"Christmas Hamper" by
Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1862)
MERRY CHRISTMAS
❖❖❖
IN THIS ISSUE WHERE TO EAT IN
SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA By John Mariani
NEW YORK CORNER
LOLA
By John Mariani
NOTES
FROM THE WINE CELLAR
IS THERE A "CORRECT"
TEMPERATURE FOR WINES?
By John Mariani
❖❖❖
WHERE TO EAT IN
SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA By John Mariani
The
gastronomy of Costa Rica does not differ
radically from other countries’ in Central
America, with rice, beans, corn, pork and
seafood always playing major parts. But the
internationalism of its capital, San José, means
you’ll find both typical and refined versions of
favorite dishes, along with upscale
restaurantes and places committed to the
most ancient culinary traditions of the
indigenous people, whose numbers continue to
dwindle. Here is a range of places I ate at with
pleasure on a recent trip. (And if you’re dying
for Chinese food, there’s a four-block Chinatown
in the city.)
CENTRAL MARKET Between
Calle 8 y Avenida 1 Entrada Noroeste
The best way to
get a crash course in Costa Rican food culture is
to visit the vast Central Market, where you’ll
find every kind of fruit, vegetable, seafood, meat
and condiments for very little money. There are
tiny stalls where women are making fresh
tortillas, but the principal eateries —called sodas,
dating back to when soda was the principal item
sold—are just inside the entrance where scores of
people jockey for a table, ordering their favorite
dishes and watching the cooks do
their magic from compact kitchens.The
menus at these sodas are all pretty much the same
and very traditional. At Soda Cristal
I stuffed myself at lunch with a rich soup of
mixed meats and vegetables with a huge platter of
rice; tender boiled chicken with French fries; and
lengua (tongue)
tortillas. A
meal will cost about $10-$15, plus drinks. I then walked over to
the bustling La Sorbetera
de Lolo Mora, the city’s oldest ice cream
shop (1901), for some wonderful vanilla-cinnamon
ice cream—the only flavor they sell.
LA POSADA DE LA BRUJAS San José Province, Escazu 2228-1645
This open air
“place of the witch” is packed every day of the
year, largely with locals who might happily wait
an hour outside, sipping Pilsen beer and getting
hungrier by the minute. The night I ate there a
table of 20 Chinese tourists were trying to make
sense of a menu in Spanish with 79 small bites and soups and 29 main courses.My
local friend ordered patacones
(fried green plantains) stuffed with black beans,
shredded beef, cheese and mayo (Costa Ricans eat a
lot of
mayo); a platter of huge barbecued ribs with
cassava; very tender oxtail with tomato sauce; and
a delicious tripe soup.Nobody rushes you, but
tables turn fast.
A meal will costs about
$15-$20, plus drinks.
SIKWA
Avenida 9, Calles 35/37
506-8499-0585
Located in the
East Side’s Barrio Escalante, one of the city’s
nightlife neighborhoods with bocas
tapas bars and restaurantes
on every corner, Sikwa would be unique anywhere in
Central America for its fervid commitment by
owners Diego Hernandez and Pablo Bonilla to serve
the food of the indigenous people of Costa Roca
(the menu changes every three months), based on the sacred
traditions of four strains of corn. It is a small,
rustic place with a counter up front, wooden
tables and a brighter room to the rear.
My meal was truly like an
expedition through an ancient food culture, beginning
with an infusion of orange, lemon, wild cinnamon
and guava intended to “balance mind, body and
spirit.” Then came a wide swathe of fascinating
dishes: a chica
infusion of corn, ginger and sugar cane fermented
for three days; a posole with
smoked pork, radish and tomato sauce (I noted that
hogs were brought by the Spanish to the Americas);
sweet corn tamale with pork and onions in vinegar,
and an ice cream of smoked plantain with cacao
truffles.
Dinner will cost about
$35.
TONY’S HOUSE Calle 4 y Avenida 2
Ciudad Colon
506 8836 7074
I
can’t imagine there are many places like Tony’s
House in San José. The Tony in question is Antonio
Aguillar Solis, who, along with his sister
Melissa, operates this tiny
eatery in the backyard of their house, where Tony
also fashions extraordinary folk mannequins for
parades and social events.
The Solises are very sweet
hosts, and Melissa makes everything from scratch
right in front of you, measuring the ingredients
by experienced eye, building textures and flavors
and serving them straight from the stove. There
was a picadillo
of beef broth to which she added bananas, then
onions, cilantro and bell peppers, and annatto
paste. Then she cooked a perfect omelet using eggs
from their own hens, with cilantro and onions,
together with steaming rice and beans, homemade
tortillas with queso blanco and a rich sour
cream-like mayonnaise (right).Tony’s
is BYOB, but they offer a delicious sour guava
drink that goes perfectly with this food. You may
telephone at the number above, or better, have
hotel concierge arrange a reservation, for two to
20 people. A
meal will cost about $20.
