MARIANI’S

Virtual Gourmet


  June 14,  2020                                                                                            NEWSLETTER



Founded in 1996 

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Marcello Mastroianni in "Divorce Italian Style" (1961)

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IN THIS ISSUE
TOURIST RESTAURANTS
AND TOURIST TRAPS
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LOVE AND PIZZA
CHAPTER TWELVE

By John Mariani


NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
AN INTERVIEW WITH
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA,
Part Two
By John Mariani

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To hear an interview with yours truly by Tom Farley on his show "What Matters  Most" about the future of restaurant after the pandemic ends, click the picture to the left.
 














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TOURIST RESTAURANTS
AND TOURIST TRAPS


By John Mariani





    It is a constant and annoying balk by people who have never eaten at a well-known restaurant that the reason they avoid it is because “it’s full of tourists.”
        Which is fine with me, because it leaves more room in the restaurant without sitting next to someone whose snobbery is based on ignorance. Such people insist that the appearance of a large number of tourists—which implies vast hordes of loud, badly dressed people just off a tour bus with pre-arranged meals—is reason enough to avoid such places. The further assumption is that such people lack taste or discernment and only go to such restaurants as curiosity seekers or to say they’ve been to them. Which may well be true of many people.
    But the same might be said about the Louvre, the Vatican, the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and the Parthenon. Of course, they’re overrun with tourists, because they are some of the most important monuments in the world. Who would take a trip to Venice and not cross over the Bridge of Sighs or go to China without trekking over the Great Wall? Has anyone been to New Orleans and not eaten beignets at the ever-packed Café du Monde?
    The same snobs—who I guarantee miss out on a lot of the world’s wonders, as well as great food—flippantly say that restaurants that cater to tourists dumb down their food and service in order to get as many people in and out the door as possible. This is certainly true of what is called a “tourist trap,” about which I shall say more in a moment, but the virtues of a great restaurant with a critical reputation, be it from the Michelin Guide or the local newspaper critic (or even me), are manifested in the consistency of the food and service. It does not vary, certainly not from guest to guest, although there are some misguided restaurant critics who insist some restaurants have cooks who make better food for critics than for the 99.9% of the people who eat there day and night. For the record, some chefs, upon realizing a critic is in the dining room, will make sure the kitchen takes a little extra care with Table 14 that night, but to suggest that the other 120 meals served that evening are in any way inferior is sheer nonsense.
    The reason the world’s most celebrated restaurants in terms of cuisine and service are consistently at the top of the 10 Best lists is because they are, not because they attract tourists. On any given evening, I would guess that the clientele at Le Bernardin in New York, Da Fiore in Venice, Le Grand Véfour in Paris, Noma in Copenhagen, Mugaritz in San Sebastián, Steiereck in Vienna, Benu in San Francisco and others is always 85% tourists, perhaps higher. So eliminating those restaurants from consideration for that simple fact is keeping snobs from enjoying some pretty wonderful meals and experiences.
