Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
The Lady & Sons Restaurant
I just realized I never actually posted anything about our vacation. The vacation was great, and I'll return to share some words and pictures about crabbing and fresh seafood. But I'm going to use this post to focus on Savannah, Georgia and our trip to The Lady & Sons restaurant, owned by Paula Deen of the Food Network.
We got in late on Tuesday night and walked the city. Great city. A little dark and forested for a downtown but I suppose if you live there that starts to seem normal. I was a little on edge about catching whooping cough or the bubonic plague in some kind of freak accident, but that was a testament to historic look of Savannah at night, not its hygiene.
So late Tuesday night after we checked in we decided to walk over to The Lady & Sons to get an idea of how far away it was, where the line would form and what the restaurant looked like.
The following morning I woke up at 8am with the understanding that the restaurant started taking reservations (in person only) at 8:30am. When I got there I was 10th in line, behind 3 groups of 2-4 people. I let Lauren sleep in since it seemed like a stupid idea for both of us to get dressed and stand in line for a half hour. Not only that but it would have meant an hour less sleep as she would have needed to be up by 7am to be out the door by 8. By myself I felt totally comfortable rolling over at 7:55am, washing my face, brushing my teeth and throwing on last nights clothes to go stand in line.
The only problem with that is that the information we got about the restaurant was not correct. The Lady & Sons begins taking reservations at 9:30am. So there I was standing in line for 90 minutes, hoping each half hour in line was my last. By the time front of the line had started moving the back of the line had stretched all the way down the block and must have been a good 150 people long.
We had a lunch reservation for noon. I went back to the hotel, showered up, ate breakfast and then we walked the city again while we waited for lunch to roll around. Sometime later in the morning The Lady & Sons had turned on a mist zone for anyone still standing in line. As we were waiting inside The Paula Deen Store for our reservation, I saw an unsuspecting family (since there was no line outside) walk up to the hostess' booth and ask for a table as anyone would at a normal restaurant. It was 11:30am and hostess told them the earliest they could get a table was 8:30pm. On a Wednesday. In August.
That restaurant must make a killing. As for the atmosphere, it wasn't all that high-end, but I don't think it was trying to be either. The lunch menu is just good Southern cooking. Fried chicken, meatloaf, chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes, those sorts of things. Not too much in the way of cold plates/sandwiches which is kind of disappointing when its 95 degrees outside and you're on foot. But that may just be me. Most of the foods I saw were what I'd associate with winter comfort food in Michigan.
It was a good experience and definitely something worth doing if you're in Savannah, but I'm not sure its type of lunch/dining experience that you're going to talk about for years to come. Which at around $40 (w/ tip) for two people probably shouldn't be expected.
Wine Tasting In Northern Michigan
Our first stop was Leelanau Wine Cellars in Omena. The picture above is not from our trip (I didn't think to take any pictures of any place we stopped) but it is the room we were in. The balding sommelier in the foreground is the same one that guided us through our tasting. Much to our surprise Leelanau Cellars didn't charge for a tasting and didn't have a set number of wines that were available for tasting. We were presented with a split list of wines, one side being wines available in retail stores throughout the state and the other being premium wines available only in Leelanau Cellars tasting rooms/gift shops. I think we tried at least 10-12 wines. It was very fun and with each winery we visit we being to participate in discussions with the sommeliers about what we like or dislike about the wine we're tasting.
But I'll admit that I still don't know if I am supposed to smell the wine before I drink it or if I'm supposed to drink it in two sips or one. So about half the time I probably look like a mix between a polite drunk and a trained monkey counting the seconds until I can push my glass forward for more wine. However thats not because I don't care or that I'm pretending to care for the sake of free alcohol. I just get awkward very easily and knowing how inexperienced I am with wine (I have probably drunk less than a dozen glasses of wine in the last year) I don't feel comfortable voicing my opinion about how this wine "finishes" or that wine "has oaky characteristics". I'd just as well leave it as "I liked that" and "I didn't like that" rather than attempt some profound observation, only to find out that my palate prefers Salisbury steak to New York Strip.
