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dragonlady7I think it was one of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books that taught me that Batavia is an antiquated name for Holland, and was most recently applied to one of those Pacific islands the Dutch colonized.
Other than that, it's also a city in Western NY.
With a really good restaurant called Red Osier that specializes in doing wonderful things to beef.
I am composing this in the car enroute to Batavia. Dave is feeling rich what with the raise and the refund and all, so he’s taking me out to dinner at the Red Osier, a restaurant specializing in beef. I am going to put the computer away and help Dave navigate. Keep Batavia beautiful, people.
Ooooog. I am stuffed full like a sack of wet concrete. I am full of good. As Dave’s family says, “My heart is full of joy.” (Ususally said after an excellent meal that perhaps prompted a bit of overeating.) OK, now I'm composing this as we take Rte. 5 all the way home from Batavia.
Batavia, for any who don’t know, is an old little farm town midway between Rochester and Buffalo. Nowadays it’s mostly inhabited by those who can’t settle in either of the two cities, and so they’re not usually in a mood to appreciate its charms. But it was originally a farming town, and is renowned for its fertile fields of “muck” (apparently that’s its scientific name), prompting the name of its AA baseball team, the Batavia Muckdogs (a farm team for the Buffalo Bisons, themselves a farm team for the Cleveland Indians).
Much of it was built before or around the turn of the last century, which means its main drag is studded with absolute gems of Victorian architecture—turrets, garrets, cornices. One I saw right near the intersection of 98 and 5 had the original glass in its windows, bright and wavy. Some of the houses are older, with the heavy pediments of the Federal style (pre-1850s) and some Greek Revival columns.
And many of them are well-maintained, with impeccable gingerbreading—no vinyl siding here, but painstakingly-painted cornices and a beautiful rose window in the Espiscopal church and the like. It’s a lovely little place, although Dave assures me it’s a hole if you actually live there.
Red Osier is a bit out of town, past it to the east, and has the best prime rib ever. It just does. They also had fresh-strawberry daquiris, which were lovely. (I inhaled mine.) They often print coupons in the local papers, and from their website we downloaded a couple of them that were only good for this week. So we ordered pretty much what we had coupons for. But, c’mon, the coupons were for surf-n-turf and prime rib. Dave got the prime rib, and I got a filet mignon and a lobster tail.
The meat was sublime. Both cuts. I am not enough of a connoisseur to really differentiate—all I know was that mine was leaner, smaller, and far more delicate, while Dave’s was a great hunk of melting beef wonder. “It had the texture of something that wasn’t meat,” Dave says. “I mean, in a good way. See, I would describe it—okay, it’s like I’d never eaten meat before. You know? Until now I’d just been eating, like, things that weren’t meat. And this was meat, just meat. There’s no sauce. There’s au jus, but that’s just sorta… meat juice. So it’s meat, plain meat, with meat juice, and it’s just Good, perhaps with a capital G or in italics. Good.”
I had to order the Peach Melba for dessert. It was advertised as being flambed at the table, which I thought would be a neat trick to see our rather wooden waitress do. (When we asked her what was in Oysters Rockefeller, as the menu had no description, she was confused, and said it had, um, like, spinach and ouzo, and the alcohol was burned off but you could sort of taste it. She offered no opinion on whether they were good. We ordered them somewhat out of curiosity, because we’d simply never encountered them before. Sure, they were good.)
Turns out they have a guy, and that’s what he does. He wheels out this cart, and he assembles the whole dish, and explains it as he’s doing it. He heated a half-jigger of 151, lit it on fire, put it into a sauté pan, let it burn, dumped the peaches in, swirled them around in it until the fire went out (“You have to let the fire go all the way out,” he explained, “or it tastes real bitter.”), then dumped them over a plate of ice cream, added the raspberry melba sauce, and their homemade whipped cream on top. He put two spoons in it and set it on the table, and I was so excited to eat it I don’t remember whether I thanked him. It was excellent, and was worth the whole production. (It was also, if I recall, $5, which is a lot for an ice cream thing around here, but given the size of it, entirely reasonable.)
We had B-52 coffees with dessert, which the waitress was skeptical about—they weren’t on the menu, and she thought the bartender might not make them. “Cuz we have our glasses, that we sell,” she said, a little anxious on top of her overall deadpan. “I don’t know if the bartender will do anything that’s not on the menu.” So we told her the ingredients, and she went off, but came back with them as promised. (In a touch of amusing irony, the B-52 coffee was introduced into Dave’s family’s world by the bartender at Alex’s, another fine Batavia restaurant; I guess that's the other side of town or something. It’s hot coffee, Cointreau, Kahlua, and Bailey’s. A B-54, which I make more often (and I make with hot chocolate instead when I’m really in A Mood; it’s also known as Buffalo Bills Bleacher Seats hot chocolate, because it keeps you from freezing your fanny off during the late-season games), has amaretto in it too.)
When the bill finally came, yes it was a lot, but it was not as a lot as one would expect, when one has just had prime rib and filet mignon and several alcoholic drinks and a dessert some guy lit on fire. And did I mention the French Onion Soup? I didn’t. I should’ve. It was good, although it made us rather too warm and we had to sit back and recover from it before our entrees came. (Which is why it’s sort of good that they were a bit slow with bringing the next course.) So, a pretty darn good way to drop a whole day’s pay.
I think we’re through being extravagant for now. But it was a lovely evening.
In other news, the process of deciding what to put onto the Work Laptop is giving me reason to paw through my old writings, and I'm going to post a few bits over on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
treigylgweith for the purpose of reminding myself what else I've written, besides this damned vikings thing that's just refusing to give me love. So keep an eye out for some amusing late-90s relics, if you're curious about My Early Work.
