Notes From The City

Sunday, August 16, 2020

An Abundant Life - Lovely Days

I heard from someone who I hadn't seen in a while the other day, and he asked if I had time to meet in Manhattan and talk a bit. In these days when I'm not traveling much into New York City, though I didn't want to disappoint him, I had to say I couldn't know when I'd be able to meet him in the City again. He suggested he could come out to Hoboken, and that was a wonderful surprise. I knew just where I'd take him because I had been wanting to visit Halifax again now that they have their new expanded outdoor seating.

I've written about Halifax before a few times because it's just such a lovely place to go, and this time was a particularly enjoyable one because it does my heart good to see restaurants I care about being able to do the work they do so well. The Executive Chef of Halifax, Seadon Shouse, is marvelously talented in skill and creative ideas. Though the indoors is off limits now for seating, the design of the restaurant itself is beautiful and that feeling of peace and loveliness spills out onto the outdoor patio area where we now are able to sit and enjoy the views of the Hudson while eating the delicious dishes that arrive from the exceptional kitchen. Chef Shouse was not there the day that I visited, but the Chefs in the kitchen are superlative and everything was wonderful. The staff are so friendly and knowledgeable, and though the restaurant had a small number of staff on the day I was there, we were all so well taken care of that I never would have known how hard they were working because they do their jobs so well and with such a commitment to excellence. As I was leaving I asked our server, Marlon, for his name because he had been so outstanding and I wanted to make sure to mention him when I wrote this post. The Manager was also terrific, but I didn't have a chance to ask her for her name because she was busy helping to seat new arrivals.

Because I love the food at Halifax so much and I hadn't been there in a while, I ordered a variety of different things, and I'll let the pictures do the talking because the beautiful food is even better than it looks. I will say that the Smoked Salmon Flatbread was wonderful not only because of the delicious bread itself and the wonderful combination of flavors, but the house made smoked salmon as always was of the highest quality. The Gem Lettuce Caesar Salad was simply lovely, with the finest of white anchovies and freshest of crunchy lolla rossa under a flavorful and not overpowering dressing, topped with perfect house made parmesan croutons. The Salt Cod and Shrimp Fritters with saffron aioli and herb salad were so good that my friend who said he would only taste a small piece just to try one had two. The Bolognese of veal, beef and pork ragu over fresh saffron rigatoni with parmesan was one of those dishes that was so satisfying, the pasta perfectly al dente and the sauce richly flavorful while still somehow being light.

Though their cocktails are always delicious, the day was a warm one and so I decided to keep it lighter with a lovely glass of Sauvignon Blanc from their excellent wine list. For dessert we shared the Strawberry Rhubarb Shortcake with candied orange, whipped cream and pistachio which arrived looking so lovely that it made the already beautiful afternoon feel like a party. Strawberry shortcake is one of my favorite things, and rhubarb is too, and though I knew it would be good, I was delighted to see and taste that the shortbread was really shortbread. I just wrote recently in a post on Instagram that no one makes strawberry shortcake the way I like it, and when this one arrived and I tasted the various flavors that melded so perfectly together, I felt like I'd finally found someone who not only understood the delicious creation that strawberry shortcake really is, but who had made it in a way that was unique and memorable. Halifax is a true gem and I'm so glad to be able to visit again. Sitting on their patio and enjoying such a lovely afternoon gives me the feeling that these long months are opening up into a much brighter tomorrow.

Halifax

At W Hotel

225 River Street

Hoboken, New Jersey

http://www.halifaxhoboken.com/

A Safe and Convenient

Contactless Menu

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

Sunday, August 9, 2020

An Abundant Life - Creating History

On the last day of June I had a telephone conversation with Eileen Kaminsky, the Founder of Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF). At this time in a normal year Eileen would have been in New York and the Spring Residency at ESKFF would have been ending, we would have been celebrating the annual fundraiser, and the summer youth mentoring program, Sol Studio, would have been getting ready to begin. But because this hasn't been a normal year at all, none of those things were happening, and ESKFF and Mana Contemporary where it is located, had been closed to the public in March. The Winter Residency had been abruptly ended and there were no Artists making art in this usually vibrantly alive and creative space. During my conversation with Eileen, she mentioned that, though ESKFF would not be able to host the youth and Sol Studio at Mana, she would be allowed to have three adult Artists in the space. She and Gina Maffei, the Director of ESKFF, had reached out to some local Artists, but they hadn't been able to find anyone who was available. I said that I could find people for her, and thought of someone immediately, the 3-D Artist Dana Gambale who I have written about before and who I knew had been wanting to apply for the Residency. I had already introduced her to Eileen at the fundraiser last year and she had donated work for it and also helped with the photography at the event. Eileen said if she was available, the space was hers and if she could find two other friends they could all do the Residency together. I sent Dana a quick message, she agreed immediately and began to contact other Artists. In the meantime I thought of someone else I could ask, and within about an hour or so we had our three Residency Artists. It turned out that one Artist was unable to do the Residency due to a prior agreement with her gallery, but the other two Artists were able to start the following week. At the end of July I stopped by to visit them for a blog post, and heard the good news that their Residency had been extended for another month.

