The Last Supper Before Easter WEBSITE: To
go to my web site, in which I will update food
&
travel information and help link readers to other first-rate travel
& food sites, click on: home page NEW YORK CORNER: Jean-Georges by John Mariani Gordon Ramsay: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Chef? by John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR: U.S. Wine Exports Soar by John Mariani QUICK BYTES A Little Outside of Vegas THE MEDICI CAFÉ at the RITZ-CARLTON (702) 567-4700 I readily admit that staying at a hotel on the Strip is not my favorite form of relaxation. Life beyond the Strip has, obviously, a less intense profile than the hustle downtown, so the location of the Ritz-Carlton, Lake Las Vegas golf and spa resort, opened in 2003 on the shores of the largest privately-owned man-made lake in the U.S., 25 minutes southeast of the Las Vegas Strip in Henderson, Nevada, is a very definite oasis from the flagrant architecture north of it. (Incidentally, the nearby Red Rock country is some of the most beautiful in the West and a far cry from the desolation of the desert around Las Vegas itself.) Nevertheless, the grotesque attempt at this golf-dominated development to reproduce Florence's Ponte Vecchio (above) at the adjoining The Medici Café & Terrace is a beautiful golden-yellow dining room (below) overlooking the lake, decorated with pleasant reproductions of Renaissance artwork. It features breakfast and lunch service, including Sunday Brunch, and dinner nightly. Executive Chef Stephen Marshall has, therefore, a lot to put on the plate, from daybreak to midnight, but at dinner Chef de Cuisine Truman Jones (below) shows an exceptional flair for fine Mediterranean and American flavors. The ideas are sound and well conceived for taste and texture, the presentations smart but not showy, and the service at the Medici is excellent. For my most recent meal I began with an amuse of fig, pancetta in a foamy Parmesan broth with a pastry twist with more fig purée--a tad sweet and a little fussy for an amuse, but good. This was followed by a delicious pumpkin bisque that was properly sweet, with a little maple syrup, and balanced with spices like cinnamon and thyme and toasted pumpkin seeds baked into a crisp cookie, with pumpkin oil and some grated chervil. Then came excellent, garlicky grilled quail, very meaty, with simple frisée, smoked bacon, and a sherry vinegar jus. Alongside was a delightful onion tartlet. Next came a single pan-roasted scallop with too many other strong flavors on the plate--cauliflower and orange and almonds and crème fraîche and lemon verbena--which compromised the delicate mollusk. Foie came in two forms--one hot, one cold: The first was seared and placed on brioche with Port syrup, and the cold was a fabulous crème caramel of foie gras garnished with a duck fat tuile sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts, the two preparations divided by a purée of pears scented with white wine and vanilla. The fresh foie gras was a bit sinewy, but I'm told Medici has since changed suppliers. I love chicken every which way and am always happy to see what a fine chef can do with it. In Jones's case, it was a perfectly pan roasted organic chicken breast wrapped in thin slices of smoked bacon, served with Yukon Gold potato purée, and baby vegetables with diced truffles. It was simple and very very good, as was a generous portion of braised short rib that absorbed the intense Barolo wine used to make the sauce; a braised brunoise and cipollini onion confit added more intense flavors, and it came with that guiltiest of pleasures, truffled mac-and-cheese. Desserts did not flag a bit, really an assortment of them--strawberries with a light mascarpone sabayon and strawberry consommé; a vanilla parfait with bananas, caramel and warm fudge sauce; a bittersweet chocolate cake with raspberry ganache; and, just when I thought of retiring, a plate of warm donuts with coffee cream and raspberry jam. Nothing on the breakfast menu is as wonderful. The winelist is a solid, if not great one in a town of first-rate lists. There are dozens of good choices for wines by the glass. So if you're not up for the caterwauling and hustle of The Strip and the ba-da-bing of the casino floors, the Ritz-Carlton is where you might want to settle down. Play some golf, do some shopping, don't worry about DWI. And if you do stay downtown, a trip out to Lake Las Vegas for a superb dinner is definitely a drive I'd highly recommend. At dinner appetizers run $10-$17 and entrees $30-$40, with a 6-course "Farmer's Market" tasting menu at $80, with matching wines $110. NEW YORK CORNER by John Mariani Jean-Georges Trump International Hotel and Tower 1 Central Park West 212-299-3900 www.jean-georges.com
If Jean-Georges
Vongerichten were a jazz musician, I'd compare him to Miles Davis, who brought the "birth of the
cool" to jazz while other, equally talented musicians like Dizzy
Gillespie and Charlie Parker had earlier given it sharp angles and
intense
heat.
