MARIANI’S

            Virtual Gourmet

"Home" (2007) Photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery

      For such a little island, there’s a lot of big food on Anguilla in the British West Indies.  While there are traditional hotels as well as B&B’s, Anguilla is best known for luxurious villas scattered around the island. Celebrities such as Kevin Bacon, Denzel Washington, Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson have discovered Anguilla for the privacy and seclusion of these villas. But even stars don’t want to eat in every evening.
    Fortunately there are a more than 85 restaurants on the 16-miles long by 3-miles wide island, a short boat ride from St. Maarten’s and St. Bart’s.

      Dining experiences range from hotel restaurants to independent, locally-run bistros as well as beach bar dives. There’s even a restaurant on a small island specializing in grilled lobster from local waters. Of course, virtually all villas offer the option of a chef who can prepare one meal during a stay or be on call 24/7 as at Sheriva, a 20-room luxury boutique villa hotel.
          At CuisinArt Resort & Spa (left) chef Denise Carr draws from the on-premises hydroponic gardens for fresh herbs such as basil, mint and dill to flavor  tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuces and bok choy in dishes inspired by the cuisines of Spain, France, Italy and Greece. The Mediterranean brasserie has a brick oven to turn out roasted local fish.
            Tastes of the Caribbean come from the organic gardens where traditional vegetables such as black-eyed peas, peppers, pumpkins and okra are grown alongside melons, avocados, guavas, tamarind, limes, orange and star fruit. These gardens give Chef Carr a reach that few on the island can match.
 
 



 


 

