This is a posting about a fantastic meal at one of my favorite hotels – made even better by two new friends going the extra mile in an Italian restaurant that is and isn’t Italian.
LOS ANGELES, CA (June 22, 2008) – Downtown LA is one of my favorite places on a Sunday evening. The streets are slow, calm, and cool. It gives you time to marvel at the modern, eclectic architecture that finally speaks the history of this city that is the core of Southern California.
My favorite hotel here is the Biltmore, now the Millennium Biltmore Los Angeles. It’s a throw-back to the 1930s when LA was becoming LA. If you pause for a moment you can hear the echoes of silent film starlets and Raymond Chandler throwing down a few.
I had spent time here in the 1990s while seeing shows or operas on weekends away from Las Vegas. So, I was enthralled when my assistant Jaime (pronounced Jay-mee), unbeknownst to me, booked me in the Biltmore. (Good assistants know this stuff.)
On this Sunday night as I prepared for the Monday conference with BNY Mellon, I decided to get a quick dinner. When the Asian restaurant Saisai was closed, I was fortunate enough to find the Italian restaurant Smeraldi’s.
What a find in many ways.
My first good fortune was to get Tom Chavez as my waiter. “What’s the best on the menu?” I asked. He didn’t disappoint.
I had the Cocktail Mediterranean which was a scrumptious medley of fresh oysters, shrimp, crab cloves, ahi tuna, and Norwegian Salmon. I highly recommend it as an appetizer.
The entrée was North American Halibut sautéed in Swiss chard, braised baby fennel, couscous, and tear drop tomato relish. It was heaven and healthy. It blended perfectly with my reading of asset management, trusts, working capital solutions, derivatives, and private equity. Seriously, I had to concentrate on my reading; that’s how good it was.
The dinner cost about $80 with tip and a glass of Jordan Chardonnay.
Of course after dinner, I had to have some fun. That means “breaking balls”. Understand that the creator of “breaking balls” — while making friends — was my Dad, John F. Daly. Pops could get away with saying almost anything that might be construed as offensive, yet the target of his barbs knew instantly that Pops was only making friendly.
However, my good buddy Jack “Jake The Weasel” McCarty has taken “ball busting” to nuclear heights. Jack became good buddies with a Japanese tourist even though he told this Japanese gentleman that Curtis Lemay had somehow missed him during the bombings in 1945. That’s right. Jake The Weasel could joke about the worst atomic attack in the history to a Japanese man – and they still had fun together.
Granted, this Japanese gentleman had the ball busting gift too. When he found out Jack was from the Boston area, he patted Jack’s tummy and said, “that’s why you have robster belly.”
My ball busting is tamer, more sophisticated (I like to think), and safer. So I brought out my usual repertoire for an Italian restaurant. I told Tom the waiter “if this is really an Italian restaurant, then you will have Strega.”
Strega is an Italian liqueur similar to Sambuca with the yellow tint of Galliano. I feasted on it as a student in Italy; it’s part of my drinking DNA. However, many places don’t carry it in America. And of course, I knew it wasn’t on Smeraldi’s drink menu.
So, I knew I had clearly stumped Tom the waiter adding the coup de grace (don’t know the Italian equivalent), “Then you can’t call this place an Italian restaurant.”
Tom was not done, though. He noticed Jaime Gallardo, the bartender, in the restaurant talking to the attractive hostess. “He’ll know.”
After catching Tom’s eye, Jaime (pronounced Hi-may) walked to my table with urgency to hear my dim-witted diatribe about Strega. “So you’re really not an Italian restaurant,” I concluded again.
“Well, sir,” Jaime responded seriously, “It’s not an Italian restaurant. The name is only Italian.” Then he smiled.
Not only had I met my match, but he trumped me. What a pleasure to ball-bust a ball-buster. Then Jaime disappeared.
Five minutes later, Tom arrived with a gift from Jaime, a snifter of … you guessed it … Strega. Perfect.
“I thought we had some in the main bar,” Jaime later told me when I tracked him down to thank him. We spoke for a while and he told me he was heading to Mexico City for four weeks vacation to see his mother and his new grandchild.
So truly Smeraldi’s is an Italian restaurant. But it has nothing to do with the great food. Sure, the food has Italian style, but it’s California cuisine, too. And the Italian label has nothing to do with them having Strega; although that helps. Smeraldi’s is real Italian thanks to Tom Chavez and Jaime Gallardo who made sure a hotel restaurant felt like a visit to someone’s home.
Besides Smeraldi’s at The Biltmore LA, there is plenty of stuff to do in LA. Call my gal Vicki, a virtuoso travel agent, at (972) 243-9704 for an American vacation in SoCal.
This is a posting announcing my new golf blog.
LAS VEGAS, NV (June 22, 2008) — This new blog is at www.lasvegasgolf.com. Although I’ll be writing a lot about golf in Las Vegas, you can be sure I’ll be talking about the golf courses I travel to around the world.
This is a posting about a friend who experienced the ultimate golf gem – a hole in one. The problem is the dope with the camera forgot to start rolling until after the ball went in the hole.
