MARIANI’S

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  March 24, 2021                                                                                            NEWSLETTER



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IN THIS ISSUE
O, CHEF WHERE ART THOU?
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LOVE AND PIZZA
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

By John Mariani


NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
HAVE THE ITALIAN WINE LAWS BECOME
A COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE FARCE?
By John Mariani




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On this week's episode of my WVOX Radio Show "Almost Golden," on Wed. March 24  at 11AM EST,I will be interviewing Harvey Sachs, biographer of Arturo Toscanini.  WVOX.com. The episode will also be archived at: almostgolden.






O, CHEF WHERE ART THOU?

By John Mariani



 


        In a world where the "celebrity chef" has become an oxymoron, not cooking in one's restaurant has become a measure of one's success. Such absentee chefs prattle on by repeating the late Paul Bocuse's hoary throwaway line, "Who cooks when I'm not in my restaurant? The same person who cooks when I am there," to the effect that it makes not a smidge of difference whether a celeb chef ever shows his face in any of the 15 restaurants he is paid to put his name on.
       Even the august Michelin Guide insists that its inspectors judge a restaurant only by what’s on the plate, not if the chef is there cooking it. So, chefs like Alain Ducasse, Joël Robuchon, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten all get a wink-and-a-nudge and stars galore for setting up restaurants everywhere from Tokyo to Las Vegas, then leaving them to open yet another somewhere else on the globe.
        Ducasse, who once ran only one restaurant (Louis XV in Monaco), now runs 55 restaurants with 22 Michelin stars around the world; and Vongerichten has his name attached to 45 restaurants from New York to Shanghai. Even the late Robuchon has his name on dining rooms in Las Vegas as well as casual counter eateries named L’Atelier in Tokyo, Paris, Las Vegas, New York, and London. Nice trick from the grave.
        These chefs—actually their corporate p.r. people and fawning food media—insist that even if they were in their restaurants, the head chef doesn’t really cook much but is more of an overseer. True and not true. If they are in the kitchen, head chefs do not simply walk around seeing if the chicken is ready for Table 12 (which is the expediter’s job.) But their presence, their cajoling, their refining of what their staff is cooking is crucial to getting the best from the kitchen.  On the assumption that the best chef in the kitchen is the man whose name is on the door, how could a kitchen stay in tip-top shape if the master chef only swings by every few weeks, or even months?
        Does anyone really believe that these chefs with management contracts that call for them only to appoint a chef de cuisine and appear in the restaurants two or three times a year bounce from one restaurant to another making sure all is to their liking, 365 days a year? Do the math: If a chef owns 50 restaurants, that means he could only spend one week in each of them per year. Even given the absurd histrionics of Gordon Ramsay screaming his head off at minor infractions by his cooks (below), it shows what a chef-owner is in fact consumed with.
      Every chef de cuisine, sous-chef, line cook, captain and waiter I’ve ever known has told me that a restaurant is a very different place when the master chef is not there, so why should we be paying top dollar for lesser work? Do the musicians in the New York Philharmonic play as well if the conductor is off playing golf?
        What these chefs’ defenders insist is that their clients choose first-rate staff, which might be true of the initially appointed chef-de-cuisine. Yet few chefs stay in one kitchen for very long, so who is the next chef to be appointed? The second-in-command? The third- or fourth? So, too, line cooks and dining room staff have an astonishing turnover, about which celebrity chefs are never informed. If you run 50 restaurants, will your manager tell you the pastry chef quit and the maître d’ moved on? No, that is the job of the company/corporation that signed contracts with the celebrity chef.
        Most important of all is that the spirit of the master is missing, on both sides of the kitchen door, when he or she has not been on premises for months, even years, at a time. The great chefs want to see their guests, ask them how the evening has gone, ask how to improve the restaurant, and make their presence—sometimes quite a charismatic one—felt.  Indeed, one of the principal pleasures chefs say they get from their presence is seeing how much people love their food. Ducasse once said that when he is not at his restaurant, “The walls sweat me.” Not a pretty metaphor (maybe it sounds better in French?), and a very inane one. For, if a chef is not willing to interact with his staff and his guests, what exact function does he serve?  And what, after paying $250 per person, do we get for our money?






