to Catch, to Catch, to Catch.

Keith Rhodes is a recognized chef who braids farm-to-table philosophy with low-country cooking and elevated culinary presentation. He brings solid accolades behind his cuisine, including a James Beard Award Nomination for 2011 and a Best Dish award in North Carolina for 2010. His food is an eclectic mix of Michelin ambitions and shrimp and grits sensibility; luxury ingredients are juxtaposed against highwayside produce and small-source ingredients. Little-known proteins become stars alongside country buffet staples, mulling a high-vs-low play of flavor notes, amplifying something deconstructed or something extraordinary. Foodies and writers and gourmands trek to sample his menus and so did we. Well, we drove four minutes from home.

Mr. Rhodes maintains his passion for our locale with Catch restaurant.  Market Street's strip malls and vacant car lots scream urban sprawl, reckless construction, while daring even the bravest of drivers to turn left or right.  Market Street terrifies city developers across the nation. But Mr. Rhodes moved into one of those strip malls, designed a nice, unassuming and simple interior, squeezed a kitchen behind some partitions, and started cooking. To Catch.

The maitre d' greeted us at a small podium in front of young herbs growing beneath bright lights and she sat us at a table that featured a slight wobble. The room was bright with evening light from large windows (facing Market St), and artful photographs of local beach scenes charmed the modest space. Casual but smart is a catch-phrase of the space, from describing the bar area to the staff attire to the overall vibe. (Mr. Rhodes emits the same vibe- I used to see him at The Village Market after dinner service when he was chef at Deluxe.  A friendly guy.) The service at Catch is focused and engaged and their knowledge of the food was impressive. She anticipated our questions and responded with well-informed answers. If she did not know, she found out. We were specialed and Kas got an excellent recommendation of wine and we got into the menu with our orders.

Our oyster appetizer offered six perfectly fried NC darlings bedded across a good cole slaw. The cole slaw was room temperature but fresh, which was fine when paired with the oysters' temperature. In fact, I believe Chef Rhodes may have designed the dish that way, to present the creamier undertone of a blue cheese folded in with the slaw. A tooth of shell did bite into my gums but I cannot dis the dish on that one mishap. All in all, a good starter.

The sweet potato salad of sauteed sweet potatoes, spinach, chevre, cranberries and toasted hemp seeds was good and plentiful. This is the dish that won NC Best Dish award last year, and I agree that it was very good. North Carolina has good spinach, excellent local goat cheese, the sweet potatos are a major cash crop, and we have really good hemp. It all worked marvelously in this dish.

Kas had scallops, listed as OBX diver scallops, grilled on bamboo skewers, and they were delicate and light and delicious with a smoky char pushing against citrus notes. Alongside were two thick slices of fried green tomato: amazing. The dolloped aioli was tasteful with white truffle as a base flavor, but the scallops were superb sans sauce.

I had local flounder pan-fried with a lively breading insulating a finely-flaked meat. This was the whitest meat flounder can produce, and I think Mr. Rhodes procures the finest seafood around.  (Hence the name Catch, I suppose.)  The filets were easy to savor with good clean buttery flavors bolted by a vinaigrette of lemon, peppers, perhaps saffron.  The filets were not large, but were cut to the exclude the lesser ends of the meat.  Sweet potato puree and sauteed spinach accompanied the entree. The flounder was good for what it was, and it was true to the menu's description. 

The highlight was a spanish basque cake, a buttery pound cake with almonds and a caramel sauce slung across the plate, maybe a hint of lemon zest. Topping the basque cake was freshly whipped cream.  The cake was a magnificent cracking crust of full sweet aromas yielding a warm near-custard center.  If I take anything to the grave from my life as a dessert addict, it will be the part of this cake I wrestled from Kas. 

One issue that lingers is the portion-to-cost ratio. With a low-country format I anticipated larger portions, and my instinct is that 23 dollars worth of flounder should amount to more, but I was satiated by the end of my plate (and one and one-half of Kas's scallops). They did not serve us bread, but I saw bread at other tables so it must be delivered on request. I didn't care about the bread so much as I was curious of what Chef Rhodes would choose for Catch's menu. After all- it could have been jalapeno cornbread or something totally funked out and awesome, or it could have been a crusty basic bread working towards technical perfection.