In an interesting turn of events, when I initially asked Dana who her friend was so that I could share her name with the Director of ESKFF so that she could be on the lookout for her online application and also begin the process of helping her get a badge to enter the building on a regular basis, when Dana said it was Alice Hepburn the name rang a bell. I had known an Alice Hepburn many years ago but I had not seen her in about fifteen years. The last time I saw her was at a Thanksgiving dinner at her mother's loft in Tribeca, and I was pretty sure that the age of that Alice Hepburn would match up with this one. I asked Dana if Alice was related to Pamela Hepburn, a Captain who is a well liked and respected member of the sailing and historic ship community in New York Harbor, and Dana said Pamela was Alice's mother. In a moment's time I was brought back to another part of my own life, when I lived in Soho and was a neighbor of another friend of Pamela's, the Artist Arden Scott and her husband Keith who owned a loft in Tribeca and whose daughter Kate belonged to the same theater company I had belonged to since I first moved to New York. And there was also a time when I was sailing quite a bit on historic ships in New York Harbor and attending many events in the sailing community, and all of those different worlds of my life were suddenly brought right into my present.

On the day when I first went to visit Dana and Alice at ESKFF we talked about their work and lives. They had some work in process but I decided to return the following week when they would have more to show me that I could photograph. Each time it was as if I was going to visit a whole group of people from my own past, because when I look at Alice I see her in my mind over the years when I knew her surrounded by the people and places where I had spent so much time of my own creative history. The work of both Artists is so vastly different and their process and materials are worlds apart from each other, but somehow visiting with them is an adventure into their combined creative process and vision, and like traveling to different planets in the solar system the experience works very well together as a whole.

Dana is developing a new series of work, some things that she has had in her mind for a while. As I've written before, I love the way that Dana's mind imagines and sees life because it is just not the same as the way my own or anyone else's does. She has such a unique vision and such a wonderful way of seeing the world. Her new work is exploring at times a type of psychedelia, with a Warhol Banana in more glittery and cosmic colors and spin paintings created on her own custom designed contraption that uses the mechanism of a fan for its spinning wheel and motor. Iconic imagery and fragmented Barbie Dolls float through some of her created cosmos skies, while words and language tell stories and make statements that give us a moment to reflect on language itself.

Alice's vision and her work are very different, but a similar quality of being so incredibly unique makes visiting with her and Dana together very refreshing. Alice is a photographer, and the series that she is working on combines footage that she has created using models, sometimes herself, in different environments and thoughtful or dreamlike stages. She layers the images, at times playing with the exposure or the shutter speed, slowing things down so that the images have a quality of being almost film-like. I kept thinking of Andy Warhol when I looked at her work, and she also adds another dimension of words and language to layer onto the images, taking passages from Ovid and working with her own knowledge of the classics and the help of a classics professor at Columbia University to find a translation that brings the words into a language that fits the world and life and experience of today. She described the process as being one that brings her back in her own memory to the time when she was in school, studying the classics and searching for translations for certain pieces that spoke to her and seemed to come alive in her present day life. The resulting images combined with language are beautiful and thoughtful, creating a life of their own and an inner world of stories within stories that feel both contemporary and timeless.

In this time of such great upheaval and uncertainty, to have Artists be in this space creating art feels in some way revolutionary and historic. As I've written before, Art is healing and powerful, and the Artists who share their unique voices and vision are capable of bringing light and healing into the world.

