MARIANI’S

  December 18, 2005                                                        NEWSLETTER

                                                       Christmastime at New York's `21'  Club

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In This Issue

      Reason Number 3,456 I never get jaded:  Not long ago I found myself rolling down a dirt road in Cappadocia, Turkey, at ten p.m. driven by a rollicking, former university professor in a Toyota Corolla humming along to a tape of Eric Clapton, after we had just attended a Whirling Dervish performance in a 12th-century caravansary.  The performance, which reproduces the seven-part mystic cycle towards perfection,  dates to the 13th-century, and is carried on by the Sufis (whose name comes from the Arabic for "wool" because the early Sufis wore very rough woolen clothes) in an hour-long performance that involves a slowly building, repetitive whirling by Mevlânâ  sect in their signature white skirts.
                                  Photo: G.Stepanoff-Dargery
        
 The low lighting of the beautiful caravansary--one of hundreds of ornate rest stops built every 25 miles along the ancient trade route--cast a flickering and  shadowy mystique over the arched hall, and the music had its own archetypal, if droning, appeal. The musicians, playing drums, a lute-like instrument and a reed flute,  sat down first and played in near darkness, a eulogy to The Prophet called "Nat-i-Şerif." The dervishes (or Semâzans) appeared, the lights brightened a little,  the men greeted each other, and then slowly began whirling in place, their white skirts flaring in the muted light like huge blossoming flower petals or the wings of manta rays. They closed their eyes as they whirled round and round, their arms outstretched, in imitation of the spinning of the universe itself.  Then the Dervishes began moving in a circle,  in four symbolic salutes, never ceasing to whirl, in order to reach a state of religious fervor, and ending with a reading of the Quran, after which the dervishes return to their monastic cells for meditation called tefekkür.
        One has to remind oneself that this is purely a religious ceremony, not entertainment, so there was little in the way of momentum or change, as one would have in a dance recital, and the evening did not lend itself to thunderous applause.
      Nevertheless, it was one of those unforgettable experiences I was glad to have had (for info on the performances go to www.sarihan1249.com), especially in a territory so truly removed from the headlong rush of the rest of the world that anyone wondering why our troops cannot ferret out Osama Bin Laden from the caves of Pakistan need only travel across the amazing landscape of Cappadocia.  Over thousands of square miles of rugged and very beautiful countryside stand lunar-like hillsides on a high plateau, dotted with small, dark openings where, for centuries, Cappadocians lived their lives out in seclusion.  Many were religious monks who never left their lairs for an entire lifetime, their food and water sent up by pulleys.  Others were home to entire families, while in the most extraordinary examples of cave living, whole tribes would hide from their enemies in vast, underground cities.                Photo: G. Stepanoff-Dargery
                                                                       
     If the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan are anything like Cappadocia's, with so many places to hide and people to hide him, Bin Laden should be safe from discovery for years to come.
      It is certainly unlike any place I have ever stayed before, and its remove from everything around it (none of the cities are very large) gives guests a feeling of being very far away in a truly exotic place.  I felt I was in the middle of the world, not the center, but the middle, as if everything else might have evolved from here.
      Cappadocia was once the center of the Hittite empire, only conquered by Alexander the Great in the 3rd Century B.C., later an ally then a colony of Rome.  That its people were experts at hiding from various invaders over the millennia is manifest in the cave dwellings that speckle the landscape.

