The Orangery has been a fabled Knoxville dining experience since 1971.  When I first came to town, the Orangery was described to me as the most elite restaurant in town.  Reputed to have the best food, most plush ambiance, and most outstanding service, the Orangery was as close as Knoxville came to continental style dining.  Eventually, my ship came in, and wasn’t a canoe, so I took my lovely spousal-unit to the Orangery for her birthday a few years back.  It immediately become Mrs. Champagne Taste’s favorite restaurant, having lived up to its reputation in spades.  After a few years rolled by, the owner of the Orangery decided to retire, and they closed their doors, leaving Knoxville with no venue for formal dining.  (sob) Not too many months later, the Orangery re-opened under new management.  (yay)

So with the re-opening under new management, I thought it would be a good time to introduce you to what had become, and hopefully will again be, one of our favorite restaurants.

The Orangery is self-described as a “classic French and inspired international cuisine” restaurant.  The atmosphere is formal, with seasonal Wedgewood china, white tablecloths, and chairs backed with carved laurel wreaths.  That last bit is always a good sign.  When enter the building, the first thing you see it the bar.  If you’re a teetotaler, it’ll offend you, but if you like hospitality, the dark, warm north American red oak of the woodwork is welcoming.  The whole building is not large, and the bartender’s work area is correspondingly small, but smartly set up.  We were greeted at the door by the bartender, who quickly fetched the maitre’d.  In seasons past, the maitre’d would also take our hats and coats and check them for us, but as it was warm out, we were neither hatted nor coated, so I don’t know if they still offer that service.  I hope so, though. Weather permitting, I like to wear a hat and overcoat, and juggling that gear at your table is not a fine-dining experience.  The bar and lounge are small, with seating for about eight or ten people at the most, but since I’ve never been kept waiting on a table, it’s not been an issue.  The lounge area is dominated by the sweeping staircase that leads up to the upstairs dining room and the baby grand piano that, on weekends, is occupied by a mood musician.

The decor of the main dining room is opulent, with large white columns, green potted plants, and gilded mirrors everywhere.  There’s also plenty of marble on the floors, oriental rugs, and twinkling candles on the tables.  The staff is not formally dressed.  Black trousers, white shirts and black vests hint at formality, but there’s not a tie to be seen among them as they work.  And work they do.  We were swiftly seated, water was immediately provided (still? tap?  sparkling?), and our drink order taken.  The liquor selection was large enough to accommodate us, and the drinks were quickly delivered, and exactly what we ordered.  When your martini arrives in a chilled glass, you know you are in good hands.

Before we could order, the kitchen provided a light appetizer of fried shrimp over an Asian  vegetable salad.  It was a portent of things to come.  The shrimp was firm without being over-cooked, the breading was light and crisp without distracting from the taste of the shrimp.  The salad was made of mixed vegetables in a sweet soy marinade that made me hope to spot it on the menu in it’s own right, one day soon.

I started with the Haloumi Cheese Tasting.  This is pan-seared haloumi cheese, D’ anjou pear, baby arugula, balsamic glaze, and flatbread.  Haloumi is a white cheese, and one I find to be somewhat dull in flavor.  The preparation, however, made up for the rather bland initial flavor of the cheese.  I’ve tried to fry cheese in my day, and the results, while flavorful, tend to leave the kitchen looking like a bomb has hit it.  My haloumi was firm, flavorful, and had a lovely aroma.  The flat bread was crisp and tasty.  The pears were crisp, sweet, and a wonderful counterpoint to the balsamic glaze that accompanied this dish.  My companion had the Beef Carpaccio, served with arugula, fleur de sel, kalamata olives, caper, truffle oil, and Parmesan reggiano.  Now, I don’t even like rare beef, so the idea of raw meat that’s been marinaded as the only cooking technique that’s been applied to it doesn’t appeal to me.  But conversation came to a screeching halt as my companion went through her first course like Rome went through Carthage.  The appetizer was a roaring success.  For my own part, a tiny splash more of glaze would have made the appetizer perfect.