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NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani
                                                           

LOVE AND PIZZA

    EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO, I announced that for the time being, I was unable to write about or review New York City restaurants because of the onset of Covid and instead published a serialized version of my  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.  For fifty-two weeks readers have followed her from Columbia University to Milan, to a budding modeling career and how falling in love would change her life. Now we come to the end of Nicola Santini's story, and I thank everyone who has had kind words to say about the book.
     NEXT WEEK I will be giving an update of all the places Nicola Santini visited and ate at in the book, so that the reader can follow in her footsteps.  The following week, since I had so much fun serializing Love and Pizza, I will be starting another serialization in April of a completely different kind of novel, but one with plenty of good food and wine. I hope you'll enjoy it.

 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 and paintings
By Galina Dargery


CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO


 

         However happy the young lovers were, Tony Santini matched them upon hearing the news that Marco would come to work at Alla Teresa.  “Now,” he said to himself, “now we show people what we can do,” and he dreamt of the new crowds who would be coming up to the Bronx to eat at his restaurant.
         When Tony and Marco met to finalize the deal, Nicola sat with them, everyone giddy with anticipation.  “Big sister, I love you,” said Tony. “And, Marco, I don’t know what you two have going on but you do anything to hurt my sister and the whole Santini family—plus all of Belmont—will come after you and kill you.”
         Marco laughed and said, “Then you will not have chef.”
         “Okay,” said Tony, “we’ll just put you in the hospital for a few weeks and take it out of your paycheck.”
         Nicola then spoke up. “By the way, Tony, we all love the movie star photos on that wall, but you never did anything with the other wall over there.”
         Tony acknowledged he just hadn’t gotten around to it and said, “I also ran out of movie stars.”
         “Well, then, may I make a suggestion? Marco, as you know, is a painter, and what he paints are women and food, very sexy but okay for a family restaurant. You hang Marco’s paintings on that wall and you’ll get a lot of attention, maybe even bring in the gallery crowd.  I’ll talk to some I know. And Marco can sell them and make some money.”
         Tony leaned back and said, “I love it. When can you hang them up?”
         Several of Marco’s recent paintings were soon hung on the blank wall—he’d already alerted a friend in Naples to be ready to send others—and the comments by the regular clientele were very positive. Within a week, he’d sold two of his works and at very good prices.
         Tony found a job for his current chef at another Belmont restaurant, and Marco gave two weeks’ leave to the Harrisons, who’d probably squeezed out all of Marco’s publicity value by then.  They wished him luck, gave him a generous bonus, and he began to pack up.
         It took several weeks for Marco to find his ingredient sources and just as long to train his kitchen staff, which was largely Mexican.  But when things started to click, the food improved to the point where those few patrons from downtown or the suburbs who did eat at Alla Teresa started to spread the word and it was very good.
      Tony and Marco started to see a steady flow of newcomers who had heard about the restaurant and came to check it out.  When they got up to leave, they had nothing but praise for the food and service.  Many wanted to meet the chef.  One couple even said they’d eaten Marco’s food on Capri.
     Then, on a Wednesday morning, the phone started ringing off the hook, both with reservations requests and congratulations.  The New York Times restaurant critic had reviewed Alla Teresa and awarded it three out of four stars—which was a monumental achievement for an Italian restaurant in New York.
         “When was the guy here?” Tony asked Nicola.
         “They come in anonymously.  You’re not supposed to know them on sight.”
         “Well, the guy obviously has great taste.”
         Of course, Tony’s family protested that Alla Teresa should have gotten four stars—only one Italian restaurant in New York had ever gotten four stars and that was more than ten years earlier.
      The review read, “While New York has seen a broader spectrum of regional Italian cooking in recent years, none has ever come closer to reproducing the true flavors of the great trattorias of Italy’s southern provinces as has Alla Teresa.  Chef Marco di Noë may well be the best advertisement for cucina Italiana this city has ever had.”        
The news was like a cataclysm, for while Manhattan restaurateurs knew well the enormous power of The Times to drive business, Bronx restaurateurs had never experienced that kind of clout.  By the end of that evening, Alla Teresa had turned the tables twice and Tony and Marco nearly ran out of food.
         And the onslaught of satisfied customers—and great reviews—did not stop.  Alla Teresa was the success Tony had always wanted it to be; even more, he could not have been prouder to have achieved what he’d set out to do, and he knew that Marco and Nicola had been a big part of that.  And the Bronx had something new to cheer about. 

                                                      *                         *                         *

         The question of Marco and Nicola living together was still moot, but they agreed they’d have to step lightly on the subject with the Santinis.  So the question of where they would live, separately, came up fast.  Nicola told Marco about the apartments on Riverside Drive and in SoHo, but he felt he could not afford a place in either neighborhood nor was he inclined to live so far away from work.
         Marco was in the kitchen at Alla Teresa making a fresh tomato sauce when he brought the subject up with a new twist.
      “Nicolina,” he said, “what would you say if I got an apartment in Belmont?  You know, I feel very close to my roots here.  I can speak Neapolitan with some of the residents, really get my food sources right, and I wouldn’t be so dead tired after work thinking I had to go back to an apartment so far away.”
         Nicola thought a moment then said, “Y’know,  Marco, I have no ties to Riverside Drive or SoHo, and I’m pretty used to going to Columbia three days a week for classes.  Maybe I’ll even buy a car.   And I feel the same way you do about Belmont.  I didn't for awhile.  I hate to admit it, but I thought I’d outgrown it and that I had more in common with the people of Milan and northern Italy.  But I’ve come to see that there is certainly no better, richer place to pursue art history than in New York.  And my family is here and now you, my darling Marco. So, okay, I’ll get an apartment here, too. Maybe in the same building.”
         “Ha, your family will not like that.”
         “Okay, maybe a block or two away.  The main thing is that we get to be together.”
        Bravissimo,” said Marco, “and who knows, in a little while things will . . . evolve.”
         Nicola kissed him on the mouth with true southern Italian passion, pinching his cheeks at the same time.
         “My God, Nicola, you break my jaw!” laughed Marco.
         “Good.  Then you won’t talk so much!”
         Marco kissed her back almost as forcefully, then, giving himself a little shake, said, “Okay, I need to work. I need to work!”
      Nicola tickled him a little as he turned to the sauce pot to which he had just added a little salt, pepper and basil. 
      Then Marco took Nicola’s beautiful hand, put a wooden spoon in it and said, “Nicola, listen.
Always stir the sauce clockwise.”


THE END



©
John Mariani, 2020

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

Have Italian Wine Laws Become
a Counter-Productive Farce? 

By John Mariani


 


         After years of seeing more and more Italian wines being granted official recognition as among the finest wines being produced, the claims have started to pale to the point where one wonders what there is to believe anymore.
         Back in 1966, when most Italians could not even name more than a handful of wines not made in their own region, one could hardly blame the rest of the world for having no more than a nodding acquaintance with any beyond the straw-clad bottle of Chianti or the soda pop-like Asti Spumante and Riunite Lambrusco. Travelers to Italy would find outdated wine lists at restaurants with dusty bottles of undrinkable wines sitting on ledges around the room. House wines were simply terrible.
         It was time, then, for the Italian government, in league with Italy’s winemakers, to set up some regulations by which a label would promise the purchaser of a bottle of Italian wine that it was made based on certain historic traditions and that what the label said was in the bottle really was in the bottle. DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) laws were established in 1967 to cover 250 zones producing 650 distinct types of wine. (Italian cheeses had had such laws since 1955.) These, while not guaranteeing quality, did prescribe norms of aroma, flavor, color, alcohol content, acidity and other factors.
     A DOCG (denominazione di origine controllata garantita) designation, passed earlier but not much used as of 1980, was a higher standard for delimited wine zones and guaranteed that the wine was of superior quality, based on traditional blends of established grape varieties. Since only five wines were so designated—Barolo, Barbaresco, Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano—DOCG was far more restrictive than France’s designation of 60 Bordeaux as crus.                 Right from the start, the laws were accused of being politically promulgated, but there was no argument that they lifted the reputation of Italian viticulture to international status and soaring sales. One real problem was that some of the most progressive wineries, especially in Northern Italy, were producing wines that did not use the traditional grape blends of their zones, despite being hailed with industry market names like “Super Tuscans” (below). These, under the laws, had to be labeled merely vino da tavola, “table wine,” just as all non-DOC wines were. Later on, under protest, the laws added the label term IGT (indicazione geografica tipica), meaning little more than a typical wine of the region.
          But the real problem has been how, since 1967, the DOC and DOCG appellations have expanded to numbers so high that it’s difficult to imagine how any wine made in Italy could fail to acquire one. (The raising of the mediocre wine Albana di Romagna to DOCG status in 1986 raised hackles considerably.) By 1992 there were eleven DOCG wines.   By 1998 there were 18; today there are a whopping 75, which includes many that are but single estates. There are now also 330 DOC zones, which, while questionable, is not outrageous for a country that produces as much wine as Italy does. 
     
