Cafe Lurcat

The setting has always been perfect--looking south across a park, catching a few rays from the setting sun, with people playing tennis in the distance and the bustle of urban traffic all around. For many years the Loring Bar occupied the site, and somehow succeeded in making faux-bohemian decor seem cool. The removable glass in the windows helped on those breezy summer nights. That the space was taken over by the D'Amico folks seemed like a classic sign of the times--the wealth few horning in on the fun. The new place is a far sleeker and more upscale establishment. Not quite the "let your hair hang out" place it used to be.

Yet the food was alleged to be very good (and a friend had given us a gift card) so we paid the Cafe a visit on a recent Thursday evening.

The space is light and airy, with exposed brick, and white cloth draped over both tables and chairs. During the course of our meal enough linen napkins were put to use to sail the Mayflower. The taped music varied from John Coltrane's Ballads to soft and sultry Brazilian vocalists--Ceu?--in short, it was an altogether pleasant environment: European/American relaxed chic. Our waiter was well-informed yet pleasingly unpretentious. He didn't tell us his name, and it was easy to imagine that he was a bright economics major from Grand Rapids with an interest in food who was working his way through college, rather than a food-snob who had sized you up immediately and determined that you couldn't tell a turnip from a parsnip if your life depended on it.

The wine list is extensive though few come in at under $30. Many of the offerings are available by the glass, however. and you can get a glass of Verdillac white for $7.50 or a "Kermit Lynch Selection" Cote du Rhone for $9, for example, following the "one glass costs one bottle retail" formula. I suspect it would be possible to have a pleasant evening sampling the extensive range of 2-ounce pours, which are in the $3-5 range, along with a few appetizers.

The menu is entirely ala carte. Everything sounds interesting, and everything we ordered was perfectly presented and remarkably tasty. I would not normally have ordered the fois gras with proscuitto on toast (here the gift card comes into play), and perhaps the waiter could read the look on my face when the dish arrived and I was reminded that fois gras is goose liver, not goose liver pate. The dish looked like a half of a pear sitting on a piece of fine bacon and drizzled with some delicate caramel sauce. It tasted like heaven. These are flavors of such succulent richness that they lie in an entirely different domain from the one our taste buds (or our psyches) commonly inhabit. The crisp toast and the salty proscuitto provided a perfect balance to the oily fatty liver, and the flavors lingered in the mouth for what seemed like an eternity. Well, enough about that. (And nary a thought about the poor goose until just now!)

The salad, which our waiter thoughtfully delivered to us on two plates, was light and tasty, and the grilled honeyed almonds that accompanied it, set in tiny beds of dried currants, were scrumptious.

And now, having used up quite a few gushing adjectives already, the rack of lamb arrives, four pairs of little ribs set on the plate tepee-style (that's what they call it at the Cordon Bleu, I believe) served on a whisp of mirepoix with some truffle oil and bordelaise sauce drizzled here and there. It was very fine, as was Hilary's grilled sea bass, a heafty chunk of fish caked in a carmelized miso sauce. We also ordered a gratin of root vegetables, which provided just enough down-home familiarity to keep us from drifting off into the nether-world of etherial food essences.

The bill, with tip, wasn't much more than we spend to heat our house for a month, on the budget plan.

Twin Cities International Film Festival

The dollar is weak and travel becomes expensive. Hilary and I just finished a week-long trip to such exotic locales as Lake Benton, Faribault, Milan (Minnesota), and Luverne. We heard winnowing snipe high above our heads and ate deep-fried chicken breast smothered in raison-almond sauce. It was all very interesting--well, most of it, at any rate. But such excursions will only take you so far. Lucky for us, when we returned the local film festival was still in full swing, and this gave us the opportunity to visit a few even more exotic places.