DURHAM, NC (May 31, 2008) – The golf gods can be gratuitous in their cruelty. Both bad and good golfers suffer the fate of a bad bounce or quirk of fate that destroys a well-hit shot.
And then there are times when the golf gods rewards those who deserve it. It happened at the Duke Golf Course on the campus of Duke University. I was there as a celebrity guest playing in the 35th Duke Children’s Celebrity Classic. No, the golf gods did not pay attention to me. Instead, they bestowed a moment of immortality on one of the good guys – Clint Davidson.
The golf gods, however, allowed me to witness it. Let the record show: on this day May 31, 2008, Clint Davidson had a hole in one on the 12th hole at the Duke University Golf Course.
Clint is the VP of Human Resources for the Duke Children’s Hospital. Clint’s one of those guys you quickly become friends with – no matter who you are.
Fortunately for me, this was my second time playing with Clint in this four-man scramble event over the past four years. He’s a good partner in a scramble since he’s a 16 handicap and he hits the ball fairly straight and consistently.
Before I explain the shot and the circumstances surrounding this hallowed day, let me tell you what happened on some previous holes.
We were given a sign of Clint’s impending meeting with glory as we played the first hole, a 400-yard plus par-4. Clint hit a shot for our team from 180-yards. It was near perfect. It landed at the front of the green, took two bounces and then ran right at the hole. The ball disappeared. I yelled, “It went in!”
But it hadn’t. The ball disappeared, but it had really run just behind the pin. (Yes, I might need my eyes checked.) But the ball was literally a tap-in away.
A few holes later, Clint excused himself from our team. He wanted to spend time with his five-year-old grandson who was at the putting green involved in some of the festivities with the other kids and entertainers at the event.
So, we missed Clint for two holes. Little did we know the magic he would bring back.
As we approached our final hole, a tricky par-3 over water, we were all contemplating what club to hit. We were found under par – clearly not in the running for first place. Still, everyone wants to conquer this hole. It’s, in my view, Duke’s answer to the 17th at the TPC Sawgrass.
The pin was up front – about 20 feet from the water. The green, as usual, sloped toward the wet stuff. The pin, by my estimate, was 125 yards from the tee. To the left of the pin: a hump. It was not the Donald Ross kind of hump that reminds you of an elephant burial ground. It was more like Louie Anderson laying on his side with green covers. Either way, the hump would have to be navigated since the green flowed from left to right starting there and past the pin.
Besides this mound of putting surface, there were two other diagnostic problems for the golfers: first, the wind was there, but above the trees which surrounded the green; second, it was a hot muggy day. So, the humidity and the wet air over the pond would probably deaden the flight of the ball.
All this was going through my head as Clint addressed the ball. He took a short, easy compact swing; almost like a chip shot. The ball stayed low, well below the tree line.
It was heading right for the hump. And for some reason, the flight of the ball seemed like a precursor to a soft-landing. So, I shouted my usual cheapskate phrase when someone is threatening a hole in one: “I drink Louis XIII at $125 a shot.” This way when the ball goes in the hole the creator of the shot, whose job it is to buy the drinks, will not be blind-sided by more order. Tee hee.
As I finished the sentence, the ball landed on that hump and gently moved to the right in the direction of the pin. It rolled about ten feet and then it seemed disappear.
I wasn’t going to be fooled again. It’s probably sitting behind the pin a cup width away. But then the gal who was our scorekeeper and sometimes forward caddy, who was closer to the green with a side view of the cup, let out, “it’s in.”
We crowded Clint like he had just won the White House by one vote. He was either too stunned that the ball went in the hole or our two other playing partners, Peter Chauncey and Earl Jukes, along with me, were so ecstatic that Clint’s reaction may have only appeared subdued in comparison.
That’s when my heart sunk. Your intrepid reporter here has a video camera in the golf cart. I decided instead of bringing it out all day, I’d just roll from some video on the last hole. But as you just read, I was fairly intent on how to hit my shot – rather than rolling video on a shot. I could have documented Clint’s great moment, but I missed the opportunity. As my good friend John Dancy, the former NBC correspondent, said to me, “You really aren’t a good journalist.”
So, better late than never. I took out the camera and videotaped Clint explaining the shot and removing the ball from the hole. That video will be part of a video blog here soon. I also have a shot of Clint – in a still photo – with the ball at the hole.
The odds of getting a hole in one on a moderate length par-3 are 8200 to 1. That’s why I think it’s so special just to see a hole in one. I believe it’s the second one I’ve witnessed in person. A gentleman who was paired with me and my buddy Sal Mentasana hit one from 155 yards at Revere in Las Vegas. He paid for a couple rounds of Cape Codders afterwards.
I’ve come close two times. The first was at Pebble Beach on Number 17 from 184 yards away. It sat on the lip. The second was at TPC Las Vegas (formerly TPC Canyons) in 2000 on the second hole from 160 yards – a few inches away.
So, Clint, thanks for the memories. And I’m still waiting for that shot of Louis XIII.
Let the record show also: Clint tried to take us into the bar to pay for drinks. We refused because the hospitality room was set up with free drinks for us anyway. And we were more interested in telling the story of Clint’s hole in one to as many folks as possible.
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