MARIANI’S

  October 30,  2005                                                        NEWSLETTER

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In This Issue

    Staying in the grand manner is more easily accomplished in London than in any other European city except Paris.  Deluxe accommodations in London truly are deluxe, which cannot always be said for those in Madrid, Rome, or Lisbon, and in many ways London wrote the book on the subject, having by the turn of the last century set the standards for luxury coupled to modernity at hotels like The Savoy, the Connaught, and The Ritz. Indeed Cesar Ritz, with Chef Auguste Escoffier, established their eminence first at the  Savoy in 1890, then went on to open similar grand palais in Paris, Rome, and New York.

     On my most recent trip to London I had occasion to stay at The Connaught (Carlos Place; 800-63-SAVOY; click here)  for the first time in years and found the upgrades in décor, amenities, and cuisine revelatory of how much of an old dowager it used to be.  Without compromising the beauty of the original design and exterior architecture (above) , everything now has a fine polish, with new lighting, silky fabrics, a smashingly handsome Bar (below), and a complete overhauling of the venerable restaurant here.
      Good heating and air-conditioning and very fine bathrooms are part of the new package, although I did find a couple of bulges in the wallpaper of my room sadly distracting.  Service, always a strong point at The Connaught, now under manager Anthony Lee, is far more receptive to the newcomer than it once was in a hotel that for decades been run almost like a private club. Just getting a room here at all, if not a regular, was difficult until the turn of this century.  Now, The Connaught is a far more easily accessible place, and, though you may still run into stuttering people with names like Colonel Vivyan Dodging-Swill, the current clientele is considerably peppier.
      The hotel is currently offering "Luxury Breaks," with rooms ranging from £325-£725 ($575-$1,285).
      About three years ago the dining rooms were transformed, under Gordon Ramsay, into MENU by Angela Hartnett, an unwieldy name for a very smart-looking, impeccably run main room (below) that retains the rich wood of the old days while adding finer lighting, plaid carpeting,  two splendid fireplaces, and a lighter touch throughout.  The other room, The Grill, is closer to what I remember, a rather staid, green, formal looking spot I find lacking in  much spirit, though probably a nostalgic balm to those who prefer that sort of thing.
     Angela Hartnett  is a wonderful young chef whose heart is in Provence and the  Mediterranean but whose respect for British ingredients gives her the leeway to make the menu at MENU all her own.   Thus, you might begin with ravioli of quail with braised Savoy cabbage, pickled cèpes and the bird’s jus, or lobster tortellini with white bean and baby squid vinaigrette with fennel. Tender Canaroli risotto with bright asparagus spears and shoots and roasted girolle mushrooms was enchanting as an early autumn starter, while a mosaic of pressed tomatoes layered with feta cheese and drizzled with balsamic vinegar was perfect simplicity.
     I’ve had no sweeter scallops this year than the Scottish variety I had here, with the underpinning of a sweet potato purée and a candied walnut vinaigrette. You can imagine the fine quality of the lamb and beef here, the former done with a ragoût of lentils and garlic confit.
     For dessert go seasonal: I was rewarded with roasted yellow peaches in puff pastry with marvelous salted almond ice cream and an “Equatorial custard.” Also delightful was a griotte consommé with a pistachio milkshake, spiced gingerbread and a crème fraîche sorbet, courtesy of pastry chef Alistair Wise. Artisan cheeses by La Fromagerie, Stefano Cavallini are also an option.
     Menu by Angela Hartnett may sound unwieldy, but in fact it is one of the most congenial, untrendy, finest places to dine in  London right now.
     The set lunch of three courses runs £30 ($53), also available pre-theater. Dinner is £55 ($97.50), with a tasting menu at £70 ($124).  A 12.5 percent discretionary service charge is tacked on. Jackets preferred. No smoking in the dining room.

      Much as I enjoy the grand manner of London hotels, I actually prefer staying at one of the city’s smaller boutique hotels, whose intimacy means more attentive service and whose singular posh is the expression of it owners.  One of my favorites of which I’ve written here in the past is 22 Jermyn (22 Jermyn; 011-44-(0) 207-734-0750; click here), run by my friend Henry Togna like the most elegant of bed-and-breakfasts, where every room and especially the suites (left) make visitors feel quite at home, as if this was your own London flat.  Togna and his staff also seem capable of arranging anything you’d like to do in town, including some very hard to get restaurant reservations.
      From now until Dec. 26, rates run £180-£250 ($319-$443).
   
 This time, however, I stayed at Dukes Hotel (35 St. James’s Place; 011-44-(0)-207-491-4840), located in a quaintly leafy cul-de-sac in St. James, around the corner from Mayfair and Green Park.  Merely walking into the courtyard here is part of the charm, as if you have private access to a place others might only peek at from the street beyond.
    Dukes has 90 rooms and suites, all with excellent baths and some of the most sumptuously comfortable beds and furniture I’ve ever plopped down upon. Pillows seemed everywhere, prints are effulgent with flowers, and lighting is ideal.
      The service staff is first-rate all around and owners David Naylor-Leyland and Alasdair Hadden-Paton keep everything on a keen keel.
     Despite Dukes' small size there is a health club here and a very fashionable bar famous for its martinis.  I did not, unfortunately, have a chance to give the restaurant here a run for its money.
      
Current prices run from £230 ($407) to £750 ($1,330) for the Penthouse.



   One of the most brightest new restaurants in the city is The Ledbury (127 Ledbury Road; 011-44-[0]-207-792-9090), tucked away down a quiet street in Notting Hill where London's ferocious traffic does not intrude.  It is owned by Nigel Platts-Martin, who also runs some of London's best restaurants, including The Square (my personal favorite) in Mayfair, La Trompette in Chiswick, The Glasshouse in Kew, and Chez Bruce in Chiswick. The Square is the most elegant of the bunch, but not flamboyant, while the rest hit just the right balance of casual chic and democratic conviviality. They are, as they say in London, "smart," which describes the style of dress (read: black) affected by their clientele.
     The Ledbury (not exactly a sparkly name) is awash with light from the large windows during the day (left), the spacious room done in tones of taupe, cream, and gray, with tables nicely separated. The decently priced winelist, under sommelier Dawn Davies, is clearly selected with an eye towards the food here--modern Franco-Brit--and there are 16 wines by the glass and a score of half-bottles.  Platts-Martin's longtime connections with London's wine distributors and massive holdings in storage have guaranteed good value for both him and his guests.
      Aussie Chef Brett Graham, 26, was brought over from The Square, and, while the food here is not quite so rich as at there, it certainly shares a dedication to absorbing and extracting intensity of flavor, even if it's in a lunch salad of greens with truffles, peashoots, asparagus, and quail's egg.  You might begin with a crispy, hot frog's leg beignet and a sip of Champagne. Foie gras comes with a sweet fig tartlette, and fine veal has the homey touch of macaroni and cheese and a topping of toasted almonds. Luscious lasagne is a sandwich of rabbit meat and morels. Excellent lamb loin is treated to the acidic-sweet dash of balsamic, served with fingerling potatoes and wild garlic.  For dessert the soufflés have already become signature items along with chocolate madeleines that ooze chocolate when bitten into.
      This is the kind of food one might not be able to eat every day but it is certainly the kind of food one would like to eat every day.  The concepts are clean, the ingredients perfect, the flavors deep.  It is certainly the best restaurant in this neck of London and one of the most agreeably priced to open in years.
        Lunch runs from £19.50-£24.50 ($34.50-$43.45), dinner £39.50 ($70); tasting menu, £55 ($97.50).
         Quite a different style of dining is available at what has become one of the most admired and beloved of all London restaurants--the now-famous St. John Bar & Restaurant (26 St. John Street; 011-44-[0]207-251-0848; click) in Smithfield, site of Londons' old meat markets.  The premises are as barebones as one can imagine, having been carved out of a former Georgian townhouse attached to a smokehouse without a great deal done to them beyond installing tables and chairs within the brick and white tiled rooms beneath 20-foot high skylights.
     Trevor Gulliver, Chef Fergus Henderson (formerly an architect), and Jon Spiteri opened the place in 1994, with the simple and very direct idea to offer good English meats and fish, along with plenty of offal, headcheese, terrines, and old British desserts.  It might have been a gamble at the time, but the sterling quality of their ingredients and the provenance of their meats carried them not only to enormous favor but also right through the Mad Cow scare without a tremor. Year after year now, St. John consistently ranks at or near the top of both foodie and critics' polls.
     My first visit here a few weeks back was all I was promised by St. John's adoring patrons.  The front room is piled with charcuterie and breads, bottles of wines, and a blackboard menu as an addendum to the seasonal menu, which was for me early fall's, and that meant the arrival of game. But first there were nibbles of olives and pork skin, smoked mackerel and pickled red cabbage. Then came the famous marrow bones, brimming with the soft, egg-like gelatin of tantalizing flavor, served with a parsley salad.
      Some of the finest rabbit--nice and gamy, but marvelously tender--took on the fat of bacon strips and the tang of mustard, while lamb's tongue had the wonderfully homey addition of bread in a green sauce. Whole crab with fresh mayonnaise could not have been improved upon, and the foie gras terrine was of fine, silky quality. But best of all--perhaps the best dish I've had all year--was a simply roasted, perfectly roasted, beautifully roasted grey partridge (left) whose flesh came off the bone suffused with juices.
       Bolstered by some good French vin du pays, we were ready for dessert, which proved to be rich and delicious--a chocolate cake with crème fraîche, a steamed marmalade pudding and custard, and a very old English sweet--Eccles cake, a larded fruit cake, served with Lancashire cheese.  (The cakes are said first to be sold as of 1793 in James Birch's bakeshop in Eccles, though similar currant or raisin-filled cakes are known well before that in English pastry.)
     By the way, Mr. Henderson (right) has produced a superb book of his cookery, Nose to Tail Eating (click) I highly recommend for those who crave his kind of food.
      Starters run from £5.60-£6.90 ($9.90-$12.25) and main courses £13.50-£22.50 ($24-$40).

          I arrived just days after China Tang (Park Lane; 011-44-[0] 207-629- 9988 ) opened in basement of the Dorchester Hotel, replacing a former Chinese restaurant that had been on an airy upper floor.  I may well have come too early, for while the place itself was quite dazzling, the food and service was most certainly not, and I suspect it had a lot to do with being able to get all the elements to work together, which include Chinese cooks who speak little or no English and Italian waiters who speak no Chinese--a recipe that spells disaster.
      David Tang, a Hong Kong fashionista who also owns Cipriani restaurant in London, oversaw the decor, spread out over several rooms with plenty of color and the kind of flash you find these days in the new hotels in China.  Tang provides visitors with everything from finny murals to mirrored columns, even shelves of books. The bar is obviously meant to be very sexy, all red and polished wood, with plenty of options on where and how you wish to sit.  The waiters are dressed straight out of a Paramount Pictures' Asian intrigue movie of the 1930s,  and the reception committee has a great deal of feminine charm.
      The tables are well set, with crystal soy sauce bottles and silver chopsticks, and the lighting is flattering throughout. If it seems a bit gaudy, it's all in fun, and you could easily dress up here for a night out, except that you might well be sitting next to a family in bluejeans, as is now the wont in London restaurants.
      The menu is pretty straightforward Cantonese, though a little too reminiscent of those old-fashioned Chinese eateries that haven't changed in decades--sesame prawns, lemon chicken, and Peking duck.  This last, which took a long while to materialize, took an even  longer time to serve, with the Italian waiters doing their maddeningly best to carve the bird while muttering under their breath.  In fact, everything took a long, long time to serve.: We waited more than 45 minutes for our appetizers, another half hour for some lukewarm siu mai dumplings (£4; $7), and the duck (£42; $74.50, for two), by the time it was actually plated, was cold. In between there was a dish of pleasant pork noodles (£9) and a well-steamed fish (£25; $44.35), though the steamed crab (£18; $32) was rather bland.
     I'm not ready to write off China Tang, but only to put it on hold until my next visit to London, by which time I hope the fellows working the woks have made their piece with the camerieri who collect and serve their food. Then again, China Tang is not a place for a drop-by Chinese meal: Prices are high, and there's little on the winelist under £40 worth drinking. A  discretionary 12.5% service charge is put on top of that.

FLAMES STEAK HOUSE
5 Gold Street
212-514-6400
www.flamessteakhouse.com.

     This is the new kid on the block, having just opened in late July in the Wall Street area, the offshoot of a highly successful namesake in Briarcliff, New York, in Westchester County (click here for review).  Owner Nick Vuli brings not only his expertise and his genuine concern for every customer—after all he’s trying to win everyone in the neighborhood over right at the beginning, with some other steakhouses moving in quickly—but also a dedication to obtaining the most consistent and finest USDA Prime beef available.
     This drives Vuli to hand-pick his beef in the Meat Market District, looking not just for the USDA stamp but for the finest examples of that much-abused top grade of meat.  At Flames you get beef that is beautifully aged and wonderfully marbled, all contributing to a steak that is among the very best in NYC, right up there with Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn and the original Palm on Second Avenue. It is then cooked at 800 degrees to seal in the juiciness and char the exterior--as good a dish as America can produce.  Just look at the photo above; unless you're not a carnivore, you should now be having a Pavlovian response.
     The two-story premises are not done in the hyper-masculine cliché décor of scruffy dark wood and yellow walls; the arched dining room, lovely landscape murals, and soft banquettes, with beautiful, semi-private rooms downstairs, make this as appealing to women as to men, and connoisseurs will find dazzling bottles of the world’s finest wines.
     You can go the traditional route with the menu, starting with an array of fresh, chilled shellfish.  The mozzarella with tomatoes and basil is always fresh and creamy, though  good tomatoes have gotten scarce. The prosciutto is sliced impeccably thin, and the pastas have real authority here.  There's a fine and delicate eggplant rollatine stuffed with ricotta, a very flavorful tuna wasabi, seared and served nearly raw.
   But let's face it, you come for the meat and five-pound-plus lobsters (up to ten!), the velvety creamed spinach, and ultra-rich S&S cheesecake. The classic porterhouse here is sliced and runs with plenty of its own juices, and the extra-thick veal chop is pink and finely grained, with enormous flavor.  For side dishes, don’t even think about skipping the crispy onion rings, and for dessert, Flames’ ice creams, pecan pie, and apple strüdel are more than worth the calories.
      Flames's wine list is very, very strong in all categories, with plenty of celebratory wines and big bottles, best appreciated in the beautiful downstairs wine room for parties.
     I might add that, while Flames’ prices are competitive with other steakhouses’, they are far from the highest in NYC, and you get very generous portions across the board. Nick Vuli makes as sure of that as he does of everything in this very personalized, non-chain steak house.

PLEASE HAVE TWO BOTTLES OF CHEAP CHAMPAGNE AND TEN BAGS OF PEANUTS SENT TO OUR SUITE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

THEN WHAT ABOUT MOTH BALLS?

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