Well, that’s what it does for me

NJ to NYC

And even at a trade conference, after a day of listening and seemingly endless indoor tedium, there are some joys to behold -  as here in Nashville, with the overwhelmingly welcome post conference cocktail firmly in hand, you suddenly glance up at the Nashville skyline and get this unexpectedly beautiful view:

Nashville

Life is here to enjoy….!

Simply the best, better than all the rest...

I travel with them very little as they don’t fly where I go.

But when I do, it’s like re-discovering a favorite sweater that somehow got buried in the back of the closet.

It’s like being a Microsoft Vista user and finding Mac for the first time.

It’s like being an AT&T customer and realizing, after you switch to Verizon, that dropped calls are the exception, not the rule…

And I don’t care if you don’t like Texas and you don’t like the boarding process. And I really don’t care if you live in Atlanta and like Air Tran or are Jewish and love Jet Blue, because you’re really just worshiping at the feet of a similar, if false, idol.

They get it.

They truly believe in customer service.

They really, really believe that investing in your own people and your own brand will bring long term loyalty and rewards.

And they believe that gouging your customers and blaming the economy and the sector is the last refuge of the weak and the craven.

And they could easily charge for the first bag – or the second bag – and make Wall St more happy.

But they don’t.

I LOVE SOUTHWEST AIRLINES….

And so should you….

The scene at London’s Gatwick airport is deceptively business as usual. There is no obvious sign of increased security around the airport, at check-in or in the shopping mosh pit. The waiting travelers are not noticeably different – they aren’t nervously glancing over their shoulders or anything – and the quietness in the air could be because it is 8.30 in the morning and it’s just after Christmas, so the Brits at least will be fighting to free themselves from an over-indulgence coma with a combination of coffee and Big Macs.

But at the gate, where security for US-bound flights has been tripled or quadrupled, there is a huge line snaking down the corridor mocking those who are on the moving walkways passing them, for they are shortly to dismount and trudge backwards to join the end of the queue. We are all awaiting another round of full body searches and forensic examination of all of our possessions, and there is a slightly more somber air to our group. Any grumbling at the at-least hour delay is quiet and sotto voce – from husband to wife – and not from stranger to stranger in the normal, roll-your-eyes, sharing travel horror stories bonding experience that epitomizes the modern travel experience.

When my body search is over I talk to my examiner as I re-dress – “In his underpants, eh?” I say, “that must make life more difficult for you”. There is a moment’s hesitation – what’s going through his mind is hard to say. What’s going through mine is ‘does my knowing that the terrorist had explosives molded to his underwear make me suspicious?’ He shrugs and says something non-committal. I move on quickly. It’s not a comment I would have made to a TSA guy in the US where – as a foreign sounding person – your risk of causing offence and drawing attention to yourself is greater, and its potential result dramatically more dangerous. And it’s probably something I shouldn’t have said to the British guy.

But the tension among us all is at a higher level, our expectation that the authorities know what they’re dealing with is at a correspondingly lower one and our reaction to the guys checking us is of gratitude and understanding rather than the usual irritation.

I vow to be more patient and sympathetic of security related delays in the future and focus my anger instead on the misguided, idiotic young men who seem to think that bringing down a plane full of 12 year old girls going on holiday with their parents; grandmas proudly visiting sons who are now working abroad; couples returning from a snowily romantic weekend will somehow imbue them with a posthumous sense of achievement and elevate them in their God’s eyes.

On the Star Alliance Menu: Logo Soup

So hello then US Airways lounges

And welcome to our Club

As we like to say to our members

But not yours, generally.

Except in some circumstances,

That we are unable to reveal.

Our new best friends at Continental Airlines

Have brought some Clubs with them

And you are invited to visit

Occasionally.

Exact rules to be determined.

Keith’s Mom says you are the runt

Of the Star Alliance litter

But I think you’re kind of cute

With your 20 worldwide clubs

And no free stuff

Yet charging over $200 a year.

Keith’s Dad says you are the new

Business Model.

