IN THIS ISSUE
Boston Dining Part One
By Christopher Mariani
NEW YORK CORNER
Élan
By John Mariani
❖❖❖
Boston Dining
Part One
By Christopher Mariani
Boston, a rather small cityfor
such a large presence, one you can literally walk
the length of in one day, is arguably one of the
country’s most densely packed in regards to
terrific restaurants. In the mid-90’s Boston was
put on the map with talents like Lydia Shire,
Jasper White, Ken Oringer and Jody Adams, and
their culinary progeny have made it all the more
exciting.
Here are some of some of the
newer restaurants I dined at during a recent
weekend getaway to this lovely city.
Located
inside the impressive Loews Hotel (right),
the former Boston Police Headquarters, Precinct
Kitchen + Bar occupies the lower level that once
housed the city’s liquor and narcotics squads,
dating back to 1926 and Prohibition. The seven-story
Italian Renaissance-style structure operated
as Police Headquarters up until 1997, then in
2013, Loews took over the space and, after major
renovations, opened its doors to the public as one
of the city’s premier luxury hotels. Loews Boston is
in the center of Back Bay, a short walk on a sunny
autumn afternoon from Fenway Park, the Boston Opera
House, the Museum of Science, the New England
Aquarium, Quincy Market and the city’s famous North
End.
After spending two nights in
the hotel, I am quick to say there are few others in
the area of this caliber. The service you receive,
from the moment you pull your car up in front to the
warm welcome upon entering the main lobby, is
as good as it gets in the U.S. The space
is very upscale, the décor simple and
tasteful, upholding the integrity of the original
landmark building. Guest rooms, all 225 of them, are
modern in design and complemented with spacious
bathrooms and great views of the city below. Precinct Kitchen + Bar is a relatively large
space dressed in light wood furniture, white brick
walls, beige banquettes and dim lighting at night. The restaurant has a main
dining room, chic bar and an outside patio with
comfy couches and chairs, a perfect space for
cocktails. Here, Chef Olivier Senoussaoui’s
charcuterie board is a must order.Senoussaoui
hails from the Dordogne region of France and joined
the Loews Hotels in 1999, arriving in Boston in
early 2013 to run the food operations for the entire
hotel. We dined indoors and peered into the
semi-open kitchen while enjoying thinly sliced
Berkshire prosciutto, Napoli salumi,
creamy duck parfait and sliced chorizo,
starting off with two glasses of Champagne. There’s
also a terrific tuna crudo
served with hearts of palm and a garlic chili paste,
along with my favorite dish, the burrata
crostini sided by roasted peppers, mint and
Marcona almonds.
The service team, supervised by
General Manager Matthew Sentas, is well versed on
the menu; they are sophisticated but never come
across sounding scripted; they never give overly
detailed food descriptions, as too many contemporary
restaurant waiters do, blurring rather than making
the menu clear.
For entrees, the hanger steak
with French fries is a great option, chewy and
flavorful, as is the succulent crisply roasted
chicken, served on the bone, with a tasty herb jus. Sides
include abundant sautéed wild mushrooms with
tarragon butter, olive oil-laced mashed
potatoes and garlicky broccoli di rabe.
If there’s room for the dessert,
try chef Senoussaoui’s play on the Boston cream pie
or his sweet, warm and buttery brioche toast topped
with strawberries and fresh whipped cream.
Starters
$12-$16; main courses $22-$28' clam bake $24 per
person; Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner
daily.
Just
across the Charles River in Cambridge, two blocks
north of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
is a very popular breakfast-to-dinner pizza,
coffee, bakery and local beer-focused restaurant
hitting on all cylinders. At first glance, the
concept seems a bit scattered, but once you eat
there for lunch the idea is simple; have fun while
enjoying a great artisanal beer and a specialty
pizza or simply a quick cup of terrific coffee and a
fresh Danish from the bakery.
