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Happy Holidays, everyone!

Cheryl has had a stomachache and a stiff neck all week, which she attributed to the stress of selling the diner building on Tuesday and having an infant whose teeth inconveniently try to emerge from her gums between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Then she realized that this is the week before Christmas and compared to past years, she’s actually quite relaxed and feeling good.

That could be because she and Paul made an executive decision to skip, for this one year, baking Christmas cookies and stollen. This is something we do every year, and Sophie did every year when she was alive, with the help of all the family members she could corral. It started with making cookies for family and friends and vendors. A few years ago we decided, since we were making cookies anyway, that we should offer them for sale. Last year, even though Cheryl was 8 months pregnant, we starting taking orders after Thanksgiving.

To our surprise, hundreds of orders poured in (a typical order: 90 boxes tied with ribbons for Friday pickup.) We just decided that this year we would skip it rather than try to figure out when we could fit 30 or 40 hours of straight baking into our already hectic schedules.

The best present we could ever get came from Paul’s family, who held a conference without us and decided it might be fun this year to have Christmas at The Saratoga rather than at his sister’s house in Chichester (two hours to the south.) This act of extreme generosity by our family members means that even though we will be serving on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we will get to spend time with our children and family rather than driving two hours to spend a couple of conscious hours on Christmas morning watching our children enjoy themselves before driving two hours back to serve Christmas dinner.

We’ve reserved a couple of adjoining hotel suites and plan to trim our Christmas tree as we always have on Christmas Eve, in the private dining room, after another family finishes their Christmas Eve dinner in there around 4:30. Santa Claus is expected to descend the chimney in the restaurant’s fireplace and leave presents under the tree for the children, the oldest of whom, 13-year-old Annarose, is rather excited by the idea of spending Christmas in a hotel with an indoor swimming pool.

Grandpa Joseph is doing his part to make sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously during the festivities. In spite of the fact that he has been charged with delivering the live Christmas tree for Christmas Eve, he added a whimsical flourish to the tradition Wednesday, by delivering an artificial Christmas tree to the restaurant’s dining room held up by a large stuffed black bear. It’s as if he’s daring us to be sticklers for tradition when clearly, we’re reinventing the holiday in a new and unusual way.

After the real estate closing Tuesday, Cheryl and Paul walked hand in hand over to Adirondack Trust to deposit what was left over after we paid off the mortgage and realized that we had a babysitter and people covering us at the restaurant and could sit down, for the first time in a year, and have lunch together. Then we decided to really be crazy, wild kids and do a little Christmas shopping without the children in tow.

Since we never go shopping, a fair number of the things we found were solutions to problems at the restaurant. Who knew they made battery operated Christmas tree lights?

This, of course, presented another problem the following day when Cheryl decided what those battery operated lights would be good for:
making a freestanding lamp for an hors d’oeuvres table in a dark corner of the restauarant that doesn’t have any electrical outlets.
(That’s actually a pretty fair description of most of the corners of the restaurant. In spite of our heckling throughout the construction process, somehow we managed to have a 100-seat dining room with only two outlets on the lower floor and and no outlets on the upper floor when the doors to the private dining room are closed. (There are at least four outlets in the private dining room, but you can’t get to them from the bar when the doors are closed for a private party.)

So anyway, Cheryl decided that a tall glass vase filled with a half- dozen pomegranates and a string of LED lights would make a great table decoration. But when she got it assembled, it didn’t look right, so she found herself, a few days before Christmas, making an 'emergency glass marble' run to Wilton, which has to be second only to Crossgates Mall for the sheer unpleasantness of the drive during the holiday season. There are only about five stoplights between our restaurant and the craft store in Wilton, but after 4 p.m. you can be guaranteed to wait at each of them at least three times before getting though this time of year. But the pomegranate lamp did turn out kind of cool.

You’d think when you’d been serving something for 37 years, you could agreed on how to spell it. Cheryl and Paul have long and consistently spelled Sophie’s special veal cutlet dish cooked in cream and lemon “scallopine.” It makes perfect sense. The word refers to scallop shell shape of the meat.
We've never questioned the spelling because it’s always on our menu.
But Paul dropped it from the menu for a couple of days because he didn’t have time to pound the veal. Our server Erica was typing up the dinner menu the night it reappeared, and had to look the word up in the Food Lover’s Companion to make sure she spelled it right. She copied Scaloppine from the book, but it didn’t look right, so she checked the lunch menu. It was spelled scallopine there, and she concluded that now we had to reprint all the lunch menus to correct the mispelling.

