We had lunch at the Wild Wing Café, a favorite spot that features, in addition to other things, 32 kinds of wings. Having eaten too much, I stayed in during the afternoon while Diane shopped.
We decided to go to Sticky Fingers for dinner. It’s a chain of 15 BBQ places across the southeast, and is generally a good place to go. It was less so, today. Immediately upon entering the service area we were greeted to the screams of a child far too young to be in a place where adults go to eat a peaceful meal, and were seated next to a group that had a 4 year-old that was too noisy, and instead of being quieted down by her parents, was encouraged in the noise-producing activity. It could’ve been worse, though.
Diane and I are “experienced wine drinkers,” which is somewhere between being a rookie and a connoisseur, more toward the middle than the expert end. We know a little about wine and brands, so we are a little choosy about what we order, and in places like Sticky Fingers, which sells a lot more beer than wine, we often find ourselves faced with buying a mediocre or lower quality wine, or trying something we’ve never heard of. Predictably, SF didn’t have the one of the two cabernets on the menu and we didn’t want the other one. The waiter said she’d go check the stock, and returned to tell us that the pickings were slim. But we selected what we thought was the best option, ordered our food, and waited.
The food came quickly, perhaps a little too quickly, being just a minute or two later than the unknown wine. You may know that red wine is intended to be drunk at “room temperature,” which is a bit misleading. The “room temperature” rule developed a few centuries back, when stone castles were typically around 55-60 degrees, and that is the ideal temperature range for reds. Anyway, the wine was warmer than the ribs. I think they stored it outside. You normally swirl a red wine in the glass to introduce some air to it, which softens the hard edges, especially in inexpensive red wines. In this case there was a second reason to swirl the wine: to cool it down to a drinkable temperature.
The meal was decent, though less than we had grown to expect from Sticky Fingers.
It was back to the room around 8 and watched two very good science shows on Georgia Public Television on the universe, a topic that has fascinated me since I was young.
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