Bom dia! I’m practicing my Portuguese again, because tomorrow I depart for beautiful Portugal! I’ll be in Lisboa on my own for a few days (if you have any tips to send, please do!), and am then meeting up with a group of wine professionals (I know, lucky me) for an immersive tour into Portugal’s wine country. It’s going to be one heck of an education. And I’m so fired up to get my jamón, pastel de nata, and bacalhau on. You can follow along on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, where I’ll be posting pics for the next couple of weeks!
I’m just happy to be getting out of here—United canceled my flight this morning. (What. The Hell.) But fortunately I was able to find another flight combination that gets me in on the same day. Whew. I return on November 14th, so the next tablehopper issue won’t be until November 18th! (Publicists and restaurant owners, please don’t pitch me on anything happening until after that date, obrigada!)
Last week was all kinds of awesome. We had the tablehopper-Cover crawl (you can check out pics here), with a group of us dining and walking from Mason Pacific to Stones Throw to Verbena. It was a truly fabulous progressive dinner. (Don’t forget, anyone can use code tablehopper for $25 off your first meal with Cover!)
Oh yeah, and there was that Giants win. There were also plenty of Halloween shenanigans going on, and I rocked out on my birthday on Saturday, complete with brunch at Verbena, bubbles and Barolo at Biondivino, a fantastic omakase dinner at the sushi counter at Pink Zebra, and disco dancing late into the night at Go Bang! at the Stud. Family supper on Sunday was the cherry on top of an epic weekend! (Although I managed to get a lot of writing done in there too, magic.) And now I gotta pack, and get these other deadlines done, oy!
A couple of final notes: here’s a fun piece I wrote for 7x7.com last week on seven restaurants that do really fun tableside service (I’m talkin’ flambé drinks and spinning bowls of salad here, people).
And please: don’t forget to vote today, okay?
Saludos! See you in a couple of weeks! Marcia Gagliardi
How we got things started on the tablehopper-Cover crawl at Mason Pacific: Val De Mer brut nature rosé. Photo: © tablehopper.com.View tablehopper Newsletter from Tuesday, Nov 4 2014