(Catch has two locations.  This meal was at the Ogden location while the other spot is in downtown Wilmington.  Check online for more information.  I would recommend reservations for any dining occasion there.)

swamp run, mindswamp, body as the sag of soaked fabric.

A fragmented fourteen began in mist-grayed morning before 7am to push outta our neighborhood towards wrightsville beach and a fast start felt strong and feet beat smooth at 7.2 minute miles and the empty streets were colorless in the fog-swallowing-the-sun flatness but the pace was strong and the lungs pushed the first four miles at 7m12secs, unforced & easy, then the sunheat started pouring on the shoulders, torso slumping beneath humid pulse, the wetheat starting in and by mile five I stalled at the dreaded intersection of eastwood/ military cutoff, heaved thick sauna-breath, but there was little traffic so I kicked off coughing, breathless, heavy but determined across the bridge, that green metal jawbone overlooking the painterly ICW, a fresh breeze beneath now blazing sun, but soon I felt the gravity of heat and exertion and I felt a succumbing apathy to the act of running, the weight of muscle dragging bone, so pulling into the WB park was none-too-soon of a thing. After a pit stop I joined the other joggers and walkers to the beach where I remembered how nice it was to live at the coast, a moment of gratitude before turning into the sun and starting back up the sand to mercer's pier where I would hit the turnaround point, push my body in snagged pacing and passages of walking and waterless dread through the unscenic church traffic to a joyful goal of Home. (Fourteen like a russian lyricist performing wagner.)

fracture, continuum and impulse withheld.

i.

Her eyes were wolflike, her eyes were aquamarine and howling, her eyes were blue sky behind smoke or fog. her eyes were wolfsex and wolflunge and brimming with crystals that had once pummeled someone toothless and bloody-mouthed. Her eyes were unsplintered rays, diamond light, were yesterday. Were blue like a false sea, a mountain collapsing, were never mine but as myth. Wolf moon with cadmium red figures poised and deliberate. 

Another series of faceless nudes, the sex of caryatids.  

Ink, charcoal, gesso.  On paper.

ii.

Grandfather mountain marathon and 26.2 miles ascending some 3000' called “america's toughest marathon.” that may, unfortunately, be true. More to come.  

Copperhead run on at poplar grove. Exceeded 700 miles for 2011.

iii.

Indistinct images.

on the side of the road is a dead fawn. with close scrutiny, the visual enigma decodes to twisted sheets of brown paper entangling fractured strips of wood. Dead deer averted. Next, old chair deteriorating above wooded shoulder trail becomes stormtwisted treetrunk. Tiredmind blurs & detaches object from reality. The senses, like the mind, like the self, needs distraction and satori and hallucination and lapse.

excerpts of thought.

April 27^th. Morning of ny ing marathon lottery begins with six miles at 5h30am.  running in the early dark is an eerie thing, entirely different than running in late dark but still vulnerable and primitive and revitalizing.  raw. an interesting mantra cycle/ chorus of fragments: 
silver scythe cutting spring wheatsky.

Harvest a field of pthalo blue.

Kicks through an empty, echoless world.

May 3^rd. Ran nine at brunswick nature park in slow/fast clips hurdling horse-scat and roots and eventually (felt it coming) broke a quick bend to the right as a black snake raced beneath feet off trail and swiftly ascended a net of branch and vine, his climbing form like a heavy black rope pulled in strange jerks through the tangle of growth. Unlike anything i'd ever seen before.

lotus blooms in marshland of bnp

trail shot on bnp with new growth in may.

May 6^th. A dozen miles at carolina beach state park with the great punctuation- the pause, build and break of the momentum- being a large deer that surprised me on a bend in the sand-bermed turn. She jammed through the thick of trees as a quick-paced percussion of hoof, her form dissolving immediately behind pines and crag oaks. . . reminded me of running pennsylvania when a huge buck and two doe stood on a gravel farm road in early morning, within twenty feet, a shock of deer when a doe sprang sharply ahead and her hooves where eye-level in effortless power and ee cummings poem 'bout the lithe light deer the fleet flown deer but back to carolina beach on a hot friday morning when I kicked slow and meandering like a heavy thing falling down the trail to be mocked by nature's brutal if not ungentle wit.

on the occasion of the assassination of bin laden.