What is questionable—as with most luxury products today—is how unusual is a wine that gets DOCG status? Especially since (unlike in France) a poor vintage might result in all the wines of that type being delimited to a vino da tavola label, which in actuality almost never happens. It’s not as if these wines are particularly rare. Like Rolexes, if you’ve got the money, you can buy them everywhere. The problem is that so many of the DOCG wines made today have nothing like the quality level they used to have when rules were more restrictive. Nowhere is this more evident than with Brunello di Montalcino, once made by only a half dozen estates in Tuscany, now pumped out by more than 200.
    The producers of
Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG are currently boasting of having 92 million bottles of were certified DOCG in 2020.
       There are now oceans of Barolo, many indistinguishable from Barbera, a lesser Piedmont wine that now also enjoys DOCG status. And there are IGT wines that sell in excess of $150 a bottle whose alcohol levels hit 15% and higher—a level that appalls most traditional winemakers and sellers, but currently enjoys high ratings from the wine media. Part of that rise in alcohol is due to global warming, though most of it is due to the way the winery purposely makes the wine.
         Because I am a wine writer a lot of wine comes to my door that I dutifully sample, and more and more I am tasting $25 wines that taste every bit as good as $125 wines, particularly wines from Piedmont and Tuscany. A Barolo from a small terroir may still result in an exquisite wine, but another, from an adjacent vineyard purchased five years ago, may be thoroughly mediocre and still charge a high price.
         No one in the wine industry, in or out of Italy, believes that all the DOCG wines deserve “guaranteed” quality status, and most believe that by heaping DOCGs on so many wines, adding to their numbers regularly, dilutes the appellation and makes a mockery of the quality claim. And in the process, the truly superior wines become allied in the wine media with the rest. Some of the finest must labor under the IGT appellation.
         It seems impossible that the Italian government will ever reverse gears and start whittling away at the number of DOC and DOCG wines currently on an ever-growing list. Which makes the labeling something of a farce, not unlike children’s soccer leagues for which every child receives a trophy at the end of the season. At a time when all wineries everywhere are suffering from a glut of product and dropping sales, especially in restaurants, having so many receive a politically driven imprimatur from the Italian government and a 90+ rating from wine media that never give any wine less than an 85, the only good thing is that good wines—though not necessarily great wines—will be available at a cheaper price than they have been in a decade.



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LEAST APPETIZING FOOD ARTICLE
TITLE OF THE YEAR (SO FAR)

"In the Necessary Defense of Dry-Ass Italian Toast: Fette biscottate are like dry, hard, crusty cardboard, yet I adore them,"
by Kelly Green,  Eater.com (Mar 9, 2021).


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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.


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FEATURED LINKS: I am happy to  report that the Virtual Gourmet is  linked to four excellent travel sites:

Everett Potter's Travel  Report

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."  THIS WEEK:






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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