PENINSULA PAPAGAYO, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
     Costa Rica is much like what Hawaii was 30 years ago,  largely undeveloped and still relatively pristine. At least that’s what the growing number of Hawaii transplants claim. Many have moved here to staff this up-and-coming resort and residential development.
          Located on the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica, Peninsula Papagayo (in the state of Guanacaste) currently includes a Four Seasons hotel as well as Four Seasons-managed residences.  The Hawaii comparison comes from the numerous transplants who have relocated to this resort, which includes an Arnold Palmer-designed golf course with club house and restaurant overlooking a beautiful bay. A beach club with dining, spa and recreational facilities, and a marina, designed to be the premier recreational port for yachts and fishing boats between Panama and San Diego, and are set to open this year and next, respectively.
     All that plays to Costa Rica’s natural gifts. As a vacation destination, Costa Rica is known for many things – beaches (31 on the peninsula alone); adventure travel;  water sports; active and dormant volcanoes; rain forests; unique flora and fauna in six national parks, six wildlife refuges and two biological preserves.  Cuisine isn’t necessarily among the country’s better-known charms, however.
     But that is yet another parallel to Hawaii. Long a vacation destination, Hawaii didn’t come into its own in a culinary sense until the early 90s when a group of the islands’ best chefs organized to create a regional cuisine using Hawaii’s locally grown ingredients and diverse ethnic styles. Some of the best known practitioners include Sam Choy, George Mavrothalassitis, Alan Wong, and Roy Yamaguchi who’ve spread their styles and restaurants to the mainland.  Their efforts transformed a homogenized international hotel-style of cooking based on imported products into a regional cuisine that relies on locally grown ingredients.
       In Costa Rica Chef James Cassidy is launching a similar movement.  Formerly with the Four Seasons, he’s moved into a position to oversee the growing number of food venues that will be part of the total Peninsula Papagayo food service. While on a recent trip, I was able to experience a beach lunch prepared by Cassidy and his kitchen staff as well as a catered dinner in a $15 million villa perched on a cliff overlooking the deep azure bay.
      One of the most delicious experiences was a conversation with Chef James whose much-traveled career has taken him all over the world and feeds his enthusiasm for what the food scene in Costa Rica will be.  Here’s a sample of what it is today. Lunch on the beach (below) after horseback riding was a first-class experience. Staff set out tables with umbrellas to shade the sun. We had linen napkins, stemware for wine and a dream menu for an al fresco seaside buffet. The menu included roasted garlic and white bean hummus with toasted pretzel chips, shrimp cocktail and grilled vegetable antipasto for starters.
         Entrée offerings such as cilantro-marinated grilled chicken with smoked bacon and cherry tomato vinaigrette, tuna niçoise salad, roast beef panini with grilled onions and blue cheese; and ciabiatta with prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, basil and olive tapenade aïoli. Sides of potato salad and black bean salad with roasted sweet corn papaya and local goat's cheese added ample fortification for snorkeling after lunch.
       All that from a guy who began his culinary career washing dishes as a 10-year-old in a family restaurant in the Chicago area. When his family moved to Washington State, he got a job butchering salmon.  Then came his first chef’s job at a restaurant in Bellingham, WA. He eventually took his natural talent to the Culinary Institute of America to learn discipline and technique. Cassidy graduated 21 years ago. Since then positions with Four Seasons have taken him all over the world but it is here in Costa Rica that he’s found the a calling: to bring fine dining to the ecological paradise.
     Just as in Hawaii in the early days of development, says Cassidy, it is hard to get products. Costa Rica doesn’t have lemons. Local trees grow limes. Moreover the rural location of Peninsula Papagayo five hours from the country’s capitol, San Jose, makes bringing in ingredients more difficult.
   But he’s become the Costa Rican equivalent of Johnny Appleseed. “You can grow anything here” because of the mild climate, says Cassidy. “When I got here there wasn’t even any romaine. I couldn’t put a Caesar salad on the menu.”
   Now growers are diligently producing custom products for Mr. Cassidy’s walk-ins, and local fisherman give him the pick of their catches. He drew on local suppliers for the dinner he prepared at the villa. The first course of tuna tacquitos with pineapple and serrano chili salsa offered a taste of Latin-influenced tropics.
   Hamachi tiradito (similar to ceviche only the fish is cut into strips) with cilantro and mint mojito and jerk-seared sea scallop with Caribbean yellow curry also recalled the beauty of the country and the largess of the sea flavored by the country’s multi-cultural history.
      Arugula and Guanacaste goat's cheese wraps with roasted red pepper, and macadamia nut and bacon dressing gave chef James a chance to show some of the local cheeses. Perhaps my favorite dish was a soup with shrimp albondigas (meat balls) in a white corn broth gently spiced with guajillo chile. This reflects some of the best flavors of local cuisine.
      A main course of sea bass on a base of lobster, potato and chorizo picadillo, flavored with a hint of Costa Rican vanilla bean, chardonnay “air” (similar to foam), and a malbec syrup created a fitting grand finale to the symphony of local ingredients.  Costa Rican cinnamon-flavored ice cream and warm chocolate cake finished off the evening as cool sea breezes blew in from the water.
     The dishes reflect the chef’s growing understanding of foodways in Costa Rica. He looks to the country’s history as one of the reasons for a lack of culinary tradition. Spanish conquests in the 1500s “annihilated the local population and culture,” says Cassidy. Today, street food and local cuisine in Costa Rica is a “melting pot” from neighboring South American countries. Until recently, tourists ate local food or homogenized hotel food that neither offended, or excited, anyone.
      But much can be done. “This is the most incredible place I’ve lived,” he says noting that he’s now got a local maker of fresh goat's cheese. Street vendors selling handmade tortillas or fresh-squeezed juices have become suppliers for his restaurants or led him to suppliers.
      When he travels Mr. Cassidy bring back seeds for herbs so he can grow what he wants. California chef Michael Mina will soon be doing a restaurant at a property across the bay. Listening to Mr. Cassidy talk about the growing culinary scene is like talking to a parent about his child. And that’s what he compares it to. “This is like having a baby, watching this thing grow. Its something we’re having a hand in shaping.”


Dotty Griffith is a writer, editor, and consultant in Dallas, Texas, and is former food editor of the Dallas Morning News. She also publishes the website The Critical Edge.