    What, then, is a “tourist trap,” as opposed to a restaurant that has a large tourist clientele? The operative word is, does this restaurant cater to a tourist crowd? Obviously places like Guy Fieri’s and Giada de Laurentiis’s restaurants, national steakhouse chains and Cinderella’s Royal Table at Disneyworld plan everything down to the last detail to appeal to long lines of tourists, who may or may not expect the food and service to be first-rate but instead go for the experience and maybe even a sighting of a celebrity, or at least a Disney character.
         Traffic flow alone is a science at such places. To each his own.
          In years past, many European countries had laws that required restaurants to post a “tourist menu” on their windows that was a set meal at a special set price, with service and tax included. Often that meant smaller portions and a carafe of house wine or dishes made from less costly ingredients. Believe me, when I was a traveling student such menus were revelations to me, opening up my palate to everything from blanquette de veau in a Paris train station to a delightful pasta dish down an alleyway in Rome.
    Las Vegas restaurants are something of an anomaly, for while the city is home to some of the finest restaurants in America, with famous chefs’ names on the door, those chefs are so rarely there to oversee the food and service that they may not show the same consistency as the originals on which they are based.  A few thrive only because high rollers are given full comps by the casinos to dine there.
    Of course, this is also true of celebrity chef restaurants around the world when the chef in question has ten or more branches as far away as Singapore and Dubai, where the ingredients will always be different. Then there’s Rao’s, a branch of the original twelve-table Italian-American eatery in Harlem that’s impossible to get into without knowing someone who knows someone; no one goes there solely for the run-of-the-mill Italian fare. In Las Vegas, however, those twelve tables have been increased to 200 seats—open seven days a week, with happy hour—so it’s no big freakin’ deal to say you’ve eaten there.
    It is also true that some restaurants with legitimate reputations have been overwhelmed by tourist crowds, causing the kitchen and service staff to get the food out of the kitchen with as much dispatch as possible. The famous restaurant Botin in Madrid—which Hemingway called the “best restaurant in the world” —has had 400 years to perfect its roast pig and baby lamb, but much of the rest of the food is mediocre and you may be rushed in and out, if you can secure a reservation at all. Such a less-than-convivial experience can also be the case at very popular places like Henne in Berlin, Tadich Grill in San Francisco, Antoine’s in New Orleans, Peter Lüger’s in Brooklyn and other places around the world.  Still, the food can be very good.
    Then there are the snobs who decry famous restaurants’ seating policies, whereby it is assumed there are “A” tables, then all the others, with tourists shunted off to imagined Siberias, not least the dreaded room upstairs. Such snobs would prefer never to go at all to Galatoire’s in New Orleans (right) rather than risk not getting a table in the front for Friday lunch; or be led upstairs, past the regulars, at Brasserie Lipp in Paris (left), Babbo in New York or Harry’s Bar in Venice. Which means that the food never really has anything to do with their decision to stay away.
    Given the prejudices of those who eschew restaurants frequented by tourists—and don’t for a minute think there’s not a racist tinge in remarks like, “Oh, the place is full of Chinese and Japanese tourists”—one wonders if they get hoist with their own petard by recommending those “secret places” the critics don’t write about. I can assure you, there are no such places: it is a critic’s job to review every restaurant of note, and, increasingly, the food media have been assiduously covering eateries and holes-in-the-wall with increasing fervor. But is the food snob not helping to ruin his favorite place by telling all his friends how fabulous it is? If you want to keep it free from tourists, then you better damn well not tell your out-of-town friends about it.