Now – the salad course was an exercise in friendly competition.  The best Caesar Salad to be had in the city of Knoxville can actually be found next door, at Naples Italian Restaurant, a family-style establishment I’ve dined at many a time.  And I told the waiter so.  The Orangery Caesar is made wtih hearts of romaine, grape tomatoes, Parmesan tuile, and Spanish white anchovy crostini.  It was quite good.  The romaine lettuce was fresh, crisp, and flavorful. The grape tomatoes were firm without being hard, and a brilliant red which pleased the eye.  Last, let us speak of the Parmesan tuile.  This is a sort of fried cheese cookie served with the salad.  It was crisp, not greasy, and for flavor had a salty-sharp perfection.  Not to put too find a point on it, but the boys in the back, they can fry them some cheese.  Sadly, when they said “Spanish white anchovy,” they actually meant it.  And I just don’t see that fish has any place on my salad.  I think that anchovies make their best contribution in the Caesar dressing in the form of anchovy paste.  Actually running into whole fish on top of my salad makes it too oily, too salty, and too fishy.  So the salad was good, but Naples remains king of the Caesar Salad in Knoxville.  My companion opted not to participate in the Salad phase of the meal.

For my entree I selected the Mesquite Grilled All Natural Springer Mountain Chicken Breast, served with Roasted Corn, Chanterelle Mushroom and Sweet Potato Hash, Maple Roasted Bacon Jus Lie.  I wasn’t particularly in the mood for chicken per se, but the phrase “maple roasted bacon” sold me.  Mmmmm.  Bacon.   The chicken was moist, tender, and yielded to the knife and fork gracefully, but not with enthusiasm.  The flavor was complex and succulent.  The mushroom and sweet potato hash was well done.  I could have done with more mushrooms and fewer sweet potatoes, but that’s my personal bias.  I’ll always swap mushrooms for sweet potatoes.  The Jus Lie was exactly what I hoped for, although I could have done with more of it.  Again, to be fair, that’s my bias. I could have done with more of it if they’d served it in a bucket. The roasted corn was quite good, but apparently not so amazing that I can remember enough about it to write about it four days later. Alas, I am unwilling to take notes while dining.  My companion ordered the Sautéed Veal Medallions.  Of her dish I can report little, because conversation mostly stopped when her entree arrived.  I suspect she was distracted.  Her only comment was that while the veal was very tender, the sauce was a bit over-abundant, and contaminated her potatoes.

For dessert I selected the Madagascar Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée.  Ok, I’ve had Crème Brûlée from New Orleans to London, and from Boston to San Francisco, and this was, bar none, the best custard I’ve ever had.  It was smooth and creamy, without a lump or a grain to be found in it.  It was just thick enough to hold its shape, but soft enough to spread like sour cream. There was nothing to clutter the flavor. No chocolate.  No coffee.  No raspberry. It was the fighter-pilot of custards.  Just the egg, and it’s vanilla bean.  If I wanted to pick a nit, the surface glaze could have been a hair thinner, but it remains the best Crème Brûlée in the United States to date.

The wine list was not quite as large as it had been under the previous management, but what remains is still enormous compared to other Knoxville cellars.  All night our server was prompt, courteous, and responsive.  He gave us no reason whatsoever to believe that we were anything other than his only customers for the evening.

Overall, my return to the Orangery under the new management was a very positive experience, and the restaurant compares favorably both with it’s previous incarnation and with other fine dining establishments in Knoxville.

I give the Orangery

Four of Five Pints for Atmosphere
Four and a Half of Five Pints for Service
Four Pints for Cuisine

This gives the Orangery 4.17 pints, and one of the highest scores here at Will’s Miscellaneous Musings.

Okay – perhaps the title is a little melodramatic, for the Snark shall sail again.  As per my initial plan, I have taken Dad’s Boat out of the water for the winter.  Kind of a shame, really, because it’s beginning to appear that the best days for sailing in East Tennessee are in the fall and winter.  Yeah, it’s cold and wet.  But the wind is blowing! But not for me.  At least, not right now.