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     No one would ever accuse Alain Ducasse of resting on his laurels, which include 15 Michelin stars, and 20 restaurants on three continents; neither would anyone expect to find Ducasse spending time cooking in any of his kitchens, an accusation to which he has retorted, "We're moving to a global situation. I have a lot of friends who are in their kitchens every day and their food isn't as good as in my restaurants, where I'm not in the kitchen. That's my answer." Me-oow! If that's what he feels about his friends, you can imagine what he feels about chefs who are not.
      I shall not yet again harangue Ducasse about his global vision except to say that he's had his flops (everyone does), which some might well suggest was due to his inattention and absence.  He closed his last two New York outposts--his namesake dining salon at the Essex House and the more casual Mix--but he is now back with Adour, which is far more an example of a 21st century French restaurant than his fussy and pretentious Essex House restaurant ever was, a place where you were offered a half dozen knives with which to cut your food and as many pens with which to sign your very high check.  As I recall, dinner at the Essex House ran $150 prix fixe, for three courses plus generous complementary amuses and confections, at a time when NYC French restaurants like Le Bernardin, Daniel, and Le Cirque were charging under $100.  At Adour, named for a river in Ducasse's hometown), the appetizers run $17 to $29, the main courses $32 to $49, which is actually comparable to a steakhouse tab (where forty-five bucks gets you a sirloin with no potatoes). The tasting menu of five courses is a mere $110--which would not even buy you a main course in Paris. Prices are kept down by not dousing and stuffing every dish with foie gras and truffles, as is the rule in contemporary haute cuisine.
      But Adour is far from low-rent Ducasse.  Reports have been mixed about The Rockwell Group's decor, but I found it very beautiful, covering over the cavernous hotel dining room (formerly Lespinasse) with walls of elegantly appointed wine coolers and scrims that shimmer in the excellent, flattering lighting, although the central chandelier seems out of style here. Chairs and tables are well set, and in the posh bar (below) there is a remarkable computerized winelist that you merely  move your fingers over to find  a bottle to your liking, a device that reminded me of the  info screens  in the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report." About 40 percent of the wines are French and an equal number American.
       Service is polished, friendly, and less studied than in the old place, and the pace of the meal is ideal for a civilized night out.  I cannot, however, figure out why, since opening this winter, Adour might offer you a table at 5:30 PM when upon arrival you'll find the place almost empty till about 7 PM and not full until after 8 PM. Unlike in France, where one seating each evening is the norm, Adour turns tables, but at very odd intervals.
        And so,  how does one eat at Adour?  Very well, very well indeed, though at meal's end you may not be particularly giddy with delight or beg another rez too soon.  This is pretty safe French cuisine, not so much simple as it is fairly predictable, delicious without being staggering. You begin with excellent breads and (for once) good olive-studded butter at the perfect temperature. NYC tap water comes in a lovely little ceramic pourer, and there are only enough knives designed for the specific job.
     Chef Tony Esnault, who was the last of three chefs who'd worked at the Essex House restaurant, is a classicist who translates Ducasse's ideas on a menu that offers nine appetizers and ten main courses, all written entirely in English. A good number of the dishes are prepped in Sous-Vide, then finished as the orders come in.
