Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 24

i 'n i i i The Arizona Republic WednesaftlXsrrch 13, 1 ftU: Close-ups Cinemafare Bridge Calendar Television Comics Restaurants Housecleaning services are gaining popularity as more families discover thai while money can 7 buy happiness, it can buy leisure time. E9. E4 tzr E5 i E6 1 E7 I E8 By ELIN JEFFORDS Arizona Republic Staff I've come to believe the world is divided into two groups of people, those who approach new eating experiences with eagerness and enthusiasm and those who look upon unusual edibles with suspicion and scorn. Now, I'm not making any value judgments on which group is better off, but anybody who dines out fairly regularly and still hasn't tried Thai food is to be pitied 'and censured. Thailand, formerly known as Siam (remember The King and is located south of China, near India.

Both neighbors have had some influence on the cuisine, but Thais do not use dairy products as do the Indians or create the convoluted dishes and thickened sauces of the Chinese. Assertive seasonings are the hallmark of Thai cooking. Garlic, chili peppers, coconut, cilantro, mint and ginger are used extensively along with more exotic spices like galangal, lemon grass, shrimp paste, and lemon and lime leaves. The spice factor is no reason to avoid the experience. Thai menus invariably include milder dishes, and even the spicy selections can be moderated by the kitchen.

Also, many dishes are vegetarian or can be adjusted to exclude meat. The beverage of choice is cold beer. Second best, and a good selection for non-imbibers, is Thai ice tea, an orange-colored beverage tasting somewhat like vanilla. The addition of heavy cream turns it into a rich treat similar to a milkshake. Thai food was introduced locally when a little diner called Char's opened about five years ago in Mesa.

Since then, owner Char has opened restaurants in Tempe and Phoenix and more than a dozen other unrelated ventures have popped up across the Valley, including a fast-food Thai restaurant. Interestingly, only one Thai restaurant has failed, proof of the popularity of this exciting, inexpensive cuisine. One of the most recent entries in the Thai-me trials is Sala Garden, which happens to be right in my neighborhood. We watched impatiently as the former Salad Bar restaurant was converted, then headed right over. The renovation produced a medium-sized dining room on two levels done in a restful rust, beige and gray color scheme.

Thai-motif wallpaper and clever cutouts between the different areas offer just the right touch of atmosphere. The upper level is the place to be; it's more intimate and the lighting is more pleasant than the harsh glare and wide-open spaces of the center of the restaurant. Speaking of the center of the restaurant, call me an old grouch, but I find the practice of management and staff taking Eric BakerRepublic pork The tender, thinly sliced meat had a strong porky taste I found unpleasant nor was I crazy about the thick, gingery sauce. We requested our dishes medium hot in deference to Companion's sweat factor. I pride myself on being macho where spicy food is concerned; believe it, Sala Garden's medium is plenty hot.

I called in a takeout order a few nights later. It was ready when I arrived, neatly packaged in Styrofoam containers and placed in bags for easy toting. The food was hot and ready to eat and, noted, just as nicely garnished for takeout. The beef salad (larb neau, $4.95) Siamese, E2 served with sweet-hot, peanut sauce and a raw cucumber, onion and green chili relish that had steam shooting from Companion's ears. There was also tod mun, ground fish patties, which were a little more rubbery than usual but tasted quite good.

Thai egg rolls are smaller and more delicate than the Chinese variety and are served with a clear sweet-sour, slightly hot dipping sauce. Crisp won tons curled around a garlicky pork nugget also go well with the sauce. Companion was incubating a cold, so we tested the chicken 60up theory by ordering thorn yum koong It arrived bubbling and steaming in a hot pot. The bracing, citrusy broth was over a highly visible table to do the books, enjoy a coffee and cigarette break or just sit and chat among themselves to be intrusive. The whole idea of going out to eat is to be insulated from such homey endeavors.

