6 posts from February 2007

I like Peter King pretty well as far as sportswriters go, but you have to wonder about a guy who goes on vacation in Europe and hits the local Starbucks (skip to the last page) in every port of call. This is a guy who bills himself as a "coffee nerd". In his dreams, perhaps.

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?
Submitted by J.T.

I'd choose to be able to learn more quickly and to remember everything I learn.  A trivia and pedantry-oriented super power.

Last night on Lost, the evil Mr. Widmore taunted Desmond with a drink of 60 year old whisky, telling him that one sip cost more than Desmond could make in a month. So I wondered, is old whisky really quite that expensive? The answer is that it's probably not that expensive, but it's pretty darn expensive. We turn to the Macallan vintages FAQ:

Some of these Macallan vintages seem very expensive compared with vintage releases from other distilleries; why?
The prices charged for these Macallan vintages reflect both their scarcity and the vintage year in which they were distilled. They also reflect the extraordinary prestige of The Macallan, which is regarded around the world as one of the greatest single malts. It has been referred to as, "The Petrus of the whisky world", "the Dom Perignon of Scotch" among other and many great accolades.

Will these vintages appreciate in value?
You have to be cautious with any prediction of future value, but it is true to say that The Macallan is regarded as the most collectable of all single malts, and that bottles at auction have seen a steady appreciation in value over the years. For example, a Macallan bottled for the Royal Marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981 was then retailed for £40. It now fetches £350 at auction. A bottle of The Macallan 1926 (bottled in 1986 as a 60 yo) sold for £6,375 at auction in 1991; in May 2002, another bottle of 1926 achieved the world record price for a bottle of single malt, £20,150!

You can purchase a bottle of Macallan 30 year old for £295.00.

The other question you have to ask is whether Macallan 1926 is any good?  Whisky magazine says it's good, but at those prices I'd expect something life changing. 

This post brought to you by a Google search for "whisky 60 year old".

Being a bit at a loss for where to eat dinner tonight, I suggested that we try South, a new restaurant in Raleigh from the Urban Food Group. I read today at Raleighing that tonight was the grand opening, and trying something new sounded fun. South is an upscale restaurant that offers traditional southern food. It replaces another restaurant with the same concept in the same location, called Savannah. I never ate at Savannah, which closed within a year of opening. Obviously Stacey and Kevin Jennings, the owners, are betting that the problem with Savannah was the execution.

I was well aware of the risks of visiting a restaurant on the first day, but the other restaurants under the same ownership are excellently run, so we went for it. As it turns out, in spite of the Raleighing publicity, the restaurant was nearly empty. There was a good crowd at the bar, but there were only two other tables of customers in the dining room. I'm pretty sure the waitstaff outnumbered the customers, but they didn't make the common mistake of smothering us (or the other tables) with excessive service. The food arrived hot and in a timely fashion, the service was great, and the decor is tasteful and appealing.

The menu at South features the sorts of favorites you'd expect at a southern restaurant in North Carolina. She-crab soup and fried green tomatoes were on the appetizers list, and the dinner menu featured fried chicken, fried catfish, shrimp and grits, and frogmore stew. Even the bread basket is southern-themed. It comes with hush puppies, bacon cheddar biscuits, and beer bread. The hush puppies and bread were fine, and the biscuits are on the light and fluffy side and very good.

My wife ordered the she-crab soup as an appetizer. It's one of those things she has whenever it's on the menu, and to me, this version (which also featured something biscuit-like submerged in it) was better than most. It was a bit lighter than you find in some places, but the flavors were also a bit bolder and richer. There was also plenty of crab meat in it, which is not always the case.

For dinner, my wife ordered the fried chicken and I ordered country fried steak. (I grew up in Texas and consider myself an authority on country, or as we call it in Texas, chicken fried steak. My tastes have expanded, but I still have a weakness for it.)  The chicken fried steak at South is outstanding. Normally chicken fried steak is a cheap piece of meat, pounded into submission, dredged in flour and shallow fried. The usually accompaniment is bland cream gravy. That may sound unappealing, but I love it. South puts a fine dining spin on the traditional southern dish, so the meat was a nicer cut, still tenderized, and the gravy was something browner and fancier than you usually find. To make this short, the steak was great. It was very well seasoned, the crust was perfect, and the gravy was tasty.  I couldn't tell you what seasonings were added to the steak, but I found the flavor surprising. The sides were mac and cheese (decent enough) and collard greens (excellent). I'd order it again.

I also tried my wife's fried chicken, which I'd also order in a heartbeat. The chicken was perfectly fried, and the flavors were more interesting than you'd expect. The sides were creamed spinach (incredibly rich) and mashed potatoes (well executed).

The entrees were filling, so we skipped dessert. That said, I'm anxious to go back and try their blackberry cobbler. They also have something called a pimento cheese beignet on the appetizer list that I'm anxious to try.

Hopefully as word gets around about South, business will pick up, and the owners will be vindicated in their belief that such a restaurant can work in that location. They won at least one regular customer on opening day.

People magazine shuffles through a bunch of candids and picks out items you've been photographed wearing three times, then whips up a feature called I Really Love My. If someone took my picture every day, they could easily come up with a page for every item in my wardrobe. There are shoes I've worn hundreds of times, and the sky's the limit on belt reuse. Half of the people in the feature are busted for using the same purse. Many normal people use the same purse every day for years. I can't imagine living under that kind of scrutiny and not being driven completely insane.

Peyton Manning and Prince were both so good in the Super Bowl yesterday that I think it made people forget how hard their jobs are. People are complaining that Manning was good rather than great, but I think that they are judging by clear, sunny day standards, rather than playing in a driving rain standards. Prince didn't help the players out at all in that regard. If the halftime show had been horrible due to the inclement weather, people probably would have been more impressed with how hard it is to play in that kind of rain. But Prince was great, just wailing on the electric guitar, standing in a rainstorm. Sometimes people are undermined by their own greatness.