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Virtual Gourmet

AUGUST 23, 2026 NEWSLETTER

Founded in 1996

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Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in "North by Northwest" (1959)

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HOW THE TRENDS OF 2006
HAVE WORKED OUT
By John Mariano

NEW YORK CORNER
HALIFAX
By John Mariani

THE BISON
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
THE WINES OF VALENCIA
By John Mariani

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HOW THE TRENDS OF 2006
HAVE WORKED OUT
By John Mariani

About ten years ago I gave a talk about what I saw as the ascending trends of that period, some backed by media star chefs, others by food companies, many by food writers desperate to come up with something new for their deadline. When I was food columnist for USA Today back in the 1990s, my know-nothing editor demanded I deliver trend stories twice a month. All that was needed was just a single restaurant somewhere in the Heartland copying a new dish in New York or L.A. to make it a bonafide trend. Such are editors.
I looked at what I said back then and thought it interesting to bring it up to date as to what continued to be popular or just in vogue and what dissipated as fads usually do. Here’s what I found:

Molecular Cuisine. The experimental, sometimes deliberately provocative, cooking of chefs at the turn of this century were on the one hand designed to expand the reach of chefs and to innovate in ways that depended on centrifuges, instant freezers and odd combinations of ingredients. Pioneered by chefs like José Andres in Spain, Wylie Dufresne in New York and Grant Achatz in Chicago, many jumped on the rolling bandwagon in an attempt to gain media attention. Yet twenty years later its messaging and arduous chemistry has had little effect on most kitchens beyond the occasional use of foaming sauces. Meanwhile the centrifuges are rusting.

Nordic Cuisine. One of the most bizarre practitioners of Molecular Cuisine was Chef René Redzepi of NoMa in Copenhagen, who was insistent than ingredients found on and under rocks, including live ants, offered a new way to cook. Gourmets and media flocked to NoMa and dutifully reported on the kind of meals showcased in the bizarre 2022 movie The Menu, and Nordic Cuisine was proposed as the big new thing, while Copenhagen, whose culinary previous reputation hung on kartoffelsalat and smǿrrebroǿd, was suddenly cast as one of the world’s greatest food cities. Yet very few Scandinavian of any kind opened in the U.S., and most that did go out of business quickly. Redzepi himself was accused of brutal behavior in his kitchen and with his staff and lost all his credibility as a result. NoMa itself closed, but is planning to re-open.

Tweezers. Let’s face it, tweezers are just skinny tongs whose main usage is to pick up tasteless microscopic greens and itty bitty baby vegetables with which to decorate a plate in a time-consuming manner while the food got cold. Tweezers are still around in the kind of restaurant that does such things to a plate of food.

Fondues. However lovable and once among the most popular gifts of a bridal registry, fondue sets faded by the 1980s. Yet the media announced they were making a big comeback ten years ago. Didn’t happen.

Raw Food. Given that most people in the world outside of Japan have never eaten raw food as part of their diet, it’s amazing how ubiquitous it now is. Sushi really only became popular as of the 1980s and sushi restaurants popped up in strip malls and neighborhood blocks everywhere. Then, after the late Gilbert LeCoze made a stunning dish of fish carpaccio with balsamic vinegar at Le Bernardin in New York in 1986, the the idea took off, so much so that Italian cooks began calling raw fish crudi, which had never been much appreciated anywhere in Italy. But now, more than ever, it’s hard not to find crudi on menus of any stripe.

Tasting Menus. Pretentious fifteen-, eighteen-, twenty-course tasting menus had become popular in the 1990s, not least influenced by such meals at Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry and among the molecular cuisine crowd and omakase chefs. But the concept became a fad intended to show off a chef’s ego and to charge a pretty penny for it for only a very few who could afford $1000 per person for a meal. Thus, while there are still scores of both talented and untalented chefs still pushing tasting menus, most people want no part of them and many restaurant critics, like the NY Times’ Pete Welles, swore off them after they became endurance tests.

Farm-to-Table Locavores. I spent a column two weeks ago on this p.r. attempt to promote chefs who insisted (disingenuously) that they only used local ingredients, so I will simply say that you never hear the phrase any longer, lest it cause a wince.

