Returning from hiatus

I have been silent for some time now, and no doubt the few readers who might have been faithful have long since gone to more voluble purveyors of food-oriented writing. I make no promises to write more frequently in the future, but for now, I have some things to say, and so I will say them.

My search for quality éclairs seems doomed to failure. Since the time of my great disappointment at Dahlia Bakery I have sampled the weak efforts of the Madison Park Bakery (average choux pastry, slightly too custardy filling, and far too much sugar in the topping, resulting in an almost crunchy layer of chocolate); vaguely tolerable mini-éclairs from several coffee shops that shall remain nameless because they simply buy their pastries from elsewhere; and even Whole Foods supermarket, which I am sad to report appears to have the best éclairs in the Puget Sound area.

That last statement may sound much like praise, but I assure you it is not. No, it is rather further condemnation of all of the other so-called éclairs to be found throughout the city.

In the past months I have sampled exceptional (and some not-so-exceptional) tapas at Tango; experienced fine dining at its best at Mistral; worked far too hard; traveled to Boston, the place of my birth, and back; sampled the cuisine of Vancouver (which appears to be almost entirely devoid of éclairs, whether good or otherwise); and I have witnessed the departure of the great Noah Mellich from Porcella, until recently my favorite spot for a quick but fine meal. I do hope the place manages to recover from his departure, but his food was the soul of the place, and they have much work to do to maintain his standards.

Now I plan to return for a time to my third-greatest passion, that of writing. (For the moment I shall leave it to others to ponder what my two greatest passions might be).

I shall also be migrating the rest of the content from my original site over the next few weeks, as I have decided that I prefer to work in through this interface rather than fighting the evils of forum spammers and web design software on my own.

You will hear more from me soon.

- Ram