Thursday, April 24
I didn’t have the best night of sleep, tossing and turning and falling in and out of sleep. I have inconsistent sleep habits in hotel rooms. The major contributing factor to that – pillows. The pillows at the Kimpton Hotels are good. I had four fluffy pillows nestled around me, three of which were stacked for my shoulders, neck and head, and one to hold on to. There’s actually a type of pillow called a husband pillow. I suppose my fourth snuggle pillow served the same purpose. In any case, what disrupted my sleep, I believe, as far as pillows are concerned, was the billowiness of the pillows. I need at least one or two pillows that are firm. In any case, I finally decided to get out of bed just after 9:30 a.m.
I checked email and went over some work projects in my queue. Then, I stretched and did ten yoga sun salutations. I got dressed and walked up a block to a creperie for breakfast. I ordered a Tuscan omelette with tomato, basil and mozzarella with a side of perfectly crisp roasted potatoes with garlic and parsley. Delicious. I had a cup of coffee and talked on my cell with my mom.
I returned to the hotel to change for a work event I co-planned with three other winery colleagues who picked me up at my hotel in a cab. We continued down Post Street to a lovely Japanese-Californian-French fusion restaurant. We planned a light and fun food and wine pairing for about 12 local media. The restaurant, Bushi-Tei, was beautiful with its simple, elegant decor. My colleague adorned the long, glass table with three small Douglas Fir starter trees wrappd in little burlap bags filled with stones. This gave it a nice Oregon touch. Black, smooth stones decorated the glass table with lovely, tall glass lamps for floating candles. It was a pleasure to work with the Bushi-Tei crew – a super professional, accommodating restaurant team. The media guests arrived, we greeted everyone and eventually got seated for the tasting.
The food was incredibly inventive and the pairings were interesting. All in all, it was a great ‘first time’ event like this and we thought this format was a nice way to taste our wines with the media. Our media guests seemed to be quite pleased with the tasting and one writer suggested she may change the format of her tastings for her column to include food and wine pairings – it really adds to the experience and perspective of tasting wine.
After, we said our good-byes and thanked our media guests and the Bushi-Tei team. We gave the restaurant one of the starter Doug Fir trees to remember their new Oregon friends. And then we took a cab to the Mission district to a dive bar called the 500 Club so that we could catch the rest of the Redwings play-off game. One of my colleagues is from Michigan and is a die-hard Redwings fan. Unfortunately, the bartender couldn’t find the channel, so we headed out across the street to another sports bar that housed the city’s Redwings fan club. Seriously, there were Redwings banners hanging from the ceiling. This other dive bar was called Kilowat.
One of the writers who came to our tasting, a cute, dimpled guy who was friends with one of my colleagues, joined us. The crew ordered a pitcher of beer, which I couldn’t partake in, so I ordered a Maker’s Manhattan. It was an interesting crowd of Redwings fans and dogs wandering between barstools. The Redwings beat the Avalanche, so we were ready to move on.
We went to the dimpled writer’s place where he had a couple of friends join us. My friend, Jamie, who handles PR for Kimpton Hotels, and her co-worker, Paul, met us at the writer’s pad. Bad pun. Anyway, the writer grilled up some lamb and pork. We were going to order take-out, but forgot to, so it was slabs of meat for dinner! We laughed about men and meat, and how they don’t really need sides. The writer shared some good wine with us and we sat outside on his patio, which was quite lovely.
At around midnight we piled into another cab and headed back to Union Square. My colleague gave the funny cab driver one of the Doug Fir trees. Before we got to Union Square, we ended up getting dropped off at a random bar/lounge named Lime, where we chatted with two locals, one who looked like MADtv’s Bobby Lee’s very gay twin. We left and went to a karaoke bar called Mint, which was only a five mintue stop-by, as my colleague couldn’t get onto the karaoke list to sing the song Jolene. So, we grabbed another cab and, still hungry, ended up at Lori’s, a diner at Union Square. We wore paper hats and delighted in the late night food – I had a bun-less burger with hashbrowns instead of french fries (per my gluten-free diet). It was delicious to return to my hotel room and finally get ready for bed! Sleep at last (hopefully).