     Among the starters the sweetbread meunière (right) with wild mushrooms, a poached egg that oozes luxuriously when cut, and toasted brioche--is quite decadent in the nicest way--but not exactly generous with the sweetbreads.  Sautéed duck foie gras was lusciously paired with a lentil casserole and a "belt" of sweet red onions.  Cucumber vinegar marinated hamachi with a green apple mustard was very tame of flavor, the marinade too subtle, the mustard providing the only tang.
    French chefs can never leave well enough alone when it comes to pasta, which can mean either an overwrought mess or an overly rich rendering: Adour's ravioli of foie gras with tapioca, chervil, celery, sunchoke in a consomme is flavorful, though the flavors don't do much for the foie gras or the sheer ravioli pasta.
      My scribblings in the margins of the menu range from "excellent!" for the olive oil-poached Chatham cod with a Bell pepper-white onion piperade with a pleasing intensity; scallops with salsify, black truffles, and shellfish jus, manifest the simple goodness of classic French cookery.  "Very good" described Adour's version of that old 19th century cliché, lobster Thermidor--with a Swiss chard fondant and a dash of Armagnac; I can't say it was much of an improvement on the classic but it was damn delicious and it doesn't skimp on the butter and richness. Nevertheless it paled by comparison to one of the richest dishes I've ever eaten--glazed Berkshire pork tournedos with a golden apple ring, blood sausage, and juniper jus, whose every morsel was devastatingly good in a way that reminds me more of bourgeois cooking than haute cuisine. (This very popular dish, I'm told, will be staying put on the menu this spring.) Also quite good was a duck breast fillet "au sautoir" (a shape of sauté pan) with polenta, shallots, radish, lemon, and Niçoise olives, which hearkens to the Mediterranean flavors Ducasse has long favored at his restaurant in Monte Carlo. There is, however, nothing to get excited about with the roast Colorado rack of lamb--a skimpy rack at that--with piquillo peppers (mild), apricots (odd), creamy quinoa (trendy) and espelette (a French pimiento).  The dish is just fine, but you can have something similar in any of a hundred New York restaurants.
    Since you have not spent an exorbitant amount of money yet, you might as well splurge on the splendid cheese course offered at Adour, all in impeccable condition with appropriate breads and condiments.  For dessert I was impressed by pastry chef Sandro Michelli's apple soufflé with Granny Smith compote, Calvados-laced lady finger, and vanilla ice cream, as I was with a rich serving of thin chocolate leaf layers with praline mousse and an orange-ginger sorbet.  I wasn't thrilled with a funny-tasting pear clafoutis with caramel croustillant and honey ice cream, but my favorite sweet of one evening was dark chocolate sorbet with coffee granité and caramelized brioche croutons.
     And so Ducasse has returned to NYC, if not yet triumphant at least with the potential for becoming so.  Like his colleague Gordon Ramsay at his namesake restaurant in the London Hotel, Ducasse seems to be playing it safe with the menu at Adour at the St. Régis, at a time when there is so much excitement on NYC menus.  And like Ramsay, Ducasse gives his restaurant only as much personal attention as he has time for as he trots the globe opening more restaurants (he's due to open a branch of Paris's Benôit in NYC this summer) and writing more cookbooks.  In as many months Ducasse opened a three very grand restaurants, at The Dorchester in London, the spectacular Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, and Adour in New York, where he has spent time doing menu tastings on a fairly regular basis since opening.  That he invests his restaurants with a highly professional and efficient brigade is obvious in the details, but like so many 21st century celebrity chefs his restaurants lack the spirit of the man himself, which is a very palpable virtue when dining out.

