Ploafmaster General

UPDATE (4/5/2011):
Lest I lose my Richmond food credibility, I think I need to add something to the top of this post. The quality of this joint fell off very quickly. I mean seriously fast. It's too long a story and involves too much conjecture, but I basically don't go here anymore. The pizzaiolo that was the star of the kitchen no longer works there, unfortunately, but the pizza fell off before he left.

I stand by my taste buds' experience when I ate that first pizza at Stuzzi, but I'm sure some of my enthusiasm was affected by the novelty of finding proper Napoletano-style pizza in Richmond. Emotions easily override reason, especially where sensory input is involved.

The main point is, I had a great pizza on that particular night. I've since had better pizza from my own oven using a pizza kit from Pizza Tonight and some fresh mozzarella. If you like Stuzzi, fine. But you won't catch me in there these days.

****************************************

The bar has been raised for pizza in Richmond, Virginia.

Valerie and I dined at Stuzzi, the new pizza restaurant that took over the much-missed 1 North Belmont location. I was worried for a while that this place would be big on gimmick and low on quality because they lean heavily on their Napoletano pizzaiolo and hand-built brick oven in their marketing. They seem to have spent more money on decoration and branding than a typical pizzeria as well.

All fears melted like their freshly-made mozzarella in a 1000 degree oven when I took my first bite.

This pizza is the real deal. Other then the fresh mozzarella on our pizza Margherita, there was a perfect quantity of crushed San Marzano tomato sauce, a few leaves of fresh basil, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. AND THE CRUST. Goodness gracious, the crust. I've opined before about the criticality of a pizza's crust. That I could eat this crust by itself and be satisfied is a mark of superior quality in a pizza. This wasn't just one of the best pizzas I've eaten in Richmond. This is one of best pizzas this Jersey boy has ever eaten (with the top spot still firmly held by L'Antica Pizzeria di Mechele in Naples, of course).

They have a reservation book, and it may be a good idea to take advantage of it if you can't make it to the restaurant by 6 PM on a Friday or Weekend evening. It was pretty busy tonight on Fathers' Day. It also took quite a bit of time for us to receive our pie, but I'll chalk that up to Stuzzi having only been open for a couple of weeks (hopefully!).

Side notes: We also started off with the mozzarella fritta - basically a sophisticated mozzarella stick, but made with their fresh cheese (round slices instead of sticks) and hand breaded. After our pizza we ordered some of their mini cannoli. These were a fantastic finish as the filling was some of the best I've had. Not too sweet, and a nice stiff texture.

It's $9 for the pizza we split, but if you're hungry you could easily scarf one yourself. It's still worth it. This is pizza as craft. But they have plenty of other toppings that look fantastic (and I intend to try) and will probably make splitting a pizza more filling for both parties.

Or you can just order one for yourself anyway. I have a feeling this stuff will make some of the best left-overs :-)

I work out in Richmond's West End, pretty close to where Parham Road intersects West Broad Street. Everyday I pass by what was, until recently, a Fuddrucker's burger joint. It's been closed for a while now, and I've been wondering what, if anything, would fill the empty building. Considering the trend of businesses moving further west toward Short Pump and leaving empty space behind, I was happy to see a construction trailer in the parking lot over the weekend.

This morning, however, I was thrilled to discover that not only will that space be occupied, but it's being taken over by one of my favorite Richmond food purveyors: Buz and Ned's Real Barbecue.

Here's how I connected the dots:
1. I searched for Fuddrucker's on Google Maps so I could get the street address.

2. Then I ran another search just using that street address, and a surprising link showed up under "Selected businesses at this address" in the sidebar: "Buz &Ned's Real Barbeque." I was immediately excited, but then a little confused because the spelling was off. Was it a mistake (on Buz and Ned's website it's spelled "barbecue")? I needed additional confirmation.

