NEW YORK CORNER REZDÔRA
IS THE BEST ITALIAN
OSTERIA TO OPEN IN YEARS
By John Mariani
NOTES
FROM THE WINE CELLAR
THE BANAL USELESSNESS
OF WINESPEAK
By John Mariani
❖❖❖
TOLEDO INSPIRED EL GRECO AS
IT WILL ANY VISITOR TODAY By John Mariani
There is a phenomenon,
particularly in walled
cities with cobblestone streets, that all roads
seem to go upward, rarely
downward. And while I know that what goes up must
go down, my traipsing through
the beautiful old city of Toledo made me feel like
a mountain goat at an age
when climbing rocks is no longer an exercise of my
animal vitality.That I did this the day after I climbed
the medieval walls of Ávila made my trek through
Toledo a rematch of man over
mountain.
That said,
Toledo, a World Heritage City,is one
of the great cities of Spain,
particularly when viewed from above, on the
Emperador Hill (above),
where some suggest
El Greco stood when he painted his famous views of
the city around 1597. There
are actually two paintings—one in the city’s El
Greco Museum, the other in New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (left)—whose
dreamy style of a churning hillside of
greenery and ghostly man-made structures might be
called Post-Impressionist or
Pre-Surrealism, forlittle of
Toledo’s actual geography is rendered. Landscapes
were banned by the Council of
Trent in mid-century, so El Greco was tempting
fate to paint
these.
The spot where El Greco might
have set his
easel is where Parador Naçional (Cerro del Emperador; +34
925221850)
is now located, one of those in the Los
Paradores
historic hotel chain. It is about 2.5 miles from
the center of town, and, with
75 rooms, has both the architectural breadth and
the personal intimacy of a
much grander hotel that would cost much more.
(Currently rooms may be had for
€125 to €160, with special offers for seniors and
“young getaways.”)
The expansive
lobby, its walls hung with El
Greco copies, opens up to a very good bar and
restaurant (left),
and there is a
sizable outdoor pool (above) and beautiful terrace
overlooking the city where my wife and
I spent a long time lingering over cocktails
before going to dinner in the main
dining room, which is clubbishly elegant but
casual, with sea green walls and
velvet fabric chairs, white tablecloths, botanical
prints and a
Monet-like
mural. The menu is quite extensive, with both
traditional and modern Spanish
cuisine that includes a cannelloni
of
beef with saffron sauce (€14); grilled turbot with
a roasted pepper gelée
(€25); and assorted marzipan (for which Toledo is
famous).
The best way to approach Toledo
is to leave
your car in one of the conveniently located
parking garages just outside the
center and walk down into the Old Quarter, which
still shows its heritage of
Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures in the
churches, synagogues and mosques,
squares, gardens and the Alcȧzar, originally a
Roman fortress, then a royal
residence of Carlos V, located on the city’s
highest hill.
One of the greatest Gothic
cathedrals in the
world is that of Toledo, begun in 1227 and
completed in 1493. Once inside the white
limestone structure, you may think it never ends,
going from one nave to
another, down long aisles flanked by dozens of
richly ornamented chapels, every
inch festooned with artwork and a great deal of
New World gold. The retable (right) is
one of the most exquisite in Europe, five stories
tall, all of it painted in
astonishing detail in homage to the Virgin and
Child.
This is
Catholic Spain, so there are plenty of other
churches in Toledo invarious architectural
styles, while the
principal art collection, containing work from
Roman times and walls hung with
Toledo artists’ paintings, is in the Museum of
Santa Cruz, with a separate
section of industrial and craft cultures.
Toledo is a
magnificent walking city, thronged
with tourists on weekends, and many will
congregate in the Santa Teresa
Quarter, with its scores of cafés, tapas bars and
restaurantes around the Plaza de
Zocodover (left).
One of Spain’s finest
restaurants is Adolfo
(Calle Hombre de
Palo 7; +34-925-22-73-21), opened in 1979,
and also one of most difficult to find. Located down
a narrow alley and up a flight of stairs, the
restaurant is a hidden trove of Iberian splendor,
with its ancient wooden beams and painted walls,
ceramics and paintings, some dating back to the 15th
century.
