A glut of gardens dominates my Cotswolds weekend

Windy Ridge (aka "the summer house") requires a three night booking during opera season.  Meanwhile, we've had the best summer weather in the UK in a decade.  Thus, even though I'd hardly shaken the American vacation dust off my heels, I was back in holiday sightseeing mode.

The Cotswolds are a tourism paradise, combining chocolate-box villages with exquisite landscape, significant country houses and some of the world's best gardens.  I focused on the last over my long weekend.  My own perennials are flourishing under the sustained sunshine and I was keen to see how the big, famous places were doing.

Hidcote first, of course.  This is one of the finest gardens in England, if not in the whole world, and keen gardeners travel here from all over.  You see them wandering about with cameras and notebooks, studying intently to figure out what they could bring home to their own patch.  I always get a little thrill remembering that this wonderful place, which really introduced the concept of garden "rooms" which Sissinghurst and other gardens would make the norm for the 20th century, was the brainchild of an American who settled in England.  I walk with the spirit of Lawrence Johnston whenever I'm here.

The famous red border, designed to be at its peak in high summer, was indeed looking good.  The

Mediterranean-inspired rooms appear more comfortable this summer than usual.  Spires of delphinium around the circular pool are an impossible blue.

But I was most impressed by the northern side of the garden, which has seen a lot of additions in recent years.  Not content to freeze Hidcote in time, the National Trust is enhancing areas that were outside Johnston's main focus.  Thus the long border here has some fresh planting, surrounded by a new greenhouse and lilly pool, with vegetable plots now managed for viewing and education.  I resisted buying plants in the excellent shop here, but did get the inspiration for what needed to happen in my own garden next.  (A large pot of lythrums sitting on one of the pedestals in the lower pond.)

On the way back to Windy Ridge from Hidcote I stumbled on Bourton House, one of the many smaller Cotswolds attractions with limited opening hours.  (Wed - Fri in the summer).  That's because this is still a private home; albeit a very impressive one.  The garden as we see it now dates back about 15 years, planted on four terraces cut out of a gentle slope overlooking a valley with hills beyond.  There's some exceptional work with topiary to form edging and parterres, beautiful borders and attractive modern sculpture in the water features.  You enter through a medieval tithe barn that's been restored to a high standard and is clearly a fabulous party venue.  But mostly I admired the view, the way the house nestled in the landscape, the labour of the three full-time gardeners who maintained the place ... and marvelled that this is really just a family home.

Another lesser-known, infrequently-open gem is Sezincote, a neighbouring estate to Windy Ridge.  English eccentricity brought to life in architecture and garden design, it was built in the early 19th century by two brothers who'd both done service with the East India Company.  They wanted to recapture the exotic glories of their time in India, thus they planted a Moghul palace on a hill in this most English of landscapes, complete with onion domes, scalloped arches, stone fretwork and minarets.    Arcades stretch away from the house in both directions, one leading to a pavilion kitted out in Indian/Arabic fusion as a posh traveller's tent, the other a conservatory serving teas with a blockbuster view on open days.

The main garden is a pleasant hillside of water features fed by a local spring, surrounded by naturalistic planting.  Like the house, what makes this exceptional is the Indian styling.  There's a Hindu temple anchoring the top pond, a rather bizarre pillar of sacred cobras spiralling up from the middle one, and a bridge decorated with sacred bulls in the centre.  This remains much as designed by Humphrey Repton in the Regency period.  Over in front of the Orangery, the current generation has reworked an uninspiring lawn after a visit to the Taj Mahal to evoke a Persian water garden, with a central rill full of water lilies, ending with sculptures of two cheerful elephants raising their trunks to form an arch through which you see a grassy hillside atop which there's a wildflower meadow and the equally fanciful farm buildings.

The interiors continue the Asian influence, but within a more restrained Regency setting.  (Restored and re-interpreted by John Colfax, of Colfax and Fowler fame, in the 1980s.)  There's a sitting room with some fantastical curtains that are masterpieces of the art of drapery:  exquisite silks, contrasting linings, detailed patissimenterie, all hanging from the original cornices that feature golden panther's heads clasping the curtains in their mouths.  A neighbouring bedroom has a jaw-dropping Chinese-style canopied bed and a modern mural in one corner that carries the view of the orangery out the window inside.  Downstairs there's my perfect dining room, the Regency mahogany table encircled by walls with hand-painted scenic wallpaper showing idealised landscapes of India.  Out the windows, the Persian garden, the orangery, the hillside and those cheery elephants.

It comes as no surprise ... though it's a little known fact ... that the Prince Regent visited the newly-completed Sezincote when he was in the early stages of building his little beach house at Brighton.  He was so inspired by what he saw in the Cotswolds that he changed direction on his own place, giving us the crazy quilt of Chinese and Indian we see at Brighton Pavilion today.

My own bolt of Cotswolds inspiration was more humble.  I needed to find an eye-catching pot to carry off my vision for my pond.  Those "in the know" make straight for Whichford Pottery, outside Banbury.  Established in the 1970s to revive an English tradition of hand-scupted, terra cotta works of art (one that had survived in Italy), the pottery is a frequent exhibitor at the big flower shows.  Their

more impressive pieces become focal points for grand new gardens, or replace worn out masterpieces of bygone ages.  Because each piece is hand thrown, all the decorative bits shaped and placed, or incised, by the local sculptors before firing, prices can be steep.  Smaller and less decorated pots are more affordable, of course.  But you don't come here for the basics.  This is eye catching stuff.  And made to a thickness and quality to allow them to offer guarantees of frost proofing that will let their pots weather many winters.  (There is sculpted terra cotta in Medici gardens, after all, that has withstood centuries.)

Because my pot would stand permanently in an inch of water, I didn't go for any of the highly decorated options.  I was after an unusual shape.  And this I got with a high oval tub, twice as long as it is wide.  While shopping here, you can also enjoy their demonstration gardens.  All planted in pots, of course, they give you an idea of just how impressive container gardening can be.

The ladies at Whichford steered me to my last garden of the weekend, a private treasure open only a few times a year for charity through the National Gardens Scheme.  At Boughton House, former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Stephen Hester has created a modern garden that will, I suspect, be as famous as Hidcote or Sissinghurst in generations to come.  Whatever you think of the banker's bonuses, the man ... who's also on the board of Kew Gardens ... has been a gift to the world of horticulture.

