February 4, 2022 Lunch - Martyrs. Afternoon - California Wine Tasting Dinner - Miniature Show at Millicent Rogers Museum
Every day there are new discoveries. Today there were several at Millicent Rogers Museum.
The day started encouragingly with Amazon reporting a profit and rising $435 that led the Market higher. I will not know if it erased yesterday’s loss until I return home on Sunday but it had to help.
Then we drove to Suzette’s pedicure at 9:30 and I drove to World Cup to fetch her a cup of coffee and me a slice of carrot cake.
After the pedicure we drove to Parsons Gallery and looked at Robert’s offerings. The one that Suzette liked was a pencil drawing by a female artist who grew up on Bent Street next to the gallery named Valentine. It was a drawing of a church in the Canyon. Robert asked for an offer and I offered $500.00 and he accepted it. We each contributed $100 and promised to send the $300 balance.
It was noon, so then walked up the street to Martyrs Restaurant, which is probably the best restaurant left in downtown Taos. We were seated in a new building at a table near a fireplace with a warming fire in the kiva fireplace behind the street fronting restaurant that is mostly a bar and outdoor seating. Suzette ordered the fish daily special, a floured and sautéed flounder fillet lying on a bed of vermicelli and covered with a red sauce with almonds, raisins, garlic, and tomatoes. It was delicious.
I ordered the Martyr’s Tenderloin Salad, which was a massive chopped salad of arugula mixed with blue cheese and garnished with Italian red sweet pepper, gigantic Asturias white beans and a generous amount of sautéed tenderloin. I could only finish half of it but that did not prevent me from ordering a chocolate mousse for dessert. You never know when your next meal is going to be and we thought our 2:30 at the Taos Winter Wine Festival would be a seated indoor seminar on French Burgundies.
When we arrived at the Ski Valley and walked to the area where the tasting was set up we found out that it was outdoors on a patio above the area where skiers gathered and that instead of French Burgundies it now featured a hodge podge of California wines and some amazing food. Greg has planned the food really well this year with good restaurants offering good food selections. We were not hungry but could not resist the charcuterie offered by 315 with flat bread baked on the open grill by the owner, Louis Moscow. The pate was a roulette with pistachios and green peppercorns that was really delicious. The other restaurant was Pig N’ Fig again offering Lamb stew with white navy beans.
This year it appears that Greg is selecting the best restaurants he can find and the menus and paying them to essentially cater the events instead of the usual large number of restaurants that volunteer to offer food. That seems reasonable given the constraints and failures of so many restaurants due to Covid. We were disappointed by the wine and delighted by the food, but could not enjoy the food because we had just eaten, so as soon as the sun set around 3:30 and the temperature started dropping we left and drove to the Millicent Rogers Museum.
In a day of surprises the greatest occurred at The Millicent Rogers Museum. First the museum is an anomaly in Taos. Millicent Rogers was a wealthy socialite who moved to Taos in the 30’s and 40’s. Her father was John D. Rockefeller’s partner in founding Standard Oil. That kind of wealth. To give you an idea of the understated elegance of the museum, it was designed by I. M. Pei.
The collection features her jewelry and fashion designs as well as her extensive collection of Native American, Spanish Colonial, and Mexican art. This evening was the opening of the miniatures show where local artists can sell a piece or two of their art to the public. We arrived at 4:30 and toured the galleries not devoted to the miniatures and I made a surprising discovery. There were about a dozen paintings by Looking Elk, one of the more famous Taos Pueblo painters. I had never seen a looking Elk displayed in any museum and I own one of his paintings. Voila!
When the doors opened for the miniature show we went to the galleries where it was presented and in the first minutes, Suzette bought two pieces and I attacked the fresh Tuna and Avocado nigiri sushi. It was delicious and I remembered that Millicent Rogers always served superb appetizers at its openings, but at this point I could only eat four of them. But I did a stealth alteration of the appetizer tray. In the middle of a large tray of sushi was a bowl of soy sauce and on the sides of the tray were two mounds of wasabi and fresh pickled ginger, but no dipping bowls. So, I put what I thought was just enough wasabi into the bowl of soy to flavor it the way I lightly flavor my soy for sushi.
A bit later after we had viewed the show and Suzette’s selections, when Suzette went to the car to fetch her wallet and pay for the pieces of art she bought, I took two cookies and a chocolate cake ball from the dessert trays to finish my dinner.
As we left the museum we saw one of those iconic Taos scenes, the sun setting and the moon rising. Moon rise over the Millicent Rogers parking lot.
All the food we ate today was delicious. There was just too much of it.
Tomorrow the 2:30 tasting will be Oysters and grilled salmon with bubbly, so we will make that our lunch and only eat a breakfast at the Sagebrush.
Bon Appetit
No comments:
Post a Comment