It came as quite a surprise to me to find that the Belgian city of Bruges is among the most visited tourist destinations in Europe.  All those people can’t possibly have been tickled to visit by the hilarious 2008 crime film In Bruges, in which two hapless Irish hit men (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, left) are sent to cool off after a bungled job to a Belgian city they’d never even heard of.
    I suspect that’s true of many people, but there’s no question that the film made Bruges look like an undiscovered gem, as it was for me till I visited this spring. Of course, it’s a gem that dates back to a prehistoric coastal settlement, followed by the usual Roman domination and incursions by the Franks and Vikings.  Through times of boom and bust, Bruges has always been a strategic port town, and as of the 19th century became a tourist destination for wealthy French and British travelers. But it was not until well after World War II that the largely untouched medieval city again became popular for tourists around the world. Today you’re as likely to bump into Chinese and Japanese as Americans and Europeans, and throughout the year there are well-attended music and arts festivals, including Jazz Brugge and the Cinema Novo film festival that draw international crowds.
    The inner city itself is only 1,000 acres in size, with a population of just 20,000 (Ghent and Antwerp are much larger), so that you can walk around it in a couple of hours. But a 40-minute cruise among the canals that cause Bruges to be called the “Venice of the North” is a wonderfully leisurely way to see so much more of the surrounding neighborhoods.
    The large Gran Markt of Bruges, dominated by the beautiful city hall and bell tower (right), is surrounded by buildings of different periods, including the 19th century Neo-Gothic Provincial Hoff.  There you’ll also find the quirky but delightful Frites Museum, dedicated to the history and culture of Belgian’s fried potatoes, a Chocolate Museum, a Lamp Museum, a Beer Museum and even a Torture Museum with its own gruesome allure.
     The  exquisite Stadhuis Town Hall and Law Courts (now the Tourist Office) is set within the equally spacious Burg square nearby the Market.  From these open public spaces, the side streets lead down to the Dijver Canal, where the city’s fine art Groeninge Museum is located, with works by Jan van Eyck and other Flemish masters. There is also a museum specially devoted to the  Hans Memling, as well as a diamond museum and much else, so, rather than take it all in on a weekend, return visits would be requisite to see just how rich a history and the architectural beauty Bruges possesses.
    The 13th century Church of Our Lady, stunningly restored to a bright, glowing luster, has the tallest spire (367 feet) in Belgium and one of the rarest works of art in the world—a sculpture of Virgin and Child by Michelangelo (right), along with a stunning triptych of Christ’s crucifixion by Rubens.   
    At the moment Bruges is alive with a citywide event called the Triennial—a celebration of a city “quite literally surrounded by water, but also liquid in a metaphorical sense, as a city in constant and flowing artistic movement, sometimes storm-tossed, sometimes peaceful and calm”—at which fifteen celebrated global artists and architects have placed  huge installations under the theme “Liquid City” on or about its canals.
   In one location, where there is a longstanding statue of Jan Van Eyck, StudioKCA, from Brooklyn, has placed the huge “Bruges Whale” leaping from the water.  Made of the kind of plastic refuse that now clogs the world’s oceans, all of it collected in just six months, it is a dramatic comment on the global impact of such detritus both on the ecology and the marine population. Two weeks after its installation, a sperm whale that had ingested dozens of just such plastic objects washed up on the beach in Spain, showing just how advanced this scourge is.
    Other installations can be walked through, like the pavilion of a surf wave done in fuchsia and neon yellow. Another is a “Floating School” by a group called NLE out of Nigeria set near the beautiful Minnewater, a Benedictine nunnery (right).  The Triennial runs through Sept. 16. Tours of all the artworks are available.
    The Love Brugge City Card, available for 48 or 72 hours, offers free access to two dozen museums and attractions, a minibus tour of the city or cruise through its canals, and discounts on events, parking and bike rentals.  Also, ask at your hotel for the free “Discoverbruges” discount card to receive a discount at numerous attractions and shops in Bruges and surroundings.

    We live at a time when media-craving chefs reject simplicity for sheer elaboration, so it is good to remind them that sushi is the easiest thing in the world to screw up and the most difficult to make one’s own.  As a moderate purist, I like sushi largely untainted and require first that the fish be of both unstinting freshness and identifiable as a species, so that everything on the plate doesn’t taste the same.  Tuna should not taste like halibut and mackerel should not taste like salmon.  After that, the rice is of equally great importance, its kind, its texture and its temperature.  Within those parameters I am most happy at a sushi bar.
