makes me want to learn to surf. Apparently individual waves can crest as high as 50 feet, though I think this year they only got to 40.
Anyway, we got to the Cliff House around 330pm. Brunch there was as fantastic as any buffet-style brunch could ever be- there was an amazing selection, it was all actually quite good, and they kept the champagne coming the entire meal. They even made Ed a special bowl of eggs after they'd taken away the last container of them, but he still wanted more. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, as you can see:
The view from our table.
Working hard to eat all that delicious food.
Ed & Alison
Me & Jill
After the Cliff House, we split into 2 groups: one for the wine store, and one to go for a hike around Land's End. That's the tip of the SF peninsula, and on clear days it offers stunning views of the Marin headlands, plus the Golden Gate bridge, from the west. Since it was a near-perfect day, me, Jill, Jeffrey, Ed, and Alison opted to take the hike, and we agreed we'd meet the others in Chinatown after they were done at the wine store. Since it also happened to be Chinese New Year, we thought it might be fun to be in that part of town.
So, I led us on a hike around Land's End. Now, given that it was already 5pm, it might have been a little smarter to just do the short version of the hike, but the last time I was there it had not been nearly so nice a day, so I pushed us all the way to Eagle's Point:
That ledge just below center in the picture is Eagle's Point.
The Golden Gate from Eagle's Pt. The container ship full of lead-poisoned toys from China really makes the picture.
This pic looks like folk rock cover art. The Ali Cats.
The sun is setting rapidly now, and we're a long way from any light. Also, this is as tall as I will ever look.
The sun is still setting rapidly. Also, this is as angelic as Ed will ever look.
We started to head back, but there was a nifty section of beach below, so I led us down there, figuring we'd be able to make it back before it got completely pitch black...
Sunset from the path down to the beach at Eagle's Pt.
Almost to the beach at Eagle's Pt. Beautiful, no?
The waves were coming in strong, and it's very rocky, so it was creating some cool, creepy sea foam.
Ed, pretending he's Neptune, and calling forth the power of the sea.
Suffused with delusions of godhood, Ed catches sight of this dude on the giant boulder, and, in an attempt to prove he has a giant penis, sets out to climb there...
...however, confirming that in fact he has a tiny penis, he wussed out and settled for climbing the knee-high rock.
I, drawing on my vast experience of injury/almost dying in situations involving boulders, climbing, darkness, inappropriate footwear, and the ocean, opted not to make any attempt at all. I think that counts as wisdom.
Although, to be fair, I think if only 4 out of 5 of those factors had been involved, and not *all* 5, I probably would have tried it. Certainly after seeing Ed chicken out.
Sunset from the foamy beach
Of course, by the time we started climbing back up, the sun was already below the horizon, so it was getting dark quickly. And, it turns out that climbing/hiking in the lee of a giant cliff, after sunset, with no sources of light cliffside, is harder than you might think. It was getting pretty hard to see anything by the time we made it back to the car. However, we *did* make it back, just fine. I don't know why anyone was worried. Sheesh.
Of course, the other group had long since finished their errand, and had retired to a pub in the financial district near where we'd decided to meet. So we made our way across town to meet them, and I parked Jill's rental in the garage that I normally use at the office. Then we walked over to the pub and got some drinks, and settled down in the basement to watch the NBA all-star game on TV. Plus, they had a pool table down there, so I played Alison in pool for a while. I'd asked Ed, but he refused to get up while the game was still on; he's not as much of a multitasker as I am.
After a while, we were all starting to fade, so Jill and I lobbied to take our group back to the beachhouse. The other group was going to stay, because some friends of Rose's were about to meet us at the pub. They arrived shortly thereafter, so Ed said, "C'mon... one more drink."
Nothing good ever happens when Ed says that. If I had acquired wisdom about that, I would've ignored him and taken us home. But I didn't.
Consequently, after another round, and some chitchat, we walked back to the garage, arriving at precisely 1105pm. Only to discover that this garage is not open late; in fact, it closes overnight. At 11pm.