RESTAURANTE
GRANO DE ORO Calle 30 Avenida
855-875-49030
Though 33 years old, a
re-opening in 2013 of the Hotel Grano de Oro has
made it one of the top places to stay in San Jose,
very contemporary in its amenities but also with
public and private rooms—some very grand indeed;
mine had a little patio—done with a carefully
refined traditional look. The pretty, leafy
outdoor patio, where guests have breakfast under
umbrellas, is as peaceful an oasis as any in this
fast-paced city. The handsome, hacienda-like restaurante
that surrounds the patio is elegantly set with
white tablecloths, signature china and soft
lighting, and the menu incorporates Costa Rican
dishes with modern culinary techniques and
presentations. The international wine list is the
most extensive in the city.
We began with the house
cocktail, a tico sour white rum and lime, and a
first course of sweet palm fruit soup ($6.50) and
an extensive plate of housemadecharcuterie
with
rabbit rillettes, sausages, head cheese and smoked
ham ($15.50). There are four pasta dishes,
including delicious tender ravioli filled with
mozzarella and ricotta (right), accompanied by
ratatouille and verdant herb oil ($13). Costa
Rican roasted pork tenderloin ($18.25) came with a
yucca croquette, mango chutney and asweet-sour
tamarind sauce. Sample an array of seafood on a
plate that includes sautéed sea bass, jumbo prawn,
wilted spinach and an aromatic cardomon essence
($22).Desserts
include a luscious signature pie of coffee cream
and chocolate cookie crust ($6.69).
By the way, a portion of the
restaurant’s profits goes to support Casa Luz, a
home for poor or abused adolescent women and their
children.
SYLVESTRE
Avenida 11 Calle 3A #955
506-2221-2464 Sylvestre,
now two years old, purports to serve “cocina
sotarecense contemporane,” and in its artful
look and use of global ingredients along with
traditional spices delivers on that idea, based on
Chef Fernandez Benedetto’s experience cooking in
Dubai, Australia and Spain.
Downstairs is a cantina that
plays movies against the wall; upstairs is a
lovely, formal room with red brocade wallpaper,
and a more casual one with some folkloric
furniture and low lighting.
To get a good sense of
Benedetto’s range, go with the tasting menus
(three courses $36, six courses $50), available
with individual wine pairings (though the pours
are stingy). I began with an amuse of
pejibaye
palm chips with mayonnaise, then two starters: an
empanada
of goat’s cheese and spinach with an egg yolk
relish, daikon, grilled asparagus and watercress
salad; and house-smoked bacon with noodles. The
fish course was a fillet of snook baked in hoja santo
leaves, with a hearts of palm puree, roasted green
peppers, mussel blanquettes and cassava crisp. The
meat course was a fine, slow-roasted shoulder of
lamb scented with fennel and served with a mint
salad, new potatoes and light mustard sauce.
For dessert there was a superb
osa
tart made from “primitivo”
chocolate beans from Talamanca, guava, caramelized
corn and cashew nut butter.With
this I thought it a capital idea to enjoy a
25-year-old Costa Rican Centenario rum.
❖❖❖
NEW
YORK CORNER
By John Mariani
LOLA
TAVERNA
210 Avenue of the Americas
212-994-9821
At
most Greek and Mediterranean restaurants in
Manhattan there is a safe template for menus
that most follow—the appetizer mezes,
the lemon soup, meatballs, stuffed grape leaves,
lamb chops, grilled seafood and moussaka.
So it is good to see that Lola Taverna, which
debuted last month in SoHo, is breaking the
mold. While maintaining many favorite items
found elsewhere, Lola stands out with innovative
dishes on a menu intended to change often.
With the
partners involved, one could hardly expect
anything else: Cobi Levy of Act II Hospitality has
a solid history of opening successful restaurants
like the French bistro Little Prince and the
Indian spot Babu Ji, while partners Will Makris
was behind the private club Socialista and health
food eatery Broken Coconut, and Thanasis
Panourgias was behind Nammos and Yves. Chef
Dionisis Liakopoulos, previously involved with
NOMA, Aska and Kuzina, brings an added Greek
pedigree into play. The cocktail list was
developed by the team behind The Clumsies bar in
Athens and the wine list by Master Sommelier Laura
Maniec Fiorvanti, who’s done a fine job of
choosing interesting modern Greek wines (and
others) with plenty of bottles under $50.
