…by marriage, as my husband just became an uncle. Congratulations to Laura and Aaron on the birth of their adorable son Jadon Elijah!
I will meet him for the first time on New Year’s Eve in Miami.
Monthly Archive for November, 2009
Kenny has been reviewing restaurants on his blog for years, and I decided recently to start joining him in this effort on our joint blog. This is my introductory post; I think I’ll start cross-posting the reviews over here as well.
My brother also recently blogged his first restaurant review.
Via my monthly Berkeley engineering alum email this week, an interesting article about recent developments with offshore wind farms:
Offshore wind farms needed sea legs. But no one knew how to float the platforms way out at sea and keep 300-foot wind turbines steady and upright in the roll of deep ocean water and storms. That is, until Roddier and Cermelli came along. Their WindFloat design employs 80-foot-wide horizontal plates which, when submerged at the base of the structure, counteract the ocean’s forces, minimizing the vertical and angular platform motion. WindFloat also features an active ballast system and triangular design to help the structure maintain stability. The platform can easily be assembled onshore and towed out to sea, the pair say, where it will be connected to its mooring system.
Cross-posted from http://lawolf.net.
Rating: 
Sadly, this is another review with no photos, because we dined at Coconut Grove during the period in which we were PowerShot-less (which we remedied later the same night).
We visited Coconut Grove on a Sunday evening in a large group; when we arrived, we had the run of the place (and it is not small). The dining area is a large open patio, with coconut trees and tile floors. The food is served on banana leaves and the beverages in copper cups. I haven’t been to Kerala yet, but I assume that they’re going for an authentic Keralan feel.
“The” thing to order at Coconut Grove (and other Keralan restaurants, I’m told) is appams – the appam is to Keralan food what naan, rotis, and chappatis are to the cuisines of other parts of India. It is simply a round rice batter pancake, but it’s thick and spongy in the middle, and is perfect for soaking up delicious coconutty curries. I was also told that they’re wonderful with a fried egg on top, but we had to save something for our next visit.
We ordered several curries for the table:
- Chicken Stew – the most popular appam accompaniment, a coconut curry with chicken and potatoes. I was actually a bit disappointed by this one, as the flavors were bland compared to the other spicy tomato-ey curries that we ordered.
- Veggie Stew – a vegetarian version of the above.
- Kuraliach Kadi – crabs in a fiery red masala with a hint of tamarind. Spicy and delicious, but lots of work dissecting the crab.
- Nadan Chemeen Curry – this was basically the same as the Kurialach Kadi, but with prawns instead of crabs. The prawns were slightly less flavorful than the crab meat, but much easier to eat, so I think this dish actually wins for overall enjoyment (we ended up ordering a second round of this one).
- Kozhi Melagu – a Chettinad chicken dish with a masala curry and black pepper. Yum.
Coconut Grove was delicious and fun. I can’t wait to go back with the camera.
Coconut Grove
No. 86, Spencers Building, Church Street
Bangalore 560 001, India
+(91) (80) 25596149