Food Trucks. They’ve been around forever, but in the 1990s they were all the rage, not least in laid-back Portland, Oregon, and many food critics lined up to declare such places the equivalent of fine dining. Well, they’re still there but in far fewer numbers than they were ten years ago, and the ones that survive predated the fad by decades. That's Lou Costello in the photo to the right.

Korean Food.
No doubt Korean restaurants boomed in the 2000s owing to media hype, so that the traditional brazier style was dissed as being in-authentic, and that just about any Korean eatery that was cooking something the media hadn’t ever eaten was worthy of extravagant praise. I’m happy that there are more such places, though the bloom is off the flower.

Pizza. No humble food item aside from burgers has been so exalted, so deconstructed, so ranked in every form as the American pizza and where to find the best, the very best and the best of the very best. Media who have never eaten a pizza in Naples go into dithyrambs about the “correct” crust and the use of correct tomatoes, while the once humbly delicious Italian-American pie was regarded as unworthy of any praise––until! ––they ran out of stories about $28 “individual pizzas” and suddenly found “slice shops” worth a rave. And so it goes.

Beef. Despite nutritional harangues and philosophical arguments against eating beef, the effect has been nil, with Americans now eating nine percent more than they did in 2010. In fact, high-end steakhouses have proliferated everywhere, both in and outside the U.S., with owners all claiming to serve wagyu beef from a tiny Prefecture in Kobe (which is impossible) and now charging $75 for a non-wagyu cut. And there’s no let-up in sight.

Dumplings. Ten years ago Asian dumplings were just rearing their darling little heads, pan-fried at every Chinese take-out shop or served in profusion at dim sum restaurants in Chinatown. In the last five years, however, dumplings have become a widespread addition to the American scene for the simple reason that everyone loves them and no has reason not to, soup dumplings most of all.

Noise Levels. Not so much a trend of the last twenty years as a scourge. No matter how many media and consumers rage against the ear-busting decibel levels in restaurants, including shattering blasts of Techno-music, restaurateurs insist that it’s part of their “vibe,” not realizing that 1) Nobody goes to their restaurant to hear music, and 2) A sizeable number of human beings won’t set foot in such places. Perhaps the owners themselves have lost the ability to hear.

Dress Codes. It’s been a long time since any restaurateur anywhere has had the temerity to refuse entry to a guest dressed like Jimmy Buffet or Adam Sandler. Barely, just barely, some are discouraging (though not always forbidding) shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, but the tide has run against them. Long gone are the days when maître d's dared to lose a single customer because he was dressed like a buffoon or hip hop singer. I once dined at the ultra-posh Crillon in Paris, to be told that the big table across the room dressed like Mardi Gras party-goers were let in because, "Monsieur, that is an American rap artiste." You would think that those restaurants who fill their reservations books every night would claim some leverage, but they never know these days if the guy in the black t-shirt and baseball cap might be Elon Musk.

The Michelin Guides. Ever since the Michelin Guides have included New York as a separate volume, they have been sniffed at by local critics who say the inspectors (whom they consider to look like Jacques Clouzot of The Pink Panther) know nothing about the local food. Yet every year those same critics dutifully publish the new results as if they were the Oscars. The real crux about the guides, however, is that Michelin will now publish a guide on your town if your tourist board antes up enough money (in some cases a million bucks), which strains the guides' credibility. Stay tuned for the Michelin Guide to Tallahassee and Dubuque. I still more or less trust Michelin’s guide to France (even if they don’t re-inspect listed restaurants for years at a time), but over here they make for fun reading and little more.

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NEW YORK CORNER

HALIFAX

225 River Street

Hoboken, NJ

201-253-2500

By John Mariani

The beginnings of so many Hollywood movies about New York always show Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the East River, taking in the Brooklyn Bridge––not least Woody Allen’s “Manhattan,” with Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” playing in the background. I can think of only one movie set on the West Side of the Hudson River, in Hoboken––“On the Waterfront.” Which is a shame because the view at twilight and moonlight is spectacular and for most people fresh and new.

