MARIANI’S
Virtual Gourmet
Hawaiian Village Restaurant menu, Waikiki, circa 1960 ❖❖❖ A NEW VIDEO I have just posted a trailer video for my new Christmas novella, The Hound in Heaven. I hope you watch and enjoy it. ❖❖❖
IN THIS ISSUE CHARLESTON
CHOW NEW YORK CORNER TUTTABELLA and VALBELLA By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR A Conversation With Jean-Bernard Grenié, of Bordeaux's Château Angelus by Andrew Chalk ❖❖❖ CHARLESTON CHOW
If Chez Nous puts you in mind of
someone's home, Two
Boroughs Larder (186
Coming Street; 843-637-3722) feels like a country store of decades
past, albeit one stocked to the gills with exquisite
local provisions. It also has a fine young
cook in the kitchen. John Mariani had a somewhat
tepid reaction to the meal he was served here over
a year ago, so when another chef -- Louis
Osteen, who is considered restaurant royalty in this
neck of the woods -- beckoned us to meet him for
lunch there, we were more than a little intrigued.
NEW
YORK CORNER
One of the least heralded of NYC’s most
successful restaurateurs probably likes it that
way. While
David Ghatanfard is intensely involved in each of
his four restaurants—two in Manhattan, one near
Greenwich, CT, one in Scarsdale, NY--he stays
behind the scenes, overseeing and making sure all
goes as he wishes and as his guests desire. Rare is
the request that his staff won’t grant. He
courts a high class clientele, and they come to
expect extra T.L.C. at his restaurants.
TuttaBella (754 White Plains Road;
914-725-0566), for a dozen years now atop a
little hill in Scarsdale across from Lord &
Taylor, has evolved from a steakhouse to a
moderately priced Italian restaurant with great
steaks, and it’s all to the good. It’s a
handsome restaurant with expanses of windows on all
sides, arched hallways, and nicely separated tables. The
terrace here is a lovely place for lunch or
cocktails.
TuttaBella’s desserts are straightforward, so, as
ever, go with the fine Italian cheesecake. Both restaurants are open daily
for lunch and dinner.
❖❖❖
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
A Conversation With Jean-Bernard Grenié, of Bordeaux's Château Angelus by Andrew Chalk
Jean-Bernard
Grenié
(left, in the middle, with co-owner Hubert Boüard
de Laforest and his daughter and managing
director Stéphanie), of Château Angelus, the
Saint-Émilion wine producer that in 2012 was
elevated from Premier Grand Cru Classé (B) to
Premier Grand Cru Classé (A), the highest
classification in Saint-Émilion. This means that, in
Saint-Émilion terms, the château is now on the
same rank as the first growths of the Médoc such as
Château Lafite and Château Margaux. AC: Château Angelus is now a First Growth, a title bestowed on châteaux like Cheval Blanc, Ausonne, Latour, Margaux, and others. How has that affected how you market Château Angelus?
JG: It did not
change our marketing. We are not crazy. We did not
decide to change the price in one day, because we
knew that if we changed the price by 50, 70 or 100
percent there would be nobody in front of us to buy.
You are aware that the classification [as a first
growth] is made for ten years. This means that we
really face a staircase now and we must walk up
step-by-step.
AC: What effect has the furor over the 2006 attempt to create a reclassification had on wineries in Saint-Émilion? I am referring to the court cases, legal battles,and so on by the wineries that disagreed with its results.
JG: I think that Angelus was not directly affected because we were not promoted in 2006. We stayed as a class B. On reflection, in a way, the cancellation of the 2006 ruling was a big opportunity for us to pass the exam [the tasting exam used to judge the wineries] and to become class A. That would not have happened before 2016.
AC: You are very experienced member of the Bordeaux wine trade. Have you noticed any effect over the time that you have been in the business from the global phenomenon known as climate change?
JG: We believe that global warming is real. It cannot explain, by itself, 100% of the rising degree of alcohol in wine, because people have such a range of techniques like green harvest and waiting later to harvest. All those things help to have a higher quantity of sugar and hence elevation of the quantity of alcohol. There is one classified growth B of Saint-Émilion, I won’t give you the name, that in 2010 indicated 16% alcohol on the label.
AC: That’s Port!
JG: Exactly.
AC: Do you think it’s possible for advances in winemaking to enable the satellite appellations of Saint-Émilion (Saint-Georges, Montagne, Lussac and Puisseguin) to make wines as good as Saint-Saint-Émilion?
JG: I think Bordeaux has wonderful terroir. The idea that I have thought in the past is that there could be general agreement between all the producers under which everybody could be called a Saint-Émilion. Everybody could produce Saint-Émilion Grand Cru but the classified growth could only be on the appellation Saint-Émilion. But I think the French farmers are too concerned with their own interests and are divided on this.
AC: Do you see a trend towards more Asian ownership of Bordeaux Châteaux, and do you think there should be limits on that?
JG: I am not
against the investment of people coming from
outside. This was always the case in Bordeaux, which
was invested in by the British, the Danish and the
Americans. Château Haut-Brion has been American
since 1931, and why not the Chinese today if they
are here to invest and make better wine. Bordeaux
has good terroir but some estates, especially small
estates, have no money. Foreign money is an
opportunity to have investors who are here to make
great estates with high quality wine and I am sure
the Chinese are an opportunity to Bordeaux.
AC: We have heard a lot in the last few years about wine fraud. People putting forged Château Angelus labels on cheap wine. What are you doing to make your product more secure?
JG: We are
doing things. We changed the bottle where it is an
engraved Angelus select so that you cannot make a
fake bottle. We have a special mark that I cannot
speak about. The last time I was tasting in China,
at the end of the tasting, I asked somebody to
collect the empty bottles. We went to the kitchen
and smashed them. ❖❖❖
IN THAT CASE, SPARE US THE BAD NEWS "The good news is that you still can't flush the toilet paper in Tulum."--Danielle Pergament, "36 Hours in Tulum, Mexico," NY Times (Nov 9, 2014).
Nearly
half
— 47 percent — of all Gordon Ramsay
restaurants have closed, changed hands, or rebooted
without the chef. And more than 60 percent
of all restaurants featured throughout Ramsay's entire Kitchen
Nightmares (2007 to 2014) run are
now closed. ❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites: Everett Potter's Travel Report: 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).
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.
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