The plan, for those who don’t recall, is to re-glass the Snark this winter so that come spring, in addition to functional, she’s pretty. The Snark has never been pretty.  When Dad acquired it, it was a bare stryofoam hull.  He took one look at his two kids and decided they’d destroy it within weeks, so he coated it with fiberglass.  So it started out the color of rosin.  For those of you who have never worked with fiberglass rosin, it’s the color of snot.  Dad wasn’t an expert on the fiberglassing process, so it turned out kind of lumpy.  Yes, snot with boogers.  Then water got under the glass, and mildewed.  Over the years some of the glass broke loose and had to be replaced.  Then I painted it with house paint.  So it looked like it had plague, leprosy, and measles all at once.  Really, as a SCUBA diver, I’ve seen more attractive boats on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

So anyway, Dad’s Boat has been taken into my workshop, and last night my friend Fritz and I removed some of the fittings and about 90% of the fiberglass coating my Dad put on it, so very long ago.  It was an odd feeling, removing some of my own repairs.  I remember the hours and hours I spent when I was about fourteen shaping the bow while I was chipping out all of that Bondo last night.  I still need to remove the transom and get the fiberglass out from under it, and there’s some over-bound glass along one side of the hull that doesn’t want to let go. It’s the result of a repair I did with an incorrect rosin back in the late 70’s.  It dissolved some of the styrofoam under the glass, which actually caused it the adhere to the foam better.  But it’s black with mildew and nasty-looking, so it’s got to go before I put the new coat on.

Which brings me to another problem:  that’s not the only spot where there’s widespread but shallow damage where the wrong rosin dissolved some of the hull.  I basically have two choices:  sand down the irregularities or fill them in with fairing compound.  Sanding down would remove a notable, but not substantial portion of hull material, and weaken the boat, at least a little.  Fairing compound might not bond well with the deteriorated hull section, and later cause bubbles in the final finish.  Decisions, decisions.

On the up-side, I’ve found out that I can color the rosin, rather than paint the hull when I’m done.  That means that when the inevitable scratches start to show up they won’t show as badly, and can be buffed out.  The secret, expensive, high-tech rosin pigment I have to use?  Rit Dye, from the local grocery store.  Even if it doesn’t dye neatly, it will still make a nice base coat, over which I can then paint and expect scratches to be less obvious.

It’s going to be a long process.  The first step will be to prepare the hull.  Do do that, I will begin by removing the remaining fittings, transom and bow ring, and getting the rest of that fiberglass off.  The over-adhered spot on the starboard side may call for some effort.  I think I will take a cheap flexible metal putty knife to my grinder and sharpen the blade and see if that helps.  After all of the fiberglass has been removed and the loose bondo picked out, I’ll have to sand it all down.  I’m trying to decide if it will be necessary to sand off all of the mildew.  For strength, I want to remove as little hull as possible, and some of that mildew is deep. But glass and fairing compound don’t bind well to mildew, and I don’t want to have to re-glass this hull again in my lifetime.  I’m also planning to lightly sand the inside of the daggerboard well by spray mounting sandpaper to my old daggerboard.  I won’t sand it much, but I would like to knock off any loose debris.  I think I may be able to do my Dad one better. He never glassed the inside of the well. I think I know how to do it. I’m gonna apply glass to some cardboard and stick the cardboard all the way through the slot. Then I’ll peel the glass off the cardboard by pulling it back through the slot, like pulling a sock inside out as you take it off.

But that’s getting ahead of myself.  For now I’m just going to focus on getting the hull cleaned up.  After I’ve remove all the flaws that I can, I’ll get some fairing compound. I’ve got a little money this time around, and instead of defaulting to Bondo, I’m going to investigate marine faring compound, which is actually designed for this use.  If I find that it’s identical to Bondo, but has a higher price, I’ll go with the Bondo. I’ve got a little money. Not enough to throw away.  Anyway, The faring compound/Bondo will fill in any dings in the hull, and believe me, I’ve got a few.  I also need to find a way to patch the hole the mast left in the bottom of the mast well this summer, and order a new rub rail and mast well liner.

This is going to be along, involved project, and I don’t have a lot of free time these days.  But Dad’s Boat must sail again come spring.

Ok, Dad’s lungs, and hip are well into recovery, although he needs a boatload of therapy on that hip to make it functional.  He’s having a swallowing study done this morning to see if they can figure out why he gags on anything like solid food.  He’s stopped sleepwalking and his mental acuity is back up to where it was before he went to Holston.  So the remaining acute issue is his heart rhythm and rate, and they think they are going to have it sorted out by this afternoon, so he will probably be going back to Holston tomorrow for long term rehab.  Dr. Worley seems to think that he will be able to recover sufficiently to go home and continue to live alone, at least for a while.  He likes the food at Holston better, so he may be able to gain more weight there, but until we figure out why he gags on everything but liquids and get that fixed, it won’t matter how it tastes.