That’s a lot of talent for a
small restaurant of just 64 seats within one room,
low-lighted with little color aside from floral
arrangements and a wall hanging resembling a
jellyfish’s poncho. It’s a very comfortable place,
although when I visited the buoyant tone of
conversation was
smothered by very loud, pounding, not at all Greek
music. When I asked Mr. Levy if the volume might
be lowered, the request was cordially granted and
the ambiance much improved. (No one asked for the
music to be turned up again.)
Kudos
for
the modest size of the menu, which begins with
three big plate salads ($19-$24) and goes on to
spreads (three for $18), all clearly very freshly
made—the good-and-spicy kopanisti from Mykonos was
terrific— and warm pita bread, oddly not
replenished during the meal.
There are six mezes that
included a delightful take on saganaki,which
usually comes as a softening slab of quickly
sautéed cheese like kasseri
or halloumi,
but here the idea gains measurably by turning
feta, graviera
and manouri
cheeses into a rich, creamy fondue with a spicy
red pepper jam ($19). Another novelty is what the
kitchen does with the
flaky savory pastry spanakopita,
here rolled into spring rolls (above) full
of spinach, Swiss chard, mint, parsley, scallions,
leeks and feta($17). Grilled octopus with capers, olive
oil and vinegar ($24) was safely commendable, and
“meatless keftedes”
made with sautéed spinach and feta foam ($18) were
delicious with or without meat. What is called
“chicken gyro bao buns” with pickled onions and
tzatziki ($18) was out of the ordinary, if not
particularly flavorful.
One of the main courses at a
Greek taverna must be lamb chops and Lola’s come
from one of Australia’s better producers, Opal
Valley Farms, with excellent flavor of their own
enhanced by roasted lemon potatoes ($32). The very best
dish I tasted that evening was a more-or-less
traditional moussaka ($26) delicately
incorporating sheets of sweet eggplant, zucchini,
potatoes, lamb ragù and
luscious graviera béchamel (there’s also a
vegetarian version)—marvelously sumptuous,
steaming hot, subtly seasoned and wholly
satisfying. We took a lot home.
A signature item at Lola is a
lobster pasta, which at $52 a pound is not really
all that expensive, because you do get a large
amount of lobster meat in a rich bisque flavored
with ouzo and set on what seemed like a pound of
spaghetti. The flavors were good but the pasta was
overcooked and clumped together.
The one real disappointment was
a juicy, large, splayed fagri (Mediterranean
bream) that sells for a reasonable $37 per pound.
I was perplexed, then, how this impeccably grilled
fish came to the table at room temperature on a
cold serving plate. Never would I suggest this is
always the case at Lola, but it was a
disconcerting faux pas in a Greek restaurant.
I trust the desserts will
increase in number from the single pudding
available that night.
If
warm weather ever returns to New York, the glass
doors of this hospitable Greek restaurant will be
opened on three sides,and, even far from the sea,
Lola will seemeven more a happy facsimile of a true
taverna.
Open daily for dinner
❖❖❖
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
IS
THERE A "CORRECT"
TEMPERATURE FOR WINES? By John Mariani
Among
the many myths about wine service, which include
sniffing the cork, using a particular glass for
a particular wine and decanting this year’s
vintage, the idea that there is a “correct”
temperature at which a wine should be served is
largely bogus. For outside of suggesting a white
wine is preferably served cool and a red wine
not too warm, the parameters for what is right
and wrong meld somewhere around 65 degrees F. The
perpetuation of ideal wine temperatures is on
the one hand part nonsense and on the other part
marketing intended to sell all manner or items
no one really needs. Suffice it to say that if
you have a collection of fairly old wines, say,
from vintages of the 1990s and before,
investment in a temperature-controlled wine
refrigerator is a worthwhile idea in order to
preserve those wines by keeping them from being
exposed to too much heat, which is inevitable in
most city apartments, where the temperatures can
easily be in the upper seventies. (Wine
refrigerators of modest sizes sell for about
$500 and way up from there, but you could buy a
small kitchen refrigerator for around $250; left.) By the
same token, there is, too, an all-too-precious
insistence that all wines are delicate and
highly prone to swings in temperature change.
