Toast of Troy

From the Food Vault Dept.: A piece I wrote just last summer, celebrating a trendy place in trendy Troy, NY, yet it’s a place with none of the haughtiness you might expect. Especially if you’ve spent time in Brooklyn.

                                                                                          

DON’T LET THE NAME OF THE PLACE FOOL YOU: it’s a Troy homage. “Most people don’t know that the name comes from the longest-running business in this building,” says Felicity Jones. “Superior Merchandise was a novelty toy shop in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.”

Felicity Jones, Mike Romig, and
Matthew Loiacono.
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

It’s a storefront at 147 4th Street in Troy, and Jones co-owns building and business with Mike Romig. “We found an ad for the old Superior Merchandise in a Troy Record,” he adds. “The place was selling mood rings and mood earrings and mood necklaces.”

“And they had things like whoopee cushions,” Jones throws in. She was a freelance graphic designer before tackling this retail project four years ago, and brings her design sense to the clean, colorful look of the place, where handsome, hand-picked items await your scrutiny.

Jones describes them as “everyday objects that are useful, beautiful, and super-well designed. To make your everyday experiences more special. We have scissors, toothbrushes, pens – simple objects you use all the time, but you won’t find in the regular stores. Ninety percent of the things are from individual artists and makers that I personally want to support.”

Crossing that Bridge

I WON’T BE WATCHING THE OSCARS, but I usually don’t. A long-ago trauma put me off the show, which is really a case of blaming a blameless entity for my own shortcomings. That the incident took place in 1975 only proves how pathetically long I hang onto such things. I was in my first (and final) year of college, an arts school near White Plains, and had been persuaded by a new-found friend named Rick to join him in Manhattan for an Oscars-viewing party during which I'd also be able to show off my bridge-playing prowess, he said.

Ely Culbertson

My parents played bridge. It was a ritual I witnessed from earliest childhood, when they’d click down the legs of the table thus intended and sit with another couple – the cast changed over time – to commence the bidding and playing and smoking and drinking. It seemed to be a very dull game, the most attractive feature of which was the fan of cards each player held, arranged by suit and rank (the cards, not the players, although now that I think of it I can’t be sure).

Although my mother tried to teach me the game, it wasn’t until late in high school that a few of us discovered the shift from poker to bridge, bringing a lot more skill into play. Now it became something filled with high emotion and attendant swearing, which made it much more appealing. And so I sought to pursue this interest in college, and ended up meeting those players in Manhattan.

Jumps in the Mouth

From the Food Vault Dept.: There’s a small eatery on Schenectady’s Erie Boulevard that for many years – at least through much of the 1980s – was an Irish pub called, amusingly, the Electric Grinch, thus saluting the mammoth edifice of General Electric that hovered a couple of blocks away. Then it went into a series of changes through a series of owners, who fought a series of indignities like tax problems. My first visit to the place as a restaurant reviewer was in 1990, as I made my return to that chair after a year-long hiatus. I was quite the enthusiast, wasn’t I?

                                                                                                        

SOME LOCATIONS SEEM MADE TO ORDER for a good restaurant business, and Schenectady’s Erie Boulevard, guarded by GE at each end, is a natural. But such businesses have come and gone over the years, struggling to survive when they should be in the punk.

Somebody else's saltimbocca

Saluti has been there for the better part of two years now, offering a menu of Italian specialties that nicely complements the many other Italian restaurants in this city. I haven’t toured the others in a while, but the food at Saluti’s may come dangerously close to being the best of them all.

It’s a place with a split personality, which probably helps it endure. On the one hand, it’s very much a bar, with a large, loud TV dominating the bar area. On the other hand, it’s a restaurant with an elegant menu. Bar and dining room are separated by sweeping brick archways. The room has fewer than a dozen tables. If you’re more comfortable at the bar, you can have your dinner served there.

