Notes from the Wine Cellar Washington
Wines Go Big but Not Better by
John
Mariani
❖❖❖
NEW ORLEANS
Part
One
by John Mariani
As much as New Orleanians try to sustain
William Faulkner's remark that "The past
is never dead. It's not even the past,"
the city has moved on from the disaster
of Hurricane Katrina in every
significant way, not least in a slew of
new restaurants that break the Creole
mold but also in older restaurants that
have been refreshed and renewed, now
better than ever.
A recent trip to the
Big Easy proved this meal after
meal. Here's my two-part report on
all that's going on down there.
Brennan's 417 Royal
Street
504-525-9711
www.brennansneworleans.com
Having
been honored to be a speaker at the
annual Tennessee Williams festival for
the last several years, I look forward
to so many of the activities and
performances at the event, not least the
dinner at Brennan's for many of the
speakers, actors, and directors who
appear at the festival. This year
my tablemates include actors Don
Murray,Brian Batt, and Judith Chapman,
and playwright John Patrick
Stanley, along with one the
Festival's prime movers, TV producer and
show host Peggy Scott Laborde.
Seated in one the
beautiful upstairs private dining rooms
at Brennan's, which has been a premier
restaurant in the French Quarter since
1946, we were served with that
well-honed mix of Southern hospitality
and smooth professionalism by a staff
for whom no request is more than
a few moments away from being granted.
We all chose from the
menu, which is large and appended with
seasonal specialties, and though I know
it well, I found myself biting my lip
trying to decide among old favorites and
dishes I'd never had before. I
began with a well-made daiquiri,
followed by white and red burgundies
poured with a mighty degree of what they
call lagniappe. My first course was a
crispy, fat-bellied softshell
crabs--they call them busters here--
whose every morsel was a sweet delicate
marvel, topped with lump crabmeat and
crunchy pecans, accompanied by slices of
garlic bread. There was great
gumbo and the justifiably famous turtle
soup, and I could hardly refuse the
hearts of palm salad impeccably dressed
with a tangy vinaigrette. I
must have taken advantage of New Orleans
crabmeat three times at meals before
getting to Brennan's that weekend, but I
cannot resist the stuff, since there is
nowhere in the U.S. that you'll find it
better, bigger or fresher. So redfish
Perez was my entree choice, lavished
with crabmeat and topped with a
delectably rich Hollandaise sauce,
served with string beans.
Dessert, of
course, included Brennan's signature
bananas Foster, created here in the
early 1950s and named after a favorite
customer. It was flamed with rum and
banana liqueur at the table by my
favorite waiter, Ron, whose ease of
preparation of the dish was a beautiful
thing to watch, the flames roaring to
the ceiling, the flash of light, and the
simmering and aroma of the pan.
Pay no
attention to recent rumors of Brennan's
demise. It's still a family business,
the wine cellar is still one of the best
in the South, and Chef Lazone
Randolph, who began here in 1965, is a
demanding steward of Brennan's culinary
traditions.
Brennan's
is open for breakfast, lunch and
dinner daily. A four-course dinner is
set at $48, with à la carte
available.
Windsor
Court 300 Gravier
Street
888-596-0955
www.windsorcourthotel.com
I've
happily been a frequent guest of
the Windsor Court Hotel during the
Tennessee Williams Festival, for it is
easily the finest and best-run deluxe
property in the city, located across
Canal Street and adjacent to Harrah's
Casino. All day long you see
limos, town cars, and expensive European
cars pulling into the walled entrance,
where a staff snaps to their duties with
balletic grace. Inside the stunning
lobby, which functions as a place where
ladies lunch and business people take
quiet meetings, you are first
greeted--almost always by name--at a
desk manned by at least two concierges;
to the right is the check-in desk.
The rooms at the
Windsor Court have excellent views of
the city and the Mississippi, and
they are sumptuous without any whiff of
being overly plush. The Club floor
is where you can have a splendid
breakfast, read the papers, and use the
computers while everyone else is just
waking up.
On the second floor
is a highly civilized, extremely
comfortable bar (right)
that goes late into the night, with a
first-rate trio performing between the
bar and the Grill Room, itself an
elegantly romantic space with impeccable
lighting. This year I had brunch on
Sunday morning, and it was wonderful to
see again beverage director Sarah
Kavanaugh (below), who came
aboard after Hurricane Katrina and
rebuilt the wine list, which had been
decimated, up to 800 labels
and 4,000 bottles, one of which, a
German Riesling, I enjoyed with my
breakfast of fried chicken and waffles,
once a Southern specialty reserved for
small eateries, now becoming a breakfast
fixture in fine restaurants like the
Grill.
