Movie and a Dinner

Jurassic World

directed by Colin Trevorrow
starring computer-generated dinosaurs and some actual people

In the original movie of this franchise, there were two moments when the computer-generated dinosaurs genuinely seemed utterly, terribly, frighteningly real: the kitchen scene when two pre-teen children are hiding from velociraptors among the cabinets; and the moment soon after when one launches itself up through a grate in the ceiling. Those two moments scared me as much as any movie moments, and are the main reason why, having seen them once or twice, I don't care to see them again. Yet I also remember the sense of magic I felt the first time the dinosaurs took the screen, and when the stars of that first movie found themselves in a stampede of critters, hiding under a log. It was truly, truly amazing stuff.

Fast forward twenty years and change. The amusement park for the first movie has been reborn as Jurassic World, a successful destination for a prosperous fun-seeking world. But success isn't good enough for the corporation that owns the project: it must always grow and expand and attract more and more visitors and more and more dollars. Okay, we get it: greed and shareholders are the root of evil.

Yada, yada, yada. The plot here is a formulaic rehash of every decent movie. Just sit back and watch. It's a technical achievement, not art. It contains the usual mash-up of dime-store philosophy and blatant obviation deemed necessary by Hollywood types who feel unable to let viewers' imaginations fill in facts. Cardboard people do things for simplistic reasons, or for no reasons. Jurassic World is an ironic attempt by those who own the movie to grow and expand and attract more and more dollars. Nothing more.

It has no moments of shock and surprise like the first Jurassic movie. The dinosaurs look, at best, as good as they did two decades ago; not always, though. Their motions seem more obviously computer-generated, the lines of sight don't always coincide precisely, and the creatures don't always know about the laws of physics. The plot lines advance in predictable ways through a story held together by peanut butter and chewing gum. As entertainment, it's good for a matinee, which is where I saw it.

Afterwards, we headed back down to my neck of the woods for a visit to
Attagirl
726 East Mistletoe

(at Kings' Court, just off the St Mary's Strip) 

I had noticed this place when I went to the restaurant next door for dinner a few months back, and was reminded of it by a laudatory review in the local weekly throw-away rag. The friend I was with is known to be a big, big fan of fried chicken, and that is this restaurant's specialty. Seemed a natural choice.

In actual fact, Attagirl isn't really a restaurant; it calls itself an Ice House, which people who've been around San Antonio for a while know means a place where you can get a beer and maybe something to eat. An apropos description.

The main feature of the place is its comfortable ambience. It's in a modest hundred-year-old building, just two rooms with a patio facing the side street, and no parking of its own. Luckily for the neighbourhood, Attagirl is small enough that it's unlikely to add much to the density of cars already blocking driveways and knocking around trash bins. We found a place half a block up Kings' Court, at 8:00 on a Thursday evening.

There are a couple of tables inside, and a couple more on the patio, but mainly the layout is geared more to the casual: benches along the patio walls, counters with barstools along the inside walls. Very Depression-era. Half the interior space is taken up with the bar and kitchen, including a large cooler for bottled beer, and taps for the dozen or so craft beers offered.

What's that mean?
Last city inspection: June 18, 2015
0 demerits

I chose an overpriced local brew billed as "kölsch." It wasn't really kölsch, which even I know is impossible, but it was vaguely kölschish, and drinkable. To go with this I ordered the chicken and waffles, a "traditional" southern dish that is relatively new to my southern-boy awareness. My friend Roland thinks it's a black thing, and he may be right; although he said he never had chicken and waffles growing up: they always had pancakes. Well, close enough, I suppose. Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of the black folk growing up in Dixie and beyond had Belgian waffles with their chicken. Not sure it makes a difference to any but a purist, and when it comes to chicken and waffles, that ain't me.

My meal consisted of three larger-than-natural chicken wings, well battered and deep-fried. There was a touch of honey to them, which gave them a pleasing resonance with the dollop of maple syrup on the (Belgian) waffle. The waffle was smallish, sufficient for its purpose and not the overlarge sort we Americans seem to have come to expect. It was large enough for any Goldilocks. It was, though, a bit overcooked, and consequently slightly too dry to really please. 