I have followed JG's career since he was chef de cuisine, under Louis Outhier, at Boston's Swisshôtel, then its branch in NYC, where he did a daring but highly focused French nouvelle cuisine I was eager to praise lavishly at the time. Both restaurants made Esquire's Best New Restaurants of the Year when they opened. He then broke away from Outhier's employ and opened his own place, Jojo on East 64th Street, not a radical departure from the bistro genre but one that freed it from its stagnation. That year in Esquire, I named JG "Chef of the Year." Vong followed, and then his flagship, Jean-George at Columbus Circle. It, too, made my Esquire list, primarily for JG's daring but exquisitely simple cuisine as well as for the modernity of Adam Tihany's beautifully restrained design. Accolades from every quarter made Jean-Georges one of the toughest tables in town to obtain. Ten years have gone by and JG has had his successes (mostly) and flops (a few), and I have been critical of his backers' attempts to float his name on so many waters, from NYC to the Bahamas, from Paris to Vegas. But unlike those other celebrity chefs who have inflated their reputations by never cooking at any of their restaurants (you know their names), somehow, miraculously, JG seems more often than not in the kitchen at his namesake restaurant in NYC. Every time I have dined there, he has been there. Which either means he doesn't pay all that much attention to his other restaurants or he is truly committed to maintaining his reputation here. I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and for that I am very very glad, as evidenced in a meal I had there with my wife and sons last week. The dining room is entered through a door (right) from the more casual Nougatine, which has a bright open kitchen where you can watch JG and his brigade work. You are cordially greeted by a highly professional staff and shown to a table civilly separated from the rest, including an alcove table many find quite cozy (I find it closes you off from things). The sparkle at night, especially now in springtime, partakes of New York's own glittery lights and colors, and the gregarious sound level is exemplary. Tablesettings are clean and in muted colors, the chairs and banquettes extremely comfortable. Silverware and stemware are of the finest quality. Fresh flowers are de rigeur. One odd thing about reservations here: You may well be told well in advance that the place is booked on the night you wish to go, but when you do get a table you may find several others empty throughout the night. This may be an attempt to cadence the evening's production capabilities to provide a seamless meal, but it can be very puzzling to see empty tables in the room. I am on frequent record that I am weary of long, endless tasting menus, but there is a handful of chefs into whose hands I always put myself, including Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, Thomas Keller, and Alfred Portale, most of the time, and this night was my wife's birthday, so I just asked JG to cook whatever he wished. We were not disappointed, beginning with a shirred egg with caviar as an amuse, followed by one of the few sea urchins--this one from Santa Barbara--I've ever actually enjoyed: its mildness mingled with a bite of jalapeño and yuzu on a bite of black bread. Vongerichten has always been a master of sashimi, and, after the late Gilbert Lecoze's trailblazing efforts at Le Bernardin to serve raw fish in French restaurants, JG has been as imaginative as any chef in this genre. That evening he served us sea trout draped in trout eggs, with lemon, dill, and a touch of horseradish. Silky ribbons of bluefin tuna came with the subtle taste of avocado and the spicy ones of radish and ginger marinade, while sliced hamachi, was just barely tinged with Meyer lemon. The palate well engaged, we then spooned into a foie gras brûlée with dried sour cherries, Maine Quibbles are hardly worth mentioning in a menu of these dimensions, but for the record, dill, an assertive herb, was used in at least two or three dishes, and some of the dishes seemed fussier than JG's cuisine used to be. And what's the deal with the foam? Quite honestly, I was surprised that more than one dish that evening used that passé concept. That said, the evening was glorious, festive without frou-frou, with an array of superbly chosen wines by the sommelier from a stellar (if pricey) list. JG proved himself on the modern masters and a chef of real cool, nuance, and subtlety, without repeating himself while at the same time staying true to his own style, even as it evolves into the 21st century. By the way, there is a remarkably priced 2-course lunch at $28, three courses at $40; the 4-course fixed price dinner is $98, with tasting menus at $128 and $148. DEPARTMENT OF AMPLIFICATION The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Chef? by John Mariani In the Feb. 11 edition of the Virtual Gourmet, I reviewed Gordon Ramsay at the London, his NYC outpost that has garnered lukewarm reviews, including my own, as a serious French restaurant doing fine but lackluster food in a room much in need of warmth. At that time, based on an interview I did with Ramsay in January, he swore to me, despite having so many irons in the fire at once, just how serious he was about this new venture. He said that