There will be no edition of Mariani's
Virtual Gourmet next week, Nov. 18,
because Mariani will be in France eating and
drinking himself silly.
❖❖❖
THIS WEEK
OFF TO FLORIDA Part Two
by John Mariani
NEW YORK CORNER MOLYVOS by John
Mariani
NOTES FROM THE SPIRITS LOCKER
Margarita Madness Demands
a Good Orange Liqueur
by John Mariani
Frank
Prial, Wine Writer, Dies at 82
by John Mariani
❖❖❖
OFF TO FLORIDA
Part Two
by John Mariani
Miami, as noted last week, is where much of
the buzz is, but within a short drive are some
of Florida's best new restaurants.
J&G
GRILL
St. Regis Bal Harbour
9703 Collins Avenue
Bal Harbour, FL
305-993-3333 jggrillmiami.com
The new St Regis
at Bal Harbour is a snazzy piece of work--all
silver and mirrors, glitter and glitz--and its
restaurant J&G Grill capitalizes on its high
profile association with Jean-Georges
Vongerichten, who now has his name or initials on
36 restaurants around the world via his management
group, including a slew of steakhouses and grills.
Not unexpectedly, many of those
I've visited have been first-class operations,
even if JG himself is never really a presence much
outside of his NYC flagship, Jean-Georges. A
few have flopped, most thrive, and many are
offshoots of originals, including six under the
Market brand. I was not much impressed by
the J&G Steakhouse in Scottsdale, AZ, but this
new branch in Bal Harbour is excellent and
distinctive, very much under the control of exec
chef Richard Gras, who incorporates many of his
own ideas into the corporate style; he offers his
own tasting menu at $75, in
addition to the à la carte offerings. He's
a chef to keep your eye on.
The dining room is all in
gray, but overhead lamps cast a warm glow, and
there's nothing like a Florida sunset to bring
color into the proceedings in early evening; from
a banquette facing the broad, high windows, you
are in sight of the pool and the ocean beyond.
Moonlight can work its charms, too.
There are eight items and as
many sauces on the grill side of the menu, from
red snapper and wild salmon to veal chop and filet
mignon (below).
I started off a variety of appetizers that
included Hawaiian ahi tuna (now that came
from far away) with a spicy radish and ginger
marmalade that gave it some kick, and hamachi
sashimi with shiitake mushrooms and a soy-ginger
dressing. I was lucky enough to be there during
stone crab seasons, for Gras gets the big fattened
critters full of sweet meat; surprising then that
the Peekytoe crab cake with a snap pea
rémoulade wasn't chock full of lump
crabmeat.
Both
delicious and quite beautiful is the pea soup with
creamy parmesan and sourdough croutons (right), and
the hearts of palm salad with heirloom tomatoes
and coconut is just the thing to make you grateful
you are in Florida. One of Jean-Georges'
requisite menu items everywhere is the black
truffle pizza with fontina, and it's as good here
in Bal Harbour as everywhere else. Oddly enough, I
thought the very best appetizer was freshly made
fettuccine with tangy Meyer lemon, parmesan, and
crunchy black pepper whose simple ingredients just
leapt from the plate and onto the palate.
Of
excellent quality and expert cooking was a roasted
mahi mahi with a Caribbean black bean vinaigrette
and tender bok choy, showing Gras' command of
techniques across a wide spectrum. That night
there was an American wagyu tomahawk steak
featured, for two at $99--not a bad price but,
like all American wagyu, it had little of the
flavor of the Japanese original (now again allowed
to be imported to the U.S. after a two-year ban),
and the meat was cut too thin. First quality USDA
Prime beef has excellent flavor, for half the
price.
For dessert the J&G
Cheesecake is a balm to those who mourn the
passing of Miami's great Jewish delis, and the
vanilla crème brûlée with
cinnamon ice cream was textbook perfect.
The winelist at J&G is impressive
for its depth and breadth, although I counted only
four white and red wines each just under
$50 a bottle. That needs some re-thinking.
J&G is a swank dining room,
the service in the appealing St Regis style, and
the scenic beauty ideal for a true lotus eater
from anywhere else.
J&G Grill is
open for lunch Mon.-Fri., brunch Sun., dinner
nightly ; Dinner appetizers run $10-$36, main
courses $$24-$46 (wagyu beef $99 for two).