The restaurant itself, whose name
derives from the neighborhood called Area
IV, is a very stripped down, modern design,
with floor to high-ceiling windows and a great view
of Hi-Tech Kendall Square. There is outside dining,
but the
real action is inside the glass walls. Wood-fired
pizza ovens blaze across from the counter tops as
guests watch with delight as cooks knead dough, lay
down handfuls of fresh mozzarella, and constantly
remove bubbling pizza pies from the wood burning
ovens. The energy is high and the space in constant
motion. Servers are casually dressed and always on
the move. You can tell the people who work there
believe in the culture of the restaurant, a quality
now priceless in the restaurant industry. Hot pizzas
whiz by the table as you eagerly stretch your neck
in the hopes that that particular pie is yours. You
won’t have to wait long if it is not, because the
kitchen is on point with a fast-paced rhythm in
place to give people just the right amount of
excited anticipation. The master-mind behind the
Area Four brand is Chef and co-owner Michael Leviton
while the actual kitchen is run my Chef and partner
Jeff Pond.
I haven’t been here for dinner,
but I would have to assume my brunch experience is a
driving force of this growing brand. We started out
with an order of the buttermilk biscuits served over
breakfast sausage and thick brown gravy, a dish I
would go back for again and again. There’s also the
pan-seared cornbread, which comes hot out of the
oven, accompanied by a rhubarb compote and whipped
sweet cream. The brunch menu doesn’t stop there.
Macaroni and cheese come with a rich croissant
crumble topping (add bacon for only $2) and there’s
even a dish called The Hot Mess, a plateful of eggs,
home fries, baby spinach, mushrooms, caramelized
onions, cheddar and a pickled banana pepper relish.
The cooks are clearly having a great time.
Save room for the pizzas because
they are damn good, especially the “Carnivore”
topped with loads of mozzarella, soppressata,
sausage and bacon (right). The table next to
ours was devouring a pie full of caramelized onions,
Gorgonzola, peppered walnuts and chopped scallions.
Side either of these with one of local beer
offerings or the “La Pistola” tequila brunch
cocktail and you are in business. There are a
dozen rotating taps for local beers and 12 wines by
the glass or liter.
Area Four has another location in
Somerville, MA,an expanding catering business, and even a
trendy food truck feeding and touring the country to
promote the brand.
TEMPLE BAR
Small Plates:
Pizza: $6-
$10; Large Plates:
Sides: $12
- $15; Open daily for lunch and dinner.
Masculine, grand and bustling
would well-define Boston’s very own Eastern
Standard, an American Brasserie. Tradition and
consistency have kept this sprawling space one of
the city’s big culinary draws for the past four
years. Walk through the entrance and you will see
what a lively restaurant should look and
feel like. The ceilings are impressively high and
the energy is radiant throughout the entire space.
The long white marble bar counter (left),
overseen by Naomi Levy, is packed with diners as a
crowd of guests two-deep are either waiting for a
table or just enjoying a cocktail in this city’s
place to see and be seen.
The connecting dining room is filled
with dark wood and mahogany while red leather
banquettes are a staple of the décor. Servers
wear white shirts underneath black vests; at times
they struggle to navigate this vibrant restaurant.
Guests range from romantic couples to men of
self-importance at tables for twelve, consuming big
red wines and hearty steaks.
The restaurant’s broad menu
constants boasting a canny blend of terrific seafood
selections and some of the city’s best cuts of beef.It is
hard not to start off with the shellfish platter, a
mix of oysters, clams, a half lobster and jumbo
shrimp served over ice. Appetizers gain
sumptuousness with roasted bone marrow, veal
sweetbreads and a foie gras and bacon
pâté. For entrees the bone-in ribeye is
full of flavor, well-fatted and exactly what you
would get at a top-notch NYC steakhouse. The
restaurant also offers daily specials, like Monday’s
braised lamb shank or Wednesday’s roasted whole branzino. Desserts include a rich
sweet potato pie topped with pecans and poached
pear; butterscotch
bread pudding comes with praline ice cream and
salted caramel.
The 110-label wine list has a
terrific selection of French wines, both white and
red, while not gouging the guest on pricing. Most
bottles are under $100 and there are plenty under
$50, a rarity in this caliber pf restaurants, with
so many similar places in town, where wine and booze
do not come cheap, forcing their clientele to
purchase expensive wine because that’s all they
offer.