I
actually began with a plate of fresh,
seared Hudson Valley foie gras with date
puree, a delicious bacon beignet, and
apples pickled with vanilla. There was
also a shooter of white bean and kale
soup that was a good pick-me-up.
The new chef here,
Kristin Butterworth, is showing how
finesse can be added to downhome flavors
in a dish like truffled chicken salad
po'boy with romaine lettuce, pickled
onions, roasted tomato, and addictive
herbed French fries.
There are a lot of
ways to enjoy Butterworth's broad range:
à la carte, the dinner runs
$13-$18 for appetizers, $28-$47 for main
courses. There's a vegetarian tasting
menu at $85; an 11-course "Chef's
Ultimate Tasting Menu" at $245; and
Sunday brunch and Polo Club Lounge
menus.
The Grill Room has always
had a surer sense of sophistication than almost
any other restaurant in New Orleans, and for a
romantic night out or a restorative weekend lunch
or brunch, its charms are very hard to exceed.
Mr. B's Bistro
201 Royal Street
504-523-2078 mrbsbistro.com
Of
all the restaurants in the French Quarter, Mr. B's
has, for more than two decades, been the best
example of how Creole culinary traditions and
contemporary cuisine can not only co-exist but
flourish within an atmosphere that is 100 percent
Big Easy swing. It is hard for me to imagine
anyone not having a swell time at Mr. B's, whose
managing partner, Cyndy Brennan, is from another
branch of the Brennan family. From the day
it opened, there was no doubt that Mr. B's was a
breath of much-needed fresh air in the Quarter,
whose restaurants had grown gray, even moribund,
going through the motions of making the same
dishes the same way from the same ingredients,
even if they were frozen.
Mr. B's changed that in one
fell swoop, gathering to its kitchen the very best
that was available from the Gulf and applying
cooking techniques that preserved the essential
flavors. Sauces were a bit lighter but richer;
gumbos were never muddy; fish was grilled
over a wood fire; pastas were a novelty;
even the bread pudding, while retaining all the
decadence of others, managed to be fluffier, airy,
textured.
In all that time, nothing has
changed that kind of dedication, and, under
veteran Chef Michelle Rainey, here since 1992,
everything is constantly being refreshed, so that
Mr. B's is the one restaurant in New Orleans I can
pretty much guarantee everyone, no matter what his
idiosyncrasies, prejudices or expectations, will
thoroughly love.
On my last meal there I
dined with the city's formidable food critic Tom
Fitzmorris, whose knowledge of the culinary
history of Louisiana is daunting, and if he tells
you that any dish is not faithful to the flame,
believe him. That notion did not pass his
lips during our long lunch, which began with gumbo
ya ya--a paragon of the form, made with chunks of
chicken and plenty of andouille sausage. Mr.
B's barbecued shrimp (left) is listed as a signature
dish with good reason: the shrimp here are always
fat and the cooking careful. This can be a
very, very heavy, easily overcooked dish, which
owes its origins to Pascal's Manale restaurant in
town. It was never actually barbecued but
comes swimming in a garlic-rich butter
sauce. Mr. B's makes this dish perfectly,
with succulent shrimp, excellent butter, and just
the right amount of pepper. Into that
wondrous sauce you dip good French bread. Bliss
comes next.
For
our main course we had delicately fried soft shell
crabs with more white crab meat lumped on top,
served with creamy corn macque choux, peppers and
milk, finished with lemon butter. If you order the
"Bistro Seafood Trio," you'll get seared jumbo
scallops and grilled shrimp with a stoneground
grits cake topped with goat's cheese and jumbo
lump crab meat finished with a smoked tomato
butter sauce. Now, tell me if you've ever
heard of anything that sounds more delicious than
that.
Save a little room for that
excellent bread pudding, which is gilded with an
Irish whiskey sauce.
No one leaves Mr. B's hungry
and everyone leaves smiling.
Mr. B's Bistro
is open for Lunch, Mon.-Sat.; Sun. Jazz brunch;
Dinner nightly. Dinner appetizers run $9-$13,
main courses $24-$38.
Houmas House
40136 Highway 942
River Road
Burnside, LA
225-473-7841 houmashouse.com
A
little over a half-hour's drive from New Orleans,
along the bucolic River Road, Houmas House stands
as a testament to what true passion and plenty of
money can do in the
South. The 23-room mansion and gardens were
bought and restored to impeccable historic
conditions by Kevin Kelly, and every square inch
of the interior is museum quality. You could
easily spend hours here just looking at the
artwork, the wallpapers, the furniture, and the
green landscape surrounded by ancient oak trees
outside. You can imagine how many weddings are
celebrated here.