The dude was locking up the gate, and I ran up to him saying "wait, our car is in there. It'll only take a second to get it out!"
Dude: "Sorry- the system is shut down." Proceeds to twist the key in the gate lock.
Me: "Wait!! That's a rental, and it has to go to the airport. Here's $40 and the ticket, you can run it through the system tomorrow. Please just let us get the car!"
Dude: "Sorry- I'm late!" Jumps in his waiting car and drives off.
Shit. Shitfuckingfuck.
A quick call to the number on the sign goes to the office of California Parking. Which is not staffed right now. But I can leave a message- they open at 6am. No emergency number is listed on the sign or on the voicemail.
So, a desperate call to Socci, who is driving my car, reveals that they have headed out to drop off Rose's friends before going to the airport to pick up our rental van for the Sonoma trip tomorrow. I explain the situation and Socci swings around a few blocks and meets us on the corner.
The problem is, my Envoy technically seats 5, and with Rose's friends, there's already 7 in the car. Plus, the wayback is loaded full with wineboxes and styrofoam, for the muling back on the airplane of all the wine the NYC crew is going to buy. So we agree that Socci and the gang already in the car will go to drop Rose's friends off, and we'll wait on the corner, which we do.
When Socci and the gang finally return, we proceed to turn my Envoy into a clown car. Socci and J-Rob take the front, Alex has Rose on his lap, I have Jill on my lap, and Jeffrey is wedged in between us on the back seat, and we carve out a cubby of space amongst the boxes and styrofoam in the wayback and stuff Ed & Alison in that. The entire trip to the airport was full of disembodied comments coming from the wayback (disembodied because you literally could not see either of them- they were entirely encased in styrofoam)like "No! Don't lean there!" and "Hey! Slower on the turns!" Fortunately, the airport was only 20 minutes away.
At the airport, we dropped everyone off at the rental place and Jill and I parked my car in long-term parking, so that I'd have a way to get home after Sonoma. The drive back to the beach house was *much* nicer, since we'd rented a 12-person van for the wine country trip.
The next morning, we managed to muster by 9am (nothing motivates this group in the morning like the prospect of imminent drinking), and we headed up to the city to drop off Jill at the parking garage. Fortunately, she was able to retrieve her car without incident, and she headed south to the airport to get herself back to Pennsyltuckey. Tragically, she had to work the next day.
The rest of us headed up to Sonoma, and were there in no time. J-Rob, Alex, and Ed had put together an aggressive lineup of wineries to hit. We were largely going to young, up-and-coming vineyards getting extremely good reviews, and typically specializing in Pinots. We had a lot of wineries on the agenda, but one that *wasn't* on the agenda was a new winery getting a lot of rave reviews: Hanzell.
Most wineries in Napa/Sonoma offer tastings, or tours of the vineyard, or both. The prices for a tasting can range from free (for instance, Rocchioli, which supplies wine to the White House and whose wine club has a 5-year waiting list... their wine is so awesome that as soon as you taste it you just want to buy it in mass quantities, except you can't afford to, and so they don't feel a need to charge for tasting) to a nominal $5 or $10. A few of the most aggressively priced places will go as high as $20 for a tasting.
Hanzell: "We do a tasting and tour of the grounds for a price of $45 per person."
J-Rob (retelling to us): "I was like, 'Are you kidding?'. So I said, 'Um... I don't think we're going to want to do the tour. How much is it just to do the tasting?'"
OK class, it's time to do a negotiating exercise. You have bundled together services A and B at a price of $45, but your set of 8 potential customers has said that they don't want service B, and the price is too high, and has inquired about the price of service A alone. You must choose a negotiating strategy. I'll pause for a moment so you can consider what strategy you'd employ...
(pause)
I think the strategy here is pretty obvious. You've probably already hit upon it yourself. And to their credit, Hanzell also hit upon the obvious negotiation tactic in a situation like this:
condescension.
Hanzell: "Well, we find that people who really *love* wine go on the tour. Because they want to see the grounds, and how the wine is actually made."
