>sake (酒) bars in Korea, makkoli (막걸리) bars in Japan

So sweet.

We are used to seeing these rival countries bicker with each other. Nowadays, something is definitely up. Young Japanese and Koreans are, gingerly, discovering each other. They are, for one, discovering each other's drinks.

Sake bars (사케바) are becoming increasingly popular in South Korea, and makkoli bars (マッコリバー) are becoming increasingly popular in Japan.

Never mind that these are mostly apples and oranges. Well, apples and one crab apple? Okay, rice and rice, but makkoli refers to just one kind of liquor, unfiltered, cloudy, sweet, sour, mild, comparable to nigorizake (濁り酒) but with a lot less alcohol and almost too many flavors. "Sake" pretty much refers to all Japanese....um, sake, well beyond the scope of this single entry.

>green soup with roots and flowers, Ubuntu Napa

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

Microcosmic. Alchemic.

When I beheld this plate (pictured above) mom ordered at Ubuntu, I searched for the right words. You must surely remember your childhood days when you thought, fleetingly, you could live on air, water, and flowers. You mean you never did?

Cool pureed soup of escarole & roscoe's asparagus
-spring roots & flowers, black garlic coulis, nettle ice
(Here's the enlarged "before" picture which shows a big mound of nettle ice)

Flowers don't last, and they are not meant to last. Forget the philistine concept of fashioning them onto a dinner plate. It seems a sacrilege to try to preserve the moment by snapping a picture of them. With modern technology at our (a novice's, in my case) hands, that's exactly what we are doing. Constant, futile attempts to root infinity in the palm of our hands. And what else, really, can we be doing?

Some prefer nettles, and so do I.