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NEW YORK CORNER
Vitae
by John Mariani

                                                                                    NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
                                            Sequoia Grove Comes Back to Favor in Napa Valley
                                                                                             by John Mariani

EATING OUT ON TAIWAN
by John Mariani

"Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994), directed by Ang Lee

    Taiwanese love nothing more than entertaining friends--and travelers--according to the custom of qingke, "playing the host."  Within that custom are rituals of seating, toasting, even paying the bill, and if invited to a banquet of a dozen dishes or more, it might be wise to learn a few of them or ask what not to do.  For one thing, liquor and wine, even beer, while available, are not necessarily served or offered; it is, however, perfectly all right to ask.    An appropriate tea will be served.
    The host will do the toasting, which will usually be the phrase "gam bei," which means "dry cup," meaning guests should drink it all, kind of like "down the hatch!"  If you  wish to toast your host, say su'i, which means "sip."
    You may notice that the host and chief guest will be opposite each other, the host with his back to the door. Other guests not quite so important will flank the host, more often than not at a round table, with a lazy Susan (left).  You should certainly learn to use chop sticks, and if you're eating at a restaurant and have a rice bowl, food taken from the lazy Susan should be placed in small portions atop the rice.  The bowl is then brought close to the mouth and the food eaten.  Do not take the whole plate from the lazy Susan. 
    There is also a tradition to the service of specific dishes, not unlike Western culture, so that you begin with non-oily dishes, lead up to them heavier dishes mid-meal, then end with more non-oily items. Spicy may be followed by sweet.  Desserts are more an adaption of Western appetites, but more and more, particularly on Taiwan, you'll find sweets served at meal's end. What you should not ask for is rice at a banquet, which is considered too common a food for such a meal.
    One difference you may find between dining out on Taiwan and dining out on the Mainland is the condition of the tablecloth itself at meal's end.  On the Mainland it is considered perfectly acceptable, even polite, to leave something of a spotted mess.  I did not find this always to be the case at my meals in Taipei, though there is a tendency to use flimsy paper rather than cloth napkins, which makes keeping the table spotless next to impossible. Dishes from various courses are also not removed unless you tell them you've finished.
    There's not much more you need to know except that the Taiwanese would never be so discourteous as to express disfavor with Westerners' behavior; they tend to suggest rather than reprimand, and Taipei, being the 21st century city that it is, has become more than a little Westernized. The people there have come to love French desserts, Italian pizza, and American hamburgers, along with breads, croissants, and chocolates.  There is no grape wine produced on Taiwan--though, as I mentioned in the first part of this article, they do make whiskey--so buying European wines, while not cheap, is possible. Eastern China does produces shao-xin, a mahogany-colored rice wine called "daughter red," which is served when a daughter is born and gets married; if she dies, it is referred to as "flower withering."
    On a recent trip I dined mostly in Taipei, which is very rich in thousands of restaurants expressive of all styles of cooking in China, from Sichuan to Cantonese.  Taiwanese cooking is, generally speaking, now somewhat lighter than on the Mainland, and freshness of ingredientsis paramount here, which can be seen from the various indoor food markets whose pristine, sanitary conditions are backed by careful municipal monitoring----certainly not a given on the Mainland. 
    My first meal upon arrival was at the five-story Silks Palace Restaurant (right), located across from the National Palace Museum.  The grandeur of the restaurant, which glows at night with its own interior light and during the day shimmers with sunlight through glass walls and corridors (below), with five restaurants and a gourmet food court. Every detail, from chinaware and silverware are designed from antique originals. The exterior alone makes for a stunning sight; inside, hallways of Ju Kilm ware wall frosting, pillars of Liang-chu period columns, a famous painting called "A Palace Concert" from the T'ang Dynasty hangs on wall wall, and lights are shaped like Tsung-chou bells.  There are calligraphic scrolls of Chinese poetry, artwork done in cut paper and ground glass lighted from behind.  All this impressive décor is followed through in the restaurant's service and exquisitely designed food, which I enjoyed as part of a banquet held by my hosts.  Dish after beautiful dish came through the doors of our banquet room, one of ten,  each dish a little work of art.  Indeed, Silks Palace offers dishes as part of its Imperial Treasure Feast, whose design mimics masterpieces of Chinese sculpture and artwork from the museum, such as a Jade Cabbage with Insects from the Ch'ing Dynasty, emerging on the banquet table as bok choy heart boiled in a chicken and ham broth and served as a salad with black sesame sauce, the "insects" composed of tiny shrimp.  In a cunning give-and-take of trompe l'oeuil food art, dongpo meat from the pig's knuckle is stewed then carved into the shape of a Ch'ing Dynasty sculpted stone itself made to look like fatty meat of various colors.
    In addition there were more traditional dishes that included an array of appetizers like sweet-sour pork soup; jellied pork cakes; "drunken" chicken; egg white porridge, and more.  Main courses included pork tendons in hot chili; steamed yellow croaker; stewed meatballs with crab; pork dumplings; and scallion pancakes, on Taiwan made thicker than on the Mainland.  Dessert was a remarkable piece of pastry art--seemingly a big paint brush, but actually a log of peanuts, jelly and coriander.
    First-rate seafood abounds on Taiwan, its shoreline rippled and jagged with inlets, coves, and harbors, allowing for a bounty of fish, crab, mollusks, and other sea creatures.  One of the best places--always packed--to find them all is Shin Tung Nan, whose own market stalls (below) lie just outside the front door.  The big room is very cheery, the banquet tables off to one side, and the food comes at a clip. From the cold dishes to the steamed dishes to the fried dishes, everything was elegantly presented. lusty and generous in portions, and quite creative, from stir-fried squid with a hot, spicy sauce to softshell crab crusted with crispy garlic.  The cost of a meal that extended to about a dozen courses that including high-priced items like crab, with beer and 10 percent service charge, worked out to about US$25 per person--an amazing bargain! Prices are this remarkable all over Taiwan.
    After a visit to the Night Market, we went above the street to Formosa Chang, which has 36 branches, two in Japan.  Chang has its fast food aspect, including boxed lunches for school children, but its traditional restaurant cooking is well respected by Taiwanese and known for specialties like minced pork fried rice; bean curd cooked in a rich broth; steamed meat and seafood casseroles, and for the adventurous, pork intestine--what we call chitterlings--in an herb soup (below).  My favorite among many dishes was Chang's braised pork knuckle in soy sauce with shredded greens.  Prices are amazingly low--that last dish was US$2.39.
    No one visiting Taiwan should miss the huge, fast-paced dim sum palace called Ding Tai Fung, also a multi-branch concept, with restaurants in Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Australia, China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the USA (Arcadia, CA, and Seattle), with six in Taiwan.    The most spectacular is on the lower floor of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, and by noontime the 330-seat restaurant is flooded with shoppers, locals, business people, and students who come ravenous for the array of dim sum offered here.  On any given day there are a dozen varieties of dumplings (right), all thin-sheeted, each juicy, from the steamed shrimp and pork shiaomai and the truffle and pork Xiaolongbao to the loofah and shrimp soup dumplings to the shrimp and pork pot stickers.  There is also a selection of 10 steamed buns, packed with everything from sesame and taro to red beans and pork.
    Yet the offerings don't stop there. Ding Tai Fung also has a large menu of other items, from appetizers like pickled mustard greens with minced pork and wine-marinated chicken slices to fried pork chops and braised bitter melon. If you've restrained your dim sum intake, you might also try main courses like shrimp fried rice or one of the noodle soups.  Then there are the wontons, too.  It's an astounding tour de force, but practice has made perfect when it comes to the dim sum, which you can watch being made by masked cooks behind a glassed-in kitchen (left). There are 36 different beers to go with the food here, which uses more vinegar than soy sauce than common elsewhere in China.

    A trip to the countryside of Luodong brought us to a remarkable teppanyaki restaurant  named Shen Yen run by a young chef named Cheng Zhi-yong (below), who was born in the village. After years of training in many kitchens, he opened his own a decade ago, and despite its remote location, it always fills up for lunch and dinner.  When you enter the broad dining room you'll see a refrigerator full of fine French wines, which would indeed go well with Zhi-yong's simple, impeccably seasoned cooking on the teppanyaki griddle. He locates himself behind it, quietly telling his staff to bring this or that fish, which he himself chose that morning at the seafood market.  He also makes his own array of soy sauces using different salts that go with different species.
    Over a two-hour meal I was fascinated by the depth and breadth of Zhi-yong's artfulness. We began with sashimi-style porgy and threadfin, sliced somewhat thicker than in Japan.  He cooks wild eel a very long time to tenderize it then serves it with six-month old soy sauce. There was also a sliced boletus-like mushrooms, though very large, followed by amberjack, red croaker, a rather bland seafood soup, and then American Kobe beef--a surprise, certainly-- wrapped around Canadian foie gras--an even bigger surprise.
    My last meal on Taiwan was something I had been craving--hot, very spicy Sichuan food.  The seasonings up till then in all my meals had been delicious but fairly mild, and I really wanted to end off with an eye-watering bang.  So, on a Friday evening, we sat in a packed dining room at W'ei, whose tableside service left something to be desired but whose food was fabulous. It's all run by women, some of them snapping orders, others rushing out plates of food, opening beer bottles, pouring tea. We began with pork in an assertive garlic sauce, then cold oily chicken. Lush bean curd came with peppers and minced pork (left).  Steamed fish came with crunchy soy powder, the whole very succulent and a good balance to the pork. Sweet dry green beans were flash-fried, and pea noodles came with minced pork in the traditional rendering what is called "Ants Climbing a Tree." Fried rice with pork had a strong egg flavor, and we ended off with kung pao shrimp with fiery shards of chili peppers and an abundance of crunchy peanuts.
    I have sometimes wondered if I would tire of Chinese food after a few days of it, but the variety of options, the array of exotica, and the regional styles of cooking I found on Taiwan only made me hungry for more.  When I got home, I already missed it.       

NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani

VITAE
4 East 46 Street (near Fifth Avenue)
212-682-3562
www.vitaenyc.com

    Vitae sits on a corridor one would think is prime real estate--one street over from Grand Central, three from Broadway theaters and Rockefeller Center, and half a block from Madison Avenue's retail stores.  Yet it has never been a bright spot for fine restaurants, and with so many places to eat at Grand Central and the MetLife Building, Vitae's chef-owner Edwin Bellanco is taking a bold step moving here.  On the basis of a recent visit, I think it's taken flight soon and well.
    Vitae is set on two floors, with 90 seats spread over a long bar, a downstairs dining room and a mezzanine (preferable for its lower noise level), with a staircase that must keep the service staff's legs in peak shape.  The décor will be a matter of taste: it's a retro 1960s look, with a pattern of interlocking nickel hexagons and mirrored walls that  remind me of Gucci's horse bit motif, a lounge at JFK Airport when it was called Idlewild, or Dean Martin's swinging bachelor's pad circa 1962. A cut-out ceiling on the mezzanine throws a soft light and the banquettes and seating throughout is extremely comfortable.
    The service staff, overseen by the very cordial manager/beverage director Emily Iverson, is fast-paced--it has to be coming and going up those stairs, the winelist is well balanced in price and categories, and the music is general gregariousness of the place infectious.
    Bellanco (left) is a true veteran of the professional kitchen, with stints and positions with restaurants run by David Bouley, Tom Colicchio, Danny Meyer, Marco Canora, Shea Gallante, and Thomas Keller, and all that work has given his cooking a precision and refinement that make Vitae an exceptionally strong opening in midtown, which hasn't had many in the past few years.
    The menu is a very sensible size, with nine entrees. meaning that the kitchen can take care with each one. My first bite of my first course was sensationally good: Bellanco redeemed my regard for sea scallops, which are so ubiquitous on menus, by combining them with contrasting flavors of cauliflower, golden raisins, cashews, and a fine Thai curry sauce, all of which brought up the sweetness of the scallop (below).  Pulled tacos were sublimated by a polenta tuile, tomato marmalade, and avocado.  Three excellent pastas followed--veal cheek agnolotti in a Parmesan broth with spring's fava beans and ramps; ricotta gnudi with a bright walnut pesto and the bite of chorizo; an spaghetti alla chitarra with delectable little chicken-ricotta meatballs, chick peas, more favas, and a rich soffrito.  Only a risotto of rock shrimp was disappointing, the rice overcooked that evening, and the saffron tasting almost medicinal.
    For main courses the striped bass was perfectly cooked, with cremini mushrooms, kohlrabi, asparagus and ramps, as  was swordfish with potato salad and parsley sauce, both dishes emphasizing the fish's flavors, not overpowering them.  A Niman Ranch ribeye was all I expected--succulence and fat in tandem, fully flavorful, with watercress, excellent French fries, and a rich, creamy Bearnaise. Lamb loin, requested medium rare came out almost entirely raw, which was not pleasant, wrapped in a crêpinette with favas, spring onions, and Mediterranean a notes of yogurt, feta, and mint.
    We also ordered a side of potato puree, but it might have been better described as butter puree with potatoes whipped in--a melange for which I have no complaints at all.  It was addictive.
    A chocolate soufflê with espresso crème anglaise and whipped cream went fast at our table, and a tarte Tatin was textbook if nothing out of the ordinary.
    Bellanca proves himself one of those chefs who give New York its mass quantity of pros who have learned everything from the masters and have gone on to be masters themselves.  He's a guy you've got to keep your eye on.

Hours Continuous service Mon.-Sat., 11:30am to 11pm. Closed Sundays. Appetizers $12-$18, entrees $24-$55; $24 pastas may be had as half portions.