Of the wineries we visited I think Leelanau Cellars benefited the most. Their wines have always been around at local wine/liquor stores and Meijer. If I am remembering correctly our sommelier told us that Leelanau Cellars is the largest winery (in terms of sales) in Michigan. However Lauren and I have always been really unimpressed with their labels. I understand that is probably the worst way to judge a wine, but if you don't know exactly what you're doing with wine the most reassuring decision is to choose the wine that looks most professional. Many of their retail wines look similar to their Winter White label, which in its defense is hugely popular wine that sells at a great price $8-$11 per bottle. So as a result Leelanau Cellars has always been a ways down our list of local wines options.
We ended up leaving with two bottles of a Baco Noir Rose (I think). More importantly I didn't want to make the same mistake we did a year ago, when we bought 2-3 bottles of good wine at our first stop and then went to a great winery and regretted only having enough wine budget left to buy 2-3 more.
Our second stop was Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay, which was a huge vineyard/farm/estate just off the main road. They describe it as "an agricultural destination" which I would agree is pretty accurate. They do weddings, events and weekend room reservations.
Again the photo is the room we were in, but definitely not the day we were there. When we went there were decidedly fewer retirees than in this photo. The "tasting club" cost $3 per person at Black Star, which got you a branded tasting glass and five complimentary tastings. The Black Star Farms Arcturos Late Harvest Riesling is one of our favorite white wines. So we elected to skip that one and try more reds. I don't recall everything we had but I think it was two Cabernet Francs, a Pinot Noir, a fruit wine, a Pinot Gris and the semi-dry riesling. Our sommelier was very good at making recommendations and pouring different wines in each of our glasses so that our five tastings stretched much closer to ten. I don't remember what we walked away with from Black Star but I think it was a Pinot Noir and the latest Riesling which has been bottled but will not ship to stores for a few more months.
The last stop we made for the day was at 45 North Winery in Lake Leelanau. I believe this winery is relatively new (less than 10 years old), but they are certainly on their way to becoming an outfit like Black Star Farms. They are in the process of building a tasting room, but for now have things set up on the floor of a bottling building. We tried another 8-10 wines here, but were rushed because of a large crowd and a small bar. In the end we bought three bottles from this winery, but I don't know what they were. It was here that we discovered northern Michigan wineries seem to buy into the idea that corked wine bottles have outlived their usefulness. Everything was a screw top cap. We found that to be very disappointing. I understand the technological argument that says screw caps work as well or better, but it still feels cheap and childish. When we got back in the car we checked out earlier purchases and noticed that all but one or two were also screw tops. Oh well. By the way, 45 North has won awards at some pretty impressive sounding wine competitions, but at the moment they aren't in stores outside of northern Michigan. One of the employees gave me information about how to get in touch with their distributors that have Grand Rapids area connections, but it didn't sound like the type of thing you would go through to get just one bottle or two.All in all it was a good time. We picked up seven more bottles to go with the four or five we have from wine tasting last summer and we've still got 17 of Leelanau Peninsula's 20 wineries left to visit on any future trips up north.
Vacation Recap In Photos
When you spend 3 hours a day at the beach, you run out of things to do. But this makes a good cover for this photo album/blog entry, so I'm leaving it in.
We took my parents' minivan this weekend because we really didn't feel like playing tetris in the trunk and backseat with all the stuff we needed to bring. The cottage where we were staying hadn't been opened for the season yet, so it was a bit unclear what we needed in the way of napkins, plates, cups, pots, pans, etc. So we decided to err on the side of caution and bring many of those things with us. That area also runs off of well water, which tastes funky so we brought bottled water and a cooler.
Anyhow, none of that is important. My point is that now that you know why we had a van you'll have a better appreciation for what happens when we drive the van. On the way to any place, if Joss isn't hovering over my shoulder trying to figure out where we're going, then she is down on the floor in between the front seats sniffing the air conditioning vents. It is so weird. It goes on in roughly 15 minutes intervals, in this case for the bulk of a 3.5 hour drive.
