Thoughts on Shortcuts.

It had been a while since I have had to drive to Dallas in the morning -- and in rush hour traffic. No one likes it. I am glad I no longer do it. But as I was making my way today and the traffic locked up, I decided to take an exit and attempt -- the back road short-cut.

It worked. In minutes I was back to cruising and feeling good. Very good.

My father was the king of shortcuts. He had a shortcut for everything; whether he was washing dishes, cutting the grass, or driving me somewhere, eventually he would devise some way of doing it faster.

Americans, by nature I think, like to find a faster, better way to do whatever it is that needs done. Henry Ford did not invent the internal combustion engine, but he did find an inexpensive way to attach it to an automobile body. Michael Dell didn't invent the personal computer, but he did find the most profitable way to sell them. Google perfected (for now) the ultimate shortcut, the search engine. Faster, better, there is just something about it that we like.

A final comment on shortcuts and cars.

Boasting about shortcut prowess is not advised. The gods of shortcutting will soon cut you down by making the alternate route worse than the main route. I know. Unfortunately, shortcuts work best when one is driving solo, as if these gods kept watch to ensure we enthusiasts don't take too much credit for our success.

That's just the way it is.

Self Check-out Salvation

I dislike lines. Not the necessary lines of life that can not be avoided, like waiting at the airport check-in counter, but the ones where the wait can be avoided. Like the supermarket check-out line.

It seems I am always behind the cell phone lady who decides to look for her debit card after the cashier is finished ringing up the order. Miss "I'm- too-busy-to-get-off-my-cell-phone" then performs the ritual thirty-second purse search, determines that her debit card is lost and decides to write a check, but can't find a pen . . . and on and on, it goes.

While I wait. Just a diet Coke and me. Waiting. And somewhere around her pen-search my head flops against the magazine rack and I ask the Fount of all that is Good what evil I have committed. And I curse. I pray and I curse. While I wait.

Which is why I am so fond of the self-checkout. Human contact be damned, I'll take the vicissitudes of this machine any day. I have heard the arguments against them, loss of personal interaction and frequent breakdowns of the software, but frankly, the impersonal "personal contact" of the check out guy is annoying and the machines are not so unreliable. I actually like checking myself out.

But most importantly, charge, debit, cash or credit, they are faster . . . and quieter, and at the grocery store faster and quieter is better.

Cavalli Pizza. Oh Baby!

If you want to be a good cook begin with fresh ingredients. Even I have had some success by following this rule. But to reach a kind of perfection in the culinary arts is difficult; to accomplish that, one must love something enough to learn how to get it right. And that takes time.

The Cavalli family has had the time and experience, five generations of flour makers in Italy, and it's easy to see they love their pizza. Their cheese and pepperoni pizza is pizza perfection, southern Italian style.

I can say this because my son, a friend and I went to Irving to visit the Cavalli restaurant. My son had business there, I went to try the pizza.

Cavalli's pizza is made with fresh mozzarella, a simple sauce from fresh imported tomatoes, and bread that made me want to cry when I got to the outer crust, it is that good. The pizzas are baked in an 800 degree wood-fired oven and served one pie per person.

I spoke to the owner, Paul Cavalli, and had only one complaint. Cavalli's has one location -- and it is not Fort Worth. He did accept my invitation to consider placing a store here and is open to location suggestions. If you visit the store in Irving, please remind him of DFW's best city for food -- Fort Worth.

This pizza is as good as it gets. They don't need my seal of approval but they have it. I liked it that much. Cavalli's is not tricked up, California style pizza. It is simple pizza made with fresh ingredients. An assortment of sensible Italian style toppings like pepperoni, chicken, garlic, and artichokes are available.

Cavalli's won D Magazine's, Best pizza by the Book, 2008, and is the first restaurant in Texas certified, Verace Pizza Napoletana*.

The Details:
Cavalli's Pizza
3601 Regent Blvd
Irving, Tx 75063
Phone: 972-915-0001
Fax: 972-915-0005
http://www.cavallipizza.com

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Editor's postscript:
Americans may be able to call any flat, circular piece of baked flour "pizza," but Neopolitans don't see it that way. In order to protect the reputation and the quality of their products, local and national Italian organizations create guidelines and offer education in the correct way to prepare these products; olive oil, coffee, wine, and pizza to name just a few. 
Verace Pizza Napoletana offers training to individuals or businesses interested in producing authentic Neapolitan style pizza according to the guidelines of the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association based in Naples, Italy. Verace Pizza Napoletana has a rigorous certification process.  

