Virtual Gourmet

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It's been a weak winter for new food books, with a couple of real disappointments, none moreso than the botch of a job that is the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, which, at two-volumes and $250, is better for browsing than for authoritative, comprehensive scholarship. And you know that publishers are running very low on ideas when they put out books with titles like The Italian Grill: Fresh Ideas to Fire Up Your Outdoor Cooking (Potter); Rosé: A Guide to the World's Most Versatile Wine (Chronicle); Kosher by Design Entertains: Fabulous Recipes for Parties and Every Day (Mesorah); and a 366-page book entitled Wine Label Language (Firefly).
I have, however, been reading with delight some excellent new volumes that merit attention as the kinds of books to keep for ages.

Let me begin by praising to the skies Arthur Schwartz's New York City Food: An Opinionated History of More Than 100 Legendary Recipes (Stewart Taboori & Chang, $45), whose title doesn't begin to hint at the scholarship, experience, and love that went into this exceptional book. Schwartz, formerly NY Daily News food editor and reviewer and WOR-Radio host, has brought together the lore, the anecdotes, and a thousand true stories of New York food, from Childs' Butter Cakes and Luchow's Herring in Mustard-Dill sauce to Pearl's Lemon Chicken and Lindy's Cheesecake. Marvelously illustrated, it is worth every penny of its $45 price tag, and there is simply no better guide than the ebullient Mr. Schwartz through the social mores and traditions of New York's high society and immigrant cookery. He remembers a great deal and what he does not he has thoroughly researched and brought back to vivid life on every page, a book Schwartz (author of the superlative Naples at Table) was born to write.

The Spiaggia Cookbook: Eleganza Italiana in Cucina by Tony Mantuano and Cathy Mantuano (Chronicle, $40) is testament to the exquisite mastery of modern Italian cuisine by Chef Mantuano at Chicago's Spiaggia restaurant. In this large format, beautifully photographed book (although sometimes the photos can be intimidating to the home cook), he shows that Italian food, which always takes a back seat to French haute cuisine in the media, is the equal of anything now being produced in French restaurants. And, although the three-star Spiaggia is very expensive, it is not so expensive as most mediocre one-star restaurants in France.
Here Mantuano gives you glorious antipasti like foie gras with white corn polenta and quince with passito di Moscato syrup, pastas like cappellaci with pumpkin and sage, seafood like grilled tuna with white beans and a romanesco sauce, meats like barded partridge breast with orange and myrtle, and desserts like almond and hazelnut focaccia cake with vanilla cream and balsamic-marinated berries. Eleganza is more than an appropriate word to describe what the Mantuanos have put into these lovely pages.

Bob Kinkead has long been one of the finest chefs in America, known particularly for his seafood at Kinkead's in Washington, DC. He also runs Colvin Run Tavern in Tyson's Corner, VA, and the brand new Sibling Rivalry (with his brother) in Boston. His new Kinkead's Cookbook: Recipes from Washington D.C.'s Premier Seafood Restaurant (Ten Speed Press, $40) struts his stuff in more than 100 recipes, ranging from simple and delicious fried Ipswich clams with fried lemons to a New Bedford Portuguese stew with chorizo. There's very good advice on selecting seafood at the market, and his discussion of species is revelatory. A number of recipes are not exactly home cook user friendly, like his pepita-crusted salmon with chilies, corn and shrimp ragoût, which has four separate preparations to it, and it would be helpful to have support in the kitchen. But these are terrific ideas that show Kinkead to be in the forefront of American ingenuity.

Soups are so often afterthoughts for most people, especially those who think that opening a can is even a close approximation of the goodness that comes from careful tending of a soup made from scratch. I suspect many people shudder at the long cooking time many soups take, but there are few things more satisfying than the mere aroma of soup simmering on the stove. These joys invest every page of Joanna Preuss' Soup for Every Body (Lyons Press, $22.95), with Lauren Braun, whose sub-title, "Low Carb, High Protein, Vegetarian, and more" would usually put me off as being trendy (and we are quickly seeing the demise of the Atkins approach to "healthful" eating), but if you erase that from the cover page and proceed to cooking the marvelous soups within, from pumpkin-black bean soup and red lentil apricot soup to curried turkey and spinach soup and cioppino with rouille, you will be absolutely delighted. There is a section on garnishes and good advice on nutritional info (Braun is an R.N.). In a sense I suspect that half the healthful benefits of making soup is in the relaxing demeanor that comes over the person making the soup. Give it a try sometime.