Director Verónica
Muñoz, daughter of chef-owner Adolfo Muñoz
(below) and
Maître d’ Carlos Gonzalez
are as congenial as they come.Adolfo
Muñoz and Chef de Cuisine David
Camaño’s menu shows the great breadthand creativity ofmodern
Spanish cuisine without any of the gimmickry of
“Modernist” Spanish cuisine.
We
had the Chef’s Menu (at a remarkable €79),
which began with a sushi of black bass in a
coconut-lemongrass and mango sauce,
then morsels of duck with foie gras made in-house
and a bonbon of Iberian ham
and cheese eaten in one very hot bite.A refreshing watermelon and tomato soup
cooled down our palates,
followed with pumpkin flower fried tempura style,
with a rich, sweet
ratatouille. The season’s finest asparagus were
dressed with an almond mojo,
while wild mushrooms were lavished
with a poached egg and crunchy ham (below).
Barely steamed vegetables came
next, then a
lustrous sea bass with onions and scallions,
pickled vegetables and tamarillo.
“Pas limon” was skinless white fish
sparked with lemon, pickled baby
tomatoes and mango cream, with quinoa on the side.
The first of the meat courses
was a red
partridge of Toledo, with “six textures and six
aromas,” served very rare; a
loin of venison was cooked in a reduction of Syrah
wine with pistachios and a
subtle scent of cinnamon.
Adolfo cooks his suckling pig
at a low
temperature, rendering the flesh creamy and the
skin crisp, served with
roasted, candied calabash pumpkin cream. An
extravaganza of “small sweets”
ended the meal, several with vegetal flavors, and
including an asparagus cake.
Adolfo’s wine list is a screed
of the best
Spanish and international bottlings, and wait till
you see how the sommelier
rolls the glass in a ritual before serving the
wine. Four samples are offered
at €26.
By the way, this is a very
sophisticated
restaurante, but children are welcome and have
their own menu at €39.
Lunch and dinner are
served every day but
Monday.
❖❖❖
NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani
REZDÔRA 27 East 20th Street (near Broadway)
646-692-9090
I’ve never been
convinced there is a “fifth
taste” called umami, or at least it’s never been
convincingly explained to
me.But
I do think there is an
ineffable taste that chefs deeply immersed in a
particular culture can imbue
their cooking with—a depth of understanding not
easily absorbed by chefs who
consider cooking indigenous dishes merely a
matter of getting hold of a recipe. Call
it “soul” if you wish, but a visit to Rezdȏra, a
new restaurant in the Flatiron
District, manifests what I mean: As soon as you
taste the dish Chef Stefano
Secchi calls “Grandma
Walking Through the
Forest in Emilia”—composed of bright green
cappelletti, roasted leek
stuffing, and black mushrooms—you may swoon or
even gasp at how perfect it is
in every respect.It’s not umami
that invests these dishes with such depth of
flavor; it’s the intensity ofSecchi’s
personality, experience and
commitment that provides that.
Secchi is of Italian
heritage—Sardinian—born in
the U.S., but he spent several years training in
some of Italy’s greatest ristoranti,
including Osteria
Francescana in Modena under Massimo Bottura, with
Davide Palluda at All’Enoteca
in Canale, and he perfected his pasta making
skills under Nonna Laura Morandi
at Hosteria Giusti.At Rezdôra (a
Modernness word for grandmother), Secchi brings
together all he’s learned, with a
focus on the region of Emilia- Romagna, known for
its rich, stuffed
pasta
dishes.
The 60-seat osteria
is very close in spirit to those of northern
Italy, with terrazzo flooring,
blue Modenese patterned tiles, wooden chairs and a
cheery bar (which gets
pretty loud by seven o’clock but mellows by nine).
A photo of elderly Italian
women shopping at a food market is the proud
symbol of Rezdôra’s spirit.
Antipasti
can be simple, like the gnocco
fritto of lightly fried pastry with
prosciutto, mortadella and fennel ($12)
or the fett’unta
of grilled bread
glossed with olive oil ($5), or as sumptuous as stracciatella, a stringy kind of
moist mozzarella with green
asparagus and pickled white asparagus of the
season ($15) that pulls apart and
goes so well with summer’s vegetables. The
cream-centered burrata comes with braised leeks and
roasted hazelnuts in a
sweet-sour marinade called carpione ($14).