Companion and I were cheerfully greeted by the hostess and promptly taken care of by a sweet, smiling waitress. At the time, the restaurant didn't have a beer and wine license (it does now); we started with Thai tea and an appetizer combination Most Thai restaurants do a superlative job of presentation and garnish. Sala Garden is no exception. The generous, colorful assortment included smoky, crisp-edged chicken-on-a-stick (satay) packed with sweet, tender butterflied shrimp, meaty dome-shaped mushrooms (resembling the dancing variety in Fantasia) and green onions. Bits of galangal, bay leaf, lemon grass and dark red chilies provided the bracing seasoning.

Companion swore it cleared his nose and soothed his throat chicken soup, move over. The entrees are served family-style. Fresh plates would have been nice since ours were strewn with appetizer and soup debris. We made do. The rice was the perfect consistency.

I really enjoyed the squid with basil leaves I've not 6een that dish at other Thai restaurants and thought the fresh, herby taste the basil lent to the red chili sauce was great. Companion liked the barbecued roast Short takes lugene Ormandy's death marks end of era Republic Wire Services PHILADELPHIA A public memorial for conductor Eugene Ormandy, who led the Philadelphia Orchestra for a record 44 years, is being planned by his successor, Riccardo Muti. Funeral services will be private for Ormandy, who died Tuesday of pneumonia in his Philadelphia home with his wife, Margaret, at his side. He was 85. The diminutive, Hungarian-born maestro made the Philadelphia Orchestra world-famous for the lush sound of its strings.

As word of his death spread, tributes began to pour in from musicians with whom Ormandy had worked during his 65-year career in this country. In New York City, Erich Leinsdorf announced that he was changing his program Tuesday night with the New York Philharmonic to conduct funeral music from Beethoven's Egmont as a memorial. Reached in Munich, West Germany, where he is conducting at the Bavarian State Opera, Muti, Ormandy's hand-picked successor as music director of the Philadelphia, said, "It is a very difficult moment, the loss of a colleague and for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the loss of a man whose life was inseparable from the life of the orchestra." Ormandy's tenure with the Philadelphia was longer than any other modern-day conductor of a U.S. orchestra, and only the realization of his failing health prompted him to step down in 1980. "One retires when one is dead or ill," he remarked at the time.

Ormandy was named conductor laureate and continued to make appearances with. the orchestra. Dimming eyesight, reduced hearing and heart problems finally brought an end to Ormandy's conducting after an appearance at New York City's Carnegie Hall on Jan. 10,1984. "The loss of Eugene Ormandy is a deep loss for the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as for the entire world," said Stephen Sell, the orchestra's executive director.

"For 44 years, he personally built this orchestra into one of the world's greatest orchestras, devoting his entire life to maintaining that excellence." Ormandy was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1899 and at age 5 entered the Royal Academy of Music as a violinist. He earned his professor's diploma at age 17 and came to the United States in 1921 as a soloist. Another man who went on to be an entertainment institution, Maj. Edward Bowes, discovered Ormandy and asked him to conduct the New York Capital Theater Orchestra. Bowes became famous with his Amateur Hour on radio, and Ormandy had discovered the baton.

He became a U.S. citizen in 1927. In 1930, he directed his first concerts with the New York Philharmonic and also conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra during three summer performances in Fairmount Park. Ormandy's first performance at Philadelphia's Academy of Music was on Oct. 25, 1931, when he was asked to substitute for ailing guest conductor Arturo Toscanini.

He became music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra after that performance and moved to Philadelphia in 1936 when Leopold Stokowski quit over a dispute with the orchestra board. "My father was a most disappointed man Writers Guild chief sees long walkout Compiled by MICHAEL MAZA Arizona Republic Staff The president of the Writers Guild of America is predicting the television and movie writers' walkout may continue for quite a while. Guild president Ernest Lehman based his prediction on West Coast members' objections to the contract hammered out by guild negotiators and approved Monday by East Coast members. "The membership sent us a loud and clear signal that they were ready to take a strike, perhaps a long strike, to get a better contract," Lehman told reporters Tuesday. When the West Coast writers objected to the pact, negotiators withdrew their support of it and postponed a vote by the West Coast members until Monday, when guild negotiators expect it to be rejected.