 

Sequoia Grove Comes Back to Favor in Napa Valley
 by John Mariani

 

    Michael Trujillo, Director of winemaking and President of Sequoia Grove winery in Rutherford, CA, shrugs when he hears his wines are not included in either The Finest Wines of California by Stephen Brook (U. of California Press, 2011) or The New Connoisseurs’ Guidebook to California Wine & Wineries by Charles E. Olken and Joseph Furstenthal (U. of California Press, 2010).     “I’m not surprised,” he says. “In the 1990s there was a falling off of the brand. Oddly enough, in the ‘80s, Sequoia was a cult wine in the media, but economic pressures and phylloxera took their toll and our competitors shot right past us.  Our wines were okay but we just weren’t running with the pack.”
    Trujillo, 50, has been Sequoia Grove’s winemaker since 1998, having grown up a family ranch in La Jara, Colorado, then studying engineering before a chance visit to Sequoia Grove led the owner, Jim Allen, to offer him a job. Trujillo went on to study winemaking at the U. of California Davis and the Napa Valley School of Cellaring.  After Kobrand Corporation bought the vineyard in 2001, Trujillo took over all winemaking and company decisions. His first vintage was in 2002. Since then he has been working to buy small estate holdings on which to improve the label’s quality and image.
     Currently the winery sits on 22 acres in the Napa Valley region called the Rutherford Bench, known for producing excellent California cabernet sauvignons. Trujillo also buys grapes from other vineyards in the valley to make cabernets in the blended, Bordeaux style.
     It was a taste of Sequoia Grove’s Napa Valley label—its workhorse label, selling for about $38—that convinced me that the winery has indeed come a long way from those days when quality varied and its reputation had foundered.  The wine is not the greatest California cab I’ve tasted, but it has all those qualities that on the one hand show how the blending of other grapes with cabernet adds complexity and levels of flavors, while on the other proves that a California cab need not be a blockbuster wine weighing in above 15 percent alcohol. This Sequoia Grove example was a robust but reasonable 14.2 percent; its single estate bottlings, like Cambium and Stagecoach, top out about 14.5.
     “A lot of Napa Valley wineries are still trying to capture a few palates accustomed to that massive, in-your-face style of cab,” Trujillo told me, “but I look for balance and structure, seamless wines with great length of finish. I’m after the guy who wants flavor, not overripeness in a wine. Those who make those huge cabs hang on one man’s word,” referring without name to wine critic Robert Parker, Jr., considered to give high alcohol blockbusters very high scores.
     “High alcohol is not a vehicle for making a wine that’s going to last a long while.  Such wines taste pleasantly sweet at first, and people like that in the first glass.  But the wines don’t age well. I have no problem adding water during fermentation if the alcohol is too high. Or I cut those big boys out of the herd.”
     The California problem is that while grapes achieve what’s called “phenolic maturity” through gradual sugar accumulation in cooler climates like Bordeaux (where wines typically have 12 to 14 percent alcohol), in hot climates like Napa Valley, grapes only reach maturity at higher sugar levels later in the fall, and those sugars ferment into high alcohol. Picking so late in the harvest can also decrease desirable acids, which give wines their fresh, bright flavors.
     “I have no problem picking early,” says Trujillo, “but 2007 was such a perfect gift of weather, Mother Nature just handed it to us on a silver platter. In 2007 anyone could make good wine. It was a steady growing season, no big heat waves, no spikes in the sugars, and we picked early.”
     I asked Trujillo why, given his antagonism towards overripe red wines, does he continue to make a Sequoia Grove chardonnay that tilts above 14 percent alcohol. “In one sense that was the style I was handed,” he explains, “but I’ve been aiming to get the big flavors of a great white Burgundy that isn’t spoiled by too much oakiness.” He also does not allow the wine to go through what is called malolactic conversion, whereby acids are reduced. “I want it to be a warm and fuzzy wine.”
     Sequoia Grove’s popularity and reputation have improved to the point where 80 percent of its bottlings are sold on premises at the winery or through a wine club offering members first pick of the new releases.  Trujillo is especially excited about Cambium, of which he made only 350 cases last year, selling for a whopping $140 a bottle.
     “I figure I’ll have to row pretty hard against the stream with Cambium,” he said. “I’m going out holding my balls with this one, but I think in six to seven years Cambium will really stand on its own.  Funny thing is, when I raised the price at the winery, I sold even more.”     He’s also hoping that he will find receptive sommeliers at restaurants to buy the wine. “I’m looking for those who want something different on their list because they know who put it together.”
     Given the improvements at Sequoia Grove, I asked those authors who had not included the winery in their books to see if they’d had a change of mind. “Since 2007 my experience with the wines has been good,” said Charles Olken, “they seem to have hit their stride and their pricing is very reasonable.”
     “To be honest I haven’t tasted SG for many years,” said Stephen Brook by e-mail. “But I used to stop by regularly when in Napa 10-15 yars ago and always enkoyed the wines - well, the reds are what I remember. There's no plan for a new edition of the book, so I have no idea whether SG would make the cut. But I'll be in Napa in May and if I have time, will stop by at the tasting room.”
     I suspect Michael Trujillo will be rubbing his hands when he reads that.

John Mariani's 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.

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