As is usual in Italian restaurants,
the pastas
shine brightest, and every one of the five I
tasted was a paragon of form and
flavor, including maccheroni with a
rich duck ragù ($20); anolini stuffed with meat in a parmigiano sauce (left) with
a drizzling of
balsamico ($22); those gorgeously green cappelletti
($24); and a dish made
famous at the ristorante
San Domenico in Imola—a large raviolo
stuffed with ricotta and an egg yolk that oozes
out of the pasta to mingle with
asparagus and black truffles ($24). The best
of the four entrees on the menu are
the veal cheek guanciale (below) with spring
onions and sweet gremolata condiment
($26) and the deeply flavorful braised rabbit
legs and sausage with sweetbreads
and artichokes ($29). Spigola (sea
bass) with tiny beans got a boost from a black
garlic whipped zabaglione. “Cow
grazing in Emilia” is Secchi’s treatment of a
sirloin steak with a red bell
pepper and cream sauce with an herb salad ($29).
Those whimsical names, by the
way, echo those of Massimo Bottura’s menus,
which have dishes with names
like “This little piggy
went to the market.” Desserts, which
are increasingly being upgraded in Italian
restaurants, are at Rezdôra simple
and delicious, including housemade gelati
like the pistachio nougat and
sea salt, a fine
tiramisù (10) and a light olive oil cake with
olive oil gelato and zabaglione
($10). The very
charming General Manager Sidonie
Rodman is also wine and beverage manager, and
the list is geared to the food,
with a judicious number of northern Italian
labels in various price ranges.
There’s
been quite a spate of new Italian
restaurants in New York whose menus go far beyond
the usual screed of Pan-Italian
favorites, and at Rezdȏra you will be reminded of
those wonderful meals you had
in northern Italy that you never thought you’d
find this side of
Emilia-Romagna.
Open nightly for dinner
❖❖❖
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
THE
BANAL USELESSNESS
OF WINESPEAK
By John Mariani
The banality of the
way wine lovers describe
individual wines has been remarked on for a very
long while, at least since
1937 when James Thurber’s cartoon in The
New Yorker showed a wine snob telling his
guests, “It’s a naïve domestic
burgundy, but I think you’ll be amused by its
presumption.”
Nowhere is
Winespeak better parodied than in
Evelyn Waugh’s 1944 novel Brideshead
Revisited, wherein two soused roués describe
various bottlings as “a little,
shy wine like a gazelle . . . Like a leprechaun .
. . Dappled, in a tapestry
meadow” and “like the last unicorn” (left).
Obviously, satires of such
piffle haven’t
stopped the wine media from trudging on in the
pages of Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Decanter
and other publications with
hundreds of descriptions that range from technical
gibberish like, “Brett in
the nose, incomplete malolactic fermentation, a
slight taste of graphite, a
scent of botrytis, and enough vanillin to suggest
overuse of new French barriques,”
to reveries like “cinnamon, Meyer lemon, papaya,
Monte Cristo No. 2 with
Dominican wrapping, cat’s pee, and a hint of
Sicilian blood orange.”
Perhaps the silliest descriptor
I’ve ever heard
was in the 2013 documentary
Somm (below), in
which one wine steward
preparing to take the Master Sommelier Exam,
exclaims with mindboggling
certainty, “I’m getting notes of . . . freshly cut
garden hose.”
The man was quite serious but failed
to say
whether a wine tasting of freshly cut garden hose
is a good thing, not to
mention his familiarity with such an item. I find
it hard for any wine lover
hearing such a statement saying, “Ah! Now, that’s
just the thing I’m looking
for in my Pinot Noirs!”
Wet horse hair, stewed prunes,
burned candle
wax, ripe plantains, saddle leather, pencil
shavings, cinnabar, summer rain,
decaying roses, old linen, cigar box—all such
references join an endless parade
of duller descriptions like juicy, citrus-y, black
cherry-like, Winesap, tar,
vanilla, inviting and bell peppers that may be
repeated dozens of times within
the same article on a particular varietal.
I admit that on occasion I,
too, slip into
Winespeak—too many times I’ve resorted to citrus-y
and vanilla—but I try hard
not to, preferring instead to give a general
background on a wine and why it is
distinctive within its region, style or profile. I
also always mention the
alcohol level in a wine, because a one percentage
point difference can be
remarkable, which few of my colleagues ever do.
