after dinner sneeze

t says: Today’s my dad’s birthday!  Happy Birthday!

t says: a and I went to Vinitaly at the Union League this past Wednesday. It was quite fun. Basically, jam a lot of people into two rooms with food and wine and this is what you get! Some notes/observations:

1) Union League requires jacket and tie. Whoa. Crazy! It’s one of those places that I doubt I’ll ever see the inside of again. There is, however, a restaurant in there … but I’ve never heard of it. It must be a secret Union League restaurant.

2) Going to Vinitaly is tough when you can’t speak Italian. That would have been useful. A lot of the producers were real Italians, so communication was sometimes hindered.

3) A lot of people in a small place … yea, it was very warm in there. It did cool off as people cleared out, but I was sweating up a storm in the beginning!

4) There were a lot of wines that you don’t hear a whole lot of in your basic liquor stores. I’d venture to say that the more recognizable wines like Chiantis, Barolo/Barbaresco, Brunello di Montalcino were the minority – but that made it fun because I never quite knew what to expect with any given wine. There was a substantial amount of bubbly there – g would have liked it a lot! (however, she would have hated how crowded it was).

5) We met some of the owners of a restaurant called Avril in Bala Cynwyd. a then attempted to excuse our ignorance of Avril by saying that we lived in Philadelphia, and not “the ‘burbs”. They attempted to claim that Bala Cynwyd is not a suburb of Philly. I decided to not help a at all – it was a fun conversation to watch.

6) The food featured your run-of-the-mill pastas (gnocchi in tomato sauce, rigatoni bolognese). It was good because I still believe that Italian wines are food wines, and the ones I tasted were consistent with this idea. There were some cheeses and antipasti (I think), but by the time we got there, they had been completely devoured.

Overall, it was a fun time. It was made especially awesome because it was free (CSW hook-ups). Next time, we’ll bring the girls with us …

t says: Jose Garces’s new venture in the Cira Center (that big glass thing with lights near 30th street station) JG Domestic is opening on 10/15.  g and I have scored reservations to dine there that very night!  The question is … should we actually go?  On one hand, it’s opening night – maybe Jose will be there!  On the other hand … it’s opening night …  so there’s a risk that they haven’t worked out all of the kinks with service and food.  Maybe they’ll need to suffer some growing pains first?  What do you think?

EDIT:  So – the result of the poll: 6 say go, 1 say go if not busy doing something else.  No one says hold off ’til later.  So that’s that – we’re going!  I wonder if g will use her chef-dar and see Jose?

t says: Philadelphia Weekly went to C19 (like we did) and had a shockingly similar experience!  See?  We’re not crazy!