The restaurant on premises,
called Latil's Landing and headed by Chef Jeremy
Langlois, is a kind of reverie of what manse
owners back in the 1820s might have feasted on, if they had
access to the same high
quality of ingredients Langlois has to work with.
I'm sure foie gras was not on the menu back then
but it is here, served with raspberry and a white
balsamic vinegar glaze and white truffles in
season. The regional touch is evident in a rabbit
and andouille gumbo, while a rack of lamb is
marinated in Community coffee and served with a
potato puree spiked with assertive horseradish.
This is a form of sumptuous
dining that is rare anywhere and in the South
still makes perfect sense as well as an impression
that visitors express with a strong of of
superlatives that begin with, "Oh, My God, this is
so beautiful!" After a meal here, you might be
coaxed to staying overnight in one of the
gorgeously appointed rooms upstairs, wake up the
next morning, and wonder if it's all been real.
Two
Places to Get Nostalgic About. . . .
One of my favorite
continental-Creole restaurants, Broussards
(left), opened in 1920,
is closing after decades of serving as a
beacon of good taste and European
service, led by the Preuss family.
Its courtyard is one of the loveliest,
its effusive tablesettings a signature,
and the use of great ingredients
nonpareil. I will be among
thousands who miss this level of
civilized dining in a city of
increasing casualness.
The city has been up
in arms this past month over the sale of
the building that houses Tujague's,
one of the Quarter's oldest restaurants,
dating to the 19th century. Always
rough around the edges and possessing a
scruffy antique charm in the bar,
Tujague's was beloved by many, though I
never counted myself a fan of the
hum-drum cooking there. There are
some stirrings that the new owner will
not turn it into yet another t-shirt
shop, so keep your fingers crossed.nd
I'll keep you posted.
NEXT WEEK: Part Two--Mariza, Dominique's, 'Revolution,
SoBou. . . and a Tribute to Galatoire's
When I
was 18 and on a student's
budget, I tasted my first Indian food, at a place
on Sixth Street in East
Greenwich Village, then a scruffy neighborhood
with a few storefront ethnic
eateries where décor came way down the list
of attractions.From the first whiff of steaming naan
bread and the first sip of mulligatawny soup I was
hooked, and a few months
later on vacation to London, I must have eaten
Indian food five out of seven
days. A full meal never cost more than a pound.
So it was with
a certain nostalgia that I returned to East Sixth
Street to eat at a new Indian
restaurant named MalaiMarke (three doors down from
that first Indian
eatery)—which means “extra zing”whose décor and service shows just
how far Indian cuisine has come from
the curry house era when every dish seemed made
with the same three sauces.
Calcutta-born Shiva Natarajan,
who also owns Bhojan, Dhaba and Chote
Nawab, and
partner Roshan Balan,
owner of Chola, is setting a higher standard than
most of his competitors in
the Village, here
specializing in
kebab cookery. Spices are moderated at Malai
Marke, when tradition dictates, though
you can order various dishes according to your own
heat tolerance.The name of the restaurant means “extra
cream,” a dash or dollop of which is added to most
dishes, enriching them
while providing another level of flavor to the
spices.
It’s a nice-looking place,.
quite comfortable, with a counter on one
side of the restaurant, walled off from the main
dining area, and a glassed-in
open kitchen typical of Indian restaurants.Bollywood music plays at a
decent decibel level.Service is courteous, but it
took a
good long while for dishes to come to the table on
the busy night I visited.
Begin with those kababs—chicken
malai or
murgh haryli with
green masala
marinade—juicy and fun to eat.I
found some of the small plates less savory than
I’d hoped. Samosas were
starchy in their filling, and ragara potato
patties with chickpeas, yogurt and chutneys
somewhat
bland.But
the gobi karare
of
smoked cauliflower and onions was a winner, the
texture of the vegetable
perfect, the seasoning ample. Best way to test out
the tandoori dishes is the fine mixed grill.
I was impressed by
most of the main courses I tried, which included
luscious lamb madras with coconut, dry red
chilies, and curry leaves.Mushroom mattar with
green peas was
very good, too, but my raves go to the saag paneer with
spinach and cheese
and the mattar
paneer of peasand
cheese in a creamy tomato sauce—two outstanding
vegetarian dishes.
Of the meat dishes, phall was
new to me—a British-style lamb curry with
green chilies and a wallop of habaneros.Subtle this was not, delicious is surely
was. I also liked the chicken
dhanewali
biryani, though at $14 the portion was
not overly generous. The wonderful Indian breads
are all here. Order the garlic naan.
