HIBACHI SUPER BUFFET - TUCSON, AZ

This restaurant is huge. Its in the same strip mall as Sunflower/Sprouts on Speedway and Swan. I can't remember what used to be in the building; furniture? anyway, its decorated very nicely; lovely oriental drawings on the wall and the necessary koi pond and the pillars are now columns of shimmering colors with scenes of Asian village life.

and the variety of food is amazing. Besides all the tables there is a big sushi selection and a bbq area (where you pick the vegetables and meat you want and its cooked for you on a big iron wok) and best of all real ice cream for dessert (in addition to all the other usual sweet culprits in Asian buffets; I love those tiny  bright neon orange cake  squares) and the ice cream is good! very creamy. they had 2 kinds of sherbet and butter pecan and mint chocolate chip and vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

Now the food quality is just so-so of the few i tried. Bill absolutely loved his dinner as both times he got salmon which he said was the best he's ever eaten in the desert. All the chicken dishes i tried (and they must have had a dozen different preparations with chicken) were a little tough and not white breast meat. The egg rolls were worse than usual on these buffets- though i realize they are always sub-standard; however, i cannot resist taking one. The pineapple rice was tasteless and the bbq'd pork pieces were hardly chewable.

However, the green beans were great; crispy and flavored perfectly and on my second plate i had just fried rice and that was ok. Next time i'll try the noodles and just stick with the green beans and maybe try some of their shrimp dishes. and there's always the ice cream!!

MONTEREY COURT CAFE - TUCSON, AZ

This area on Miracle Mile has been transformed, well, at least the Monterey Court area. There are still some pretty seedy and 'ladies of the night' scenes happening and the motel right next to the Court by all appearances is a rent-by-the-hour establishment.

The courtyard is darling with lots of plants and a wonderful big seating area in the center which is not only for eating but also for listening to their regular live music (free!) events. There is also room for dancing. They were having salsa music the night we were there and some of the gallery owners had their dancing shoes already laid out. and there are lots of shops all around the center; paintings, jewelry, gourmet food, pottery, wind chimes, clothes, cards. Lots of stuff to see and buy. The space has a lovely feel to it.

The cafe is small and i entered the restaurant behind a huge gaggling and gabbing group of those red hat'ed purple ladies and i held my breath expecting seating to be nil but there was a table by the window.  Their menu is not very big and even though their website says they serve breakfast till noon; we had the breakfast menus unceremoniously taken out of our hands at 11am- to be replaced by their lunch and dinner menus.

Chris and I shared 2 entrees; a chicken and brie sandwich with a side of sliced potatoes (the sandwich was good but nothing extraordinary and not much chicken and the potato portion was small and tasted like warmed over breakfast sides and this was $8.95) and a dish called Little Sparrow which turned out to be a bowlful of warmed vegetables and tiny dumplings. The vegetables were all cooked too long so everything was limp and had stayed in the olive oil saute a tad too long. but there was a good variety of veggies and the garlic and tomatoes tasted great. The dumplings were pretty gluey and pasty and heavy and because there were so many of them- it negatively impacted on the rest of the entree. this was $10 which was way overpriced. The Little Sparrow came with 2 slices of french bread.

So all in all, i'm impressed with the look of the place but not the taste so won't be back.

THE LITTLE GREEK RESTAURANT - TUCSON, AZ

This restaurant is in the vacated place of one of  our favorite bbq places. The owners just rented part of the space so its a fairly narrow eating area. You order at the counter and along the wall is a bunch of tables.

I wasn't impressed. and i was disappointed because the area this restaurant is located at is a perfect stopping off place for dinner when we're coming down from Mt. Lemmon.

The menu is really small; several "specialties" for $13 which include garlic-yogurt sauce and pita bread and rice pilaf; flaming cheese, lemon orzo soup and gyro sandwiches in addition to a couple of souvlaki dishes. We ordered and split a gyro with rice (you can also get it with greek seasoned fries) for $9 and a small salad for $7.

The salad was a sad assortment of iceberg lettuce, too many onions, a few lumps of feta cheese, 2 cucumbers and 3 slivers of carrot swimmingly and i might say, drowningly drenched in a viniagrette. And the portion was pretty tiny.

The gyro was good but nothing special. The rice was buttery and flavorful but the real standout was the thick yogurt and garlic sauce (tzatziki). Most excellent.

so because of the convenient location we might go back but we wouldn't go out of our way to eat here again.

THE MASTER

The scenery was stunning; the music was melodious and varied and fit each scene well; the photography was excellent; and the acting was beyond brilliant. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays an L. Ron Hubbard cult leader espousing a blend of hypnosis and past life fantasies to heal people and Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie, an alcoholic severely PTSD survivor of WWII loner with a psychotic mother. Joaquin transformed himself into a shambling and stooped and gaunt and mumbling maniacal and yet very sympathetic character.

He was amazingly wonderful. I'm so glad he is back to acting from that spell of hoaxism. Hoffman was likewise mesmerizing - embodying all the qualities of a leader  of a therapeutic movement. He was bombastic and domineering and magnetic and funny and stern.

However, in spite of all the above accolades, both of us gave this movie a 5 because there was no plot, no tension, no driving story line. This film was over 2 hours long and to paraphrase a character in the movie who was commenting on Hoffman's publication of his 2nd book which was really thick "this could all have been said in a 3 page flyer."

