A quick trip to Detroit -- fine dining at Habib's Cuisine

This past Monday I flew to Detroit and back to argue a motion to vacate a prior restraint barring a Dearborn man from using a community Facebook page to criticize the proposed settlement of a class action against McDonald’s over the sale of non-halal meat that had been advertised as halal.  It was a tough travel day, beginning with a 5 AM awakening to get to BWI Airport and ending after midnight on Tuesday after driving back from BWI, but I was rewarded by the judge’s somewhat grudging decision to vacate the prior restraint, as well as a truly outstanding meal.

On arrival at Detroit’s Metro airport I rented a car – why does the home of US auto manufacturing have the very highest domestic car rental rates? — and drove to the office of Michigan’s ACLU, which filed an amicus brief in support of my client and kindly offered me an office in which to finish my preparation for the 2 PM argument.  The ACLU recently acquired its own building on Woodward Avenue, about a mile from the courthouse in downtown Detroit.  I ate lunch with a couple of ACLU lawyers at the Atlas Global Bistro across the street from their office – as best as I could see, it was the only restaurant nearby.   It was adequate, nothing more.  The most interesting dish on the menu was orecchiette with fennel sausage and radicchio – they were out of the fennel sausage, but it was available with chicken instead.  Maybe it would have been really good with the fennel sausage, but it was boring with chicken. 

On the  drive downtown, my eyes were drawn to a huge mural on the side of a downtown building reading Outsource to Detroit.

After the argument was over, I took the advice of my client, a lawyer named Majed Moughni, who had identified Habib’s Cuisine as the place to eat in Dearborn.  I don’t often give restaurant’s a five-star rating, but this place had it all – nice dining room, fine and very friendly service, and top-notch food.  I ate with long-time friends Barbara Harvey and Michael Friedman, both lawyers in Detroit.   

Eating at Habib's Cuisine with Barbara Harvey

I was disappointed that they did not serve liquor – I assume for religious reasons — but I started with a delicious fresh mango juice flavored with lime.  We ordered several appetizers, figuring that they would be small-ish dishes, as well as two main courses; the main courses also came with a choice of soup or salad: I chose the soup, a greenish soup called freekeh, which had many  shreds of chicken.

Freekeh

The appetizers began with a lovely plate of hummus and small rounds of bread,

Hummus

and a salad called zaatar.  I have always thought of zaatar as a spice blend, but this was a mixture of lettuce leaves, fresh oregano, scallions and tomatoes as well as spices

Zaatar below, hummus above

Then there was the Majadara Hamra (pronounces Mah-ZHED-ruh), a combination of brown lentils, cracked wheat and spices, topped with browned and caramelized shreds of onion

Majadara Hamra

Yet another appetizer was hindbee, a dish of sauteed dandelion greens with onions, flavored with lemon juice and served on a bed of greens (in the front center of the photo below), as well as labne (pronounced LEB-nah), which resembled Greek yogurt but even more dense (upper central in the photo below)       

By the time I was done with the freekeh and into the appetizers, I was almost too full for my main course.  But I had to eat at least some of that — I had ordered tawook, a dish of grilled marinated chicken that was tender and tasty (right-hand side at the bottom of the photo above).  The main dish came with very tasty roasted vegetables, and a choice of potato balls or rice – I chose potato balls (the reddish globes served with the tawook), which the consistency of tater tots, but nicely spicy.  I was so stuffed that I did not even ask for a taste of Michael’s main dish, sauteed shrimp with mango sauce.

We couldn’t come close to finishing what we were served, so we got take-away containers, and there was no way we could think of ordering dessert.  But I had two hours still until my plane, and the company was good, so we ordered coffee and tea (the only disappointment of the night – the tea choices were Lipton black tea or green tea in a bag; only American coffee was available, but Barbara and Mike reported that the coffee was properly strong without being bitter).

With the coffee came a “surprise” – a platter containing three bowls of nice rice pudding. Sitting amid the bowls were three strawberries, each artily cut from the top and sitting in a mound of delicately light whipped cream, and decorated nouvelle style with a lime-based concoction.

We couldn’t insult our waiter, who had brought us this extra, so we slowly ate the delicious rice pudding and every last piece of strawberry and bit of whipped cream.  Delicious.

Despite portions, the prices were very reasonable – we came away with a bill of a bit more than $100 for the three of us, including a substantial tip.  For some reason, the menu on the restaurant's web site is not the same as the menu from which we ate; at my request, Habib's sent me their menu, which is linked here.

