Bottle Shock

The second event of our date was seeing the movie, Bottle Shock. The movie is about the fabled Judgment in Paris of 1977 when British wine merchant Steven Spurrier arranged a blind tasting of California wines and French wines. Based on the book by George Tabor, who was the only journalist in attendance at this historical event. Because I'm such a wine geek, I wanted to see this Hollywood treatment. I very much enjoyed the scenes filmed in Napa and seeing the places that we have been to. Still, it was a "hollywood" movie and focused on the familial relationships of the Barrett's who owned the Chateau Montelena winery and Steven Spurrier's efforts to discover new ways to promote his wine shop in Paris.

I think that more could have been made of the character of Gustavo Brambila, the winemaker at Chateau Montelena at the time, but that was only a back story.

Amaya at the Grand Del Mar

Jenn and I went to Amaya for lunch yesterday as the first event of our date. I picked it based on it's proximity to Addison. The architecture is very much Italianate and reminded us of the La Costa resort. We were greeted by the "hostess" and offered the breakfast buffet before she even checked our reservation (made through Opentable.com). After touring the rather ordinary looking buffet offerings, we opted for the lunch menu and were seated in a corner table just off the entrance. On the opposite corner of the room was a sales agent for the condos being offered on the Grand Del Mar property. She was giving the hard pitch and it was very hard to concentrate on the menu. Not that there was much to contemplate. It was a limited lunch menu offering some salads, one soup, a burger and some entrees -- a steak salad, a "Cobb" salad, a halibut dish, two salmon offerings and a gnocchi dish. The sales pitch was so distracting that we asked to be moved to another room. "No problem". When we were able to order, Jenn decided on the oven dried tomato goat cheese tart and the gnocchi. I went for the yellow pepper soup and the cobb salad.

The soup was actually quite nice. It had a little dungess crab and chive oil enhancing the subtle flavor of the pureed yellow peper. My salad came tossed with some of their organic roasted chicken, but lacked the chunks of bleu cheese that one generally expects in a Cobb. Jenn's gnocchi came with slices of summer truffles adding a nice earthiness.

The highlight of the meal was the dessert. We selected the "Le Grand", which was a delightful layered chocolate peanumt butter torte with a dollop of banana ice cream.