Babani's Kurdish Restaurant

When visiting the Ordway recently, I took the opportunity to experience Kurdish food, a genre I couldn't even really picture before entering the restaurant.  Would it be like Afghani food? Middle Eastern in some way? Indian-esque?

My experience at Babani's would result in a "none of the above" answer to those possibilities, if only because the food was uniquely its own.  Located walking distance from the Ordway, Babani's has been opening the eyes and mouths of Twin cities folks since 1997, which I think is wonderful!  The exterior of the restaurant is unassuming and easy to pass by, but the interior is a colorful homage to a culture about which I will honestly plead ignorance.  The rugs on display and some of the dress reminded me slightly of the decor and clothing of the Berber women I lived with in Morocco.   The mixing of the rice and entree reminded me of the activity involved in ordering a curry, but the flavors were specific and there was a different type of warmth (not better, not worse) than the cumin-heavy delicacies I lived off of in North Africa.

We had Nareen to start, a Kurdish bread topped with feta and served with a spiced tomato sauce.  I just love to see how different cultures land on the same general concept of awesomeness. Tomato+bread+cheese = delicious.  It's not rocket science and it's hard to mess it up.  This was a wonderful way to start off a yummy evening.

We each had soup with our entrees, Niskena for me and Dowjic for my date.  The Niskena was a blend of lentils and spices and wasn't too different from other lentil soups I've had.  I would say that they nail the perfect balance between lentil and broth, which can be tricky as I've had some intensely goopy lentil soups recently.  So while the soup wasn't a particularly new experience for me, it was a well-executed one.  The Dowjic was a unique blend of chicken, yogurt, rice, basil, and lemon, and it was incredible.  It was soft and brothy, not like some yogurt-based soups that can be cloying and almost sticky.  It reminded me of a chicken and wild rice soup with the added benefit of perfectly blended yogurt, just enough tang to make you wonder what could be different about your bowl of goodness.  When we go back, I'm getting the Dowjic.

I'm a sucker for a good description and despite cutting back on my meat consumption of late, the description of Sheik Babani, named for the appearance of a man's striped trousers, sold me on diving into a meat-laden dish. Honestly, I don't even know the type of meat.  Maybe beef?  A mix of beef and lamb? Regardless, the meat mixture was simmered in a delicate, mildly spicy tomato sauce and stuffed in eggplant and served with a plate of basmati rice.  It was a healthy, but not overwhelming portion, that stuck to my ribs for the night in a comforting, almost-winter-so-you-better-warm-up-those-bones sort of way.

Babani's is almost hidden in downtown St. Paul, and given that it has been around for 15 years, it's probably not high on anybody's list of "new" places to try.  But if this place is new to you, it's worth the trek to St. Paul.  It's delicious.  Order the Dowjic, you'll thank me.

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Delfos Danza

I am not a dance person.  When other girls were taking their first tap and ballet classes, I was learning how to swing a bat on my T-ball team.  Years of softball and zero acquaintance with anything resembling contemporary dance (other than a ludicrous college class where our teacher allowed us to nap if that's what "felt our bodies were saying") has resulted in a woman passionate about baseball and somewhat dismissive of most contemporary dance forms.

I felt it necessary to lay that on the table before I attempted to craft an opinion on my recent experience at the Ordway, where I saw a performance by Delfos Danza, a contemporary dance troupe hailing from Mexico.

Is troupe even the word I'm supposed to use?

I struggle to articulate myself properly on subjects about which I have no knowledge, but there were parts of the performance I found stirring and beautiful, and others I found tiring and somewhat boring to watch.  The visuals incorporated into the performance were stunning, a mix of video and exquisite costuming that provided a perfect aesthetic support for the dancers' movement.  But I struggled to understand the story, the point, the motivation, the reason, the crux, the hinge, the lie, the philosophy, that the performance was attempting to convey.  There was a sense of being captured, trapped even, and that correlated with what I read in the program about the piece having something to do with masks. Some sort of physical manifestation of what it means to hide behind a facade? Or be forced to wear a facade against one's will?  Maybe?

The most powerful image for me was that of flight and escape.  The video usage of the birds was beautiful, the shadows of wings and the tree at center were wonderful ways to bookend the beginning and ending of the performance.  But, I have to admit something here, I couldn't help but think of the episode of Portlandia making mockery of the hipster desire to stick a bird on absolutely everything, "stick a bird on it." But birds are powerful symbols of both entrapment and escape, so I can't fault the usage of a recognizable symbol for those concepts.

Dance, to me, is a foreign world, one I struggle to relate to given my complete lack of physical gracefulness and the absence of any desire to remedy said issue. But it's a foreign world I enjoy peeking into, even if I'm left feeling somewhat lost.

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Perspectives

I did not love living in the Twin Cities when I moved here.  I missed New Orleans, missed warmth, missed humidity, missed pralines, and had zero threshold for cold.  But I, somewhat begrudgingly, developed a strong affection for these Twin Cities, evidenced in part by my ability to always find somewhere new to visit, some new food to try, some new band to hear, and those new and new-to-me experiences fill the bulk of this blog.