The house itself sits about 3/4 of the way down another of those long, deep Cotswold hills.  The garden here works in terraces cut into that hillside, but such big ones that at first you don't realise the scope.

Up top there's a grassy paddock and some woodland walks.  A large greenhouse and vine-covered walkways create a transition to a more formal area, where loose, mediterranean-style planting surrounds a channel of water that cascades into a big, rectangular reflecting pool filled with fish and lilies.  From the edge of this section you can look down on modern parterres, the box arranged in the pattern of the cell structures of local trees and filled with interesting perennials.  Other steps down give you garden rooms with leafy walls, a pool and pavilion with interesting borders, a fern-planted stumpery and a bog garden at the bottom of it all.  Off to one side, meandering paths are mown into golden wheat fields leading to the arboretum.  On the other, light woodland surrounds the house, offering shady walks before opening up again to formal borders in front and to one side of the building, offering views of the bottom of the valley.

The design is innovative, the plants interesting, and the fact that it's all been created in the past 15 years is both unbelievable and inspiring.  It reminds you that all the great gardens of the world were once just fields, hills or forests, waiting for their touch of genius.  Hester's garden team are enthusiastic, clearly loving what they do and eager to welcome the public in on their open days.  They sell their extras in a walled bit by the paddock, proceeds to charity.  I came away with three unusual specimens to nestle into my own borders.

I'll never have the money, time or space to garden on a grand scale, but each of the places above gave me ideas for my own little patch of paradise.  A late-summer photo blog of how things are developing is coming soon.

Longborough's La Boheme's a lot better than it needs to be

This summer, with the Longborough Opera Festival taking on the promethean task of putting on Wagner's full Ring Cycle, they could be forgiven for not doing anything else.  Or, when doing a Ring alternative, to give it shorter shrift than the Wagnerian climax.  Happily, this wasn't so.

The operatic production is, admittedly, only one part of a delightful weekend.  The whole experience of donning formal wear, quaffing champagne in an English garden and staying in a Cotswold manor house (as usual, the spectacular Windy Ridge) with your friends would compensate for an average performance.  It's provided the buffer I needed to ease into Wagner in previous years.  This year's La Boheme was a triumph even though it didn't have to be.   Like so much of what Longborough does, this was a production that made you forget you were in a converted barn some rich guy's garden.  Small production, big quality.  That intimacy, in fact, gave me an appreciation for the characters and the plot I hadn't had before.

I've never denied the magic of Puccini's score.  The duet over which our lead characters fall in love, O Soave Fanciulla, is so poignantly exquisite a romantic soundtrack it makes love at first sight perfectly credible.  And since great music combines with a fairly simple plot and a relatively short running time, it's one of the most approachable operas in the standard canon.

But I've always found Mimi a weak and uninteresting lead, and have never been particularly gripped by the whole Parisian starving artist thing.  Perhaps it's the small "c" conservative in me, thinking "get a job so you can heat the damned apartment.  Paint in your spare time."

The Longborough troop gelled as a group of friends and radiated the frustrated energy of young artists rebelling against society.  (In fact, it made me wonder why nobody's ever done a pre-Raphaelite adaptation, to play on the drama and sexual dynamics of that group.)  Grant Doyle brought Marcello, the painter who is the secondary lead, brilliantly to life.  Joined by Fiona Murphy's sparkling Musetta, they combined to portray one of those couples who can't live without each other yet fight constantly, all wrong, but drawn together by compelling sexuality.  This production was as much their story as the traditional leads, and at the end you left believing that the tragedy that unfolded on stage would make them appreciate each other and bond for life.

Katie Bird's Mimi revealed more backbone than others I've seen.  Early coughs and stumbles hinted that she was ill even when she met our hero Rodolfo (Robyn Lyn Evans), and was focused on sucking the marrow out of her short life.  The couple matched their excellent voices with strong acting, conjuring a palpable sexual frisson that made them not an innocent young couple, but two equally daring and rebellious free spirits who hooked up quickly through passion and then discovered love.  But Rodolfo's jealousy causes Mimi to walk, and she's actually moved on to another relationship in Act 2 as he realises his mistake letting her go.  Realising that she's coming back to the toxic relationship she knew was no good for her, but she still wanted, makes that death scene more tragic.

The transposition to post-war Paris might have helped to bring out these sexual dynamics; it certainly

made all the relationships seem more modern.  It also allowed for attractive Chanel-style costumes for the women, and let the men evoke Picasso.  The two story set oddly set the famous garret in a basement, but it made great use of space and allowed for credible crowd scenes on a small stage.

Four of us purchased one of the boxes mid-way along the left side of the theatre and booked dinner in the carriage house restaurant.  This was a marvellously relaxed and sophisticated way to go.  The boxes are comfortable and offer plenty of legroom, while the restaurant was good quality and easier than the picnic routine.  (Which is sometimes fun, but we weren't in the mood.)  Too late, we realised that because the box was exclusively ours and opens directly to the outside, we could have brought in drinks.  Next year.

Michelin starred-Sepia's food was good, but overall experience fell short

Though I delighted in exposing my husband to the casual Midwestern comfort food of my youth, the majority of restaurant reviews on this blog attest to the truth:  When it comes to food, I'm European now.

Not just European, but a product of the deep foodie culture of London and its environs, where there are more than 70 Michelin-starred restaurants within the town and its commuter belt.  Cookery shows are a staple of prime time television and most middle class dinner conversations seem obsessed with your latest restaurant find, the gourmet ingredient you brought back from your last holiday or the menu for your next dinner party.

When I saw that Chicago had 19 starred restaurants of its own, I thought it was time for a comparison.  As familiar as I was with Michelin's picks in the UK, I'd never eaten at that level in the land of my birth.  What would it be like?

Our test case was Sepia, a well-reviewed place in the city's newly trendy near west side, serving up "New American" cuisine in an old print works.  (From there, the inspiration for the name, and the brown-tinted photographs of old Chicago decorating the interior.)  The ethos, certainly, is exactly the same as any UK equivalent.  This from their menu:  "rooted in tradition, our seasonal menu showcases pristine natural ingredients ... we support local artisan farmers".