Of course, people who live on the river in towns like Weehawken and Hoboken have a grand panorama and the majestic George Washington Bridge to the north and the Verrazzano-Narrows to the south. It makes perfect sense, then, to have restaurants along the river, and Halifax in Hoboken is among the more upscale. And it is very much chef driven, in this case by Seadon Shouse, who was raised in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia, from which many of his culinary ideas come––many included in his 2023 cookbook From the Hill by the Sea.

Shouse has been at Fairfax for eleven years and prior to that at Proof On Main in Louisville, Kentucky, then Glenmere Mansion in Chester, New York, then continued at yjr French seafood brasserie Millesime in midtown New York.

The restaurant itself, inside a W Hotel, has two dining areas, and décor-wise they have the bland look of a modern hotel restaurant used for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Ceilings are high and the “lively bar” means it’s loud and boisterous so request a table far from it. There is, however, the virtue of its glass wall overlooking the Hudson and you can dine outside, too. “Wednesday Supper” is a popular weekly tradition. The night I dined at Halifax the main room was closed, so we ate in the bar, which has a different menu, though I was able to order from the dining room 's.

The term locavore has been bandied about with little regard to the truth or the reason, but it most certainly applies to Shouse’s ingredients, which come from local farms and waters as much as possible.

You might begin by sharing a board of cured and smoked fish with maple-smoked salmon, trout, mussels, pollock, and a seafood salad, or cured meats of pork, salami, wagyu bresaola and duck liver pâté, or artisan cheeses from New York, Massachusetts, and Georgia. Or you indulge in a plateau of oysters, clams, shrimp, smoked mussels and lobster tail.

I enjoyed the silky bluefin crudo (right) with a braised sugar kelp emulsion, pickled jalapeños and puffed rice, baby kale and sesame. My favorite appetizer was a hefty serving of trumpet, maitake and oyster mushrooms with ramp butter atop toasted house-made sourdough bread made from spelt flour, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax and sesame seeds, speckled with Parmigiano (left).

You might expect a good clam chowder on the menu from a Nova Scotian, this one with tender clams, smoked ham and potato, though I don’t see rye oyster crackers adding to the clean flavors of the dish.

The two pastas we had were generous––both overcooked––one a saffron rigatoni with lobster and its coral made into a butter, along with roasted trumpet mushrooms. The other was as sunny as August: Agnolotti stuffed with New Jersey corm, lacquered with brown butter, oven-dried tomatoes, Parmigiano and herbed bread crumbs for further texture and some fresh basil and mint for spark (below).

Perhaps his Nova Scotia upbringing has given Shouse his way with fish, which is to cook it lightly. His Faroe Island salmon is pan-seared with quickly sauteed local summer squash, fresh corn and heirloom tomatoes, flavored with torn basil and mint and served in a seasoned light tomato water broth. First-rate roasted Atlantic pollock did not gain anything from a smoked chicken broth that also overpowered the heirloom carrot, braised potatoes and leeks.

A fine Berkshire pork chop was perfectly pink and enhanced by a salad of grilled Jersey peaches, slabs of house-made Bacon, cous-cous, tomatoes and a tangy-sweet peach gastrique. The requisite hamburger uses good beef but it gets too muddled by adding mustard to caramelized onions and truffled cheddar.

Desserts are sumptuous, including a red velvet mousse cake with a chai mousse, chocolate ganache and cream cheese crumble; Rich panna cotta was sweetened by a peach cream, honeycomb candy and peach marmalade.

The two-sided wine list is more than ample, and features fine bottlings from the west coast––many from out of the ordinary vineyards like Temsley, Orin Swift and Peay, as well as a few foreign. There about close to 20 sparkling wines. About half the wines listed are admirably under $100.

Halifax succeeds in putting out of mind the noise and hotel atmosphere around it. Eating Shouse’s seasonal fare and looking across at the Manhattan skyline is what you cross the Hudson for.

