MARIANI’S

            Virtual Gourmet


  May 1, 2005                                                        NEWSLETTER

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                                                                    Menu cover for Odeon Restaurant, NYC (2005)

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FUN WITH FOOD by John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER: Osteria del Circo by John Mariani

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FUN WITH FOOD
88888by John Mariani
 
 
 
Food is a serious business if you make your living cooking and serving it, and there's nothing that puts me off my feed  more than that raucous TV chef what's-his-name who repeatedly screams to his guffawing audience,  "Hey, this ain't rocket science!" (True, rocket science requires no finesse or good taste; cooking does.)

    But if you're not a cook or restaurateur, I don't think food should ever be taken very seriously, except when you get the bill.  Food and dining are two of life's purest and most enduring pleasures, not something to treat as a religion, art form, or polemic. Which is why the wittiest things ever said about food, wine, restaurants and taste have been said by writers who are usually not cooks, cookbook authors or restaurant critics. Brillat-Savarin, the great gastronome who was fondest of bon mots about food, including, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are," never said a funny thing in his life.
 


1  Some of the best commentary is merely whimsical, as when Mark Twain (left) said, "Nothing so improves the scenery as a plate of bacon and eggs," and that "pompano is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin," while others are cutting, often exposing something of the national character by focusing on a nation's eating habits, as when Voltaire observed, "The English have forty-two religions but only two sauces."  And they're quick to make a crack and masters of timing. Closer to home, comedian Rodney Dangerfield described his wife's cooking, thus: "Y'know in most houses it's come and get it? In my house it's try and eat it." Ba-da-boom!
  Probably the funniest writing about food is that designed to puncture the pomposity of those who take it so seriously. In the hilarious television series "Absolutely Fabulous," the goofiness of contemporary Brit restaurant criticism is sent up perfectly by writer-actress Jennifer Saunders 210(far right), quoting the fictitious "Hamish," food editor for Ella Magazine on a new French restaurant in London: "Competent in the grand manner, stuffed with plutocratic goodies and a decent duck. A boudoiresque dining room, fin-de-siecle eclectic and still fashionably uncomfortable. A melange, possibly a post-Orwellian version of an Edwardian eaterie.  The food ecumenical in flavor, a cosmopolitan adventure of exuberant eclecticism full of amuse gueule and gastro-credibility.  No flash in the bain-marie this. It has a comforting ambiance, although generally the tomatoes were rather `pulpeuses.'"
    Pretty much from the time people began cooking rather than merely gulping food down, there have been writers happily making fun of bad taste and manners. "All human history attests," wrote Lord Byron 3(below), "Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner."   The Bible is not particularly funny when it comes to food, but in 750 B.C. the poet Hesiod wrote, "The art of cookery drew us forth from that ferocious life when, devoid of faith, the Anthropophagian ate his brother."  And around 800 B.C. Homer in the Odyssey quipped, "A hungry stomach will not allow its owner to forget it, whatever his cares and sorrows"--a notion expanded on by the sardonic Ambrose Bierce some two millennia later, when, in his Devil's Dictionary, he described the abdomen as "the temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage the one deity that men really adore."
    The distaste discerning chroniclers have had for the excesses of show-off cooks was noted early on by the Roman comedy writers Plautus, who said of the exotic vegetables served at a lavish dinner, "If the cows won't eat it, you can be sure that people will."  Vegetarians seem particularly good targets for scorn: George Orwell believed that "The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots."  The English humorist J.B. "Beachcomber" Morton insisted that "Vegetarians have wicked shifty eyes, and laugh in a cold and calculating manner. They pinch little children, steal stamps, drink water, favour beards. . . wheeze, squeak, drawl and maunder."  Samuel Johnson (below) 4once gave a recipe for cucumbers, saying they  "should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out as good for nothing."  On one occasion when seated next to strict vegan George Bernard Shaw, whose plate contained only vegetables, James M. Barrie, the author of "Peter Pan," inquired, "Tell me, have you eaten that or are you going to?"  5Even Shaw himself (below) once refused to attend a gala testimonial in his honor that included a vegetarian menu, saying, "The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me."
   The biggest eaters are usually the wittiest, not the pickiest.
After serving a meal of very small portions, a hostess politely said to Alfred Hitchcock, "I do hope you'll dine with us again," to which the movie director snapped, "By all means. Let's start now."  Hitchcock  (below) must always have been a very difficult guest, even with his own wife: Once when she put a soufflé in the oven, he could not keep his eyes off a closed oven door, fearing7
the confection might become overcooked or fallen. Exhausted by the experience, he told his wife (with no small degree of irony), "No more soufflés until we have an oven with a glass door. I can't stand the suspense!"
   James Beard, who was a very big man with a very big appetite, once said of dieting, "A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." And Paul Bocuse, who despite being one of the world's great chefs is also a very funny man, once described "nouvelle cuisine" as "not enough on your plate and too much on your bill."
   But nothing seems to stir the contemptuous humorist as does the idea that another country's food is inedible.  Such barbs aim at the belly but hit the heart and soul. When the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray visited America and had his first American oyster, he professed, "I thought I'd swallowed a small child."  Meanwhile,  Charles Dickens (left) rcouldn't wait to tell his British readers of his own dining experiences in the United States, describing the American appetite for oysters, noting that "at every supper at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters" would be served at every dinner, "in any one of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered easily."  A few years later Rudyard Kipling confirmed Dickens' reports of American table manners: "The American does not drink at meals as a sensible man should, Indeed, he has no meals. He stuffs for ten minutes thrice a day." Sounds like America in 2005.
    Apparently the worst an Englishman could lodge against French dining habits was what Tobias Smollett spat out: "If there were five hundred dishes at table, a Frenchman will eat them all." James Boswell, however, could not help but couple national diets with political agendas, writing of the difference between England and France, "I think a Welsh rabbit and porter with freedom of spirit better than ortolans and burgundy with servility." Ouch!
    On the other hand, a good deal of the criticism of a nation's food comes directly from the mouths of its own citizenry.  Upon learning that 100 fast food eateries had been established in his ancestral home of Japan, politician S.I. Hayakawa lamented, "That seems a terrible price to pay for Pearl Harbor." Charles DeGaulle (right), with great frustration, said of his beloved France, "One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese."9 "To eat well in England," said W. Somerset Maugham, "you should have breakfast three times a day," and Oscar Wilde sniffed, "The British cook is a foolish woman--who should be turned for her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she has never known how to use." When asked why he moved from his native England to South Africa, British-born statesman Cecil Rhodes, replied, "The real fact is that I could no longer stand the English's eternal cold mutton."
   Writers' hatred of eating anything nutritionists say they should eat has been cause for some of the more memorable lines. 22W.C. Fields (below) explained his less-than-savory diet by saying, "My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies." Fran Liebowitz, who has made a career out of curmudgeonry seems at her most acidic when it comes to food that purports to be good for you: "Thoroughly distasteful as synthetic food might be," she wrote, "one cannot help but accord them a certain value when confronted with the health food buff. Brown rice is ponderous, overly chewy, and possessed of unpleasant religious overtones." Or, as Calvin Trillin put it more succinctly, "Health food makes me sick."
  Trillin (below) has long been one the funniest contemporary commentators on American food, assuming what he calls his "cheerful glutton persona." His definitive put-down of that bogus term "continental food" has become a classic: "In American cities the size of Kansas City, a careful traveling man has to observe the rule that any restaurant the executive secretary of the chamber of commerce is particularly proud of is almost certainly not worth eating in. Its name will be something like La Maison de la Casa House, Continental cuisine. Its food will sound European but taste as if the continent they had in mind was in Australia." (This was before Australian food got real good in the 1990s.)  kkHe has also proposed exchanging turkey for spaghetti carbonara on the national Thanksgiving dish on the basis that, "The only thing we know for sure about what the Pilgrims ate is that it couldn't have tasted very good," and that Christopher Columbus "would have sooner acknowledged that the world was shaped like an isosceles triangle than to have eaten the sort of things that English Puritans ate."
  I am also always delighted reading the "frivolous, snobbish" (his words), hilarious opinions of my friend James Villas, who gets equally apoplectic about people who would demean American country ham as French Camembert. He once wrote a very funny nine-page treatise on "Understanding fried chicken," claiming that only southerners know anything at all about the dish. Writing of the National Cooking Contest, Villas sniped, "A few years back, a young lady irreverently dipped some chicken in oil flavored with soy sauce, rolled it in crushed chow mein noodles, fried it up, and walked away with top honors and a few grand for her Cock-a-Noodle-Do. Without doubt, she was a sweetheart of a gal, but you know, the people who judged that fried chicken need help."
  I suspect, in the end, that most witty food writers grew up neither rich nor starved for food or love, although plenty went hungry and thought a lot about food when they did, which is why Dr. Johnson was right on the money when he said, "A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner."
   Beulah, peel me a grape.


NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani

Osteria del Circo
20 West 55th Street
212-265-3636
www.osteriadelcirco.com
Photos by Lanteck Studio

       9The closing of the Le Cirque 2000 on Madison Avenue last January was a disappointment to those who loved all that Sirio Machine and his sons, Mario, Marco, and Mauro had put into it over a five-year period, having  been previously located for two decades on East 65th Street.  So the announcement that they would be opening up a new, smaller East Side restaurant in the Bloomberg Building this fall or winter was greeted with hungry anticipation. 
     In the meantime we have Osteria del Circo, itself celebrating its fifth anniversary, on the West Side, and, under the careful Maccioni stewardship buoyed by maître d' Bruno Dessai, it is thriving and, with a new Sicilian-born chef, Carlo Apolloni, the cooking is better than ever.  That the cooking must still be approved by materfamilias Egi Maccioni is all to the good for the consistency of the food here, and her signature dishes--like the Tuscan zuppa alla frantoiana with 30 vegetables and beans and her ravioli di mamma Egi, with buffalo ricotta and spinach in a sage butter sauce--are still here, grazie Dio. (Recipes for which may be found in  The Maccioni Family Cookbook.)
       The place looks fresh and brighter than ever, a circus motif designer Adam Tihany has provided with a great curved bar up front, outdoor tables that are filled from noon through dinner, plenty of red-and-yellow circus stripe colors, metal clown figures, trapezes, and polished wood.  333There is a brisk theater crowd that causes a rush for the door at 7:30, so don't book before 8 PM.  You'll be greeted with gusto by Marco or Mauro or Bruno, and they have made a concerted effort to disabuse guests over notions of good and bad tables by having one big open two-tiered room with good sightlines all around.  The kitchen is open in the back.
       On my last meal, which was pretty extensive, at Circo, just about everything exceeded expectations, so I have to report that the new chef is the best they've had here.  We began with a slew of  antipasti, from a porcini salad and octopus alla genovese, with potato and Gaeta olives salad, then one of my favorite dishes here--baccalà (salt cod) whipped with olive-oil and garlic and served with grilled polenta and mixed greens We could not refuse to finish  off every bite of schiacciata--very thin, cracker-like bread with funghi porcini and lardo (the fat cut from prosciutto), and their pizzas are excellent.
     34343 Of the pastas I loved
gnocchi ai quattro formaggi, which is as rich as any in New York, and bucatini all'amatriciana, with its zesty bite from red onions, along with tomatoes and guanciale. I was disappointed, however, that a dish described on the menu as tagliatelle with pesto sauce and  bay scallops, turned out to be, cut-up sea scallops, good substitutes, but not bays. 
       Branzino came baked in a salt crust to maintain its succulence, served with grilled vegetables, while chicken cooked "al mattone," under a brick, with cipollini and broccoli di rabe was juicy and wonderfully, crisply charred on the skin. A medallion of roast venison with baby carrots, fennel, apples and a reduction of Lagrein wine was hearty and complex while still keeping the flavor of the venison up front.  Circo also has nightly old-fashioned specials on each day of the week, from trippa alla fiorentina to cacciucco all livornese and a terrific lasagne alla bolognese.
       eeDesserts far exceed the usual Italian items, and for those who miss Le Cirque's original crème brûlée, it is here in all its pristine glory. Otherwise go with the banana-chocolate tart with rum ice cream, yeasty bombolicini with coffee cream centers (right), or a lovely apple tart with caramel ice cream.  If you crave great espresso, you'll have it here.  You'll also choose from one of the best wine lists for Italian wines in New York, with prices up and down from every region.

     (There is, by the way, a branch of Circo at Bellagio in Las Vegas, one of very few  restaurants open for lunch in the city.)

      Antipasti run $10-$18, pastas are $14-$19, and main courses $26-$36. There is a fixed price dinner of 3 courses at $34, served from 6:30-9:30 PM.



HE'S NOW THINKING ABOUT OPENING ONE FOR BULEMICS WITH REAALLLLY BIG REST ROOMS
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A new restaurant in Berlin has opened named Sehnsucht ("longing" in German) created by a  former anorexic who's hired an anorexic chef.  "Anorexics have to be taught that eating out can be fun," said owner Katja Eichbaum, who lists on the menu items without food names, like "Hallo" for lobster bisque, "Ravenous Hunger" for rack of lamb, and "Soul" for cappuccino dessert.








NOTHING LIKE A GLOWING PINK SCALP TO TURN ON THE CHICKS333


"In the lavishly appointed Panorama [aboard the Silverwind], where a dance quartet is playing, women in bold leopard spots and tiger stripes lurk beside potted plants. . . . The male passengers are more sedately outfitted in typical black tie--tropical penguins, perhaps.  The standout among them is a handsome white buck of a man, in a snowy dinner jacket.  His eyes are a piercing blue.  His pink scalp, fringed by white hair, glows in the dimly illuminated lounge."--"Traveling Companion," Travel & Leisure (April 2005)








LET ME TAKE YOU ON A SEA CRUISE

Dear Subscriber,

 555555555I 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. o   
     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


 
QUICK BYTESS

To all my friends in the public relations community: With regard to Mother's Day celebrations (as well as Father's Day, St. Valentine's Day, etc.), the volume of announcements I receive has made it impossible to list every one in the Virtual Gourmet.  Therefore, I shall endeavor to include as many of those that seem to have the most interesting, singular events (like the those below), rather than those that offer merely a special price for the day, e.g., Mother's Day brunch.
 
* On  May 4, Chef Ryan Hardy welcomes cookbook authors John Ash, Jessica Harris, Tina Miller, and Catherine Walthers to a dinner at The Coach House at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgar Town, Mass. À la carte or $30 prix fixe. To make reservations, call (508) 627-3761.

* NYC’s Tavern on the Green is inaugurating an annual program wherein children will make a special dessert for Mom on Mother’s Day as a personal expression of their appreciation, at the end of a 3-course menu, offered from noon-8 PM. As children finish their meal, they will be escorted to a special auxiliary kitchen, where, with e Pastry Chef Jasmine Bojic, they  will be able to choose from several dessert options they can make and present to Mom.  $89 for guaranteed seating in the Crystal Room and $69 for general seating; children under 12 are half price. Call 212-873-3200 or visit www.tavernonthegreen.com.

* On Mother's Day in Santa Monica, CA, Valentino  will hold a 6-course dinner cooked "Mamma-style," inspired by dishes  from the kitchen staff's childhoods, like Bolognese pork roast and parmigiano souffle from Reggio Emilia.  $65 pp, $45 for children. Call 310-829-4313.

* On May 3 the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington winner of the Duke Zeibert Lifetime Achievement Award will be revealed at a special RAMMY preview party at Saks Fifth Avenue, where he or she will be honored and all other category winners will be announced at the 2005 "RAMMY Awards" Gala on Sunday, June 5 at the Washington, DC Convention Center.   Tickets are $175 for RAMW members, and $200 for non-members and can be reserved by calling 202-331-5990. For more information visit www.ramw.org.

* From May-October NYC’s Hotel Gansevoort is offering a “High Roller” Package, incl. roundtrip transfers from NY airports or addresses within 20 miles of the hotel; Dom Perignon and chocolate strawberries upon arrival; two  nights in the duplex Penthouse; dinner for two at ONO  (fixed menu, beverages not included); full American breakfast; Table for 10, magnum of vodka and personalized lifetime membership card at Lotus; private midnight dip in rooftop pool; spa day for two at Eva Scrivo Salo; monogrammed bathrobes; 10 complimentary drinks at our rooftop bar, and more.  $3,995. Call 877-426-7386, or visit www.hotelgansevoort.com.

* From May 12-15 the Scottsdale Celebrity Chef Golf Invitational presented by Bon Appétit magazine will feature culinary talents of Scottsdale with Mario Batali, Todd English, Ming Tsai, Richard Sandoval, and other chefs, featuring culinary workshops, seminars and tastings, a Bon Appétit ArtWalk in Downtown Scottsdale, and championship golf at the Tournament Players Club. Call 888-383-8472 or visit www.bonappetitgolf.com. All events support The Make-A-Wish Foundation.

* On May 14 L.A.’s Campanile will hold a lunch, tasting and discussion of 4 California olive oils produced or blended by women. “The Olive Harvest” cookbook by Nan McEvoy, owner of the McEvoy Olive Ranch, will be available for purchase. All proceeds to benefit AIWF.    Members - $65; Non-members - $75.  Please make your reservations by mailing your check, payable to AIWF or Visa/MC/AX to Gloria Barke, 5215-2 White Oak Ave., Encino, CA 91316 or fax (818) 705-1261.  For more info, call 818-705-1260.

* On May 15 NYC’s Tasters Guild will host a  “Moulin Rouge Dinner” at Bouterin, with a troupe of dancers performing variations of the Can-Can. For the evening, Bouterin will be festooned to make it resemble the legendary Moulin Rouge in Paris.  $125 for non-members.  Call Ron Kapon at 212-799-6311, or Ms. Vivian Tramontana at 212-501-7823.

* On May 18  Left Bank brasserie in Pleasant Hill, CA, will host a “Chef’s Table” 4-course dinner with chef Roland Passot, along with Chef de Cuisine Erik Romme.  Chef Roland will visit and chat with diners between courses. $69 pp. Call 925-288-1222.

* Le Richemond in Geneva, Switzerland, has put together a sailing package with a private 3-hour sunset sail aboard a yacht, with unlimited Champagne and canapés, accommodations at Le Richemond, daily buffet breakfast, Champagne and fresh fruit in room upon arrival, transfers to the harbor for a sunset trip, and dinner at Le Jardin restaurant.. Prices start from (approx.) $1,448 per room, per nigh, valid from June 1-Sept. 30.  Call in the USA 1-800-215-2167; In Europe: 00-800-11-20-11-40.
 

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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).  

 Any of John Mariani's books below may be ordered from amazon.com by clicking on the cover image.


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copyright John Mariani 2005