    Thus, the arrival in Westport, Connecticut, of a Japanese restaurant so special— where the rest of the menu is at least as enticing as the sushi, which is itself outstanding—makes OKO the best new restaurant I have dined in so far in 2018.  The fact that it is run by a non-Japanese chef—born and raised in the New York suburbs—whose nearby restaurant The Cottage is exemplary for its modern American food may seem all the more surprising, except that Brian Lewis (left) has proven his ability to combine the finest culinary traditions with his own restrained sense of innovation.  At OKO he has so obviously thought through every dish to be a personal expression that I could imagine him opening up a taco stand with his own sense of style and creativity.
    I first enjoyed Lewis’s cooking at the Bedford Post Inn, then at his own place, Elm, in nearby New Canaan, where he was already showing a talent for Asian flavors and techniques he furthered at The Cottage.
    OKO is located within a historic brick building in Westport known as the Vigilant Hose Company, and with its scrubbed red brick walls, big windows, fluorescent lighting, bare wooden tables and big open bar, it’s almost as loud as if a fire truck was revving up to leave. (Lewis told me sound-proofing is on the way.)
    The nigiri sushi section is extensive (the chef’s selection, five for $25, ten for $45, is the way to go; otherwise, $4-$10  piece), and most is not what you might expect if you’re used to seeing only a slab of fish atop a finger of rice. For one thing, as at the best sushi bars in Japan and New York, Lewis assesses the correct temperature for an item and, accordingly, may give it a quick blast with a hand-held blowtorch. Thus, hamachi is flavored with a scallion aïoli and gomashio, slowly roasted garlic and sesame.   Akami tuna, from the leaner part of the fish, is classically blanched and then marinated for up to two days, served with a nikiri shoyu of caramelized maple syrup, puffed quinoa and avocado-yuzu puree.
    Wild King salmon is paired with yuzu and finger lime, while morels are braised in sake butter and served over a Japanese omelet flavored with dashi, mirin and soy. And Atlantic squid  is thinly scored to absorb red kimchi juices and a touch of sichimi togarashi spices.
    There were many more wonderful sushi options, but let me not miss telling you of a starter of chilled King crab salad, tomato dashi, avocado, wasabi and white soy  ($17), and a razor clam and cauliflower with smoked trout roe and dashi ponzu  ($4).
    Among the cold and sashimi dishes I marveled at the complex flavors of golden snapper with smoky roasted salt and red yuzu koshu ($9) and marvelous kabiyaki-glazed sea eel, with aromatic sancho pepper ($6) that Lewis brought back from Kyoto.  Mackerel shime saba had a little pickled jalapeño ($6). Sweet shrimp in a rich garlic-brown butter soy took a hit from that blowtorch to meld the flavors ($8). Foie gras with cherry yuzu took on a sweet side from kosho maple soy ($10) and was spiced with five-spice powder and junmai daiginjo sake made from pure rice and water only. I’m not sure I believe in umami, but if it is a fifth flavor, Lewis’s food has it.
     Foie gras also provided the filling for succulent gyoza  dumplings, glazed with umeboshi pickled fruits and duck jus ($14). Buttered King crab legs ($19) were grilled over coals, basted in sudachi citrus fruit and chili butter, then finished with a mayonnaise given the torch treatment.
    Perhaps the finest of all three dishes I had that night was a perfect seared sea scallop roasted on the teppanyaki grill, served with hot red kimchi juices emulsified with sake butter, squid caramel and a salad of scallion, daikon and carrots ($6), followed by sticky ribs (right) with smoked maple, gochujang chili paste and sesame crunch ($17).
    The least interesting of the dishes were the tempura items ($5 to $18) of beans, mushrooms, eggplant and other vegetables that all tasted pretty much the same within a too-thin, unseasoned gluten-free batter.
    On the assumption that no one really expects great desserts in a Japanese restaurant, Lewis simply serves up delightful soft serve ice cream to finish ($5), but all are done with flair, like ginger blueberry jam, brown butter almonds, butterscotch, matcha twist, sesame popcorn and sweet adzuki bean.
    I had expected Lewis would put a lot of thought into the beverages, so I was happy to see such an array of cocktails, sakes, wines, beer and teas—not a huge list, but a well chosen one.
    OKO is a restaurant of substance and personality, something wholly new in the suburbs of New York and competitive with the best in Manhattan, where you’ve got to be very good to create a reputation.  That Lewis can do as he does and still charge very reasonable prices is all the more amazing.  If there was ever a reason to drive up to Connecticut to eat, OKO—about 75 minutes from Manhattan—is it. 

