La Femme in Vancouver, BC

Last month, K and I made one of our regular treks to the gritty, luminous city of Vancouver, British Columbia.  One of the distinct pleasures of living in Seattle is the proximity to British Columbia.  In a couple hours you can be over the border and in the land of maple syrup, Caesar's (the national cocktail of Canada), and Toonies.

Granville Island

K and I definitely have a routine when we go to Vancouver.  We always:  (1) visit Granville Island, (2) stroll Robson Street (Zara, please come to Seattle!) and the downtown core for shopping, and (3) enjoy cocktails at our very favorite haunt (more on that later...).  Granville Island is a marketplace for food, artisanal crafts and stunning views.  The island is pleasant to walk around on a beautiful afternoon and is always a must do.  The interior market area can get very crowded, but it is a must to wander around and gawk at the gorgeous produce, meats, cheeses and baked goods (and to wish you had a local kitchen to cook it all in!).  More than that, however, Granville Island has a plethora of fun shops to check out, including, but not limited to, a shop that sells only handmade brooms.  They also have a fantastic hat shop (have I mentioned, I look fabulous in hats?)

K and I usually spend our time in Vancouver just being flaneurs and exploring the city with stops for shopping and coffee (or cocktails.  No judgment.  Day drinking is perfectly acceptable on vacation, right?).  Vancouver is a diverse, cosmopolitan city and it bustles all through the day and night.  The neighborhoods are distinct, from the yuppy Yaletown, full of design shops and expensive restaurants, to the dilapidated but charming (and up and coming) Gastown.  I also adore exploring my beloved Kitsalano: great restaurants, cute shops and free parking!  Stunningly beautiful, Vancouver is surrounded by water and ruggedly pointed mountains, and the views from Granville Island into the city and from the waterfront into Vancouver Harbor are awe inspiring any time of year.  When it is sunny Vancouver is even better and biking the enormous Stanley Park seawall is a lot of fun (and a great way to burn off all those cocktails!).   There is something very wild about the landscape surrounding Vancouver that we don't have in Seattle even though it is just a few hours north.  I always get a sense of the Arctic when looking at the mountains to the north.

This time, After a leisurely freeway drive up to the border and the usually tense border crossing (well, for me.  I am terrified of immigration officials), and an unusually quick jaunt through the notorious George Massey  tunnel, we made it to our hotel.  K and I have stayed at many hotels in Vancouver, from the incredibly gaudy but surprisingly luxurious Hotel de Soleil to a nondescript Park Inn and Suites on West Broadway with an amazing balcony and view of the False Creek and the city skyline.  This particular trip we chose Hotel Moda, right off the Granville Entertainment District.  Hotel Moda had the veneer of a hip design hotel with the terrible plumbing of a crumbling, downtown city building - our room might be described as minimalist (or it might be described as cheap. As K would say, reasonable minds can differ).  But it did give us great proximity to downtown Vancouver and to Yaletown, a neighborhood we had yet to explore in depth.  K and I usually go across the bridge into Kitsilano, an adorable, hipster (oxymoron?) neighborhood in the west end of Vancouver.

Vancouver is undeniably a foodie town.  On our most recent visit, we had  two different but equally great meals.  The first was at Edible Canada on Granville Island.  Featuring local produce and products from all over the country, Edible Canada is where K and I always eat on Granville Island.  Their burger is to die for (with tomato jam, yum!), and everything we have eaten there is excellent, including the inventive cocktails.  They also have duck fat fries which, for better or worse, are really everything fries should be: crispy, flavorful, salty, and cooked in duck fat.  Fries often leave me disappointed, and I usually only eat about 10 when I get them, but these are an exception (and McDonalds; how the heck does McDonald's have such great fries?  Actually, I probably don't want to know). We also had dinner at  an unassuming little hole in the wall called Yaletown Antipasti (terrible name, I agree).  The kitchen was almost nonexistent, but the straight off-the-boat Italian chef made amazing pastas, and we had some great salami and bruschetta (one of my favorite things EVER). There is also Chambar, a lovely, immaculate (read, expensive), Belgian restaurant.  I was never a steak fan until a few years ago when we went there and I decided to be different and get steak. Seriously. It changed my life.  Chambar is dark and sexy and has great and interesting food. It is on the list once again for our next trip.

But biological sustenance and indelible edibles notwithstanding... you know it must be twelve o'clock somewhere, and there is only one place we go for cocktails.

Listen, I love Vancouver. Its a wonderfully cosmopolitan city, and I love to visit. But, I have been holding out on you.  I really only have one love in Vancouver, and it is called a bellini from Cactus Club Cafe.

The amazing bellini from Cactus Club  

Now, this is no ordinary bellini (made with champagne and peach puree). Oh, no.  This is, quite frankly, a masterpiece.  A frozen bellini with a sangria floater (you may be hearing angels as you read this).  As a lifelong slurpee lover, I couldn't believe it when we went here for the first time.  Cactus Club a totally ridiculous restaurant, a Canadian chain, vaguely clubby and faux hip, with decent food, it really is a desitnation for K and I.  We went to Cactus Club the first time a few years ago after our luggage had been searched at the train station customs and the trip was starting out terribly (I told you I hate border patrol).  The downtown location, a light-filled, glass building, just happened to be a block away from our hotel, so, crabby and starving, we walked into the bar to eat.  I can't even remember what I ate. But the bellini was amazing.  I like sweet drinks, K doesn't, but even he admitted it was tasty.  Kitschy, maybe a little tacky, Cactus Club is always fun to go to and K and I always make sure to visit daily when we are in Vancouver (now you know why we have to bike the seawall!).  Me for my bellini, he for his double Manhattan (that is another great thing about them, all cocktails are a double).  I am strangely thirsty now!

