The Breakers

Before coming to live at the beach in Florida, my visits here were frequent. For a long time I’ve felt like I have a good handle on this small town and what it has to offer. But until yesterday I was ignorant of what that pink restaurant on the beach, at the end of Flagler Avenue was all about. It’s a well-known restaurant and bar three miles north, straight up the beach from me, and it’s called The Breakers. The name clearly comes from the fact that the windows all look out onto the Atlantic surf breaking on the white sand beach, and from almost anywhere inside the ocean views are endlessly postcard pretty. But all this is new to me, because until yesterday I had never been to The Breakers and was unfamiliar with all but the name and location. Somehow, in my eleven or twelve years of coming here, I had never eaten there.

For that reason, yesterday became a landmark day for me personally when a friend took me to lunch there. Stories from a handful of people had always included mention of the great burgers served at The Breakers. I have my own favorites and so never gave much thought to trying a Breakers burger. After yesterday, I realize my former attitude of little interest was my loss. No doubt about it, any of the burgers on the Breakers menu can stand up against any burger, anywhere. They are that good.

Eating in a large crowd of people is something you have to expect. Lunch or dinner at The Breakers on a day when the weather is good (and it very rarely isn’t) the restaurant will be wall to wall with people, many of whom want to pass the afternoon or evening at one of the window counters looking out at the ocean, sipping a beer, eating a burger. My friend and I were lucky and stumbled upon a couple of seats at the bar just as we arrived; perfect seats, perfect view.

Ask some locals and they will tell you that The Breakers has been here forever, but forever turns out to be no more than twenty years. A Boston family took over the beachfront property and built the restaurant in 1990. But it didn’t take them long to gain notice—apart from the reputation of that premier view of the ocean. The restaurant won a Star of the South Beach - Best Burger award for the first time in 1993. They went on to win the award in ’94, ’95, ’96, 2004, ’06, ’07, ’08 and 2009. The Breakers Burger won the Best Burger in Central Florida award in 1995, ’99, 2000 and 2005. No foolin’, this is a burger not to miss!

A full menu is offered, including dinners, all priced at $14.95, though the choices are limited to seafood. Apart from burgers, sandwiches come in the familiar varieties of chicken breast, BLT, tuna salad, chicken salad, turkey and fish. If a burger is on your mind, you will have to choose from a list of seventeen. I had the Bacon Burger and wish I had another one in front of me now. All burgers are hand-shaped with a half pound of lean ground beef, char-grilled to order, and served with lettuce, tomato & onion, and a choice of fries, potato salad or cole slaw. All are priced at $9.50. The bar offers twenty different beers on tap, and thirty brands bottled.

If you ever find yourself anywhere remotely near New Smyrna Beach, it’s worth going out of your way to spend an hour or so at The Breakers with a great burger and a dazzling view of the deep blue simple.

By Any Other Name…

If you were here a few days back you might have seen my remarks about ink I bought at the Montblanc store last Monday. In the earlier post, I was indulging myself in a review of the Oyster Grey fountain pen ink from Montblanc, but I got two different inks that day, and this time the focus is on Montblanc’s Toffee Brown ink.

A few words of intro are required, though I risk repeating some of the things I said on July 14 in the Oyster Grey review. My experience with Montblanc products has until this month been all with stores in Tokyo. Until leaving there I regularly visited several Montblanc stores and I only just learned that the Montblanc inks in Tokyo and Florida don’t always match up. Bottles, size, names and prices are all different. The American bottles are larger by 10ml, different names are applied to the same ink, and Japan prices are higher. Still, one Montblanc product is the same worldwide: Service inside the store is what anyone would call excellent.

Brown Toffee is the name given to an identical ink I bought in Tokyo last year, an ink called Montblanc Sepia. I did not realize this when I sampled the Brown Toffee in the Florida store on Monday. Obviously, I haven’t used the Tokyo sepia enough to recognize it offhand.