      If reports about wine fraud in major auction houses are making you queasy about what you really have in your cellar, there are a few ways to minimize your risk in the future.
      First of all, despite reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere that New York auctioneers have allegedly sold counterfeit wines and inauthentic vintages, a reputable auction house or fine wine store is still the most sensible way to buy rare wines, because those institutions have so much to lose if wrong. In 2017 auction totals in the U.S., U.K. and Hong Kong markets, plus online sales, rose 12.7 percent to $381.7 million, up from $338.7 million in 2016, although the peak was in 2011, with global wine auction sales at $478 million.
      “Auction houses vet their wines very carefully,” Peter Meltzer, author of Keys to the Cellar: Strategies and Secrets of Wine Collecting, said in a phone interview. “I would not be overly worried. Also, the night before or the day of the auction there is usually a pre-sale tasting where for $50 to $100 you can sample many of the wines that will be up for bid. They are also a good way to meet and connect with other collectors who might have more experience.”
      The younger the wines, the less probability there is for fraud, even if a single bottle, like a Romanée-Conti from a recent vintage, may cost well over $1,000. Fraud occurs mostly with older, rare vintages and, especially, with large format bottles called magnums (two ordinary bottles), jereboams (six), methuselahs (eight) and nebuchadnezzars (twenty), of which very few are made.
     So-called "trophy wines" are ripe for forging, for it is the very rare wines that collectors crave, like 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, 1947 and 1961 Pétrus, and 1921 and 1967 Chȃteau d’Yquem, so they are the ones most likely to be faked, because they bring so much money. Nobody fakes a wine from, say, 2010. And most of the time the buyer never drinks the wine he buys, saving it either as a trophy or for future sale.
      The best advice for a neophyte wine collector is to spend years building a relationship with a fine wine store in order to gain experience. A store like London’s famous Justerini & Brooks Wine Merchants, which opened in 1749 and now has more than 2,000 active accounts, including the royal family, stocks its wines in impeccably maintained cellars, and the company never buys at auction, because they cannot be sure of the provenance.
      The London-based MARC Fine Wines stocks more than 120,000 wines for sale to the trade and private collectors and will buy from auction houses and private cellars. Provenance, which is listed in the auction catalogs, counts:  If  the sale of a ’61 or ’59 Bordeaux is from the chȃteau itself, you can be sure it’s the real thing. Auction experts may call the chȃteau to ask about a particular bottle, if it seems in some way suspicious.
       There may be telltale clues, like the weight of the bottle, the color of the wine (the older the wine is, the lighter the color may be), the condition of the capsule, and the identifying marks on the label.
      The most targeted wine for fraud is Chȃteau Pétrus, whose bottles used before 1982 did not have identifying marks.
    Obviously, not everyone can be on a first-name basis with a château, but many châteaus in both Bordeaux and Burgundy, as well as in California, are open to the public and may offer “Library Selections” of older vintages that have never left the estate’s cellars. It is also a good idea to buy  “en primeur” futures, with certified proof-of-purchase from the winery itself.
     If you are interested in buying at auction, certain telltale signs can be gleaned from looking at the label.  Obviously, an older wine’s label should show some age, but the gap between the wine in the neck and the lip of the bottle—called ullage—which indicates a degree of oxygen entering the neck, can be telling.  A very old bottle will have more ullage than a recent vintage (left). Still, some collectors will pay the chateau itself to open their wines and top them off with a little of the same vintage and then recork the bottle.  Indeed, a few chateau technicians even make the rounds in London and New York to perform such a safeguard.
      The corks themselves will also have the date of the vintage on them and show considerable age, though laser printers these days can fake that too. At auction a lot’s provenance will be described, commenting on prior storage conditions and whether the wine has come from a winery or a single seller. One might also look to see if a wine is packed “OWC”—in its “original wooden case”—which may actually increase the bidding price for such wine.   
    As in everything in life, timing is important. When the 2008 recession hit I decided to auction off some of my rare wines I knew I'd probably never drink. But the market was then so depressed that I made far less than I'd imagined, even though my lot contained Lafite-Rothschild, Pétrus and the California cult wine of the day, Screaming Eagle.
  In the end, however, wine collectors should be wine drinkers. “The best way to find a fake is to open a bottle of the wine you’ve bought,” says Meltzer. “If you’re suspicious of it, you can bring it back to the seller and have it tasted or tested.” But be aware that auction houses sell their wines “as is,” which protects them more against spoiled wine than fakes.