Amberjack Sushi
I have fallen into more and more parental traps lately as Vida has started pushing the envelope of various “rules” that I have tried to establish. The most difficult one is trying to keep some semblance of a dinner hour where we eat at the table together. Vida would prefer (and wouldn’t most people) to eat in front of a video instead of her tired mother. She knows I’ll back down, if pushed, just for the sake of getting to eat my own meal in peace. But if I’ve learned anything about parenting it’s that accepting defeat in the moment doesn’t mean you can’t reinvest yourself in what is important to you later--I can lose the battle but win the war. I can’t stand the discipline for discipline’s sake mentality that compels some parents to make small disagreements into major conflicts.
Since Vida first started preschool I got into the habit of bringing her a snack when I picked her up. When I was a kid and had to go to Hebrew School after school my Uncle David would sometimes bring my cousins and I a snack when he picked us up—usually potato sticks. He didn’t do it that often but we loved it when he did—it was the snack and also the idea that he was thinking about us that made it special. I know how good it made me feel and I wanted to give Vida the same feeling. The problem was that if I didn’t bring her a “snack in the car” she would have a fit. Occasionally when I brought something she didn’t like it would also provoke major drama. I tried to explain to her that it made me feel bad when she got expected the treat every day and got upset when there wasn’t anything. Eventually she got it and I can (mostly) pick her up without a snack and without fear. The other day was one of those “snack-less” afternoons and Vida was so patient about it that I thought it would be a good night to go out to eat.
I keep driving home from Vida’s school down Church Street hoping for some kind of restaurant inspiration but the mostly residential neighborhood seems to have maintained more suburban zoning laws than older neighborhoods. I always imagine Church Street as it is in old photos with streetcars traversing what look like dirt roads. Not wanting to miss anything I started at Verona Pizza Restaurant at the very end of Church Street and drove South. I saw a couple of possibilities for Chinese or Thai but decided to put them off since they aren’t Vida’s favorite kind of restaurant. I drove by the restaurant space that used to house the vegetarian restaurant Valentine’s but thought it’s current incarnation might be too challenging. I looked longingly at Incanto, one of my favorite adult restaurants right up there with Delfina. (Vida has actually been to Delfina many times but has slept through most of all her meals there—for some reason the restaurant gods have perpetual mercy on me there.) I remembered a mediocre and over priced meal at Fattoush and a lovely afternoon at Lovejoy’s Tea House. By that point Church Street ran out of restaurants and I circled back to Amberjack Sushi. It always seemed like an upscale sushi place so I have avoided it for a long time but the driving around was testing Vida’s patience so we parked and went in.
Vida’s calm demeanor disappeared as soon as we sat down. Within the first five minutes we had two soy sauce accidents involving about eight napkins. Luckily the place wasn’t too fancy and the servers were nice about picking up after us. The sushi wasn’t exceptional but it was good enough. As soon as it came Vida wanted to take it “to go” but I managed to get her to eat long enough for me to finish my beer. We managed a fairly civilized meal together and I was happy not to be watching Tarzan at the same time.
Restaurant Total: 147
Darla's
The past two months have been so busy with vacations that Vida and I have had barely a chance to go out to dinner here at home. We finally went to Darla’s on Ninth and Irving for hamburgers the other night. The restaurant promotes and lives up to its kid-friendly atmosphere. There is an inexpensive kid’s menu complete with crayon. The food was good but not exceptional. It was really the small touches, the kid’s size lemonade and the sliver of brownie we got with the check that made the place unique. We had been out to eat so many times in the past couple of months that I was exhausted with managing Vida under adult conditions. It’s different when it’s just the two of us and it was a relief to get back to “normal”.
While on vacation in Ashland we ate out every night except for one when we joined the bees in Lithia Park for a picnic. Most of those meals were at old stand-bys. A highlight of the dinner hour was Monet’s Garden, a traditionally French restaurant with an old-school menu in the middle of nowhere. Imaginative play is where its at in Vida’s world so for almost every meal we were accompanied by the two inch baby doll and/or a couple of the horses. Vida definitely preferred the meals with the baby and without the bugs.
When we were getting ready for our trip to Lake Chelan and Soap Lake, WA Vida kept asking if there were bugs there. I tried to reassure her without promising that there wouldn’t be any bugs. She was particularly worried about Soap Lake and I was too since I remember it most as a place infested with sand flies and bees. The refrain for most of the early part of the trip was whether there were bugs at “Snowflake”. She said “Snowflake” so often that I came to prefer it. It became kind of a mental antidote to some not so sunny memories of visits to my Uncle Sam’s ranch. As an adult, particularly when I went with friends, I loved visiting the ranch. My tyrannical uncle was no longer there to control every moment of our visit and we got to stay in the fabulous Notaras Lodge. The remnants of his crazy lifestyle, dozens of rusted vehicles of all sorts from mail trucks to farm equipment and rejected household appliances created an interestingly picturesque junkyard. We scavenged the property for forgotten treasures in sheds, houses and silos trying to capture what was best about the ranch and bring it home to remember it by.
There was something about bringing Vida there that made me think I was done with the place. Over the years it has been cleared of many of its “charms”—the property has been cleaned of the vehicles and appliances except for a few kept around as talismans of the past. The empty houses have other people’s junk in them. So with nothing much to look at except the view—which no doubt is exceptional—and the orchards which are so polluted with pesticides and fertilizers that I really can’t eat without guilt, I started to feel like I did when I was a kid and there was nothing to do except wander around waiting for Uncle Sam to do something you didn’t want to do anyway. We would go on what I considered terrifying jeep rides down pitted roads and sit for endless photo sessions and otherwise listen to him yell or needle everyone around him. The moments of pleasure like inner-tubing down the irrigation ditch were few and far between. It was always one long weekend of obligation, bugs and incessant heat. But as ridiculous as all that was, it was at least interesting.
There isn’t much left to impress upon Vida since she will never know how it was except through stories. I guess what irritates me the most is how living in this beautiful place never inspired Uncle Sam to make it pleasant. While he preferred rustic authenticity I can’t get comfortable in a house so dirty you want to be able to float through and not actually touch anything. It’s not like camping because the façade of human habitation lures you in—but you definitely don’t want to stay. I’m glad Vida had a chance to visit “Snowflake” and I hope she takes me there some time.
Restaurant Total: 141