For an education on classic Boston hospitably dine
at Eastern Standard.
Appetizers: $7 to
$14; Entrees:$18
to $32; Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.
❖❖❖
NEW
YORK CORNER
By
John Mariani
Photos by Dan Krieger
43 East
20th Street (near Park Avenue)
646-682-7105 elannyc.com
Artists
first, and restaurants second, are the true
reclaimers of derelict neighborhoods.Artists
set up studios in old buildings, then come the
art galleries, then good places to eat, then
boutiques, a rush of new tenants, and before you
know it the once down-and-out neighborhood
becomes the place to be. There is light on the
street. Nowhere was this more evident back in the
1980s than in New York’s SoHo, once a fashionable
19th
century neighborhood that had fallen on hard times
by the mid-20th,
acquiring the moniker “hell’s hundred acres.”It was
in 1979 that Chef David Waltuck (below) and
wife Karen opened a new style of fine dining
restaurant ,whose emphasis on minimal décor
manifested both the Waltucks’ budget and their
intent to focus on the food.Chanterelle,
named after the mushroom, did for SoHo what Drew
Nieporent’s Montrachet (now
Bâtard) did for TriBeCa--both opened
in culinary wastelands while competing with the
finest French restaurants in Manhattan.Neither
was inexpensive, both were packed for years.
Chanterelle’s success, both
critical and popular, gave the go-ahead to other
hesitant restaurateurs like Keith McNally, who
opened the enormously popular Balthazar, then
Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Mercer Kitchen.Tiny by
comparison, Chanterelle needed to expand and did
so into TriBeCa for a long, rewarding run, but
then, five years ago, the Waltucks closed their
restaurant for a good long rest.
But the urge to do it all again
has caused David, this time without Karen’s
presence, and co-owner George Stinson (who had
been manager at Chanterelle) to open a new
restaurant called Élan--uptown in the
not-at-all-derelict Flatiron district.The duo
sought to take the kitchen in a new direction, and
Élan seemed a sprightlier name than
Chanterelle. The cooking was to be more global,
never fussy, and always grounded in the most
proven techniques.
The new
décor (at what was previously Veritas)
features a revolving display of contemporary
artists--many the Waltucks’ long-time friends--and
at the moment that means five huge, rather grim,
self-portrait paintings by Chuck Close (above)
staring at you across the bar. The rear room (below),
done up with white brick, ceiling ductwork,
mirrors and gray banquettes, is plain but
comfortable, the noise level civilized, the
service well mannered.The wine list--at
Chanterelle one of the grandest in the city--is
now down to about 80 labels geared to match up
with Waltuck’s cooking.
The first signal that
Élan is not a reverential dining experience
is the arrival of “everything” pretzel bread,
heavily seeded like a bagel, and mustard butter.One
bite, you smile, you relax, and ask what’s next?
Cold foie gras lollipops ($4
each) with fig and pistachio coating is not a
novel idea, but always a delight. Guacamole was
not enhanced by the strong taste of sea urchin,
wasabi and fried taro chips ($16), but a classic
country terrine of pork, chicken liver and herbs
($16) would be most welcome anywhere.
These were called “starters,”
for the appetizers were to follow. Excellent
gazpacho enriched with morsels of lobster ($16)
was a dish I wanted more of; so, too, the grilled
seafood sausage with sauerkraut in a velvety beurre blanc
($19), a dish revisited from the Chanterelle menu.
Zucchini
blossoms came with a tasty tomato confit and lemon
crème fraîche ($17) but the night I
ate there they were very salty.By
comparison, simple market vegetables à la
grecque ($16) were just plain bland.
