Restaurants aren’t supposed to be real. Real you can get at home. Restaurants are for fantasy of one kind or another. A shot-and-beer bar with sawdust on the floor can fulfill a fantasy or bolster an ego as well as an elegant French dinner with all the trimmings. It just depends on who you want to pretend to be at the moment.
All this comes to mind because Jill and I went to a restaurant that belies everything I just said. There’s not a drop of fantasy in the package. It’s simply what it is and it does what it does and it’s been doing it at the same location for thirty-six years.
Bloodroot is a self described vegan/vegetarian/feminist restaurant that was created all those years ago by Selma Miriam and Noel Furie. Selma runs the kitchen and Noel holds down the front of the house. They’ve perfected their act and they do it exactly the way they want to do it. Your fantasies are not the issue.
When you walk in, Noel instructs you to look at the menu listed on the wall. You tell her your choices and pay up front.
“They’ll call out your name when your food is ready and then you get yourself a tray and carry it to your table.”
The road to 
While back home in Massachusetts for my father's 70th birthday – which
is so hard to believe – my husband, older sister Sue and I wanted to
take him out one night for a first-class, adult meal before the nieces
and nephews descended and the backyard grilling began. We tried to get him to choose a place he wanted to
go, but he wasn't in the mood to decide, so he left it up to us. He was
thrilled we were there – it's been a year since we were together – and
glad for a night out, but the occasion was something he would rather
have ignored. I can't say I blame him.
Amber Road Café's breakfast is worth getting up for. Lunch warrants standing on line. Dinner? Amber's not open for dinner. Bummer. We find ourselves here for lunch and the only reason there's no line and we're seated is because we're late. Not far too late and not a moment too soon.
Martha’s Vineyard in the Fall is the secret treasure of Vineyarders. The “summer people (some are not)” have returned to their sophisticated rat races, leaving perfect weather and fabulous restaurants to the people who really love the Vineyard – those whose families have been living in Martha’s Vineyard since, well, the 17th Century.