In Which I Do a Lot of Things

R. and I went to Domaine Drouhin (I’d made a reservation the night before) to do some wine tasting. We bought some for SIL, since she’s asked. We ordered more for ourselves, to be shipped in the fall. On their recommendation, we had lunch at Trellis. It was excellent, altho we froze to death, because the AC is working to keep the wine cool and the wall of wine is close to the kitchen. We then went to Woodshed (also recommend by our host at DD), which was hilarious and awesome.

I’ve told this story so many times, I’ve probably also blogged it, but here it is again. Some time in the early 2000s or possibly 1999(pre 2003) I went to the Palace Kitchen and ordered the house red. It was the best wine I’d ever had, so I asked what it was, and they told me and suggested I go down to Willamette Valley and visit Tony. At the time, they did not have a tasting room (that was built later), but it was at the same place that R. and I went today. The view is just as great as ever. Anyway, Tony was awesome and I bought some wine, and then I went over to a place that had a restaurant and a tasting bar where you could try a lot of the smaller makers (doesn’t exist any more as near as I can tell). A lot of the smaller makers. I was young and stupid and did not know you weren’t supposed to just keep tasting. I was picking as I went so I wasn’t trying to keep straight which one tasted like what (impossible past the first dozen in a sitting, imo) and I was not swallowing anything at all so I wasn’t getting drunk or losing the ability to taste. But by the time I was done, I’d bought a few hundred dollars worth of wine and when I had lunch, I was a hard no on wine pairing and only wanted iced tea with my salad. I told this story at dinner to SIL, saying, “a lot of wine”, and she asked how many different wines and I lowballed as hard as I thought I could get away with and said (30-50) (it was over 50 and not by a little). She was surprised and said, oh, I thought maybe more like 15. And I was like, we had 16 today, because we had 6 at each winery and R. got a flight of 4 at Trellis (this was an error, because those were 2 oz pours).

We had dinner with SIL at Screen Door. This is a southern restaurant that I’d worried about whether I could eat, but the online menu had vegan cole slaw and bean fritters, which were both excellent. A. was fine — they had chicken and waffles. But R. was kinda screwed; they marinade the fish in garlic. What the actual fuck. Also, they were the most rude restaurant I’ve encountered in a very long time. We walked in and were actively ignored. Apparently they were full, and they thought they had seated everyone; I later checked messages and saw that we had one from SIL who told us where she was seated. But I’d been driving, and I don’t walk into a restaurant staring at my phone if I can help it. No worries, I was patient, but when R. explained his allium thing — which we know is a problem, but which restaurants consistently work very hard and patiently with us on — and the response was, well, that’s not going to work here. It was fine — the chicken tenders apparently don’t have much if any allium, so I don’t know why the rude? They had an easy solution? I hesitate to say, Never Go There, because the cole slaw was good and the bean fritters were really excellent. On the other hand, there’s a lot of great food and good service in Portland so nearly anywhere else, IMO.