Cheryl proceeded to defend her rather logical, elegant-looking spelling. but she was nowhere near the rack of reference books. She did have a computer at hand, so she Googled “scallopine” and got dozens of hits.

Erica backed down, but Cheryl, as a former journalist, knows you can’t take most of what you read on the Internet as authoritative sourcing. So she Googled “scaloppine” and got just as many hits. A rather compelling one from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, points out that the Italians spell scaloppina and scaloppa with one “L” and two “p’s” and the French spell “escalope”
with the same distribution of consonants. Although if we’re going to be true to the English language’s romantic roots, American Heritage should not spell “fillet” with two “L’s” when trying to explain what an escalope is.

The Free Dictionary by Farlex, whatever that is, rather democratically spells the word both ways, without choosing a preferred version.

For those of you still wondering what to do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Chez Sophie will be open on those holidays for the first time in its 37 year history. We will begin serving dinner at 2 p.m. each day, a five-course meal that includes 1. appetizer (your choice of a plateau de fruits de mer, terrine of foie gras, Provençal vegetarian sampler, or cadeaux d'escargots.) 2. Christmas consommé 3. entree (your choice of roast Christmas goose with quince chutney and Burgundy sauce, baked ham with a sauce of fresh cherries, Dover sole Cardinale, or vegetarian cassoulet) 4. winter salad of Belgian endive, watercress and pomegranite 5. dessert (your choice of apricot, quince and kumquat tart, crème brûlée, chocolate hazelnut tort or a selection of fine cheeses)

Our regular à la carte menu will not be offered.

$75 per person, plus tax and gratuity
$25 for children under 12

Reservations recommended
The last dinner reservation will be accepted at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve and 7 p.m. on Christmas night

Chez Sophie will be serving brunch Sunday and Monday of that week from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. The Saratoga is offering rooms to Chez Sophie guests at a discounted rate of $79 per night.

We are also gearing up for New Year's Eve, with two fabulous dinner options for revelers.
Early diners (seated at 5, 5:30, 6 and 6:30 p.m.) will have their choice to start of oysters on the halfshell with shallot mignonette or terrine de foie gras. The second course will be a black and white soup of imperial black rice with shallot cream. The third course will be a choice of Chateaubriand, seared breast of goose or fish. The fourth course will be a winter salad of blood oranges, grana, frisée, and almonds. The final course will be a choice of chocolate soup with mascarpone swirl and fried dessert pasta (the black and white soup number 2) or gateau citré, an orange layer cake made with kumquats and a lemon buttercream.
This prix fixe five-course menu includes a glass of Champagne and is priced at $75 per person, plus tax and gratuity.

The late-night New Year's Eve party features a nine-course menu, with seatings at 8, 8:30, 9 and 9:30 p.m. Jazz Pianist Cole Broderick will start playing at 8 p.m., and there have been some requests to move the chairs from in front of the fireplace later in the evening to allow dancing.
Diners will start with and amuse guele of escargots with Pernod butter and cream in puff pastry, followed by their choice of oysters on the halfshell with shallot mignonette or terrine de foie gras.
Next will be the black and white soup of imperial black rice with shallot cream. The fourth course will be a terrine of legumes or seared venison. Next comes passion fruit sorbet, then a choice of Chateaubriand, seared breast of goose or fish. The winter salad of blood oranges, grana, frisée, and almonds follows, with a selection of cheese close behind. The meal will end with a choice of chocolate soup with mascarpone swirl and fried dessert pasta (the black and white soup number 2) or gateau citré, an orange layer cake made with kumquats and a lemon buttercream. The cost, which includes a midnight Champagne toast, is $125 per person, plus tax and gratuity.

Cheryl and Paul will also be devising their annual prix fixe wine menu with tasting notes and suggested pairings, a tremendous bargain at $65, which allows diners to sample up to 12 different wines in what ever order they choose. The full wine list and bar will also be available.

Double rooms at The Saratoga will be offered to Chez Sophie customers at a discounted rate of $199 per night.
Reservations required with credit card confirmation 518.583.3538.