Other than that, it's also a city in Western NY.
With a really good restaurant called Red Osier that specializes in doing wonderful things to beef.
I am composing this in the car enroute to Batavia. Dave is feeling rich what with the raise and the refund and all, so he’s taking me out to dinner at the Red Osier, a restaurant specializing in beef. I am going to put the computer away and help Dave navigate. Keep Batavia beautiful, people.
Ooooog. I am stuffed full like a sack of wet concrete. I am full of good. As Dave’s family says, “My heart is full of joy.” (Ususally said after an excellent meal that perhaps prompted a bit of overeating.) OK, now I'm composing this as we take Rte. 5 all the way home from Batavia.
Batavia, for any who don’t know, is an old little farm town midway between Rochester and Buffalo. Nowadays it’s mostly inhabited by those who can’t settle in either of the two cities, and so they’re not usually in a mood to appreciate its charms. But it was originally a farming town, and is renowned for its fertile fields of “muck” (apparently that’s its scientific name), prompting the name of its AA baseball team, the Batavia Muckdogs (a farm team for the Buffalo Bisons, themselves a farm team for the Cleveland Indians).
Much of it was built before or around the turn of the last century, which means its main drag is studded with absolute gems of Victorian architecture—turrets, garrets, cornices. One I saw right near the intersection of 98 and 5 had the original glass in its windows, bright and wavy. Some of the houses are older, with the heavy pediments of the Federal style (pre-1850s) and some Greek Revival columns.
And many of them are well-maintained, with impeccable gingerbreading—no vinyl siding here, but painstakingly-painted cornices and a beautiful rose window in the Espiscopal church and the like. It’s a lovely little place, although Dave assures me it’s a hole if you actually live there.
Red Osier is a bit out of town, past it to the east, and has the best prime rib ever. It just does. They also had fresh-strawberry daquiris, which were lovely. (I inhaled mine.) They often print coupons in the local papers, and from their website we downloaded a couple of them that were only good for this week. So we ordered pretty much what we had coupons for. But, c’mon, the coupons were for surf-n-turf and prime rib. Dave got the prime rib, and I got a filet mignon and a lobster tail.
The meat was sublime. Both cuts. I am not enough of a connoisseur to really differentiate—all I know was that mine was leaner, smaller, and far more delicate, while Dave’s was a great hunk of melting beef wonder. “It had the texture of something that wasn’t meat,” Dave says. “I mean, in a good way. See, I would describe it—okay, it’s like I’d never eaten meat before. You know? Until now I’d just been eating, like, things that weren’t meat. And this was meat, just meat. There’s no sauce. There’s au jus, but that’s just sorta… meat juice. So it’s meat, plain meat, with meat juice, and it’s just Good, perhaps with a capital G or in italics. Good.”
I had to order the Peach Melba for dessert. It was advertised as being flambed at the table, which I thought would be a neat trick to see our rather wooden waitress do. (When we asked her what was in Oysters Rockefeller, as the menu had no description, she was confused, and said it had, um, like, spinach and ouzo, and the alcohol was burned off but you could sort of taste it. She offered no opinion on whether they were good. We ordered them somewhat out of curiosity, because we’d simply never encountered them before. Sure, they were good.)
Turns out they have a guy, and that’s what he does. He wheels out this cart, and he assembles the whole dish, and explains it as he’s doing it. He heated a half-jigger of 151, lit it on fire, put it into a sauté pan, let it burn, dumped the peaches in, swirled them around in it until the fire went out (“You have to let the fire go all the way out,” he explained, “or it tastes real bitter.”), then dumped them over a plate of ice cream, added the raspberry melba sauce, and their homemade whipped cream on top. He put two spoons in it and set it on the table, and I was so excited to eat it I don’t remember whether I thanked him. It was excellent, and was worth the whole production. (It was also, if I recall, $5, which is a lot for an ice cream thing around here, but given the size of it, entirely reasonable.)
We had B-52 coffees with dessert, which the waitress was skeptical about—they weren’t on the menu, and she thought the bartender might not make them. “Cuz we have our glasses, that we sell,” she said, a little anxious on top of her overall deadpan. “I don’t know if the bartender will do anything that’s not on the menu.” So we told her the ingredients, and she went off, but came back with them as promised. (In a touch of amusing irony, the B-52 coffee was introduced into Dave’s family’s world by the bartender at Alex’s, another fine Batavia restaurant; I guess that's the other side of town or something. It’s hot coffee, Cointreau, Kahlua, and Bailey’s. A B-54, which I make more often (and I make with hot chocolate instead when I’m really in A Mood; it’s also known as Buffalo Bills Bleacher Seats hot chocolate, because it keeps you from freezing your fanny off during the late-season games), has amaretto in it too.)
When the bill finally came, yes it was a lot, but it was not as a lot as one would expect, when one has just had prime rib and filet mignon and several alcoholic drinks and a dessert some guy lit on fire. And did I mention the French Onion Soup? I didn’t. I should’ve. It was good, although it made us rather too warm and we had to sit back and recover from it before our entrees came. (Which is why it’s sort of good that they were a bit slow with bringing the next course.) So, a pretty darn good way to drop a whole day’s pay.
I think we’re through being extravagant for now. But it was a lovely evening.
In other news, the process of deciding what to put onto the Work Laptop is giving me reason to paw through my old writings, and I'm going to post a few bits over on
treigylgweith for the purpose of reminding myself what else I've written, besides this damned vikings thing that's just refusing to give me love. So keep an eye out for some amusing late-90s relics, if you're curious about My Early Work.