       A semblance of what it is like to live in such a community is to be found at an astounding hotel carved out of 5th and 6th century caves and a 19th century Greek mansion.  Yunak Evleri (right; 90-384-341-6920; www.yunak.com; ) near the town of Ürgüp has a primordial beauty whose starkness and apparent primitivism vie with modernity within the transformed holes-in-the-walls.  The hotel (curious word for this assemblage) has 29 cave rooms (below),  their arched ceilings preserved and restored impeccably, now outfitted with all  amenities, from comfortable queen-sized beds to commodious marble baths, from beautiful Kilim carpets and lace curtains to antique trunks and Ottoman period bedsteads. There is even a honeymoon suite with a Jacuzzi and another suite with a steambath.
       The welcome at Yunal Evleri is warm and inviting and dispels all thought of having to rough it out in these caves.  There are porches and umbrellas, alfresco sofas in good weather, outdoor fireplaces for the cool nights, and a main building where, if the gods are willing  and the stars aligned, you can even connect to the Internet. And it is all so very, very quiet as you lie in your bed beneath a canopy of carved rock, with nothing but the sound of the whirring wind outside.
      There is also a delightful, rustic restaurant (right) on the premises where guests dine on both Turkish food and standard meats and seafood, with a selection of Turkish wines I found remarkably tasty. (See below for more on the burgeoning Turkish wine industry.)  The restaurant serves a lavish buffet breakfast, and in the evenings you can dine well on Turkish ravioli called manti, very good lamb dishes, and local vegetables, all served by a charmingly amiable staff.  There are few tables and you'll probably meet travelers from around the world and perhaps make transient friends from Britain, Germany, Russia, and Japan. In the background they play Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane.
        The Turkish government has done a fine job of preserving the historic and ancient towns like Ürgüp, a center of the Byzantine religion, with awe-inspiring murals of silent beauty (left) attesting to the power of their iconography.  In such places outcroppings of sandstone rock stand like mushrooms of every description, while palisades sidle the stunning Ihlara and Soğanli Valleys.  One of the consistent features in most of the cave towns are the hundreds of dovecotes in the rocks, from which villagers collected the doves' guano for fertilizer for crops.  There is a fairy-like quality to the towers of stone and the elflike structures in lowlands of great stillness.  Indeed, while preserving these places the government has also contributed in some ways to the disappearance of the ancient culture by forcing cave dwellers out of their homes because they are no longer stable and threaten to collapse.
Photo: G. Stepanoff-Dargery

        Nothing quite prepared me for the underground city of Derinkuyu (left), on the road to Niğde. Dug down 85 meters deep, containing warrens of living quarters, stables, churches, wineries, and study rooms.  People might live here for the entire year, hidden from their enemies,receiving air from a 55-meter ventilation shaft that also acted as a well.  Opened in 1965, 90 percent of the city is still unvisitable. With slight apprehension, I descended three floors below the surface, down steep steps and through dank, backbending, fortunately well lighted, tunnels, before a feeling of claustrophobia kicked in.  My guide led me back to the open air, where my wife was waiting, and I was never so happy to see blue sky and sun.

                                                                                            

      My wife and I were afterwards extremely happy to visit a carpet production facility and store named Gallery Anatolia (www.galleryanatolia.com) in Goreme, where we watched Cappadocian women quickly and with amazing dexterity wind the strands of colored wool and silk in intricate patterns to make the various styles of carpets they sell here, including the famous kilims (below) .  There is an on-premises weaving class where students are taught ancient arts of weaving, using natural dyes, silk extraction, and the significance of Anatolian motifs.  The Gallery also supports the weavers with five workshops, looms and materials that  would otherwise be too costly for the women to afford at home.

     The richness of color and intricacies of the patterns are astonishing, and the reverence for the traditions of carpet weaving is explained on the Gallery's website: "Every carpet represents a living history from the early ages to the present in which women have patiently and untiringly written their joys and sorrows in amazing codes and magic letters which are to be read line by line. They contain voices of birds, voices of children, gently blowing spring winds, flowers, leaves, branches, figures, whims, wishes and rebukes. An expectation of news by a bird with four wings and heads, but the language of these symbols has not been fully decoded to our day."
     We were then brought to the store, opened in 1960, and, with no small degree of enthusiasm, watched the manager and his staff unroll carpet after carpet after carpet in a large room, until they overlapped each other, some long kilims, others broad, some in silk, some made with goat's hair and cotton. The display was like a candy shop's, tantalizing, maddening in its temptations, beautiful beyond imagining.  My wife and I bought two carpets, which were wrapped for us to take home; otherwise the Gallery ships worldwide.                                                       Photo: G. Stepanoff-Dargery
       Gastronomically Cappadocia shares the same tastes as most of the rest of Turkey, from the addictive little meat or cheese-filled ravioli called manti, graced with yogurt and perhaps a touch of paprika (left), to the baklava desserts—thin sheets of baked, buttered pastry crammed with pistachios or walnuts and suffused with intense sugar syrup. And of course, there are the dozens of mezes to choose from, like dill-scented fava bean purée, broad beans cooked with tomato, sweet red peppers stuffed with rice, fried zucchini flowers, and wonderfully rich yogurt.
      The restaurants are either very basic or designed, like caravansaries, to appeal to travelers, usually with fine decor, large communal tables, and music. TaşHan  (Güvercinlik Vadisi; 0384-219-2958) in Uçhisar is typical--large, very convivial, with a parking lot full of tour buses.  The food is served buffet style,  and won't cost very much, and they sell several Turkish wines on premises.
     It would be easy to say that Cappadocia is still in a state of suspension, and I wish that were true. Tiny windswept towns are in abundance and old men sit in the afternoon sun and drink tea and eat sweetmeats in the square.  Women still weave carpets and the religiosity of the region is still palpable, both in the Christian shrines and in the Islamic mosques.  Some people still live in the mountain caves.  But Cappadocia has edged into the 21st century, while maintaining its old character.  It is the land itself that has helped preserve the region and its people from headlong urbanization, but it's coming.  Fortunately, I think, it will be a long long time before Cappadocia loses  anything of its soul to tourism, but going now is better than going later.

     
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR by John Mariani

Turkish Winemakers Achieve Quality under Tough Conditions
    
      Wine was being made in Turkey at least 6,000 years ago, but the Muslim Ottoman domination of the region prohibited wine production for more than four centuries. Table grape production thrived, however, and Turkey is still the fifth largest grower of grapes in the world. Yet, illicit or not, 160 taverns and 6,000 stores selling alcohol were counted in Istanbul in a census of 1637.
      After Mustafa Kemal Ataturk dissolved the Ottoman sultanate in 1922, he encouraged wine production, though largely under strict government control that directed which local grape varieties would be planted and how the wines would be made.  The results were largely poor, often oxidized wine intended either for export as cheap wines to Europe or made into brandy and the anise-flavored alcohol called raki.
      Even five years ago there would have been little to report on the Turkish wine industry.  Only in the last decade have independent wineries, led by Kavaklidere (founded in Ankara in 1937 as Turkey’s first independent winery) and Doluca, loosened the grip of the government-run Monopole group that oversaw wine production.  Amazingly, that grip dropped away entirely within the past year as Monopole sold off all its wineries and vineyards to the independents. Still, the fact that this new movement is less than a decade old and under government pressure shows that Turkey in 2005 is torn between sacrosanct and entrenched tradition and an urgent attempt to prove the country modern enough to enter the EU.
     “Monopole only made wines from local grapes,” says Estat Ayhan, owner of Istanbul’s largest wine store, the 8-year-old La Cave (below; www.lacavesarap.com), which carries more than 400 Turkish wines from 45 wineries. “Monopole always had a constant supply of their wines in the stores, but fewer people drank them because they weren’t very good. A lot of it was shipped to France and labeled as French vin du pays. Competition from the independents forced them out of the wine market. Now young producers are making excellent wines from European varietals like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, and chardonnay.”
      According to Ayhan and interviews at wineries and Istanbul sommeliers, an interest in good wine has quickly developed among foreign non-Muslim workers in Turkey, young Turkish businessmen, and students.  More local restaurants now carry wine, and the Islamic prohibitions against alcohol have slackened among a population increasingly given to the more freewheeling lifestyle of non-Islamic countries.
      Yet just as Turkey’s wine industry has gotten rolling (about 275 million liters are made per year), the Muslim-dominated legislature recently slapped an oppressive 119 percent sin tax on wines. Wineries and wine shops like La Cava see this as an Islamic attempt to stop people—and young Turks in particular—from drinking wine.   Now wines that last year cost the equivalent of $6-$10 (still not cheap for most Turks) have leapt to more than double that price.  And the better wines are now almost out of reach of most Turks.  At the Istanbul restaurant Tugra in the posh Çirağan Palace Hotel Kempinski, Turkish wines from Kavaklidere and Doluca can run well above $100 a bottle. “This tax hit us all hard,” insists Himli Sarikaya, head sommelier at the Çirağan, who is in charge of a new, beautifully designed, temperature-controlled wine cellar. “We do have a clientele for these wines, but Turkish people just beginning to enjoy wine have great difficulty now.” Such prices also make exporting the new wines nearly impossible.
     Nevertheless, of several dozen Turkish wines I tasted over a week visiting Turkey, I was impressed by the quality of many. I found the wines from local grape varieties very dry and one-dimensional. A couple of the whites made from the narince grape showed slight oxidation.  But the European varietals showed remarkably well, from simple, clean, well-made cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays to some outstanding merlots.  One merlot, Sarafin Merlot 2002, was as good as many I’ve  had from California and compared with many from France’s Pomerol region.
     One winery, Cappadocian wine company, Turasan (www.turasan.com.tr), in business since 1943, became famous overnight when a TV soap opera regularly featured it as a place young Turks would go to sample wine in a tasting room that looks pretty close to those at the Santa Barbara wineries in “Sideways.” In contrast to the Kavaklidere and Doluca wineries that dominate the current Turkish market, Turasan features far more local varietals with tough-to-remember names like öküzgözü, narince, and bogazkere.
    Independent Turkish wineries have now proven they can make wines at the same quality level as those from neighboring eastern European countries—the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Croatia. But they simply can’t match those countries’ lower pricing.  And if Turkey’s young consumers cannot afford their local wines because of Islamic price restrictions, it may be a long time before Turkey’s wine makers can compete with EC countries for EU business.

NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani

`21' Club
21 West 52nd Street
212-582-7200
www.21club.com

The Bar Room at `21'

Some things never change, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't.  A case in point is `21' Club--or `21' as most call it, or "The Numbers" as some do--which has been going strong since 1931, first as a speakeasy then as a full-fledged restaurant.
       Its raffish history is part of the lore of New York City, during the days when Mayor Jimmy Walker would have soirées with showgirls in the wine cellar to the times when everyone from Richard Nixon to Elizabeth Taylor stored their own wines here.  The restaurant has been the scene of two important movies--"The Sweet Smell of Success" and "Wall Street" (a new Spike Lee movie is about to shoot here, too)--whose directors needed an iconic image of a restaurant packed with power tables.
      The façade (shown at the head of this newsletter) is as famous as those of Tiffany's, the Chrysler Building, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tables in the bar room (above) have brass nameplates of celebrities who dined here, from Humphrey Bogart to Orson Welles, and the ceiling is festooned with the toys of major corporations for whom such a display is to a notable rite of passage.  The upstairs party rooms are museums of fine artwork, both graphic and sculpture, and the wine cellar itself, hidden from view by a six-ton cement wall still opens at the click of a lock jiggled with a long wire (right), now to reveal one of the most beautiful rooms in any American restaurant (below).
      Seven decades in business has given `21' institutional status, and that, for a while there, was part of a problem neglected back in the 1970s and '80s when its faithful clientele started to die off and both the interiors and the kitchen were in sore need of revamping.  No one knew the chef's name and no one cared.  The menu never changed and the food always tasted the same, which was thoroughly dull.  The old guard, who had run the place since its inception, seemed not to notice, until carpet magnate Marshall S. Cogan bought the place in 1987 and poured millions into rehab without destroying the look and spirit of the place.  He also brought in fine, fresh talent to the kitchen, and the food improved rapidly while maintaining the sacrosanct menu here.
       Cogan's tenure ended when the Orient-Express Company bought `21' in the 1990s and poured still more money into brightening everything, persuading the oldtimers--both staff and clientele--that change was not just a good thing but requisite to bringing in newcomers who might well have thought of the restaurant as dated. It was during this time that the wine cellar, once a warren of shelves and crates, was made over into the stunning private room it now is.  An upstairs room was given evocative New York murals, and a series of chefs won over the gourmet crowd, while tweaking the beloved classic dishes here like the `21' Burger and the chicken hash (which at least one customer eats here at least once a day). They even hired away master maître d' Oreste Carnevale from a formidable competitor, The Four Seasons.
      The chefs who have come and gone, including Alain Sailhac, Anne Rosenzweig,  Daniel Bruce, Michael Lomonaco, and Erik Blauberg--all helping to re-position `21,' as is the current chef in charge,  a young man named Stephen Trojahn (right), who comes from the Ritz-Carlton in Beaver Creek, Colorado. On the basis of one extensive dinner at which my guests and I sampled both the classic and new sections of the menu, I can happily report that Trojahn shows real promise in being able to satisfy the oldtimers who still want their steak tartare and Heineken, those who love nothing better than Dover sole with a bottle of great Meursault from one of New York's best cellars, and those who want to see what this new, young chef can accomplish with seasonal ingredients.
       After a round of well-made daiquiris, with an amuse of cured venison with baby arugula, our table ordered some old and some new dishes. Of the former, the crabcake was fabulous--about the size of a softball and full of little but fresh lump crabmeat.  Excellent seared foie gras came with pickled Asian pears, and bay scallops were lightly napped with lemon butter to preserve their sweetness. We were about equally divided in our opinion of roasted garlic coup with melted Brie cheese.  I thought it was a wonderful, if very rich, dish for winter; others thought the ingredients didn't jibe.  We all agreed, however, that a very strange winter squash risotto with spiced pumpkin seeds took on the distasteful flavor of burnt rubber, possibly from the addition of a nutmeg-pumpkin oil.
       The first wine of the evening chosen by sommelier Philip W. Pratt was an odd choice--a 1987 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondoñia Blanco, which I thought would have been slightly oxidized at that age and it was, making it taste like inferior sherry.  His other choices, ranging from a delicious Ladoucette Baron d'L 2000 and luscious J.M. Pillot Chassagne "Morgeot" 2002 to a Mitolo "G.A.M." McLaren Vale Shiraz 2003 and a glass of 15-year-old Cosset-Gordon Bual were thrilling.