Dana Gambale And Alice Hepburn

At ESKFF At Mana Contempory

888 Newark Avenue

Jersey City, New Jersey

http://danagambale.com

https://www.instagram.com/aliceokhepburn

https://www.eskff.com

Dana Gambale

In Her ESKFF Studio

With Selected Work

A Fan Modified For Spin Paintings

Alice Hepburn

Processing And Developing Negatives

In The Studio At ESKFF

And Sharing Some Of Her Inspiration

A Few Early Proof Prints

And Notes With Ideas And Early Translations

A Printed Series

Selected Individual Work

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

Sunday, August 2, 2020

An Abundant Life - Dreaming The Night Away

Last fall I heard from Chef Paul Gerard that he was consulting on a new restaurant opening in Closter, New Jersey named Stern and Bow that was a project of the well respected and admired Restaurateur Russel Stern. As anyone who knows me knows, Chef Paul Gerard is my favorite Chef in the world and the restaurant Antique Bar & Bakery in Hoboken where he is Executive Chef and Partner is my preferred restaurant to go to anywhere. I had the very beautiful opportunity to attend the opening night of Stern and Bow and it was truly wonderful. I went back again just before Christmas last year and wrote about it in my blog. The food is more than excellent, the staff friendly, helpful and knowledgeable, and the design is lovely, and I would be there more often except that it is hard to get there from where I live unless you have a car which I do not, and I'm very old fashioned when it comes to car services and rarely take them preferring to walk where I can and take public transportation if I must.

I had been planning on returning at some point earlier in the year with the Sommelier and Mixologist Joel Liscio because I had wanted to introduce him to Russell Stern. I had a feeling they would get along well and have fun together because they both have a love of excellent and interesting wines and spirits and excellent food to pair with them. At the time when Joel and I were talking about it he was very busy, and before we could set a date the world as we knew it changed seemingly overnight and everything was shut down all at once making it impossible to travel far or do much of anything at all except for necessary things very close to home. During that time Joel was working even longer hours than he had been in the past, because in addition to everything else he was doing in his professional and family life he was continuing to do his famous and well loved wine tastings, a regular feature at the restaurant where he worked in normal times that he had re-imagined virtually as online Zoom calls. I sat in on a few of them and loved them as much as I had loved his in person tastings because there is something about Joel that makes everyone feel comfortable and right at home that translated perfectly to a live online conversation. As things slowly began to open up again and I heard that Stern and Bow had opened their outdoor seating area, I checked in with him to see if now might be a good time to visit Russell Stern at Stern and Bow.

From all of the photographs I'd been seeing on Instagram and because I had experienced the excellence of the restaurant before, I knew we'd be in for a lovely treat, especially after all these long months of not being able to share time together over a delicious meal at a restaurant. We traveled up to Closter on a very hot summer day, but when we got there everything was so cool and peaceful, very calm and collected, and though there was a threat of rain we didn't have to worry at all because they had the excellent planning to have the open air dining area covered with a sturdy tent that had open sides but that could also be protected in the event of rain while still staying open and breezy. The tables were spaced out comfortably and safely in the large parking lot area, and our meal was superb.

We started with Oysters and went on to have tastes of several other lovely dishes, mainly seafood but we also had a delectable pizza made with N'duja, Fresh Ricotta, Calabrian Chili and Acacia Honey which I had been wanting to try for a while. Delightful and refreshing cocktails and an excellent wine list, along with my favorite Veuve Cliquot kept us enjoying the evening sunset while we talked and tasted the delicious and inventive recipes. Everything was wonderful, the oysters marvelous as always, the lobster roll lovely, a ceviche that was as beautiful as it was delicious, a sampling of fresh smoked scallops that arrived with a perfectly complementing chilled white wine. A memorable standout this time was the New Orleans Barbecued Shrimp in Dark Beer Shallot Sauce that came with Corn Fritters that reminded me of Rhode Island Johnny Cakes, like flat light and crispy pancakes made with fresh corn underneath the shrimp. Soaked in the sauce from the shrimp they still maintained a lightness in their texture while adding a richness to the dish that was perfect for an outdoor summer evening. I've been a corn fritter lover and maker all my life and I've never had one like that. They were delicious as were the fresh and flavorful head on shrimp that covered them. I'm not usually a dessert eater unless it's fully chocolate, and the sticky toffee pudding, my favorite from past visits, was not on their current menu, but I was happy to try the homemade donuts served warm with Grand Marnier pastry cream and kiwi fruit at Joel's suggestion, and the chocolate blackout cake was all a chocolate cake should be and more. I'm still dreaming about that dinner, and looking forward to the next time because Stern and Bow is too lovely a place to visit to stay away for long.
.

Stern and Bow Restaurant

171 Schraalengurgh Road

Closter, New Jersey

https://www.sternandbowrestaurant.com/