I doubt Mireille Giuliano, whom I've known for many years, could possibly have imagined that her book Why French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure (Knopf, $22) would become a best-seller (especially, as you might imagine, in California), for it is neither a diet book nor a recipe book, though it contains advice and a few recipes. It is a joyful jeremiad, an anti-diet book that makes the forceful point that, generally speaking, women in France and other European countries, do not obsess about diet or weight loss yet eat all those wonderfully sinful things with a certain abandon but always with great and grateful pleasure. Giuliano, too, admits to gaining a good deal of weight on her diminutive frame when she first came to the U.S., but it dropped away upon her return to France, where she consumed butter, foie gras, cheese, and all the other American no-no foods. What she does not consume is junk food and stupid snacks, and she makes a very telling point that, if you offer an American a four-pound 99 cent fried burrito, he will probably eat it, even if it doesn't taste good.
    Europeans do overeat and drink too much in the 21st century, and there is no doubt that there has been a fleshy spread around the middle of French women. And I might add that Jessica Siegel, in an article entitled "Inhaling Their Food" in the NY Times (Feb. 21, 2005), makes a telling point when she writes that in France nearly one-third of upper-income French women smoke, compared to one-tenth if their American counterparts, noting that "[Chain-smoker Catherine Deneuve], still slim, still breathtaking, unabashedly hails cigarettes as her beauty secret" for staying slim.
   But I truly believe that this book does an enormous service to women, especially, in showing that the culprit is not any one kind of food but too much of some foods. Ironically, I fear that the book's best-seller status is due to many women who have bought the book in hope of a quick fix, like eating leeks to burn away the fat. This is not Giuliano's message at all and it is perverse for anyone to think she advocates a specific diet. She proffers a way to eat well and enjoy life, which is the best way to healthfulness I can possibly imagine.

I am actually very leery of recommending Ed Levine's new book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven (Universe, $24.95) for a very specific reason. This "Ultimate Guide and Companion" has as its pizza authorities not only the formidable Mr. Levine (author of the invaluable New York Eats) but a slew of writers, many very well known, including Nora Ephron, Calvin Trillin, Corby Kummer, Alan Richman, Ruth Reichl, Jeffrey Steingarten, and Eric Asimov. So what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that the compilation almost entirely ignores Italian and Italian-American writers (Mario Batali being the prominent exception). Can you possibly imagine a publisher coming out with a book on bagels whose principal writers were Julia della Croce, Viana La Place, Mary Ann Esposito, Pino Luongo, Marcella Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, and Anna Teresa Callan--but no Jewish-American writers? Such a book would never see the light of day and be laughed off the shelves. Oddly enough, I suspect it never even crossed Mr. Levine's of the publishers' minds, but it should have. It's an insult.
Having said that, the book is a very complete, very authoritative assessment of pizza history both in Naples and the U.S.A., with plenty of idiosyncratic pizzeria recommendations, and discussion of regional distinctions. He rightly excoriates chain pizzas (though he's too kind to Chicago-style pizza), and seems to have an indefatigable appetite for trying every pizza in every town in America. If you like pizza--but don't ever expect to make one at home--this book will fill you up good.

Miami proper, across the bay from the excesses of South Beach, continues to prosper as the financial hub of the South and gateway to Latin America. Business people, Sunbirds from Europe and the

Americas

, permanent residents and South Americans fleeing political unrest and financial turmoil are filling up condos almost before they are completed. Brickell Avenue, the area’s prosperous main thoroughfare, glistens with shiny new office buildings, hotels and skyscraper dwellings.
6666

