Since I finished The Other Boleyn Girl on the way to Dresden, I needed to pick up another book in the Frankfurt airport for the return flight. I chose The Zahir, by Paulo Coelho. I had liked (but not loved) The Alchemist, and The Zahir struck me in much the same way: both are about the quest for enlightenment and spirituality, and both are somewhat heavy handed. The Zahir at least has a more interesting plot. The narrator's wife, Esther, has disappeared and he spends the next few years searching for her, his obsession, his "Zahir." In the meantime, his lover Marie supports him unselfishly as he searches. In fact, she's the only unselfish character in the book. Assisting him in his search is Mikhail, an expatriate from Kazakhstan and possibly Esther's lover, who travels about giving interactive performances about love. It's all very deep and spiritual, but not really compelling, at least not for me.

Once I finished The Zahir, I could move on to one of the books in my stack that I've been looking forward to reading. My sister, Julie, had loaned me her copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, who also wrote The Kite Runner, which I loved. Both of Hosseini's books take place in Afghanistan and as such, provide a glimpse into a very different world. In combination with The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart, which I read for my bookclub but apparently never wrote about on this blog, these books are starting to make Afghanistan a little more familiar, if not more understandable. What Suns does that the others don't is provide a picture of women's lives in Afghanistan, which are very different from the lives of men.

I really admire the way Hosseini weaves the political struggles in Afghanistan with the heart-wrenching tale of two women, but I found A Thousand Splendid Suns to be unrelentingly grim until the last 35 pages or so when it suddenly becomes a love story. I guess you can't criticize a writer for writing something unrelentingly grim about an unrelenting and grim war, but it made difficult reading for me. As for the male/female and other relationship issues that he tackles, I was less surprised by the fact that women have no rights and no protection in Afghanistan (at least under the Soviets, the Taliban, or the Mujahideen) than by the way the wealthy Jalil treats his illegitimate daughter Mariam: he alternately loves and cares for her and casts her out to endure a horrific life. I guess what I found so surprising was the kindness he (at times) showed to her. Even his other three legitimate wives take her in, although eventually they seem to the culprits in his rejection of her. The rehabilitation of the Jalil character at the end of the book also did not ring true to me, but given that the Afghani culture is unknown and perhaps unknowable, perhaps this is as realistic as any story can be.

We had a fabulous dinner at Cafe Mosaic the other night, or at least I did. We go there frequently and usually it's very good, sometimes excellent, and sometimes just so-so. On Friday I had their szechwan pepper crusted ahi, with soy glazed spinach, lomi-lomi tomatoes, and wasabi vinaigrette. It was memorable... so delicious I was practically speechless. Mike almost always has ahi tuna on the menu, and it's always good, but this was just spectacular. I'm not even sure what anyone else had, I was so focused on my meal. Eveyrone else must have enjoyed theirs as well, since no one even wanted a bite of mine, although I did offer. Maybe it was just that look in my eyes.

This will be the first short restaurant review on my blog. I've been meaning to do this for awhile, because we seem to have an increasing number of good restaurants out in our neck of the woods.

Saturday night, Garrett and I headed to Fioravanti in Downingtown. Except for a few quibbles, I thought it was very good. I started with a salad of tomatoes, spinach, arugula, blue cheese crumbles, and caramelized onion pancetta dressing. The combination of flavors was great, although it appeared to be a hot-house tomato, which I think is inexcusable when the local tomatoes are so wonderful right now. The salad was also overdressed and the dressing was quite vinegary, so when I got towards the end, I could no longer eat it. Garrett started with chicken medallions stuffed with spinach, asiago, and roasted peppers; wrapped in bacon; and served with horseradish aioli. They were very good, but pretty much anything wrapped in bacon is going to be good.

For our entrees, I had a special of Chilean sea bass topped with lobster and some red Japanese caviar and served on risotto with braised leeks. It was delicious, very well balanced, and the risotto was perfectly cooked. I have never liked caviar before, but this was the perfect complement to a great dish.

Garrett had osso buco, which was excellent as well.

The restaurant is small and has an open kitchen, which I like because it's fun to talk to the chefs and watch what they are doing. However, it was also really noisy (mostly because of a few larger, loud parties). Service was pretty good, although we felt a little bit rushed. I was shocked when I looked at the clock when we got back to the car and it was only 9:20 (we went in a little before 8)!

We had taken a Bogle Petite Sirah with us to this BYO restaurant, and it turned out to be a good match for both of our dishes.

For Garrett and me, The Birchrunville Store Cafe is the standard to which everyone else is compared. Fioravanti wasn't nearly as good as Birchrunville, but we really enjoyed it and will probably go back.