Cavalli's restaurant is one of the few American restaurants to meet those specifications.

The Chop House

Sometimes when plans fail, things work out better, to wit . . .

My first choice for the wife's birthday dinner was Aventino's. I have been hearing good things and Jake gave it a romantic thumbs up on Twitter, so I thought, perfect . . . well no, not perfect. Aventino's was booked for the night.

Second choice, Ellerbe's. Closed. 

Lili's. Closed. Nonna Tata. Closed.

It's Monday night, the slowest night in the restaurant business and Magnolia street restaurants proved it.

Seeing that my best laid plans were failing fast, my wife suggested the Chop House downtown, which had been a favorite of ours, so Chop House it was, and as it turned out, an excellent choice.

Our favorite special night entree is Beef Oscar, a filet topped with crab and a Bearnaise Sauce, and usually served with asparagus. We both ordered the Chop House version of this favorite. The steaks were cooked perfectly, hot all the way through, and the Bearnaise Sauce was smooth and tasty. The crab was a little hard to find but I don't take any points off there. The asparagus was crisp.

The appetizer was the beef kabobs. Very good.

We both chose the Chop House Salad which was not cold enough and very wimpy. The sauce was supposed to be a Roquefort but it tasted more like Ranch. The blue cheese was hard to find and the bacon was uniformly grease encased. I have had better salads at Denny's. Every restaurant should be able to do the following: serve lettuce cold in a cold dish, never mix the dressing into the salad until it is ready to be served. And if you call anything Roquefort make sure its good.

The side was a scalloped potato dish which we split and it was delicious.

Dessert: Bread pudding with ice cream and fruit. Not the best bread pudding I have ever had, but it was good.

Conclusion: Chop House is still a good restaurant with a good steak, a comfortable setting, good service -- and it is downtown, which is always a plus.
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Final only slightly related note: I am old enough to remember when most fine dining restaurants required appropriate attire. I do not blame any restaurant for moving with the times and not requiring a coat and tie for men, but I do wish that at least one restaurant in Fort Worth would have a more formal dress requirement. Am I alone in this? Out-of-touch, or on to something?

The National Health Insurance Debate.

A year ago I posted some thoughts on health care, copied below, after watching a 60 Minutes segment on a medical organization called Remote Area Medical (RAM). RAM, and their methods, are in the news again because of the federal government's health insurance initiatives.

I am not opposed to a "nationally governed" health care system because it is inherently wrong, but because it is inherently cumbersome, restrictive, and expensive. And I emphasize "inherently". The regulation of any such enterprise from a central location is a beast that no one will control. Imagine General Motors at its most bloated, times 10. The effect of more and more statutory law is always less and less justice. If a national health policy is the only way to accomplish the goal of health care for everyone then we are a nation on the downward slope of good health.

The post from a year ago on the organization Remote Area Medical. (RAM):
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In political discourse, it is called framing the debate.

Example: 90 years ago, Congress was debating whether or not to install a national income tax. Today, we have the Federal Income Tax, and no Congressional debates on whether we need an income tax, just how much we should pay. That debate has been framed.

Health care funding, on the other hand, is a very current debate. After watching the CBS 60 Minutes segment on an organization named, Remote Area Medical (RAM), I think someone should ask another question. I wish someone would re-frame the debate.

RAM goes to remote areas of the world to provide desperately needed health care. A few years ago they took the idea local and brought the services to parts of the USA. Hundreds of medical professionals, from dentists to surgeons, met in Tennessee somewhere for a one-day, free service to all comers. The physicians and nurses were doing something they love for people who needed it -- and appreciated it (the report is very clear on this point, see link below).

What does this have to do with a debate? Organizations like RAM are filling a void that should not exist. And it makes me wonder if all of us wouldn't be better off by eliminating the pounds of paperwork and constant threat of medical malpractice, like RAM does on their missions. Why can't we go back to simpler system where an MD is concerned more with the patient's health, than with paperwork and litigation? If the professionals working with RAM could provide care that way, there, why not in their home office?

Am I being naive? Probably.

But I go back to the title of this post, what damage have we done by allowing medical lawsuits and burdensome paperwork ruin common medical care?

We will have a national healthcare system in the next 5 years -- which reminds me of an old Roman political maxim: the loss of personal and civic virtue ushers in decadence, usurpation follows in the name of order.

We live in the American age of centralized government usurpation. It will get worse.
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CBS 60 Minutes report on RAM:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/28/60minutes/main3889496.shtml
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(FINAL NOTE: I was wrong about one thing. I said we will have a national health policy in 5 years. We will have it in a year or two.)