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NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani
                                                           

LOVE AND PIZZA

    Since, for the time being, I am unable to write about or review New York City restaurants, I have decided instead to print a serialized version of my (unpublished) novel Love and Pizza, which takes place in New York and Italy and  involves a young, beautiful Bronx woman named Nicola Santini from an Italian family impassioned about food.  As the story goes on, Nicola, who is a student at Columbia University, struggles to maintain her roots while seeing a future that could lead her far from them—a future that involves a career and a love affair that would change her life forever. So, while New York’s restaurants remain closed, I will run a chapter of the Love and Pizza each week until the crisis is over. Afterwards I shall be offering the entire book digitally.    I hope you like the idea and even more that you will love Nicola, her family and her friends. I’d love to know what you think. Contact me at loveandpizza123@gmail.com
—John Mariani


To read previous chapters go to archive (beginning with March 29, 2020, issue.

LOVE AND PIZZA
 
 

By John Mariani

Cover Art By Galina Dargery


CHAPTER TWELVE


    “I got passes!” Catherine screamed, bursting into her dorm room, where Nicola was napping one early spring afternoon.   
    “To what?”
   Duh! To Fashion Week! Middle rows, but we’re in, two each day for two days.”  Catherine did a ridiculous strut around the room shouting “Yes!” then said to the air, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mommy!”
    Then Nicola remembered what she’d promised to do. “Shit,” she said, “I forgot to ask my father for passes! Damnit!”   
Catherine, still ecstatic, said, “No problem. We won't need them. We’ve got these.”
    “Yes, but what about Jenny, Suzanne and Mercédes?  You only have four passes.”
    “Oh, Jenny won’t really care, and I guess we’ll have to draw straws or flip a coin.”
    “Jeez, I’d feel terrible if one of them missed it," knowing that Jenny said she'd no interest in the shows.  "Look, I screwed up. I won't go.”
    A look of mock horror came over Catherine’s face. “Oh, no-no, Nick, I love those girls but you’re by far the most fashion conscious, with your background and everything.  I really want to be with you at those shows.”
    “Well, if I go to one show one day, Mercédes or Suzanne can go with you the other day.”
    Catherine pouted like a child for a moment but said, “Che sera sera,” recalling the title of an old hit song by Doris Day.  “Whatever will be, will be.” Catherine seemed resigned to somehow fix the arrangements but the shows were coming up the following week, so she forced herself to think about the critical question of what she would wear.
    She wasn’t quite sure whether it was tacky to wear the clothes of the designer whose show she was attending, and, although the models would be showing fall fashions, it was now March, one of those ridiculous in-between seasons when you can’t really wear spring clothes and don’t want to show up in that winter’s clothes.
    “Nick,” Catherine said, standing up and sticking her chin out.  “We have obviously not taken Italian fashion seriously enough since we got here. It’s time to fix that. Tomorrow we go shopping for things to wear at the shows.”
    Nicola did not put up a battle. Tomorrow was Friday, when no one had classes, and there were a few sales in the better stores. 
    “I guess I have to tell the other girls right now, then,” said Catherine, wondering why something so wonderful had to be such a bummer.  But, as it turned out, Suzanne had two overdue mid-term papers to bang out and couldn’t possibly break away to attend a show.  Catherine tried seeming to be very sorry but was actually glad it would be Mercédes, who, being Argentinean, showed considerable Latin style in the way she dressed.
    The next day, as soon as the stores rolled up their corrugated metal doors, the three American women went prowling, first to some of the moderately priced stores like Max Mara and Benetton, both near the Duomo, then, emboldened by having each bought outfits by one o’clock, decided to cruise through the high fashion shops along the Via Montenapoleone and Via della Spiga—Ungaro, Armani, Pucci, Versace, Gucci, Loro Piano, Roberto Cavallo and the brand new Mariella Burani—skipping entirely the French designers on those same streets.
   
    The girls went without lunch, already fearful they had gained weight since arriving in Milan, and by four o’clock were exhausted.  Catherine overbought and Nicola and Mercédes had to carry a couple of her packages. “None of it will go to waste,” said Catherine, trying not to seem too ridiculous after purchasing three pairs of shoes, two handbags, and one Versace outfit she hadn’t a clue as to where she would wear it back home.
    Mercédes went for bright colors and came away with a beautiful fuchsia blazer and striped slacks.  Nicola, without the money to buy what she’d seen on Via Montenapoleone, had purchased items she knew she would wear again and again, even if they seemed a bit too high fashion for Belmont.  Like her grandmother, she eschewed anything black, instead buying a gorgeous white and navy blue dress cut on the bias—a style that she could see took expert tailoring—which she matched with a small handbag in a lighter blue with a gold chain strap.  She also bought a couple of headbands—she loved headbands—and a pair of striped espadrilles she’d get good mileage out of.  None of the shoes she liked could she afford.
    Back at the dorm the women showed off their new clothes to the other students, then Catherine offered to take Jenny, Suzanne, Mercédes and Nicola for drinks at the bar of the Grand Sforza Hotel, recently opened in a renovated 15th century palazzo.
    “It’ll give us a chance to break in the new duds,” said Catherine, headed for the shower. “Let’s meet in one hour.”
    An hour and a half later, the women, dressed to be devastating and with somewhat more make-up than was usual for them, sat in the swank bar lounge at the hotel, sipping perfectly made negronis, martinis and Camparis—the fact that none of them was twenty-one made no difference in Italy—and nibbling on the salted nuts, potato crisps and olives set on the table and frequently replenished by a succession of young waiters in white jackets, who were eager to get a closer look at the five attractive Americani. 
       
There was no nebbia that evening, but there was a scent in the city air that promised spring was finally on its way.  The women raised their glasses and said, with fluent authority, “Salute!” to which Nicola added, “Cent’anni! May we all live to be a hundred and come back here for an anniversary dinner!”
    “Even if we’re on walkers or in wheelchairs!” added Jenny.
    By this point in their Italian sojourn, nearly every wistful moment of homesickness had left them, and they’d all come to feel the marvelous contentment of knowing a foreign city well enough always to recall it with insight and con amore, knowing they would return to renew those feelings in the years ahead, perhaps with husbands or children along. 
   
