Fathers Day at the Alcove — June 21, 2009

Order from our regular menu or order one of our Fathers Day specials — omelets, meals-in-a-bowl, and more.

There’s something for every taste — traditional and adventurous, meat-loving and vegetarian, all delicious, made from scratch, with healthy ingredients.

See our complete menu by clicking on the link at the right.

No reservations.  Toga optional, but greatly admired.

OMELETS

Big three-egg or five-egg-white omelet rolled around a hearty serving of special ingredients. Served with breads and fresh fruits.  

Smoked whitefish with lemon-dill sauce  $9.95

Veggie: asparagus, leek, garlic, tomato, red and green pepper, wild mushrooms  $8.95

Local treasures:  sherried morels and other wild mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns, wild ramps, goat cheese $9.95

Meat-eaters: bacon, sausage, ham, and cheddar cheese  $9.95

Smoked salmon with cream cheese, capers, & chopped red onion $9.95

Chorizo sausage, green onions, & cheddar cheese, topped with salsa  $9.95

BIG BOWLS

Beef Bourguignon and noodles, side salad, & bread of choice $10.95

Seafood lasagne, side salad, & bread of choice  $9.95

CONTINENTAL

Assortment of fresh fruits and berries, cheeses, cup of yogurt, nuts, and a fresh-baked scone or muffin of your choice  $9.95

Summer’s on its way.  Leaves are beginning to peek out, the grass is greening, people are grinning, and the Alcove Cafe is now open 6 days a week (closed Wednesdays).  Hope to see you soon.

Daily specials via Twitter.  Special Twitter-only prices.  At most one tweet a day, promise.  Follow us at Alcove_Cafe.

Mothers Day 2009 – May 10

Crepe Menu

Strawberry-Rhubarb & Chantilly Cream

Poppy Seed with Apricot Sauce

Strawberry Jam-Filled

Banana-Orange

Apple with Calvados Butter

Salmon with Dill Pesto Cream

Chicken-Asparagus-Mushroom

Mushroom-Ham-Bechamel

Mediterranean Tuna

Mango-Shrimp

Any 3 crepes, mini-scones, fruit or bean salad, & beverage $11.95

You’re also welcome to order most items from our regular menu.  Have crepes or our orange vanilla rice pudding for dessert!

Five-Dollar Depression Specials

(We mince garlic, not words!)

Breakfast 1 – One egg your way, toast, and fruit or potatoes or bacon or sausage patties.  Served with beverage.

Breakfast 2 – Our fabulous oatmeal topped with dried berries and nuts, and all the trimmings — brown sugar, cream or milk, cinnamon, …  Served with beverage.

Lunch 2 - Cup of our tomato-basil soup and half of an Alcove chicken salad wrap sandwich.  Served with beverage.

Lunch 2 – Steaming bowl of our tomato, gumbo, or southwest chicken soup, toast or bread.  Served with beverage.

While you wait for your food to arrive, our talented servers will share tips for saving string, washing and re-using aluminum foil, and darning socks.

 

Or Try One of Our Popular Bowls of the Day

Mediterranean Couscous with our roasted tomatoes, capers, kalamata olives, and fennel, topped with wild-caught coho salmon or wild-caught tuna steak.  Served with a side of fresh greens and bread of choice.  $9.95

Eggplant Raechel — eggplant rolls with fresh ricotta cheese, marinara sauce, green onions, and Parmesan cheese.  Served piping hot from the oven with a side of fresh greens and bread of choice.  $8.95

To honor the birthday of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, 1000+ people have signed a pledge to profile a woman in technology on March 24.  This is my contribution.

I have chosen to profile my sister, Gretchen Tigner, a computer programmer — certified java programmer.  Gretchen is the youngest of my siblings.  I worked for many years in technology fields; my sister Mary, a teacher, once worked as a systems analyst for the University of Chicago library; brother Bill is an engineer; and our mother was a technology wiz and information strategy planner for the State of Ohio.  Genetics. 

Gretchen took the long route to her profession.  She dropped out of school and ran away from home shortly after entering high school, worked at various jobs, and eventually obtained a GED.  After several false starts she found the right school and the right major, and graduated with honors from the DeVry University in Columbus with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.  By then she was in her 30s.

She went to work for Bank One, later JP Morgan Chase, as a programmer for the Retail Banking division, and stayed there for about ten years.  While there she wrote an application called “Fee Automation” that everyone else said couldn’t be done.  A couple of years ago she and her husband Todd, a musician, following a long-time dream, relocated to Helena, Montana, where she now works.