Preview of DC United's 2013 Season -- Season Ticket Holder Event With Ben Olsen

I was frustrated that another commitment made it impossible for me to accept the invitation extended to DC United's season ticket holders to hear from coach Ben Olsen earlier this week, but fellow DC United fan Deborah Eckbreth provided this report to a fan listerv in which I participate and graciously authorized me to post it here:

Why can't DC requirements for construction sites be more pedestrian-friendly?

This morning, I walked to and from my dentist’s office.  Between 20th and Q Streets NW and 25th and M Street NW, walking along New Hampshire Avenue, I walked about ten blocks in each direction, and five of those blocks were entirely or partly marked as closed, to accommodate construction. 

I have often wondered why the District of Columbia can’t do a better job protecting pedestrian access to sidewalks.  Every time I visit New York, I find a walkway available when I am walking hear a construction site, normally a covered walkway in fact.  But I almost never see this in DC.  Apparently the District has a similar requirement for construction projects.  But I have rarely seen such covered walkways.

The rules allow for “site-specific modification.”  Is the problem that site-specific modifications, eliminating the entire requirement, are always permitted?

The requirement of a walkway no doubt adds to the cost of construction, but the compared to the total cost of a downtown office building or major roadway rebuild, the cost would be a drop in the bucket. 

A few days in Portland for Working Weekend at Reed College

I spent the second half of last week traveling to Portland for its second annual Working Weekend, a program sponsored by Reed's Alumni Board and Career Services Office that brings scores of Reed alums back to campus to speak to students on a series of panels about career choices and career path; there were also hands-on workshops on developing startups and producing radio news programming, as well as a sort of speed-dating like series of ten-minute one-on-one meetings between individual alums and individual students.  I began with a separate career talk to students on Thursday afternoon.  The public restroom had this interesting label which, I gather, will increasingly become the norm.



For dinner, I headed out to northeast Portland to meet my friend (and perennial host when I come in for Reed activities) Lorene Scheer and a couple of her friends at a very interesting Cambodian restaurant, Mekong Bistro (at this writing the web site is not working, but their Facebook page is here).

The Mekong Bistro menu ranges wide in different flavors and textures.  We began with two appetizers —  beef jerky, four strips of beef that were a bit chewy but also moist and nicely flavored, and the Mekong Lettuce Wrap, a spicy minced chicken cooked with diced apples and vegetables, served with quartered head of lettuce from which we would peel off the lettuce leaves, stuff them with chicken mixture and eat by hand.

Lettuce Wrap and beef jerky at Mekong Bistro

We had somewhat sour and spicy soup, Som-Law Maju Kreung, with lemongrass, watercress and pork ribs.

Som-Law Maju Kreung at Mekong Bistro

The chicken and shrimp salad with noodles and vegetables (nyum) was spicy, but the steamed catfish, served in coconut cream and curry paste and wrapped with banana leaves, was delicately sweet and cooked just right. My one regret about the catfish dish was not having a separate plate to eat it, because I think it would have been better if the portions I took were not mixing with the spicy flavors from the other dishes that we all shared family style.

Steamed catfish in banana leaves at Mekong Bistro

Nyum at Mekong Bistro

We were too full to order dessert, but the restaurant treated us to a dish of sweet rice topped with strips of custard.    Having been given a gift, of course we had to consume it -- a delicious treat.  We were only able to scratch the surface of the menu, and I look forward to visiting again on future trips to Portland.   

Although I had scheduled my plane travel based on a preliminary schedule that had the sessions for Working Weekend beginning on Friday, the final schedule had nothing until a dinner for the visiting alums with the Board of Trustees.  But i had managed to find an excellent fare for barely over $300 round-trip out of National Airport, and it would have been expensive to change it.   Instead, my host Lorene and I planned to go snowshoeing on Mount Hood.  But there was so much snow during that week that we weren’t confident in bringing either her car or my rental car without the required chains or traction tires, and Lorene's hip was acting up, so instead we opted to spend the day hiking in the Columbia Gorge.  Portland was still covered by clouds as we drove out I-84, but as we passed through Troutdale the sky turned sunny, and in the end we enjoyed sunny and unseasonable warm temperatures for our hike (upper 40's, maybe even low 50's).  We chose to hike Eagle Creek although as usual we got such a late start that we had to turn back about a mile short of the Tunnel Falls destination.  But there were dozens of waterfalls, pouring through the forests and tumbling over steep basalt walls.