You can hardly blame wine
media for the
wearying onslaught of descriptors. It’s a very
tough thing to taste your way
through 20, 30, or 50 wines, blind or not, and
find anything fresh to say about
the 15th or 28th or 49th. Palate fatigue is a very
definite factor, even if you
swirl, taste and spit, an appalling ritual to
watch and one that to my taste
buds never gives me enough information about a
wine. I try as much as possible
always to taste wines with food—never more than
six bottles at a seating—because
wines only show their real flavor and potential
with food. Saliva counts in a
very real way to release flavors. One might as
well test out a Ferrari by
running it in a garage as taste wines on their own
without food. You’d never
know how it handles the curves.
There is also no way to predict
a certain
future for any wine, except to say it’s ready to
drink now or that it will
improve with a few years age. Anyone who declares,
“Drink from 2020-2025”
really hasn’t a clue how an individual bottle will
develop.
Of course, the wine media know
very well that
no one reads these reams of blather about 20
French Chenin Blancs or 30
Brazilian Tannats. Instead, people just glance at
the numerical scores,
instigated by Robert M. Parker Jr. in his Wine
Advocate in 1978, and take their cue from
them. More than once have I been
asked by a wine-loving friend how I like, say, the
2014 Château de la Pew
compared with the 2015, adding, “Wine
Spectator gave 91 points to the 2014 but
only 90 to the 2015.”I simply respond, “Why don’t
you taste
it for yourself and see which one you prefer?”
The
really good wine writers have, over many
centuries, provided beautiful descriptions—some
too flowery—of wine in general
and of certain kinds of wine specifically. The
best are very funny, as when
Cardinal Richelieu asked, “If God forbade
drinking, would He have made wine so
good?” and Alexander Dumas, who said, “Wine is the
intellectual part of the
meal.” Even Napoleon got off a good one when he
quipped, “Nothing makes the
future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a
glass of Chambertin.”
Ernest Hemingway always got
right to the point
about wine, as in AMoveable Feast
when he reported,“We had a
Corsican wine that had great authority and a low
price. It was a very Corsican
wine and you could dilute it by half with water
and still receive its message.”
Not without good reason,
Hemingway was one of
the most dependable wine writers ever, not because
he wrote columns about wine
but because his well-informed opinions, dropped
into his novels, stories,
commentaries and letters, came to such a clear,
rational point without rambling
on in cloying praise.He didn’t
even have to say what wine he was drinking to
evoke the essence of wine’s pleasure
with food: “As I ate the oysters with their
strong taste of the sea and
their faint metallic taste that the cold white
wine washed away, leaving only
the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I
drank their cold liquid from
each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste
of the wine, I lost the
empty feeling and began to be happy and to make
plans.”
And most famously he wrote,“Wine
is one of the most civilized
things in the world and one of the most natural
things of the world that has
been brought to the greatest perfection, and it
offers a greater range for
enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any
other purely sensory thing.”
Funny, he
didn’t mention anything about a cut
garden hose.
❖❖❖
MOST DEPRESSING HEADLINE OF THE
YEAR (SO FAR)
"Fake
Meat Is Here to Stay, So Stop Treating It Like
a Gimmick," By Jaya Saxena, Eater.com
(6/10/19).
WHO YA GONNA CALL?
"Somebody
called in to complain that the Taco Bell on Gause
Boulevard ran out of both hard and soft taco shells.
While this is truly a travesty, the police can’t do
anything about this. Hopefully, they are replenished in
time for Taco Tuesday!"--Slidell Louisiana
Police Department response.
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
The Hound in Heaven
(21st Century Lion Books) is a 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
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."
Eating Las Vegas
JOHN CURTAS has been covering the Las Vegas
food and restaurant scene since 1995. He is
the co-author of EATING LAS VEGAS – The 50
Essential Restaurants (as well as
the author of the Eating Las Vegas web site: www.eatinglasvegas.
He can also be seen every Friday morning as
the “resident foodie” for Wake Up With the
Wagners on KSNV TV (NBC) Channel 3 in
Las Vegas.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
Robert Mariani,Misha Mariani, John A. Curtas, Gerry Dawes, Geoff Kalish,
and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographer: Galina Dargery. Technical
Advisor: Gerry
McLoughlin.