I love opening nights, and not just when it comes to the theater. When a restaurant opens its doors for the first time, there’s a mood created which no longer exists later on once the unfamiliar rhythms settle into a perfected routine. Both staff and customers are filled with excitement and wonder, and as they’re both experiencing the venue for the first time, maybe even a tickle of uncertainty as well.

Will it all come together? Will confidence be rewarded? At the outset, you can never be sure. But one always begins filled with hope.

Which is why, when Aaron Silverman announced that Pineapple and Pearls—his spinoff from Rose’s Luxury—was going to open in April, I knew Irene and I had to be there. After all, Bon Appétit had judged Rose’s Luxury to be 2014’s best new restaurant in America, so Pineapple and Pearls promised to be something quite special.

And it was.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Pineapple and Pearls opened its first phase—a coffee shop serving amazing sandwiches and sweet rolls—on February 12. Though I wasn’t able to get there for its opening day, I was able to pop in exactly one week later, when I was in D.C. to record an episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast, and I checked out the entire menu.

To experience the coffee shop, all I needed to do was show up. But to get a table for the fine dining component, I had to work my Internet magic the moment reservations opened. Luckily, I was able to grab a table for the first seating on the first night.

And so, at 5:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 7, we arrived at Pineapple and Pearls—me wearing a pineapple, Irene wearing the pearls—and were immediately handed mint juleps. (Sans alcohol, of course, for we had chosen the non-alcoholic pairings, as we always do.)

Once we were led to our table, I peered over to the kitchen and spotted what felt like a historic moment which cried out to be captured—head chef Scott Muns and chef/owner Aaron Silverman conferring as service began. (more…)

I sure I must have read the April 1926 Amazing Stories before as part of my desire to see how this thing of ours began, but I have no memory of reading Hugo Gernsback’s editorial in that first issue of the first science fiction magazine.

Wait, no—let me correct that. Because Gernsback didn’t call it a science fiction magazine. He called it a scientifiction magazine.

And what was scientifiction? For those who’ve never heard the term, let Gernsback explain—

By “scientifiction” I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.

And from that statement an entire genre, far more varied that he could have ever imagined (or, I’m guessing, would ever have been comfortable with, as scientific education is no longer our main goal) has sprung forth.

Check out his mission statement from 89 years ago.