But there's another reason I grew to love it here.  And that is the Cities' impressive array of volunteer opportunities and the seemingly inexhaustible appetite Minnesotans have for said volunteering.  For all my frustration with the coldness of Minnesota "Nice" (it's not particularly welcoming), there is a certain communal attitude of service that I really respect.

I shoveled a number of piles of mulch this afternoon with some fellow employees (I work for a large local Minnesota-based company) at Perspectives, a social service center in St. Louis Park. The center serves serves 50+ families on its grounds in supportive  housing as well as other children/families in the surrounding area through food service, tutoring, and after school programs.  After our mulching, we learned a bit about the facility and how local chefs often help cook/serve the meals side-by-side with the kids each night.  I just think that's fantastic.  The Kid's Cafe program teaches nutrition, leadership, and social skills for kids dealing with transition and/or homelessness in their lives.  Kids cook and serve the meals alongside the Perspectives chef as well as local restaurant chefs who donate their time.

Perspectives is working on developing more green space, installing gardens, etc., to further teach the community and the children often in their care the real life cycle of what ends up on their plates.  Such an exciting idea, and a lesson that is so often lost in urban environments.  I hope local restaurants and chefs continue to donate their time to this awesome organization.

There are lots of volunteer needs at Perspectives, so if you have a couple hours a week to spare to tutor a child or have other gifts/skills you think might be effective, check out their website.

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Billy Elliot

I have a very strong affinity for underdogs, a symptom of growing up in a baseball family and rooting long into the 9th inning for our team (Cardinals, not doing too shabby at the moment) to catch a break.  So Billy Elliot, a musical unabashedly embracing an improbable pursuit, and currently playing at the Ordway, resonates with me.

This was my first time seeing the musical live, but I listened to the original Broadway recording pretty religiously a couple years ago, during my Elton John Can Do No Wrong phase.  I tired of that particular musical worship, but I still find John's craftmanship with this show to be top-notch. But just as my enjoyment of John faded with a few too many songs-that-sound-the-same, so my attention drifted, from time to time, during this performance.  There was no lack of skill, no particularly glaring error in direction or vision, the show simply faded for me a bit, with the highlights noted below snapping me back to attention.

Said highlights were the lead females, the supporters of our famous underdog.  I thought Janet Dickinson's Mrs. Wilkinson was tough and funny, with just enough of a soft spot to make you recall every "tough love" mentor in your own life.  She was a solid champion with a beautiful tone to even her friskiest numbers.  Grandma, the friskiest of the bunch, was simply hilarious. Patti Perkins' "We'd Go Dancing" was equal parts saucy, I-never-want-to-hear-my-Grandma-say-that hilarity, and downright melancholy.

Our hero, Billy, charmed, but even I, flagrant supporter of all things underdog-ish, found the Angry Dance at the end of Act I to be a bit long on Footloose, short on authenticity.  But Billy's frustration and eventual redemption in Act II felt more genuine than his building anger in Act I, and that may be a comment on the book or it may be a comment on the actor settling into his task for the evening or it may be a comment on a number of factors all rolled into a "good, not great" evening of musical theater. The final dance number with the company was charming and Billy deserved his standing ovation, not so much because his performance astonished me in and of itself, but because at the end of the day, he is a child commanding a stage for 2+ hours and he did so more effectively than many twice or thrice his age.

Shows through October 14th.

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Appomattox

A few of my friends have insinuated that I have a rough time being "mean" on my blog.  I do tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and even when unimpressed by certain restaurants, activities, or performances I tend to sugarcoat it a bit. Maybe they were having a bad day. Maybe they were sleepy. Maybe my opinion was influenced by the rainy weather. Maybe the band just needed more time to warm up.

That tendency noted, you must know how vehemently I disliked Appomattox, now playing at the Guthrie, in order to state as much on this blog. I really, really disliked it. I wanted to like it.  I was inspired by the concept (juxtaposing Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865 with the explosion of the Civil Rights Movement in 1965). But the show left me feeling annoyed and wishing I'd seen Looper with my boyfriend instead of dragging him to the play. And now, my willing audience, I shall tell you why.

1. Southern accents: Or shall I say, the lack thereof.  I realize I am biased.  I realize, as a native Southerner, I'm picky.  And I realize that I'm even more picky than your average Arkansan because I also spent four years in Virginia, the state in which the first half of the play was set, and so can note pretty acutely the difference between a smooth Virginia drawl and a clumsy attempt at one.  The only character with a believable Virginia lilt was Robert E. Lee (a blessing, I guess, since Lee without a hint of drawl would be very, very sad).  The rest of the characters laid their accents on so thick I was tempted to roll my eyes. It sounded like half of them had marbles in their mouths.

