Saturday, September 04, 2004


intelligent life still exists . . .with scones

after a mind-numbing week here in nyc, i was somewhat stunned to discover that intelligent life still exists. apparently, it's just gone to canada.

one of the many trinkets mr. right brought back from vancouver was a hard copy of the globe and mail, which i had seen only on the 'net. now, this is the canadian version of, oh, usa today.

it's not supposed to be fantastic paper, but i perused it over my morning usual batdorf dancing goat cappuccino as a matter of interest. boy howdy! was i suprised!

it was all about the united states -- you had to get pretty far inside the darn thing before you were aware it had any canadian content. and that content did turn out to be mostly hockey, altho' with some reference to the conrad black embezzlement scandal.

but once you got to that content, it was really really good. i mean, better than the new york times. i'm not kidding.

for example, the editorial page contained a column discussing political coverage in the u.s.a. in terms of freud, adler, and chomsky. i don't happen to agree with chomsky and in fact think he's become an extremist nutcase.

but the analysis was much more intellectual, well-written, and thoughtful than anything short of the new york review of books. which is also in the ozone, actually, albeit a well-spoken ozone!

this op-ed piece not only mentioned these names, but spoke as if it actually expected its readers to know what these ideas were without explanation. i've never seen anything like that in the ny times.

the movie coverage was fabulous and without any faux pretentiousness. the quality of the writing -- i mean just the vocabulary level, even of the fluff-pieces like the one about the cirque du soleil -- was higher than the supposedly deep saturday nytimes metro/arts section.

so i wonder: what does a good canadian newspaper look like? imagine that. . .

but enough boring politics; let's talk about something important: the coffee. i now have the full report on mr. right's visit to 2 caffé artigiano locations.

he actually called sammy piccolo's wife to find out in which location sammy would be to ensure he got a coffee from the barista champion himself.

can you believe that? sammy, his wife, and his brother vince were absolutely sweet to a total stranger, a new york guy in town to film -- but they treated him as if he was a regular and valued customer.

mr. right was kind enough to say my microfoam on sweet little silvia was better. however, sammy's latte art is of course, unbeatable.

while i think artigiano is all about the coffee, i also got good reports on the food. the scones were judged to be incredible; one of mr. right's colleagues called them the best she'd ever had.

the panini are likewise said to be really good, but the croissants were thought to be just fair. people often describe vancouver as the child of seattle and san francisco, and i think hanging about with an espresso from sammy in that atmosphere would be frankly gear.

so this morning i made mr. right his usual dancing goat latte on silvia, all the while thinking about the machine of the moment -- the quickmill. . .

posted by fortune | 8:52 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments