MARIANI’S

  October 16,  2005                                                        NEWSLETTER

                                              La Bella Notte at Tony's in "Lady and the Tramp" (1955)

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In This Issue

OUR FAVORITE MANSIONS:  Bovey Castle  by John Mariani

Now It Can be Told! Esquire's Best New Restaurants 2005 by John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER: Perry Street by John Mariani

QUICK BYTES

       When Wordsworth wrote his famous line, "Of  splendour in the grass, or glory in the flower," he might well have been describing the extraordinary beauty of the land surrounding Bovey Castle.  The castle itself is set on 360 acres of green, rolling hills and reflective water within the Dartmoor National Park and built in 1906 as the home of Viscount Hambleden, son of newspaper baron WH Smith (whose name is inescapable for anyone wanting to buy a paper or magazine at a kiosk in England).
     Over the years the structure was magnified quite a bit with extensive wings to accommodate guests after this became a hotel, and today, completely refurbished and refurnished to the tune of $50 million by developer Peter de Savary, who also founded the Club at  Skibo Castle in Scotland (reviewed here: click).  The "Old Course,"  designed by J.F. Abercromby in 1926, was revived by a $10 million investment, with important but respectful changes made to various fairways and greens, now playable year round, given your endurance for a pelting British rain now and again.
      Arrivals at Bovey Castle come either by car or train.  The former seem to favor large Bentleys, Roll-Royces, and Aston-Martins, arrayed across the parking lot gravel like sleek, stately, steely beasts. (Driving up in a Ford Focus would take a strong ego.)  The latter arrivals, which included this guest, use BrtiRail out of London's Paddington Station, a swift and somnolent two-and-a-half hour trip through some lovely English countryside.  Incidentally, one of the best buys in Great Britain these days is BritRail's FlexiPass, now discounted until Feb. 28, which allows four days of unilimited travel ranging from $199 to $252, and children travel free (www.britrail.com). They are available only to non-U.K. residents.
       And so, after ripping past the green lands of Hampshire and Dorset, you arrive at St. David's Station in  Exeter, which is about 15 minutes' ride from the Castle, which is itself only a few miles from another great estate in this territory, Gidleigh Park.  The drive takes you through cattle-rich farmland, careering along two-lane roads sidled with tall stone walls. After passing through the charming little town of Teignmouth, you begin wending your way into Bovey property towards its great iron gates and its imposing façade, flanked by Lord Hambledon's original premises. The castle's hallway is justifiably called "Great" for both its size and majesty, as is the Cathedral Room (left), but it is the grounds themselves that are truly breathhalting--they stretch far away to a vast, forested horizon and contain Edwardian Gardens  exquisitely beautiful for their not being overdesigned.
     Walking through the grounds here, and through the National Park they attenuate, is to be suffused with all those wildly romantic scenes out of Austin,  Scott, and Thackeray, perhaps even Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," who in Xanadu a "stately pleasure dome decreed."
      You can walk these hills for hours, days really, along rivulets and streams cast in fairy lights and dappled hues of every brown and green tone imaginable.  I somewhere recall that the only unofficial recorded utterance of Queen Mary Tudor was, upon being asked if there's something she wished she'd done in her life, was, "I always wished to jump over a stile."  I never really knew what a stile was until I saw them arrayed along wooden and stone fences in the Bovey countryside: it is a Middle English word for a set of small steps for getting over a fence or wall, a darling substitute for a gate, accomplished in one or two steps, a simple little thing that seems like something Alice might cross over into another wonderland and which might afford a Victorian gentleman a glimpse of stocking to make his heart rush.  By all means visit the fairy tale-like village of North Devon here, with its 13th-century village church.
      There are 24 miles of salmon and trout fishing available for both the compleat and incompleat angler, an equestrian center, boating lake, tennis and croquet courts, archery and shooting, even falconry.  You become bored at Bovey only by your own choice to do nothing at all.
       Back at the castle there are other, man-made pleasures to be found, from the gorgeous Ministry's Gallery to the very Edwardian billiards room.  The 65 rooms at the castle are a splendid array of carefully calibrated comfort zones, so quiet as to make you hold your breath, each individually decorated and set down hallways hung with art deco travel posters.  (The Hambleden Suite is shown below left, the Fountain Room below right.) Depending on the season (April-October or November-March), rooms range from £295-£1,750 ($522-$3,097).  The extensive Spa here offers up a myriad of treatments seemingly designed to make headway into every nook and cranny of your body and into every ego in need of bolstering, from a Pro-Active Age-Defying Facial and Fennel Cleansing Cellulite Ceremony to a Hot Toddy for the Body and a Sage and Cormneal Body Buff, which start to take on the sound of a Monty Python routine on spa treatments.  I settled for a simple, relaxing massage that sent me right to bed until dinner.
       One of the unexpected swells here in a calming sea of first-rate modern amenities is the frustrating lack of any consistent internet access, especially at the business center where access and speed are as dependable as the English weather. I trust it is something they will address immediately, for Bovey is aiming at attracting business groups here.      One of my favorite rooms in the Castle is the bar, as tufted and leathery a place as any civilized man or woman could want, and very sexy for all that.  I must also say that the bartender here is one of the finest of his profession I have ever met, one who takes his job and his guests' request very, very seriously so as to turn out the perfect cocktail with the ideal spirits available.
     When you move into the Palm Court dining room (below) you will feel you have left the 19th century behind and entered an Edwardian salon of a type John Galsworthy evoked, a time when  "a bumble-bee alighted and strolled on the crown of his Panama hat."  The room has the traditional look of a grand hotel dining room, affording you a glance at who's arriving as you butters your toast,  A voluptuous Egyptian bronze takes up the aspect of a manager summoning a busboy,  and the lighting throughout gives every woman a glow she may or may not otherwise possess.
     One of the most appealing thing about Chef David Berry’s menu is that it happily combines the kind of traditional English cooking that might well have been served to the guests of Lord Hambledon’s day—garnished smoked salmon, King prawn and crab salad, roast rib of Aberdeen angus beef with sauce béarnaise, and even a hefty plate of “Bangers & mash” with onion gravy—with finely wrought modern dishes like a cauliflower velouté with morel cream, a foie gras amd artichoke game terrine, and a mushroom and goat’s cheese tian with buttered asparagus and mint hollandaise.
     Line-caught Newlyn halibut comes with a clam and herb risotto and ratatouille of vegetables, while a panaché of Cornish fish bobs in a creamy lobster broth. Now that it is autumn, there is juicy, roasted Moorland partridge with Savoy cabbage and cinnamon-glazed baby beets on the menu, along with a fig tart Tatin with blue cheese ravioli and an oyster beignet. Desserts are seasonal and scrupmtious.
     The selection of British cheeses is excellent, to be happily enjoyed with a glass of vintage or tawny Port arrayed for your delectation. A three-course dinner here is ₤52.50 ($91).  The wine list is very good, with depth and breadth and and range of prices that should please anyone.

       Bovey Castle is a singular place in a country where many castles, estates, and manor houses exist in various states of repair and disrepair, fine taste and eclectic taste, always buoyed by the grandeur of the English countryside.  None I've seen is more beautiful than Bovey, which reminds me of another, fictional, castle Evelyn Waugh described in  Brideshead Revisited, a reverie where "leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of God."  Add in a $50 million investment, and you've really got something special.


     

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!

Esquire's Best New Restaurants 2005
by John Mariani

     

     The peripatetic Jean-George Vongerichten sometimes has to lay his head somewhere, and he's chosen a very modern glass box on the Hudson River where he has also located the newest of his 15 restaurants.  He lives atop this shop (so does Martha Stewart), which gives him easy access when he's in NYC. How often he can make himself available when he has so many entrepreneurial interests around the globe, including two units of Vong (Chicago and Hong Kong), Market in Paris, JG in Shanghai, Prime Steakhouse in Las Vegas, Dune in the Bahamas, et al, is anyone's guess, and he's taken some shots recently, with a London Vong now closed and his NYC steakhouse, V, said to be on the verge. 

       Yet the new Perry Street has been generally welcomed as an indication that J-G still has his chops and can turn out a modern restaurant with highly personalized cuisine as well as anyone.  How long they remains the case, with J-G in absentia, is anyone's guess, but for the time being, it's a fine addition to the neighborhood, even if its Miesian glass- and-steel construction looks a little out of place among the brownstones of the West Village.
      The dining area gains tremendously from the changing natural light that pours through the vast windows, from noon through twilight and into evening, so that this is just a cheery a place to come to for lunch as it is a romantic one for dinner.  The colors of the room are quite monotone--various shades of white and gray--with lighting fixtures and patterned carpet with a distinct 1960s minimalist Futurama look, which is in fact beginning to look more appealing than one could ever have imagined. I'm sad to see--and it's become almost a cliché--that J-G has yet again abandoned the soft, reflective beauty of tablecloths for the cold, hard surface of wood topped with brown paper.
     Since this is a J-G restaurant, all bets are off as to when you can snag a dinner time table (they take them a month in advance), but I was able to make a lunchtime reservation easily two days in advance and found the place only about two-thirds full by the time I left.  And since the menus at lunch and dinner are very similar, if you want desperately to be among the first to eat at Perry Street, have lunch.  You will be cordially received by everyone,  a young, well-dressed crew in basic black to coordinate with the room's tones.  The menu is of modest size--8 apps, 8 mains-- simply described in arial type, and easy to understand without further elucidation from the staff.   The wine list is formidable without being off-putting in size or scope.  This is food that goes well with Alsatian wines, and there are some fine examples here, some under $50.
      The food, as has become J-G's trademark, has assertive spicing that always suffuses rather than overpowers the other ingredients. A marvelous amuse gueule of cold gazpacho gave a brisk start to the palate. Colorful frisée and goat's cheese salad came with sparkling pickled peach and crystallized wasabi that made the whole idea of a salad into something novel and refreshing.  It was superb. Good ingredients were obviously the base for asparagus and grilled shiitakes with a simple but delicious vinaigrette, all set with a lightly poached egg on top.  Rice cracker-crusted tuna with a mayo-like but peppery sriacha-citrus emulsion made for an excellent starter, but an overdose of salt marred a dish of black pepper dumplings and snow peas.
     Light and lovely was a snowy white Arctic char with cherry tomato juice ("freshly  squeezed"), with fennel purée.  Grilled tenderloin of beef did not have all that much beefy flavor, and though tasty, the addition of both savory onion jam and sour plum mustard was duplicative in texture and, to an extent, flavor.
     Desserts were light but rich, including a deep chocolate pudding with crystallized violet.
      Perry Street's food has a pristine beauty about it that makes it easy to appreciate even before you eat it, and while there is delicacy throughout the menu here, there are also the kinds of subtleties that have shown Vongerichten the master he is.  The food here is not as spicy as at Spice Market, as imitative as at 66, or as regionally focused as at Vong; neither does it have the heft and authority of his flagship, Jean-Georges.   I was glad, then, I went for lunch because I strongly suspect I would have been hungry after dinner.
(Fortunately Chinatown is just a few blocks away.)
       This is definitely Jean-George's best effort in years, though just how dedicated he will be to the proposition is anyone's guess.  His living in the building makes the prospect of his passing through the dining room on a regular basis pretty good, though he did not put in an appearance while I dined that afternoon.  More worrisome is that Jean-Georges is not one to keep a chef de cuisine for very long, either because he goes off on his own or because he is switched to another JG property, and that makes my guaranteeing consistency very difficult indeed.  Perry Street is a fine template for Jean-George to prove his mettle upon, but, like the decor, it still lacks a highly personalized passion.
       Dinner  prices for appetizers range $10.50-$15, entrees $22-$38.  Lunch and dinner are served daily.

NOT TO MENTION THAT OVERSEXED COUPLE FROM FRESNO

"A passport is your ticket to a global party, one where love-starved Australians and Swedish hotties are thrown together in a simmering stew of international intrigue. Attachments are low, flirtation is high, and no one is averse to a vacation fling (or love connection) that they can juicily recount to friends back home."--Sara Benson, Don't Let the World Pass You By!; 52 Reasons to Have a Passport (2005).

HEY, YOU  EVER BEEN HIT WITH A BURRITO UPSIDE YO' HEAD?

"The kid was sitting there as I'm describing this in assembly, and he's thinking, `Oh, my gosh, they're talking about my burrito,'" said Junior high school principal Diana Russell of Marshall, New Mexico, about  a scare at the school when a witness mistook a student's wrapped-up burrito for a concealed weapon and summoned law enforcement.








OUR READERS ROAR. . . .

In answer to my assertion last week that Paris is a much more expensive city than London these days, my friend and colleague, Anthony Dias Blue, author of Anthony Dias Blue's Pocket Guide to Wine 2006, writes:

 "I beg to differ. London is MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than Paris. Don't forget that the Paris restaurant bill includes the tip. In London, after you absorb the shock of the bill, you have to add 20% more. And if you then add in the unbelievable cost of the cab you took to get there, it's no contest. Of course, I don't eat at those fancypants places you like. My favorite bistros in Paris (L'Ami Louis excepted) run about $100 a couple including tips."

. . . AND WE ROAR RIGHT BACK

Dear Mr. Blue, I have to agree that London cab fares are appalling, which is why I walk or take the tube to those fancypants places I enjoy. Increasingly a 12% service charge--never 20%-- is being added on to London restaurant bills, though it is discretionary. Too bad guilt-ridden American tourists believe they should leave even more weak American dollars to make the wait staff love them more.  I would have to say that at the bistro level, London and Paris compete fairly closely on price. But when you do rise to the level of even a one-star restaurant in Paris these days, you may well find yourself paying $85 for an appetizer and $120 for a main course--prices you will find nowhere close in London.



KATRINA RELIEF FUND EVENTS

* On Nov. 2 Vikas Khanna & BackBurner Creations present NYC Chefs "Cooking for Life" - Gulf Coast Relief Benefiting "Save the Children" & "Habitat for Humanity," with fine food provided by top NYC Chefs with open bar at  the Tribeca Rooftop (2 Debrosses Street).  The event will also include Entertainment, Live Music and a Silent Auction.  $100 pp. in Advance and $125 at the door;  available at www.nyccl.com or 866-543-2781, or 203-22-.4161.


QUICK BYTES

* From Oct. 17-29 NYC’s  Aureole will donate 10 % of sales from Executive Chef Dante Boccuzzi’s 7-course tasting menus to benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  $99 ($160 pp, with wines selected by Wine Director Scott Brenner).  The 5-course lunch menu, $45 ($75 with wines).  Call 212-319-1660.

 * On Oct. 27, for the 23rd Anniversary of Houston’s Backstreet Café, will hold a 5-course wine dinner featuring Roessler Vineyards. $95 pp. Call  713-302-9087.
 
* From Oct. 27-Nov. 2, The Spanish Kitchen in Los Angeles will be celebrating Halloween and the Days of the Dead with a  costume contest, a haunted house party, and  Dia de los Muertos menu. $36 pp. Call 310-659-4794.

* On Oct. 27 Le Bernardin in NYC will host an  evening with Beatrice Cointreau, CEO of Champagne Gosset and Managing Director of Cognac Pierre Frapin, pairing a 4-course menu created by Chef Eric Ripert with 4 Gosset Champagnes and two precious Frapin Cognacs. $300 pp. Call 212-554-1515.

* On Oct. 28  chef Chan Kwok of Hua Ting Restaurant at the Orchard Hotel in Singapore is coming to NYC  to showcase haute Asian cuisine at the Ambassador Grill & Lounge at the Millennium UN Plaza Hotel during the “Singapore à New York Food Festival.”  Lunch prix-fixe four-course menus are priced at $40 pp;  dinner five-courses, $60. Call 212-702-5014.; www.millenniumhotels.com.

* From Oct. 28-Nov. 3 The Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley National will hold its Wine (and Beer) Lovers Weekend, with seminars, dinners and tastings, with cuisine of the Inn’s Chef Michelle Hanson, who completes the weekend with a specialty cooking class on Sunday morning.  $995 per couple for a Standard Room, $1095 per couple for a Deluxe Room, and $1195 per couple for a Luxury Room.  Call 760-786-2345 and request booking number 1489.  For further details about the property and the weekend, please visit www.furnacecreekresort.com.

* On Oct. 28 Bacara Resort & Spa in Santa Barbara, CA, hosts its third annual avocado festival. Events incl. ranch hikes, Aston Martin ride-and-drives, celebrity guest chefs (Roland Passot/La Folie, Todd Humphries/Martini House) guacamole judging contest, organic garden tours and cooking classes.  Santa Barbara County wineries will complement the avocado dishes. Call 805-968-0100 or 877-422-4245 or via www.bacararesort.com.

* On Oct. 28 Les Amis d’Escoffier Society of New York, Inc. will present "Soixante-Neuvième Dîner d’Automne"honoring Chef Anne Rosenzweig at The Lighthouse, Pier 61, Chelsea Piers. and to support the Natalie Toedter Scholarship Fund. Dinner to follow $225 pp.; $175 members only ; visit www.escoffier-society.com.

* From Oct. 28-Nov. 5, Chicago’s Meztiso Latin Bistro & Wine Bar will offer a 7-course  menu and masquerade soirée in honor of ”Día De Los Muertos,” Mexico's Day of the Dead, prepared by Chef Jona Silva. $60 pp. Call 312- 274-9500 or visit www.meztiso.com.

* From Oct. 31-Nov. 3 Hostaria Mazzei in Port Chester, NY, will hold "A Tavola con la Puglia," a regional dinner celebrating the food and wine of Puglia. $75 pp. Call 914-939-2727.
 
* On Oct. 31 at Bricco restaurant in Boston, cookbook author and teacher Giuliano Bugialli will join Bricco’s Chef Iocco at Bricco at a 4-course dinner to introduce his latest book, The Foods of Parma. $125 pp.  Wines and an autographed copy of the cookbook included. Call 617-248-6800 or visit  www.bricco.com.

* From Nov. 4-6 the Third Annual Ischia Vintage will take place at Hotel Regina Isabella on the Mediterranean island of Ischia. This year, Giancarlo Carriero, owner of Hotel, will pay homage to the wines of Campania, incl. Azienda Agricola Di Marzo, Casa Vinicola Mastroberardino, Cantine Antonio Caggiano, and  the hotel’s own wine, "Nausicaa,"  created by the Count Gelasio Gaetani d’Aragona Lovatelli. Rooms range from € 125 to €290. Call 011-39-081-994-322; http://www.reginaisabella.it.

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, Bloomberg News and Radio, and Diversion.  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.

copyright John Mariani 2005