The desserts at Malai
Marke did not seem much different than those found
around town, but neither were they too sweet and
tasted fresh.
It was fun to get
back to East Sixth Street after all hose years and
to see that both the neighborhood and the
restaurants have graded upward. Now
those Indian restaurants have been
joined by Kuboya Japanese, Minca ramen, Buenos Aires and others.And in the restaurant biz,
competition of all sorts makes
for better food.
Lunch and dinner daily.
Small plates $4-$9, main
courses $1-$20.
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
Washington
Wineries--Bigger Is Not Always Better
by John
Mariani
The Columbia River
photo from Washington State Wine Commission
A
recent trip to Seattle gave me an opportunity to
re-assess my
estimates of the wines of Washington State—second
largest premium wine producer
(after California) and a $3 billion industry. Having
always had high regard for
a few estates like the pioneering Château Ste.
Michelle and Columbia Crest, my
experience with so many Washington wines has reminded
me of Winston Churchill’s
assessment of a colleague, that he was “a very modest
man [with] a lot to be
modest about.”
Washington has had wine grape
plantings since
1825, and today the state has 750 wineries and 13
approved appellations. But as a modern
viticultural region its history only dates to the
1970s, when strides were made
in producing consistently good vinifera like
chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon,
and merlot in the Yakima and Columbia River Valleys.Since then, there has been a good deal
of experimentation with other
varietals like riesling, semillon and syrah, and some
of the state’s very best
wines are late harvest dessert wines. Rieslings in
particular have compared
variably with those in Alsace and New York State for
their balance of fruit and
acidity.
But Washington has always prided
itself on
intense, highly tannic, high alcohol wines that show
well in their youth but
often lose brightness and complexity as they age.This, I’m sorry to say, was even
more prevalent among the
wines I sampled in Seattle and upon returning home
than I recall in years past.
The most salient example was a Woodward Canyon
Old Vines Dedication Series #28 Cabernet Sauvignon
2008 ($75) from Walla Walla.
With a whopping 16.5 percent alcohol, it was all
full-tilt tannin and new oak,
and after just half a glass, I found nothing
distinctive about it except for
its one-dimensional character. After five years this
monster should have
loosened up but hasn’t.
The same winery’s Artist Series #18
($45) was
only 15.8 percent alcohol but still felt like a blow
to the palate rather than
a pleasurable wine beverage, despite a bordeaux-like
blend of cabernet franc,
merlot, petit verdot, and syrah in with the cabernet
sauvignon. Quilceda
Creek Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2003,
is a much-ballyhooed cult
favorite that sells in stores for between $300 and
$400. At 14.9 percent
alcohol and a decade old, it was a blockbuster but
wholly one-dimensional, and
that dimension was one of tannin.
I
did find relief from the brash alcohol levels with a
well-fruited Seven Hill
Merlot 2007 ($22) whose softness was due to the
varietal, while an inexpensive
cabernet sauvignon from Chaz Point 2010 ($18) showed round
levels of fruit and
a pleasing lushness that went very well with a veal
chop over dinner.
There
was also a good mix of strawberry-like fruit and
cherry flavors in JM
Cellars
Tre Fanciulli 2007 ($35). It’s a judicious
blend of 67 percent cabernet
sauvignon, 19 percent merlot, and 14 percent syrah,
this last boosting the
elegance of the wine. At only 14.4 percent alcohol, it
shows how the terroir of
the Columbia Valley, whose south-facing slopes get a
great deal of solar
radiation, can produce power within a velvet glove.
Among
the rieslings I drank while in Seattle, I very much
enjoyed a citrus-bright
Efeste Evergreen
Vineyard 2011 ($17) that was an ideal match
with cold
shellfish.
Washington
vintners have a knack for quirky names for their
wines, like Boom Boom,
Livewire, and Kung
Fu Girl. This last, a riesling by Charles
Smith, is
a crowd pleaser at about $10; it makes no pretensions
other than to show off
good apple, melon flavors and a little sweetness that
makes it a fine aperitif.
Smith says that he “focuses on
the way people generally consume wine today:
immediately. The intent was (and
still is) to create wines to be enjoyed now, but with
true typicity [sic] of
both the varietal and the vineyard.” His motto is
“It’s just wine, drink it.”
Wine is a lot more than that,
certainly, but
many Washington vintners should step away from
thinking that a bigger wine is a
better wine.
