The James Food Review

The way The James hides in a cozy concrete corner downtown epitomizes the enveloping homeyness I associate with Williamsport. The Pine Street facade is unassuming, and any
evidence that The James is inside the Holiday Inn is delightfully subtle.

The atmosphere is lovely—low amber lighting and sturdy, cherry-stained tables are arranged in an open space in the main area of the restaurant. Even so, the feeling is intimate.

The menu comes in two pieces. The main page has soup, small plates, toasts, pasta, large plates. The smaller page has sushi: cut rolls, hand rolls, sashimi, and salad. Perhaps providing two separate menus is meant to explain the lack of continuity in the menu since, aside from three of the large plates (Asian Lacquered Ahi, Miso and Mirin Glazed Salmon, Pancetta Wrapped Hamachi) that invoke Japanese flavors, the sushi feels out of place.

The offerings are a mix-up of Japanese fusion; Italian fusion with a preponderance of tomato, mozzarella, and pasta; and some American superstars like a Bacon Cheeseburger, Cowboy Steak, and Cobb Salad. The small plates include Roasted Crab Dip, Panzanella, and Jumbo Hot Wings.

After our server took the order, we were presented with a plate of bread and seasoned oil. The oil itself was nice, but heavy with dried oregano, sage, crushed red pepper, and basil. It was odd to me that the herbs were just plopped into the oil as opposed to being infused by heating, then strained and garnished. The bread was not extraordinary. It was a tad stale around the edges and lacked salt. Our bread course foreshadowed the rest of our meal, which fell a notch below expectation.

I ordered the Chicken Agnolotti from the pasta section. The description read, “caper and Limoncello cream sauce”. What arrived were four large agnolotti swimming in cream sauce with capers, oddly sans garnish. The capers were briny and sharp in just the right way, but the sauce lacked its purported Limoncello component. The agnolotti were filled with plain, shredded chicken which was not seasoned. The pasta was made in-house but lacked the fresh and tender lightness I expected. The dish, taken as a whole, was boring.

My date ordered the Chipped Tenderloin Toast, which consisted of sautéed beef chunks nestled in a long French roll and a sauce that invoked gravy via cheese. The beef had a nutty, browned flavor, but the cheese-gravy was uninspired. The roll was nice: the crust crisp and the dough chewy, but the real treat of this plate was the eggplant fries. These were strips of eggplant, battered and deep-fried and served with ketchup, which I found to be unnecessary. The delicate tang of the eggplant was not overcome by the batter or by old frying oil. They were perfectly crisp. I liked them so much I opted not to finish my dinner and had a side order of the fries (which were surprisingly inexpensive at $1.50).

While the fare was moderately priced, in the $9 to $24 range with a side salad costing $3, I found the website’s claim of “fine dining in a casual atmosphere” to be a bit off. The food we sampled was satisfactory but not exemplary, certainly not on par with other fine dining. One does not have to dress or make reservations.

Fortunately, there is more to a dining experience than the food. Our server was pleasant and quick and our food was served extra-hot. We both ordered the Brown Ale, which was lovely. The restaurant was comfortable and pretty; the luminaries and hanging lights were shaded with natural pulp paper. The dinnerware, though incongruous with some of the atmospheric elements, were these beautiful, heavy, white, elongated rectangular vessels. The flatware had a nice heft and squared edges that matched nicely with the plates.

While some restaurant reviewers award stars, I will use capers. Out of a five-caper system, I will use the average from three categories. For Service, I give 4 capers for the superb speed and food temperature. For atmosphere, I give 3.5 capers, owing to the paradoxical elements but general comfort and prettiness. For the food, there can only be 2.5 capers. Overall, then, I award The James 3-1/3 capers.

I love food and I'm on a diet

Hi.

For 2010, I decided that this chubby girl needs be chubby no more! That was 4 weeks ago, about.

I ate so much ridiculous and delicious food around the holidays, but each year, starting in November and ending after New Year's, eating gravy and overcooked meat and carbohydrate and fat laden holiday food is exceedingly delicious, but every year, I find myself eating nothing but grapefruit and dry tuna for about a week in January in order to feel detoxed. This year, I just decided to carry the torch and diversify.

I recently joined dailyburn.com. My boyfriend's on it, too. We're each other's motivators, which is good since we're both really into food. You could maybe call us foodies.

Anyway, for somebody who's totally into cooking and eating, when my daily menu looks like this

1 c raw baby carrots
1/4 c mixed salted nuts
2 string cheese
pita with hummus
grape tomatoes
other miscellaneous veggies
grapefruit
banana
other miscellaneous fruit
1 c. organic fruit yogurt from Wegman's

for days and days, well, I get bored.

