Keith Talent

Tough crowd in here. Not like it'll make anyone feel better, but I got it. I actually thought it was funny too. FWIW, admitedly not much, but Watermark has been an opening that even non food people are talking about. I've talked to a couple people this week that are only tangentially aware of a new downtown joint called Camber or Champer or some such thing, but they've already dined at Watermark. To rave reviews. Which bodes poorly. And I wonder if they'll accept reservations now for next years fireworks?

I thought Phillip Morris was being spun off from Kraft as a method of insulating the larger group from tobacco lawsuits? Did that not happen?

What? Why? And granted, lattes are of the devil. Unless of course it's prior to ten AM.

No, you can't bring a bottle on the list, what'd be the point? Where's our restaurant professionals? We need clarification.

The joke is so easy I refuse to make it. And let me get something straight. As per 2roost, I should buy a bottle off the list in addition to the corkage? Why? In no other industry I can think of does provindng an service for a customer entitle the vendor to extra compensation.

Hang on. the speech is dated 05-04-11 (a format incidentally never before seen. Year first? Idiots.) Yet the prevoius years winner are referenced. Assumably the speech was given regarding the 2004 winners, in 2005, three months prior to the 2066 (2006?) winners being announced. My head is swimming. Add to the legislative works a law decreeing either a standard date format, or even better, writing the freakin' month, even an abbreviation. I also suggest we make the theme from Muade our provincial anthem.

Text of the presentation speech. Only in BC would awards be given to unavailable wines. Here's the schedule for the revolution. 9:00 AM Meet at White Spot, downtown Victoria. I recommend the Nat Bailey breakfast. 10:00 March on the Lt. Gov. Generals residence. 11:30 Sieze power, preferably in bloodless coup 12:30 Meet at Shelora's for vaunted fish tacos. 3:30 Return to Legislature. 6:40 Ajourn legislative session. New bills include banning fruit salsas, instituting a gov. sponsored free pho home delivery service, repealing sin taxes and making Moxies illegal. 7:00 Drinks and Dinner. Where to?

Yet more proof that we need a revolution. I'll be atop the ramparts brandishing a sword should anyone care to join me.

Shit, I was off to West for dinner, but by this rationale I'm moraly obligated to only dine at some east side co-operative work experience fair trade organic bistro. Damn my moral conscience, damn it to hell.

Are you kidding me? The freaking vikings invented death metal. Beowolf was Rob Zombie long before Rob Zombie was even wearing Pampers. Agreed, anything smoke realted is a non-starter, no possible rational discussion can develop. It's unfortunate that we're not all more considerate of other people, it seems to be some sort of genetic trait not to be.

I've done it and seen it done. It is compleetly legal.

Funniest line; "Three doors away at Starbucks, the same size latte costs about a dollar more. But Hanna Letkowski, who speaks for Starbucks in B.C says they welcome the competition. "I think there's room for so many coffee houses in the market. I just think there's room for a lot of different competitors " Really? Starbucks doesn't mind their competition driving down prices in the short term, eventually leading to less well finaced outfits driving themselves out of business? As an added benefit to the big green machine, independents will tend to compromise the quality of the product in an effort to maintain margins by reducing costs/raw materials used. Trust me, Starbucks would absolutely love the basis for competition to be price rather than quality. Sometimes I wonder how good a food city Vancouver really is.

Actually, if you dug up your old ghetto blaster, you'd be looked at inquizitively by kids sporting I-pod ear buds.

That analogy is about as bad as the service at White Spot. It assumes that the management gave a blessing for your Swedish death metal (I personally prefer Danish death metal, but there's no accounting for taste.) If management wasn't on side with your plan, they'd be well within their rights to ask you to leave, much like Watermark has done with gaspers. If management was onside, those of us that far prefer Danish metal could choose to patronize establishments where they play vastly superior Danish metal and not totally craoppy Swedish metal.

That smells like George Carlin.

I'm stupid. Dumb it down a little. As a restaurantuer, would you rather sell a bottle for 60 that you originally paid 20 for, or would you prefer to collect a twenty dollar corkage charge? And do all the local chefs/restaurantuers feel the same, or is there dissent among the local pros?

So I can carry wine out of a restaurant, but not in? And correct me if I'm wrong, this is merely a speculation, but I'd guess that The BC Restaurant Association is lobbying hard against corkage, but firmly in favour of take home bottles? That's the only (semi) logical explanation for a complete bueraucratic dogs breakfast that we have now.

Chance that this remains civil is about the same as Moxies tying Wilsons for the Vanmag Restaurant of the Year. I'm suprised that it's only tobacco smoke that disturbs people, not car exhaust, or at Rangoli, copious diesel fumes fron the busses incessantly going by. Anyway, there is a place you can go if the foibles of others interfer with your personal definition of pleasure. It's called home. It's somewhere that you can avoid any and all unpleasant contact with yopur fellow man.

It helps if you look dumb.

It would move in bond, technically speaking, it would never be in the USA, at least for customs purposes. And the cost to truck a container from Seattle/Portland/LA is fractions of pennies per bottle.

And where could we currently find Nota Bene ready to be snapped up?

No mangosteen? Harsh. The orange thing is understandable however. Florida don't want their crops infected with the local pests and disesases of the California crop, and vice versa.

I'm already ginned up all day here at work, I prefer to switch to wine in the evenings. But thanks for the suggestion.

For what it's worth, and it's not like I'm not talking completely out of my ass here, but this thing will be resolved sooner rather than later. The problem for the strikers is their window of opportunity will soon close as ships are diverted and alternate routes are established for goods to flow, at that point, they become irrelevant and any negotiating leverage they have evaporates. Then again, I never thought the NHL would be so stupid as to blow off a season. And hopefully we'll see some good stuff from the west coast start filling shelves. California has seen it's market share in BC dwindle, (mostly due to greedy pricing policies.) Oregon and Washington are horribly unrepresented. Bring it on. This coincides nicely with the California wine glut, maybe some sharp agents/importers/wineries will see the opportunity. I'm ready for a big glass of Zin.

Uhh, according to the Monetray Aquarium, the only acceptable method for catching Ahi is with a pole and line, both longlining and trolling which are the methods used for commercially caught fish are cited as being unsustainable, due to bycatch.