Virtual Gourmet

EDITOR'S NOTE: Readers may now access an Archive of all past newsletters--each annotated--dating back to July, 2003, by simply clicking on ARCHIVE .

   Retreating to and being stranded on a desert island are very different things, but with the way things are going in the world these days, both seem like reasonable alternatives to staying in residence in a city.
   The problem is, of course, desert islands are usually lacking in good wine stores, and that can be off-putting. But, just to be fantastical about it, were I to be stranded after my ship sank, I’d ask myself what wines would I like to have wash up on shore from the lost ship’s wine cellar?
   Since this is my fantasy, I shall allow myself some leeway: I want an island whose temperature does not rise above 85 degrees in summer or below 40 degrees in winter. That way I can store my wines in the surf itself without worrying about them being cooked in the tropical sun.
   I won’t ask for chickens and cattle, but a few wild pigs would be nice, along with abundant, edible fruit and flora. And that’s all I ask.
   Since this is an island, I would hedge my bets by wanting wines made by wine cultures by the sea, which basically means the Mediterranean, Australia and New Zealand, and maybe Santa Barbara, California. Since my diet will be mainly seafood, I’d want either predominantly whites or lighter- to medium-bodied reds. Unless I catch a wild pig, a Romanée-Conti or big Napa Valley Cabernet will be a poor match for anything I would eat.
   So, I would opt for fresh, easily quaffable, white wines of the most recent vintage that are best with fish roasted over an open fire. Let’s say, a case of Vermentino from Sardinia, pretty, undemanding wines with herbal notes. Many of the Sardinian cooperatives export good, sound examples, especially the Cantina Sociale del Vermentino, where Vermentino is their specialty. Or a richer Fiano di Avellino, a Campanian wine that shows all the minerals and flintiness of its volcanic soil, which my own little island would have too. Mastroberardino is one of the best labels. From Greece I’d choose Boutari’s Moschofilero, with its apple-and-apricot fruitiness, which is consistent year after year. Australia has come up with some big but fairly oaky chardonnays, which would be O.K. for barbecued shellfish, while     New Zealand has made a lot of waves with its appealing, pear—and-peach-like sauvignon blancs, with their characteristic grassy aroma. These would be terrific with the tropical fruits and bananas I would just reach out and pluck from the tree while waiting for my lobster to steam in the banana leaves. Cloudy Bay is one of the ripest of the sauvignon blancs out there.
    But man—at least not this man—cannot live by white wine alone. After a week I would kill for a bottle of red wine, except there would be no one to kill. So I would live in hope that a few cases of Chianti would drift ashore—not one of the overly rich Chianti Classicos riservas, but young wines with medium body. I have always found that Chianti goes with almost everything, including seafood if there are any herbs available to sprinkle on fish. I like producers like Castello di Gabbiano, Castello di Uzzano, and a remarkable red table wine made by Antinori, called Santa Cristina, which is always under $10 a bottle. Of course price is no object when there's nowhere to spend what you have. A pretty little Spanish tempranillo would work too, or a soft pinot noir from Santa Barbara, from a producer like Sanford.
    Maybe it will be November or December when I am shipwrecked, in which case there might well be some Beaujolais Nouveau aboard. Normally I take B.N., which is released in mid-November, with a shrug: it’s really an unfinished party wine good for celebrating the harvest, but it would also have those qualities of Gamay grape lightness and pronounced fruit and acid that would be ideal for so much I would be eating if stranded. And, hey, I like to party.
    The days will pass into weeks, and perhaps the weeks into months. But if I have wine enough of the kind I’ve mentioned, I will be content until rescued. Meanwhile, I shall sit down to a dinner of freshly caught grouper roasted over fruitwood and accompanied by slices of sweet mango and papaya.

The trade winds will shimmy across the waves and the sun will sink below them as my companion and I speak of never leaving our island. Then I ask him where he put the corkscrew. Wilson, the corkscrew? Wilson, where the hell is the goddamn corkscrew?!