We went for the seven course chef's menu with matching wine flight.  Well, we could hardly do a fair comparison on just three courses and one bottle, right?  The food was exactly what I'd expect from any one Michelin star establishment.  A beautifully balanced menu, everything perfectly cooked and artfully presented, with delicate portion sizes built to let you work your way through the whole menu without being stuffed.

There was little, however, that surprised, and little that told my taste buds I was in another country.  The only strikingly unusual element on the menu was the striped marlin (aka nairagi) for the fish course; flown in from Hawaii and unknown in the UK.  Everything else was standard fine dining fare:  beef tartare, scallops with black pudding, pork tenderloin with the uber-trendy slow cooked cheek.  Innovation was subtle and came in the accompaniments.  Pickled ramps (baby leeks) beside the scallops, tea soaked prunes with the pork, a flemish sour beer with the flourless chocolate cake.

That last pairing was the stand-out culinary moment of the evening, and I suspect Verhaeghe Brewery's
Duchesse de Bourgogne may make an appearance in place of a dessert wine at a Bencard dinner party this winter.  In fact, it was the wine flight that took us to the most interesting and unusual places.  First, another example of an American "flight" that wasn't just wine.  Then a tasty riesling from Canada's Niagra peninsula, and a pinot noir vin gris from Traverse City Michigan.  I had no idea either of those northern spots could turn out wine.  Neither were worth adding to the home cellar, but it was interesting to taste such unusual options and they both paired well with their food.  (Gingersnaps with ricotta cremeux for Niagra and scallops for Michigan.)  In fact, alcohol seemed to be a strong suit overall.  The bar up front has a fascinating collection of local spirits and a barman who's a true mixologist, creating unusual combinations unique to Sepia.

The differences from English Michelin star dining came in environment rather than food.  If this is a representative example, then America's high end restaurants are just as noisy as the run-of-the-mill places.  There was a steady din until the place started to empty out as we approached dessert.  Most diners seemed to be there on business.  We know.  The residents of the tables on each side of us were speaking so loudly I could have contributed to their discussions.

Most of our fellow diners did not seem to be having the chef's menu ... which would be standard at this sort of place in London ... but doing a typically American in-and-out for two courses.  From our observation, nobody really seemed that into the food at all.  This spilled over to efficient yet brisk and perfunctory service.  Our waitress was pleasant, and told us what was on the plate, but didn't stop to chat and didn't have that much to add, even when we asked questions and it became obvious we were honestly interested.  We never really got to conversation level, as we often have with servers over here, who are clearly as into the cuisine as we are.  The same went for the drinks service.  I sense there wasn't a sommelier at all; the flight was served by either the restaurant manager or our waitress.  And while they were able to give us a basic overview, there was certainly none of the tasting note style conversations, or quirky stories about the winery or the production, that you get in the UK.

All this, honestly, left me unimpressed.  If I'm spending a lot of money on a meal ... which, we all know, I am happy to do ... then I want the atmosphere to be as impressive as the food.  Soothe me, fascinate me, or give me a buzzy vibe that makes me feel that I'm in some exclusive spot with the cognoscenti.  The whole experience should be as special as the food, and I certainly can't say that about Sepia.

Our visit to Niche the week before in St. Louis remained the finest dining experience of the whole trip.  But our time in Chicago generated a healthy list of other honourable mentions, laid out below.

The Berghoff
Chicago's German classic, run by the same family since they opened in 1898 and claiming to be the oldest restaurant in town.  Sadly, they've modernised since my youth, opening up the old, wood-panelled bar so that it runs continuously into the restaurant and putting all sorts of non-German things on the menu.  If you want light food or nouvelle cuisine, go somewhere else.  Come here for fresh-baked pretzels with multiple mustards for dipping, wiener schnitzel, spaetzle, sauerbraten, potato salad and the own-brand beer, with seasonal varieties.  Those were all still as good as they used to be.

Kikuya Japanese Restaurant
On the edge of the University of Chicago Campus and a 10-minute walk from the Museum of Science and Industry, but clearly such a local secret that one of the regulars ... a professor from Roosevelt University ... struck up a conversation with us to discover how in the world we found it.  (TripAdvisor)  Tiny, humble place with fantastic sushi.  Obviously freshly cut and prepared by hand on order, with both traditional and the bigged-up, sauced American-style rolls.  Some of the best I've had in the States.

Harry Caray's Tavern, Navy Pier
Yes, it's a sports bar, looking like a thousand others across the States.  But the burgers tasted like they'd actually been shaped in that kitchen and were cooked to your preference, rather than to the enforced medium-well-so-you-can't-sue-us style so prevalent now across America.  My Santa Fe salad was heavy on the good stuff, rather than bulked out with cheap iceberg lettuce, and served in a size I could actually eat rather than sending wasteful extras back to the kitchen.  Great service with constant refills on the soft drinks.  Better than the average sports bar is a mini museum on the way to the bathrooms; St. Louis fans will be particularly impressed to see one of Stan Musial's jerseys.  (Caray was the Cardinals' broadcaster before he moved north to make his reputation with the Cubs.)

The University Club
Sadly, you can't eat here unless you're a member, or have a membership at a reciprocal club.  Or are with someone in those categories.  If you can get in, do.  A constantly changing menu with seasonal specials, top quality meat and fish, beautiful presentation and a great wine list.  Most of the year dinner is in the extraordinary neo-Gothic great hall, but in the summer you eat on the roof balcony with jaw dropping views of the city.  There's an extremely friendly and generous staff.  Dangerously so when if comes to the one behind the President's Bar, to which we retired after our meal to explore their small but respectable collection of armagnac and single malts.  We ate here two of our three nights and dollar-for-dollar, it delivered a better all-round fine dining experience than Sepia.

Tortas Frontera
Celebrity chef Rick Bayless delivers the best airport food I've had anywhere in the world.  Mexican
griddle-baked sandwiches filled with delicately seasoned south-of-the-border specialities like Cubana smoked pork loin, chipotle chicken and Yucatan pulled pork.  From meat sourced from organic producers listed on the menu.  No industrial, processed flavours here: everything tasted like it had been cooked slowly for hours over a wood fire by some wizened old woman named Juanita.  Pair that with hand-shaken margaritas made with house-infused flavoured tequilas.  All explained by a barman/server who clearly cared about the provenance of his ingredients and whether we liked it.  And conveniently located across from the BA departure gate.  Makes me kick myself I didn't plan far enough in advance for my Michelin experiment to take place at Bayless' starred Topolobampo.  Top of the list for the next visit...

