The name of Vincent Chirico’s new restaurant doesn’t really tell you what to expect, or just how exceptional the food will be. Chirico’s cooking is anything but coarse and fits no dictionary definitions of the word, which range from “inferior” to “common” to “rough.” Indeed, it is very superior cuisine, certainly not common around town and assuredly refined.
    At least the new name is better than the original one—Raw New York—which seemed pretty straightforward, even though the menu was not all raw food, although Chirico (left) often did little more than slicing and dicing. An expensive sign change to Coarse NYC hasn’t really made things all that much clearer.
    Nevertheless, the well-priced $99 tasting menu is clearly an attraction, served at a judicious pace within a room that does in fact have some deliberately rough edges, with an open kitchen, exposed water pipes, rough white brick walls, unfinished wood, a long polished communal table, word-and-image abstract art and pillars with sketchy drawings of bald heads. What is unfortunately very coarse about Coarse is its noise level, loud enough when the place is full of people but intensified by an indistinguishable play list of throbbing drums and bass lines. It’s annoying when you sit down and becomes more uncomfortable as the night progresses.
    As noted, Chirico’s cuisine is highly refined and thoroughly personal, certainly with some raw elements but more likely quickly or barely cooked, so he delivers disparate tastes by balancing flavors that are predominantly Asian. During the evening he or the kitchen staff will deliver your plates and describe what you’re having.
    My wife and I began the dinner with lustrous hamachi with tender lily bulbs, Thai basil, daikon radish and a preserved ginger sauce made from rice wine vinegar, mirin, lime and shisho—a real spark to the appetite. Next came a single sea scallop (left), almost translucent, with a mousse of sunchoke and black garlic pounded into a pesto and crisp sunchoke.
    Chirico quickly marinates tuna in subtly flavorful white soy, then just as quickly sears it tataki style, dusted with aleppo pepper, fresh coriander and crunchy sea salt, then finishes it with a brown butter laced with white soy and lemon for an acid bite.
     Moving westward, though containing buna shimejji mushrooms, was ravioli filled with creamy burrata. Then came a near classic dish of duck with sweet corn and hazelnuts, water spinach, a reduced Port wine sauce and a pungent-sweet black pepper honey sauce (right). The last white asparagus of summer were served with chopped shallots and a white truffle dressing (rather bland), celery leaf, manchego cheese and (even blander) summer truffle.
    At this point there was a delightful cheese course of Gorgonzola dolce with caramelized raw sugar, an olive oil gelato and aged balsamic—good, though the gelato detracted from the already very creamy cheese. A grapefruit granité with yogurt and white chocolate was delicious, and a little pot of almond crème sealed the deal, along with sea salt chocolates.
    Appropriate wines are served with each course, all included for the remarkable $99 for a meal that is rare in New York and rarer still at this price. (There’s also a $69 three-course dinner menu and a $49 lunch.)
    Whatever the name Coarse is supposed to convey, Chirico might as well call it Oilcloth. Or the No Name restaurant, or anything else.  It’s the uniquely refined food that counts and will be the draw when the word gets out.  

Dinner is served Tues.-Sat.

    South Australia has been the continent’s largest wine producer for decades, with plantings of its signature grape, Shiraz, dating back at least to the 1860s. The Barossa Valley, with more than 140 producers, had Silesian immigrants planting Riesling there in the 19th century, and today the huge Penfolds company (now owned by the global giant Treasury Wine) makes some of the world’s most expensive and respected Australian wines.
    The McLaren Vale, with more than 125 wineries, may be less familiar to those who love Aussie wine, but it has become known for its big, brawny, high alcohol wines that sometimes exceed 15.5% alcohol. In 2012, California’s own major global wine company, Jackson, bought Hickinbotham McLaren Vale winery (left) to expand its holdings in the Pacific Rim, appointing Christopher Carpenter as winemaker to produce Bordeaux varietals at the estate, which was founded in 1971.
    Hickinbotham’s Clarendon Vineyard covers a steep cut of territory from the ridgetops above the village of Clarendon to the Onkaparinga River in the gorge below. The original vineyard dates back to 1858 under the stewardship of Edward John Peake, who went on to export wine to Calcutta, Java, New Zealand, even  England. In the next century wine educator Alan Hickinbotham Jr. of Roseworthy Agricultural College, bought the Peake estate for $54,000, in time expanding the acreage and later selling grapes to Penfolds and other wineries.  Alan’s son David launched the Clarendon Hills Hickinbotham Vineyard in 2000, selling it to the Jackson family in January 2012.
