Along with its enhanced wine quality, Italy’s Chianti Classico area, between Florence in the north and Siena in the south, is witnessing a further refinement of its excellent cuisine. As has been the situation for years, at most of the region’s better restaurants sauces are made from fresh, local ingredients. But now they seem more flavorful. And while the fare in this area has never featured dishes that will jump out at you with big, bold flavors or pungent spice, it will more than please the palate with multiple levels of rather delicate seasoning, perfect to mate with the plummy, cherry tones of the area’s best wines. In fact, the rather recent improvement in bottles of Chianti Classico might well be a reflection of the need to better match the flavors of the wine with the seasoning of the fare. And, as prime evidence of this continuing trend towards farm-to-table food with multiple flavor levels, discussed briefly below are some meals enjoyed at five of the area’s recently visited dining establishments, and one just outside the Classico boundaries, in Siena. 
    (Vat 20% tax and service are included in the bill.)

Rinuccio 1180
Via Cassia per Siena 133
San Casciano Val di Pesa
(in the Antinori Winery) 
39-055-235-9720
 
    Situated on the rooftop of the modern, showplace Antinori winery (left) that affords expansive views of the surrounding vineyards, this restaurant offers a range of fare, perfect for a mid-day splurge (and best accompanied with a visit to the winery, which requires advance reservations at www.antinori.it ). Appetizers run the gamut from tasty Tuscan ham served with greaseless grilled eggplant to an assortment of artisan cheeses (younger, milder aged and aromatic) that mate perfectly with 2017 Peppoli Chianti Classico and/or the 2015 Badia a Passignano Chianti Classico Gran Selezione, that shows memorable flavors of ripe plums and cherries.
    There’s a range of pasta selections like short macaroni with a heady duck ragù and delicate ravioli filled with eggplant, burrata and arugula (right). Main courses run the gamut from lamb chops with green peppers to Florentine T-bone steak (for two) and daily specials such as a roasted, stuffed young guinea fowl. For dessert be sure to try the cantuccini (crunchy, golden almond biscuits), served with honey-scented vin santo.
       
Lunch only is served daily; expect a meal for two to cost about $100 for two, excluding wine.
 


Colle Bereto Wine Bar
Plaza IV Novembre 5
Radda in Chianti
39-0577-738276
 
    Located at the eastern edge of a plaza in the ancient town of Radda in Chianti (approximately midway between Florence and Siena), this very small restaurant, with indoor and outdoor seating, serves a small selection well-made, rather simple fare, with a selection of bottles from its winery. An appetizer of freshly made burrata cheese, accompanied by an assortment of tomatoes dressed in good oil and balsamic, and one of “Chianti Ham” served with a large slice of mozzarella were perfect starters for a warm summer’s evening. 
    A main course of spaghetti with truffles and truffle cream was a pasta loaded with earthy-tasting white and black varieties with an earthy sauce, and a grilled medium-rare, beefy entrecôte steak came with arugula topped with thin slices of Parmesan. A rich chocolate torta made an excellent finish.
    All dishes (even the chocolate) married perfectly with the ripe plum and cherry flavors of a 2013 Colle Bereto Chianti Classico.
    Of note, Radda offers a number of historic sites and local shops within its walls, and if you should stay overnight, a good choice would be the CDH Radda Hotel. It’s situated on a hillside, a two-minute car ride from the center of town, with clean, cozy rooms, most having a scenic view of the vineyards below and a spa as well as indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and a very friendly, helpful front desk staff.  Rooms currently go for about $124.

Open daily for lunch and dinner; expect to pay a very reasonable $75 for dinner for two, excluding wine.
 


Osteria Volpaia
Localita Volpaia 53017
Radda in Chianti 
39-0577-738066
 
    The ancient building is in what is now part of the Castello di Volpaia winery and small hotel,  where this restaurant offers à la carte and tasting menus of artistically presented, whimsically named seasonal dishes. We started with “A pheasant at Volpaia” (left), which was a a thick slice of pressed meat of the bird topped with small portions of red fruits, corn and wild flowers, so that each bite had a unique taste—ranging from sweet to lemony. Next we chose “Countryside Paths,” a heady mix of risotto, asparagus and porcini mushrooms, and concluded with “They used to call her Sarah,” a pastry topped with apples and pears cooked in Chianti and served with spiced ice cream.
    We accompanied the meal with the excellent 2016 Volpaia Chianti Classico Riserva that showed complex flavors of ripe plums, strawberries and oak, with hints of almonds in its finish.

Open Tuesday-Friday for lunch and Thursday-Tuesday for dinner. Expect dinner for two to cost $90-$100, excluding wine.
 