Museums make Chicago one of the world's cultural capitals

One of the glorious truths of the human condition is that aspirational people lavish money on the arts.

Whether it's "barbarian" conquers of Egypt trying to be convincing as pharaoh, the Medicis moving
from banking to nobility or nouveau riche Americans trying to be accepted by the European aristocracy, history shows us that if you want to be taken seriously, you buy a lot of art, build grand structures and found some museums.

Take Bertha Palmer.  Her husband Potter made a vast fortune at the turn of the 20th century, first from the Marshall Field's department store, then from property investments and the huge luxury hotel in Chicago's loop that bears his name.  Bertha spent a lot of that money on a bunch of avant garde artists in Paris she quite fancied, but who didn't interest the French.  Eventually she gave her collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, establishing what would become ... in my, and many others', opinion ... the finest collection of impressionist art in the world.  Potter's early business partner Field, also rolling in pre-income-tax lucre, indulged his interests in the natural world a few blocks over by establishing his eponymous museum.

Just two of many examples of how the uncouth, rough-and-ready town that was early Chicago gave us the finest collection of museums in the United States outside of New York or Washington.  Museums that are, I am delighted to say, going from strength to strength.  Rather than resting on their laurels, they've all adapted to the modern age:  updating how you interact with collections, adding wings and facilities and establishing themselves as a complete "family days out".  (Except for one delightfully quirky exception, which I'll mention at the end.)

Let's start with the Art Institute.  Some of my earliest memories take place in this building, and it's so associated with great memories of my mother that, on this first visit since her death, I made it no further than the bottom of the grand staircase before I broke down for a little cry.  That blast of emotion past, I started on a 90-minute stroll through my highlights of the collection.  (Like most of the museums mentioned here, you could easily give the Institute a full day.  But with so much to see and our GoChicago cards covering admission to all, we did abbreviated sampler visits.)

The core of Old Masters is essentially unchanged, and offers one or two examples of most of the great names of the Western World.  My favourites here have always been a bit quirky, however; I needed to make my pilgrimage to four vast Hubert Robert canvases of imagined classical ruins and a medieval Spanish altarpiece of a noble St. George impaling an unthreatening little dragon who looks like a labrador-komodo dragon cross.  The gallery around the top of the grand staircase offers a collection of decorative bits rescued from Chicago buildings long-gone, proving that the early 20th-century dedication to the arts included architecture, and was city-wide.  Walk to the back of the museum and that's illustrated in full by Adler and Sullivan's magnificent Arts & Crafts trading room from the old Chicago Stock Exchange, moved here in full when the original building was demolished.  You get to pass by Chagall's famous stained glass windows on the way.

There's a whole new wing since my day, bringing the museum's total area up to one million square feet and making it biggest art museum in the USA after the Met in New York.  With limited time we didn't head into the new wing (modern art ... never high on my priority list), but I did notice what that extra room did for the rest of the collection.  With room to spread out, the Impressionists now fill all the galleries on the upper floor of the bridge linking original and new buildings; a neat positioning both figuratively and literally as they link old to new.  The bottom level of that bridge, once a dark and narrow province of arms and armour, has now been opened up with windows and filled with Indian and Asian art.  Adding this new stuff (at least, I don't remember any of it, and assume it was in storage somewhere) to the familiar galleries on China and Japan, this must be one of the best Oriental collections in America.  The armour now has its own gallery, where I think there's less of it, but it's all the finest pieces beautifully displayed.  And now with the benefit of a free standing cube gallery-within-a-gallery of Renaissance jewellery to show off similar artistic skills, but in miniature.  (I don't remember any of this stuff, either.)

Over at Shedd Aquarium, there's more than a little new stuff ... it's a revolution.  My sorority used to host a casino night fund raiser here every year (Pisces and Dices; get it?), so I knew it well.  When last I visited they'd just gotten a couple of Beluga whales and built a lovely tank on the back end of the place

with a glass wall, so you had the illusion they were swimming in Lake Michigan.  And there was a cool new coral reef in the centre of the building.  That's all old hat now.  The Beluga tanks have expanded into a vast, glass-enclosed area (still with the fabulous views of the lake) now landscaped like the Pacific Northwest and filled with an army of fabulous animals.  Seals, sea lions, otters, and downstairs a great penguin experience with multiple varieties zipping about like torpedoes.  Here, and throughout most of the exhibits, the cases are modelled to reflect the animals' native environment, with water coming half way up the glass, so you have a great perspective of being both under and on top of the water.

There are wonderful new exhibits on the Amazon rain forest and the coral reefs of Southeast Asia, both with that naturalistic approach so you are totally immersed in the environment.  They've even landscaped the outside, making one of the prettiest gardens in Chicago.  The coral reef seems a bit passé these days, to be honest.  All these additions make it the largest indoor aquarium in the world, with more than 8000 animals.  And they've done a fabulous job reaching out to children, with shows and added experiences (for an extra fee) like touching a stingray.  These days, if I had little ones in tow, Shedd would be my first stop.

Which was never the case in the old days, when the kid magnet was always the Museum of Science and Industry.  It's still fabulous, of course, and like the Shedd they've invested and expanded heavily.  Here, the most noticeable additions since the old days are an impressive entrance hall which gives more intuitive access to the whole museum; a bit like the pyramid at the Louvre.  And an entire wing devoted to U-505, a German sub captured in World War II.  In my childhood the old hulk sat on a concrete slab outside the building; you saw it rusting beyond the windows as you headed for the model farm to watch baby chickens hatch, or Coleen Moore's dollhouse.  (The latter ... a 1930s film star's scale model of a fantasy castle right out of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler ... is a rather bizarre inclusion in a science museum but, unsurprisingly, one of my favourite displays.)