Because that was it: hoffman was the leader and Joaquin  drunkenly wandered into his sphere and Hoffman tried to help him. That's it!! We were really disappointed.

MAMA LOUISA'S ITALIAN RESTAURANT - TUCSON, AZ

We went here once during Tucson #1 and I remember liking it but not being super impressed. However, we (including Jean and Tim) wanted to eat Italian and this was one of the most reasonably priced restaurants. I don't understand why pasta dishes are so expensive when that type of cuisine has got to be one of the cheapest to make.

anyway, even though we arrived at the restaurant at 6pm (we had made reservations and were seated as soon as we  arrived) which i thought was an early dining time for a Saturday night; the place was packed and the noise was at the screech level. it was a real din in there. so it was physically uncomfortable to communicate even though the table we were sitting at was a small one.

as an aside, the restaurant is decorated in the usual frank sinatra- grape arbor theme but the bathroom was one of the plainest i've seen and slightly grungy.

And just like my first visit, the portions were huge and the food was good but not very good and i didn't especially care for the heavy on the tomato taste and thin pasta sauce. Garlic soft breadsticks came promptly to the table and were tasty but once they cooled off, they tasted pretty doughy to me.

I ordered a combo meal; 1 meatball, 4 cheese ravioli and some pasta with marinara sauce. I also got the all you can eat salad bar which was quite good. The lettuce was fresh and they had lots of additives for the salad and the thousand island dressing was almost a 10. The bar also had some great 3 bean and small white potato salad and a killer macaroni salad with thinly sliced green olives and a very very light dressing.

I filled up on the salad so i could take the bulk of my meal home for a leftover lunch; figuring that italian food is often better the second day; plus i'm getting tired of Lean Cuisine frozen meals for my lunch.

Bill had pork marsala with a side of fettucini alfredo. He was quite satisfied with his dish.

And then we all went home to my tiramisu which was awesome.

MARGARET

I was never sure where this movie was going to go. It had so many different aspects and depths; unusual. But in the end it is a wonderfully acted film about the life and emotions of a 17 year old. This role was played most superbly and intensely (sometimes too intensely) by Anna Paquin. She is Lisa, a precocious and highly dramatic teenager; the child of an actress mom who is divorced.

At the beginning of the film, there is a tragic and graphically suddenly gut-wrenchingly realistic bus accident which Lisa witnesses. The lady who is hit dies in her arms and as Lisa eventually finds out, this pedestrian thought Lisa was her dead daughter also of the same name. so this connection and the fact that Lisa (anna paquin's lisa) feels partly responsible for the accident (she was flirting with the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) who ended up running a red light, leads to many consequences in her life.

We get to see the effects on her blossoming sexual life and her relationships with some of her teachers (Matthew Broderick and Matt Damon), the horrendous angry scenes with her mother, the sadness over her lack of a bonding with her dad who has remarried, her contacting the bus driver wanting him to take responsibility, her involvement with the police department, Lisa's urging the best friend of the dead lady and her cousin to file a wrongful death lawsuit. This movie is quite a journey of dark twists and turns in Lisa's life.

Both of us gave it a 9 though it could have been shortened by about 30 minutes. Too many slow motion group and crowd scenes. Lots of opera music too which isn't my favorite. and there is no character in the film named Margaret.

PICTURES FROM OUR AUG-SEPT PORTLAND TRIP - 2012

click august phjotshere to see photos from our recent trip.

google has changed their viewing format a bit so here's some tips.
click on the first picture of me by the trailhead sign; my caption will be in the column on the right and when you want to see the next picture just click on the picture on the screen.

i think you can just view the pictures as a slideshow or individually but you won't be able to see my captions. which of course you WILL want to see.!

THE WORDS

SPOILER ALERT: (though it ain't any earth-shattering twist or ending!)

Dennis Quaid is an author who has written a book about Rory (acted by Bradley Cooper; and what a hunk he is and a really good actor too with beautiful eyes; unlike Quaid who has taken acting lessons from Keanu Reeves - a sleepy Perry Como technique) who is a struggling writer. Rory is married to Dora who is inexpertly and misguidedly played by Zoe Saldana (she had no chemistry with Cooper at all and was unbelievable as a wife. she mostly slithered her body over Cooper's and rubbed his head and batted her big eyes).

Rory accidentally finds a manuscript of a book in an old briefcase he buys at an antique store. and through a series of events, he sort of unconsciously falls into the huge dishonest act of passing it off as his own. And of course it is a big hit and he is feted royally around town and wins lots of awards.

Well, one day the REAL writer of this book (wonderfully acted by Jeremy Irons) shows up. During his meeting with Rory, he tells the story that he had written and that Rory was passing  off as his own. and it is a true story of his time in the war and his falling in love and the death of his child and about including all these incidents in the book he wrote which was left on a train in a briefcase found years later by Rory.

Jeremy Irons doesn't want to be paid off or given any credit. He just wanted Rory to know where those words came from.

and at the end of the movie, Dennis Quaid who is reading from the book he wrote about the above story is confronted by a student who wants to know if its a true story or not. In other words, is Quaid the guy who published the book as his own? like it wasn't a fiction book that Quaid wrote but an autobiographical piece.

Confused yet? i got a little mixed up at the end. and I don't think there was ever any conclusion as to Quaid's honesty or not.

I gave the movie a 6.5 and Bill gave it an 8. It was too long and a little slow and had too many words.!