Each had acquired enough Italian to cope nicely in most situations—Jenny and Suzanne had taken a basic Italian class back at Columbia—and the feeling of being foreigners regarded as alien by the Milanese had by now evaporated into a cordial affection for these smart young women from I Stati Uniti who were so truly eager to absorb the best the city had to offer them.
       
In the piazza, the majestic Duomo, encrusted with spires and buttresses and hundreds of statues offering their stony benedictions to the great city, glowed in the anchored lights from below and from a full moon overhead that signaled the official arrival of spring that very day.
        “Let’s drink to the best idea we ever had,” said Suzanne, “to Italia!” and they did, proud of what they’d accomplished in their lives back home, in their studies, and in their embrace of the rich culture of Milan.   And at that moment, Suzanne, who’d always thought of going into politics now began to consider pursuing a career as an ambassador, perhaps to Italy someday. 
    
   Jenny, too, who’d always had an interest in the somewhat narrow study of archeology in the Midwest, now saw the opportunities for such research in Italy to be immeasurable.  Mercédes, in pre-med, gave no thought to someday practicing in Italy, but in visits with doctors and to hospitals in Milan she had come away impressed with the tender degree of caring and time the staff spent with their patients, an approach she found so often lacking in United States and South American medicine, where the profit motive and insurance seemed to drive every decision about a patient’s care.
        Catherine, even more than the others that night, seemed blissfully adrift, giddy to be away from the life of privilege that she’d found stifling and empty of any purpose other than sustaining itself.  For the time being Catherine was keeping the future at bay.
        Nicola, enjoying the last sip of her Campari and soda, was smiling, though more silent than usual that evening.
        “What’s with you tonight?” asked Catherine.
       “Oh, nothing, really.  I was just thinking that in so many ways everything here is so beautiful—the art, the clothes, the food, the people. Look at this room, this glassware, these waiters!  I guess I’m feeling a little detached from where I came from, and that bothers me.  I owe my family so much, but sometimes I think that I’ve, oh, I don’t know, outgrown them.  The Bronx is not anything like it is here, Catherine, and I’m beginning to realize just how different it is.  I mean, I’ve always thought of myself as an Italian girl and have been very proud to also be an American.  While I’m here, though, I feel somehow closer to”—she waved her hand in front of her—“all this.  I never thought I’d feel this way.”
        Catherine hugged her friend and said, “Hey, Nick, you just promised we’d all live a hundred years. You’ve got plenty of life to live on both sides of the Atlantic.  Don’t look so deeply into everything. Come on: la dolce vita! And what is it?  Il dolce far niente? 
        
She took a sip of her negroni and looked directly at Nicola.
        “You know what you need?” she asked.
        “What do  I need, Catherine?”
        “You need to have a fling with one of these Italian guys. A big, juicy, hot fling.  It’ll clear your mind.”
        That’s really what you think I need?” asked Nicola, wondering how her friend could be so simplistic.  “I haven’t seen you have your big fling yet.”
        “Hey, I’m coasting here,” said Catherine. “I had enough to last me a while back in New York.  My head is as clear as it’s going to get, at least for this semester.  Not that I’m against having a fling over here.  Shit, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”
        Nicola shook her head and said, “I love you, Catherine, especially when you’re being completely carefree.”
        “Well, then, here’s to being carefree!”
        They clinked glasses and Catherine called for the bill, which she paid, leaving a huge tip.



© John Mariani, 2020

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR



AN INTERVIEW WITH
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA,
Part Two

By John Mariani

(To read Part One, click)


Was there a time when the running of the winery took precedence over your activity in filmmaking? 

Well, a big part of filmmaking is the writing, and later the editorial phases, which are performed alone, so in the natural rhythm of the work it was possible to do both.

On your movie sets did you ever have the kind of lunch breaks that the “spaghetti westerns” director Sergio Leone was famous for—the full Italian meal with wine?

Yes, we did turn to the European tradition of serving wine during lunch of our film crews.

Eli Wallach, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef dining at Al Moro in  Rome during the filming of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966).

Since the winery was funded by profits from The Godfather movies, did the winery become a major profit maker for you and help fund the next films? 