Among those shiny new buildings in the financial district, just off the Bay, the Conrad Hotel (1395 Brickell Avenue; 305-503-6500) blushes almost unseen, with only a pair of discreet signs marking its side street entrance. It is part office-building, part luxury hotel in its mid-section and part residences in the upper stories, all done with an elegant minimum of signage. The Conrad, which opened last summer, has a sibling in New York, but you’d hardly know it. The Manhattan Conrad was fashioned from the posh upper floors of the Waldorf-Astoria's Towers, where kings and queens and presidents, Eisenhower among them, resided. Ask a Manhattan cabbie to take you to the Conrad and you might have to tell him how to get there. Right now, it’s almost the same in Miami, but that is about to change as the locals get to know this attractive downtown hostelry.
The Miami Conrad is the first in the United Sates to be built to the group’s requirements, soon to be followed soon by others in Las Vegas and Indianapolis. The Miami hotel's concave glass and steel building (left) glistens on skyline, but few know it is a hotel. Its ground level entryway is subdued and spaciously uncluttered, with just a few pieces of the well-chosen art you will see elsewhere in its hallways and rooms. You leave your baggage there, but the first sense of being in a hotel comes after a jet-speed elevator flight to the twenty-fifth floor glass-enclosed atrium lobby, home to reception, Noir, a 40-seat bar, and its upscale restaurant, Atrio. 0000

Recently, a group of us enjoyed a sampling of possibilities from Atrio’s new winter menu. We started off well with a warm cauliflower soup topped by creamy carrot-cardamom froth, and, in mine, a small fingerling potato hiding in the broth. Others found different surprises in their plates.
     One of my favorite white wines, a 2002 Albariño from Condes De Albarei, made a perfect match for a molded lobster salad with tuna sashimi and fresh wasabi root, floating on a red grapefruit brûlée. It was followed by a rich terrine of fois gras fortified by goat's cheese, dried apricot, apple gelée and organic lettuces.
   Our main course was extraordinarily tender and moist venison tenderloin with a caramelized corn flan, a purée of boniato, a particularly succulent Latin-American sweet potato, and slices of black truffle. The wine, a 2002 Petite Syrah from Bogle, supple and rounded, was the perfect match.
   Not so perfect was the pairing of a non-vintage Perrier-Jouët Champagne with a selection of apple carpaccio, succulent crème brûlée and chocolate lavas. The Champagne’s acidity overwhelmed their flavors, which would have been better enjoyed with a late harvest dessert wine on the order of a Dolce from Far Niente in Napa or a Vin Alsace from King Estate in Washington.
   That aside, I might even walk up 25 floors for another try at that venison. Atrio’s innovative food and disciplined service make it a worthwhile destination restaurant, and the view over Miami and Biscayne Bay enhances the experience. Lunch entrees are $14-$27 and at dinner, $17-$38. Please note, however, that there has been a change in chefs since my visit, though the management contends the menu will stay much the same.

    jjj

Jorge was my waiter at Azul (below) at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami (500 Brickell Key Drive; 305-913-8358). That striking hotel on the water, looking back toward the city, is a good reason for not crossing the bridge to the beach. Despite the Latino name, Jorge was my perfect Jewish mother of a waiter, offering suggestions that were hard to refuse, returning frequently to assure himself I wanted for nothing, always at hand, never hovering. It was a Saturday night and while there may have been five parties in another corner of that beautiful room panting for our bayside table, Jorge made us feel as if we were family for the evening.
    Which is as it should be in one of Miami’s most honored restaurants. Azul rode to fame on the world-class cuisine of Michelle Bernstein (now consulting in Mexico and planning to open her own restaurant), and the culinary crowd wondered if her successor, Clay Conley, could maintain those standards. Banish your fears, wandering gourmets. Conley, a longtime exec chef and culinary director at Todd English's Olives restaurants in Boston, Las Vegas and Washington, is not about to let the side down.
     We started on a high with an amuse bouche, slivers of tender duck breast dotted generously with truffles, followed by a duo of seafood appetizers. First was a blend of diced conch, and tiny morsels of yucca and red peppers in a garlic sauce, a bit hot and somewhat sharp for the subtle flavors of the conch, but a taste bud sharpener. Because I was concentrating on seafood, I followed with an order of “Cake n’ Claw,” which breaks down to fresh-from-the-sea stone crab accompanied by one of the best crab cakes I’ve ever enjoyed, dressed with two sauces, spicy rémoulade and honey mustard.
     Before my main course of hamachi marinated in miso, with an edamame stir-fry, sake butter sauce, and shrimp dumplings, Jorge brought us a mid-meal treat from chef Conley. It was a dream of a dish, a perfectly seared scallop, still tender and loaded with its own special essence, paired with tender braised pork belly resting on a purée of celeriac. The scallop was as tasty as if it had just arrived from the sea, wonderful alone, but mated with the pork, it was stunning. Conley had a holdover dish from the Bernstein era--crisp sweetbreads accompanied by black-eyed peas, smoky bacon and maple sauce, a wonderful marriage, though the sweetbreads arrived just a bit oily. ===8