He may be right.

(With acknowledgments to EJ Thribb, aged 17 1/2)

Bolsa neighborhood attempting not to look dodgy

It may already be too late to catch the wave, but Bolsa has apparently been earning accolades and rave reviews locally and is as fine a dining experience as it’s been my privilege to enjoy all year. I don’t know my Dallas neighborhoods that well – this part of Oak Cliff seemed slightly on the dodgy side to me, but that’s probably because my Ethiopian cab driver from Phoenix appears to have followed me to Dallas. So, his 15-minute cab ride from downtown turned into a 30-minute nightmare of reversing up the off-ramp from Highway 30, U turns and Amharic curse words. Thus we traveled through places that one usually and presumably wouldn’t travel through to get here, so I arrived out of sorts and slightly cranky. And was perfectly prepared to continue in that vein – if the restaurant had allowed it.

But it didn’t. Bolsa looks smart from the outside – it has an outdoor patio and a smart indoor dining area connected by a common bar where you can sit like a normal person from the indoor side and like a high hurdler if you are on the other side. All the bar and waiting staff are young and disconcertingly friendly and open. And, so they should be – because they have a restaurant to be proud of. The décor is homely, family style meets shabby chic meets earth mother meets metropolitan sophisticate…and if that all adds up to eclectic, there you have it.

It has more atmosphere at night...

The pitch is ‘slow food’ and fresh (as in delivered that day) ingredients. So the menu changes daily and is wide-ranging, locally biased and intriguing. As well as the food, the service is also on the slow side. But it’s busy because it’s popular and to be honest, when you have the quality of the food that’s on offer and you’re in good company on a pleasant Sunday evening – who really cares? We shared a bruschetta sampler between the four of us that came in four different flavors and all were excellent, including one featuring smoked salmon, pickled red onion, crème fraiche and capers – which shouldn’t have worked, but did. As the wait for the main course was longer than anticipated, our friendly waiter brought us a complimentary mushroom soup – unbelievably delicious. Also because of the wait (ha!), our Buena Vista Chardonnay had expired early and we were refreshed with a decent house substitute – again with the compliments of the house. The entrees were great – simply but beautifully cooked, tasty and not over-sauced – and notable for the freshness of the scallops, Louisiana red fish, steak and accompanying vegetables.

Not actually our waiter on the night....

If you had to think of a couple of adjectives – unpretentious and accomplished just about sums it up. You might want to throw in friendly and warm too – compliments of the house…

Food: Muy bien

Service: Magnifico

Price: No esta mal

Ambience: Si

Nowhere is the mindlessness and tokenism of “putting the needs of the business traveler first” more apparent than in the gate boarding process.

I’m not talking about the creeping herd of “Zone 1” passengers that surround every boarding gate like a pride of lions stalking a stricken antelope. But I AM talking about the appearance of the five-foot strip of red carpet, the rope, the steel stanchion and the steely eyed gaze of the gatekeeper determined to announce, identify and reward the frequent business traveler with his privilege, nay, his RIGHT to be boarded before his fellow travelers. So, now not only do you get the pre Zone 1 boarding call – you also get to…get this, ego fans…travel down a specially delineated strip of carpet and/or floor space to the same boarding card scanner, the same gate attendant, the same gate, the same jetbridge and the same aircraft. But the fabulous reward for traveling more than anyone else is that you have 30 seconds to walk in another area of the airport  on a piece of carpet THAT NO-ONE ELSE IS ALLOWED TO WALK DOWN!!!!

Special Boarding Privileges – What! Me, special?

It is all so laughably embarrassing and yet, very few seem to be laughably embarrassed by this ridiculous charade and overt display of  misconceived ‘loyalty marketing’; this mind-numbingly complete and utter waste of money and resources. So, at the same time that airlines are taking peanuts off planes, charging for bags and generally gouging their customers for all they’re worth – here they are buying thousands of strips of 5’ x 1’ red carpet and a DIY bouncer kits from Nightclubs-R-Us to make the boarding area more complicated, more crowded and more partisan. GREAT JOB United Airlines! GREAT JOB Delta Air Lines!

