A Surprise Visit

We're in California for just 2 more weeks continues...

Last night we had a visit from our friend Mary! This is unusual because we have only seen Mary when she is visits London and usually stays in our guest suite there.

But she was in San Francisco for a couple days so she had a chance to come to Berkeley to see our completely different (from London) house. And she got to meet Clyde. She brought her fun friend Christine who is executive director of the fabulous Chanticleer which John and I have been fans of for many years.

We went to dinner at Citron because we wanted to be able to have a conversation and our favorite local restaurant (Zax) is closed on Mondays. Wow, Citron has really gone down hill. It took forever even for them to bring us some bread. After waiting a long time I inquired about our champagne and they said they would bring it right way. After another long pause the waiter brought the champagne and poured it into wine glasses which I thought was odd. After my first sip I thought the champagne was flat and was about to complain when I realized it was rose wine, not rose champagne.

We weren't sure if John ordered the wrong thing (Mon Dieu!) so we mentioned it to the waiter who looked at his pad and admitted he had written down the wrong thing. Ok, an honest mistake, no problem. The wine was pretty good anyway. I did miss having champagne though, sigh.

The food was mediocre. My medium rare flat iron steak was close to well-done and not very good. The lobster soup was boring. The salmon had no flavor, no spice, no nothin'. Hmmmm. I guess we're crossing Citron off our list.

But it didn't matter because it was such a pleasure to spend time with Mary.