Jorge was sad when we elected to forego desserts and insisted we try the specialty of the night, a raspberry soufflé. We couldn’t say no to him, so we shared a small soufflé and had to admit that, like a good Jewish mother, he was right.
Rainbow of oysters at Azul

Conley has an audacious tasting menu that we’d like to try on a future visit. It starts with a hamachi tartare and lobster tempura paired with avocado, eel and ginger cream, followed by that stone crab claw dish mentioned earlier, crisp, meaning lightly fried, yellow fin tuna, toasted almonds and gooseneck barnacles, and a pork combo, confit roulade of belly and grilled loin with Brussels sprouts, cipollini and mustard polenta, a cheese course and hazelnut cream stuffed poached pear, topped by Frangelico caramel sauce. The tasting menu costs $95, and with six well chosen wines from California, German,

Spain

Italy

and

France

, $150. Next trip, after a day of fasting.
Sticking to the menu, you’ll find appetizers from $11-$2 (for lobster salad), and main courses from $27 for chicken to $42 (for a Kobe beef duo, sirloin and braised short rib).

     Every 20 years or so I like to go to Rao's, though when I go is never up to me.
     Nor is it up to anyone who is not a confirmed regular at this Harlem Italian restaurant notorious for its refusal of all reservations to everyone who calls. Or tries to call, because no one ever answers the phone at Rao's. The place only has ten tables and those ten tables are spoken for every night Rao's is open, which is Monday through Friday, dinner only. The people who have those tables have had them for decades, and they include everyone from neighborhood families to a local priest who usually gives his up as an act of charity for fund-raising purposes. Otherwise you are simply out of luck. There simply is no way to get a table at Rao's other than to be asked by a regular. Getting a private audience with the Pope (whose photo is on the wall but who I don't think has ever been invited) would be easier.
      Which is really why it's taken me 20 years to get back to Rao's. I had to be invited, in this case by a doctor friend whose patient is a regular and who was not going to be able to use his regular Tuesday night table People plead, beg, offer all sorts of money, drop names, and work themselves into a pitiable frenzy trying to get into Rao's, all to no avail unless you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.
      For this reason Rao's has gotten a rep as being a goombah's hangout, and it's entirely probable that some such guys have over the years frequented the place or given up their tables while spending time in the state pen and eating through a slot in their cell. The odd thing is that no one outside the neighborhood had ever really heard of Rao's or given it a thought until a NY Times critic wrote a review of it back in 1980s that catapulted it into the weird spotlight of retro-chic.
     The story of Rao's, told on its web site (which is mainly devoted to selling their food products), starts in 1896 when Charles Rao bought a saloon on the corner of 114th Street at a time when East Harlem was heavily Italian. His brother Joseph ran the place until 1930, and his son, Louis and Vincent took over. Louis died in 1958, and Vincent, who was the chef, and his wife Anna ran with the help of her nephew, Frank Pellegrino (looking out the door in the photo below), who, with a partner, Ron Straci (Vincent's nephew), still runs the place. Another relative runs Baldoria in the Theater District, but that restaurant has never really inherited Rao's reputation.
       I offer this review not to hold out hope that you--or I--can ever hope to get a reservation at Rao's but merely as a glimpse into an institution whose friendliness and old-fashioned Italian food belies the notoriety of the place. O.K., so once in the last century one wiseguy whacked another wiseguy in the back at the bar, but mob jokes don't go over well at Rao's, which has more judges and lawyers and police captains--and Woody Allen--as customers than it does Tony Soprano types.
        The red façade has looked the same for ages,