While we're on the subject of fishing, I was recently sent information that throws considerable light and clarification on statements published in Science (January 2004) last winter and picked up by the sensation-seeking media on health alerts about eating farmed salmon versus wild salmon. According to the study, farmed salmon contained seven times higher levels of PCBs, dioxins, and pesticides than wild salmon, and went on to note that the least-contaminated farmed salmon (from Washington State and Chile) contained significantly higher levels of PCBs and other carcinogens than most wild salmon—high enough to cause the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to recommend eating no more than one meal a month containing salmon farmed in those regions.
But are such data the whole story? As an article by John Whiteley in the Vancouver Sun (May 19, 2004) points out, "The purity of the wild Alaska salmon is based more on myth than reality, as it is subject to the same environmental pressures, and water-borne contaminants, as other wild salmon stocks up and down the West Coast. The crème de la crème of Alaskan wild salmon is the Copper River run, and every year its arrival on the market in May is greeted with the same enthusiasm and hoopla applied to the arrival of Beaujolais wine from

France

. But guess what -- it’s laced with PCBs. I feel safe in using the word ‘laced’ because the same word was used over and over again in the media to describe the 32 parts per billion of PCBs detected in B.C. farmed salmon. . . . But an independent study conducted in 1998 on behalf of the Circumpolar Conservation Union showed Copper River salmon with PCB levels exceeding 60 parts per billion -- nearly twice as `laced’ as the farmed salmon rate. . . . Similar results came out of a study of Puget Sound salmon, where wild Chinook salmon were found to have PCB levels equal to, and sometimes higher than, farmed salmon."
Now, the latest round of PCB monitoring, carried out by Salmon of the Americas, shows levels of PCBs in farmed salmon at about the same levels as those from wild Alaska Chinook and sockeye salmon. The report also points out that the fish in the January, 2004, study were sampled two years before it was actually published.
The irony is that there is no scientific evidence showing that PCBs in fish or the environment have ever caused cancer in humans. All salmon tested were at PCB levels well below the 2,000 parts per billion considered the maximum allowable before the fish is considered a health problem. According to another study, if you eat a six-ounce serving of cooked farmed salmon from Washington or Chile once a month for your entire life, your risk of getting cancer rises by roughly one in 100,000. Currently about 33,000 of every 100,000 Americans who live to be 80 years of age will be be diagnosed with cancer. If all 100,000 ate farmed salmon from Washington or

Chile

once a month, the number of cancer cases would climb by just one, to 33,001. If farmed salmon was consumed once a week, the number of cases would rise by four. Yet roughly 5,000 out of every 100,000 Americans die of cardiac arrest. If, however, all 100,000 ate salmon (farmed or wild) once a week, researchers estimate that the number of deaths would drop to 3,500--30 percent fewer lives lost--because of the healthful effects of omega fatty acids gained from eating salmon. The math would seem to favor eating, rather than not eating, salmon over the course of one's life.
According to Eric Rimm, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, “The health benefits of the protein and omega-3 fatty acids found in wild salmon or farmed salmon from Canada or Chile, where the US gets most of its salmon, will almost definitely outweigh the risks for American adults where the leading cause of death is from cardiovascular diseases.”