Keeping one’s wine cellar at a fairly consistent
temperature throughout the year seems like a
capital idea, but unless one’s storage room gets
to 95 degrees in summer over a period of
weeks—and this used to be a big problem in huge
commercial wine storehouses in Miami—wines hold
up well. “Cellar
temperature” presupposes that an underground
room will be cooler than above, perhaps by ten
or more degrees. My own cellar swings from about
65 degrees in winter, gradually warming to 72 in
summer; and I’ve never had a problem with a
“cooked” wine. I also recall how Guy Tesseron,
owner of Château Lafon-Rochet in Bordeaux, told
me he had inadvertently left a case of his wine
on his boat over the winter, where it rocked on
the waves and endured freezing temperatures
until summer, when the wine endured high heat.
“I thought the wines would be ruined and
undrinkable,” he said, “but to my surprise they
were all in perfect shape.” The
notion of serving red wines at “room temperature”
is obviously outdated in the face of modern house
and apartment temperatures. Years ago, especially
in Europe, that was not the case, when keeping
your home warm via wood or coal fires was a
persistent problem. Just think of Scrooge (right) in A Christmas Carol:
“Scrooge had a very
small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very
much smaller that it looked like one coal. But
he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the
coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
clerk came in with the shovel, the master
predicted that it would be necessary for them to
part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white
comforter, and tried to warm himself at the
candle; in which effort, not being a man of a
strong imagination, he failed.”
It’s also the reason you see
even the rich aristocracy of “Downton Abbey”
always dressed in heavy tweeds with vests or
sweaters. Heating a mansion costs a bloody fortune
and they were always drafty old buildings. The “room temperature” idea
dates to a time before central heating when people
were happy to heat their rooms to 60 to 65
degrees—an excellent range for
any wine. Today most people—and far too many
restaurants—flagrantly heat their premises to well
above 75. At those temperatures red wines lose the
virtue of refreshment and taste flabby.
In
contrast, white wines served too cold, below 42
degrees, simply lose flavor on the numbed palate.
In his seminal book On Food and
Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Harold
McGee notes that “The colder the wine, the less
tart, sweet, and aromatic it seems.Intrinsically
tart and mildly aromatic wines, usually white and
rose wines, are best served cold, 42-55˚F/5-13˚C.
Less tart, more aromatic red wines are more
full-flavored at 60-68˚F/16-20˚C.. . .
Complex white wines may be served at higher
temperatures than their light cousins; similarly,
many light red wines are better at cooler
temperatures.”
I feel that
42 degrees is much too cold, but red wines above
70 degrees will indeed have a different, flabby
taste. At New York’s haute cuisine restaurant Per
Se, the vast wine storerooms have three
temperatures: 48 degrees for Champagnes, 55
degrees for whites, and 55-60 for reds. The
sommelier may take a red wine out upon its being
ordered to warm it up a little before service.
Sticking a white wine in an ice bucket will cool
it down quickly and leavinga
bucket beside the dinner table is a good way to
maintain its temperature as glasses are poured and
replenished and then the bottle returned to the
bucket.
Of course, many wine lovers
become ridiculously doctrinaire about the right
temperature for a wine to be served; others simply
indulge their own eccentricities, as with the late
Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château
Mouton-Rothschild, who would stick his bottles of
Château d’Yquem Sauternes in the freezer till ice
crystals started to form. Then he drank it with
his foie gras. “But,” he wagged his finger and
said, “I do that only
with Yquem, not other Sauternes.”
There
may be a lesson in that, and I’d rather drink a
wine too cold than too warm.I’m not
in the least bothered by someone putting an ice
cube in a glass of red wine to cool it down for a
few seconds, then removing the ice, which will not
have melted enough to dilute the wine. But
overall, proclaiming there are correct
temperatures for wines is like insisting one
should never wear linen before Memorial Day or
after Labor Day, which is more affectation and
snobbery than good sense. So if I’m sitting on a
verandah in Mumbai where the temperature in April
is 100 degrees, I’m likely to be wearing linen as
I sip my chilled-down red wine.
❖❖❖
FOOD
WRITING 101: BLOCK THAT METAPHOR!
"The Whale is a
clip-on tie. It’s a cubic zirconia peddled as a
diamond. It’s a racing spoiler attached to a beat-up
2005 Honda Civic. And it’s also one of the most
popular new restaurants in Chicago. "--Nick
Kindelsperger, "The Whale Restaurant," Chicago Tribune
(10/31/19).
GEE WHIZ, WE OFTEN
WONDER WHO EATS
BUTTER AND PEAS
ANY MORE
According
to Daily Meal,
here are just a few vintage kitchen staples "you
don’t see much of anymore, but should consider
cooking with again."