For main courses, I recommend
the perfectly cooked mackerel, a fish that can
often be too strong but here was perfectly meaty
and flavorful, done in a clam-dashi
risotto and yuzu ($27). Fettuccine with sea
scallops ($16 as an appetizer, a whopping $32 as a
main course!) needed more of the duck fat in the
saucing to bring it alive.The
best of the entrees I tasted was a mixed grill of
duck ($33) with a balanced duck fat Bearnaise, the
kind of dish that hearkened back to the French
kitchen at Chanterelle.And there’s more duck fat in
the delicious hash browns ($8), and probably a
shot of it in the wonderful side order of wild
mushrooms (market price). Even before opening
Élan, word was out that Waltuck was going
to do his version of General Tso’s chicken but
with sweetbreads ($18/$30), along with leeks,
orange and chilies, but I doubt Chinese cooks
anywhere will be trading their recipe for this
rather mild rendition. There are superb
desserts ($12) from Diana Valenzuela, including a
coconut panna cotta with strawberries and lemon
grass; succulent blackberry-blueberry tart; and
chocolate mousse with raspberries and a touch of
fennel.
Critical applause has, thus
far, been respectful, and I share that sentiment.
Élan is a restaurant both of its time and
of another era, when precision and refinement
counted above novelty for its own sake.If
Élan’s global approach doesn’t always
result in eureka moments, the evolution of the
menu should be fascinating to watch.
Open nightly
for dinner. Brunch on Sat. & Sun.
❖❖❖
THEN AGAIN, MAYBE NOT
“My
husband, Adri, has turned his backpack inside out in
our room at Hortel El Pati.`I left
all my other T-shirts at home,’ he says sheepishly.He wears
shorts and a gray Star Wars tee featuring Chewbacca.One
T-shirt, six days of hiking, five historical
villages: This should be interesting.”--Regina
Winkle-Bryan, “Hiking Spain’s Cinque Terre,” Delta Sky
(Sept. 2014).
CAN HOSPITAL FOOD BE FAR
BEHIND?
Air
Food One and LSG Sky Chefs, the same people who
prepare Lufthansa's Business Class airline
food, have
started a subscription service that brings that same
food to your door. Meals cost about $13
each, frozen.
❖❖❖
Wine Column Sponsored by Banfi Vintners
Harvest: Working With Our Hands,
Thinking With Our Heart
by Cristina Mariani-May co-CEO of Banfi
VintnersAmerica's leading wine importer
It is harvest
time at my family’s Castello Banfi estate in Montalcino,
Tuscany.Whenever
I read the reports about harvest in trade journals or
wine columns, I chuckle because they seem to paint such
an absolute picture of what is to come.The reality
is that the harvest is as dynamic as Mother Nature
herself, ever changing, with more variables than some of
the most complex science experiments. And what it comes
down to are two simple things: what mother nature hands
us, and how humans react to it.
Right now, the fate of vintage 2014
at Castello Banfi rests on Mother Nature and her two
adopted sons: Maurizio Marmugi and Rudy
Buratti.Maurizio
is our agronomist, or vineyard manager: he is Tuscan by
birth and by nature; stoic, matter-of-fact, and in touch
with nature.He
advises me that “Mother Nature controls 75% to 85% of
the game – it is up to us to manage the remaining 15% to
25%, so we better get it right!”
Maurizio plays a constant game of cat
and mouse with nature.If Spring is wet and cool, he considers removing
some of the leaves shielding the grapes from beneficial
sunrays, but knows that if the weather turns too hot he
cannot put the leaves back!His pruning must be precise,
leaving the right amount of branches (and therefore
grape bunches) on the vine, but also think about what
tendrils he will leave for the subsequent year.At a certain
point, about three weeks before harvest, he must decide
how much of the fruit to “green harvest” or sacrifice so
that the vine will concentrate its energies on the
remaining fruit.
When
Maurizio has done all he can to best his 15% to 25%, he
hands it over to Rudy Buratti (right), our chief
winemaker.Rudy
graduated from Italy’s leading school of enology, San
Michele all’Adige and, as a fresh graduate, accepted an
opportunity to come work “a harvest or two” at Castello
Banfi, as he puts it, “to learn something.”Thirty-two
years later, he admits that he is still learning!
When he and Maurizio decide together
when to harvest, Maurizio admonishes Rudy: “Okay, I’ve
done the best I can to give you good fruit: don’t mess
it up!”Now,
Rudy will be the first to admit that you need great
fruit to make great wine… but he also is quick to tell
Maurizio “you did your job, now leave me alone to do
mine!”