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
My
latest book, which just won the prize for best
book from International Gourmand, written with
Jim Heimann and Steven Heller,Menu Design in America,1850-1985 (Taschen
Books), has just appeared, with nearly 1,000
beautiful, historic, hilarious, sometimes
shocking menus dating back to before the Civil
War and going through the Gilded Age, the Jazz
Age, the Depression, the nightclub era of the
1930s and 1940s, the Space Age era, and the age
when menus were a form of advertising in
innovative explosions of color and modern
design.The book is
a chronicle of changing tastes and mores and
says as much about America as about its food and
drink.
“Luxuriating
vicariously
in the pleasures of this book. . . you can’t
help but become hungry. . .for the food of
course, but also for something more: the bygone
days of our country’s splendidly rich and
complex past.Epicureans
of both good food and artful design will do well
to make it their coffee table’s main
course.”—Chip Kidd, Wall Street
Journal.
“[The
menus] reflect the amazing craftsmanship that
many restaurants applied to their bills of fare,
and suggest that today’s restaurateurs could
learn a lot from their predecessors.”—Rebecca
Marx, The Village Voice.
My new book--Now in Paperback,
too--How Italian Food Conquered the
World (Palgrave Macmillan) has won top prize from the
Gourmand
World Cookbook Awards. It is
a rollicking history of the food culture of
Italy and its ravenous embrace in the 21st
century by the entire world. From ancient Rome
to la dolce
vita of post-war Italy, from Italian
immigrant cooks to celebrity chefs, from
pizzerias to high-class ristoranti,
this chronicle of a culinary diaspora is as
much about the world's changing tastes,
prejudices, and dietary fads as about
our obsessions with culinary fashion and
style.--John Mariani
"Eating Italian will
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the cuisine of Italy and how it
won over appetites worldwide. . .
. This book is such a tasteful
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make you hungry for Italian food
and arouse your appetite for
gastronomical history."--Don
Oldenburg, USA Today.
"Italian
restaurants--some good, some glitzy--far
outnumber their French rivals. Many of
these establishments are zestfully described
in How Italian Food Conquered the World, an
entertaining and fact-filled chronicle by
food-and-wine correspondent John F.
Mariani."--Aram Bakshian Jr., Wall Street
Journal.
"Mariani
admirably dishes out the story of
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recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the
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cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David
Lincoln Ross,
thedailybeast.com
"Equal parts
history, sociology, gastronomy, and just
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World tells the captivating and delicious
story of the (let's face it) everybody's
favorite cuisine with clarity, verve and
more than one surprise."--Colman Andrews,
editorial director of The Daily
Meal.com.
"A fantastic and fascinating
read, covering everything from the influence
of Venice's spice trade to the impact of
Italian immigrants in America and the
evolution of alta cucina. This book will
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interested in the real story of Italian
food."--Mary Ann Esposito, host of PBS-TV's
Ciao
Italia.
"John Mariani has written the
definitive history of how Italians won their
way into our hearts, minds, and
stomachs. It's a story of pleasure over
pomp and taste over technique."--Danny Meyer,
owner of NYC restaurants Union Square Cafe,
Gotham Bar & Grill, The Modern, and
Maialino.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites:
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." THIS WEEK:
Eating Las Vegas
is the new on-line site for Virtual Gourmet
contributor John A. Curtas., who since 1995
has been commenting on the Las Vegas food
scene and reviewing restaurants for Nevada
Public Radio. He is also the
restaurant critic for KLAS TV, Channel 8 in
Las Vegas, and his past reviews can be
accessed at KNPR.org.
Click on the logo below to go directly to
his site.
Tennis Resorts Online:
A Critical Guide to the
World's Best Tennis Resorts and Tennis Camps, published
by ROGER COX, who has spent more than two decades
writing about tennis travel, including a 17-year stretch
for Tennis magazine.
He has also written for Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, New York Magazine, Travel &
Leisure, Esquire, Money, USTA Magazine, Men's Journal,
and The Robb
Report. He has authored two books-The World's Best Tennis
Vacations (Stephen Greene Press/Viking
Penguin, 1990) and The
Best Places to Stay in the Rockies (Houghton Mifflin,
1992 & 1994), and the Melbourne (Australia) chapter
to the Wall Street
Journal Business Guide to Cities of the Pacific Rim (Fodor's
Travel Guides, 1991).
nickonwine:
An engaging, interactive
wine column by Nick Passmore, Artisanal Editor, Four
Seasons Magazine; Wine Columnist, BusinessWeek.com;
nick@nickonwine.com; www.nickonwine.com.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John
Mariani.
Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani, Robert Mariani,
John A. Curtas, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein,
Suzanne Wright,and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,
Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.