Thursday 11.12.09

I took the train back to the office and got as much work done as I could before Chris and Rich picked me up for dinner. My nephew Danny’s old friend from college back in Maine invited me to his beer tasting at Roseville in Pt. Loma. Jeff has worked for Shipyard Brewing company forever, and being that he lived with me for a few months a year or so ago, I grew accustomed to the taste of this fine brew!

Reception: Shipyard Allagash White. osyters on the half shell, beer battered haddock, humbolt fog mac-n-cheese, chestnut stuffed chicken roulade.

First Course: Shipyard XXXX IPA, steamed venus clams with Spanish chorizo, melted leek, oven-roasted roma tomato and basil pistou.

Second Course: Grammy Dibiase’s “Door Knobs”, Duck confit, celery root puree, maitake mushroom, medjool date, and sage brown butter froth.

Third Course: Shipyard Imperial Porter, Meyer Ranch top sirloin roast, glazed winter vegetables, smoked parsnip puree with a red pearl onion porter reduction.

Last Course: Shipyard Barley Wine Style Ale, Hazelnut Brown Butter Cake, Barley Wine ice cream, beer soaked cherries, candied lemon and sea salt caramel.

The food was fantastic and the beer was great, as always.

The really interesting part of this evening is the 2 degrees of separation that was going on from the minute we walked into the door.
I ran into an old friend named Sara who works at Arterra in Del Mar.

Her sister Jessica and I went to elementary school/Jr HS/HS and are still in touch (poorly, I might add, but we are both guilty of being “too busy”… I know, it’s lame) Anyways, I lived with Jessica, Sara and their mom as a boarder in their house after my first semester of college. Long story: I moved to SD but moved home after 6 months and didn’t want to live with my evil stepmonster so I moved into a their house down the street. Jessica now lives in San Diego and Sara moved here a few years ago, too. One of Sara’s employees is from Maine and is good friends with Jeff, the Shipyard rep (try to follow) so that is why they are at the dinner in the first place. Oh, and Sara knows my nephew from CT when he was like 2 years old. OK, great. So then Chris runs into a client of his that he is supposed to close a deal with the very next day (hosting, co-location, ISP etc…) who happens to be in the adult entertainment business! (can’t really say names). Then we are sitting at our table of 15 and we start chatting up the other folks, and we discover that we are sitting with our best friend Sigrid’s boss! Who happens to be her neighbor and who is chatting up another guy at the table who lives around the corner from them as well. Who happens to know Sara from being a restaurant fly around San Diego and met her at her old place, The Pearl.

So ironic…  San Diego is a small village in a small world.