Barbatella
1290 Third Street South
Old Naples, FL
239-263-1955 barbatellanaples.com
Fabrizio Aielli has long
been one of my favorite Italian chefs (via
Venice), and his beautiful wife Ingrid has always
been at his side to make perfect in the dining
room what he does in the kitchen. They began in
Washington, DC, then in Old Naples, where a few
years back they opened Sea Salt, one of
America's great seafood restaurants.
Now, just a door or two down,
they've opened the more casual (although
everything in South Florida is very casual)
Barbatella, a pizzeria on one side (below) and
trattoria on the other. And the pizzas are
really terrific, with signature toppings that
include the “Funghi & Carciofi” with mushrooms
and artichokes, and the “Diavola” with spicy
salami.
There is a 20-foot bar with 100
wines by the glass, and the larger dining room (above) is a
blast of color with a retro design that might have
been in the lobby of the old Fountainebleau Hotel
back in the 1960s.
You could happily have a light
lunch here with the perfectly rendered, generous
seafood salad and some superlative eggplant
parmigiana. From the friggitoria
(frier) comes impeccably crisp arancini rice
balls stuffed with meat and ragù, and the
pastas are as good as any the Aiellis have ever
turned out, al
dente, simple, enormously tasty,
including the orecchiette
with broccoli di rabe, garlic and sausage, and the
rich lasagne
all bolognese (left) in delicate pasta sheets
with besciamella
and beef ragù.
There is also a rotisserie and
grill here, and from their former you can enjoy a
mix of herb-crusted chicken, porchetta with
fennel and rosemary, duck with orange and sage,
served with roasted potatoes an tomato gratin, all
for just $29.From the grill comes beef tenderloin, pork
ribs, mahi mahi and Scottish salmon, none more
that $29.
You mustn’t leave without some
gelati—16
flavors--then you can stroll Third Street wholly
satisfied that you have dined well, for a moderate
price, and you can think about dinner at Sea Salt
that night.
Barbatella
is open for lunch and dinner daily; Dinner
appetizers $8-$12, pizzas $14-$16, pastas
$18-$19, entrees $24-$29.
Max's
Harvest
169 NE 2nd Avenue
Delray Beach, FL
561-381-9970 maxsharvest.com
More than two decades ago,
Dennis Max set out to bring Florida a thoroughly
modern restaurant style, not much in the
so-called Floribbean fusion trend of the
mid-1980s but with more of an emphasis on the
wood-fired grill and Italian dishes. Max’s
Unique Restaurant Concepts was founded to open its
first project, Café Max, in Pompano Beach,FL,
with a California spark brought to the Sunshine
State. Max's Place in North Miami, Maxaluna in
Boca Raton and Brasserie Max in
Plantation followed and more. The idea at
Max’s Harvest is to focus on ecological concerns
about food, sourcing its animals and fish raised
humanely and without antibiotics and hormones. A
cattle rancher in Clewiston, FL, raises
Akaushi
breed beef cattle and a pig farmer in Avon Park
raises Hereford pigs. The casual
new place in Delray Beach has outdoor seating as
well as a patio out back, and the one-page menu is
arranged around Snacks, Start Small, and Thing Big
categories.Everything has plenty of dash and big
flavors, spiciness and succulence, a good char and
irresistible side dishes. This is
intended to be a place for food and fun. You
can tell everyone is having a great time. Begin with
snacks like Medjool dates with blue cheese, bacon,
marmalade, orange, and arugula, or the meatballs
with tomato gravy, basil, ricotta and pecorino—not
really a snack but a great starter.The
spinach and Brie onion dip on baguette toast goes
great with Caribbean cocktails, and the B.E.L.T.
wedge salad is huge and lavished with bacon, hard-boiled
eggs, tomatoes, pickled red onion and Russian
dressing.