My friend Roland had a different type of batter on his chicken, which I didn't try; he did, however, give me a taste of the potato salad he had ordered, and which we had overheard another customer raving about. She, I think, has low standards. This was just plain ol' potato salad, dryer than one gets at HEB but similarly seasoned. In the kingdom of potato salads, this version can be found hiding behind the throne while mayonnaise is passed out.  It fails to live up to its $4 price tag.

 

Who Needs It

Folc
226 East Olmos Drive

(near the Circle in Olmos Park)

N.B.: This was written last October, but not published until now. I  don't know why. Anyway, some of the details mentioned may now be out of date, but I'll not be going back to find out.

H. L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore back when Baltimore was something, is probably most famous for observing that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Whoever the people are behind this new Olmos Park restaurant, they doubtless hope Mencken is as wise as he sounds.

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with our experience there. We had heard nothing about the place, but had just noticed its presence in the space twice abandoned by a restaurant we sometimes liked, and decided to try it. To be honest, we weren't even completely sure it actually was a restaurant before we pulled up in the parking lot, and saw tables and chairs inside.

It's one of those places that thinks it's classy to spell out the prices in text instead of numbers; and whoever wrote the menu has decided that punctuation need not enhance understanding. Those who enjoy studying a menu will be assured of a rousing good time.

But not a very long good time. The menu is short, with four categories of plates (fowl, sea, land and earth. Can one be more pompous.) The wine list is skimpy enough that even my wife was uninterested in any of its offerings. I, unusually, went for a glass, despite the confusing listing, and despite the name-dropping the waiter engaged in to describe what it was. 

Everything is a la carte here, because you can charge more that way. My wife chose the fish of the day, while I picked the pastrami duck, mustard, pumpernickel, caraway twenty-three. We also split a side order of the asparagus, mushroom, cream ten. 

The wine I'd ordered ("Bin 27 High on the Hog - California, Grenache blanc, voignier, roussanne, marsanne nine" -- "Think chardonnay," says the waiter) costs five dollars a bottle in the store, but the good people at Folc feel justified in charging seven times as much, because the stuff is made by some people retired from a well-known upscale grocery chain. It was a little on the sharp side, as one would expect of a $5 bottle of wine, but drinkable.

The dishes arrived individually. This appears to be an affectation much beloved by restaurateurs who prefer not to take the trouble to instruct their kitchens in how to arrange for orders to coincide. I guess that's just too much to ask these days. So we got our side order first, then my wife's fish, then my duck. The lag between arrivals was just enough to irk without becoming a serious problem; in fact the two main dishes arrived close enough together to suggest the waitress bringing them simply doesn't have the strength, or possibly skill, to carry two plates at the same time.

My wife's fish was on the order of ceviche: not cooked. She seemed to enjoy it, though not a lot; her only comment on it was that if they were going to serve you raw fish, they ought to tell you that in the description, either on the menu or by the waiter. I don't eat uncooked meats, so I didn't try it.

The asparagus was good quality produce in a carefully made cream sauce, with just enough thinly sliced mushrooms (cremona, I think) to enhance the texture. It was the only thing that pleased without qualification.

My disdain for uncooked meats almost extended to my duck, which was served close enough to that state to cause me to consider sending it back. Although I chose not to -- who wants to be the person at the table not eating? -- I was uncomfortable enough eating the stuff that I would not make that same choice again. And fortunately, there wasn't enough of the stuff on the plate to concern me for long. I will admit, though, that the mix of flavours and textures in the dish would have been deliciously intriguing, had the meat been cooked sufficiently.

The front page of the restaurant's web site says that it offers "American contemporary family-style plates." This is where marketing hype departs from reality and misleads: family-style plates are like serving platters, containing enough food for a group of people. These dishes barely contain enough for one, even if they are intended to be shared. For any group larger than two, they provide nothing more than overpriced amuse-bouches.