They have now done the old sub justice, moving it indoors, completely restoring it and building a whole dedicated mini-museum around it.  Displays tell the story of the daring capture, the remarkable effort to get it to Chicago, and the larger context of the war and the importance of capturing the enemy's kit.  There's an enigma machine and stuff on code breaking here.  You can actually tour the inside of the sub now, but this is an additional fee and you have to book early.  If you want to get in, either go early or prepare to hang about for many hours.  We skipped it, but the outside of the boat and the museum displays were so fascinating we were perfectly satisfied.

Elsewhere, most of the old displays are still here but enhanced for the digital age with more to touch and explore.  The old coal mine is another extra charge experience, but the air and space wing still offers plenty to gawp at as part of general admission.  Particularly impressive for a Midwesterner was the artificial tornado generated in a tube stretching the height of the main hall.  Across the aisle the massive train set is still there, complete with mountains and farms, but they've added a scale model of Chicago to one side.

The other honeypot for the under 10s is the Field Museum, charitable establishment of the department store magnate.  Of the four major museums mentioned here, this one seemed to have changed the least. The grand, open great hall is still dominated by its mastadons and a dinosaur skeleton, though I learned it's a different one than in my youth.  Hadn't noticed.  For our quick dip, we headed for the animals of the world section.  These glass cases with their taxidermised animals in dioramas of their native

environments haven't changed at all.  But I have.  After seeing most of the African animals shown here in the wild, I realise what pale and slightly mangy representations these long-dead versions are.  It is still, however, a fun way to explore the planet's fauna.  The educational labels on the side are much improved, making it all a game for the kids.

We spent some time in the excellent American Indian displays before heading upstairs for the room of jewels, which is much brighter and more artfully displayed since my day.  Living within striking distance of the British Museum and its amazing Egyptian collection, we didn't bother with the noteworthy Egyptian stuff here, but it remains one of the best gatherings in the States.

Our final museum was an aberration to almost everything I've said above.  The Oriental Institute wasn't on our GoChicago Card, isn't designed for children and doesn't appear to have changed a bit since its establishment in 1919.  This small museum sits in the middle of the University of Chicago and is associated with the renowned archeology programme there.  In the early 20th century, its professors led major discoveries across the Near East, and this small but beautifully formed collection is a treasure trove of loot from cities of legend.  There's a good Egyptian collection here as well, but it's the stuff from places like Nineveh, Babylon, Sumer, Ur and Meggido that's both impressive and unique to most American museums.  Agriculture, writing, law, art, the whole urban experience ... it all came out of the fertile plans around the Tigris and Euphrates.  Sadly, it's a region primarily associated with war, terrorism and religious conflict now.  The Institute reminds you that once, not so long ago, it was known for exquisite artefacts and the birthplace of civilisation.

Here, in fact, is where the museum has changed.  Down in the basement you'll find a little exhibit on the sack of the museum in Baghdad.  Sadly, the devastation of recent years means that what's now at the institute is arguably the most comprehensive collection in the world on this topic.  And, let's face it, you're unlikely to get to any of the original sites in the foreseeable future given the political situation.  So come here, stand before the human-headed winged bull from Khorsabad, be intimidated ... as Sargon meant you to be ... by the larger-than-life procession of courtiers from his throne room, and remember the wonders that once existed in that part of the world.

Iran and Iraq, the Amazon rain forest, the African veldt, the drawing rooms of 18th century Europe.  Chicago's museums take you to all of these places, without ever leaving the shores of Lake Michigan.  It was in these places that my hunger to see the world started.  I'm confident they'll be triggering intellectual wonder and a desire to explore for generations to come.

A cleaner, brighter Chicago is even better than I remembered

Chicago calls itself "The Second City"; a hangover from the days when it was indeed the greatest American metropolis after New York.  Growing up, it was certainly my second city.

As the cultural hub of the Midwest, its museums and architecture exerted a gravitational pull over 300
miles of corn fields several times a year.  We went Christmas shopping there every winter, gawping in delight at Marshall Fields' windows and eating lunch in the Walnut Room just like the natives.  My mother took her AP History of Art classes on a museum blitz every February; by the age of 13 I could probably give a guided tour of the Art Institute's highlights as well as most adults.  Summer offered a lake and beaches reminiscent of the the seaside, but much closer.  And, of course, there was university. Four years as an undergraduate in suburban Evanston, a year in grad school studying at the downtown campus and covering the arts and legal beats in the loop.  With that background, I was confident I knew Chicago.

How wrong I was.

This is not the city of my youth.  Sure, all the major landmarks are still there.  But they're a lot cleaner.  And the urban space around them has changed.  It's brighter, tidier, better maintained.  There are new parks, major new pieces of public art, new extensions on the museums and whole new areas of town. Clusters of beautiful skyscrapers, designed with Chicago's usual attention to innovative architecture, stand in districts that were industrial wasteland in my day.  I've always told Europeans this was a better city to visit than the usual coastal suspects, and today it's even more true.  There's a prosperous, modern buzz that sits comfortably alongside the history and culture.

Our home for four nights was The University Club.  Magnificently located on Michigan Avenue at Monroe, overlooking the Art Institute (new wing opened, 2009) and Millennium Park (opened 2004), it's decidedly not new (opened 1909).  A 12-story gothic-styled tower, it's characteristic of the mix of brash new money and respect for tradition that characterised the town in those days.  Built as a private club for university graduates (far rarer then than now), the building combined modern technology and comforts with the mullioned windows, gothic arches, heraldry, stained glass, massive fireplaces and ornate woodwork that whispered of Oxford, Cambridge, tradition and sophistication.  It was a trend-setter for a style that would stay popular for decades:  the Tribune Tower up Michigan Avenue and Deering Library at Northwestern are direct descendants.

There's a great hall worthy of a medieval palace, with stunning views over the lakefront and a particularly nice clock with Northwestern's seal as its face.  An equally traditional library with the same view is a floor below.  There are bars, other restaurants, a pool in the basement and helpful staff on the front desk.  The highlight for us was the seasonal restaurant on the roof balcony, where we dined on beautifully presented, sophisticated food on two balmy nights, overlooking the lights of the city and the crowds in the park below.  There were also several floors of hotel rooms, where we could book space thanks to a reciprocal agreement with our club in London.  A wonderful experience, far less expensive than an equivalent hotel. I now understand the magic of reciprocals and will be starting with our partner list when researching lodging for all future urban breaks.