Benji Fun offers "Dinner in the Sky" at a table suspended at a height of 50 meters, available for a session of 8 hours. Dinner in the Sky accommodates 22 people and three staff in the middle (chef, waiter, or entertainer). “Dinner in the Sky is an event that can be held anywhere (golf course, public place, race track, castle, vineyard, historical site…) as long as there is a surface of approximately 500 m2 that can be secured.”

"Nancy Nipples started the Pike Place Market Creamery in Seattle 30 years ago, selling milk, butter, cream and the like to help local independent dairies. . . . (Nancy Nipples is the name she uses to sign checks; her full name, taken after a divorce, is Nancy Nipples the Milkmaid.)"--The New York Times.

*  Westport Rivers and the Russell Family announce a calendar of events for spring and summer 2008. All scheduled Long Acre House wine and food pairing dinners begin with an in-depth tour of the vineyard & winery: Founder’s Day Dinner, April 12
 Tour 5:30, Dinner 6:00-8:30pm; $75; 2008 Coastal Wine Trail Kick-Off
, May 10
; $35; Early Summer Dinner
, May 17
;  $75; At the Greek Table
Saturday June 14, $80; Independence Day Clambake , July 5. $80. Call 508-636-3423 ext 2 or www.westportrivers.com.

*  From April 11-May 5 Disneyland’s California Food and Wine Festival, will hold winemaker dinners at Steakhouse 55, incl.April 11 – Chappellet Winery, Phillip Titus, Winemaker; April 18 – Twomey Cellars, Daniel Baron, Winemaker; , April 25 – Nickel & Nickel Single Vineyard Wines. Darice Spinelli, Winemaker;  May 2 – Pride Mountain Vineyards, Steve Pride, Proprietor . . . . Also, Napa Rose Chef Andy Sutton will be hosting hands-on cooking classes with  paired wines., April 12, 19, 26 and May 2.

* On April 15 in NYC,  67 Wine & Spirits and Tavern on the Green present "A Napa Valley Experience with the Robert Keenan Winery. Mike Keenan will be on hand to discuss 4 wines with 5-course dinner and, in addition, to pour his Reserve Cabernet and Cabernet Franc at a special tasting table. $109 pp. Call 212-873-3200; www.tavernonthegreen.com.

* On April 18 NYC’s  District restaurant’s executive chef Patricia Williams and general manager Marissa Barr are hosting their second Girls on Grapes event as part of an ongoing series of casual food and wine pairings ffor a flight of 6 wines paired with 3 courses of small bites.   $35 pp. Call 212-485-2999. 

*   On April 21 in Dallas,  Nana will be hosting a 5-course Domaine Chandon Wine dinner by Chef Anthony Bombaci, with James Kress, winemaker. $150 pp. Call 217.761.7470 or visit www.nanarestaurant.com.

*   On April 23 Chef Anthony Susi of Sage Restaurant in Boston    welcomes Ruffino Wines for a multi-course dinner created around their Tuscan Estate wines.   $85 pp. Call 617-248-8814; www.sageboston.com.
 

* From April 15-May 15 London’s Tamarai launches Singapore Month featuring a traditional drinks and dishes, culminating with Etihad Airways giving one lucky diner the chance to win a trip to Singapore. www.tamarai.co.uk. 

* On April 15 the Bel-Air Hotel in Bel-Air, CA, will host a Domaine Carnberos dinner with Elaine Crane.  $125 pp.  Call Karla at 310.943.6742.

* On April 20 in Highland Park, IL,  Carlos’ Restaurant Owners Carlos and Debbie Nieto, with Rabbi Susan Warshell, will host a special Passover Seder. Chef Ramiro Velasquez will prepare a 7- course menu, priced at $90 pp or $130 with kosher wine pairings. Call 847.432.0770.* In Cambridge, MA, beginning April 20, the annual “Latin Dinner Series” will be held at Chez Henri for  6weeks. With 3-course, $39 prix fixe menus.  To kick off the series: A Fidel Castro Retirement Party, with Latin music by Jean-Carlo.  Call 617-354-8980; www.chezhenri.com

* From April 23-27, forty chefs from the U.S.,  South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, France, Spain, et al,  will serve food samplings at The Grand Wine & Food Affair, with over 100 wineries attending for vintner dinners, wine tastings, and a grand tasting; www.TheGrandWineAndFoodAffair.com or call 713-747-9463.
 
* From April 24-27 the 6th annual St. Michaels Food & Wine Festival will be taking place along in St. Michaels, MD, incl.  presentations by leading food and wine experts, recipe demos, wine tastings, culinary and wine seminars, book signings, and unique cuisine, wines and spirits from Chefs and Sommeliers pairing with chefs at local award winning restaurants.  The Festival begins with a VIP charity reception and continues through Sunday Champagne Jazz Brunch. Visit www.stmichaelsfoodandwinefestival.com.

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: TETON RIDGE RANCH. To go to his blog click on the logo below: