We went to Celadon last night. This is the newest restaurant in the space that recently housed Tahiti, then Yi. So now it’s Celadon. It’s an expensively furnished, fairly large restaurant. The location, being near the Grove, is pretty good, but it seems to be in a bit of an awkward stretch, which may account for the problems with restaurants in that location.

The menu claims to feature “Authentic Global Tapas.” I don’t really know what that means. Wouldn’t authentic tapas necessarily not be global, but just Spanish? Do they mean something like “authentic plates from around the world?” That’s probably closer to reality, although I wouldn’t claim any of these to be authentic. They are from around the world, but they have much more of a fusion quality than an authenticity about them.

A large portion of the menu, probably half, are Asian-based dishes, like noodles, rice, and dim sum. Frankly, the Asian dishes were definitely inferior to the European style dishes. Of all the Asian dishes, I think only the shrimp toast was any good. The samosas were really not good at all. The rice and noodle dishes basically had no flavor. 

They have a section of crudo, and those dishes were pretty good. They’re a bit more like innovative sashimi than they are like Italian crudo, but they were tasty, and well presented.

There were actually two standout dishes to me: the sliders and the hummus. Sliders are so often overdone hard discs of meat. These were juicy and served medium, with good bread and sauce. I was pretty surprised - I would definitely get these again if I go back. The hummus had artichoke hearts, fava beans, and fennel seeds on it. Great combination - and the bread served with it was grilled and spiced.

I’m not too sure that I’d go back. So many dishes weren’t great - I think we did about 50/50 which, with the great restaurants around here, isn’t good at all. The place was pretty empty, the music was some hip fusion nothing, the place really had no style. And it was large - it didn’t have either the comfortable small feeling, or the glamorous large feeling. Service was fine (20% gratuity added to parties of six or larger, rather than the 18% I usually see).

EDIT: Forgot about the scallops. Avoid the scallops. At least, the night we went, our two scallop dishes were NOT good. If they can’t get good scallops that day, they should 86 them from the menu . . .

We just got a letter from Freedom Financial Partners. I thought it was a routine “Do we have a new loan for you!” letter, and I tossed it. But my wife had seen it first and was worried that it said our house was in jeopardy due to a loan default.

So I fished it out of the recycling, and sure enough, she was right - the letter did say that.

OK - first, some background info on the wonderful Freedom Financial. Their website seems to be here. Note the link to the BBB. I’m really not a big fan of the BBB. As a business owner myself, I feel like they extort a yearly fee in exchange for a good review of your business. But click the Freedom Financial BBB link. Nada. No reviews. But they link there. Pathetic.

Next, the ways to contact them. On their website, they have a comcast.net email address. On the letter, it’s a gmail address. For a company with a domain name and a website, this seems a bit strange. Is it operated on public computers where they need webmail?

As for physical location, their area code (724) puts them in Pennsylvania. But their BBB info puts them in Utah. Their whois info is hidden. You guys really know how to gain the trust of your customers.

Here’s the key line from the letter: If none of this is true, I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you by sending this letter. Wow. So if you’ve scared perfectly mortgage-paying homeowners into wasting their time, and possibly calling you, you’re sorry. Even in Stockton, California (with its 10% foreclosure rate - reportedly the highest in the country) you’d only be right up to 10% of the time, so you’d be wrong 90% of the time. In the rest of the country, you’d be wrong 90%+ of the time. Truly pathetic.

Freedom Financial Partners: Please! Have some personal integrity! Do the right thing here! Does scaring people into contacting you ever work?

Last night I went to Soot Bull Jeep for dinner. Hadn’t been for a while. Since it was a guys-night-out, we decided to go for the marinated squid - something that our wives would have objected to.

I’ve got to say, we eat pretty much everything, but when this plate landed on the table, we were pretty shocked:

I was expecting maybe a plateful of normal-sized squids, cut open, or rings, or something similar. But this was essentially a giant squid (not too huge, but not quite related to the calamari variety). If you ever get squid leg at a Japanese restaurant, you’ve seen part of this beast. It looked like an alien creature.

Anyway, we threw it on the grill and it started to look a bit more like food. 

Finally, the waiter came over with scissors and cut it up into pieces for us. In the end, actually, it was really good!