the NYC restaurant is the only restaurant outside of his London flagship and Claridge's that bears his name, while his other restaurants actively promote the on-premises chef, and that he would be flying at least twice a month between London and New York to be in both kitchens as much as possible, with Chef de Cuisine Neil Ferguson overseeing day-to-day operations in New York. Actually, neither assertion happens to be true: Ramsay has his name on Gordon Ramsay at the Conrad in Tokyo, along with twelve other restaurants around the globe that allude to his particpation. As for his promise to spend a week in and a week out of NYC, he has not. And, in the same way that Alain Ducasse fired chef de cuisine Christian Delouvrier at the Essex House then closed the restaurant (due to re-open in the St. Regis sometime this year) after the NY Times dropped Ducasse's namesake restaurant a star, Ramsay, having failed to get ecstatic reviews, including the Times's Jan. 31 review, relieved Neil Ferguson of his position in NYC as well as sommelier Gregory Condes--which puts all critiques of the restaurant into limbo for the time being. In the April 2 issue of The New Yorker, Bill Buford (author of the bestselling book Heat about Mario Batali) wrote an article about Ramsay entitled "The Taming of the Chef," which may be a bit of overstatement because Ramsay comes across as the same foul-mouthed abuser of his staff as ever, calling them things I choose not to print in this newsletter, mostly variations on the "F" Word (title of one of his TV shows in Great Britain). Buford quotes Ramsay as saying, "Basically I'm a prostitute. I prostitute myself so I can have a restaurant [in NYC]. But I don't fully take off my knickers." Buford chronicles how, during what anyone would perceive as the most crucial period for a new restaurant, Ramsay was not often in New York: He was not, apparently, there from mid-December till New Year's Eve; he then returned to London, then went on to California to film the third season of his Tv series "Hell's Kitchen," then to Las Vegas to film its finale, then began a new series, "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares," then back to the East Coast for four more episodes, not returning to his NYC restaurant until March. As Buford notes, "He had been away for two months." Somewhere, during all the turmoil, all the TV shoots, and a bout of food poisoning, Ramsay also managed to open yet another restaurant in London, called Narrow in the East End and plans a gastro-pub later this year in the Maida Vale neighborhood. This is, in addition to somehow keeping tabs on his nine other restaurants in London, one in Tokyo, and one in Dubai, with another due to open in Boca Raton. The question then becomes, how much input--forget about hands-on cooking!--does Ramsay have in any of his restaurants any longer? If he goes around firing his best chefs--who are doing his bidding--who is there to step into the fire after his restaurant gets weak reviews? Apparently not Ramsay. Does Ramsay take responsibility or does he merely shrug and say, "Well, I'm a very busy man and can't stand over my cooks all the time." I despise the kneejerk reaction so many journalists have in calling anyone a prostitute, but that, sadly, is Ramsay's own assessment of what he does in order to fund a project like his NYC restaurant. Perhaps he should be reminded that all whores grow old and lose what made them attractive in the first place; perhaps now is the time for Ramsay (whose autobiography with the telling title Humble Pie is due out May 1 in the U.S.) to devote himself with his whole heart and fiercesome intelligence to what he does best and to get back in the kitchen to do what he fell in love with twenty years ago. If he truly wants to do his best, then he should do it himself.
by John Mariani "This dramatic sales growth in 2006 must be placed in perspective as they do follow a decrease in 2005 compared to the 2004 shipments," noted Joseph Rollo, Director of the Wine Institute International Department, in a phone interview. "Nonetheless, the long-term trend of The growth is particularly encouraging because It was also good news when a recently signed U.S./EU wine agreement gave In order to reduce the freight costs of shipping bottles, a growing number of major The value of U.S. wines grew by value in the United Kingdom by 8 percent in off-premises sales (grocers and retail stores), a figure greater than any other major country’s and amounting to a market share of 16 percent, compared to Australia’s 22.3 percent and France’s 16.4. On-premises sales (restaurants and hotel accounts) grew a whopping 18 percent by value. Until recently American wines were a tough sell in There also seems huge potential for American wines in Nevertheless Rollo is cautious about the Asian market: “We think it may be enormous some day, but don’t ask me what year. There have been a lot of false hopes in the past. But Despite the report’s good news, there is a lot of room for growth. American wines still only claim a 5 percent market share in As yet high-priced To view the Wine Institute’s Report, click here. ARTICLES WE NEVER FINISHED READING "In the sexy world of
cured meats, much attention is given to
Montreal-style smoked meat and New York pastrami."--David McGimpsey,
"The Corn Beef Sandwich," enRoute
(March 2007).