Waterfall seen across Eagle Creek

Punchbowl Falls along Eagle Creek Trail

The path hugged the side of the some of the walls, and sometime we were walking directly under individual falls or could look up and see streamlets of water pouring over lichen-covered rocks onto us.

Walls along the Eagle Creek hiking trail

Eagle Creek trial going behind a small fall

Looking up at the walls along the Eagle Creek trail

Hill overlooking Eagle Creek Trail

There was several footbridges over the creek, one of them more than a hundred feet over the creek as it plunged through a narrow chasm below, and one place where we had to step over the creek ourselves. 

Chasm below bridge over Eagle Creek

I spent Saturday at Working Weekend, appearing on a panel with three other alumni lawyers engaged in a variety of practices, then watching a panel on “Law Outside the Corporate World” that featured three lawyers I know from DC.   

Working Weekend alumni participants

Working Weekend Schedule

 In the early afternoon there was a meeting of the Reed Alumni Board; among other things, we got to hear a defense by Reed Student Services director Mike Brody of a recent controversial decision by Reed’s new President, John Kroger, to cancel two classes during the January Paideia session and to demand reformulation of a third class which, supposedly, threatened the health and safety of students by providing inappropriate information about the use of drugs and the brewing of alcohol.    (Kroger’s written explanation is here).   Brody’s argument expanded on Kroger’s to some extent, suggesting on the one hand that any discussion of how to trip safely would inevitably encourage the use of illegal drugs, and on the other had that if information were to be conveyed about safer use of drugs it should only be offered by a highly qualified professional counselor instead of a hobbyist who might offer incorrect information.  I found the defense unpersuasive, but with a full agenda there was insufficient opportunity for a full discussion.    I will be looking forward to Kroger’s visit to DC next month when I expect a number of alums will be asking for a fuller explanation.  On the other hand, I could not help wondering why the students had not responded to the censorship of the classes by rescheduling them en masse without official “Paideia” imprimatur.

In the evening, I headed up to the Profile Theatre, which is having a whole season of plays by South African playwright Athol Fugard.  The theatre is tiny and in the round; the actors did a fine job.  Saturday’s performance was “The Road to Mecca,” about a woman whose artistic self-expression, a series of sculptures made from glass bottles, was threatening to her Afrikaaner neighbors.  I felt that the play started a bit slowly before the intermission, but it built to an intense conclusion.  It was a powerful end to a fine long weekend.

A Day in New York

Last week I took a business trip to New York.  The business reason for the trip aborted, but in New York there is always the chance for a great visit.

The original reason for the trip was to accompany Jane Perez, whom I had represented in the Virginia Supreme Court against a preliminary injunction requiring her to change unfavorable reviews she had posted on Yelp and Angie's List about a contractor who then sued her for libel.  After the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the injunction,  I helped her find a pro bono lawyer, but she was still facing the prospect of significant our-of-pocket expenses, and was conducting an online campaign to raise funds to continue her defense.  (I urge readers to donate to that fund).  The Anderson-Cooper daytime talk show expressed an interest in having her appear on the show along with the contractor, and given the history between the two – he had shown up at her door demanding to “talk to her” after his previous lawsuit against her had been dismissed — she was nervous about appearing without her lawyer present.  So my purpose in going was to provide some reassurance while she made her case on the air.

Our appearance was derailed, in the end, by the exceptionally broad release that the show apparently exacts from each of its participants, including a confidentiality clause so sweeping that, if we had seen a guest offering payola for inclusion on a broadcast, or seen a rape while backstage, we would have been forbidden to talk about it publicly or even to tell our friends or law enforcement officers about it.  I tried to get an explanation for the sweeping secrecy pledge, but could get nothing more detailed than that every daytime talk show allegedly imposes similar requirement, and that the parent company for the Cooper show, Time Warner, does not want to have public discussion of its company business.  I remain curious about what the producers have to hide that requires them to demand such sweeping confidentiality clauses.  Beyond that,  Anderson Cooper soils himself by allowing his program to be associated with confidentiality requirements that any serious journalist would oppose.

In the end, I did not have the opportunity to learn what they have to hide because, while my client and I were on the train to New York, we got a call from Anderson Cooper’s producers telling me that, because of my strenuous objections to the confidentiality requirement, they were cancelling the segment.  By this time, it was too late to go back to DC, so I decided to make the best of the situation by sampling New York’s delights for a day.  After all, it was Restaurant Week in New York (actually, more like Restaurant Month, because it lasts from January 14 to February 8) and although I have frequently taken advantage of the DC restaurant week to try places that would strain my normal dining budget, I had never tried New York’s similar event.

