MARIANI’S

October 28,  2007                                                       NEWSLETTER

Claude Rains as "The Invisible Man"  (1933)

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In This Issue

rialto

     Thirteen years ago chef Jody Adams, with partner Michaela Larson, opened Rialto in Cambridge, featuring a menu of Mediterranean food that rightfully garnered both local and national acclaim, including a nod from Esquire.  Larson  has moved on to open Rocca (see below), while Adams, a respected figure in Boston’s gastro-evolution, shut Rialto down,  then re-opened it last January with a completely new look and a menu that shows how broadly and deeply she has come to understand Italian regional food.
     Adams, who has won about every culinary award possible,  has kept some of the dishes her regulars begged her not to remove, like the grilled clams with andouille sausage and garlic roll (left) and the roast duck with escarole and green olives. But she now changes the menu monthly to feature a different region of Italy; when I visited she was serving authoritative but highly personalized dishes from Sicily, starting off with fava beans, fennel, and ricotta slathered on crisp country bread, then house-made tagliatelle with the season’s shad roe, pancetta, and greens. There was also luscious spaghetti with lobster, and a smoky mixed grill of swordfish and tuna with sweet and sour eggplant, tomatoes, and artichokes. For dessert that is a delightful "cannoli undone" with ginger, almond, and passion fruit sauce by pastry chef Susan Abbott.
     The place looks great—Americana now replaced with glass and gauzy fabrics, with very romantic lighting and round booths facing an open antipasti counter.  Rialto is not a re-hab; it is a great new restaurant with a fine pedigree.
     "I have an enormous amount of respect for local cooking traditions," says Adams. "Technique on its own doesn't count for much.  A new technique or personal interpretation only becomes part of the tradition when it enhances the taste of the dish's ingredients."  Amen!

Rialto is open for dinner only daily.  Appetizers run $5-$14, main courses $12-$36, with a prix fixe menu depending on the season.





ROCCA Kitchen & Bar
500 Harrison Avenue, Boston
617-451-5151
www.roccaboston.com

     Michaela Larson’s leaving Rialto (see above) to her former partner Jody Adams  brought her to Boston’s South End to open Rocca, where she brings into play her passion for the food of Liguria, that stretch of rippling coastline referred to as the Italian Riviera, teeming with fabulous seafood and possessed of great olive oil and the finest sweet basil in the world, the basis of the region’s signature pesto dishes.  It is also a region few Americans know much about, though well they should.  Liguria has some of the most delicious food in Italy, and while its wines are rarely among the highest rated--the whites are the way to go--they do accompany the radiant cooking of the area, which is as rich in olive oil, nuts, and herbs as it is in seafood.
       After frequent, intensive eating excursions to Liguria, Larson has managed to nail the flavors of the region, from pastas like trofie with a verdant pesto, to fat panzotti with walnut sauce, and chestnut flour corzetti with braised rabbit and red wine (left). The San Remo pizzette with tomatoes, capers, olives, anchovies, and herbs is amazingly good, as is the selection of sliced salume, fresh, juicy mozzarella, and Italian cheeses here as part of the seasonal antipasti. Veal involtini are stuffed with mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil and set on an herbed risotto with tomato sauce. Sea bass is perfectly cooked with herbs, and for dessert get the walnut-fig torta with a glass of vin santo or finish off with "smashed almond bark: with a dark chocolate dipping sauce.  This is food I could easily eat twice a week. Maybe more.
     The place is very casual, with the hip California luncheonette look of the 1960s, kind of "77 Sunset Strip." Begin downstairs at the bar with a negroni or a bottle of  sparkling prosecco, then step up to a large dining room (above, right), formerly a warehouse,  with a retro-industrial look of brick and cork walls, Italian movie posters, comfortable banquettes, bare coffeehouse tables, and Italian glassware.  It all rings true at Rocca:  maybe they should put up a white sheet and show Fellini movies on the wall.
 
Rocca is open for dinner only nightly and Sunday for brunch. Appetizers run $3-$12, main courses $10-$24.

MIEL

510 Atlantic Avenue, Boston
617-217-5151

www.intercontinentalboston.com

     There are two restaurants worth checking out at the InterContinental, one for its honest devotion to French brasserie fare, the other to a very cool ambiance and cocktail service that has made it very popular.
     Miel is committed to organic ingredients of the kind farmed and found wild in the south of France, and they all find their way onto Chef Didier Montarou's menu.  (Michelin star chef Jacques Chibois is a consultant here.)  There are pastel Provençal colors and flourishes throughout the big, sweeping interior dining room (right), with 120 seats, but if the weather is good, by all means take a harborside table al fresco.  One very welcome virtue--Miel is open 24/7, with late night dining after midnight.
     On premises is a 360-degree round Olive Oil Museum that functions also as a private dining room, with a California olive wood table and an amazing array of olive oils from around the world, all of which are for sale.
     The menu at Miel pretty much runs the gamut of French country classics, from a fine, restorative pistou teeming with basil and garlic, to a tuna Niçoise with beans, olives, hard-boiled egg, tomato, peppers, basil, and artichoke. The aroma of Pastis-scented escargots with aïoli-slathered toast, and the shrimp sautéed with fennel seeds, garlic, and Pernod is enough to make you want to order both, and they also have serve up a good foie gras terrine with honey and Port gelée.  I also recommend the thick, seared filet mignon with truffled béarnaise sauce and crisp, golden pommes frites. This being a hotel dining area, they also serve American favorites like shrimp cocktail, club sandwich, and cheeseburgers, but no one says you have to order them.  For dessert indulge yourself with crème brûlée or an artisanal cheese platter, and sip a good Provençal wine from a list of solid offerings that go well with this cooking.

Miel is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. At dinner,  appetizers are $7-$16, entrees $14-$42.

      I had a tequila cocktail but did not eat at Sushi-Teq (left), next door to Miel, but it is worth mentioning for the snazzy, very hip decor, and the interesting mix--which works well--of a tequila bar, with 69 labels, and sushi. It seats only 40 and is great for a pre-theater nosh or as a place to meet friends afterwards (it stays open till 2 AM).  Check out the entire menu to see the variety and serious commitment to fine sushi and sashimi.

L’ESPALIER
30 Gloucester Street
617-262-3023
www.lespalier.com

by Henry Togna
     For two decades now L'Espalier in Back Bay has had an enviably high reputation for formal "New England-French Cuisine," but a recent visit showed that its considerable merits in cooking are not matched by what almost seems almost a satire on modern restaurant service.
     The lovely Brahmin townhouse dates to 1880, once a private home, and, for a while, according to the restaurant's website, "notorious for its wild parties in the 1960s."  Originally opened by Chef-owner Frank McLelland on Boylston Street in 1978, L'Espalier moved to the current premises in 1988, now with three dining rooms. Along the way, McLelland picked up a James Beard Awards as Best Chef in the Northeast.  On L'Espalier's website McLelland (below) notes that,"From the dishwashers to the chefs to the managers, no one entity is greater than the other. Everyone works as a team to create a memorable experience for the guest. I infuse my spirit into the restaurant each night as does the entire L’Espalier crew in an effort to provide a seamless, multi-layered experience." We were, then, prepared for just such a seamless evening.  We got something short of that.
      Upon arrival, we were greeted by two unsmiling reception girls  who were clearly of the opinion that they were doing us a huge favor by  allowing us in. We were asked to wait, and as time drifted by and we marveled at  the dreary antiquated decoration, we inquired as to why all the suspense: we'd arrived  at 8:30 for an 8:30 reservation. We were informed that the maître d' was  "checking our table." Finally the "Togna party"--all two of us--was  permitted access to a welcoming line-up at the top of the stairs, which  we followed at a funereally slow pace into a half-empty room.
     To say that the  décor was dull would be an understatement, with a central chandelier lighting  the room as if it were a pathologist's lab--with two dead bulbs to  boot!
      Our waiter for the evening had the sweetest habit of cocking up one leg  when presenting anything, in a balletic pas de deux movement. He made the  fatal mistake of addressing us in French, which my fluent-in-French guest seized upon, to his distress,  since his mastery of the language seemed limited to six words at most. He and I  then had a bizarre exchange when I asked for a glass of Chablis, to be told  that they had "two kinds of champagne";  this continued back and forth for a  good while, Fawlty Towers style. Water was presented as if shipped in via Norway, and our waitress (more of whom  later) emptied half a liter into a Bordeaux-size  glass and seemed surprised that she  would not be winning the evening's award for the most water served to a table.
       By this time my guest was all fired up, and, when the menu was presented, said that, as my guest, she was accustomed to a menu without  any prices on it. More consternation while the computer  was charged up and a price-free menu presented (good for them!).  Across from us, a table of four men were doing a "Sideways" imitation, and  two of them, if not actually Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, seemed very closely  related indeed. This was like observing some kind of religious ceremony with so  much continuous swirling of wine that we feared their glasses would  melt in a kind of whirling wine dervish. At final count, there were 20  glasses on the table, so much so that it looked like Superman's spiritual home. How it was that none was cleared is an unanswered question. The following is a comment from one: "Doesn't this just make you tingle to your  toes?
       We both started with silky foie gras, which was delicious, accompanied by a  mysterious jelly. When both of our plates were 99.99% empty,  our glum waitress wondered out loud, "Are you still  working?"  No, we were still eating.  Next, our main courses: a tender fillet of pork, a bit too pink to my taste but delicious nevertheless, and a tasty little pigeon, both dishes accompanied by a truly triumphant cassoulet of vegetables correctly served in copper  dishes.  Our dancing waiter pirouetted up to the table and inquired, "Come se mange?" managing to incorporate three languages into three  words.
      In a repeat performance, our waitress once again inquired if we were  "still working" before clearing our plates.
     As we left, unable to go through the stress of dessert and exhausted by the pomp and ceremony, a line of four suits gravely bade us goodbye, perhaps worrying about my note pad to which I added mysterious  comments throughout the evening's performance--always guaranteed to create  consternation.
     Here was a case of an evening of very good haute cuisine brought down by a style of service that pretends to be classically refined and professional, when in fact it was pretentious and, ultimately, off-putting.  Putting the guest first is far preferable than putting on airs.
 
L'Espalier is open nightly for dinner and offers a 3-course menu at  $75; 7-course Tasting Menu at $94; 7-course  Vegetable Menu $75; and Chef’s Tasting Menu at $175.

RUSSIAN SAMOVAR

    There are certain things you should not expect at Russian Samovar, which has served a cosmopolitan crowd in New York’s theater district now for two decades. You should definitely not expect the décor and sophistication of the more famous Russian Tea Room, though the food here is less expensive, less fussy and, these days, better. Don’t expect pompous doormen in puffed hats and gaudy Cossack uniforms out of some Slavic operetta, or medal-bedecked servers in blousy, over-decorated costumes. Don’t anticipate waiters carrying huge cuts of meats on swords.  Don’t expect frenzied gypsy dancers. If you want that sort of touristic excess, Brighton Beach on the far shores of Brooklyn is where you should go. Things are a bit more homey here.
     Here’s where you might find customers inclined to break into song, Russian. operatic or pop, to accompany the pianist, who is part of the nightly dining scheme or others standing up to recite poetry.  You might encounter many Russian notables, most of whom you probably will not know except for Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was actually a founder of  the restaurant along with the Nobel-prize winning poet, the late Joseph Brodsky. You might also find owner Roman Kaplan matching lines of Pushkin with a tablemate, as he did one recent evening with my wife, Rolaine.
     As I surveyed the scene, I was reminded  of the  legendary late New York saloonkeeper, Toots Shor, who ran a watering hole that attracted sports stars, radio and TV celebrities, a few mob figures, and characters whom Toots often challenged to drinking bouts.  Kaplan does the same on occasion.  The Russian Samovar is Toots Shor’s for Russians and their friends and visitors from the former land of the Czars.  The Samovar is similarly a hangout for special people, friends of  Roman, the artistically talented, the intelligentsia, poets and writers, more than a few Russian oligarchs, and occasional tennis players, whose numbers have grown in recent years.
          A visitor might recognize tennis star and US Open champion Maria Sharapova, who hangs out in season, or writer Norman Mailer, or Liza Minnelli, who recently took the mike for some improvisation, or instrumentalist Wynton Marsalis.  The faces of  Phillip Roth and actress Nicole Kidman (below, with owner Roman Kaplan) hang on the wall amid photos of visiting Russian notables, along with a gallery of Russian art from Kaplan's own collection.  In the late hours of the evening, the bar morphs into a hangout for after-theater celebrants who enjoy the Samovar ambiance and its flavored vodkas (above), a spirits innovation which Kaplan claims to have introduced to American imbibers.
     Although the menu offers traditional Russian cuisine, the man behind the stoves has roots in other soils.  He is French-born and -trained Patrick Allouache, a veteran of several Michelin-starred restaurants in his homeland. Allouache serves a hearty wild mushroom soup, a full-bodied broth, thick with shiitakes, crimini, and porcini, making me think that someone in that kitchen had picked them in the forests of suburbia and reminding me of a Russian neighbor who told me I was foolish for not feasting on the mushrooms that grew in my suburban yard. The visual standout on the appetizer list is the Royal Baltic Fish Platter (below) a gigantic assortment of smoked salmon, salmon roe, sturgeon and two kinds of herring.  My wife opted for a more traditional dish, brilliant red beet borsch accompanied by a crispy and tasty meat-stuffed pirozhok (think empanada in Russian).
      I fought the temptation of a huge plate of blini (tiny buckwheat pancakes with osetra and salmon caviar, salmon and sable, herring and chopped eggs and onions) or coulibiac (salmon baked in pastry), a two-day effort we have served at home as a party dish.  I opted for a simple order of pelmeni, small meat dumplings served in a light broth.   A peasant at heart, I savored the tasty dumplings, sparked by spicy mustard and sour cream on the side.  As for my wife,  she was still searching for the chicken Kiev of her dreams, a dish that had disappointed her twenty years ago when she participated in an oxymoronic culinary tour of the then-Soviet Union.  She has continued the search in the gaudily decorated restaurants of Brighton Beach without success and she resumed her quest at the Russian Samovar.  We watched carefully as she stuck her fork into a breast of chicken snugly curled around a lump of cold, garlic-seasoned butter.  A little butter trickled out. “No explosion,” she lamented.
      Owner Kaplan was passing by and he noticed my wife’s disappointment.  Kaplan took a knife and warned her to sit back.  He delivered a sure-handed slash to the chicken and smiled triumphantly as the butter burst forth.  After the pyrotechnics, my wife was rewarded with more of what she had been hoping for--a tender, moist and flavorful Chicken Kiev, after all those years of searching.
     We decided to go French with dessert and ordered chef Allouache’s tribute to his Gallic heritage, a huge napoleon pastry--big enough for four, it was a formidable, towering  assemblage of Bavarian cream flavored with Grand Marnier and fresh raspberries sandwiched between slivers of delicate pastry.  I would guess the Czars might have enjoyed it as much as we did, leaving hardly a crumb on the plate.
      Russian Samovar is a unique place, to be enjoyed as much for its ambiance as its hearty menu, the pianist often joined by improvising guests, the joie de vivre of the largely Russian audience in a setting that is as much Roman Kaplan’s parlor as commercial restaurant.
       Toots Shor would have applauded.

Russian Samovar is open nightly for dinner. An average 3-course dinner runs about $49.

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

John Mariani's weekly wine column appears in Bloomberg Muse News, from which this story was adapted. Bloomberg News covers Culture from art, books, and theater to wine, travel, and food on a daily basis, and some of its articles play of the Saturday Bloomberg Radio and TV.

A New Book on Beaujolais Bolsters its Faded Image
by John Mariani
 
      When Rudolph Chelminski announced to friends that the subject of his new book was to be Beaujolais, they broke out laughing, as if “I had chosen to write a book about a Ford instead of a Ferrari.” Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy—“that’s serious stuff,” while Beaujolais’ Joe Six-Pack reputation among winelovers is what he calls “the ransom of its success,” which adds up to 70 million bottles sold annually.
      Chelminski’s book, I’ll Drink to That: Beaujolais and the French Peasant Who Made It the World’s Most Popular Wine (Gotham Books, $27.50) sets out not only to show that Beaujolais is a wine that can be the equal of all but the very finest crus in the larger region of Burgundy, but that it achieves that excellence at well under $20 a bottle. The French peasant of the book is the redoubtable Georges Duboeuf, known as the “King of Beaujolais,” who currently controls about ten percent of the wine’s total production and $100 million dollars in sales annually.
      But before Duboeuf enters the picture, about halfway through the book, Chelminski details how thousands of peasants going back 700 years struggled to scratch a living from their out-of-the-way parcels of French terroir to produce wine from the gamay grape introduced there by the Duke of Burgundy.  Their life was tremendously difficult, their rewards always in doubt, and not until the 18th century did Beaujolais dealers establish a safe, “fairly reliable liaison with the attractive Paris market” at a time when roads were improved and barges could be loaded with wine barrels for shipment northward. In Paris Beaujolais quickly became the standard red wine of the common people and of the new bistros dotting the city’s neighborhoods.  When trains and trucks entered the picture, allowing more regional wines to get to Paris quickly, Beaujolais’ near monopoly faded.
      Chelminski (right), author of The Perfectionist: Life and Death in French Cuisine (2005), is a highly engaging writer, mixing personal anecdote, character sketches, and telling details about the promotion and marketing of wine. He shows how the mere introduction of the horse to the Beaujolais region after the French Revolution was regarded by the old-timers with suspicion, because horses were beasts they had never before been able to afford. Tractors were far in the future, but the simple invention of a huge winch with which to drag open the earth was a major innovation of the 1930s.
      At this point in the story Georges Duboeuf enters, from a very old, though very common Maconnais bloodline. Duboeuf grew up on a farm with one horse, two cows, two goats and a pig, where only the women were engaged to milk the goats. Young Georges milked the cows, cut and stocked the hay, picked grapes, and drank the wine they made. In high school he wanted to be a sports trainer, perhaps in therapeutic massage.  But his return to his village of Chaintre forced him back into winemaking.
      But he was a very canny young man. At a time when most wine of the region was sold in bulk from barrel, Duboeuf had the idea of bringing finished wines in bottle to local restaurants.  His first visit was to a famous one, Le Chapon Fin, whose owner agreed to take the young man’s wines on a continual basis. He was on his way.
      He set up Beaujolais’ first “caveau de dégustation”—a wine tasting room—for the public to visit and created a promotional flyer to direct people to it. The rest of the story of this enterprising young man is told in a narrative worthy of Horatio Alger, going to work for powerful wine buyer Alexis Lichine, scouting the best plots for Beaujolais and selecting and bottling his own wines with a nose—literally and figuratively—for finding the best around. The three-star Lyon chef Paul Bocuse championed Duboeuf’s wines, and the vigneron’s reputation, and sales, grew.
