Earlier this summer we took a short detour from the Survivor Marathon we’re on to watch the latest season of Top Chef. Or Top Escallop as I like to say. At some point there was a frustrated Italian contestant named Fabio who was griping about another chef named Jamie, of course, “All she does is scallops. For Christ’s sake, c’mon. This is Top Chef, not Top Scallops.” Having rewatched the clip, it appears I added the “es” to scallop, but I’m not changing my attempt at an Italian accent now after all these years. My apologies Fabs.
Meanwhile, it appears I mentioned our switch to the Larder seafood box for children with champagne wishes and caviar dreams. A few weeks ago James made a beautiful weeknight dinner of grilled scallops. Nate rolls up to the dinner table last (he’s always last to dinner) and asks, “What’s for dinner… bananas?”
So we’re watching Top Escallop as it’s taking place in a COVID bubble in Portland and I basically buy four direct plane tickets before the credits roll. The Portland tourism board wishes they could track such pure revenue attribution.
We visited the last weekend in July and based on our iPhone pictures, this appears to be the exact weekend we always visit Portland. Like migrating birds to gourmet food and lighting factories or something.
We had a blast visiting our usual haunts and a few new ones. The Japanese garden and the Lan Su Chinese garden kicked-off James’ newest bonsai-garden visiting-nursery hobby. I fell in love with Wayne Jiang’s condiment paintings. Jake was disappointed I hadn’t made a reservation for the Umami Café at the Japanese garden (note for next time). But he did order the best jasmine tea at Lan Su. I’m still devastated Schoolhouse was COVID-closed. But the boys and I were in heaven at a Blue Star out in the burbs. The second stop at Nola put us over the edge of the donut cliff. At some point we worked it off… we’re forever zoo connoisseurs– the entrance to that zoo is magical. And we adored the food at Eem based on James’ newfound connection with Top Escallop Star Chef Chris Cosentino, who moseyed on into Office Hours at some point this year.
Two Friday’s ago James brought the scallops back into rotation with a bright, lemony risotto. His youngest son joins us…
“Still looks like bananas to me.”