In the end, they both do their jobs
exceptionally well – because they pour their heart, soul
and passion into it.“Wine is passion, love and sharing,” as my dear
friend and colleague Remo Grassi, another Banfi veteran,
points out, “and we know how to communicate all that!”
In the end, its all about a great
team of people working with our hands and thinking with
our heart!
Cristina Mariani is not
related by family or through business with John
Mariani, publisher of this newsletter
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
A BIG
ANNOUNCEMENT!
I'm proud and happy to
announce that my new book, The
Hound in Heaven (21st Century Lion Books),
has just been published through Amazon
and Kindle. It is a Christmas novella, and
for anyone who loves dogs, Christmas, romance,
inspiration, even the supernatural, I hope you'll find
this to be a treasured favorite. The story
concerns how, after a New England teacher, his wife and
their two daughters adopt a stray puppy found in their
barn in northern Maine, their lives seem full of
promise. But when tragedy strikes, their wonderful dog
Lazarus and the spirit of Christmas are the only things
that may bring back his master back from the edge of
despair.
“What a huge surprise turn this story took! I was
completely stunned! I truly enjoyed this book and its
message.” – Actress Ali MacGraw
“He had me at Page One. The amount of heart, human
insight, soul searching, and deft literary strength that
John Mariani pours into this airtight novella is
vertigo-inducing. Perhaps ‘wow’ would be the best
comment.” – James Dalessandro, author of Bohemian
Heart and 1906.
“John Mariani’s Hound in Heaven starts with a
well-painted portrayal of an American family, along with
the requisite dog. A surprise event flips the action of
the novel and captures us for a voyage leading to a
hopeful and heart-warming message. A page turning, one
sitting read, it’s the perfect antidote for the winter and
promotion of holiday celebration.” – Ann Pearlman, author
of The Christmas Cookie Club and A Gift for my
Sister.
“John Mariani’s concise, achingly beautiful novella pulls
a literary rabbit out of a hat – a mash-up of the cosmic
and the intimate, the tragic and the heart-warming – a
Christmas tale for all ages, and all faiths. Read it to
your children, read it to yourself… but read it. Early and
often. Highly recommended.” – Jay Bonansinga, New York
Times bestselling author of Pinkerton’s War, The
Sinking of The Eastland, and The Walking Dead:
The Road To Woodbury.
“Amazing things happen when you open your heart to an
animal. The Hound in Heaven delivers a powerful story of
healing that is forged in the spiritual relationship
between a man and his best friend. The book brings a
message of hope that can enrich our images of family,
love, and loss.” – Dr. Barbara Royal, author of The
Royal Treatment.
Modesty forbids me to praise my own new book, but
let me proudly say that it is an extensive
revision of the 4th edition that appeared more
than a decade ago, before locavores, molecular
cuisine, modernist cuisine, the Food Network and
so much more, now included. Word origins have been
completely updated, as have per capita consumption
and production stats. Most important, for the
first time since publication in the 1980s, the
book includes more than 100 biographies of
Americans who have changed the way we cook, eat
and drink -- from Fannie Farmer and Julia Child to
Robert Mondavi and Thomas Keller.
"This book is amazing! It has entries for
everything from `abalone' to `zwieback,' plus more
than 500 recipes for classic American dishes and
drinks."--Devra First, The Boston Globe.
"Much needed in any kitchen library."--Bon Appetit.
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
never be the same after reading
John Mariani's entertaining and
savory gastronomical history of
the cuisine of Italy and how it
won over appetites worldwide. . .
. This book is such a tasteful
narrative that it will literally
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
Italy’s remarkable global ascent
to virtual culinary
hegemony....Like a chef gladly
divulging a cherished family
recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the
secret sauce about how Italy’s
cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David
Lincoln Ross,
thedailybeast.com
"Equal parts
history, sociology, gastronomy, and just
plain fun, How Italian Food Conquered the
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
serve as a terrific resource to anyone
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, 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:5
MYTHS ABOUT TRAVEL AGENTS
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. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
Robert Mariani,Misha
Mariani,
John A. Curtas, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein,
Andrew Chalk,Dotty Griffith and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Dargery, Bobby
Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.