    Chris Carpenter, who is also winemaker for Jackson’s Cardinale, Lokoya, La Jota and Mt. Brave estates, has since been visiting South Australia frequently to oversee new plantings, harvesting and production, and his Cabernet Sauvignons in particular have won wide acclaim. Over dinner at a French bistro in New York, Carpenter, who once played Big Ten football and looks like a cross between songwriter Jim Croce and western actor Sam Elliot, told of how he’d earned his M.A. degree in biology from the U. of Illinois, where he often played trombone in bar bands. But during a visit to Napa Valley, he fell in love with the territory and signed up to study at UC Davis, garnering an M.A. in both viticulture and oenology, then furthering his studies at Tenute Antinori, Santa Cristina Estate in Tuscany. He joined Jackson’s winemaking team at Cardinale in 1998, adding Jackson’s other wineries to his portfolio.
    Not wanting to show up as an American interloper in Australia, Carpenter sought to gain as much knowledge about the terroir of individual parcels as possible and to plant accordingly, with the help of local winemakers. “Water is a big problem in Australia,” he told me. “It comes almost entirely from rainfall, with agriculture using the most water, and since 2002 there have been real problems with drought, and we have to work within restrictions.”  (Australia's long-term annual average rainfall, 18.6 inches, is the lowest of all the continents except Antarctica.)
    Still, red grapes grow well in McLaren Vale, which is cooler than other terroirs, and its Shiraz wines rank with the best from France’s Rhône Valley. Hickinbotham’s own Brooks Road Shiraz 2016 is from a cooler region.  The time on the skins, after cold soaking, was a minimum of 18 days, then the juice was free run and separately, gently pressed. Unlike most Rhône Syrahs, which are a blend with other varietals, Hickinbotham’s is 100% Shiraz, yet, at 14.5% alcohol, it avoids being inky or too tannic, and showing abundant fruit.
    The Revivalist Merlot 2016 ($75) comes from hand-picked grapes, with 21 days of skin time, then racking over the next 15 months, emerging with a balanced 14% alcohol that keeps it from becoming overly fruity or cloying. The soil is iron rich and clay, imparting its minerality. There’s a good deal of finesse that does indeed remind me of a Bordeaux Pomerol like Château de Sales or Château Clinet. Only 748 cases were made, so this is a fine Merlot at a fair price, already sold out in Australia.
    Carpenter describes his Trueman 2016 ($75) as “the most homogenised, smoothly-assimilated Cabernet in recent years from Hickinbotham, reminiscent of those made by Stephen Hickinbotham in the early 'eighties. While its aromas of bergamot and blueberry have yet to lock in and settle, the palate's already there: fine, fresh and strapping. It's an elegant, savoury wine now, but will smooth out and flesh up to memorable opulence with a decade or two in the cellar.” Spending 15 months in a mixture of fine-grained Bordeaux-coopered barrels, the tannins of this 100% Cabernet Sauvignon have softened, and there is abundant acidity that keeps it fresh, with just 14% alcohol as ballast. Carpenter recommends aging, but it is rewarding to try it right now as an example of what he’s accomplished in a short period of time with this varietal.
    The Peake 2016 is, as is obvious from the price of $150, Hickinbotham’s top of the line bottling, using Cabernet (56%) with Shiraz (44%) blended in, rather than Merlot, a mix not unknown in Australia, where it has been done since pre-phylloxera days (the scourge arrived in 1877). With winemaker Charlie Seppelt and Viticulturer Michael Lane, Carpenter worked with vines dating to 1971 in high country (720-755 feet).  Both varietals were left on the skins for a minimum eighteen days, resulting in an alcohol level of 14.5%, skirting the higher levels of so many unbalanced Australian red wines. It was indeed a beautiful wine, though still quite tannic—it went very well with a steak au poivre and rack of lamb—and Carpenter insisted it’s a wine that will improve over many years.
    When I asked how many people are going to spend $150 for an Aussie Cab, he answered, “I make my wine for connoisseurs who can afford it and have huge cellars where they can store the vintages.” When I winced at the remark, he quickly explained that his other wines are very fairly priced for all wine lovers.
    The next day I checked the price on Penfolds Grange Bin 95, which sells for  $550, and realized why Carpenter was confident of what he said and what he’s gunning for.  Time in the bottle will tell if he’s right.