Osteria Le Panzanelle
Localita Lucarelli, 29  53017
Radda in Chianti 
39-0577-733511
 
    Very popular with locals in the small hamlet of Lucarelli between the towns of Castellina and Panzano, this establishment offers flavorful, regional fare in an informal setting inside and outside of a restored 19th-century structure.
    From a menu that changes monthly, depending on what’s in season, we chose salads of ripe tomatoes, their simultaneous sweet and acidic taste made memorable by a simple drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic. And for main courses, from a variety of grilled meats and game birds we choose medium rare steak, its slices bursting with beefy flavor, that was served with a mound of just picked arugula.
We accompanied the meal with an excellent bottle of 2016 Poggerino Chianti Classico ($32) that had a hint of anise in its bouquet and taste of plums and raspberries and we concluded the meal with a rich vin santo gelato.

Open for lunch and dinner daily, except Monday; expect dinner for two to cost $80- $100, excluding wine.


Antica Macelleria Cecchini
Via XX Luglio 11 
Panzano in Chianti 
39-055-852020
 
     Not everyone’s cup of tea, this carnivore haven offers seating for lunch and dinner daily at communal tables on three levels. The chef and owner is the effusive Dario Cecchini, whose family have been butchers for over 250 years and who gained fame by holding a mock funeral for the “mad cow” at the end of the epidemic in 2001.     Forget the brown gravy that accompanied much of the Italian beef of years past, because served here is a fixed price menu ($55 a person) of five courses of unadorned  beef  ranging from a pile of tartare adorned with a lemon wedge to four cuts of barely cooked beef from different parts of cows raised in Catalunya, Spain. Yes, there’s a vegetarian menu for “beef-a-phobics” but few order it. And, while “house wine” is served on a complimentary basis, there’s no corkage fee for those who bring their own. 
 

Salefina Vino & Cucina
Via degli Umailati 1
Siena
39-0577-287224
 
        Situated on a plaza at the edge of Siena, this restaurant run by a young, amiable couple, Claudio di Sante, the chef, and Alice Dandosso, the manager. It  offers seating outdoors as well as indoors in a white-walled room decorated with photos of the area. The extremely reasonably priced fare, with selections from a menu and daily changing blackboard of specials, provides a range of deftly made local fare.
    For appetizers we enjoyed a light lettuce wrap of dewy shrimp and one of silky slices of tuna tartare and for main courses we chose a special of roasted pheasant and artichoke dusted with a mix of peppery spice and one of thick pork ribs served with roasted potatoes. We accompanied the meal with a plummy 2015 Castell’in Villa Chianti Classico and concluded with a homemade custard topped with berries and a creamy citrus tart.
       
Open Monday-Friday for lunch and Saturday and Sunday for dinner; expect a meal for two to cost a very reasonable $70 -$80, excluding wine.
 

 

 

NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

    As the story goes, Ismael Alba couldn't find a restaurant in New York he felt “captured the true experience and authentic cuisine of his native Argentina,” so he opened his own a dozen years ago at a time when the East Village was not the well-trammeled, well-lighted, vaguely trendy place it is now. Indeed, Alba was a pioneer in a neighborhood now flush with restaurants and bars. Buenos Aires is still one of the most colorful and lively, and the food really is every bit as good as I’ve found it to be in the city of Buenos Aires itself.
    Alba’s family were restaurateurs, and upon his arrival in New York in 1981, he worked his way through the business until co-opening an East Village spot called Coup. Going solo with Buenos Aires in 2006, he was committed to showcasing the best Argentine food products and wines.
    The restaurant is composed of two dining rooms and a patio, the first hung with all manner of things Argentine, from soccer team shirts and pennants to posters and photographs that include Pope Francis, for whom Alba once proudly cooked when the pontiff visited New York. (He ordered chicken.) There are more artifacts in the 35-seat rear room (below), which is quieter and sometimes used for private dining. South American music is played in both rooms but it doesn’t much intrude in the rear.
    The 300-bottle wine list is impressive for the number of well-priced Argentine labels and for the 25 wines by the glass, along with a slew of specialty cocktails. 
    The best thing to do is to leave your order in the hands of Alba and his staff, and you’ll likely start off with grilled smoky Argentine provoleta cheese with fresh tomatoes ($16.95), and camarones al ajillo, plump shrimp in a heady garlic sauce ($14.95). By all means go for the housemade sliced and sautéed  chorizos criollos sausage with sweet onions, hot red peppers and olive oil ($10.95). For the table, the Rueda Buenos Aires ($32.95) is a platter for two (or more) containing those grilled sausages, along with rich blood sausage, grilled veal sweetbreads and somewhat funky veal chitterlings ($32.95).
    If you’ve got the appetite, I wouldn’t neglect the pastas here—Argentina has a huge Italian population—for the canelones caseros, pasta tubes stuffed with spinach and ricotta, summer’s truffles, tomato sauce and a luscious salsa blanca ($20.95) are delicious.
    Now you are ready for the main event: You can choose from grass-fed Argentine beef or USDA Prime cuts; ordinarily, in an American steakhouse I’d go with the USDA Prime. But, when in Buenos Aires, do as they do, and the Argentine beef here, hormone and antibiotic free, is the finest, most flavorful grass-fed beef I’ve had outside of Argentina itself. There’s a 12-ounce boneless rib eye at $42 and 16 ounces for $52 (left).    
    But the correctly noted “Special” here is the Buenos Aires Grilled Skirt Steak (32 ounces for  $72) that will feed an entire table of four. Skirt steak used to be an ill regarded, cheap cut until fajitas became a national phenomenon, and this example is of superb, deep, mineral-laced flavor.     If you choose not to choose, go for the Parrillada Buenos Aires Mixed Grill, including Angus short ribs, skirt steak, sausage, spicy blood sausage, veal chitterlings and grilled veal sweetbreads ($66). They also do a fine crisply roasted half-chicken marinated in lemon and herbs ($29).  All entrees come with a choice of mashed potatoes, French fries, white rice or mixed salad.
    You might be surprised at the number of desserts on the menu—eight, plus ice creams, all of them quite traditional, from the flan (right) with dulce de leche caramel ($12), and the budin de pen bread pudding with raisins and ice cream ($9) to the caramel crêpe ($14) and apple crêpe ($14).
    There’s no chance you’ll emerge from Buenos Aires without a full stomach and an appreciation for the commitment to authenticity the kitchen makes. What’s more, the nightly festive atmosphere and effusive service proves every bit as genuine.

