ONE RARE ITALIAN STEAKHOUSE

16 East Parkway

Scarsdale NY

914-330-8488

By John Mariani

       Perhaps the most deliberately myopic omission among New York’s food media is their persistent ignoring of the steakhouse, whose standards were set more than a century ago in places like Peter Luger, The Palm, Keen’s and Gage & Tollner.
    Those critics argue that all steakhouses are the same, with the same menu that never changes, which may also be said for most French and Italian restaurants. Yet as anyone who dines at the best steakhouses in the city, which would still include those classics above, as well as more modern entries, they all differ in décor, style and menu to one degree or another, plus the fact that many stock the most extensive wine cellars in the world. Certainly Wolfgang's, Gallagher's, Del Frisco's and La Tête d'Or look and feel nothing alike.

       These distinctions extend well beyond New York, as steakhouses like Benjamin’s in White Plains, Flames in Elmsford and Hudson Prime in Irvington attest. One of the newest and best is One Rare Italian Steakhouse in the village of Scarsdale,  where executive chef and owner Admir Alibasic (above) has made this a very personalized restaurant that has its own, distinctly refined design with arched windows, a lovely entwined grape vine in the center, well-lighted and set tables, comfortable high-back chairs and a remarkably civilized noise level achieved by extensive and invisible sound-proofing. The wine list is, certainly, among the best in the county, although the wine glasses could use an upgrade. It is also one of the very few steakhouses in the U.S. (of about 78) to obtain the coveted golden plaque by sculptor Yuki Shintani designating One Rare as serving the highest grade Kobe A5 wagyu beef awarded by the Kobe Beef Marketing & Distribution Promotion Association. 

       Alibasic himself is in and out of the kitchen to check on everything from food and wine to service and is proud to tell you about the provenance of every ingredient on his menu, starting with the tower of seafood, mounted abundantly with very large shrimp, lobster in the shell, jumbo lump crab meat, clams, and oysters with appropriate dipping sauces. There is also a generous platter of fried calamari, and sesame-crusted tuna with a wasabi cream sauce and balsamic reduction. The thick-cut bacon is some of the best I’ve run across, since too often the meat is too salty, while here the flavor is more intense and lightly cured.

        The restaurant’s name appends “Italian” to itself, which refers to some very well-rendered house-made pastas like tagliatelle alla bolognese with dry aged beef ragù, and luscious wild mushroom ravioli, stuffed with ricotta and a Parmesan truffle cream sauce, as well as chicken scarpariello, shrimp scampi and chicken parmigiana. They also do a exceptionally well-cooked, buttery Chilean sea bass atop a moist potato gratin with grilled asparagus.

       But you come here for the beef, and, while I usually prefer USDA Prime beef, especially One Rare's well-seasoned Cajun ribeye to  most of the wagyu I come across, the Kobe A5 wagyu here lives up to its promise, which goes beyond lacy fat marbling to strike a balance with the red meat, so that it is not cloying but complexly flavorful.

       The usual side dishes include superlative onion rings, and home fries, along with either creamed of sauteed spinach. For dessert the American brownie with vanilla ice cream is the one to share.

           Besides the fine cuisine, which easily matches the best steakhouse fare in Manhattan or Brooklyn, the ambiance has a sophisticated but unstuffy cast in contrast to the faux-macho greeting and service you find at some old-line steakhouses like Smith & Wollensky and Sparks. Even if high-end steakhouse abound, One Rare  applaudably lives up to its name. If the New York  food media  paid more attention to steakhouses they'd realize why most of them are packed ever night. They might start with One Rare.

Open for dinner nightly. Closed for lunch.