These were our accomodations for the weekend, aka The Bat House. From what I remember it is called that because one of the first times my Aunt & Uncle stayed there after they bought it, they encountered a bat. It freaked them out, my aunt didn't want to sleep there for a while and then it became a running joke. It was literally the only time they had a ever seen a bat at that house. As you can see its a pretty densely wooded area. At night you can't see 50 feet into the area surrounding the cottage, which is really nerve wracking when you're with a dog who will stare into the darkness for no particular reason. As you can tell this dense foliage greatly hampered my ability to be friends with Mario Batali. He could have had a 15,000 sq ft mansion on the adjacent lot and we wouldn't have ever known. In addition to that, the road that circles the area that he reportedly lives in was described by my uncle as "drive down that road by invitation only".
The front room of the cottage, just inside the front door.
The kitchen and front door. There is a refrigerator, its a little dorm-sized wood patterned fridge, just in front of the cooler. Not pictured are the back room which is a bedroom with two twin beds and the bathroom.
I didn't take a whole lot of photos while we were out. I'm not sure why, but it just didn't occur to me to take photos of anything we saw while we were out wine tasting except for this. This was in Suttons Bay, outside an art gallery. I don't believe this was for sale, but a similarly constructed pig about 1/6th of the size cost $725.
I'll leave the wine tour to a separate post, but it was a really great time. We only hit three of a possible 9-12 wineries in the area, but I am pretty sure they were three of the best. Although I don't know anything about wine, couldn't tell you which are my favorite styles or why and that I get buyer's remorse every time we leave a winery, wine tasting is still one of my favorite things to do.
The remainder of the weekend was spent with this wet rat on the shores of Lake Michigan. Nothing can satisfy her urge to go swimming. She swam so much that at the end of the first day Lauren threw a ball out, Joss went to get and I though I was going to have to swim out and get her before she went under. She was so tired that she fell asleep standing up on the 5 minute car ride from the beach back to the cottage.
Every day was pretty much 2-3 hours of this:
But it was a great weekend. We also went strawberry picking on the way up, where I also did not take any pictures. Strawberries seem slightly less delicious after seeing the way that they're grown. I always pictured them hanging high off the ground from a majestic bush, not directly on the ground inside of a plant that looks like a lawn weed.
Northport
Last weekend I went to weddings on back to back nights. Or at least I tried to. I didn't feel so great after a few hours at the second wedding and went home to take a shower and hug an air conditioner. Last week was so disgustingly hot it ruined everything. I didn't really cook anything because the last thing I wanted was the oven heating the house and I didn't want too much time tending to a 500 degree grill outside in 90 degree heat with 90% humidity. So last week was burgers, cold sandwiches, grilled chicken and pizza.
This week the weather is considerably cooler, but its a 4 day week and Lauren and I have plans for the weekend. So cooking is nearer the end of the list of priorities than usual. We're heading north to Northport, Michigan where my mom's side of the family calls home. We'll be staying in a cottage/house owned by my uncle, a couple of hundred yards (but right next door) from my grandma's house.
During the 2000 census the population of Northport was officially registered as 648. But Wikipedia says that one of those 648 is none other than Iron Chef Mario Batali. Not only that but they list the area where he owns a house and it is really, really nearby. No matter how hard I try I can't get this fantasy out of my head where we run into him (flat tire on the side of the road or something) and become good friends, if only for a long weekend.
Also, you shouldn't infer anything about where we're staying by its proximity to Mario Batali's home. My mom's family has owned those two properties for more than 30 or 40 years, long before people started clearing lakefront property up there and building million dollar summer mansions.
So this weekend in addition to hanging out with Mario Batali and swimming in Lake Michigan, we're also going to have the opportunity to go wine tasting. See all these red dots and balloons? Those are all wineries. We're staying just north of the where this map cuts off.
And just to give you an idea of the scale of this map. That natural triangular loop between Northport, Suttons Bay and Leland takes 20 mins per side to drive. So in an hour's drive time we could hit 6 or 7 wineries no problem. Madonna's family has a winery in that area, I think its the B balloon or in that area on this map.
In addition to all these we're hoping to spend some time at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as well as some time hunting for Petoskey stones on the beach at Peterson Park (a 5 min drive). Anytime you can be within 5 minutes of Lake Michigan you know you're going to have an awesome weekend.
And if all of that gets boring we can always head to the National Cherry Festival in Traverse City. I really want to a 72 hour nap and wake up to find out that its Friday morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