Tech It and Like It

From the Vault Dept.: Here’s one of the most unusual (for me) pieces I’ve cranked out over the years. Many years ago, a friend had taken a job editing a magazine specific to the pharmacy industry, and asked if I’d write about the pharmacy technicians. This I did, and at a decent rate of pay. There remains debate about this profession, so don’t take this as an endorsement. It’s more of a study in how much detail I can absorb, write about, and then forget.

                                                                                                                                                  

WE TAKE THOSE DIPLOMAS on the wall for granted, but for many years there has been no diploma for the person who works alongside a licensed pharmacist. The personnel cutbacks that some forms of managed care have led to, especially in chain drug stores, is prompting increased use of that unlicensed pill counter, the pharmacy technician. Giving new life to an old fear that techs could cost credentialed – and therefore costlier – pharmacists their jobs. Even worse is the fear that techs, let loose upon hospital corridors, could dispense the wrong medication altogether. Stories of just that kind of incident persist, although in each case responsibility ultimately falls to a pharmacist. Still, it's easy to point an accusatory finger at a technician.

"You’re always going to hear those anecdotal things," says Patricia Harris, executive director of the California State Board of Pharmacy, "and pharmacists are always going to lose jobs if they’re not capable, and then they’ll blame anyone and anything." Harris oversees a system that includes statewide registration of technicians, "but it’s not competency-based. We’re having an informational hearing at an upcoming board meeting on the issue of certification, to try to figure out where we stand on that process."

Into the ’Wood

From the Food Vault Dept.: I lunched at the Redwood Diner not long ago and am happy to report that it just as accommodating as it was when I wrote this piece seven years ago.

                                                                                          　

IT WAS MY FIRST-EVER VISIT to this longstanding restaurant, and I felt as if I’d walked into somebody else’s house. Somebody very gracious, someone who’d been expecting me – but someone with a large, extended family who were enjoying the already-in-progress party.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

"We’ve been here 33 years," says Gloria Adrikopoulos, who owns the Redwood Diner with her husband, Peter. "We have a lot of friends in the neighborhood."

I’m shocked to realize that I’ve been in this area for most of those years, yet never stopped in before. Now, as a result of that visit, I will be stopping in again. I’ve been adopted. Along with my family.

This friendliness is a little surprising. Or, to put it a more honest way, I’m instantly suspicious of such quick friendliness from anyone. I fear that the person is about to pitch Herbalife, or is simply insane.

Do You See What I See?

WENDELL BERRY HAS BEEN THE CONSCIENCE of rural America for several decades, presenting a cohesive, considered response to the over-industrialization of our lives. He has done so through his essays, novels, and poetry, while living a life as a Kentucky farmer with a deep connection to the land that allows him to put his beliefs into practice.

In the fall of 2016, Wendell Berry and his colleague Wes Jackson delivered the annual E.F. Schumacher lecture at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington, the cultural heart of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Their analysis of our perilous state was provocative.”What screwed us up,” Berry said, “was oceanic navigation, because it taught us to think that if we didn’t have it here we could get it somewhere else.”  Commitment to a community and a place is necessary in Jackson’s words “for affection to grow and intelligent action to take place to address what is needed in a community.”

This 2016 appearance in the Berkshires raised expectations for a long-awaited documentary devoted to Wendell Berry: “Look & See, A Portrait of Wendell Berry,” from executive producers Robert Redford and Terrence Malick. Retitled from “The Seer” because Berry expressed misgivings about being identified in the office of prophet, it was anticipated that the film would provide a means for introducing Berry to a much wider audience than his many admirers.

A Marvelous Party

From the CD Shelf Dept.: The admirable show- and movie-centric label DRG reissued a pair of Noël Coward albums back in 2003 – albums originally recorded in the 1950s and released on Columbia, but, as I wrote below, there was more to be heard, and it finally was here.

                                                                                          

COVER ART ALONE attests to the journey these recordings have taken. Originally issued in the mid 1950s as two LPs, the first cover featured a suave, teacup-wielding Noël Coward on the Las Vegas desert; the second, created in the wake of the other’s success, relocates that image to Manhattan. Columbia later LP-issued the two as a gatefold set, with an older Coward pictured at “Firefly,” his Jamaica home; the first CD issue improbably pictured the 30s-era Coward.