I spoke to Dad’s new doctor this morning.  Don’t panic – he didn’t have yet another organ fail and get another doctor.  No, the Doc that has been working with him this past week is leaving, and has handed him off to Dr. Worley.  He’s the only Doc of Dad’s whose name I’ve been able to remember on the first hearing.  For some reason, back when I was a kid, Jo Anne Worley’s name really stuck in my mind.  So I made an instant association with the name.

As I have mentioned to a couple of people, Dad’s heart keeps going into atrial fibrillation (afib).  This condition is where the small chambers of the heart go into spasms.  It’s often accompanied by an extremely high heart rate as the larger chambers of the heart try to catch up with the atria.  The condition is treatable with medications to keep the heart at a normal rate and other medications to keep the atria beating normally.  I’m not sure what all the hazards of an abnormally high heart rate are, but I do know that medical personnel get real excited when a 75-year-old has a heart rate of 153.  One of the potential problems is fluid accumulation in the lungs, which is a shortcut to pneumonia-ville.  This was detected as a side-effect of his trip to the ER last week because he was confused and unresponsive.  The “final diagnosis,” in as much as any diagnosis of an ongoing condition is “final,” is that his confusion and unresponsiveness was caused by his UTI, in concert with his pain medication.  They’ve sorted his UTI and taken him off of his pain medication except for Tylenol.  He’d rather be in pain than have mush-for-brains, so at least for now he’s content with what’s happening.

So – he tried to die this Sunday.

Stroke?   Noooo . . . . Blot clot?  Noooo . . . .     Lung collapse?   Noooo . . . . .  Heart attack?  Noooo . . . . .  Sudden, giant infection of doom?  Noooo . . . . .

With all the stuff that’s wrong with him, what almost killed him while I was out of town this weekend?

While eating his lunch, he had a sudden sneeze and inhaled a cherry from his fruit cocktail.  It apparently took two nurses and an orderly to get it out of his windpipe.

He thinks it’s really unfair. He’s had trouble swallowing since the lung surgery, and his doctor keeps wanting to put this down as an “incident” in his therapy/swallowing record, and anybody could have aspirated a cherry while sneezing.  It’s got nothing to do with his other issues.  It was just a plain ol’ accident!

His new Doctor is going to have the Transitional Care Unit do an evaluation and see if they can help him.  He’s in better shape than the last time they had him.  If they can take him for two weeks, and whip him into better shape, he might get to go home.  I, myself, have been very skeptical that he’d get to go home at all. I was positive that once we’d run out of short-stay insurance, we’d have to get Medicare to put him in long term care.  Instead, he might get to go home for a while longer.

His sister and I are quite concerned about that; but he’s fiercely independent, and the idea of moving to a rest home for the rest of his life would devastate his state of mind.  I’m going to speak to the social worker at the hospital and see what the options are for getting him a little help at home.

It appears that Dad’s confusion and disorientation were caused by a urinary tract infection compounded with the pain medication that he takes for his diabetic neuropathy.  I think I mentioned that in an earlier update.

Anyway, the UTI is clearing up very quickly.  They’re giving him those antibiotics they give you when they want everything in your body that weights less than a pound to be DEAD DEAD DEAD.  He’s more lucid, more responsive, and yes, more demanding today.

In all the confusion over the past three days, I don’t know if I thought to mention the atrial fibrillation with rapid ventricular response he’s also had.  This was discovered by accident when he was under routine monitoring in the Emergency Department for his confusion and disorientation.  They put him on cardiazim to keep his heart rate down.  This morning I got a call that the doctor thought he was ready to go back to Holston, but within an hour, they called me back and said his heart rate had spiked again, and that they wanted to keep him for another couple of days. Nobody seems to be able to tell me what is causing that afib, and he just called me to tell me that they did an ultrasound on the veins in his neck.

So he’ll be in there over the weekend, and I’m more comfortable with that.