Greenland: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

If you saw The Fastrunner, then you know how slow-moving, disjoined, and all but incomprehensible the films of Inuit directors Kunuk and Cohn can be. When we're dealing with the myths and spirits of a strange, arctic people these qualities are not necessarily bad, however. On the contrary, they free the mind from its "What happens next?" mode and allows us to absorb the atmosphere, thought processes, and world-view that is not quite like our own. Though less engaging than their earlier production, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen has more than enough shaman-lore, igloo song-fests, poor dentistry, and grueling marches across the frozen wastes to keep us interested. The acting style is also intriguing, with long silences between conversations and expressionless men and women often standing around in furs in the background. Throughout the film I asked myself repeatedly, "Aren't their ears getting cold?" If it were not for the program notes, it would be impossible to extract much more than a rudimentary outline to the story, even though the film is based on events that actually took place during a Danish exploratory expedition in 1922.

After the film a woman selling tickets for the next show started asking me questions about the rise of Christianity and food-distribution practices in the Arctic. (How did she know I'd studied with Spenser and Hoebel? Is it written on my face? ) Finally Hilary pulled me away, and we went out into the warm spring night where teeming hordes of young frat boys were drinking beer on dilapidated couches set out on the grass along University Avenue.

Romania: What Means Motley?

In 1999 a choir of 41 singers from Romania arrived in Dublin and vanished immediately, never to be heard from again. Here directors John Ketchum and John Riley envision how it might have happened. But the plot revolves around an Irishman down on his luck in Romania, and the difficulties he runs into with the Gypsy mafia. Fortunately he has an ally--a Romanian taxi-driver who wants to leave the country almost more than he does. The Irishman is a naive, never-say-die type, and he's been liberally endowed with the gift of gab. Once he's rescued a beautiful Romanian woman (whom her father has just gambled away in a poker game) from her pursuers a few times, the trio sets to work on a plan to make some money and pay off their underworld debts by smuggling some of the locals to Ireland as a Romanian folk choir.

Plenty of madcap confusion ensues involving Gypsy bands, the Irish consulate,a fake CD, and plenty of beer. The decrepid streets of Bucharest take on the golden luster of ageless punk beauties, the tired cars and abandoned buildings provide a perfect backdrop for a desperate scenario sustained only by good luck, imagination, and the comic chutzpan of Ardian Ciglenean in the role of the festival "agent."

India: The Journey

This tale follows a few days in the life of a celebrated writer named Dashrath who travels by train to receive a literary award. On the train he meets a young film director, and in the process of answering the man's questions about the novel, he also tells the story, which is largely autobiographical, to us. He had been a school-teacher in a small village, and had (unknowingly) rescued a young and very talented dancer from the clutches of her cruel husband. He and his wife had nursed the woman back to health, but found it prudent to head for the city when the husband finally shows up with a carload of thugs.

Now, years later, Dashrath ponders the Westernized and consumerist behavior of his adoring wife and children, and delivers a speech at the awards ceremony questioning the fate of the world, and so on. After imbibing a few two many Scotches, he then decides to revisit the singer whom he had saved years earlier. She is now a courtesan in Hyderabad. As it sometimes happens in films, she is still ravishingly beautiful, and she has not forgotten the classical dancing and singing arts of her former life--though they're of little use to her nowadays. Dashrath's sudden disappearance sparks alarm in the family and also the awards organizers who are responsible for the man's whereabouts. His reunion with Lajvanti is full of surprises, not all of which are pleasant.

The success of this film is largely attributable to the actress who plays the role of the dancer--Rekha. She has appeared in scores of Bollywood films since the 1970s and in 2007 won the "Forever Diva Award" from the industry. Her presence is remarkable--somewhere in the zone between Isabella Rosellini and Selma Hayek--and her dancing, to this uninformed Westerner, is consistently mesmerizing. But this can take us only so far in overcoming a rather slow-moving storyline and a central character who drinks too much, mouths platitudes about dreams and reality as if they were golden truths, and seems to have no regard for the feelings of his family, merely following his every whim as if he owned the world.