Our plan was for three concentrated days of sightseeing, sandwiched between fairly relaxed arrival and departure days.  We bought Go Chicago cards to take the stress out of this process.  At first, US$123 per person for three days seemed expensive.  But my head was still in the '80s.  Admission prices to Chicago attractions are steep, and if you see two or three things a day you're likely to come out ahead.  In addition, the card allows you to jump several queues and pop into places you might not prioritise if you were doing considering attractions on price alone.  (We never, for example, would have paid $29 to go into Shedd Aquarium under our own steam, but being able to duck in at will was great.)

The card covers most of the centrally-located highlights.  The Gray Line bus tour ($30 without the card), good for hopping on and off for two days, left from in front of the Club and covered major sights along the coast from Soldiers' Field (with its new, modernistic stands inserted into the original architectural frame) on the south to Navy Pier (completely renovated since my day) on the north.  Given the stunning weather, riding around on the top of an open double decker bus was a delight, but the information imparted by the guides was variable.  We encountered one who was good, another who was so awful ... and inaccurate ... we had to get off the bus rather than listen to him.  Far better was the architecture tour by boat up the Chicago River ($35), with a guide who was both amusing and professorial in his expertise.

We went to the observation deck of the John Hancock building ($28), which is a stunning view but you don't get much else for your money, so good to have it included.  But mostly, we used the card for the museums, which have admissions prices that reminded us of just how blessed we are in London.  In addition to the aquarium, there's the Art Institute charging $23, the Field Museum at $25 and Science and Industry at $27.  Interestingly, most of these museums now seem to market and price themselves like entertainment venues, branding different parts as "experiences" and charging on a sliding scale depending on how much you want to experience.  But of that, more to come in my museum entry.

We also spent a fair amount of time on leisurely dining, hanging about the club and sleeping in.  All that a holiday should be.  Next ... a closer look at the dining.

In other St. Louis dining delights: Schneithorst's redeems itself, Vin de Set slips and Spencer's satisfies

It wasn't all Americana and barbecues.  We did let The Englishman out to experience a few more elegant delights.

There was a do in a mansion in Huntleigh Estates.  High school classmate.  Sprawling place in verdant grounds, tastefully decorated in the most traditional of styles.  Bustling staff of caterers circulating hors d'oeuvres from a kitchen the size of our entire ground floor.  Well-maintained middle aged folks (it was a 50th birthday party) still wearing the same Lilly Pulizer print sundresses, Brooks Brothers madras plaid bermudas, needlepoint belts and monogrammed accessories they wore in high school.  The Englishman was both horrified and fascinated by St. Louis fashion.  Everyone clustered around an outdoor bar complete with embedded flat screen TV and proper beer taps next to an outdoor sitting room and stone fireplace.  It was pretty much my high school scene, but we were partying on the main floor rather than being limited to the basement.


Another party at my "second parents" in Chesterfield, in whose basement I practically lived.  Now we were setting out elegant table decor under a tent beside a perennial garden worthy of an English manor, establishing the bar and supervising the caterers for a 50th wedding anniversary party.  Not quite so palatial, but still elegant and sophisticated enough to debunk any myth of backwards good-old-boys from the hinterlands.  Though we certainly had a taste of the real Midwest when a hail storm blew through our sunny day and wiped out both the bar and the table settings minutes before the guests arrived.  Thanks to our English weather resilience, a crack team of helpers and American tumble driers, we had the tent re-set before the food was out.

On the restaurant scene, our second upscale dining outing (after the extraordinary Niche) was Vin de Set.  I'd been here on a business dinner a few years before and was mightily impressed by the French-inspired food and terrific wine list served on a wide roof garden with clear views of the St. Louis arch.  My plan:  A chance to see the big St. Louis fireworks display without having to deal with the crowds.  On this front, we succeeded.  And while not quite as impressive as sitting in the park beneath the arch and seeing the rockets' red (and blue, and green, and yellow) glare reflect off its steel surface, watching from a distance with a glass of wine in your hand and no risk of getting crushed on the way back to the car was a fine evolution.

The restaurant, however, didn't impress me as much as last time.  No drastic complaints, but nothing to dazzle. Most of us had steak and those all came out to the levels ordered. Shared appetisers of sea scallops on polenta were good, but extremely expensive; what they call a large scallop in the Midwest is a lot smaller that the similarly defined back in England. Steak tartare was interesting, served as a make-your-own plate with capers, red onions, sauce, etc. piled separately for you to combine with the beef; the dice on the meat was a bit too hearty both for delicacy of taste and ability to eat neatly. We ended with a shared cheese plate (good-sized slices and a nice variety of accompaniments) and a chocolate souffle roulade. Not sure where the souffle was on this; it was a good but completely average roulade only a step or two above a packaged, store-bought version.

The real problem was with the service. The waitress didn't seem to know much about what she was serving and was very forgetful. She'd drift off for long periods. At one point we grabbed another waiter to order wine and, when she learned of this, was visibly irritated with us. She got a bit more cheerful at the end ... when we came close to tipping time ... but this certainly wasn't the service I expect in American restaurants, where they're now expecting you to tip 18% to 20%. (We gave her an old-fashioned 15. In England, she'd be lucky to get 10.)

Performing far better than its last encounter was Schneithorst's.  For several generations a German restaurant decked out like a Bavarian woodcarver's shop, they modernised about a decade ago by tearing down the old place, giving half of the space over to a strip mall and rebuilding as a casual beer cellar and cafe with an open-air beer garden on the rafters above.  The story of Piers' last visit, when Piers irritated an already-grumpy waitress by insisting on his beer in an un-iced glass.  It has become one of his favourite why-Americans-can't-do-beer-properly stories.  A cheerful waiter named Zak and the fact that they only use plastic cups in the beer garden saved the day.  The Englishman could now concentrate on the fact that Schneithorst's actually has a very respectable beer menu, and the plastic cups brought it out at the right temperature.  Young Zak even scrambled downstairs to get one brew not stocked upstairs, and threw it in for free because of the inconvenience.  And the food was good, too.

