Monthly Archives: February 2006

Quattro (Whistler, BC)

2 Replies

Rating:

Seattle is in the Superbowl this weekend and Lauren and I snuck away to Whistler. All week I’ve been looking forward to the conditions from January’s record snowfall of 15.6 feet (with little sign of slowing down). I’ve also been looking forward to a weekend of fine dining in the evenings. Whistler has a ton of restaurants. Some are amazing and others are overpriced tourist traps, so where should you begin?

This weekend, Lauren and I began at Quattro (in the main village, across from the Delta Whistler Hotel). It’s a cozy restaurant that does a great job with both couples and large groups. Last year we had a group birthday dinner for 10 in their private Tasting Room. Tonight it was a fireside dinner for two.

Along with our Pinot Grigio we started with Dungeness crab & scallop cakes. They were generously filled (the breading was kindly restricted to the outside of the cakes), and the crab and scallop was a tasty pairing. Some wild mixed greens on the side (just to make you feel healthy), and more importantly a topping of moscato & chive aioli:
crab and scallop cakes

For our main course, Lauren ordered the “Rotolo Farcito”. It had been described as pasta rolled with ricotta cheese, sweet peppers, spinach, and mushrooms in a creamy tomato sauce. What we got (while tasty enough) was not at all what we expected. The filling was low on ricotta, high on mushrooms, and overall the closest comparison I can engender is mini-lasagna filling. The “creamy tomato sauce” meant that 2 of the four pasta rolls were in cream sauce and the other two were in tomato sauce. It was well prepared, but Quattro has much stronger items on their menu.

Which is a perfect segue into a perfect dish: “Branzino alla Crosta”. Quattro can really knock your socks off with their fish preparations. 4 years ago I had a Chilean Sea Bass that was so succulent…but I digress. The Branzino is a baked black cod with a pistachio crust. Soft, but not too mushy. Rich flavors without being overpowering. Topped with a fire roasted sweet pepper sauce that is possibly more addictive than crack. We certainly used the homemade foccacia to ensure not a drop was wasted. Heaven on a plate.
the best cod ever

Quattro at Whistler
4319 Main Street
Whistler, BC
604-905-4844

Daily 5:30PM-late (Dinner only)

Enabling E2E Tracing for WCF

6 Replies

Tracking down bugs in distributed systems can be really difficult. One of the technologies we’re using in Indigo to help make this easier is known as “E2E Tracing” (for End to End Tracing). Of course, this technology is only as good as the traces that a system emits. In Beta 1, we weren’t so good about our traces, but in the past few months we’ve made a concerted effort to improve them. And we need your feedback on what is easy to track down and (just as importantly) what was a pain in the butt to figure out. I recommend starting at “Warning” level. Verbose traces are very, well, verbose and can often be hard to navigate through.

Indigo also includes a Trace Viewer (svcTraceViewer.exe) which allows you to make heads (or tails) of the Xml files that are generated. Again, feedback on the tool is highly encouraged.

Here’s a sample config file snippet that will enable tracing in Indigo Applications and will generate Xml file with the traces.

The generated file can then be opened with svcTraceViewer.exe

<configuration>
 <system.diagnostics>
  <sources>
   <!-- The 'switchValue' determines the level of traces that will
             be outputted, e.g. 'Verbose', 'Warning', 'Error', etc -->
   <source name="System.ServiceModel" switchValue="Warning, ActivityTracing"
                 propagateActivity="true">
     <listeners>
     <clear />
     <!-- The 'initializeData' attribute determines to which file
              the traces will be written -->
     <add name="xml" type="System.Diagnostics.XmlWriterTraceListener"
                initializeData="e2eTraceTest.xml" />
     <!-- To log to a Console, use this instead of previous Node:
     <add name="console" type="System.Diagnostics.ConsoleTraceListener" />
     -->
    </listeners>
   </source>
  </sources>
  <!-- Setting he 'autoflush' attribute to 'true' ensures that the trace
            sources flush to disk after each trace -->
  <trace autoflush="true" />
 </system.diagnostics>
</configuration>