The already truncated program was further shortened for a single CD. DRG now has issued the program on two CDs, both brief, with the original covers, and for the first time we’re able to hear the Las Vegas program as it was originally performed. Turns out the intro was faked and some of the songs were cut. DRG sent its engineers to the original tapes, and they’ve included all available material. Also, you’re finally hearing the whole thing in as decent sound as was possible to achieve.

As a studio recording, the NewYork set was as good as you’d get in the mid-50s, although it’s characteristically Columbia high-end harsh. The muddier Vegas recording requires a few moments of ear adjustment.

Happy Heifetz's Birthday

This blog would like to take a moment to salute the 117th or 118th (there is a small, flickering dispute out there) birthday of Jascha Heifetz. YouTube has become crowded with opportunities to see and hear him play, but how about some Paganini?

A Tangled Web

From the Smut Vault Dept.: Back in the glory days of the internet’s infancy, I wrote a computer-information column for a magazine called D-Cup, the thrust of which needs no explanation. Under the moniker “Dr. Barry Tetons,” I guided the lusty wayfarer to where the red lights shone on the information highway. This was my debut piece, from late 1995. Unlike my readers, it couldn’t be more dated. (Here's another such piece, and another.)

                                                                                       

YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT THE INTERNET. You may even know that its most passionate users are also passionate about a free exchange of ideas. What you may not know is that large-breasted, beautiful women are among those ideas, and just in case you don’t get the idea, you can get the picture – a full color, let’s-leave-nothing-to-the-imagination picture, that is.

Let me be your guide. I’ve been working with computers for a decade, and if there’s smut to be seen on the screen, I’ve seen it. I’ve taught computer beginners in classrooms but that’s far too polite and forces me to leave out the good parts. The good parts I’m going to help you find every month as we explore together.

All you need is a good computer, the right software, and a little know-how. Let’s talk first about your hardware. I’ll show you mine: it’s an IBM clone, based on a 486 processing chip. It’s got 8 megabytes of memory, and a good color monitor. That’s the basic stuff to run Microsoft Windows, and the easiest way for us peeping Toms to find our thrills is to look through Windows. You can find a system like this for well under a thousand bucks.

What You Pay For

From the Back of the Fridge Dept.: Back when I was reviewing restaurants for Albany’s Metroland magazine, we enacted a policy whereby we didn’t bother with the chain eateries. My long-ago visit to a brand-new Olive Garden, reviewed below, was one of the reasons. (But they showed up in a more recent piece about food-delivery innovations.)

                                                                                              

We showed up on a Saturday afternoon at quarter to five. The parking lot was packed; people waited on benches, at the bar and in a straggly line that stretched to the door. We had an event to get to and couldn’t wait. We returned at 10:30, a half hour before dinner service stops. The place was still pretty full but – except for us – it was by now exhaling customers.

The Olive Garden, which arrived in late November, is clearly a hit. And why shouldn’t it be? Under the guise of offering Italian fare, it serves the same kind of bland but over-salted cuisine that too much of America microwaves at home in the pursuit of dinner.

In other words, don’t look for fine dining here. Don’t even look for the kind of cooking that makes your neighborhood Italian eatery special. It’s assembly-line stuff. Some of it is amusingly non-Italian, like the “Italian Scallion,” a mass of fried onion pieces. Then there are items with Italian roots given an Olive Garden conversion into bar food, like the fried ravioli and mozzarella wedges that join stuffed mushrooms and fried zucchini in the Italian Sampler.

Great Vibes

From the Vault Dept.: I treasured the six-record set of Lionel Hampton’s small-group recordings that was issued in the waning days of the LP era, so it was a thrill to see these sides (and more) get the Mosaic Records treatment in the deluxe five-CD set that I reviewed below. But Mosaic licenses limited-issue releases of these sets, and the 5,000 copies of the Hampton set have long since sold out.