But we couldn't stay away from Americana for too long.  Three of our most enjoyable comfort food experiences were within walking distance of our local digs in downtown Kirkwood.  The Kirkwood Custard Station is almost as good as Ted Drewes, but without the drive and the crowds.  And with the benefit of a little stroll around the historic station and its gardens while you eat your ice cream.  A chat with the train spotters reveals one of the odder similarities between America and Britain.  Who could have imagined such an odd habit could exist on both sides of the pond?

McArthur's Bakery produces sweet treats in the finest St. Louis tradition.  Far too sweet for The Englishman, but the cherry danish ("But those aren't Danish!", pointed out the also Half-Dane) were enough to make me very happy.

And no visitor should leave Kirkwood without breakfast at Spencer's Diner.  A beautiful little bit of the late '40s preserved to perfection, dishing up eggs, hash browns, pancakes and bottomless cups of coffee at low prices with magnificent service.  If you dare, have the eggs slathered with beef chilli.  My friend Mike rolled his eyes in delight.  I was happier with chocolate chip pancakes.  After Vin de Set and Niche, we were all happier with the bill.

St. Louis can do upscale elegance, and affordable comfort food.  Shame we've yet to find a place that does both.  The quest continues...

The Englishman negotiates rivers of beer, baseball and BBQ with dignity

My husband is a tremendously good sport.  This was his first worry-free trip to my home town (the others were tied to my mother's death), so the extended family and I decided to show him a particularly Midwestern good time.  We would, we decided, dip him in all the Americana one week could bear.

We probably overdid it.  Certainly no typical week in my past has featured quite that much saturated fat, nor that amount of country music.  But nobody could resist toying with The Englishman.  And it was Fourth of July week.

The most memorable day was a road trip to Hannibal, Missouri.  We were heading for National Tom Sawyer Days, billed on the town's website as a big, exciting, Mark Twain-themed festival.  On arrival, it was a small strip of carnival rides at the end of town.  Main Street didn't seem particularly busy, its strip of quaint, 19th-century brick buildings filled with cafes and gift shops ... but not many people.  Beer tents and stages were still in set-up mode; clearly there was more activity scheduled the next day.


There's a short strip of clapper-boarded old buildings in the centre of this stretch, with plaques telling you this was the house of the girl who inspired Becky Thatcher, here's the pharmacy the young Twain lived over, and here's a model of the fence Tom persuaded his mates to paint for him.  Complete with bucket of whitewash for your photo opportunity.  The Englishman grudgingly obliged.


Just above this is the Mark Twain Diner, a humble place dishing out excellent burgers and home made root beer by locals who, I suspect, have never been further than Chicago or St. Louis.  Piers was wildly exotic.


It was all somewhat charming but, truth be told, it was worth no more than a 15-minute sightseeing stroll after lunch.  Add another five, perhaps, to climb to the top of the levee to marvel that the Mississippi was unusually high for this late in the year.  (This accompanied, incongruously, by a guy strolling back and forth on the grassy bank practicing Scottish tunes, badly, on bagpipes.)


It would have been a monumental bust had Hannibal been our only objective.  But the point of the day was the journey, not the destination.  We'd headed up the Great River Road and cut across the fertile flood plains fed by the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers.  The scenery is beautiful in its gentle way, with fields of nodding young corn surrounding humble farmsteads with collapsing old barns and shiny modern grain silos.  Limestone bluffs mark the edges of river valleys, from which you can spot eagles circling if you look sharp.  Every so often you cut through a tiny town with a few churches and a gas station.  Nothing has changed out here since I was a girl.


In fact, this drive was a wander through the back country of my youth.  Memories were gilded by the sun pouring through the open top of Mike's jeep, country music blaring on the radio.
First stop: Alton.  Once a major point for loading grain barges, just below a series of locks where the Mississippi and the Missouri meet, it's the traditional start of the prettiest part of the Great River Road above St. Louis.  Today it's perhaps most notable for Fast Eddie's BonAir, a bar that's been in continuous operation since Anheuser Busch (the man, not the company) opened the place in 1921.


You enter through the original art deco portal and emerge into a dark '50s style bar.  Beyond that is an enormous covered outdoor courtyard.  Service is fast and friendly and it's famous for ridiculously cheap burgers and boiled shrimp.  It was still early, however, so we only paused for drinks.


Then north along a strikingly beautiful part of the Mississippi, so wide at Portage des Sioux, where the Missouri joins, that it's dotted with forested islands and you'd swear you were looking at a lake.


The Piasa Bird, an ancient native American cliff painting of a dragon-like creature, still adorns the bluffs here, though today it's a modern recreation.  It was always the sign we were nearing Pere Marquette State Park, where the staff in the 1920s WPA-built lodge used to serve us fried chicken Sunday lunches that we'd walk off on the hiking trails through the wooded bluffs.  The park and lodge are still there, though I can't vouch for the chicken these days.  Though it was a great cue to tee up the Zac Brown Band's Chicken Fried on the iPhone, perhaps the most recent country music anthem to Americana and one bound to make The Englishman wince as the rest of us bellowed along with the chorus.


Eventually the road to Hannibal turns away from the Mississippi and into broad stretches of rolling farmland, before crossing the smaller Illinois river.  Just up from the crossing is the tiny town of Kampsville, population 302, which on that day had hung out banners welcoming a local boy home from service in Afghanistan.  My husband isn't really a complete stranger to small town America, since these places tend to supply the American soldiers he once worked with.



More than 30 years before, I had spent two summers here on archeology camp with Northwestern University.  Heat, mud and boredom knocked the archeology bug out of me, but I still have fond memories of sitting in the riverside park here, drinking a purloined beer (I was under age) and watching the little car ferry travel to and fro.


Half an hour on from Kampsville we skirted the town limits of Quincy, where another high school adventure had me on yearbook camp at the local college.  I was back in 1987 as part of my newspaper management programme in graduate school, advising the Quincy Herald Whig  on how to raise circulation with readers across the river in Hannibal.  (More Cardinals coverage, we said.)  And thus to Hannibal itself, which doesn't appear to have changed at all in 27 years, except for higher prices in the Mark Twain Diner.