ZZZZZZZZZZZZOOOOOOOM!
An unnamed *
On
April 9 “Il Ritorno di Ca' del Solo,” a winemaker dinner celebrating
the rebirth
of Bonny Doon Vineyard¹s Italianate portfolio, with winemaker
Randall Grahm,
will be held at Incanto in San
Francisco, CA, $100 pp. Call 415-641-4500
or visit www.incanto.biz.
* From now through May 31, Restaurateur/chef Pierluigi Sacchetti on NYC’s La Cantina Toscana has introduced a special 5-Course Wild Boar Tasting Menu, with dishes like housemade prosciutto, sausage, bruschetta, head cheese, pappardelle with wild boar ragù, wild boar stew, and tenderloin of wild boar, dusted with fennel pollen, prune sauce. $59.95, or $89.95 with paired wines. *
On April 16 NYC’s Tribeca Grill will featuresome of Spain's top
wines from Rueda, Rias Biaxas, Rioja,
Ribera del Duero, Toro, Priorat and Campo de Borja. 150
pp. Call 212-941-3900.
*
April 17, The Chef in the
Hat will host Woodward Canyon Winemaker Rick Small at
Rover's in
* On April 20 & 21 Wine Rave NYC, created in 2005 by Ian Warren, President of Mouthwater, will be held at Guastavino’s, with tastings of a wide variety of wines from the USA, France, Spain, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with programs and seminars, incl. “Sips of Wisdom” led by some of the industry’s top experts. $65 general *
On
April 23, four of
* On April 24 The South
Jersey Independent Restaurant Association and
*
* From April 27-29, The 25th annual Astoria-Warrenton Crab and Seafood Festival will be held held at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds outside of Portland, OR, featuring live music, Pacific NW wine and beer, and 200+ artisan vendors. The highlight is its traditional crab dinner, plus varietals from 50+ of Oregon's wineries and craft beers. Admission $7 pp. Fri. & Sun., $9 on Sat. Call 800- * On April 28, eat, drink and shop at Wine, Women & Shoes in Boston, with proceeds to benefit the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in Harvard, MA. The evening will incl. a shoe salon by Nordstrom, a live auction, live fashion show, food by 11 of Boston’s chefs and 7 women vintners from California. . $150 and $250 pp. Call 978-456-3532 or visit www.healinggarden.net). * On April 28th, * On April 28, eat, drink and shop at Wine, Women & Shoes in Boston, with proceeds to benefit the Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in Harvard, MA. The evening will incl. a shoe salon by Nordstrom, a live auction, live fashion show, food by 11 of Boston’s chefs and 7 women vintners from California. . $150 and $250 pp. Call 978-456-3532 or visit www.healinggarden.net). * The 25th annual Astoria-Warrenton Crab and Seafood Festival will be held held at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds outside of Portland, OR, April 27-29, featuring live music, Pacific NW wine and beer, and 200+ artisan vendors. The highlight is its traditional crab dinner, plus varietals from 50+ of Oregon's wineries and craft beers. Admission $7 pp. Fri. & Sun., $9 on Sat. The crab dinner is available for approx. $14. Call 800- * On April 29 diners all over the country will come together and take a stand against the genocide in 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." To go to his
blog click on the logo below:
Tennis Resorts Online: A Critical Guide to the World's Best Tennis Resorts and Tennis Camps, published by ROGER COX, who has spent more than two decades writing about tennis travel, including a 17-year stretch for Tennis magazine. He has also written for Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, New York Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Esquire, Money, USTA Magazine, Men's Journal, and The Robb Report. He has authored two books-The World's Best Tennis Vacations (Stephen Greene Press/Viking Penguin, 1990) and The Best Places to Stay in the Rockies (Houghton Mifflin, 1992 & 1994), and the Melbourne (Australia) chapter to the Wall Street Journal Business Guide to Cities of the Pacific Rim (Fodor's Travel Guides, 1991). Click on the logo below to go to the site. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher:
John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani, Naomi
Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson, Edward Brivio, Mort
Hochstein, Suzanne Wright. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery, Bobby Pirillo. Technical
Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.
Any of John Mariani's books below
may be ordered from amazon.com by clicking on the cover image.
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