3. I searched around on Richmond Good Life's excellent (if a little over-crowded) website to see whether any recent stories talked about Buz and Ned's expanding into the West End, and I found a December 2009 article from Richmond Magazine. The article isn't specific about a location, but it's interview with Bruce "Buz" Grossberg indicates that he "arranged financing for a new place in western Henrico County and plans to close on the property by the end of January." Well it seems that closing happened, and things are moving forward because:

4. I ran a search through Henrico County's system for Plans of Development and found a case indicating that Buz and Ned's application for "Transfer of Approval" was received on April 14th of this year, and approved on May 26th, last week. The most recent update to the case was today, by Lee Pambid of the Planning Commission indicating the approval and sending of the approval letter. According to Article VI of The Rules and Regulations of the County Planning Commission for Henrico County, "Approval(s) of plan(s) of development are granted only to the owner-applicant(s) listed on the application. Subsequent owner(s) must request that the Commission transfer approval(s) to them." So this approval essentially transfers development rights from Fuddrucker's to Buz and Ned's.

I'm not really sure when it's supposed to open - and I'd be happy for anybody to fill me in - but since I drive by every morning and afternoon I'll be on the lookout as the situation progresses. It sure will be nice to have some of my favorite 'cue out by my office.

Normally after experiencing a high-quality food establishment I tend to gush about it on these digital pages rather quickly. I don't know if it's yet another sign of my dwindling energy for blogging or that it simply slipped my mind, but I've been to Secco Wine Bar in Carytown four times since May 14th and I'm just now writing about it outside of Twitter.

Secco (Italian for "dry" - hence the up-turned bottle, I think) is the long-in-the-making brainchild of Julia Battaglini, the owner of next door's River City Cellars, and it supplements RCC's fine selection of wines, cheeses, and beer with a clever dining menu. That is to say if you enjoy shopping at RCC then you probably already like about 1/2 of what they serve at Secco. What you won't find in the retail side, however, are some of the spectacular edibles such as their duck terrine with pistachios and dried cherries (wrapped in jamon Serrano, I believe), passatelli in brodo (a fresh pasta soup), pork confit sandwich, or flamenquines (pork cutlet rolled with more Serrano, breaded and fried).

The quality of the ingredients and the presentation are of a high level and, most impressively, quite affordable. The menu indicates "small plates" but the portions, while not the over-sized helpings of your average restaurant, are typically plenty for lunch. You can still put together dinner for between $10 and $20 pretty easily, and seemingly half of the excellent wines-by-the glass are around $5. Secco's menu favors sampling and sharing, and the prices make it a great entry point to fine dining in Richmond. When I consider the comfortable atmosphere and friendly staff, however, Secco also invites you to become a regular, serving equally well as a place to meet with friends or simply chat with the bar tender.

I think I may stop by for a glass of cava tomorrow evening, in fact.

Last night I quit Facebook. Again. It's not because they've changed their layout. It's not because they added some new feature. It's not because I'm afraid Facebook is selling my data to corporations or some other paranoid plot. It's not even really about privacy. There are privacy controls and I understand them, and I use them.

It's the implementation, however, that pushed me over the edge. I just got seriously tired of having to flip switches and opt out of everything. When something that's ostensibly entertainment turns into work it loses any shred of fun it had left. I've long tolerated Facebook for the sake of my family connections who use it all the time, but I've never warmed up to its near uselessness (for my purposes) since I re-joined a little over a year ago. Now that privacy maintenance has become too onerous I've decided to ditch it again. If everything was opt-in instead of opt-out I'd probably linger around a bit longer. But I don't like the idea that I have to learn about, search for, and maintain every new setting because they're turned on by default.

Have I left for good this time? I hope so. I didn't really get anything new out of it when I returned except for additional annoyance, more wasted time, and a feeling that I had to be more careful about what I said because of who was following me. Good riddance.

(blurry photo by the kind hostess)

Yeah, that's right. I also included this post in my "Arts" category. Because the meal Valerie and I consumed over a perfectly-paced three hours was a masterpiece.