Open daily for lunch and dinner.

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

    France’s Rhône Valley produces distinctive red and white wines, but the former far outweigh the latter for kudos among wine critics. Even so, before the 1970s, when most of the valley’s vignerons sold their wine to negoçiants, and really not until the next decade was there much interest in Rhone wines. As John Livingston-Longmonth wrote in his monumental The Wines of the Northern Rhône (2005) “the poor cousin of Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne,” “The northern Rhone faces the twenty-first century with its tail apparently up.”  Comments on the southern Rhône are less effusive, although the region, which extends from the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea, produces the majority of the wines, mostly red.
        Among those reds there are some favored regions, like Gigondas, Vacqueyras and Côtes-du-Rhône Villages, within which Beaucastel, Chȃteaneuf-du-Pape are well known. Whereas Syrah is the dominant grape of the north (the southern climate is too hot for that varietal) for red wines, while Marsanne and Roussanne are used for whites.
    The white wines of the south have rarely earned high accolades, based on Grenache Blanc, Ugni Blanc, Clairette, Viognier, Vermentino and others, with most bottlings a blend of grapes. Cooperatives produce most of the wines in the south, but now there are some innovators in the region who are producing wines that are not only of high caliber but of distinctive tastes that diverge from the bland blends that dominate.  Here are four (with one from the Northern Rhone) that I recently tasted with summer meals that I was delighted with.
 

DOMAINE DE LA JANASSE BLANC 2017  ($19.99)—The Cotes du Rhone appellation covers an enormous amount of territory, and this domaine’s part of it is 98 acres near the village of Courthezon, owned by the Sabon family (Aimé oversees the vineyards, his children Christophe and Isabelle make the wines). When writing about wines I try to eschew simple-minded allusions to particular fruit flavors, but on my first sip of this white Rhone, I burst out, “Pears! It tastes exactly like ripe pears!”
    A blend of 50% Grenache, 15% Clairette, 15% Bourboulenc (a rare varietal not even mentioned in The Oxford Companion to Wine), 10% Viognier and 10% Roussanne, the wine is pure pleasure, full flavored with minerality from limestone and sandy soils. It ages for a year in a large wooden vat called a foudre, which allows for a degree of oxidation to further flavor the wine.  I drank it with a summer salad of fruits, tomatoes, onions and olive oil.

DOMAINE LA MANARINE BLANC 2017 ($19.99)—Since 2001 Gilles Gasq has been making predominantly Grenache red wines in the well-regarded region called the Plan de Dieu (God’s plan), but he also makes a 50-50% blend of Clairette and Bourbelenc. After pressing, the juice ages on the lees for an amazing five months, with ten percent of the grapes vinified and aged in neutral casks to undergo malolactic fermentation. The wine has fine fruitiness and acid with a streak of rocky minerality garnered from both limestone and quartz called galet. It was perfect with sautéed swordfish with summer corn.

 

DOMAINE LA RÉMÉJEANNE LES ARBOUSIERS BLANC 2016 ($19.99)— A higher altitude and cooler climate around the village of Sabran in the foothills of Cevannes gives the wines of Remy Klein and his son Oliver a refined freshness and balance of elegant fruit and tangy acid. Grapes are hand harvested, using indigenous yeasts and aged on the lees for six months. The blend consists of 30% Roussane, 30% Clairette, 20% Viognier (which gives the wine its flowery aroma) and 20% Bourbelenc.

 

DOMAINE DES AMPHORES “ALTITUDE 300” BLANC 2017 ($19.99)— Although this 25-acre Northern Rhône vineyard dates back only to 1992 under owners Philippe and Véronique Grenier, this domaine in Chavanay is in the forefront of modern winemaking, completely organic and biodynamic. In this blend of 80% Roussanne and 20% Marsanne (left) both grapes are full bodied and it has the heft to go well with salmon or chicken, as well as cheeses, either as an apéritif or after the main course.