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

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THE BISON
By John Mariani

Donald Trump, Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

       "Okay,” said David, loosely holding the gun and switching it back and forth at the Pierces. “We’re going to call the police, and they’re going to speed up here and arrest your asses. Katie, they have 911 here?”
       “Yes, but it’s 112,” she said. “Dialing it now.”
       Richard Pierce was visibly shaken, his head showing a bloody gash and hematoma already bulging up around his eye. Angus was calmer but looked scared.
       “You don’t really think this is going anywhere do you?” he snapped.
       “You mean you’ve got every cop in St. Moritz on the take?” said David. “I doubt it. They may like you stashing your money here, but the Swiss get pissed off when there’s a murder. Gives the police something to do when they’re not handing out speeding tickets.”
       “Ha! Here you are standing over us with a gun, my son’s bleeding from his head, and you expect to convince them it’s because we tried to murder you? Don’t be ridiculous.”
       David laughed. “And I’m sure this gun is registered in your name here in Switzerland. They’re kind of insistent about that sort of thing.”
       “Yes, and you took it and turned it against us. Your word against ours. No one else was here.”
       Kate chimed in, “Ah, but there is another witness.”
       Pierce twisted his eyebrows. “Really? Boris is long gone.”
       “Not Boris. Sony,” she said, lifting her pocket tape recorder from her bag. “Shall I play what she heard, from the beginning? The part where you admitted knowing about the murdered girl at Epstein’s? Or the part about getting Maxwell tossed overboard? She heard it all.”
       The Pierces looked at each other in astonishment. It had not occurred to them to frisk the two Americans because he knew they wouldn’t be carrying firearms. But a tape recorder!
       Katie dialed 112 and a voice answered immediately.
       “Can you dispatch police to Springbok in Engaden? You know where that is? Excellent. There’s been an attempted murder. How long will that be? Okay, very good, thank you.” She hung up and said, “They should be here in under ten minutes.”
       Pierce’s mind was in a fury of conflicting reactions.
       “Christ, can you at least get Richard a goddamn towel? He’s bleeding all over the goddamn rug!”
       Katie smiled at that absurd concern for the rug, and asked, “Where’s the nearest bathroom?”
       Pierce pointed to the right and Katie returned with a thick moistened towel, tossing it to Richard.
       “Can I sit down?” he said. “I feel very dizzy.”
       David nodded and said, “On the floor. I don’t want you plucking another gun or a knife from underneath a cushion.”
       Richard carefully lowered himself to the floor. Pierce spoke, “Listen, I’m sure we can work something out here. Name your price.”
       “I don’t think that’s going to work at this point, Pierce,” said David. “Katie already told the police there was an attempted murder. How do we explain that little misunderstanding?”
       “Maybe you’d like to try to bribe them, too,” said Katie.
       At that moment they could all hear a distant police siren, growing louder quickly till they could see the flashing blue lights coming up the driveway. Katie went to the front door to let them in and brought them into Pierce’s office.
       David, speaking like a former cop, related what had happened in specific detail. The policeman asked if there was anyone to corroborate his story. Katie showed them the recorder and clicked it on, just at the point Pierce was speaking of Boris’s means of murdering them.
       The police handcuffed the Pierces and phoned ahead to headquarters.
       “He’ll be taken to the hospital,” said the officer, nodding to Richard. “This one we take to our station.”
       David could not resist saying, “Drive carefully. I’m told it’s very icy out there.”