Will the last talented marketing executive at an airline kindly switch the lights off as they leave the building. Helloooooo! Anyone there???? Ha! Thought not. They’re all working at Hilton Hotels. And Studio 54.

Luckily for the NFL, it is a condition of British citizenship that you travel around in groups of 5,000 ready to appear as a human Union Jack flag at any time of the day or night....

The annual NFL regular season game in the UK has been dubbed The London Bowl. This means that the canceled game that the Seahawks were due to play in Beijing is presumably the lost China Bowl, which is good news – because now I know where it went. Ha! And ha! To the NFL who has now seamlessly moved the debate from ‘what the hell are we doing playing in a foreign country?’ to ‘how many regular season games are we going to play in a foreign country’ without passing Go! or Allez! or Andante!

The game – of which this is the third – has now been established as a permanent fixture for the hardly sport-starved Limeys and their visitors from near Europe with a yen and a following for the real thing. Previously they had entertained the late and unlamented European Football League of teams like the Frankfurt Blitz versus the Amsterdam Spliffs before a bored crowd of expats trying to escape the monotony of a Western European winter – or was it Summer?

Every year has seen a sell-out in London – who have now proved they can drum up a full house without Citibank and Goldman Sachs taking the first 30,000 tickets and also without a full week of cheerleaders draped around Beefeaters and defensive ends extolling the virtues of Fish n Chips and Bangers n Mash in soundbites on the evening news. This year, both teams flew in on Friday and out on Monday thus depriving the beleaguered British economy of a local edition of the Today show and a free Lindsay Lohan fashion extravaganza in the somewhat restrained ballyhoo leading up to London Bowl Sunday.

The game was remarkable to the Brits and unremarkable to everyone else for its slick presentation and the efficient infrastructure that surrounded it. One shudders to think how much the NFL actually paid London Underground, Chiltern Railways and the London Borough of Wembley to allow the crowd to arrive unimpeded by rail delays, strikes and road works but whatever it was, it was worth it. And the extensive waterboarding of the Wembley ground staff over the past 12 months resulted in a pitch/field that didn’t resemble the Maginot Line after the first primeval rumble of 300 lb linemen. Go NFL agronomists!

The presentation has now been smartened and slickened up to provide for a virtually indistinguishable experience from a regular NFL Sunday game where many of the watching audience are blissfully unaware that the game is taking place anywhere else other than on their televisions and where the appearance of a Welsh soprano singing God Save the Queen before the game is ample proof of the sort of shenanigans they get up to at Foxboro to wrong foot the opposing team.

Not that the Patriots needed much to wrong foot the hapless Bucs who, despite 85,000 people waving pirate flags at them, played like their coach was still imprisoned in the Tower. Nevertheless, it was a grand occasion with a party atmosphere, much collective and knowledgeable enjoyment, no discernible obnoxious drunkenness and a timely non-appearance by Sir Elton John.

And yes, I hear that the NFL has been enlisted to consult on staging the London Olympics in 2012, but there is absolutely no truth in the rumor that darts is now an Olympic event. That’s something they CAN leave to the locals…

No need to beware of snipers hiding in the foliage here

CHICAGO: Le Colonial, 937 North Rush Street, Chicago 60611 (312 255 0088)

A French –Vietnamese theme and ambience (although, having never been to Vietnam, I had to take my dinner companion’s word for its relative authenticity) makes this a somewhat unusual destination, but definitely one to remember. My advice is to save it for one of those long winter Chicago evenings, as the heavily draped, red and gold, low lit and somewhat louche atmosphere lend the restaurant an air of warm, erotically intriguing welcome. The maitre d’ is a firm, madame-like presence, tables are a little close together for comfort, the wine list strongly French, if slightly limited and the food well prepared, tastily and spicily Oriental.

We all had the dish recommended by our competent and unobtrusive waiter  (Tom xao sate – Sautéed jumbo shrimp & asparagus, in a light sauce of sate spice, chili, & garlic – if you are feeling lazy, calling out the number 23 will suffice) which was good to OK (6/10)), and we shared some sort of banana/tapioca type dessert which reminded me too much of boarding school to comfortably share without breaking into a cold sweat, reflexively buttock clenching and feverishly murmuring under one’s breath: the horror, the horror, the horror…

The overall verdict from the emotionally damaged jury:

Food: Comme ci comme ca

Service: Sai-been and gone.

Price: Bring plenty of Dong

Ambience: Red light means go.

The empty terrace of Rise awaits the fierce souffle hunters of suburban Dallas

Rise is one of those restaurants that really shouldn’t work: It has a theme – Soufflés – (soufflé = rise, geddit?) – and it’s in one of those random, semi-upscale, low rise (ha!), mall-type neighborhoods in North Dallas – like Highland Park, but not Highland Park. It’s a restaurant trying so hard to be French that it’s practically breathing garlic and Gitanes onto the sidewalk and it has more gimmicks than a Government sponsored economic rescue plan.

And yet…the soufflé thing kind of works. The layout, décor and atmosphere of the main dining room (with an excellent bar seating area) is very cool and inviting. And the rest of the food and the wine list (including four tasting flights) are verging on the excellent.  The cheese cart (I wanted to say trolley, but I just heard Vinny Jones utter the immortal English phrase “off his trolley” on US TV, so I don’t want to add confusion here) houses a particularly impressive selection of not just French, but domestic and other cheeses – all lurking in fine condition on their mobile display. Apart, that is, from one nasty concoction/aberration by the cheese ‘chef” (huh?) who puts together his own mangled combo of all the other cheeses into one sculptural mess which is introduced as the ‘special’. Hmm, special indeed…

But, as I say, the whole experience somehow comes together – and our evening was infinitely enlivened by a waitress with attitude rarely seen outside the attitude major leagues and who definitely has a future (or a past) in the Sarcasm Hall of Fame. Opening gambit to one of our number who lamely asked what was on the wine list: “Have you tried opening it up and reading it?”

Fun!

It’s a long while since I’ve sat at a whole table of  media types with a free pass to waitress bait for the evening. And she won! My favorite part was her ability to repeat every order for a glass of wine with the corrected pronunciation and with the cutest and slightest turn of her upper lip and still manage not get stabbed. She is a girl absolutely at the top of her game.

When you go just ask for the French Canadian bitch with the annoying tendrils falling over her face who claims to be from Dallas – and you should be in luck. Unless there are more than one of them and  it’s just part of the “Let’s be more French than the French” theme………..aaahhhh, I’m getting it, now!

Food: Oui, monsieur.

Service: L’ATTITUDE with a capital L’ATTITUDE.

Price: Worth the price admission – better value than la Cirque du Soleil.

Ambience: Cheese eating surrender monkeys. But in a good way.

Vives les Cowboys!!!

As lifted from their website and featuring the exterior of a restauarant clearly NOT in Buckhead and obviously a long way from any other eating establishments withing walking distance

This may be a small chain (now I’ve checked their website – yes it is, there are six of them), as someone told me they thought the restaurant started in Florida. Whatever – the ‘Seasons 52’ of the title refers to the weekly change of menu to reflect what’s in season, fresh produce, organic, natural cooking techniques (!), blah blah…

Observed: Large, attractive room; great booths in the bar area; wide-ranging wine list by the glass. I only ate from the appetizer menu – the tomato/parmesan flatbread was amazing…and amazingly fresh. A glass of King Estate Pinot Gris came immediately to accompany it – and life was restored. If you live in or near Buckhead I’m sure Seasons 52 is one of a relatively full list of cool places for you to visit with great service, comfortable ambience and beautifully prepared food. If, like me, you don’t live here and want all of the above, make a note and go.

Food: Summer is here all year round.

Service: A Spring in the step.

Price: Not too Wintry.

Ambience: Fall-ing in love…