Travinia and triathlon

I've been remiss in not posting. Not that I haven't eaten anywhere or seen anything that really annoys me or had any great sporting experiences, just nothing out of the ordinary.

Had dinner this past Saturday at Travinia in Market Commons. My experiences with Travinia over the years have improved. When they first opened a couple of years ago, they tried to be an upscale, contemporary Italian trattorria. They succeeded visually and failed culinarily (if that's a word). The food was over-priced and average. A bad combination, even in a place like Myrtle Beach where the philosophy is often well, if you don't like it, the other 12,999,998 people that come to town probably might. Recently, they seem to have taken a lesson from their competitor down the block, PF Chang's:

• Lowered their prices.
• Put a lot of stuff in bowls.
• And, as an improvement on PF Chang's, increased their portion sizes.

This past weekend, I had the veal Marsala. Wonderful Marsala wine flavor. The downside was the consistency of the sauce was just this side of gelatinous, more of a mousse than a sauce, it was thick. To me, great Italian has a sauce that accents, not literally buries the food. The sauces are why I always recommend Villa Mare for local Italian. You can taste the sauce at Villa Mare, you don't have to scrape it off your plate, or push it off to the side.

Kudos to the city of Myrtle Beach for the National Triathlon Championships. Hopefully, physically fit people on carbon fiber frames will eventually complement our fat Harley riding visitors and the sentiment expressed to me by a local doctor's wife/decorator "I can't believe they closed the by-pass for those bike riders", won't prevail. (Note: I said complement, not replace, although replacing wouldn't bother me.)

Also on the subject of the triathlon, it is a shame the city has had to endure some absolutely Old Testament weather with the the plague of rain we had in the week prior to the triathlon. Only a 3 day dump like that could close the waterway. Better a few disappointed athletes than the entire city water system affected the next day by 2,000 simultaneous cases of e-coli.