      Then, as of November 15, 1970, Duboeuf made Beaujolais fashionable overnight as the new, unfinished wine of the harvest was celebrated in parties throughout Paris bistros, sparked by “a little yellow handbill” that announced, “Le Beaujolais Nouveau Ést Arrivé!”  From that point on Beaujolais Nouveau became a mid-November phenomenon, with wineshops and restaurants competing to be the first to serve the new wine in Paris, in New York, and in Tokyo. Four million bottles of it is shipped by Duboeuf, 2.3 million to the U.S. in 2006.
     The rest of Chelminski’s book details how the success of this least-interesting example of Beaujolais came to dominate the wine’s reputation, which sank as a fashion even while outselling the more noble wines of the region, including the 10  crus like Julienas, Morgon, and Chiroubles.  Sales fell, and the Beaujolais, especially Duboeuf, now 74, have been working ever since to buoy the image of a wine whose future is in considerable doubt. Indeed, as one of Duboeuf’s colleagues remarks at the end of the book, “Les plus courageux survivront”—the toughest of us will survive.
      Chelminski ends, as he must, optimistic that Beaujolais will remain true to itself and its history, but admits that view is “arrant romanticism on my part.” Yet this is not a sad story so much as it is a very well-told, often rollicking, highly gustatory tale of a place and a wine often neglected, heavily promoted, and, like all else in the global market today, a fashion victim.
 

IN NEBRASKA THAT’S NOT ACTUALLY ALL THAT UNUSUAL

RUN THAT BY US AGAIN?

“See that hedge-fund guy in suspenders and John Lobb boots over there ordering a 2004 Bienvenue Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru from Domaine Leflaive? It sells for $275 at Zachy’s and consists of a single varietal, or grape, chardonnay.  Now, calling such magnificent wine by its grape is like calling Beethoven a piano player, but even Beethoven started somewhere. `Chopsticks,’ anyone?”—S.S. Fair, “Chardonnay: An Apologia,” New York Times (Sept. 16. 2007).

I consider this the best and savviest blog of its kind on the  web. Potter is a columnist for USA Weekend, Diversion, Laptop and Luxury  Spa Finder, a contributing editor for Ski and  a frequent contributor to National  Geographic Traveler, ForbesTraveler.com  and Elle Decor. "I’ve designed this site is for people who take their  travel seriously," says Potter. "For travelers who want to learn about special  places but don’t necessarily want to pay through the nose for the privilege of  staying there. Because at the end of the day, it’s not so much about five-star  places as five-star experiences."  To go to his blog click on the logo below:

MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly.  Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani,  Naomi  Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson,  Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein, 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 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.

My newest book, written with my brother Robert Mariani, is a memoir of our years growing up in the North Bronx. It's called Almost Golden because it re-visits an idyllic place and time in our lives when so many wonderful things seemed possible.     For those of you who don't think of the Bronx as “idyllic,” this book will be a revelation. It’s about a place called the Country Club area, on the shores of Pelham Bay. It was a beautiful neighborhood filled with great friends and wonderful adventures that helped shape our lives. It's about a culture, still vibrant, and a place that is still almost the same as when we grew up there.     Robert and I think you'll enjoy this very personal look at our Bronx childhood. It is not yet available in bookstores, so to purchase a copy, go to amazon.com or click on  Almost Golden.                                                                                                                     --John Mariani

copyright John Mariani 2007