E ditor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience. We invite you to come along with our writers as they—informed, intelligent eaters like yourselves—have a simple meal at an area restaurant, just like you do .
My mom is picking at something beige on her plate. She holds a forkful aloft, inspecting it, then offers it to me for analysis. “Might be toast,” she muses. I take a bite, feeling the dry graininess on my tongue, the starchy crust and the blandness that tastes only of butter. It’s poorly done polenta. She gives me a chunk of the gray meat that sits atop. It’s overcooked fish—mahi mahi, we suppose, as our waitress had recited it as the catch of the day ($17)—that hunkers in a puddle of white wine sauce under a fistful of dry parsley flakes.
Now it’s my turn. “Bacon grease for sure,” I vote, pushing my plate of meatloaf ($16) in her direction. “Maple syrup, maybe. Microwaved hamburger.” She identifies ketchup, and nibbles at a scoop of stiff mashed potatoes alongside. We both agree that the side dish is spinach, rather than the promised Brussels sprouts. She sighs. I cough. We both put down our forks. This little game we’ve been playing at Sky Lounge Steakhouse & Raw Bar isn’t fun anymore.
When we first sat down at the restaurant on a recent Saturday night, we’d been amused. There’s a retro charm to the place, tucked as it is inside the Sonoma County Airport, overlooking the tarmac with its walk-up plane ladders and looking like a throwback to the ’50s.
But this Sky Lounge wasn’t at all what we had expected. It opened in August to a fair bit of publicity. It’s newsworthy because the North Bay’s only commercial airport reopened last spring after a long hiatus. As such, Sky Lounge is a gateway to wine and food country, an important first and/or last impression for visitors. Appropriately, it promises “top grade” beef and seafood from local farmers and fishermen, in a “first class restaurant with a creative menu emphasizing freshness and quality.”
A centerpiece, deliciously showcased in marketing materials, is the raw/sushi bar. It sounds like a nifty proposition even for folks not trapped waiting for a plane: Hog Island oysters in truffle-ponzu mignonette, kona kampachi spiked with spicy mayo and jalapeño wafer or a soft shell crab BLT.
Yet tonight, there’s no sushi or raw display at the tiny wheeled-in sushi stand off the kitchen. There’s apparently no real food either; our waitress tells us the chef is off. So instead, our dinner is just coffee-shop clam chowder ($6) that’s been so beat-up by reheating that there’s yellowish skin across the top, a caesar ($11) drowned in mayonnaise and a few marinated anchovies and Asian lettuce cups ($9) buried under flabby pork clumps.
Outside, it’s so densely foggy that the PA system alerts us an incoming flight is being diverted to Oakland, and its passengers will be bused back here. A pack of people settle in at the bar to wait, arming themselves with cocktails. Don’t they know that the first rule of going to the airport is to check and make sure the plane is on schedule? The second rule, apparently, is to find out if the chef has arrived.
Sky Lounge Steakhouse & Raw Bar, 2200 Airport Blvd. (in Sonoma County Airport), Santa Rosa. Open for breakfast and lunch daily; dinner, Wednesday&–Sunday. 707.542.9400.
Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.
Craving Fresh Blood
After Loveless , My Bloody Valentine signed with Island records, disappeared into Shields’ home studio and never came out. By 1997, their membership was down to Shields and co-vocalist and guitarist Bilinda Butcher, with no new albums on the horizon.
Until now.
Shields has announced the band is reforming to play a handful of shows in Britain and to finish that damn lost record already. Loveless was the touchstone of the shoegaze era; it left listeners hungry for more, and now they can finally exhale. But based on prior performance, it is perhaps a shrewd move to assume that My Bloody Valentine won’t deliver the promised album within the new year, or even the ones after that.
In the meantime, there’s a whole universe of music to listen to out there, a fair share of it My Bloody Valentine&–derived. Here’s the cream of the lesser-known crop.
The Athens, Ga., instrumental band Japancakes recently released a start-to-finish cover album of Loveless , and—surprise!—it’s neither a novelty nor a goggle-eyed homage. Japancakes’ interpretation replaces the vocals (something My Bloody Valentine happily blurred deep in the mix) with instruments such as slide guitar, cello and Farfisa organ, resulting in more straightforward, less atmospheric songs. And by bringing those heretofore buried melodies to the forefront, Japancakes transform some of Loveless’ mellower transitional tracks into lovely standouts, such as “Touched,” which seeps with unvarnished melancholy.