2. Lincoln as Savior. You're kidding, right?  At the outset of the war Lincoln was not a man bent on becoming the Great Emancipator.  He would have kept slavery in the South had it been a viable option and a way to maintain the Union. Siding with the abolitionist movement was a political tactic, not one stemming from any gut reaction to the evil of slavery. While it seems that he slowly changed his mind, began to see the moral darkness encompassing half the country, that didn't inspire him by any means to encourage the equality of black people.  He would have rather seen them shipped back to Africa (and that's what he tried to do with the creation of Liberia). Lincoln did many brave things and we're right to respect some of his choices, but you belittle the difficulty of his position by encouraging a fanciful image of his Goodness.  It would have been far more engaging, in my mind, to transpose the very real quasi-worship of Lincoln by the freed slaves over the equally real internal conflict Lincoln had over whether slavery was really evil. To see that played out onstage would have been interesting and would have raised powerful questions.  As is, none of the Lincoln scenes seemed remotely engaging or authentic.

3. Dialogue.  Aside from the  Lyndon B. Johnson scenes (played expertly by Harry Groener, who couldn't give half as much life to his portrayal of Lincoln), the vast majority of the dialogue seemed stunted and forced.  I have a theory about this.  I noted in the program that Hampton first crafted Appomattox as an opera and that this play is an adaptation of that opera.  This, to me, explains a lot.  Opera, by its nature, requires characters that are dramatic and vividly recognizable as good/evil or some such stereotype.  The vibrancy of characters with socially defined expectations is captured well by the operatic medium.  But translating from opera onto Hampton's stage left characters that couldn't have a conversation. I stopped counting the number of times actors answered each other with phrases that didn't seem to have any cohesion to the momentum or emotion just preceding the line.  It's as if the characters weren't listening to each other.

4. Caricatures. This parallels my frustration with the dialogue.  The only character who seemed lifelike was LBJ.  With all his crass humor, loud-mouthing, and cursing, Groener was able to deftly show a man exhausted by a war and desperate to do as much good as he could in a limited amount of time.  He had his own unique perspectives, his own prejudices, but he was brave enough to fight the prejudices of others and fight hard against the failures that loomed behind and before him.  If only Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., could have been so engaging. Instead, they came across as flat portraitures of actual men. Barely even snapshots. With all King's blustering and rhetoric, you never felt the heat of his anger or the heart-wrenching exactitude of his statements on America's equality failure. I honestly don't even know what any of Lincoln's scenes were supposed to accomplish.  He raised his voice at times that seemed unnatural and joked at moments that never seemed authentic.

5. The ladies.  Greta Oglesby and Sally Wingert are fantastic actresses. Fantastic.  I've seen both several times and they are Twin Cities treasures.  The fact that Wingert was unable to rescue the Lincoln scenes, despite the occasional laugh drawn by her nutty Mary Todd Lincoln, and that Oglesby was left with a Coretta Scott King that came across as a cold, almost petulant companion for the King caricature just goes even further to prove my disappointment in this show. But if the script gives an actor nothing, what can the actor give in return?

6. The ending. What the heck was that? To show two aging men (somewhat) paying for their crimes (finally) of murder in a jail likely not far from the scenes of the rest of the second act was an interesting decision.  But it's only interesting for about 3 minutes. What is that scene supposed to prove? Are we supposed to be surprised that these racist SOBs (who also make a point of holding steadfastly to their version of Christianity) still find no fault in their actions? I don't know why that would be shocking. Evil exists.  And if that evil was strong enough to drive men to murder strictly based on skin color 50 years ago, I wouldn't be surprised if they maintained those beliefs until their dying day. What would have been truly disgusting, disheartening, and thought-provoking would have been to view young people today falling prey to the same racial prejudices as their fathers and grandfathers. Just as Act 2 questions how far we, as a country, had come in the 100 years after the end of the Civil War, I would have welcomed a scene that called into question how far we've come in 150 years. But we didn't get that. We got stupid old men, evil really, men it's easy to dismiss as abnormal by today's social intelligence.  But perhaps their prejudices still exist.  Perhaps they're just under the surface.  Perhaps we should shine a light on such thoughts and not dismiss racism as That Problem Our Parents Dealt With.  The last scene, to me, dismissed the rest of the play.  It gave the impression that The Good Ole Boys who caused all those problems were aging fast, that their friends were aging, and that soon they'd soon all be gone. We should be so lucky.

And now, the saving graces:

1. Groener really did crack me up as LBJ. There were poignant moments as the President, but Groener really shone in LBJ's wicked exchange with George Wallace. That piece was the highlight of the show for me.

2. The JFK video (and some of the other effects). The staging was interesting and, at times, powerful. I loved the shadowing in LBJ's office.  I also found the use of civil rights-era footage to be powerful.

3. They played Nina Simone before the opening of Act 2.  I love Nina Simone.

Nobody can write a brilliant script every time, right? Hampton's Tales from Hollywood was very interesting and the characters were deftly written.  I simply cannot say the same for Appomattox.

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