and the Christmas lights are still on. Nicky "the Vest" still bartends (he's the guy who answers the unlisted phone number), and Frank Pellegrino, who has a couple of Rao's music CDs to his credit, is the greeter. And that greeting is warm and cordial, on the assumption that anyone who can actually snag a table at Rao's would be very welcome indeed. The nattily dressed Mr. Straci is also often on the premises making the rounds of the tables. The wait staff is young and fleet-footed, dressed in Rao's Italian soccer jerseys. There are still only ten tables, some booths, and the walls are hung with hundreds of celebrity photos ranging from Sophia Loren and Jerry Lewis to whole rosters of ball teams. The night we were there the only person I recognized was Armand Assante (below, left) at the next table, not looking thrilled with his guests.
        You sit down and a guy named Joseph, in a suit and tie, pulls over a chair and starts to tell you the specials of the day and the specialties of the house, and it's a good idea to take his advice. He then goes over the wine list, which on my last visit 20 years ago consisted of red or white, both served cold with the cork out. They still come that way, but these days there are about 20 wines at Rao's, ranging from Chiantis to Brunello di Montalcino, all highly marked up.
     The food is served family style and as a matter of tradition, they never change your silverware. Why, I haven't a clue, no matter if you followed cold seafood salad (which tasted a bit of iodine) with linguine alla filetto di pomodoro (overcooked).
      p98

We started off with good mozzarella in carozza with one of Rao's tomato sauces, which would show up in numerous dishes throughout the evening. Roasted peppers were tasty enough, and pasta shells with ricotta and tomato sauce was decent. The famous lemon chicken was quite delicious, nicely cooked and juicy, with a real tanginess to it, but a veal chop came overcooked to gray (no one asked how we wanted it cooked). Veal Marsala was standard issue. Portions are enormous.
     At 9:30 the music starts to get louder and the decibel level of the small room rises and rises, very gleefully, with the sound of people having a good old time, particularly those who feel like they've been granted a great gift to be there. So you finish what you can, take the rest home, and maybe share a slice of Jewish-, not Italian-style, cheesecake. The table is yours for the night, so you won't be rushed out. Even if a regular shows up. As they say in their ads, "If you can't get a table, you can always stand at the bar."
      Which is good advice for curiosity seekers who will never get a table. Rao's has good, standard Italian-American fare, but if it had none of the notoriety that surrounds the legend of the place, I doubt anyone would really care very much to go here. The irony of it all is that the same snobbish uptown people people who wouldn't think of going to Little Italy or Arthur Avenue in the Bronx or even utter the words "red sauce" when speaking of Italian food, are the same people who would do anything or pay anything to be in on the fun at Rao's. Go figure.
       I understand that. I had fun. I ate well. It was a trip. But by the time I get back again, they may be wheeling me in. I can wait.

I will be hosting a very special and, I think unique, cruise event this summer from June 4-16 on the S. S. Crystal Serenity. I have chosen some of my favorite places in the whole world to visit and dine at, including Alain Ducasse’s illustrious three-star Louis XV restaurant in Monaco, and the enchanting Don Alfonso on the Amalfi Coast. You will be treated to the finest these and other dedicated restaurateurs have to offer in their unique way. I will be telling you everything worth knowing about the food and wines of the regions we visit—Dubrovnik, Barcelona, Monaco, Florence, St. Tropez, Sorrento, and Rome—including the best places to find haute cuisine to the most charming trattoria or the liveliest bistros and cafes.

   My wife Galina, co-author with me of The Italian American Cookbook (which we’ll sign copies of), will also be giving an exclusive cooking lesson onboard I know you will enjoy.
    Between relaxing and enjoying yourselves onboard and coming with us to the loveliest sites and restaurants in the Mediterranean, you will have a unique and memorable trip and, I hope, become as familiar with these glorious places, cultures, and people as I am.     Galina and I look forward to seeing you onboard in June!    For details, go to http://www.festivalsafloat.com/html/mariani/letter.html
-- John Mariani

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).