Japancakes strip away the diaphanous haze that My Bloody Valentine liberally applied to their recordings, revealing the rock-solid songwriting that’s not immediately apparent when listening to the original versions. Their Loveless cover makes a fine complement to the original, but still shines in its own right.
Shortly after imports of Loveless hit our American shores, a number of bands took to the distortion pedal. One such band, Philadelphia’s Lilys , put out a somewhat maudlin but still enjoyable copycat album, In the Presence of Nothing , in 1992. Listen to the gorgeous metallic wreckage of “Tone Bender” (whose chugga-chugga guitar paired with whisper-soft vocals follows My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow” template to a T), and dare to say imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery. Lilys’ productivity has far outstripped My Bloody Valentine’s; the band has recorded nine albums and counting, covering a stripped-down ’60s garage-rock phase up to the psychedelic art-pop they continue to perform to this day.
Also still very much active are Seattle’s Voyager One , who take more musical cues from early, ultradruggy Verve (they’re more percussive and vocal-driven), but share My Bloody Valentine’s devotion to studio-crafted musical environments. Particularly of note is their 2002 album Monster Zero , which hints at what happens when a band takes a dance-centric track like Loveless’ “Soon” and runs with it. Voyager One, who are a super-tight live act with or without My Bloody Valentine comparisons, have a new album on deck for February 2008, and if precedent serves, it should be a good one.
And, of course, there’s no way to write a list of My Bloody Valentine supplements without mentioning the Sacramento power trio Electro Group , whose fiercely eloquent songs are the ultimate distillation of My Bloody Valentine’s punkier side. Both A New Pacifica and their latest, the succulent Good Technology , don’t skip on the fuzz, the volume or the blissful catchiness.
Sense of Self
Self-portraiture is such a difficult task that few artists regularly undertake it. After all, how to disconnect the id and release any sort of unguarded truth when the subject matter is one’s very own complicated self?
The challenge has got to be tougher for teens, young people who are still wrassling out the particulars of who they are now and who they might be some day. But teens are resilient, and, in the case of the wonder kids who are in Santa Rosa High School’s ArtQuest program, they’re also terrifically honest, terrifically smart and terrifically plain old talented.
This is our second year working with ArtQuest, under the direction of Tanya Braunstein and Glen Graves. This year, we asked the students to explore the self-portrait from three angles: their physical self, the person they are at home and their public persona. Drawing from the results of these three revealing chapters, we chose one shot from each artist to reproduce in these pages.
I am personally amazed at the honesty expressed by these young artists. I jokingly suggested that if I had to take a self-portrait, I’d just shoot the contents of my purse. Would I actually dare to print an image depicting my slovenly habits and insane need for extra lipsticks? No way. These kids are far braver than I’ll ever be.
All of the shots taken and approved, plus the ones reprinted here, will be on exhibition at the Santa Rosa High School multipurpose room through Dec. 20. A free artist’s reception kicks off on Wednesday, Dec. 19, from 3pm to 5pm. 1235 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa.
We applaud the artistry and hard work of this year’s crop of ArtQuest kids. Bravo!
Hannah Bowen: Hannah took this unvarnished shot of herself just after waking up one morning.
Ashley Franklin: Ashley’s shot from the inside of her car reveals roads traveled and roads yet to take.
Abby Campbell: To us, Abhy’s shot evokes the poems of Sylvia Plath. No, there is no concrete reason why. This was a cover contender.
Joseph Zappelli: Joseph calls this his ‘Italian GQ’ shot. It’s irresistible, but so is the moody, refracted image he took through the doorway into his bedroom that we wish we had room to also print. This was another cover contender.
Melanie Hede: Melanie took on a gothic mood for ‘Storm,’ which depicts her favorite abandoned water tower.
Elizabeth Randol: Put a favorite Belgian waffle iron in a white cast iron sink, and voila!
Claire Sloan: Claire elegantly juxtaposes her grown-up size with the baby chair given to her as a child.
