We had plans to go out to the Thai place on Kent Street for a Father’s Day dinner last night but, frustratingly, they were closed for a private function. So we ended up across the street at Piazza Joe’s.

It’s hard to believe, but Piazza Joe’s took over the old Tradewinds in 1996, twelve years ago. I still think of it as “that new Italian place on Kent Street” but it’s not been that for a while. And we hadn’t been there for a long, long time.

In the beginning, Piazza Joe’s had aspirations: read the article from The Guardian that they have mounted in the downstairs men’s washroom and you learn that the plan was that the Kent Street location would be the first of many spreading out across the country. That was in the days before East Side Marios, Boston Pizza et al, and I suspect that the world domination plans were long-ago set aside.

Although Oliver and I walk by the front door every morning on our way to school, I hadn’t eaten there, well, at least since Oliver was born. Probably in a decade. Something about the “bread bar” and the plastic bricks and the faux Italian dioramas put me off. Their recent drive to take over at night where Myron’s left off as the happening dance place for the kids didn’t help. And I never really like their take on Italian food.

So, in other words, there wasn’t exactly a “oh wow, Piazza Joe’s!” smile on my face when I walked in the door.

But they surprised me.

You can’t walk into Piazza Joe’s hoping for anything remotely resembling actual Italian food. The chicken comes from a bag. The ice cream comes from 5 gallon tubs. The “Expresso” sign having in front of the bar belies the lack of an actual espresso machine. In short, Piazza Joe’s fills the same culinary niche for Italy as having a plate of sweet and sour chicken balls at the Canton Café fills for China.

But once you set aside your Euro pretensions, they do pretty well on everything else.

Our server was friendly, witty, and capable, indeed all the staff were really nice, and pleasantly free of the amped up “maximum service, always” attitude that infects most chainy places these days.

The food itself — Chicken Tetrazzini for Catherine, “Kickin’ Chicken” for me, and kid-sized lasagna for Oliver — was surprisingly tasty (there actually was a kick to the chicken, which is rare in an city where the “Super-Spicy Baconator Killer Burger” comes with mild barbeque sauce).

Even the bread bar — you take a slice of bread, slather it with “spreads” of various types and put it on a open grill — was a welcome respite from severe hunger, and a Fun Activity for Oliver. They had 6-grain bread, which was nice.

I love places that offer an expensive tiny dessert option, and their tiny brownie sundae fit the bill perfectly: $2.99 for a tiny brownie, a tiny scoop of ice cream, a tiny bit of whipped cream and a tiny dolop of chocolate sauce.

All in all, a not-unpleasant night out. Not remotely like “going out to eat in Milan,” but a lot better than I expected 2 blocks from our house, and executed, for what it is, very, very well.

I’m headed off tomorrow night for Copenhagen, by way of Halifax and Iceland, for a two week “working vacation.” Assassins, stalkers, etc. can find my complete itinerary here and, as usual, you can follow my Plazes presence stream for a detailed blow-by-blow.

At the end of the trip comes reboot 10, my nominal reason for the voyage (it didn’t seem just to go to Copenhagen for just two days; two weeks seems slightly less unjust).

I’m looking forward to it all; I just hope that I can shake this snarky cold that’s had me in its grips for the past week.

Back July 1, meaning that this space will be pleasantly free from Festival of Lights diatribes this year.

I just noticed that, among the 732 categories of content on this-here weblog, I have never, in almost 10 years of writing, been motivated to tag a post with keyword business. This despite having tags like myownstupidity and rubberstamps.

I suppose this is simply more evidence that I’m neither businessman nor entrepreneur.

Roland Tanglao has a business plan for the kind of coffee shop I’d love to be able to patronize. Among his points describing the BareBones concept, the ones I like most are:

• No WiFi, no internet no power outlets.
• No takeout, only coffee in “real” cups.
• No coffee cards, no promotions, no free coffee after buying 10.

I think Roland’s on to something here: in the future we’re going to seek out things that have fewer features not more.

For the past month or so I’ve been quietly putting together the basics of a Firefox extension for Plazes.net. I needed to learn a fair bit before I could even start: XUL, how Firefox extensions work, and then how to wire up a MAC-address-grabbing shell script to an extension (which is where the “auto-Plazing” magic happens).

The result, or rather the work in progress, is FirePlazer, which I’ve just released the source for. It’s primitive, only works under Mac OS X (and maybe some flavours of Linux) and needs some UI work, but it does most of what you’d want a Plazer to do for you: auto-Plazing by MAC address, Plaze lookup by keyword, and the ability to create presences in the past, present and future.

Here’s a short video demo of FirePlazer in action:

FirePlazer is a source-only release right now. The FirePlazer wiki page has instructions for how you can manually install the extension if you want to take it for a ride.

I’m releasing FirePlazer mostly as a proof-of-concept, with hopes that others will contribute enhancements to its functionality and UI, and use some of the underlying ideas to develop additional Plazes tools for Firefox.

Last October Catherine and I had the great pleasure of attending a Garnet Rogers concert at the Trailside in Mount Stewart. Doug Deacon just emailed to let me know that he’s been able to book return dates for Garnet: he’s playing four nights, June 26, 27, 28 and 29, 2008. Tickets are $25.

If you have any sense you will immediately call the Trailside and make a reservation (go early for dinner; it’s a nice night out). You will not regret it: Garnet Rogers is a truly gifted musician (listen here) and to see him in a small venue like the Trailside will improve your life immeasureably.

Alas I’ll be in Copenhagen for the duration, so won’t be able to make it out myself. Which means there’s one more seat for you…

Apple announced that the iPhone will be available in Canada on July 11, 2008. The Apple website is pointing people to Rogers when you click “Where to Buy.” At the Rogers website there’s no indication they’ve ever heard of the iPhone, and their site appears to contain no mention of it at all:

In a rare breach of habituality, Oliver and I went out for dinner to Café Diem last Wednesday night. It’s under new management this season: Mamdouh Elgharib, formerly of Meeko’s just up the street has take over the reigns (the Meeko’s space has been assimilated into the Murphy Cube — see Which Murphy is Which? for guidance).

The standout item: potato salad. It’s very, very good. The carrot cake, about half the size of a brick, is also very good (although, at $5.95, it’s more expensive than a brick too).

Overall impression: service is as good or better than it’s ever been, the menu is expanded and less panini-centric, and everything else is much as it ever was.

On my last trip home to my parents’ house, I took an impression of the corporate seal of my great-grandfather Edgar Caswell’s company: