7 JAN 07: JADE, GREENS AND GREENVILLE
Instant Message to the Talbot County Commission: The coast is clear now. You can go back to your usual ways of governing. The TV reporter who kept you honest for a couple of years has left the area.
Jade Hindmon is the second TV reporter in two weeks to leave Columbus. Friends and co-workers held a farewell party for her this weekend at the Meritage Café complex - and with a couple of different businesses open at different times of day, it certainly CAN be complex.
We'll get back to the Meritage, but we start with the party. Jade Hindmon is moving to a Fox station in Greenville, South Carolina. She told friends at the party it's about a four-hour drive from Columbus to Greenville. I've made this drive, so her comment told me two things - she speeds, and she's never been caught in an Atlanta traffic jam.
It's not unusual for Columbus TV reporters to move to Greenville, South Carolina. Staci Walker went to a Greenville station around 2000. And Katie Crecente left WRBL in the late 1990's for a public relations job in Greenville. I remember her well because she was amazingly pretty - and she illustrated a hurricane one evening at a "weather wall" wearing a raincoat and hat. [True!]
Jade Hindmon especially will be remembered for all the problems she exposed in Talbot County. The worst probably was the rundown recreation center, complete with what one county commissioner called on-camera "ugly poo-poo pots." [16 Jul 06] Some politicians talk more "down and dirty" than you might think....
Whatever happened to that Talbot County recreation center, which was locked up for renovations for months? Jade Hindmon told me it's now open again, but county commissioners won't let her see the improvements. I'm guessing we might see them on television days before the 2008 primary.
The farewell for Jade Hindmon marked our first trip to the "Meritage" area on 13th Street since Miriam (now Eve) Tidwell sold it a few years ago. The "café and gallery" was closed, as it's only open for breakfast and lunch. For such a nice-looking place to keep the hours of a Myrtle Beach waffle shop puzzles me....
(Please note we're not calling the Meritage Café and Gallery a "restaurant." Ms. Tidwell wrote an e-mail to us a few years ago objecting to such a label, even though Miriam's was listed under "restaurants" in the Yellow Pages. Meritage isn't listed there now -- and it's not listed under "art galleries," either.)
So the Jade Hindmon farewell event occurred next door, at "Tapatinis at Meritage Café." I can't really call that a restaurant, either. When the menu lists one page of food options and more than one page of martinis, I don't consider that a restaurant.
Besides, someone at the event commented the "wine list" at Tapatinis is more "like a journal." It covered several pages - and while I didn't look at it, it seemed to have more choices than Bill Heard's used car lot.
But I had shown up at this event for dinner, so I reviewed the Tapatinis food list. It's on the elegant side -- not only from the items listed, but by the fact that it has no dollar signs on the prices.
The best choice for me seemed to be honey barbecued Atlantic salmon. It came with "twice-baked potato salad" - which was new to me, because most people I know don't even bake the potato salad at picnics once.
But the other item with the salmon really puzzled me. "What are hericot verts?" I asked the server.
"They're like greens," she answered. Ohhhh. The only "vert" I knew until then was vertical - as in the stairs I climbed from the Tapatinis lobby to the top floor with the party.
It took several minutes for my dinner to be prepared, so I sipped on a diet cola. I didn't drink wine or a martini, because I didn't want my camera photos to be blurry -- or at least my view of them.
(The diet cola was served without a napkin, which made things a bit awkward in terms of liquid on our small round table. Another person in the party longed for a straw with her drink - but she said once she started sipping from the glass, there was no turning back.)
At last the salmon came -- on a small rectangular plate, with about as much open space as food. Truly this business lived up to its name -- only I'd spell it Tapa-Teenie, as in Weenee.
The salmon was not a full filet, but what appeared to be a center cut. It was tender, and slightly bitter without the barbecue sauce on top. The salmon practically hid the twice-baked potato salad below it - which didn't taste out of the ordinary for potato salad, but seemed scarcely made from two "new potatoes."
As for the hericot verts, a person sitting near me summed up the appearance of it: "Green beans." Actually, something with a smaller diameter and no bean at all. They were firm, but not crunchy -- and it didn't make me jump vertically at all.
(I checked a dictionary as I prepared this entry, and it defines a vert as "green growth from a forest." At least it wasn't shaped like poison ivy.)
The salmon dinner cost me eight dollars -- and in this day of extra-large portions, it was eight-dollar sized. This was not a Ruby Tuesday-sized fish. But it was perfect for people with resolutions to lose weight in 2007.
But something curious struck me as I finished dinner -- as the rectangular plate was wobbly. It didn't sit flat on the table, acting a bit like an old school desk or folding chair. The "catch of the day" didn't squirm around like that.
People around me eventually ordered other Tapatinis dishes. One woman praised the "she-crab soup." But I left without thinking to ask for the gender of my salmon.
Appearance is everything when it comes to the dishes at Tapatinis. One person ordered a chicken dish, which came with whipped potatoes swirling to a peak like an ice cream dessert. It's like the style of "The Daily Show," as opposed to the substance of a C-SPAN.
We wished Jade Hindmon well, as she heads for South Carolina. And we wished Tapatinis had a dessert menu, to provide a "nightcap" after a relatively modest dinner. In a first, the nightcap did NOT come in the form of candy at a convenience store - but a double cheeseburger from the McDonald's dollar menu.
(Which reminds me -- the McDonald's in North Phenix City actually posted a sign on its door, warning prices would go up Saturday. I've never seen a McDonald's do that before. And I wish gas stations would do that a lot more often.)
Now that we've had possibly our first combination celebrity report/restaurant review, let's check other items from the weekend:
+ The Saturday high temperature in Columbus was 72 degrees F. - and an evening run found someone using a laptop computer on the Chattahoochee Promenade, above the river. I've seen people have weddings on the promenade, but never someone trying online dating there.
+ The Ledger-Enquirer reported the new Sam's Club near Columbus Park Crossing will open January 18. Then a Wal-Mart SuperCenter nearby will open January 23. You'll have to guess the date when the Winn-Dixie on Veterans Parkway will close.
+ Columbus Police announced they seized thousands of dollars in counterfeit name-brand merchandise from "Wow Fashions" on Buena Vista Road. The owner of the store is wanted for questioning - so he or she could be a "Wow Weasel."
+ Phenix City Councilman John Storey told a competing blog a merger of water systems with Fort Mitchell and Russell County could mean higher water rates. But he said the rates would go up more without a merger, because fewer customers would have to pay for higher production costs. So in his view, three headwaters are better than one....
+ The Royal Lippizaner Stallions performed at the Columbus Civic Center. I wasn't able to attend this - so did the spectators wear different fancy hats, or keep the same ones from the Steeplechase?
+ The Columbus Cottonmouths retired the jersey of goaltender Frankie Ouellette. I never understood why he didn't play major league hockey for the Los Angeles Kings or Anaheim Mighty Ducks - so he could tell his friends, "Frankie Goes to Hollywood."
+ Glenwood School's basketball teams both stayed unbeaten, by sweeping Northside Methodist. Northside WHO?!?! This is a bit like Florida State becoming "bowl eligible" in November by beating Western Michigan.
+ Former Atlanta Falcons coach Jim Mora was a guest studio analyst on NBC's football playoff coverage. Mora claimed his notorious phone call to a Seattle radio station "never came up" in his final meeting with Falcons owner Arthur Blank. Of course not - it was the next-to-last-straw, before those last two losses in December.
SCHEDULED MONDAY: An update on the Hurtsboro hubbub....
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