J-Rob (retelling to us): "I didn't even know what to say at first. I mean, I wanted to say 'Right- I did hours of research to find this place, got on a fucking plane in the middle of fucking February, and flew all the way across the country to get here, all because I only kinda like wine.'
But I didn't say that.
I said, 'Uh, yeah, we're not going to want to do the tour. Can you give us a price just for the tasting?'"
Hanzell: "Well, I'll have to talk to my manager and call you back."
OK class, you're up again: you went with the obvious strategy and it didn't work. Now you're going to have to actually dig deep and get creative. Fortunately, you've bought yourself some time to do that by saying you'll need to talk to management, who, we can only assume, will draw on their vast well of experience in customer service to help you craft a negotiating position that will lead to the kind of win-win situation that we all aspire to in negotiations. I'll pause for a moment again for you to draw upon your own vast well of customer service experience to come up with your new strategy...
(pause)
Whatever you just chose, it probably isn't as clever as the solution that Hanzell came up with. Their solution has a kind of elegant simplicity to it, an almost Solomonic quality really...
Hanzell: "I talked to my manager. Good news- you can just do the tasting only... for $45 per person."
J-Rob (retelling): "I didn't say anything at first, because I thought she was joking. I mean, I seriously thought she was joking. When I realized she was serious, I took a deep breath and explained that we do this every year, and we typically hit about a dozen wineries, and in our years of doing this, no one has EVER charged more than $20 for a tasting. No one. EVER."
Hanzell: "I'll have to talk to my manager again and call you back."
I'm not even going to bother pausing here, because only an actual genius could come up with what Hanzell came up with, on only the 3rd try:
Hanzell: "OK, you can do the tasting only at half-price: $22.50."
J-Rob (retelling): "OK, that at least seemed like a semi-reasonable offer. It would still be the most we ever paid for a tasting, but whatever. But then I said to her: 'OK, that seems fine, but I just want to make sure you're OK with the fact that although there are 8 people in our party, there will only be 5 tastings, because one of us is driving, and there are 2 couples who share tastings, since we're going to 6 vineyards in one day. Obviously they'll share a glass and you don't need to pour any more than usual- I just want to make sure you're OK with that.'"
Now, sharing tastings is pretty standard stuff, and in fact this is how we've done it every year, at EVERY winery we've ever visited. J-Rob was just being buttoned up about it with Hanzell, since everything they do seems to be unusual. But in fairness to the woman from Hanzell, who must surely have been heady with feelings of genius and self-congratulatory beneficence, this last wrinkle would surely have caught her completely off guard.
Which would explain why she defaulted once again to the obvious negotiating strategy:
condescension.
Hanzell: "Well, it's just that we're really more of a boutique winery, and less of a bar."
J-Rob (retelling): "And that was it for me. I was done. I thanked her for her help, and said we wouldn't be coming. She seemed genuinely surprised. I mean, genuinely SHOCKED that we wouldn't be coming, when they were bending over backwards to be accommodating."
And that's why we didn't end up going to Hanzell. For the record, their wine is supposed to be quite good, even if their customer service strategy isn't. Anyway, if you're unlike we are, and are people who actually *love* wine, you'll take their tour.
We started the day at Rocchioli, where I took down some menu ideas for the dinner party next year from a couple letters on the wall from the White House, which always say what the wine was served with. From there, we went to MacPhail, which was phenomenal. And had excellent customer service. After that, we hit Nalle at some point (pics below), which was not bad, but was not especially good, but we also hit 3 other wineries I think, and it's hard to remember, because I wasn't sharing a tasting (I need Jill to be present next year) and consequently was pretty wrecked by the end of the day.
In fact, I apparently sent texts to Jill throughout the day. Which she transcribed exactly, in order, and included the time stamps, and then sent to me in an email the next day.
eek.
Here they are, copied exactly from Jill's email, which begins: "Here is the wonderfully sweet and hilarious drunken progression of texts from yesterday:
(1:56 PM): babe we just tasted a bunch of fucking phenomenal pinots @an up-and-coming winery & now I'm totally tipsy. we should build a house together, & hv a wine cellar.