I made reservations over a month ago for dinner at Alinea in Chicago and was immediately giddy at the prospect of eating my first haute-cuisine meal. Each passing week brought the realization that I was ever-so-much closer to tonight, and as I sat down in the upstairs dining room of the stylish and contemporary restaurant (perfectly befitting the Great White City) I had the nervous excitement of a child on Christmas morning who has woken just a little too early for his parents to let him tear away the wrapping paper. I know that sounds a bit cheesy and overwrought, but I'm serious. I felt like kid. Before every course. And the excitement built before each of the THIRTEEN courses.

Valerie and I each had the smaller - yes, there's one bigger - of the two menus, but we didn't leave hungry at all. We knew there would be around thirteen items, but with a frequently changing menu we had no idea what would arrive at our table next. One set of flavors transitioned to another with varying intensity of flavor. Amuse-bouches built up to incredible major courses before winding down with three dramatically different yet perfectly complimentary desserts.

I'll not list the entire menu here - perhaps I'll update the post with a scanned image of tonight's menu when I get home - but I'll share a few highlight items. I can't begin to describe some of the preparations, though they did include gels, foams, clever service, and liquid nitrogen. Sure, call it "molecular gastronomy" - a cliché at best - but it would also miss the point. The presentation served to delight more than simply the palate. The aromas, textures, and even how we were to eat certain courses made spectacular entertainment out of what was ostensibly dinner. The food wasn't merely delicious, but it was fun to eat. It was, therefore, easy for me to dive right in to some ingredients that I had until then avoided. Shad roe? Sure! Morel mushrooms? Delicious. Leeks? Absolutely. But there was also sturgeon, confit of pork belly, Wagyū beef, fois gras, and black truffle. It was a culinary tour de force.

It wasn't cheep, and I'm sure you guessed that. And I'm sure a meal like this isn't for everyone. I have no problem with somebody wanting to eat what they grew up with, or comfort food, or keeping it simple. But if you're willing to step outside your gustatory comfort zone, save your dollars and make it happen. It's worth every penny. Is it wasteful? I'd argue it's not. There is craft, there is skill. There is visual beauty. Expert execution coupled with extraordinary creative talent. To eat at Alinea is to be a patron of the arts.

I've been sitting on this find for quite a while and today I think it's time to show everybody.

I inherited this nearly-perfect-conditio Polaroid SX-70 from Valerie's late grandfather. It appears he received this beauty as a birthday gift back in 1973.

I ordered some of the completely new film stock from The Impossible Project last Friday (3/25) when it went on sale and recieved my two packs today. I'll be honest - the first pack didn't go so well. I chalk it up to being a total novice using this type of camera, but essentially I grasp how long the shutter was open in the given lighting conditions and ended up with several shots of nothing.

I'll scan the closest thing I have to a success - and some of the interesting failures - when I get a chance this evening.

I have one more pack, too, and I think I have the hang of this thing, so hopefully I'll have some more to share over the weekend.

A few times a semester I write for the Robins School of Business MBA Blog. I try to focus on the intersection of technology and business since that's my background, and I had a few thoughts about those little portable computers we carry with us every day:

With the advent of powerful mobile operating systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone OS, Palm’s WebOS, and Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Phone 7, you can say that your mobile phone does everything on this list as well. Oh yeah, and all of these devices let you make and receive phone calls, too.

Forgive the long setup to get to the point. I hope it's at least food for thought.

So a few days ago HP posted a video to their YouTube channel. It's on HP's channel, but the video is basically Adobe selling HP's "Slate Device" for them.

Yesterday Apple premiered their television ad for the iPad during the Oscars.

It struck me, as it did John Gruber, that the iPad commercial is quite a bit like many iPhone ads. End users are the focus and we hear no explanations of what you're seeing or how it works or why it's there. You just hear a rock song and see people in comfortable, informal situations using the iPad with ease.

In Adobe's demo video for HP's "Slate Device" (I hope they come up with a better name than that. Or at least better than "iPad.") the focus seems to be on the content providers rather than content consumers. Sure, there are references to real people using the device. But there's a saturation of seller-oriented themes in there about content publishers, developers, content distribution channels, and "branded site experiences." A user likely won't mind opening a separate video player to watch a clip if the transition is executed well. But MTV doesn't want you to miss those Flash ads "in context of the site."

Adobe also uses Alexa metrics to indicate how many top websites use Flash and how much web video is served up using Flash. Users don't care about these numbers, sellers do. Users might want Flash video, but with so many people unaware of what a browser is they probably don't know that they want Flash either. They just know they want to see that skateboarding dog on YouTube.

I noticed a specific ding against iPhone's/iPad's lack of flash in Adobe's video when they mentioned the ability to consume content without the need for downloading a separate application. This is pure conjecture (though I'd love some real numbers), but I bet that's not a real problem for end users. Not all downloads from the App Store are fart apps and games.

Okay, so it's not a completely fair comparison. The Apple ad is a TV spot and the Adobe video is a demo spot and not necessarily a commercial. It should also be noted that I haven't used either device and, if it wasn't already clear, I hope you know that I'm not commenting on the quality or performance of the gadgets - merely the messaging and my perception of each message's audience.

It just seems strange that one of the earliest demo videos for this device would focus on content suppliers/sellers. Maybe it's because Adobe doesn't have to convince users to buy the "Slate Device." That's HP's job. Adobe wants to sell Flash to content creators. Last I checked, though, content consumers outnumbered content creators, so I hope HP has another partner company lined up to shill this thing to the people who are supposed to use them.

So this is it. Whiskerino 2009, and Whiskerino in general in its present form, is over. I participated every day, met some great people, honed my photography skills a bit (and learned to sit REALLY STILL), and had a total blast.

Just in case you need a review (as if you cared), check out my archives.

This weekend was the Whiskerino 2009 Throwdown. We had home-made beer. There was a little break dancing. Bowling. Tacos. A gigantic party/concert/party to wrap it all up. And of course, there was meeting a host of guys that turned out to be as quirky, interesting, and fun as their photos implied. It helped, of course, that we all started from the same baseline of nerdiness for having jointly participated in this Internet beard growing event. None of it would have worked had there not been a pile of decent human beings willing to push awkwardness aside and go hang out with a bunch of near-strangers for a weekend. But Sunday morning, there were a lot fewer near-strangers and a lot more new friends.

There's only a week left until the whole Whiskerino is over, but this weekend will go down as one of the best I've ever experienced.

I finally have a wide angle lens! This is my new AF NIKKOR 24mm f/2.8D, and you can expect to see it in use for the remainder of Whiskerino and many shots beyond.

This is also one of my first experiments using some light-reflective material (in this case some heavyweight white paper) to provide some fill light.

Pumped!!

Oh man, something new is on the way. Something through which light passes. Something that has a wider field of view than I normally experience.

More info on Tuesday, hopefully.

I sure hope I don't haunt your dreams...

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9094931&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=0&fullscreen=1

FACE from ploafmaster on Vimeo.

I found this video absolutely fascinating. I'm a sucker for the junction of art and process, and this video highlights just such a situation that also happens to involve the making of good espresso. Here in Richmond, I've only experienced this level of care in coffee making at Ellwood's Coffee at the top of Carytown. The first time I ordered a cappuccino there last year, in fact, the barista scrapped the initial shot of espresso because she didn't like the way it was extracting. It took a little longer for my coffee, but the result was worth the wait.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8709313&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.

(via simplebits)

Oh man. I hope he doesn't fade away from television or entertainment, or whatever. But I'm so glad to read Conan's statement (through the New York Times) regarding NBC's bone-headed move to shift the late night schedule around.