  The Remington Room                      Two of the entrees were outright winners: Pomegranate-scented halibut with baby eggplant and mashed potatoes, and a lusty  loin and a smoky chop wrapped in double bacon  of venison (which should have been American, not from New Zealand!)  in a rich reduction of red wine.  The usual, complex flavors of a generous osso buco were delectable, but for some reason  Trojahn takes the meat from the bone, which detracts from one of the principal pleasures of the dish--digging out the marrow.  And while Dover sole was of fine quality and impeccably cooked à la meuniére, it could have used some sizzling browned butter spooned onto it at the last moment, preferably tableside.  For a textbook lesson in making pommes soufflés, ask how they do the perfect little golden pillows at `21.'
     For dessert there were poached pears in port wine with a touch of anise, bay leaf, and cinnamon, and a soufflé that needed the gilding of a creme anglaise stirred into it.
     If you've never been to `21,' you owe it to yourself both for the fine food and for the experience, and if you haven't been in a while, I think you'll find it particularly evocative, especially during the holidays this year when we could all use a bit of decadence mixed in with fine cuisine and a great bottle of wine.
      At dinner, à la carte appetizers run $12-$28, main courses $$30-$41, but there are several fixed priced options. In the Bar Room a 3-course lunch is $33, with a new menu each week; Pre-theater dinner is $38; A tasting menu of 7 courses is $120; Upstairs at `21' three courses are $65.
    

HOW TO HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
by Anonymous

                                                                        Photo by Howard R. Hollem, 1942

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they're serving rum balls.


2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it's rare. In fact, it's even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can't find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It's not as if you're going to turn into an eggnog-aholic or something. It's a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It's later than you think. It's Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That's the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they're made with skim milk or whole milk. If it's skim, pass. Why bother? It's like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people's food for free. Lots of it.

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year's. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you'll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don't budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They're like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you're never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don't like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it's loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10. One final tip: If you don't feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven't been paying attention. Reread tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.



Remember this motto to live by:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO what a ride!

   


DEPT. OF AMPLIFICATION
In last week's newsletter in the article on Valbella, NYC, I neglected to say that David Ghatanfard is the owner of the restaurant.

BOTH THE BEST AND STUPIDEST INVENTION EVER TO COME OUT OF GERMANY

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!

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