In the last two or three years sepia ink has grown in popularity. Several of them have come to live among my ink bottles, and I even put up a sepia post in January of this year. That post compared the Montblanc Sepia (Brown Toffee) with Hakase Sepia. I said then that Montblanc Sepia had a touch of shoe polish red that I didn’t care much for. I also complained that the ink was lacking in both depth (saturation) and shading. Disappointingly, the ‘new’ Toffee Brown 'sepia' doesn’t change my mind completely about color, shading or saturation. I feel the ‘toffee’ is a poor name choice, as the ink does not have at all the yellow brown of actual toffee. Perhaps the makers thought the toffee name sounded good.

Two other inks come very close to matching the Toffee Brown’s color. Line up swatches and written lines of Montblanc Sepia with Waterman Havana and Iroshizuku Tsukushi. You will find all three close enough to confuse experts.

Since the Montblanc Oyster Grey did so well in the waterproof test, a similar test with the brown ink was something I tried, but the result was not so good; unlike the Oyster Grey, the Toffee brown is not waterproof. On the plus side, I couldn’t help but feel that both saturation and shading are better in the Toffee Brown than in the Montblanc Sepia from Tokyo.

Bottom line, I doubt I will use this new Toffee Brown anymore than I have the identical sepia. Maruzen’s Athena Sepia will continue to be my first choice for an ink in this range.

Law at Draconian Palms

Sometimes board meetings can turn out interesting. One of the ongoing processes in learning to be a full-time Florida resident is getting to know the people pulling the ropes and directing policy at the condominium I am a part of. Today’s board meeting brought me a few steps closer in that process.

For several years we have had what most consider a good, active and economy-minded board. My impression about the present board’s efforts is a positive feeling. For a long time I was out of the country and away from my investment, but then as well, from that distance I always felt confident about the board’s arrangements and decisions.

The central topic of today’s board meeting was a discussion of rule infractions around the pool area. Most gathered for the meeting admitted that condominium owners shared equal blame for the infractions. A good part of the back-and-forth was focused on people eating, snacking, drinking and setting up meals at the poolside tables.

MY THOUGHT: It’s traditional, expected holiday behavior around condo pools everywhere. Tables and chairs are there…people are going to eat. Might be more effective trying to ban Coca Cola.

Ants swarming for scraps and leftovers sounded like the big concern. I wondered why many of my neighbors thought it so difficult to pick up the scraps and give the ants an intro to Black Flag. The pool area has never looked dirty and unsanitary with food leftovers. It’s a once in a blue moon thing. Don’t worry about it.

Have a look at the rules posted on two sides of the pool area. (My comments in parentheses.)

1. No GLASS allowed in the pool area. (Reasonable. Plastic works.)

2. No food, frisbees, balls, surfboards, floats, or ANY DEVICE allowed in the pool or pool area. (Do they imagine that no one under the age of 75 comes on holiday? Surfboards, yeah. The other? Forget about it.

3. No running, diving, or rough play in the pool or pool area. (This must be a joke when everyone there is a young person on summer vacation.)

4. Everyone must shower before entering pool. No oil please! (Fine for those coming up from the beach, but people coming from inside won’t do it.)

5. All children 10 and under must be accompanied by an adult. (This is reasonable.)

6. Do not reserve or remove pool furniture. (Laying a towel across the adjacent chair or lounger until the second or third person gets there? The pool area is really never so crowded.)

7. No radios permitted in the pool area without earphones. (I'll sign my name to this one.)

8. No cut-offs allowed in the pool. (Why ever not?)

9. Trespassers will be prosecuted. (That just doesn’t happen.)

I drew the title of today’s post from the idea that most of the rules shown above are a bit too severe. Chances are, some of the rules are there because of a clause in the insurance policy. 95% of the people using the pool and pool area disregard the majority of posted rules, and that certainly includes owners and board members. First of all, there is nobody to enforce the rules. There is no security guard and the manager can’t be on patrol all the time, so these things slide. But that won’t stop the boardroom debates on pool rules.

Feverish Cooking

Must have caught a fever this morning and been overcome by weird ideas, because in all this summer heat I took a notion to whip up a big pot of bean soup, a dead of winter dish to most people’s way of thinking. A feverish notion is not ample excuse for heating up the house and preparing something that sends a rush of heat and sweat to the face, and leaves your tongue hanging out. But that’s what I did, so turn on the fan and think for a few minutes about ‘bean & Italian sausage soup.’