Vancouver is truly one of my favorite destinations, and I hope to return many times (and have many bellinis!).

Julie

It's Noon Somewhere....So Co Hurricane

Next month K and I are making our first trip to the mythical, magical city of  New Orleans. I can't wait.  In honor of Mardi Gras, we are pulling out one of our favorite cocktails for the weekend (with a twist).

Admittedly, Southern Comfort or So Co may be considered a little country bumpkin for this blog.  I mean, it is more readily associated with country folk and K and I are certainly not country folk (sorry dear).  But I think that the rich, peachy, whisky flavor adds a lot to the juice concoction known as a hurricane.  Usually, you use dark and light rum and a mixture of fruit juices but a couple months ago, K was going through a Southern Comfort kick while watching Treme (So Co is made in good old Louisiana) so we thought we'd try an extra Louisiana twist on the classic New Orleans cocktail.

So Co Hurricane

1.5 oz Southern Comfort
1 oz pineapple juice
1 oz sour mix
1 oz orange juice
Juice of 1 lime

Shake all ingredients together with ice.  One of the best things about having a hurricane is using a hurricane glass.  But if you don't have one, you can use a double old fashioned, a big red wine glass or even a brandy snifter.  I think all drinks deserve beautiful glassware, but a hurricane demands it!  Make sure to garnish with a cherry and orange slice.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Julie

La Femme Recommends...Kings and Queen

One day, in a La Femme Recommends, I promise that I will review a fun, breezy, modern film with broad appeal (K is appealing for The A-Team.  Never.).  That is not the movie I am recommending today.  Instead, I am going to try and convince you, dear reader, to see Kings and Queen, a three hour, sprawling French film that includes, in no particular order: comedy, tragedy, melodrama, gunfire, murder, lost love, French hip hop, "Moon River", and one hell of a femme fatale.

Nora (Emanuelle Devos), our heroine / villain / femme fatale / Botticelli goddess lives a charmed life.  She is engaged for the to a rich, gangster-like businessman who she seems mildly interested in. She also runs a successful gallery, which she is also mildly interested in.  She has been married twice before: her first husband is dead, and we will get into the second one in depth later.  She also has a ten year old son from her first marriage, Elias, who she also seems mildly interested in (sense a theme?)  and who she rarely sees, apparently without much guilt.  Of all the men in Nora's life, the only one she seems to truly love is her father, Louis, a famous writer.   Unfortunately, he has been diagnosed with stomach cancer and is dying a terrible and painful death.  While Nora takes care of her father, we get more insight into the four men she has loved (her father, her first husband, her son, and finally her second husband, Ismael.  Notice, her new fiance is not on this list).

There is a remoteness to Nora that can be off putting; she can be a bit cold and maybe even conniving (see, e.g., her new relationship in which her love can now be bought), but there is also incredible warmth in Devos's performance.  I have sung her praises before but this is my favorite performance of her career.  Nora is an incredibly complex character: the more we learn about her, the less we like her but, at the same time, the more we sympathize with her.  There is something strange and beautiful about Devos that Desplechin brings out perfectly.  She is not a traditional beauty, but in this film she is radiant, an object of worship and scorn.  A late act revelation about how a character truly feels about her is at once devastating and also a little gratifying.  But the revelation strikes her so hard, we, like the men in the film, want to make her forget about it.

While Nora is ensconced in tragedy, Husband #2, Ismael is living a burlesque comedy.  Ismael, a violist, has been committed to a mental hospital by an unknown "friend" after his eccentric behavior begins to drive them mad.  As he schemes with his lawyer, a drug addict, to get out, he also begins a tentative relationship with a fellow patient. Ismael is played by my favorite French actor, Mathieu Amalric, and he is wonderfully unhinged (and strangely handsome.  Amalric is the epitome of unconventionally handsome).  In the course of the film, Ismael will (1) wear a cape, (2) break dance and, (3) tell Catherine Deneuve that women have no souls. Amalric could easily have given just a broad comic performance, and while there are elements of that (Hello, he break dances! See the video above.  You're welcome.), Amalric and Desplechin, makes Ismael just as complex and as true as Nora.  Ismael is a huge a&#hole, but he is one of those detestable, yet irresistible ones (you know what I mean). He is also thoughtful, intelligent and in his last scene, incredibly romantic.

As Nora and Ismael weave in and out of each other's lives, the stories collide. But, this is not a movie where the stories directly relate.  Desplechin has an incredibly deft hand at filmmaking; huge tonal shifts work remarkably well here and he also has a great flair with editing.  Jump cuts, sepia tones, archival footage and even a stage like set for one scene all work together to disconcert but engage the viewer. Desplechin also offers a tapestry of minor characters (although they are so perfectly drawn they shouldn't be called minor at all.) In addition to Hippolyte Girardot as the madcap lawyer, there is Catherine Denevue as the hospital director and Jean-Paul Roussillon and Maurice Garrel (grandfather of my famed french boyfriend, Louis a.k.a Monsieur Dirty Hot) as our heroes' respective fathers.

Despleschin was inspired by Francois Truffaut's declaration that he wanted to have four ideas in every scene.  Despleschin succeeds beautifully and frustratingly with Kings and Queen.  This is the kind of movie that you never really understand fully but appreciate more each time you watch it.  There is something so close to reality about the characters of Nora and Ismael that we love and hate them but also empathize with them in an almost uncomfortable way.  As we follow them on the road to forgiveness and acceptance, we root for them and scold them in a way that I have never felt for any other film characters (except for perhaps my beloved Jesse and Celine from the Before Sunset / Sunrise films).  Kings and Queen is absolutely a masterpiece.  Difficult, beautiful, rewarding, heart breaking and heart swelling, just like all of our lives.

Julie