On Tuesday, East Coast writers sent the West Coast chapter a telegram promising they would remain on strike. The decision to delay the vote led producers to announce continued reruns for Johnny Careon's Tonight Show, Late Night With David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. Book deal for Hinckley When a letter from John W. Hinckley Jr. arrived at the New York Post in 1982 "Don't turn me into a monster," Hinckley pleaded reporter George Carpozi had his literary agent write back, urging Hinckley to cooperate with a book project Now President Reagan's would-be assassin, according to Carpozi, has agreed to help in exchange for 25 percent of the profits.

And Carpozi, now deputy news editor of The Star, a supermarket magazine owned by Rupert Murdoch, is hard at work on The Day I Shot the President: The John Hinckley Jr. Story. "Someone has to do it," Carpozi said Tuesday, adding that his agent is currently shopping around for a publisher. The recently passed Comprehensive Crime Control Act forbids convicted assassins and other criminals from making i money off the sale of their stories, but Hinckley may be entitled to collect, says assistant US. attorney Charles Roistacher.

"One problem is that he wasn't convicted, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity," Roistacher says. Eugene Ormandy when I became a conductor," Ormandy once told a reporter. "He should have been happy and proud of a son appointed to succeed the great Stokowski, but the fact that I had not become the world's greatest violinist broke his heart." In 1917, the orchestra was the first in the United States to make recordings with its own conductor. In 1929, it was the first to perform its own national radio broadcasts. In 1948, it became the first to be featured on national television.

It also became the most traveled orchestra in the country. Ormandy and the orchestra made nearly 400 recordings, many of which are currently available and three of which topped the $1 million sales mark Handel's Messiah, The Lord's Prayer with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and The Glorious Sound of Christmas. He won numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire. Prescott's Channel 7 lays off 1 2, cuts news shows station since its inception. Baron, 28, joined the staff a year ago.

Said Quirk, "I think we did a lot for this community, like putting together public-affairs programs that the public shows interest in. We sure tried. We were on the way up, but it got to be a matter of dollars." As news director, Quirk was a cameraman, announcer, editor and producer. Both he and Baron worked 50 hours Monday through Friday and covered what they considered newsworthy on weekends. KUSK-TV won first place last year in Prescott, E6 By FRED SMITH Yavapai County Bureau PRESCOTT KUSK-TV (Channel 7), the independent station in Prescott that has tried to operate like its big city counterparts despite a skeleton crew, announced Tuesday a series of cutbacks in a bid for survival.

The changes will include the layoffs, effective Friday, of 12 full-time employees and several part-time staffers and the end of locally produced news, weather, sports and public-affairs programming. The station also will alter its "canned programming" and will feature more religious material in the future, "We've been caught in a never-never land of television," said Bill Sauro, part-owner of the station. "We've got too much competition for the ad dollar here. We've done everything we can to make a go of it, but we're losing too much money the way it is now. I'm very disappointed we have to take these steps." Channel 7 went on the air on Sept 5, 1982.

It is owned jointly by Sauro, president of Creative Advertising Inc. of Phoenix, and by the All-State Insurance Co. "AO-State got to the point where it didn't want to put any more money into the station," Sauro said. "And I couldn't put any more into it because I didn't have it" The most noticeable change for local viewers will be the end of the 30-minute evening news program, which featured part-time newscasters, the 10-minute news show during the noon hour and a 20-minute forum on local issues that also ran at noon. Also affected will be live broadcasts of Yavapai College girls basketball games and the Bradshaw Mountain High School football games.

Included in the laid-off category will be Rob Quirk and Kathy Baron, two journalists credited by Sauro for carrying the brunt of the news-producing load. Quirk, 27. has been news director for the 4 i f-t--i-lt--c-S.