A sense of place

It has been many years since I found myself gazing out the window of my elementary classroom as the teacher patiently reviewed multiplication tables or verb conjugations.

Ev Parker

The Loire Valley Wine Bureau, representing wines from that area in France, sponsored what it called a Thanksgiving dinner, paired with Loire Valley cabernet franc wines at Rubicon in San Francisco last week. We won’t go into the entire menu except to say that the second course is smoked bacon-wrapped turkey, so apparently that’s the Thanksgiving connection. Nothing else on the menu appears on our Thanksgiving dinner table — no Dungeness crab sticks or sweet potato risotto croquettes as an appetizer nor lobster and caramelized pear as the second course. But then again, France doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so how would they know?

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Java jive

By L. PIERCE CARSON

Two famed restaurant guides and a popular TV program just released their latest ratings, and Napa Valley establishments naturally did well.