Mokka mit Schlag » Travel

What sort of topsy-turvy world are we living in when Southwest is the service leader?
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A few random notes from the culinary wastelands:

Mimi’s Cafe

I was really looking forward to this little restaurant on Barranca. Several people had recommended it, and it was always packed. When we walked in I couldn’t quite place the decor. It looked vaguely like it was trying to be a French brasserie. My wife finally identified it: this is supposed to be New Orleans! All I can say is whoever designed the decor and the menu cannot possibly have ever been closer to New Orleans than Bastrop Texas. It looked a little more like French brasserie. Possibly the designer heard that New Orleans was French (something that hasn’t been remotely true for over a century now) and checked out a picture book of Paris from their local library.

The menu was a bit of a shock given the recommendations we’d had: the same prepackaged Sysco pablum you can buy in any Chile’s or TGI Friday’s around the country. They may have listed one or two items as “Cajun”, but there was nothing the least bit Cajun about them (not that New Orleans is or ever has been a Cajun city anyway). I had the pork chop, which was the typical large but bland pork chop you can find anywhere. I don’t know if I can really blame them for this though. Pigs have been so wrongly bred for so long now that only a few specialty farms still raise decent pork. Unless you know where the pigs come from, a pork chop is almost always a mistake nowadays. Still, they could have at least put a little seasoning or something on it. They didn’t even have Worcestershire sauce, the old standby of flavorless meat everywhere.

Britta’s

One of the few bright spots in an otherwise dark strip mall. Reliably good food, if a tad on the pricey side. Do be careful to warn them not to put bacon on everything if you don’t eat pork, though.

Chaparosa Grill

Technically, not in Irvine, (just outside it in Tustin) but I had to include it just to prove I don’t hate everything out here. This is a shockingly good restaurant right outside an AMC multiplex. Beth and I just popped in to grab some Margaritas before a movie started, but were charmed into staying for dinner instead. The food was excellent: redolent with interesting spices and tastes, exactly what’s missing from everywhere else we’ve eaten in Irvine. The Chaparosa Cioppini was a wonderfully spicy bouillabaisse. We’ve had it several times now. The Shrimp Scampi was possibly the best Shrimp Scampi I’ve ever eaten: nothing like the prepackaged reheated Korean shrimp slopped over pasta at most chain restaurants. The seafood pasta was equally unusual and interesting.

This restaurant is several notches above everywhere else we’ve eaten, and quite reasonably priced for the quality. What it’s doing in a shopping mall I have no idea, and I don’t know if it will be able to survive in a climate of diners trained to think that The Olive Garden qualifies as fine dining, but enjoy it while you can. Highest recommendation.
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There’s nothing like getting to new habitat for finding life birds. A couple of weekends ago (2008-05-17) Beth and I drove out to Desert Hot Springs in the Coachella Valley to visit a friend who runs a small hotel there.

Jill mentioned that she had Cactus Wrens nesting up by her house, but before we could even get there, these birds flew into a palm by the pool:

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Tuesday, Day #6, Beth was playing hooky from the electronic music at the conference, so I took her to visit the New Summer Palace (the one the Empress Dowager Cixi built after the Old Summer Palace was destroyed by the British and French Allied Forces around 1860.) In the cab ride over I saw two more of my “White-winged Starlings” (that I suspected were Crested Mynas) but once again I didn’t see them long enough or well enough to be sure.

The Summer Palace itself is very pretty: lots of people, temples, and palaces. We didn’t see half of them. Not many birds though, despite the large lake. (Lakes and water features are usually surefire bird attractors, but in Beijing most water was shockingly bird free except at the Old Summer Palace. The only water birds we saw at the New Summer Palace were a few Mallards in the lagoon at Suzhou Street.) Aside from the ubiquitous Black-billed and Azure-winged Magpies, most of the birds were painted:

There was a Hall of Listening to Orioles (for opera, think “nightingale” in English) but we didn’t see or hear a single oriole the entire trip. :-(

We climbed up to the Buddhist Temple of the Sea of Wisdom, then walked down the back. There aren’t many hills in Beijing, and the emperors seemed fond of putting temples on top of the few hills they have. I don’t think we saw one hill the whole trip that didn’t have a temple on top.

Walking down the hill, we headed toward Suzhou Street. On the way I heard a really raucous cry. I’d heard this same cry the day before at The Temple of Heaven Park, but hadn’t been able to track the bird down. This time I got luckier. It was a Red-billed Blue Magpie! I only saw it briefly, and didn’t get a photo, but it was unmistakable. This is a really impressive bird. In fact, after finding it inside the field guide, I realized it was also the bird on the cover:

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Saturday morning (Day #3) Beth was attending the conference so I decided to do some local birding. It took a bit of doing, but the kind folks at the registration desk managed to write “Please take me to the Old Summer Palace” on a piece of paper I could give to a cab driver. The disadvantages of a non-alphabetic language: they knew how to say the Chinese name of the Old Summer Palace, but it’s an uncommon name so no one knew how to write it. They ended up copying it out of my guide book. Nor did the first cab driver I tried no how to read it. Fortunately, the second cab driver understood it; and eventually I got there, paid my $10 Yuan admission, and walked in.

The first bird I spotted was a Black-billed Magpie, but soon after I found a different magpie, the Azure-winged Magpie, my first life bird of the day. This is very pretty bird, with an unusual distribution. They’re found in Spain, but then, for some reason no one understands, there’s a huge gap in their distribution until the middle of Asia. I didn’t get any good photos of Azure-winged Magpies thast day, but here’s one from a couple of days later at the Zoo:

Shortly after spotting the magpie, I met a Chinese birder, the first and only one I saw the whole trip. He was as excited to see me as I was to see him. Unfortunately his English extended as far as my Chinese: I could say “Nihao” and he could say, “Hello” and after that our conversation degenerated into a lot of pointing at trees and field guides. However in this process we were able to find a Great Spotted Woodpecker, and he was able to tell me that the crows we were seeing were indeed Thick-billed Crows, Corvus macrorynchos, not Carrion Crows. That made them life bird #412 for me. He also found a Great Spotted Woodpecker for me, and tried to teach me the Chinese word for Woodpecker (Sicha, I think if I’m remembering correctly). I tried to teach him the English word for “Magpie”. I’m not sure how much of that stuck with either of us, but it was the most significant interaction I had with a non-Anglophone Chinese the entire trip.
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Our plane doesn’t leave till 9:00 PM tonight (and arrives at LAX at 5:00 PM tonight, the wonders of the international dateline) so we did a little more sightseeing.

First stop was the Dongyu Temple, the first Taoist Temple we’d visited after slews of Buddhist Temples. It was a bit of an eye opener. I had no idea Taoism was this pagan. It apparently rivals Hinduism for sheer number of deities, not to mention ghosts, demons, and assorted other creatures. Plus there’s reincarnation, and a hierarchy of possible next lives. If I recall correctly, if you do nothing but evil you come back as an insect; if you do more evil than good, you come back as a bird or a fish; and if you do equal amounts of good and evil, you come back as a mammal (but not a person). Of course, you can also just end up tortured in one of 14 hells:

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