* * *

       Katie and David followed the police to the station to make a signed statement, and the detective on duty asked Katie if he could have her tape recorder to make a copy of the conversation. Katie was reluctant to hand it over, thinking that something might happen to its contents either by accident or intention.
       “I’d rather keep the original tape with me, if possible. We’re happy to wait for you to make a copy. The conversation didn’t last more than twenty minutes.”
       The detective, who seemed to know who David was, said that should be all right, and called someone at the station to make a copy with the two Americans present, then handed the recorder back to her.
       “I need you two to stay in St. Moritz for a day or two more, in case we have more questions,” said the detective. “If you need accommodations we can provide them. You will have to come back here if there is an indictment and trial.”
       David said they’d be happy to stay on and could be reached at their hotel.
       By the time they reached the Giardino, the phone in Katie’s room was ringing. It was Alessandra Baldassari.
       “Katie, Alessandra. I heard what happened. Tell me, tell me.”
        Katie responded, “How did you know so fast?”
       “I have eyes and ears everywhere,” she said. “I was told that the Pierces tried to murder you, but David disarmed them?”
       Katie said it was something like that, and she knew Baldassari was looking for a scoop before any other media got the story.
       “If you want to come to the hotel, I’m happy to fill you in. We’re exhausted—I think the adrenalin’s drained out of us—but I guess I owe you for helping set the whole meeting up.”
       “Well, I certainly didn’t think they’d try to kill you! I haven’t heard anything like that happening in St. Moritz in ages. Certainly not among the Pierces’ social class.”
       David, listening in, remarked, “Tell her about the Maxwell murder.”
       Katie mentioned that event and Pierce’s admission of aiding Maxwell’s death, then said she’d prefer to speak in person. Baldassari agreed and said she’d be over in ten minutes.
       After filling in the details of the evening, Katie and David said they really needed to get some rest but would be sticking around town for a few more days, during which Katie wanted to gather more information for her story, which had obviously taken a huge turn.
       She also thought the story could wait until morning in New York, not wanting to shake Alan Dobell out of bed.
       When she did call her editor, at seven AM New York time, Dobell sounded both astonished and fascinated. He was of two minds: angry that Katie had gone to Switzerland on false pretenses and ecstatic that they survived another murder attempt.
       “I’m not happy, Katie, with your deliberately disobeying my instructions to get out of harm’s way, and then you go sticking your head smack into it. That sort of thing is going to get you killed one of these days.”
       “I guarantee, Alan, that David and I are trying real hard not to let that happen. And however pissed about our going to Switzerland you are, you’re going to get a phenomenal story, much bigger than the Epstein story.”
       “And did Pierce say Epstein was involved in any way?”
       “With Pierce trying to knock us off? I don’t know, but Epstein had to know about the death of the girl Sarah. It happened in his own goddamn house under his perverted little nose.”
       Dobell agreed and has obviously calmed down about Katie’s disregard of his directive to stay clear of Pierce. But he was still excited about the attempted murder, which he thought would hit the New York papers by the following day.
       “You talk to the police?” he asked.
       David said they had and that they’d copied Katie’s tape.
       “Okay, good. Now put that tape in the hotel safe, or get a safe deposit box at the bank. Then keep me posted on everything that happens from now on. This is going to hit the international media within twenty-four hours, and I need to make a statement.” Then, “I gotta say, Katie, you’re something of a damn fool but a pretty damn good reporter. Just get back here in one piece. If Epstein is further exposed, he may get bad ideas about the two of you. Get back to the U.S.”
       They hung up, and Katie said, “Do you think I should call Ghislaine?”
       David wagged his head. “As a cop, I wouldn’t do it, at least not just yet. You don’t know what the local media might find out from the police here or if they’re going to mention the Maxwell murder at this point. As a reporter, though, do what you have to do. I have a suspicion you’re dying to tell Ghislaine the truth of what she’s always suspected about Pierce.”
    “You’re right, that’s what I’m thinking. It’s not that I owe her anything really, except she did give me info about Pierce. And if Epstein is involved, she’s not going to say anything to me. I just think she’d feel vindicated if she knew her father had been murdered by Pierce. It’d be closure for her.”
       “Like you said, you don’t owe her piss, Katie. She shouldn’t know anything other than what she reads in the papers at this point. Don’t spook her.”
       Skipping dinner, the two of them went to their rooms, told the front desk to hold all their calls and were asleep within minutes of collapsing into their beds.

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

VIVA VINO VALENCIA!