No pretense over the origin of this recipe, and it’s no doubt one that a million shoppers have tried at least once. I discovered it about a month ago on the back of a supermarket bag of beans. Tried it out and liked it, so now I’m once again steaming up the house.

“CAJUN 15 BEAN SOUP”

What you will need:

ONE 20 ounce bag of Hurst’s HamBeens Cajun 15 Bean Soup

ONE pound of mild Italian sausage — In tube or link, or you might try using ground sausage and shaping it into irregular-sized balls.

ONE large onion chopped

ONE 15 ounce can of stewed or diced tomatoes.

The juice of ONE lemon

ONE-TWO cloves of garlic chopped or minced

The bag of Hurst’s Hambeen includes an envelope of Creole seasoning; or 3 tablespoons of Zatarain’s Cajun Seasoning will work as well.

THREE-FOUR cups of cooked rice; Mahatma Jasmine rice has a good flavor with this soup.

Preparation:

Wash the bag of beans, then drop them into three quarts of water and get them boiling. Set your timer at 70 minutes, give the beans a stir, drop the lid on and sit down for a sip of icy martini and a puff on that smoldering Chesterfield.

Return to the pot of beans and stir them again. You might lower the heat under the soup to reduce the heavy boil, not wanting too much liquid to evaporate.

Chop the onion roughly, and then either chop or mince the garlic in with the onion. Slice the Italian sausage into manageable bites, or shape the ground sausage into balls or tiny patties.

Put a little olive oil in a wok on medium high heat. Brown the onion and garlic and add the sausage. Continue to sauté the mix until the sausage has browned somewhat.

With 30 minutes left in your original 70 minutes, add the can of tomatoes, lemon juice and the sausage-onion mix.

Next, stir in the Cajun or Creole seasoning.

Now is the time to put the rice on to cook. I use a battered old Japanese rice cooker, which cooks fast. It may take a little longer cooking the rice in a regular pot. Figure on 30 minutes.

When the last 30 minutes have elapsed, turn off the heat and allow the pot of soup to stand for a while. It’s much too hot to eat, so let the flavors meld for half an hour.

When the boiling heat of the soup has dissipated to a point where it won’t burn your lips and tongue, go ahead and serve it up. Put a cup or two of rice in a bowl, and ladle the soup and sausage over the rice. In between fighting for breath and fanning yourself, you can enjoy a hearty and tasty Louisiana soup. Bon appetite.

Black & White

On a trip to Singapore, one day in a public park I came upon what looked to be a kind of yard sale spread of goods, old and new, watched over by a wrinkled grandmother. This kind of thing will stop me every time, and I happily spent an hour looking through the old woman’s collection. There were three or four curiosities that looked interesting, but prices were high, and I had to pass on all but a carved teak water buffalo, and a handful of what impressed me as beautifully composed photographs of children from the 1940s. Not unusual for the place, the children in the photographs are all of ethnic Chinese families. Two of the photos are embossed with the name of long gone photography studios: The Kong Studio and the Ling Tong Studio, both probably active in 1940s Singapore.

The four photographs here are examples of how beautiful black and white photography can become in the delicate handling of light and shadow.

Impossible to know anything concrete about the pictures or the children in them, but it is fairly obvious that the children in the group pictures are all siblings. The faces in each of the first three show similarities that lead one to think that they are five brothers, four and then three sisters.

The photo of the three girls seated on two hassocks is quite special. The faces are pretty near what you might call exquisite.

Jesus Speaks in Red

For the past couple of weeks I have been reading Clyde Edgerton’s 1987 novel, Walking Across Egypt to an elderly friend. This morning we came to the final page, leaving Marianne completely charmed by the story and characters, eager for another of Mr Edgerton’s wonderful books. I felt some personal satisfaction about that, knowing I had chosen well in picking out a book for her.