PEARL

 

The Mysterious Death of Janis Joplin
By John Mariani 

CHAPTER FOUR

       Katie was amazed by David’s recall of pop music from the Sixties and Seventies, and she had never been deeply into the music of the Eighties and Nineties so as to remember who died when. She never followed the pop music magazines like Rolling Stone or Creem unless it was to read a feature story from the archives by Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Joe Klein and Lester Bang. So, if she was going to follow her suspicions about the deaths of rock stars in the late Sixties, she would need some guidance as to how to go about it.
        McClure’s had an arts critic named Judy Davidson, who covered a wide swath of stories about classical music, opera, museum exhibitions and some pop music if it was a trend story, like Gangsta Rap. When Katie asked if she had any advice, Davidson said, “You can call my friend Bobby Romine over at Rolling Stone. The guy’s a walking encyclopedia on pop music. Want me to call him first?”
       Katie said she'd very much appreciate it, and Davidson did so immediately, putting Katie on the speaker phone.
       Bobby Romine said, “Hey, Katie, I love your work for McClure’s. You should come write for Rolling Stone, do some investigative pieces.”
       Katie thanked him and arranged to go to the Rolling Stone offices on Second Avenue later that afternoon. The offices were considerably larger than those at McClure’s and, like every magazine, decked out with the covers from the past, in the case of Rolling Stone, dating back to 1967 when Jann Wenner founded it  with $7,500 he borrowed from his mother and girlfriend. The first cover, prominently displayed near the entrance, was of John Lennon in the army uniform he wore in the move How I Won the War, with a lead article on the Monterey Pop Festival held that summer. 
       Bobby Romine was waiting for her. He was tall, lanky, with dreadlocks, wearing baggy jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked to be in his late thirties.
      “Hey, really great meetin' you, Katie,” he said with a Black southern accent. “Y’all doin’ great work over McClure’s. Winnin' some big prizes, too, huh? Gettin’ in some trouble along the way?”
       Katie shrugged and said, “Trying hard to stay out of trouble, actually. My partner David and I came too close to our demise too often.”
       Romine showed her back to his desk, which was piled with books and CDs, his wall hung with covers he’d written on various hip-hop stars.
       “So, Judy says you’re lookin’ into the death of Hendrix and some of the others in the business who died young?”
       Katie cleared her throat and feared she would come off sounding like a complete dunce in front of Romine.      
     “Well, I know you know I’m not the first one to question whether all these deaths were suicides or overdoses, accidental or otherwise,” she said, “and believe me, Bobby, I’m not a conspiracy nut. But I guess the whole raft of these stories is what interests me, not just Hendrix but the others, Morrison, Brian Jones, Cass Elliott, Joplin, some others.”
       Romine leaned back in his swivel chair and said, “The thing is, Katie, these people were all druggies and usually alcoholics, so it shouldn’t be too surprisin’ that a few of them died from contamination of some kind doin’ all that shit.”      
    “And a lot didn’t. Look at Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. . .”
     “Yeah, well, they all got off the dope and got their heads straight. Then, of course, they got all preachy about bein’ clean. But they got through the tunnel and saw the light and are here to tell about it.”
       “Okay, what if I just stick to Hendrix for the moment. You think he died of an overdose? The coroner’s report did not make a final decision and hinted there might have been a crime committed.”
       “Yeah, I heard that, and there’s always a shitload of conspiracists goin’ ‘round saying every rock star who died early died mysteriously. You ask any Elvis Presley fanatic how he died, and they don’t want to admit it was from doin’ so many drugs, endin’ up fallin’ off his toilet because he was so fuckin’ constipated. And you remember when there was this bullshit about how Paul McCartney died and it was being covered up, and that whenever Paul appeared anywhere they said it was a double? Just to keep the Beatle brand going, make more money. Then when they did break up in—what, 1970?—people said the C.I.A. offed him.”
       Katie did vaguely remember that and how people were looking for clues in what the Beatles were wearing on the cover of their “Abbey Road” album to prove McCartney was dead.
       “So, you don’t think there’s anything new to discover about the death of Hendrix or any of the others?”
       “I got no idea. Drugs kill a shit load of people you heard of and never heard of. But I tell you what: Hendrix had a manager—more of a roadie—guy named James ‛Tappy’ Wright who has been mouthin’ off about how Jimi’s death was not accidental. Says he’s going to write about it someday. Maybe you should talk to him.”
       “You know where to reach him?”
       Romine typed Wright’s name into his computer and said to her, “Here you go. The guy’s British, I think, and has two addresses, one in England, one in Florida.” He had contact info for both. “Call him up. He’s the kind of guy who loves to talk to the press if it makes him sound like he was some part of rock and roll history. He did work with Little Richard for a while, and, I think, Ike and Tina, and The Animals. Call him up. See what he says.”

