DINING FIND
Thanks to our friend Sue, we finally tried Bridge Street Bistro in Bradenton Beach. If you just walk by, you’ll see and probably hear a noisy set of diners on the ground floor. But, if like us, you prefer quiet and a more elegant dining room, then head up to the 3rd floor. Here is a windowed dining room, one side with a view toward the gulf, and an attractive bar set apart from the tables. Linen napkins, a menu of seafood and Italian fare, and attentive, helpful service.
We shared a Caesar salad and then enjoyed very tasty veal saltimbocca and the grilled salmon topped with spinach and a lemony sauce over saffron risotto. Both excellent dishes and generous enough that we left with some for the next day’s lunch. No need for a reservation this time of year, but I make one anyway just to be safe.
SARASOTA MUSIC FESTIVAL
This week’s Thursday concert of performances by several of the festival faculty was another musical treat! Current festival music director Jeffrey Kahane and former director Bob Levin teamed up on two Schubert piano pieces for four hands, while Leone Buyse on flute and Michael Adcock on piano played the marvelous Sonatine by Walter Gieseking, a work previously unknown to me. Ms. Buyse was sitting behind me after the intermission, so I got to thank her and particularly compliment her on the lively Vivace movement.
The concert ended with Beethoven’s Piano Trio No.5 with violin and cello which brought down the house. We’ve vowed to go to more of these concerts next year—some of the best music in Sarasota!
SMALL SCREEN
Loch Ness (Acorn). This Scottish series is quite dark, but once I got past the first episode I was hooked. Two women are the lead inspectors trying to locate what appears to be a serial killer while the brooding lake of the title is a character in itself. There is just one season and it’s one continuous story over the six episodes. Complex characters, small town anxieties and tensions, and lots of twists and turns in the plot.
Lives in Squares (Amazon Prime). This three-part series from the BBC captures the messy, passionate lives of the Bloomsbury Group, with Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, being the focal point. This set of talented writers and painters spent a lot of time together and several lived in each other’s pockets. If you aren’t already familiar with some of the relationships between the sisters and their coterie, you might be puzzled. Adding to the viewer’s potential confusion is the fact that the actors playing the principals change as they age. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the series and would recommend it if you’re a fan of this period. Thanks to Patricia for suggesting it.
SUMMER READING—TRACKING TWENTY
#5 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
This long novel was named one of 2017’s ten best books by the New York Times Book Review. In it, Lee traces the lives of four generations of a Korean family who move to Japan and yet are never considered full members of the society. The novel opens in 1910 and ends in 1989, during which time Korea is annexed by Japan, fought over in a war, split in two, and later closed to many Korean Japanese residents who wish to return. When Sunja, a young boardinghouse owner’s daughter, becomes pregnant by Hansu, her older married Japanese lover, she is offered marriage by Isak, a sickly young minister. He takes her to Osaka where they raise two sons.
How these sons and the succeeding generations deal with poverty, limited career options, and the need to hide their true ethnic heritage makes for a moving saga about immigration and living as an outsider. A pachinko is a Japanese slot machine and several characters run pachinko parlors and become wealthy. I found the novel overly long, but more absorbing in the second half. Not sure it would have made my list of 10 best.
Note: Photos and coloring by JWFarrington.
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