By John Mariani

    How would you feel about a dinner of grilled lamb chops and fried potatoes with a $10 bottle of red wine from Valencia? Probably the first question you might ask is, “Uh, exactly where is Valencia?” Second question,”Is the wine any good?”
    Valencia is, in fact, a significant Spanish wine region, three hours east of Madrid and straddling the Mediterranean, and I can vouch for both its beauty and the quality of its wines. The capital city of Valencia itself is the third largest city in Spain, as cosmopolitan as Madrid and as forward-looking as Barcelona. Alicante, a city to the south, is a sun-belt haven for rich madrileños who dock their yachts there. It is a region of distinctive gastronomy, the home of paella, and now one of the fastest growing wine regions in Europe.
    Indeed, it’s always been a big producer––the second largest after La Mancha, with 75,500 hectares of vineyards––but now a new generation of winemakers is stressing quality over quantity, proving that formerly low-regarded local grapes like Bobal, Verdil, Muscat, and Monastrell can be made into wines of power and complexity. Other Valencian vintners have started producing wines from international varietals like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and syrah, though the best I've sampled were blends of the local grapes with smaller amounts of the internationals. Castillo de Enguera Reserva ($15), for instance, is an enchanting blend of 50% Monastrell, 30% Tempranillo, 10% Tempranillo, 10% Merlot and 30% Syrah, a mix that, at 13.5% alcohol, is a well-rounded, easy-to-drink wine tailor-made to drink with paella à la Valenciana, made with chicken, rabbit, and rice.   Bodegas Murviedro––which offers a superb cellars and winery tour––makes a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon ($12) that spends a good deal of time on the lees, so it emerges at 14.5% alcohol, and they also produce a blend of Monastrell, Tempranillo, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Only 17,000 bottles were made, and it is a terrific buy at about $15.

    Even more amazing are the wines of Dominio de la Vega, a winery that only released its first bottles in 2000. Here, charismatic vintner Alvaro Faubel Frauendorff is a passionate proponent of the local Bobal grape: “Everyone around here said, ‘Don’t be stupid. Bobal is just a bulk wine.’ We said, no, it can be a great wine of Valencia. It’s easy to make a `typical’ regional wine, but it’s much harder to make a very good one.” He has certainly succeeded: His Finca La Beata 2017 ($36) is 100% Bobal, and although its alcohol, at 15%, pushes the limit, but clearly makes Frauendorff's point about the varietal. He is also known for his sparkling cava wines, especially his Cava Brut Reserva Especial, which sells for only $14, a great deal cheaper than many overpriced French Champagnes.
    Like many burgeoning wine regions, Valencia now has the technology to compete globally but they are still far in the shadow of more illustrious, well-established Spanish regions like Rioja and the well-promoted Catalonia, home of Priorat wines. For that reason wine prices have remained low in Valencia. And in an effort to crack the glutted global market some Valenician wineries are hustling to make whatever kinds of varietals they think will sell. In fact, some Valencian wineries even use the Australian term “Shiraz” on their labels instead of the European name, Syrah.
   A big part of the Valencia wine story is in its cooperatives, long devoted to bulk wine. But here, too, there has been a major shift to produce higher quality wine. Bodegas Bocopa is comprised of 1,800 wine growers on 8,000 hectares of land and represents 60% of the Alicante region’s wines under D.O. (denomination of origin) regulations. In 2000 a new, state-of-the-art facility was built on the Alicante-Madrid motorway to process the grapes and wines of its members.
   But most of the young Valencian winemakers are out to distinguish themselves from the rest of the crowd. “We have to build our brand names by reputation,” says Rafael Poveda Bernabe, enologist for Salvador Poveda in the dry sandy region near Alicante, which produces a big, elegant 100% Monastrell called Borrasca that weighs in at 14.5% alcohol.
    These young vintners see themselves as Valencian crusaders, convinced they are on the brink of greatness. “Look around my vineyards,” says the ebullient Pepe Mendoza (below), winemaker-partner at the Enrique Mendoza bodegas, who rides his red BMW motorcycle up Valencian hillsides that change from red dirt to clay to sand within meters. “To make great wine you have to know your soil and your plants over many years. Plants are like athletes on a six-month run. You have to nurture them—that’s what the word ‘crianza’ means—and they get thirsty, but you can’t give them too much water or they get sick. I want my reds to be big but have soft, sweet tannins. I want them to have a long finish. I want people to love them the way I do.”
   Taste his Santa Rosa Reserva (selling in the U.S. for about $29) and you will taste the terroir of the region, maybe even the salt of the sea that blows across his vineyards. Then ask him about his experiments with international varietals like Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah, and you’ll start to understand how far and how fast Valencian wines are changing.

MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani, Misha Mariani, John A. Curtas, Gerry Dawes, Geoff Kalish. Contributing Photographer: Galina Dargery. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.