Not too long ago all American steakhouses looked more or less the same--manly haunts with rough wood floors, walls yellowed from cigars and cigarettes, some sturdy booths, and starched white tablecloths--a raffish style still replicated in the various Palm restaurants around the world. But when steakhouse chains like Ruth's Chris, Morton's, Smith & Wollensky, and Capital Grille expanded into double digit units, often as franchises, there has been enormous diversity in the way steakhouses now look, from the polished posh of the original Capital Grille in Providence, RI, set within the shell of an old railroad's boiler room, to the frou-frou glamour of Prime in Las Vegas.
But none has the backdrop of Michael Jordan's in NYC's Grand Central Terminal. (By the way, it is a terminal, where train trips terminate, not a station along the way.) Look around the majestic Terminal, in any corner, above you, below you, down a ramp, up an escalator, through an archway, and you'll see details of astounding beauty, from the cerulean blue starry ceiling to the great tiled caverns below by Rafael Guastavino. There is the huge clock on its facade, festooned with Roman deities. The mullioned windows in the main hall are astonishing for their beauty, grace, and lightness (once completely covered over). And on the mezzanine of the great hall there are now restaurants--Harry Cipriani Dolci, Métrazur, and Michael Jordan's, this last the most marvelously situated within tall pillars and a marble balustrade, above which hangs set of fabulous chandeliers (below). There is a bar (below, left), with banquette seating, at the top of the stairs, and then you enter the dining room through a souvenir shop. There are three private dining rooms.
I know nothing of the business relationship Mr. Jordan has with restaurateurs Penny and Peter Glazier (who also own Strip House, Monkey Bar, and other establishments), but don't expect the former superstar to drop by your table any time soon. Content yourself with the view and some of the finest American food in NYC, starting with superlative beef overseen by executive chef David Walzog and prepared by a kitchen headed by new chef Lance Callaway. 88i

       The menu isn't radically different from other steakhouses', with a few additions (and nightly specials) that are unique, including some sticks of garlic toast piled high and soaked with Gorgonzola cheese. They are addictive and not recommended if you plan to eat much of anything else; but you will anyway.
   Soups have always been good here, including their creamy, silky chowder, and salads are effulgent and crisp. You won't find a better crabcake in town either. Shrimp cocktails are composed of truly jumbo, meaty shrimp, served at the right temperature, not ice cold. The roasted marrow bones, with mustard croutons and salad are true trencherman's fare. Try 'em once.
      The USDA Prime beef is superb, richly marbled and deeply flavorful. The NY strip sirloin and the ribeye are my first choices, but the filet mignon (never my favorite cut) is also first rate here, massive and juicy throughout. Lamb chops are American, and the lobsters, usually around 3 pounds, have plenty of meat inside, meaning they have been well kept and not lost any of their fat or muscle tissue. The usual sides--French fries, onion rings, creamed spinach, hash browns--are all very good, but don't miss the macaroni-and-cheese, which has about the same ballast-inducing weight as the garlic bread.
       Desserts are unexceptional, which is to say as good as any other steakhouse's, including a fine cheesecake and a multi-tiered chocolate cake I find it difficult to imagine any one person ever finishing.
        The winelist here, never stellar, has been building to a critical mass (the problem is storage space), but there's plenty on it to please anyone with a steakhouse appetite, including Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande '95, Ponzi Reserve Pinot Noir '99, and Cain Cellars Cain Five '99. Prices are not exactly bargains.

I'm always asked which is the best steakhouse in NYC and I candidly say that most of the indigenous examples--at least those at the original locations--like Palm on Second Avenue, Smith & Wollensky on Third, Ben Benson's on West 52nd Street, Spark's on East 46th, Gallagher's on West 52nd Street, Manhattan Grille on First Avenue, Strip House on East 12th Street, and Peter Luger's on Brooklyn--are all excellent when it comes to the meat of the matter. (Out of town branches are often not.) But for something unique and wonderful, in a setting beyond all imagining for a steakhouse, Michael Jordan's is another thing entirely. Look down from your table into the great hall and you'll see what one NBC radio broadcaster back in 1937 called the "Crossroads of a million private lives! A gigantic stage on which are played a thousand dramas daily." This is New York in excelsis.

Department of Corrections: In a review of Mimi Sheraton's book Eating My Words (8/15/04) it read that she had once given Le Cirque four stars decades ago; in fact, she gave it only three.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDITOR'S NOTE: This newsletter is also available on the very comprehensive food site www.sautewednesday.com
which has dozens of other links to food articles from around the world, and also at www.Gayot.com. New York Corner reviews are also available at
www.nycvisit.com/johnmariani

MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani, Naomi Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein, Lucy Gordan, Suzanne Wright. Contributing Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery, Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.

John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman), The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway), and, with his wife Galina, the award-winning new Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press). To purchase from amazon.com, click on the image below.