-butter
-peas
-heavy
cream
-leftovers
-buttermilk
-milk
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
The Hound in Heaven
(21st Century Lion Books) is a novella, and
for anyone who loves dogs, Christmas, romance,
inspiration, even the supernatural, I hope you'll find
this to be a treasured favorite. The story
concerns how, after a New England teacher, his wife and
their two daughters adopt a stray puppy found in their
barn in northern Maine, their lives seem full of promise.
But when tragedy strikes, their wonderful dog Lazarus and
the spirit of Christmas are the only things that may bring
his master back from the edge of despair.
“What a huge surprise turn this story took! I was
completely stunned! I truly enjoyed this book and its
message.” – Actress Ali MacGraw
“He had me at Page One. The amount of heart, human insight,
soul searching, and deft literary strength that John Mariani
pours into this airtight novella is vertigo-inducing.
Perhaps ‘wow’ would be the best comment.” – James
Dalessandro, author of Bohemian
Heart and 1906.
“John Mariani’s Hound in
Heaven starts with a well-painted portrayal of an
American family, along with the requisite dog. A surprise
event flips the action of the novel and captures us for a
voyage leading to a hopeful and heart-warming message. A
page turning, one sitting read, it’s the perfect antidote
for the winter and promotion of holiday celebration.” – Ann
Pearlman, author of The
Christmas Cookie Club and A Gift for my Sister.
“John Mariani’s concise, achingly beautiful novella pulls a
literary rabbit out of a hat – a mash-up of the cosmic and
the intimate, the tragic and the heart-warming – a Christmas
tale for all ages, and all faiths. Read it to your children,
read it to yourself… but read it. Early and often. Highly
recommended.” – Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling
author of Pinkerton’s War,
The Sinking of The Eastland, and The Walking Dead: The Road To
Woodbury.
“Amazing things happen when you open your heart to an
animal. The Hound in
Heaven delivers a powerful story of healing that
is forged in the spiritual relationship between a man and
his best friend. The book brings a message of hope that can
enrich our images of family, love, and loss.” – Dr. Barbara
Royal, author of The
Royal Treatment.
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.
"This book is amazing! It has entries for
everything from `abalone' to `zwieback,' plus more
than 500 recipes for classic American dishes and
drinks."--Devra First, The Boston Globe.
"Much needed in any kitchen library."--Bon Appetit.
Now in Paperback,
too--How Italian Food Conquered the
World (Palgrave Macmillan) has won top prize from the
Gourmand
World Cookbook Awards. It is
a rollicking history of the food culture of
Italy and its ravenous embrace in the 21st
century by the entire world. From ancient Rome
to la dolce
vita of post-war Italy, from Italian
immigrant cooks to celebrity chefs, from
pizzerias to high-class ristoranti,
this chronicle of a culinary diaspora is as
much about the world's changing tastes,
prejudices, and dietary fads as about
our obsessions with culinary fashion and
style.--John Mariani
"Eating Italian will
never be the same after reading
John Mariani's entertaining and
savory gastronomical history of
the cuisine of Italy and how it
won over appetites worldwide. . .
. This book is such a tasteful
narrative that it will literally
make you hungry for Italian food
and arouse your appetite for
gastronomical history."--Don
Oldenburg, USA Today.
"Italian
restaurants--some good, some glitzy--far
outnumber their French rivals. Many of
these establishments are zestfully described
in How Italian Food Conquered the World, an
entertaining and fact-filled chronicle by
food-and-wine correspondent John F.
Mariani."--Aram Bakshian Jr., Wall Street
Journal.
"Mariani
admirably dishes out the story of
Italy’s remarkable global ascent
to virtual culinary
hegemony....Like a chef gladly
divulging a cherished family
recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the
secret sauce about how Italy’s
cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David
Lincoln Ross,
thedailybeast.com
"Equal parts
history, sociology, gastronomy, and just
plain fun, How Italian Food Conquered the
World tells the captivating and delicious
story of the (let's face it) everybody's
favorite cuisine with clarity, verve and
more than one surprise."--Colman Andrews,
editorial director of The Daily
Meal.com.
"A fantastic and fascinating
read, covering everything from the influence
of Venice's spice trade to the impact of
Italian immigrants in America and the
evolution of alta cucina. This book will
serve as a terrific resource to anyone
interested in the real story of Italian
food."--Mary Ann Esposito, host of PBS-TV's
Ciao
Italia.
"John Mariani has written the
definitive history of how Italians won their
way into our hearts, minds, and
stomachs. It's a story of pleasure over
pomp and taste over technique."--Danny Meyer,
owner of NYC restaurants Union Square
Cafe, The Modern, and Maialino.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites:
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.