Michael Pollan at The Greenhouse Tavern last week/photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman
On Monday, Writer’s Center Stage and Cuyahoga Public Library brought Michael Pollan to Cleveland to speak. He happened to be free for lunch and seemed delighted to be taken to The Greenhouse Tavern (above, photos by Donna Turner Ruhlman), for a taste of fall.
Pollan, who lives, teaches and writes in Berkeley, CA, is tall and lanky, bobs his head a lot, smiles easily, and is engaging in conversation. He was for years a magazine editor in New York, and left full-time employment with no small amount of anxiety to complete his first book. His second book had mediocre sales, he noted (I read it long ago, excellent book). The Botony of Desire faired better, but it was The Omnivore's Dilemma that transformed him from non-fiction author and ...
I ran this photo by Donna a while ago, but came across it this weekend and love it so much I decided to put it back up. Just because.
Want to see something even more beautiful? Watch this video, from Grant Achatz and the team at Alinea and Next, the restaurant that is now devoted to childhood. Anyone else tear up? It was the beaters that got me. (My colleague Emilia Juocys found it and put it in the Sidenotes here but it deserves to be featured.)
I'm such a homebody, I dread book tour trips and typically stress about them, and I nearly always return thrilled to have gone and surprised and amazed by what I encountered. Last week was Chicago and the schedule was so tight that I took a taxi from O'Hare straight to the Chicago Tribune's test kitchen where Monica Eng, formerly a food reporter now on the investigative beat, reverted to her former purview to join me in making an easy Coq au Vin from Ruhlman's Twenty (I forgot how good it was till I tasted it—haven't made it since Donna took the pix). I had time for a quick lunch after across the street at The Purple Pig (pig ears and the artichokes), excellent casual place recommended by a twitter friend.
That night there was ...
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