(2:48 PM): 3rd winery not as good but I drank everything they gave me & now i'm perilously close to shitfaced. Next plc only 4min away. Wish you were here my love...
(5:18 PM): leaving our 5th winery, for the 6th plc. i am totally shitfaced. thank god socci is driving. I miss you & can't wait to take you here.
(6:08 PM): Now we're leaving the 6th plc. Omg, i am *fucked* *up*. i hope your flights are going well. I miss you so much...
(6:24 PM): we're trying to find dinner now. I'm alive, but fucked up. I miss you so much. i swear I can't drink another drop of wine.
(6:42 PM) we've settled on healdsburg bar & grill for dinner. they use the acronum HBG-it makes me think of you. Oh god I'm drunk & i really want a bacon cheddarburger&you
(9:43 PM) just walkws into the hotel & am going straight to bed. I love you and miss you and will talk to you tomorrow..."
I remember I liked this place. The dude working there was hilarious. Can't remember which winery it was though.
I think this is the same place. Not sure. But it *is* a pretty day...
Uh, a winery. In Sonoma.
A great day for a wine country visit...
Taking a work call while waiting for our last appointment. Although the call actually went very well, in hindsight it was maybe not smart to do that while hammered.
Drinking is hard work.
At our final appointment. What J-Rob clearly needs is another glass of wine.
Honestly, for me the day is pretty much a blank after MacPhail. I remember the bacon cheddarburger at HBG was good though.
Tuesday, we got up early to make an appointment at Freeman, which has an extremely good reputation, and which we all enjoyed, although their wine did not seem as revelatory as we were expecting. Still, we got to have a tour of the Wine Cave, which was pretty neat...
The Wine Cave. Cave vino.
The Freeman wine cave guy. Very nice, very helpful. Jill and I may go and volunteer there this fall to help with the harvest. It could be a blast, and we can learn winemaking operations, in case we should ever retire to a vineyard.
Rose, fast-tracking inebriation, and using the opportunity to cop a feel.
The gang.
Freeman was our 1st stop. Merry Edwards was the 2nd, and was quite good. She's been around a while working for other vineyards, but is relatively new as her own label. But the experience shows through.
After that, I know we hit 5 other wineries. I don't know precisely which ones they are/were, except that I remember we went to Marimar for an excellent tasting/gourmet lunch (which, btw, cost $40... eat that, Hanzell):
Seriously, the meal was *delicious*.
Drinking is very serious business...
unless you're Rose...
and a total lush.
Ed, proud that his people have not been *completely* overshadowed by the French and the Italians.
Rose married a Jew, and hence feels obligated now to eat Christians, preferably babies.
You know what a world-class winery needs most in order to convey that special je-ne-sais-quoi?
Giant fucking dog sculptures.
Rose. 'Nuff said.
Alison, enjoying life.
Ed likes it doggie-style.
Ed, thinking he is Atreyu.
Goodbye, giant dogs. Don't chase after the van...
Once again, it gets pretty blurry after this. And, because I was too wasted the night before to remember to charge my phone, it died halfway through the day, thus mercifully preventing me (mostly) from sending ridiculous texts to Jill. The last one I sent ended with "I koce you," so you can imagine the state I was in.
Don't mind me... I'll just be back here w/ the prosciutto. And the box of raisin nut bran I picked up at the Safeway. b/c nothing cleanses the palette like a combination of prosciutto and raisin nut bran.
By the time we made it back to the city for dinner, which we had at Harris' steakhouse, I was pretty wrecked again, and had had the hiccups for like 3 hours. But dinner was excellent, and I began the process of sobering up. We had a nice long dinner, and then we headed down to the airport. Although the flight ended up delayed, everyone got home OK; the only casualty of the weekend was a bottle of Zinfandel that broke in transit on the plane. A truly tragic event, but hey- we fulfilled the only real goal of the weekend, which was not to have to dial 9-1-1 for any reason.
After all, it's important to have goals...
And nice to achieve them.