So i finally got a moment to cook something and I made this turkey breast. I marinated it in lemon juice, garlic, olive oil. Then I baked it (a scoche too long, it's a bit dry), and i threw together some fake tzatziki sauce (lowfat plain yogurt, onions, cucumbers & a touch of black pepper and garlic powder), and I warmed up a pocket-less pita, and I added some grape tomatoes and feta cheese and cucumbers and baby spinach, and folded it over, and ate it up like a sandwich. YUM.

So today, I think I am making a huge, giant delicious spinach salad with the rest of the turkey and other veggie deliciousness for dinner. The point is that my little pick-around approach for the first several weeks was good because it got me in the habit of thinking about calories and nutrition and health and things.

Though I just had this kind of brilliant idea for a delicious tuna pita melt that would be kind of junk food satisfactory, but not unhealthy. At least, not as much as the pizza I've been craving.

photographs

253 photos so far in 2009. of those, at least 150 were taken by someone else. Probably 50 of them are of my daughter. 53 are random. I do not prioritize photographs the way that some people do. For a short time, I remembered to take pictures of Pearl because she asked me to. Today was her 4th birthday party (her birthday was Thursday), so there was some requisite photo taking. But my mom took most of them.

Yes. Yes, I am very, very interesting.

Hahaha!

My boyfriend, who is like the best guy ever,--No, actually, he's not like him. He is him.--told me he read my new blogs the other day. By new, I guess he meant that he read the blogs I wrote in March. Back when I was still working at the car dealership. I'd forgotten I had a blog, seriously. Seriously. So I'm thinkin' aw shit. I needs to do me some bloggin'.

Here's what's interesting.

In phase two of awesome birthday cake for 4-year-old (yesterday) daughter.
Been cooking some pretty delicious stuff of late. Recipes at www.allrecipes.com, www.foodnetwork.com and www.epicurious.com.
Am highly sleepy, but will be up for some time longer (see cake, above).
Doing consistent freelance editing stuff, have discovered serious detestation of ellipses.
Switched jobs again.
Moved.
Decided to lose some weight.
Drink too much coffee.
Had a sister graduate from high shool.
Had another sister turn 21.
Wish I could get back some of my innocence.
Will! Write! Romance! Novel! (Please, no judging. People READ them).

Finally, I will try to write more blogs. I will try. I don't really know who I'm writing them for. This blog is not nearly so artful as others' blogs. Nor is it focused enough to really gain a niche following. Blah Blah.

Lame

Sheesh. I am a bad, bad blogger. I will blog more soon. I swear. As soon as things calm down. As soon as the moon is full. As soon as my feet grow two sizes. As soon as I start talking to my old friends again. As soon as I get some time. As soon as minutes get longer. As soon as a duck returns my call. As soon, just as soon as I can.

I love Pandora

So this very attractive hipster man came into my office at the job one day. His name was David Romeo, of all super-perfect-literary-life-moment things. I was listening to Pulp (sorry kids, all I care to invest the time to find is a fan site), on CD in the CD drive of my horrid work computer. It wasn't even a burned CD. It was the proper CD with the case and liner notes and everything. Not MP3s. [It seems relevant to note that I am kind of slow on this whole music technology thing. I won an iPod Nano a few months ago at this thing, and I put like 9 songs on it and that is that. I keep thinking I should put the whole music library on it and put it in my car so I can listen to anything without messing with CDs, but I like CDs. Then I think I should sell it on eBay. But I bet the next big thing is coming out, so I missed my moment on the Nano selling.]

So David Romeo, who is trying to talk me into getting my bosses to get us up and running with eBay Motors goes, "Are you listening to Pandora?"
"No. Pulp." I said.
"I know." He said. "You should try Pandora. It's online radio and free. You tell it what you like, and it plays music like that."
"Cool." So of course, as soon as David Romeo leaves my office with cards for my bosses (who are luddites), I set up my Pandora account.

Anyway. So I made 2 Pandora stations so far. It's like LastFM which my Mac-antagonizing, hipster-mocking, IT boyfriend prefers. So if you are like a boyfriend of mine (who is also divine), maybe you would like LastFM more.

And Pandora has these cool concerts. And the whole reason I wanted to make this blog was to say that I'm so pumped about the embedded video. Pandora told me he was good for people who like Jeff Buckley. And I do. But I can't listen much because he, like Johnny Cash, makes me weep. I do not know how people can live and feel so much. I guess they can't because neither JC nor JB are still with us.

Lookeee!

Vocations

Okay, so I did the impossible. I procured a different job in these our uncertain economic times! I even think I'm really going to enjoy it.

So hopefully, since I will have soon pulled myself out of this crazy job in which I suffer now I will be happier and less defeated-feeling and more-able to write blogs. Stay tuned, my people. Stay tuned.

!!!
-me