everyone seems obsessed and maybe a little haunted by bin laden and his death.  his assasination is no attrition or redemption or justice, it is no testament to america's power. it is the end of a cycle of propaganda. bin laden is  by now deified (to use a christian term), declared a righteous martyr, and replaced not by body but by a body of ideals dessminated across a huge sect, a following.  bin laden is a symbol, and a symbol is an abstract and ironic thing. a symbol is only as powerful as the energy asserted by others.  he is a cult of personality.  a plastic thing.  to some he is a folk hero: a trotsky (assasinated), che (assasinated), a siddhartha, a guthrie.  to others he is an embodiment of pure evil.  posters portray a face of terror, display horror and atrocity and murderous contempt.  they neglect his dimensionality as a prodigal son of saudi aristocracy. they neglect what al queda may have done to improve things (if anything, if nothing).  he is no longer a man, he is a Symbol.  and i say leave him a symbol, just a symbol.  a cycle of propaganda. . . an act of war, a brutality, a target. (the language of propaganda is the language of war.  rhetoric.  the war of language.)  the ideals and energy and symbolism of bin laden is a power-narrative pushed against a face now decaying beneath a massive news camp (perhaps it should be broadcast in latin like traditional catholic prayers, or hebrew like judiac readings, perhaps we should display images of schoolhouses destroyed by missiles).  in the end, there is only force and consequence and retalliation.    there is only the abstract notion of who is a terrorist and who is an avenger. and while i do not subscribe to al queda thought nor bin laden's philosophies and means, i am wholly unconvinced that this is a great day in history.  just the end of a cycle of propaganda on which another cycle will begin.  there is no spiritual principal at work here.  

the one good result may be that our military can return home.

Bob Bryden's Recent Work at Caprice Bistro, Opening May 1.

Mr. Bryden extended an invitation to visit his studio so I crossed the Cape Fear and its wetlands to his home. While near a busy section of New Hanover county, the home remains quiet in a thicket of trees bordering marshlands and estuary. “There are still many rice canals through the property” he says, explaining that the tract of land that was once a rice plantation now salted over. Parallel to the driveway is a weed-choked path that once nested the railroad tracks that began Wilmington's trade dominance. “You could take it all the way to Fayetteville,” and Bob suggests a day hike sometime.

The house lays into the land with a gentle footprint and pulls sublimely from the surrounding nature for many requirements. The construction conforms to practices of minimalism and has no excess to tame or muffle. The artist's home is designed from the same philosophy as his art, and that intricate weave of philosophy and design is a direct result of aesthetic maturity. Mr. Bryden is clearly a deep and quiet thinker of things, a still type, who moves deliberately and thoughtfully into a labor, whether designing a house or executing a print. And that takes us into his studio.

Natural light pours across the workspace from surrounding windows and a tabby cat rests in a corner beneath a chair. File cabinets roll with prints in various stages of completion. A new print hangs on a drying line, clamped with tissue between the rubber-tipped clip. Nearby are two floating frames exhibiting prints which baffle language, imposing a wordless appreciation for his work. Watercolor pencils flow through fields of wispy wash and burnishing, playing among numerous sequences of masking: a meditative scene of melodic color.

A printmaker's studio is a rare thing of meticulous cleanliness and methodical organization, harmony and balance: conscious placement. These terms are equally relevant descriptions of Mr. Bryden's work.

He rolls open a drawer to a new set of print-drawings that vibrate with turquoise and cadmium orange and new greens. Colors are bound in separate geometric forms with prismatic edges, sharp but for a delicate fray. Mr. Bryden says, “I don't like to work directly on the surface of the material.” Raw pigment is thus applied with unusual technique to fresh and luminescent effect with various cloths, inks and additives. Layers of masking and application. Images of brightly pigmented old-growth forests come to mind. Aquatic drifts of light. A centrifuge of linework gradating, a dizzy prism. He details his process and how the work from conception to execution can easily consume 50 working hours per piece. Distillation. When I ask if he could name an influence, he says “no.” He then laughs, pauses, “Maybe Kadinsky.” His work could also show unobtrusively with Diebenkorn, Rothko, Marden.

The pieces never display the copious labors. Instead the processes move and dance and gradate through layers into a smooth controlled image. The colors are dazzling and clean, really diamond sharp, with the world's spring in his palette, making it a perfect May show. The movement of the non-objective compositions is pure design, with an occasional landscape reference giving way to an enigmatic non-pattern. Explaining the prints, conjuring their effect by language, is an impossible thing, a strong indication of the talent at work behind these prints. You must really see them for yourself.