When I was young, I was very poor and realized that if I wanted the independence to make the moves I dreamt of, I’d need to be able to finance them myself. However, everything I did to try to make money, investments and such, tended to lose money, so at one point I just decided not to worry so much about it and just do the things I loved. It turned out those were storytelling, writing and publishing, adventure and travel, and so quite naturally I found myself in the magazine business, film business, hotel and resort business and food and wine business. All areas where the most important criteria are authenticity, quality and pleasure; those three ideals guide us in everything we make today.

Why do you make such a wide array of wines rather than concentrate, as do Italian wine producers like Angelo Gaja and Piero Antinori? 

It has to do with the way my company evolved, and unlike Gaja and Antinori, who are part of great historical wine families, I just kept following my instincts and they led me to make certain decisions, which later, when I revised or incorporated, blossomed into new variations on the theme. Marchesi Piero Antinori (right) famously says, “My family has been making wine for 500 years.” However, in answer, I say, “The Coppola family has been drinking wine for 1,000 years!” 

Do you think your wines are closer to Italian models and traditions than to California models?   

I think the goal of Italian models was set more with their eye on the great wines (and prices) of the Bordeaux and Burgundy models. That’s where the idea of the so-called “Super Tuscan” wines was born. I’d say that for our wines with characteristics similar to Tuscany the answer would be “yes,” and in other great Italian regions such as Salento or Sicily or Veneto our wines would be more similar to those. California is a huge agricultural area and has many areas similar to different regions of the world. And the wines tend to follow the terroir. In winemaking, everything follows the quality and characteristics of the grapes.  

How did the resort businesses come about? As an adjunct of the wine business? 

Film directors tend to fall in love with the locales they shoot in. David Lean found it difficult to leave the desert after filming Lawrence of Arabia, and I felt the same about the jungle after making Apocalypse Now (left). That led me to rush to Belize in the year it was founded as an independent nation.  I was nostalgic about those fascinating jungle locations and searched for something similar. I found such a place, totally remote, and bought it, thinking I’d found a place to write in. But once I had fixed it up and made it comfortable, of course I needed someone to watch and care for it, and one thing led to another with me saying “yes,” as I do more often than I should. And if you say “yes” a lot, you’ll find yourself in the hotel business. 

In springtime grapes don’t need that much tending, but, if this pandemic continues, who will pick them in the fall? 

We qualify as essential activity and our very valued vineyard workers work throughout the year. Grapes are like people; you want to have different phases: new babies, mature, elderly. There’s constant tending and re-planting. Francis Coppola Wines have had long-term contracts with the growers and families over the years. There’s always been in California a mutual respect, and the state is blessed with great nations on either side. It would be inconceivable not to take care of people and antagonize Canada and Mexico.

Coppola's resort Palazzo Margherita, Bernalda, Italy

You seem to have deliberately kept your prices on the moderate side. 

There are a couple of new wine releases in the Gia line (below)—a Sangria and an orange wine. Of the seven or eight companies larger than us, Kendall-Jackson underprices us somewhat. But there have been so many changes in the business and distribution has become very regulated by the government. The distributors and retailers grow larger and larger, so profits get squeezed. 

How do you think the buying and selling of wine will change in the future. Wine sales seem to be going off the charts, but wineries are struggling. 

We live in a house up a mountain and I’m bringing only my fine wines up there. Everybody in the country must be doing that—buying expensive wines and storing them away, or drinking them at home. The normal drill of going out to dinner at restaurants is temporarily suspended, so that a glass of wonderful premium wine is a treat and something you can do at home, so the whole country is moving to higher premium wines. I think that will continue into the future as wine with meals becomes a more wonderful experience. There is so much to know about wine and the regions of the world and the best owners won’t compromise on the excellence of their wines. 

So have you retired from the motion picture business? 

I’m sort of retired. I feel blessed to be with my family. Everyone wants to go home, so we have to take care of our home. Every day I sit and look at this beauty in the valley and imagine what a film it might be. Remember, Bacchus was the god of both wine and drama to the Romans. [Vittorio] De Sica’s 1951]  Miracle in Milan is a good movie to watch right now during the pandemic, about oppressed and poor people in Milan victimized by the rich and the police for their land but miraculously fly away on broomsticks. So, here we sit, have dinner together, watch movies and prize the stars in the sky.








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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.

 

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