Gretchen is one of those people who is naturally and astonishingly brilliant.  She tackles the hardest problems and sees her way through the tangled confusion to a solution.  But she’s also an amazingly practical and down-to-earth person.  Her personal life comes first, and work is just work.  She managed to work all of those years in a corporate environment without becoming a corporate drone.  She loves shoes, and has a huge collection.  She loves to dance, to backpack, and to eat out.  She taught my kids to hold a paper napkin in front of their faces, and stick their tongues through the paper.  We worked together on the “Inappropriate Barbie Series.”  She is imaginative and outrageous, everyone’s favorite relative.

Last summer I received a phone call from Todd.  Gretchen had suffered a brain hemmorhage, the result of an aneurysm that burst.  Most people die as a result, and of those who don’t, most have brain damage.  She survived five weeks in neuro intensive care at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, where she had been flown.  And then went home to rehabilitation.  Her speech therapist told her she was lucky to have so much “cognitive reserve,” meaning I guess that she could lose some IQ points and still be smart as heck.  In November she was back at work part-time, still programming, and although she works a little more slowly and struggles a bit with memory issues, she is still smart and funny and lots of fun.  She recently passed an exam on insurance, required by her insurance company employer, so I guess her memory is good enough.

Her aneurysm is growing again, so she’s going to have more surgery on April 1.  She’s going to be “clipped” as Joe Biden was for his aneurysms.  Todd shaved his head a couple of days ago, and next Saturday she’s having her head shaved in preparation for the surgery.  She started a Facebook group called “Gretchen Need a Hat” (join!).  And she’s preparing to start the rehabilitation process all over again.  She’s beautiful, she’s brave, and as she says, “Gretchen, like Keith Richards, cannot be killed by conventional means.”  For that we are all grateful.

Something sent to me by Steve Harris

For several months, with the help and encouragement of many of my Park Avenue neighbors and other folks, I’ve been working on the Park Avenue Prowl.  Well, we made it!  Our website is live, we’ve printed and distributed 1000 brochures, and we’re all really excited about it.  In addition, Georganna Monk and I, mostly Georganna, have finished the history display in the restaurant.  It includes artifacts that were found in the crawlspace: dolls, school papers, and other children’s items, and cooking supplies. 

Check out the website:  http://www.charlevoixparkavenue.com. 

To top it off, it’s Memorial weekend.  People are coming back to town, the weather is glorious, and everyone is in a vacation frame of mind, even the people working 12 hours a day. 

 

Every once in awhile I make a big hiring mistake.  Well, maybe more often than that.  I’ve had great success with servers.  The kitchen is another matter.  I have heard that “restaurant people are a breed apart,” and “kitchen staff are naturally unreliable.”  Surely that doesn’t have to be true. 

On the 4th of July we had two cooks working, one on the line, and one doing prep.  We had other folks doing prep also, but the two cooks were doing the bulk of the work.  The guy on the line was, shall we say, a bit under-motivated.  He kept complaining that his eye hurt, and to be fair, he did have a minor case of conjunctivitis.  Yes, before you ask, he had a doctor’s ok to return to work.  Anyway, at noon — on the 4th of July — he told me that he had to leave, and was going to the hospital to have his eye looked at.  The guy did have a history of leaving work or not coming to work because of illness, and then being seen riding his bicycle around town.  So I told him that if I he left I’d better not hear that he was out riding around on his bicycle.  He left, and half an hour later someone came in to tell me he was down at the beach playing basketball.  Hope he got sand in his eye.

I fired him the next time I saw him, and he seemed quite surprised.  The beach is two blocks from the restaurant; how did he think I wouldn’t find out?

“Sally” left a comment the other day on my Staff page.  It was simply this:  “Good place to meet an old boyfriend for lunch!”  I’m curious.  I’m intrigued.   And I’m wondering …

Did “Sally” actually meet an old boyfriend here?  She was writing from Philadelphia (Internet magic – don’t ask).  Was she in Charlevoix recently?  And of course, if you’re meeting him for lunch, is he really an “old” boyfriend?  Is there any such thing as an old boyfriend, or are all boyfriend connections real, live, and forever? 

Is Sally sending a subtle message to an old boyfriend?  Maybe they periodically Google “old boyfriend for lunch” to find out where their next meeting place is — same time next year, Neil Simon and all that.  

My favorite story has an old boyfriend of mine posing as “Sally” and letting me know he’s going to pay me a visit.  No old boyfriends in Philadelphia, though.  If any old boyfriends are going to meet me, I need to lose a few pounds, quick.  And get my hair done.  So give me some notice, will you?

Maybe “Sally” visits random blogs and leaves inscrutable messages to provoke speculation.  Just for the fun of it.

Well, Sally?  What’s your story?  We are all wondering how that lunch turned out.