                                                                               

VIBRAPHONIST LIONEL HAMPTON became a sudden star in 1936 when Benny Goodman featured him in a quartet. Soon after that, Victor Records invited Hampton to record a small-group session under his own name, so Hampton brought a bunch of Goodman bandmembers into the studio and laid down four memorable tracks. A phenomenon was born.

It was hot, joyous and relatively short-lived. Twenty-three sessions over the next four years yielded about four tunes apiece. In terms of jazz interest, some are more successful than others, but even the most negligible of them are still entertaining. And the peaks are impressive indeed.

Much of the material was collected late in the LP days, but only sporadic CD issues have seen light of day. Mosaic Records’s new five-CD set collects the totality of those Hampton session, and with that company’s trademark thoroughness presents superior transfers of the original material along with all known alternate takes.

Personnel also were drawn from the bands of Duke Ellington, Stuff Smith, Count Basie and others, which benefitted from having players already accustomed to working together. Sessions in April 1937, for example, featured Ellington sideman Johnny Hodges, whose “On the Sunny Side of the Street” became a hit and has endured as a classic.

A Paradise of Borodin

From the Classical Vault Dept.: Speaking of Borodin, I found an eleven-year-old review I wrote of the Albany Symphony in which that composer’s “Polovetsian Dances” were featured – and I resisted pointing out that said dances supplied the tune for the song “Stranger in Paradise.” Despite weakening in this wise, I shall continue to resist where it matters.

                                                                                              

“A NIGHT IN OLD RUSSIA” almost certainly means a night with dsypeptic old Tchaikovsky – which can be a tuneful but melancholy visit. In his Symphony No. 4 and “1812 Overture,” however, the composer leaned, if not toward happiness, at least to states of exuberant excess.

Alexander Borodin

As performed by the Albany Symphony Orchestra last Saturday at Albany’s Palace Theatre, these warhorses sounded dynamic and fresh, and had the added bonus of a chorus in the “1812,” showcasing the distinguished sound of Albany Pro Musica.

It’s an excellent idea, combining the city’s premiere orchestra and chorus, and this time the result gave us the distinctive sound of Russian song, a flavor that pervades instrumental music of the period, but flowers to life when the human voice is included.

The first half gave us orchestra alone, beginning with the Tchaikovsky symphony. Completed in 1878, it’s a big, brassy, sometimes capricious work that nevertheless inspired the NY Post reviewer, at its 1890 U.S. premiere, to term it “one of the most ... semi-barbaric compositions ever heard in this city.”

Today it’s a work in danger of being overplayed, but ASO music director David Alan Miller made the most of its “barbarism” even as he satisfied the work’s more tender aspects. Like any good symphonic work, the piece is a journey, heralded by what the composer termed the call of Fate, realized in the brass section’s dotted-note anthem.

The Amateur Photograph

Guest Blogger Dept.: Let's revisit the poetry of P.G. Wodehouse, with an piece from 1901 that reminds us how little has changed.

                                                                               

P.G. Wodehouse

The eye is the eye of a forger,

The brow is the brow of a thief,

        The mouth and the nose

        Alike disclose

A wickedness past belief.

‘Tis a visage that proves its owner

A man of the basest stamp,

        I haven't a doubt

        That he rides about

At nights without a lamp,

Or travels without a ticket,

Or visits music halls;

        His expression shows

        That he often goes

To Covent Garden balls.

And – but what is that you are saying?

Ah, horror! Can it be

        That this shocking disgrace,

        With its Hooligan face,

Is an excellent likeness of me!

-- P.G. Wodehouse, Fun Magazine, 2 March 1901

Russian to the Finish

From the Vault Dept.: Having seen this ensemble perform in Troy, NY – and, as you’ll read below, having been very impressed – I was pleased to be asked a few months later to write liner notes for their Dorian recording of Borodin string quartets, which you can read here.