On arriving in New York, I guided my client to the Hudson Hotel on 58th Street near Ninth Avenue, where the Cooper show had booked rooms for us and quickly took off for the Yerba Buena, a pan-Latin place in the East Village where I was to meet my cousin Elisa for dinner.  The plan to visit this restaurant had begun on a disturbing note, because when I made a reservation for the place on Open Table, the confirmation message informed me that the reservation was not eligible for the Restaurant Week menu.  I called the restaurant to ask about this, but because the place is open only for dinner, I got a recording instead — and the recording informed me that no reservations were being taken for Thursday through Sunday!  That left me feeling nervous, so I made a backup reservation by telephone at Dévi, a very interesting-sounding Indian restaurant up near Union Square.  But when I reached Yerba Buena by phone later in the day, they assured me that Restaurant Week would be honored, and in fact they were very flexible, letting my dining companion  two appetizers instead of an appetizer and main dish, and offering her a dessert that could not be found on the Restaurant Week menu.  (I'll have to try Dévi the next time I am in New York)

And the food was excellent (although the print on the restaurant week menu was so light (lighter than the regular menu) that I could barely read it).  We began with an excellent beet and spinach salad and a pair of crispy shrimp empanadas.

Shrimp empanadas at Yerba Buena

Beet / Spinach Salad at Yerba Buena

 I had the seafood stew as my main dish – it featured fluke as well as shrimp and other shell fish.  Because Elisa avoids red meat, she opted for a second appetizer, tuna tartare served on a "potato salad" that was much more like mashed potatoes; the potatoes were too spicy for Elisa’s taste, but I liked them.  I had the coconut mousse for dessert — more of a cake, I thought— and  Elisa chose an off-menu selection, the chocolate souffle.  I thought it was quite good — almost as good as the flourless chocolate souffle that I make at home from time to time.

Chocolate souffle at Yerba Buena

 After dinner,  I walked back to West Fourth Street the long way, passing by DiRobertis’ Pasticceria on First Avenue and Eleventh Street where Nancy and I used to spend evenings when we were living in Chelsea back in the 1980's. I would have been tempted to stop in for a pastry just to admire the ancient tin ceiling, but I couldn't eat any more after dinner.

I went back to the Hudson Hotel.  The first impression on entering the lobby is a fine one, with the ceiling and walls covered with vines, but I cannot recommend staying at this hotel, at least in a cramped regular room like the one I had.  The bed was so close to the walls—barely one foot on one side, and less than 20 inches on the other side—that it would be a disaster for the claustrophobic.  Had I been there as a couple it would have been unbearable.   The bathroom was even worse, because the toilet bowl was so close to the wall, with less than a foot of space, that I could not sit straight because my legs would not fit.  I found the thermostat inadequate—it often cooled off too much before reheating.  One nice feature of the room—the bed was exceptionally comfortable.  As for the staff: the lobby staff were accommodating without being cloying or unduly intrusive, but I could not say the same for the room cleaning staff.   There was a knock on my door before 9 AM, asking when I would be checking out so that the room could be cleaned, and then another knock before 9:30 for the same purpose.  The advertised checkout time is noon, so I have to assume that the cleaning staff is given so many rooms to clean that they simply cannot get the job done without urging guests to get out of their rooms immediately.

Taking my own sweet time, I left the hotel a bit before ten, walking uptown for a day of museum visiting with a Reed College friend.  I could have taken the subway or bus, but unless time is pressing or I have to carry heavy luggage, I always prefer to walk in New York to admire the architecture and to soak in the atmosphere of the city streets. 

We began at the Guggenheim Museum where we saw an exhibition of Picasso works in black and white.  We passed up the free audio tour because just after we arrived, a docent was beginning a guided tour.  The fifteen or so participants were drawn into a lively discussion of the either works, two sculpture and six paintings, on which the tour focused.  After the ninety minute tour, we had just enough time to walk slowly through the rest of the exhibit, and we had to skip a Kandinsky exhibit that I had hoped to see as well, because we wanted to get down Fifth Avenue to the Metropolitan Museum in the hour that remained before the lunch reservation that had been our original plan for getting together when I had expected to spend a few hours on the Cooper show.  At the Met, we entered for a dollar apiece, taking advantage of the “pay want you want” policy that is familiar to most New York natives but, apparently, mysterious to everybody else, whereby $25 is only the “recommended” admission price; visitors are actually free to pay what they choose and thus can treat the entire payment as a tax-deductible donation.  Living as I do in a city where all the public museums are free of charge, I have a principled opposition to paying $20 for admission to an art museum, instead of making a separate donation.

We started with an amusing small exhibit on Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, and then proceeded to the piece de resistance, a comprehensive Matisse show.  We didn’t have nearly long enough to see either show, but then, the Met is such an astonishingly rich museum that there is never enough time – you have to take this museum in (comparatively) small doses.

Finally, we took the bus down Fifth Avenue and walked across town on 59th Street to reach our final destination, A Voce Restaurant.   The restaurant is on the third floor of the mall portion of a corporate office building, normally not an auspicious location for a fine restaurant, but I was pleased with our selection.   We began with a nice broccoli soup

Broccoli Soup at A Voce

and through a miscommunication, ended up with both a green salad (which my dining companion would have preferred, although the combination of the greens and the dressing made it a bit bitter to me taste) and the pecorino-stuffed ravioli that we actually ordered.  For me, the main dishes were the highlight of the meal, a delicious dorade served with blood oranges and beets, and braised short ribs served with farro.  Dessert was also good – a peppery chocolate cake served with mascarpone, and zuppa inglese.

Sadly, we had to rush through this last portion of the meal, because I was worried about getting to Penn Station in time for my train home.  Still, I left the restaurant stuffed and happy, and in the end made it to my train with enough time to spare that I was able to turn on my laptop and check my email before boarding.

Nightmare work trip to Dallas on American Airlines

This past week I had occasion to fly down to Dallas to argue a case against enforcing a subpoena to identify several anonymous posters, then on to Michigan to defend the anonymity of another Doe defendant the following day.

My flight to Dallas on American Airlines is the worst experience I have had with an airline in recent years.  Generally speaking, I hate to entrust airlines, and especially domestic American airlines, with my baggage, because most airlines charge extra for checked luggage, because I hate to risk loss or damage, and because waiting in line to checked luggage, then waiting to retrieve luggage on arrival, usually adds thirty minutes to the flight.  On this trip, though, the quantity of the files I needed to bring along for the two consecutive oral arguments meant that I would need two online bags just for my work materials; my suitcase had to be checked.

Final Day in Toronto

Sunday morning after breakfast, we checked out and left our bags at the Jarvis House and headed over to the nearby  Allan Gardens Conservatory

where we enjoyed looking at a nice exhibit of plants strange and familiar

Then we took a streetcar to Queens Park, where we walked around the outside of the Ontario Legislature

Ontario Provincial Legislature

and the University of Toronto

we headed back to admire more of Toronto’s office building architecture

Old Toronto municipal building reflected in office building next door

and decided that we liked the old Toronto Municipal building much more than its new City Hall

Toronto's old municipal building

Toronto City Hall

We stopped into Toronto’s major downtown shopping mall, Eaton Center, whose roof, at least, is modeled on the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, but only to use the washroom facilities (they’re not called restrooms)

Eaton Center with flock of geese near south entrance

then headed over to the Kensington Market and Chinatown for some last touring as well as lunch.

Chinatown was full of fruit and vegetable markets along Spadina Avenue; it has been some time since we last saw durian on sale (we managed to pass up the opportunity). In Kensington Market, we liked the small Victorian houses, most of which were residential but some of which contained small shops, and the murals decorating some of the shops

This shop was actually a bit to the east of the Kensington Market area

Apparently, McDonald's is facing serious consumer skepticism in Toronto

There were several small synagogues in the neighborhood, which was once a center for Toronto’s Jewish population.  Next to one of the synagogues was the Ka Chi Korean restaurant, where we had our lunch.  

The atmosphere was rather too sterile for my taste, and I didn’t much care for the "pan fried" dumplings, which seemed to have been deep fried and were way too greasy (we much prefer the Chinese style). But Nancy liked her seafood pancake and the sides that came with my spicy bulgogi, which was also tasty.

After lunch, we hopped on a streetcar back to the Jarvis House, where we collected our bags and headed back to Billy Bishop City Airport. Having learned our lesson from the interminable walk from the airport, we used our day pass one last time and rode the subway and street cars back to the airport. It was a good two days in Toronto.