I'll watch Conan on any network, any time slot, and I respect his decision not to participate in the sinking of a great ship as executed by an aimless network with a management team that seams to be as creative as GM's design department.

Well the fun had to end some time.

Tomorrow I return to work after a nearly 2.5 week absence. I also start my second semester of business school. I'm not excited about going back to work at all, but truth be told I'm rather tentative about my first class of the week, too.

I'm trying very hard not to be cynical about things - after all, I was loathe to take an accounting class but ended up loving the course because of a fantastic teacher - but this is a bit different. It's a course on marketing. And one of our books is about "leveraging social media." Be still my lunch.

What I'm worried about is that we'll spend a significant amount of time hearing about how "social media" is a magical nebulous tool that all businesses must learn to harness lest they fall perilously behind their competition. I'm afraid my classmates will leave the course believing that they need a Facebook page or Twitter account for their entrepreneurial endeavors. I'm afraid it will be more Comcast than 37 Signals.

I'm afraid it will further contribute to the sour image many have about MBAs, especially in the web-centric side of the IT community.

But what do I know? This is likely just anxiety, and I hope to be terribly wrong. I hope if, unfortunately, my expectations are even halfway met, that I will see it as an opportunity to research sound material for classroom discussion. I'll start to get a better sense of this tomorrow evening, I suppose. Until then...

Less than a week until Contra releases, but until then you can hear the new hotness direct from the source:

http://beggarspromo.com/daas8972530fdfhwvampireweekend/vampireweekendalbum.swf

Christmas cards with bold colors that represent different aspects of the season? Yes please.

Check out the Pantone-inspired Christmas cards (and posters).
(via Curatedmag)

UPDATE: I was able to contact VCU and received a very quick and polite response. The image has been removed.

I guess you know you're doing something right when a university steals your original photograph and uses it on the front page of their athletic department's website.

Check out this screen shot of the Men's Basketball page paying particular attention to the smaller image at the bottom center:

[I've removed this image since VCU fixed the problem.]

Now take a look at this image on RVANews' Flickr account that I provided them from Saturday night's game:



Can't VCU find any photography students to take pictures for them? I'm not sure how to get in contact with the folks who make the website because there's no obvious webmaster link or contact page. I'd be happy to let them use it if they pay me. Barring that, I'd like them to take down my image.

I wonder how many other photos they've misappropriated?

Last night I was fortunate enough to be on the floor of the Stuart C. Siegal Center at VCU to photograph the Rams defeat the Richmond Spiders 65-57. There's a photo feature of my work up on RVA News.

Today, on Thanksgiving, I'm thankful that my wife's late father was into photography.

When I started dating the woman that is now my wife her father was already inaccessible, in the late stages of a rare disorder that would take him during our last year in college. I never really got to meet the man who would have been my father-in-law.

He did, however, leave behind a wealth of well-kept camera gear largely from the 1960s. My wife used his old 1967 Nikon F in college, and eventually gave it to me as my wedding present in 2004. She knew I was taking an interest in photography and taught me to use her father's camera.

Today, while digging around my mother-in-law's garage for a prop to use in tomorrow's photo, I stumbled upon a gold mine. An early 60's Mamiya C3 TLR medium format camera. It's in almost perfect shape, and included a pistol grip, mirror finder, hood, yellow filter, and UV filter. For this shot I put the mirror finder on in place of the waist-level finder and attached the hood and grip. Everything seems to work just fine, and I plan to run a test roll through when I get home on Sunday.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Peep the new hotness from Vampire Weekend - "Cousins" off their upcoming album, Contra:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0u11rgd9Q&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1&w=560&h=340]

I really dig the video. It's a simple conceit - basically just back and forth on a dolly - but there's a lot of clever changes and some interesting editing at points. This album drops on the 12th of January, 2010.

Yesterday I had my first paying photography gig through RVANews photographing St. Joseph's Villa as they celebrated 175 years in operation. Check out the results!

Dress-up day for Whiskerino.

Just doing my civic duty.