                                                                                            

THE TONE OF A STRING QUARTET CONCERT is set by the opening notes. Whatever the mood or dynamics of the first piece, you’ll get a sense of the ensemble’s surety. The beginning of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 4 has a passage in which the first and second violins are in unison, an octave apart; shortly after that, there’s a sequence of call and response. Those were enough to tell us that this group had matters like intonation and vibrato and dynamics nailed. There would be no technical problems. This was a group in complete control.

Recording the St. Petersburg Quartet in Troy, NY
6 June 2001 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Beethoven’s Quartet No. 4 is in C minor, the key of the fifth symphony and the Pathétique sonata, and it shares a sense of defiance well articulated by the musicians. It’s also got early examples of Beethovenian quirkiness, as in the second movement, a scherzo that takes the place of something slow. It’s witty and gentle, and packs a nice joke toward the movement’s end when the cello fails to enter when you’d expect it. The third movement minuet moves us into an insistent, gypsy-like finale with lots of bounce, all of it giving the group plenty of easily bested challenges.

Their interpretation packed a lot more variety than I’m used to hearing from, say, the Guarneri or Alban Berg Quartets; some of the phrases were crafted with a little hesitation here and there, which actually proved refreshing to my ears.

The Q is Capital

From the Smoker Dept.: The reason I no longer get out to barbecue joints these days is because I’ve got my own smoker going in the backyard often enough to keep me contented. But I’m delighted to see that Capital Q, reviewed below a decade ago, is still going strong. All that seems to have changed is the pricing.

                                                                                              

THE BARBECUE REVOLUTION CONTINUES. We of the innocent northeast grew up believing that barbecue was a verb, an activity that took place over a grill fired by fluid-impregnated charcoal briquets (developed by Henry Ford as a byproduct of Model T production). Alongside the endless parade of burgers and wieners appeared chicken parts, slathered in sweet sauces, and ribs of pork or beef. With the proper know-how, you can grill chicken and ribs into excellent meatstuffs. But it’s not, applying the word as a noun now, barbecue.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Sample the pulled pork at Capital Q Smokehouse for a taste of the real thing. This is meat as tender as it can get, yanked off the pork shoulder (in butcher’s parlance, the butt), served with or without some manner of sauce. Its tenderness comes from many lingering hours over not-too-hot woodsmoke, enough time to require day-in-advance preparation. When your local barbecue joint confesses that it’s out of this or that meat, it’s another sign that they’re making the real thing.

Such was not a problem the day we visited Capital Q Smokehouse, the little eatery in the Ontario St. space once occupied by Emil Meister’s Market. There were ribs, there was brisket, there was pulled pork. And there was a parade of tasty side dishes to round out the meal, all of it fulfilling a dream of chef-owner Sean Custer.

Sparkling Solutions

From the Wine Cellar Dept.: I attended and wrote about the Albany American Wine Festival for several years – here’s one such account – and for its 1998 edition (one of the last), I interviewed Joy Sterling, part of the family that owns and operates Iron Horse, a winery in California’s Sonoma Valley. (Here’s a piece about a visit to the winery in 1989.)

                                                                                             

THERE ARE MANY GOOD REASONS for sampling wine at an event like the Desmond’s Twelfth Annual Albany American Wine Festival, which takes place in two weeks. We’ve recently learned that wine is good for the heart and good for the eyes. We’ve long known that it’s good for the sense of well-being. Nothing sets off good food better than good wine. In short, it adds sparkle to life.

Joy Sterling

But add a little sparkle to the wine and you’ve got the makings of a celebration. Champagne is the beverage of the best parties, whether you’re celebrating a wedding with many, an anniversary with another, or the turn of the year with half the world. With the turn of the millennium approaching, champagne consumption is expected to soar. But, in the opinion of Iron Horse Winery’s Joy Sterling, “There won’t be enough.”