Mattie Rigsbee is a church-going, independent and strong-minded little old lady of seventy-eight, who will feed anyone appearing at her back door, including birds and dogs. She lives her life pretty much according to the lines from Matthew 25:40, ‘…I tell you the truth, whatever you did for the least of the brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Mattie is determined to see good in other people.

A stray dog at Mattie’s back door is catalyst to an alternately funny and touching story of getting old, of caring for others and always searching out the good in others. The dog is Mattie’s first stray, but the little mutt leads her to an orphaned 16 year-old boy in the local juvenile correctional facility, who after meeting Mattie, soon comes to crave more of her pound cake, and who also convinces himself that she is his grandmother. On the other side of the fence, Mattie believes she might be able to help the boy turn his life around, and Wesley, the boy, believes she could be his ticket out of the hoosegow. This desire by one to help, and by the other to be helped has consequences approaching the hilarious.

One underlying issue the story illuminates is the honest and heartfelt charity of one Christian woman, and the reaction she faces from members of her church. It is a poke at those Sunday morning Christians who conveniently forget the teachings of the Bible when it threatens their complacency; people who read scripture with little idea of its meaning.

Along with the weightier questions of aging, helping others and neighborly goodness, the book tells a story of southern cooking and hospitality which will have your mouth watering.

The writer tells his story chiefly through dialogue and the thoughts of his characters, who speak in word and idiom straight from a southern grandmother’s kitchen. A southerner myself, I can vouch for the authenticity of details, as well as the dialogue. The story is simply written without pretense or reliance on clever literary fireworks, and throbs with down home charm from page one to page last. If you’re looking for a book about good people who live uninfluenced by the darker corners of human behavior, then pick up a copy of Walking Across Egypt.

The Pearl of Inks

I have long yearned for a solid gray ink with a degree of saturation that doesn’t leave me straining to make out the words. In my experience this is a rare quality in gray inks. In addition to the Montblanc Oyster Grey being reviewed here, I have four other grays—Sailor Jentle Ink Gray, Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun and Kiri-same, and J Herbin’s Gris Nuage—all rarely used. The reason is, none of them have a saturation that makes reading easy, but often require squinting or holding the paper under my nose. I mean, let’s face it, gray almost implies vagueness; it’s a diluted shade of black, the hue most often described as colorless. Unless the ink blender is very, very careful, the mix is going to end up pale and hard to read.

Des Atramentis hit upon a brilliant stroke when they added a dollop of green to gray and created the very readable Charles Dickens famous name ink. That green is the key to its easiness on the eyes. The Jentle Ink Gray from Sailor never worked for me, and after an initial infatuation, the two Iroshizuku inks paled. The J. Herbin Gris Nuage I used once and promptly forgot about. But along came Montblanc Oyster Grey and I am once again excited about a gray ink. In talking about a visit to the Montblanc store yesterday, I described the Oyster Grey as an elegant and aristocratic shade of gray. It also has the saturation necessary to make the color easy to read. The shading also impresses me, though I realize there are some who prefer less obvious deviation in the flow of ink. The Montblanc Grey gives what you could call shading plus.

I tested the Oyster Grey in two pens on four different kinds of paper: First, a Montblanc Meisterstuck 146, and then a Sailor 1911 Professional Gear, each pen on Clairefontaine, Moleskine, Life Noble Note, and common 20 lb white copy paper. The opinion of three people reflected a like choice. Oyster Grey in the Sailor 1911 (Medium 14k gold nib) on Clairefontaine 90g Triomphe stationery was the pick for ease of reading.

But here’s what surprised me—this ink is completely waterproof. I wrote three lines, allowed it to dry for ten minutes and then held the paper under running water for no less than thirty seconds. Every letter, every word was perfectly clear and legible at the end of that bath. Drying time for the ink is not so terribly slow, and might work fine for even left-handed writers. No bleed through, feathering or nib creep was there with either pen, on any of the four papers.

The feeling now is that I’ve found a gray ink I will go back to on a more regular basis.

MONTBLANC OYSTER GREY INK • 60ML BOTTLE • $16.00 AT MONTBLANC