Thoughts on arts, life, and current events

My initial impression of the renovated Park Hyatt was several months back when I met friends for tea.   My lovely White Tea cost $11 which I found not to be too soothing as I had an entire box of White Tea from Safeway in my kitchen cabinet which I had purchased for $3.00 and no amount of adding water to the complicated tea service would lessen my anxiety about the price.  So,  I enjoyed my tea and tried to assuage my guilt complex thinking of the Sherpa who schleeped the tea from the high mountains in Asia which I was now enjoying as I listened to my friends stories about Argentina.  So reluctantly I went to dinner the other evening when invited.

I am so glad that I made this particular dinner party.  First and foremost, Blue Duck Tavern is a restaurant which can best be described as “comfort food for the comfortable.”  We sat at a wooden round table with no linen table cloth.  The beautiful decor and ambience of the restaurant is Vermont/Marthas Vineyard casual.  Americana chic.  The kitchen opens up into the restaurant so you feel like you are at the kitchen table rather than in the dining room.

I can not thank my host enough for one of my most fun and memorable evenings in quite some time.  I told my brother the next day I felt like I had been at the Knights of the Round Table with the literal bounty of food.  All that we missed was some portly jolly fellow in a Renn Faire Costume knawing on a drumstick while enjoying ale from a large tankard and William Hogarth in the corner capturing the grotesque excess of the moment on his easel.

The repast included - oysters, duck, pheasant, steak, polentta with wild mushrooms, crab cakes, stuffing, branizino, chard tart, brussel sprout salad, greens, and copious wines!  The family style passing and tasting made for great fun as everyone loved everything.  No vegetarians were invited.  Absent was pasta, bread, and tomatoes.  This was hearty fare.  Nothing was either vertical nor drizzled.

Having spent Saturday at the Reedville Oyster Festival fund raiser for the Reedville Fisherman’s Museum in a slightly more authentic environment of food preparation - Boy Scouts shoveling oysters onto the fires, volunteers depositing them on large tables with guests donning their own oyster knives and gloves to shuck their own oysters this seemed pratically French by comparison.

Each food item came in its own dish/pan.  Slightly nicer than pyrex the variety of bowls, platters and serving utensils created its own dance of kitchen ware.  I half expected the plates to gracefully do a show stopper off the table like in Beauty In the Beast singing “Be Our Guest!”  The candle light bouncing off the simple crystal glasses and the contrast of the silver, glass, copper, wood made me think Thanksgiving had come early and I was enjoying a repast in a friends home in Vermont where the labradors would soon be getting tasty morsels on the braided rug beneath our slippered feet.  Actually the poor labs would not get a thing in this instance.  There was no fat on the duck, steak, or pheasant.  Actually, there were no left overs what so ever.

In true Elizabethan fashion I would have expected performers to come entertain us as we awaited dessert.  But no we would have to settle with the “passion” play at the table.  Given DC it was the usual restrained ineundo and drama ranging from politics, love affairs, conspiracy theories, and the economy.  Arguments and pithy remarks ran the gamut from unemployment numbers being deflated from their reality, DC real estate still lagging behind NYC (thankfully for now), to more outlandish suggestions such as the conspiracy theory that Obama’s protocol gaffe of bowing to the Emperor and to the King is an intentional sabotage effort of Secretary Clinton’s protocol chief to cost Obama reelection as it offends all Americans, and lastly, that Fred Malik must be sleeping with Sarah Palin as his defense of her book on the news was so totally inexplicable to his friend at our table!  We just had to laugh at these suggestions - I mean have you seen Todd Palin? And, perhaps no previous President that we could recall bowed since they were not that flexible?

Back to the meal - now it was time for dessert - again I found myself momentarily in New England enjoying pumpkin pie, apple pie, fig ice cream and vanilla ice cream.  Big wooden spoons which you had rinsed off after stirring the gravy earlier were now plopping ice cream on my plate.  It was a total fantasy.

Someone at the table said that President Obama loves this restaurant.  I can totally appreciate why after all the meals with proper service thanks to the elegant White House and Blair House staff, proper silver ware, crystal, linens, White House china and small intricately designed beautifully presented morsels this is a meal for a King!

(Photo to be posted later.)

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