She’s talking about the good stuff, vintage wine made from a single year’s harvest and fermented the old-fashioned way, as opposed to cheap plonk that’s more or less carbonated. “Anybody who’s buying non-vintage French champagne is making a mistake,” she says, “when you can buy vintage California sparkling wine for the same price. Being a particular vintage makes a difference – it affects how long the wine is aged on the yeast, and results in a richer, creamier, smoother finish.”

Another Orbit

NEARLY A HALF-CENTURY AGO, I celebrated the turn of the year (and a turn of the decade) with a trio of friends and a pair of boxes of pizza, which I lazily left in those boxes when I put them into the oven to reheat. We were at the home of one of those friends, and his parents had thoughtfully repaired to an upstairs room before the clock struck twelve.

Did they smell the smoldering cardboard? We didn’t. It wasn’t until I fetched the pies that I saw the blackened containers dropping ash on top of the pepperoni and cheese. Did that stop us from consuming the stuff? It didn’t.

In fact, it seemed like an appropriate way to kiss off the ’60s, which we, in our mid-teens, barely had the chance to enjoy. We’d do better in the ‘70s, when (at least) we’d all get laid.

Those New Year’s celebrations would continue to accumulate, of course, in a variety of forms for me. One of them found me stuck in a snowdrift with a friend whose antique Imperial met its match in some snowy Connecticut back roads. I spent many of them in restaurants as a waiter or chef, pouring champagne or banging on kitchen pots as the calendar flipped. That was work under battle conditions, and you bonded closely with your fellows.

Nina

Here's a peek -- shot during a very casual rehearsal -- at what'll be on tap when Malcolm Kogut and I bring our cabaret show to Steamer No. 10 Theatre (500 Western Ave., Albany, NY) at 7 PM on New Year's Eve.

Good Sports

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s nice to report that Maggie’s Café and Sports Grill is still going strong. It’s not a place I’d visit regularly – I have trouble when so many TV screens surround me – but I paid a pleasant visit a decade ago, as the report below attests.

                                                                                             

AS THE COWBOYS AND THE PACKERS TOOK to the field, a roar went up from the throng. “I can’t believe how many people are here tonight,” said Maggie Smith, whose eponymous café recently reopened, after a ten-month hiatus, as a sports pub. “This is my busiest night in a long time!”

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Formerly an Italian restaurant, Maggie’s suffered a fire last November – “Just as I was about to do all my Christmas parties,” she laments – and had to undergo extensive renovations. During this period, she decided to change the style of the place.

“People don’t want to pay too much for food,” she reasons. “Not with gas prices and other expenses being what they are.” And so she changed the layout, the look, the menu. All pretense of fanciness was dropped, pub fare moved to the fore, and TVs went in. Lots of them. Eighteen jumbo-sized high-definition screens, surrounding you with a numbing area of visuals and sound, typically tuned to any number of simultaneous sporting events.

Staying on Your Toes

From the Vault Dept.: This year, the Albany Berkshire Ballet gave its 43rd annual tour of “The Nutcracker,” which played at The Egg in Albany on Dec. 9 and had performances as far afield as Pittsfield and Springfield, Mass., and Burlington, Vermont. Here’s my review of what came to Proctors in Schenectady 30 years ago.

                                                                                    

ISN'T IT ASTONISHING how far-fetched a plot can be and still convey a spirit of Christmas? “The Nutcracker” is downright absurd, wandering as it does through fantasy into sci-fi, going from simple anthropomorphism into a snowbound ethnic pageant.

A more recent "Nutcracker" photo
from Albany Berkshire Ballet

Yet there’s magic in the ballet yet, as was evidenced by the Berkshire Ballet’s production yesterday afternoon (and evening) at Proctor’s Theatre. Princes and queens, fairies and angels and a swarm of children took to the stage to present the tale of the little girl who saves her Christmas nutcracker from destruction by a horde of angry mice – and is rewarded by a trip to the Kingdom of Sweets.

Ashley White danced the part of young Clara for the matinee with laudable grace; she played the part of the holiday-happy kid with no affectation, and did the most difficult part – watching the Act Two progression of fancy dances – with perfect aplomb.