The opening reception will be held May First from 6pm until 9pm in the Sofa Lounge and Gallery.

Mangum Track Club-- a run with kindred folks.

Mangum Track Club held their shirt run on saturday and I am now a proud member, a lifelong member, of the Mangum Track Club. What is the MTC and what is the shirt run?  

The MTC is a self-described rural running group that has no dues or fees, no endless emails and  nothing to prove to anyone.  A history can be found at http://www.etinternet.net/~runrbike/.  Many of the members are ultrarunners, several are canines who completed the necessary challenge, and some are casual walkers who enjoy the roads.  Some members win 50k or 100m or 12hr races, while others sweep up the loose back-pack of runners, but everyone is open and kind and passionate about soles kicking the horizon.  

Completing the shirt run is the process by which one joins the Mangum Track Club.  Its a point-to-point run that puts one deep in the rural NC piedmont for fifteen miles.  Saturday April 23rd found 67 runners clogging down a road known merely as a state abbreviation and a number. I was one of the 30ish newbies and this is how it went down.

Work finished at midnight Friday and I drove home, set the coffee pot for 4am, brushed the teeth and readied the gear.  At 4h05am I downed a hotdark cup of sugared java and grabbed my running bag to cruise carbonblack Hwy 74 for 2.5 hrs to find an obscure intersection on the outskirts of Ellerbe NC. Did I mention obscure-- the sudden surreal village of runners roaming the road to the left was not unlike a rainbow gathering or a gypsy caravan.  Rows of cars were parked on each side of the road.  Runners entered and exited the woods and sat in lawn chairs in the middle of the state highway.  I saw Mark, whom I'd met at the gator trail 50k and who orchestrates the group, and he introduced me to some folks.  I joined other runners in the back of a pickup truck to tear through the wet chilly grayness towards the start fifteen miles away.  Six of us huddled and curled against the cold wind and tight turns, an occasional wave/nod to a runner doing a “double shirt run” (out-and-back 2x = 30m), and the truck came to a stop.  Here was another obscure intersection with vehicles parked on the shoulder, runners milling and stretching, and several structures around including a house, a greenhouse structure, and a church.   A NC DOT green sign ahead read "Mangum" to note the location.

The first half of the shirt run is a pure exercise of faith.  

The fifteen mile run traversed the bending highway by various churches named after old testament stories, paced across cement bridges above deep rivers of muddy slowness, geared up long inclines that folded back from hardwood thickets into vast flat fields of perfect green reeves that sweep like fine bristles against the wind.  One could hear civil war armies marching across the fields into the pine-and-oak perimeters. One could hear birds and endless birds and maybe a turtle scratching against red clay and then the footsteps of runners spread through the countryside like synesthesia echo.  A white truck lapped the collective body of the mass offering water and we encountered few other cars.

A lively group in a steady groove ran the ribbon of asphalt and stories were exchanged.   There were stories of the mangum track club ranging from a naked runner to the origin of the group, brainstorms of reasons why we run, explanations of various routes we passed over that MTC coordinates into other runs (ellerbe marathon, boogie marathon or the boogie 50m, derby 50). A dozen miles passed like a glass of sweet iced tea. 

I had to keep a smooth, working pace to finish within my schedule.  Eventually I turned into a hill that glimpsed the parked cars as the double yellow line jostled beneath me to a stop-sign end.  Runners had resumed sitting in the middle of the road.  Mark handed me a fine trophy, the navy blue shirt with strong white letters spelling Mangum Track Club.  The shirt is traditionally paid for by the existing members of the MTC, and the generosity is a trait common to these people.  He gave me a few stickers, offered black olive pizza, and I shook some hands and changed shirts before returning home for work at 3h30pm.  

All in all it was a brilliant run in a beautiful part of the country with good folks.  Several will I meet again to kick up dirt and slap asphalt, and I look forward to it.  I am still reeling on my belonging to a track club and I am grateful to Mark and MTC for including me. The energies of those kindred folks and the fields and hills and rivers and the porcelain-white churches stay with me now as I write this, and I think thats a big part of being a Mangum Track Club member.