       Katie thanked him and said, “Y’know, it just occurred to me, this is a story that might be more up your alley. And Rolling Stone’s. You wouldn’t want to do it?”
       Romine scoffed. “Wenner has no more interest in investigative pieces anymore. Rolling Stone’s just becomin’ a fan-zine. You see who we put on the cover these days? Robert Downey Jr, David Letterman, Brad Pitt. Jann’s idea of an investigative story is how Pink Floyd self-destructed.”
       Katie felt deflated, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Romine would recommend she speak to Wenner about her idea.
       Romine got up from his chair. “Let me know what Tappy says.”
       Katie thanked him again and went back to her cubicle at McClure’s.

       What Katie had been able to find out about the coroner’s inquest on Hendrix was that in 1992 the file was handed over to Scotland Yard because the results were not definitive. After a seven-month investigation the results proved no more conclusive than before, and Attorney General Sir Nicholas Lyell claimed it would “not serve the public to go further,” given the amount of time that had passed since Hendrix’s death.
       The wheels of Katie’s suspicions were turning but not spinning in any direction. After all, Hendrix’s death had been thirty-seven years ago, and no one within the music industry had treated the subject as anything other than an a fatal, but accidental, overdose.  No one except this roadie named Tappy Wright, who, if he did know something, had waited decades to tell what it was about the event. 
       Googling his name, Katie found only scraps of info about Wright. Born in Tyneside, England, he started out as a driver for The Animals, who, along with many British musicians at the time, were appearing as resident group at the Club a’Gogo in 1962, along with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd and the American singer Jimi Hendrix. The club was later turned into a bingo parlor and shuttered as of 1968.
       Tappy (below) would be a sometimes-manager and claimed to know everyone in the sixties, seventies and eighties, by which time many groups had disbanded and many musicians died. By the turn of the century he was retired to Whitley Bay, not far from Tyneside, where he ran a couple of local clubs and music events. In winter he’d re-locate to Miami. He was married to a woman he said was a Polish princess.      

     It seemed that after losing his place in the rock-and-roll landscape of the eighties, he had begun to mine his memory for sensational stories about what he called “those wild, halcyon days.” And that’s when he began to talk about what he insisted was the murder of Jimi Hendrix.
       Assuming she could reach Wright, Katie figured it was worth the time and airfare to fly down to Miami, where the previous year she and David had been involved with a story about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She might have done an interview with Wright over the phone but figured she could use a weekend out of the February chill in New York.
       Katie got Wright’s phone number in Miami and called, leaving a message on his machine saying she was a reporter interested in what he had to say about the Hendrix case, and  she was not surprised when he soon called back and agreed eagerly, telling her to come whenever she liked. They agreed on the next day, Katie booked her ticket and was on her way to Miami on  a nine AM flight out of LaGuardia, arriving by noon.
      
    After a quick shot of strong, sweet caffé Cubano at the airport, Katie took a taxi to Coconut Grove, where Wright had a condo in North Bay Village overlooking Biscayne Bay. To Katie the building looked like a thousand others in Miami, a silver-and-glass monolith with dozens of stories. She asked the reception desk to ring up Wright and was told he would be coming down to meet her within five minutes. Katie went outside under a searing, glaring sun—she was wearing navy blue Bermuda linen shorts and a sleeveless white blouse, with an overnight bag on her arm —and soon heard behind her a British-accented man calling her name.