Brooklyn Seafood, Steak and Oyster House, Seattle

The Brooklyn was an old favorite of ours, so we were keen to head back at the first opportunity to check it out again. We’ve never reserved, and always seem to get a couple of seats at the counter overlooking the kitchen without any trouble. The interior is a little dark and dated, but the ‘Captain Kirk’ style chairs at the counter are excellent for casual dining. The steaks look excellent here, but the fish selection is hard to pass over.

It was a busy Friday evening, and the waiter was a little stressed. This meant I only got 4 oysters instead of six, and our neighbors nearly sampled our wine before we did. Still, the recommendation of the Adelsheim 2005 Pinot Gris was an excellent one – all nectarines and balanced acids making an excellent, fresh food wine.

I’m not sure which four oysters I eventually received – there were eight varieties to choose from -, but two were delicious and creamy, the others respectable enough. A Dungeness crab salad, subtly dressed with lime-poppy seed vinaigrette certainly made up for the missing oysters – light, crisp and not-too-voluminous (an all too common occurrence in the USA).

Jan’s Alaskan halibut with lobster mash was the main course highlight. The fish was perfectly cooked, translucent, moist, springy, and well paired with the somewhat decadent mash. My Hawaiian ono was a little disappointing, having spent a minute or so too long in the oven for my liking. The accompanying medley of clams, Penn Cove mussels and crab risotto slid down rather nicely though. As a combination the dish didn’t quite work, but most of the constituent parts held up well!

It’s been 3 years since we last ate here, but the Brooklyn is still following its formula of fresh ingredients cooked relatively simply. It’s easy to see why it remains a vibrant and popular venue for downtown workers, symphony goers and tourists. On the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) Good Food Guide restaurant rating scale, 13/20.

Elysian brew pub, Seattle

The Elysian is a good 20 minute, dinner-digesting uphill stroll from downtown, in Capitol Hill. For Sydney readers, Capitol Hill is Seattle’s Newtown. All funky clothes shops, coffee-shop accessory dogs with dyed hair, arthouse movie theatres, oddly placed piercings, extravagant tatoos and strong gay culture. You get the picture.

 

I couldn’t detect any signs of a beer sampling platter option, so was forced to chose from the 15 or so beers they have on tap. The Bete Blanche sounded fun, so I tried a pint of that first. It turned out to be a smooth, medium-bodied Belgium style beer that slipped down very easily. Next was the Perseus Porter, a bitter chocolate and smoky full-bodied ale that I liked immensely. After that, all I could think of that could follow the porter was the Immortal IPA, a beer I remember from a previous visit. This is a dry, aggressive IPA with a hoppy kick like a boxing kangaroo. It’s no wonder I remembered it – it’s a beer that’s hard to forget.

 

Overall, I favored the Bete Blanche. It was the sort of ale you can happily sup a few of, a classic session beer. The porter and IPA are fine drops, but their alcohol levels and bold flavors make me want to approach them with a litte caution. They certainly keep your taste buds on their toes.

 

The Elysian brew a heap of European inspired beers. A return visit is in order to sample these interesting northwest interpretations of classic German and Belgium brews. 

Snow Lake hike

On the way back from Seattle, we stopped at Snoqualmie Pass to find a day hike. It was a glorious blue sky day, so definately a chance to go and see some more of the Cascades before the snow arrives. Our guide book had recommended a hike to Snow Lake within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, so we bought a trail head permit and drove the 2 miles to the car park.

It was a seven mile return hike, at first through dense forest and then up rocky switchbacks to a ridge, from where the trail dropped to the lake. Although there were plenty of people (and nearly as many dogs), it was a very fine hike, and afforded some wonderful views of the jagged peaks of the Cascades.

The trail head for Snow Lake was at the Alpental ski area car park. We’ve not skied here, but will hopefully this year. It has a reputation for knarly, steep skiing with some wild back country. Shouldn’t be long now …

Captain Fantastic revisited

About 3 years I took Jan to a Bjork gig in Seattle. I thought it was quite amazing, all silly outfits, geeks on laptops and Bjork’s haunting, mis-pronounced atonal sounds, but I’m not sure Jan was quite so enthusiastic. So I think going to see Elton John this weekend was a kind of revenge. However, little did she know that I’d spent a memorable summer holiday in the south of France in 1975 listening continuously to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy on a old shoe box-like crackly cassette player. And by sheer coincidence, the album released the day before the concert here, The Captain and the Kid, promised to evoke strong memories of the album I loved so many years ago. Revenge thwarted.

The gig was at Key Arena in the Seattle Centre. A venue we’d not been to before, but even though our seats were at the side of the stage, the view and sound were pretty darn good. They even had good microbrews on tap inside, so it gets a thumbs up from me.

Elton and his band played for the best part of three hours non-stop, pounding out most of his famous material, along with six songs off the new album, which stood up pretty well. Ok – so 75% of this show could’ve been performed thirty years ago. But maybe that’s just a testament to the quality of the music John and Taupin wrote in the early 70s. Elton’s voice isn’t quite what it used to be, but few were worried about that. This was a crowd-pleasing performance from an enduring, engaging and ever-enthusiastic superstar.

The fun and games of publishing …

Had some good news today. One of our papers (with Jenny Liu) on adaptive server architectures was accepted for publication at the 2006 Software Engineering for Middleware (SEM 2006) workshop in Portland in November. This is a fun, focused workshop that I’ve attended in the past and found very valuable.

This is the 4th version of this paper that we’ve submitted. We aimed big about a year ago and tried for ICSE 2006. Wildly ambitious, I know. With a 9% acceptance rate, this was always going to be a long shot. We got rejected, but two of the three reviewers were pretty positive, just one was not convinced. We took on board their comments, significantly upgraded the empirical validation, and submitted the new version in January to another leading conference, which shall remain nameless.

Of the three reviews this time, one was very positive, one neutral, and one absolutely hated the paper. Viciously. From the latter’s comments, it was however blatantly obvious this reviewer had absolutely no understanding of the paper whatsoever. I know this kind of thing happens, but this was a really bad case – probably the worst I’ve ever seen. We prepared a response for the Program Chair, but didn’t send it in the end. Program chairs have enough on their plate. We were unlucky, but you have to take these things on the chin in this game.

So we made some mods to improve clarity, and submitted to another major international conference in Melbourne. By this stage, we were very happy with the paper, and confident it’d be accepted. You can imagine our surprise when, of three reviewers, one liked it a lot, one was positive, and one hated it. This time we’d stumbled upon that classic reviewer profile of ‘this work refutes mine so it must be wrong’. Despite the strong empirical evidence in our paper, the reviewer dismissed our approach as infeasible. Never let the facts get in the way of entrenched opinions, I say.

Fortunately, the SEM 2006 submission deadline was timely, and  our reviewers unanimously liked the paper. They even made insightful comments on how we could improve it. Luxury.

We know this is the first stage of a long R&D project, but it’s decent, innovative research and validated much more strongly than most current work in the adaptive/autonomic systems area. It’s good to finally find a qualified and informed audience. Ok, I’m biased

I am looking forward to Portland in November.

Big, old trees

Whilst at Priest Lake, we drove north up some dirt roads about 15 miles to see the Roosevelt Grove. There’s a couple of mile hike that takes you between two stands of monsterous cedar trees. The walk follows Granite Creek, which thunders over a series of small falls in a narrow, rocky canyon. It’s a pleasant little stroll.

The real stars are the cedar trees. Some must be at least 50 metre tall and have a 4 metre trunk diameter. Apparently the average age of the trees is 800+ years, and some of the really big ones are well over 2000 years. It’s incredibly impressive wandering through these ancient monoliths, absorbing a landscape that has not changed for many centuries.

Places like this are special. Fortunately, fire is now the major threat to these tree’s existence. Unfortunately, fires are getting more frequent and of higher intensity – this year has been the worst on record in the Pacific Northwest.

Let’s hope these trees maintain their good fortune.

WICSA, Mumbai Jan 2007

The review process for the Working International Conference on Software Architecture has just been completed. We accepted 17 full papers and 14 short papers, and overall I think we’ll have an excellent program. Scott Ambler will be opening the conference with a keynote, no doubt to do with all things agile-y and RUP-y. Scott’s an excellent speaker, so expect an interesting and hopefully somewhat controversial talk.

Dan Paulish has also put together an exciting tutorial program for the first two days of the conference. So this is an excellent opportunity for researchers and practitioners to hang out together, discuss hot architecture issues and indulge in Indian food and beer in Mumbai in 2007.

Registration is open, and the programme will be on the web site real soon now!

Grandview Resort @ Priest Lake

We were lucky enough to get a room at Grandview Resort for the weekend. For $90 per night, we got an excellent sized room within perfect views from the balcony across Reeder Bay on Priest Lake.

The room and resort as a whole had obviously seen better days, but remained perfectly serviceable and comfortable. We arrived Friday evening just in time to run downstairs to the dining room for dinner. Their Friday night special of baby back ribs with homemade huckleberry barbeque sauce had to be one dish, and I ordered a lemon baked cod. Both were incredibly tasty, simple, perfectly cooked, and accompanied with salad and scrumpious roasted Idaho reds. Potatoes in Idaho are fabulous things – it even tells you so on their car number plates.

The next night we returned for a ‘maxi cut’ of prime rib and a nut roasted chicken breast. Once again the food was very enjoyable. Both nights were about $40 total – a bargain.

On Saturday we went to the bar next to the restaurant to have a beer and indulge in some banter with the locals. It’s always a pleasure to sit at the bar in the USA and talk to a good bar man who is able to hold about nine conversations simultaneously, and orchestrate the conversation to include everyone who wants to participate. It’s just like being in an episode of Cheers. This was no different, and we found out heaps about the local area, fishing, hunting and snowmobiling.

I would however not recommend complimenting Idaho’s new ‘no smoking in bars’ laws in this kind of company. The beers had lowered our guard (ie always avoid religion and politics in such situations), and we forgot that Idahoans are some of the world’s remaining great smokers. A five minute rant resulted. We just smiled and listened intently. You have to. These people own guns.

All-in-all, this is a great place to stay. The location is beautiful and convenient, the food is fresh, tasty and excellent value, and the rooms are functional and well positioned.

On Sunday we night we wandered around the bay for a mile to have dinner at Elkins Resort.The restaurant was quite classy, a beautiful log building with a huge central fireplace. The food lived up to the settings, too. While my halibut was slightly overcooked, Jan’s pepper steak was just-as-ordered (medium rare), with a delicious rich and tangy green pepper sauce that went perfectly with the creamy mash. Good mash is, not surprisingly, a fine thing in Idaho. Remember those potatoes.

We lingered over the remnants of a Californian zinfandel (ok but not noteworthy) before walking back. There was a full moon rising over the bay, reflecting on the water and illuminating the path back to Grandview. It made you realise that in many ways, as the locals tell you often, this is god’s own country. And not just because all you can get on the radio in Idaho is god and country

A weekend in Priest Lake, Idaho

It was my birthday weekend, so we headed about 3.5 hours north to Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle. It’s only a few miles south of the Canadian border. I’d seen some information on the area and it looked quite beautiful.

Most camping is closed up there now, so we stayed at one of the small resorts on the lake. More on that in next entry.

We spent Saturday mountain biking along the 9 mile Lakeshore trail. This was a single track mountain bike trail north along the western shore of Priest Lake, with some spectacular views and secluded sandy beaches. Sunday we did a 12 mile round trip hike out to near the top of Upper Priest Lake.

At the turn-around point, we decided to have lunch on a beach at a closed campsite – closed we assumed because of a local forest fire or bears – there were warning signs everywhere. How wrong we were. Within 2 minutes or our arrival, a Ranger in a boat came over and told us we should move on. This was because the helicopters were spilling water from the huge buckets they were filling up in the lake to drop on the fire. The campsite was closed because "a gallon of water  weighs 8 pounds and hurts when it hits you from  400 feet". We didn’t argue, and went and hid under some big, dense trees to eat our sandwiches!

The whole area is meant to be full of aminals. It’s even grizzly country, which adds to the excitement a little. But amazingly, despite hearing frequent twig breaking and snorting noises from the dense forest, the only unusual animal we saw was a snake. A snake in northern Idaho! Steve Irwin (RIP) would’ve been proud of us.

The whole area was very quiet, but the weather was still quite wonderful, sunny and clear. The lake was a pleasure to swim in too after a decent hike or bike. A dip in cool, minerally, crystal clear water was the perfect preparation for beer-thirty

Wine Exchange ate my money! For Spanish cabernet …

A few years ago I sought out a low-key web site in California to supply us with some good priced, quality Aussie wine. It worked well, fast delivery, decent selection. To my amazement, when my PNL email address was reactivated in July, I suddenly started receiving essentially a daily email from Wine Exchange, telling me about the fantastic bargains they had on offer.

So I’m a sucker for someone who tells me there’s a fine wine to be had at a bargain price. But I must confess the idea of Spanish cabernet from a major Rioja producer was one that had never materialized even in my wildest dreams. Then add a 1994 and 1997 in to the deal, and I could resist no longer. Add 10 more bottles of various odd Italian, Spanish and Kiwi wines, and, well, the more you spend, the more you save. You know it makes sense …

We cracked the Torres Mas La Plana 1997 tonight, and what a spectacular drop it was. It opened up full of red berries and charred oak, but soon softened to reveal smoky, spicy flavors, all perfectly in harmony. The bottle age had worked its wonders, and while nowhere near the end of its life, this wine was drinking superbly.

I can’t wait to try the 1994. And then see if Wine Exchange has any more left.