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday through Friday night, and during Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
(barring special events that preclude live music.)
Cost: No cover charge

Tango Class
January 10th
Tango instructors Diane Lachtrupp and Johnny Martinez will offer a free tango class to Chez Sophie customers at 8:30, with open dancing afterwards. We plan to repeat this feature on the second Wednesday of each month. For those who would like to dine first before dancing, our regular menu is offered until 9 p.m. The bar menu is available until 10 p.m. and the bar will be open for at least a couple of hours after that. For more information about local classes by Diane and Johnny, see the Saratoga Savoy website at http://www.saratogasavoy.com/files/instructors.html
Cost: No cover charge

Tasting menus
Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu available each night. The menus are designed based on the best and most creative dishes Chef Paul K. Parker is serving each evening. We will pair wines for you or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $75 per person, plus tax and tip. Everyone at the table must partake in the tasting menu

If you're feeling less impromptu, you can call ahead to arrange a special tasting menu with the number of courses and wine pairings designed to suit your capacity, dietary restrictions and budget.
Tasting menus arranged in advance will be printed on commemorative vellum scrolls personalized with the name of the host or the reason for the event.
Cost: $50 to $200, depending on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests Call Cheryl to make arrangements 518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered Tuesday, December 26 through Thursday, December 28

$30 per person
includes your choice of soup or salad, a special entree, selected desserts or a cheese course and coffee, tea or espresso.

This week's special entree:
pasta with clam sauce

Notes on Nico and Léo:

Things we never thought we’d hear ourselves say when we were young and single: “Nico, please stop writing on your sister’s head.”
“Léo, please don’t pull your brother’s hair.”
"I know the dog is eating the cranberries, but that doesn't mean they're good for her."
“Well Nico, I don’t think she realized it was poop when she rubbed it on her face.”

We won’t say that Léo is walking yet, but she is determinedly making unassisted steps (three at a time so far before she topples.) Her brother walked (and began crawling) at nine months, and that was a true nightmare, so we’re grateful that she’s taking her time. She has been crawling since she was five months old, so it’s not as if she’s lazy. Nico spent his first three months upright barreling at high speeds into tables because he was too young to understand that there was anything above his eyes (like a forehead.) He spent the next two years being carted from one orthopedic specialist to another because the early walking bowed his little bones. The doctors thought it might be necessary to break those precious little bones and knit them back together with pins, but luckily the legs straightened themselves out before his parents we’re persuaded to intervene surgically.

There was a time, about six months ago, when our three-and-a-half- year-old son's world hinged on predictability. He needed to know exactly when we were leaving home, coming home, who his babysitter would be, and dozens of other small details about which he craved foreknowledge. That changed this week. We've tried so hard to provide a stable schedule that we seemed to have bored the boy. We were leaving the restaurant Thursday night and one of our kind servers, Thomas, offered to walk around the side of the building and drive the baby mobile to the door of the restaurant to help Cheryl and Paul get home more quickly. He couldn't find it in the parking lot, and loathe to come back empty handed, he used the second car key on the key ring to bring back Paul's car, an old Land Rover. In the interest of time, Cheryl strapped Léo's car seat in and when Paul emerged with Nico, she said she'd walk the boy around the building and drive him home in the Volvo station wagon.
Nico begged to ride in Daddy's car too, so we acquiesced, and the entire way home Nico marveled at all the things he could see from the height of Daddy's back seat; "Look! There's the toy store! Oh, Papa, there's the horsey."
Paul stopped for gas, and Cheryl followed him into the station and ran inside to pick up some orange juice. Nico began screaming at the top of his lungs: "Léo! Wake up!"
Paul opened the door to scold him and asked him why he was doing that, and Nico replied non-sequiturially: "Well, Léo was walking when there were other people around."
A minute ago he ran up and declared jubilantly: "Oh, Mom! We rode in Daddy's car!"

We hope to see you soon,

The Parker family
at chez sophie
518-583-3538

Chez Sophie was founded in 1969 by sculptor Joseph Parker and his French-born wife, the late Sophie. The business moved to a vintage stainless steel diner in Malta Ridge, New York, in 1995. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark. In June of 2006, they moved the restaurant into their current location in The Saratoga Hotel on Broadway..

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P.S. Each month we draw a name at random from our database of customers and send them a $50 gift certificate to Chez Sophie. If you would like to be added to this promotions database, which is owned by Chez Sophie, please send us an email with your name, address, telephone number, birthday and anniversary. People on the list will also receive a gift certificate by mail or email for a free glass of champagne or dessert on their birthdays or anniversaries. (You only need to enter once to be eligible every month.)

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