Boa tarde! I know, this is a first: a tablehopper on a Wednesday. But yours truly had her Saturday flight from Rio canceled an hour before I was due to leave for the airport, and wasn’t rebooked until Monday night! I know, I could think of worse places to be stranded than Rio. Anyway, here I am, and thank God for my super editorial assistant Dana who was able to track so many of these stories during my delay.
Brazil was quite the adventure—I was so impressed with many of the wineries in the south we visited (guess who was happy to be in the land of sparkling wine!), and I’m really happy my bottle of bubs from Cave Geisse made it home safely in my bag (also pleased my hot sauce didn’t explode, along with my “digestif grappa” from Perini). Whew.
Seeing Italy play against Spain in Fortaleza in a semi-final game in the Confederations Cup is something I won’t forget (although watching the Azzurri lose to a penalty kick was rough), and hello, my solo week in Rio was over the top. What a sultry, stylish city. I’ll be sorting through images and more for a recap soon, but in the meantime, you can check out a ton of pics I took on Instagram and Facebook.
I am definitely dragging right now (16 hours on two planes will do that to a person) and was very content to return to my espresso machine (and how nice, a houseguest left me a bag of Blue Bottle Hayes Valley espresso, aww). Speaking of cawfee, do you remember that panel on local coffee roasters I moderated for the Commonwealth Club? Well, now you can listen to it online if you’re so inclined.
A few more items: I have a few 7x7 posts to share with you, like this one on some of my favorite places to go for a banquet dinner with friends (so perfect for birthdays!), and I also wrote a piece on the best spots for coffee-lunch meetings (something I always struggle with—it’s so hard to find the right spot!).
I also have last week’s column for the SF Bay Guardian linked for you (and what the heck, here’s my SFBG column from the week prior because you need to know about the steak tartare I featured in it).
This Sunday evening is the CUESA Summer Celebration, are you coming? It’s an awesome event—there is more delicious food and tasty wine, beer, and booze than you’ll even know what to do with, seriously. And I’ll be there at a table, so please come by and say hello. It goes without saying that CUESA is a wonderful organization to support, so come on down!
Okay folks, I gotta go—I have a mountain of email to contend with, you can’t even imagine. But I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday.
Tchau! Marcia Gagliardi
The Bahian ladies (at a food stand in Rio) who made my favorite dish of the trip: acarajé! Photo: © tablehopper.com.View tablehopper Newsletter from Wednesday, Jul 10 2013