The next day, back in St. Louis, we put The Englishman through a proper home-town July 4th.  Ribs smoking for five hours, copious quantities of beer, a bit of Springsteen.  An outing to the lazy river at the Kirkwood community pool for me, while he stayed in a shady spot by the bbq with chef Mike.  The family kept an amusing line of banter going on America's lucky escape from the UK, and laid out Union Jack paper napkins to rub the point in.  Piers answered with John Cleese's famous revocation of independence.  Later, off to the Kirkwood community fireworks for the logical conclusion of the day.  More beer, some ice cream, competitive singing of My Country 'Tis of Thee against God Save the Queen.  I had to help my husband out by singing the latter.

The last bit of requisite Americana, of course:  baseball.  We caught the Cardinals against the Marlins on the Sunday.  A win, a gentle breeze and temperatures just slightly below normal making a day game tolerable.  (Although the draining heat and humidity typical of St. Louis was on its way back.)  The Englishman demonstrated a growing expertise in the game, bought two new Cards caps and looked like a local by the time he was pounding post-game Anheuser Busch products straight out of the can at Paddy O's sports bar.

God bless America.  And God bless The Englishman willing to embrace the spirit of the Midwest.  Even though he refused to let me snap a photo of him consuming tinned Cheese Whiz on a triscuit.  That, evidently, was an indignity too far.

There are stars hiding in this St. Louis Niche

In Europe, it's not unusual to find Michelin-starred restaurants nestled in charming villages off the beaten track.  Not so much so in the States, where fine dining has generally been the preserve of a handful of large cities.  At least that was my perception until last night, when my home town hit a dining ball out of the culinary ballpark.  Just a week ago I ate at the double-Michelin starred Hibiscus in London, and I can assure you that St. Louis' Niche is a superior restaurant.  And half the price.

Let's start with the benchmark.  Claude Bosi's Hibiscus featured in this blog three years ago when the Northwestern girls chose it to cheer up the recession-challenged Lisa, who was at the end of her patience trying to find a new job.  From the depths of that enforced career break she's risen to the heights of partnership at her new firm, and we thought a return to Hibiscus created a fitting full circle.

Bosi's still an assured master of his game, with the evening featuring delicate, French-inspired classics delivered by charming servers, matched with interesting wines.  The weekday dining deals of our early visit are long gone, however.  The six course tasting menu with matching wine flight, plus coffee and the bottle of champagne we started with, rocketed the per-person cost to a stratopheric total not far off what I would have made in a whole fortnight in my first job.  

I wish I could tell you I felt it was great value for money but, even before the St. Louis comparison, I was feeling underwhelmed.  It was an impressive start.   The menu was a bingo-card style listing of ingredients that we were invited to volunteer likes and dislikes against, then the chef crafts your dinner from there.  The amuse bouche of a shot glass of cold cucumber soup topped with elderflower froth was an inspired pairing, and the mackerel two ways draped in strawberry sauce vierge was a brilliant innovation.  After that, however, everything was delicious, but nothing dazzled.  Broad bean and prawn ravioli, turbot with brown butter sauce, duck breast with kumquat and chili sauce.  Wine pairings were good but occasionally off; the red with the duck was far too thin and sharp to carry the rich dish.  I don't question that this is Michelin-starred dining, but of the wealth of starred restaurants in the UK, my return to Hibiscus didn't impress me enough to favour it over many others.

Niche, on the other hand, will be on my list for every future visit to St. Louis.  It delivered, in fact, one of the 10 best fine dining meals I've had since this blog's inception.  Chef/owner Gerard Craft has garnered a fair amount of publicity in national food and wine magazines and has been credited with "turning the St. Louis food scene on its head."  This was certainly a long stretch from the toasted ravioli, BBQ pork and sugar-charged bakery goods that defined the city of my youth.

That was obvious from the first sip:  oak tea flavoured with smoked pork fat and lemon.  And the first bite, the coxinha:  A quail egg-sized cheese croquette of Brazilian cheese, breaded in crispy chicken fat, served with a cocktail of Hendricks, aperol and rose lillet.  A lemon maple egg custard spiked with shitake mushrooms, topped with glistening bonito pearls, served in a perfectly hollowed egg shell followed.  Three courses and my jaw was already dropping in amazement.  Not just that I was getting this kind of fare in St. Louis, but that every course brought innovations I hadn't encountered in any European dining.  

More amazing courses followed thick and fast, every one worthy of note.  Soft and airy balls of cheese bread served with delicate pickles and shavings of country ham.  A chilled pea soup ladled over sour
ed oat granola, delivering a playful contrast of sharp and smooth flavours, liquid and crunchy textures.  Another soup-like dish, this one individual, sweet Brussels sprout leaves arranged like a flower on a pillow of ricotta and caraway, then drizzled with a smoked trout broth that puddled in each leaf.  Next a crayfish roll on griddled rye enlivened with apple, celery, nasturtium leaves and a shard of Old Bay "glass" ... sugar set with the iconic spice.  All those savoury dishes led up to a perfect, simple round of ribeye with a fruity, luscious red wine.  

Following in the footsteps of all fine dining establishments came multiple desserts.  First an alcoholic iced lolly you popped up from its plastic sleeve, dropping us all back to summer circa 1972.  Palate cleansed, on to crunchy honeycomb with lime curd and raspberries, dotted with lemon verbena leaves.  Finally the sweet peas appeared again, this time as ice cream with a tiny financier cake, strawberries and hibiscus.

All of this was served with elegance, precision and presentation worthy of any high end European restaurant.  Sitting at the chef's table ... four counter seats next to the pass, overlooking the open kitchen ... enhanced our experience.  The whole team was happy to chat and able to multi-task, plating up whilst explaining details about preparation and comparing favourite dining experiences.  It was, frankly, the chef's table experience I've always wanted in London, but hadn't yet managed.

In fact, there were only three things that told me I wasn't in a British Michelin-starred establishment.  1. The merry, casual din.  Fine dining at home is rarely this informal and never this loud.  2.  The wine presentation.  All excellent wines, but poured without ceremony and without the detailed explanations that a European sommelier would normally do.  (That, I missed.)  3.  The price.  $95 for a 10 course tasting menu, $55 for wine pairings.

British friends, that is 98GBP all in.  Less than half of what I paid for that much lauded and inferior meal at Hibiscus.  And, frankly, what I bet many of you have paid for a three-course dinner with plenty of wine at your local gastropub.  I keep telling you people you need to visit the Midwest.  Here's another reason why.