Among the main courses I
enjoyed most were the pork chop with braised red
cabbage, and chipotle-sweet potato puree; the
chicken cooked “under a brick” to flatten and
crisp it, served with warm farro salad,
pearl onions, cauliflower, Swiss chard, squash—a
canny idea of showing off the vegetables more than
the protein.A crisp parmesan risotto cake with wild
mushrooms, peas, carrots, zucchini ribbons, tomato
coulis and
truffled herb salad cried out to be ordered and
was rewarding in every ingredient.Only
a dish of fresh fettuccine was labored with
rock shrimp, pancetta
peas, zucchini, spinach, onion, parmesan cream and
egg yolk. Among the
sides don't miss the Gouda-pancetta mac &
cheese or the rosemary frites. Prices are
fair, portions large, and part of the restaurant’s
income goes to Share Our Strength.This is
the way an American restaurant is meant to be.You
won't leave hungry and you may feel light of
heart.
Max's Harvest is open
for dinner Mon.-Sat. for brunch Sat. & Sun.
Dinner snacks run $5-$14, small plates
$10-$18, large plates $24-$42.
To
paraphrase the old joke about "how do you get to
Carnegie Hall?" (practice, practice, practice), how do
you get great Greek food in NYC? Turn left at Carnegie
Hall. Since 1997, the Livanos family, together with
Managing Partner Paul McLaughlin and Chef Partner
James Botsacos, Molyvos, named for a
village on the island of Lesvos, has been a
beacon for traditional Greek food done with a wholly
modern sensibility. Now, after an
extensive renovation this year, the rustic, wooded
décor is now done in the palette colors of the
Greek isles--white and sky blue--still retaining,
however, the family photos of the Livanoses dating
back to pre-immigrant days.
The kitchen has never wavered, so
it is good to report that the food is better than
ever, starting with a sparkling taramasalata that was
as fresh as could be wished for, the roe not too
strong, the mousse rich and creamy.
Wood-grilling gave an eggplant salad greater depth,
and the small keftedes
meatballs came braised in red wine, tomato and a touch
of cumin, all of these scooped up with excellent housemade pita bread. Then
there are pites,
stuffed pies in crispy phyllo that I could so easily
make an entire meal of.
All these were just considered mezedes, to be
followed by lavish appetizers like the wonderfully
grilled octopus, with arugula, smoked potatoes, white
beans, red onions, tomato, capers and red wine
vinaigrette--a tantalizing dish of many savory, tangy
flavors and soft textures. A more-or-less
traditional Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumbers,
peppers, feta and more was nothing out of the
ordinary, and left more room for the remarkable spiced
lamb spareribs with thyme honey and an ouzo glaze--a
dish I would order and order and order again.
There are whole fish available and
displayed as you enter, covered, not just laid on
crushed ice, and, while expensive by the pound, fish
like the succulent wild lavriki (sea bass) was some of the
best I've ever had this side of the Aegean. The
same fish is cooked expertly in a clay pot, infused
with onions, tomatoes and kalamata olives.
Of course, many a Greek cook would
claim that lamb is the true test of a master, and
Botsacos scores highly with arni yuvetsi, braised marinated lamb
shank of supreme tenderness from the clay pot, with
orzo and kefaotyri
cheese. Simpler but showing thew quality of
ingredients at Molyvos are the grilled baby lamb chops
with potato kefte,
watercress, frisée, and roasted eggplant salad.
For dessert I recommend the
impossible-to-say galaktoboureko,
a semolina custard in phyllo enriched with citrus
syrup, and a warm chocolate baklava with almonds,
dates and spiced almond syrup.
Obviously Molyvos gets a pre- and
post-theater crowd, and for those who love ouzo, there
are 15 offered to sample at the bar; the all-Greek
winelist is testament to modern winemaking in a
country that has been making it, not always well, for
millennia.
I'm glad I got back to Molyvos
after a long absence, reminding me not just of its
continuing excellence but that this is without doubt
the most complete and versatile Greek restaurant in
America, with a warmhearted degree of filoxenia--hospitality--that
others need practice and more practice for to reach
its level.
Molyvos is open for
lunch Mon.-Fri, brunch Sat. & Sun., dinner
nightly. Dinner mezedes and appetizers run $8-$19,
main dishes $21-$36, with fish priced by the pound.
❖❖❖
NOTES
FROM THE SPIRITS LOCKER
Margarita Madness Demands a Good Orange Liqueur
by John Mariani
When was the last time someone
offered you a crème de menthe, you know, the
one that turns your teeth bright green? Never? I’m not
surprised, since liqueurs, or cordials, are not as
high on most people’s list of after dinner drinks as
they were when ladies retired to one room and men to
another. But a slew of new apple-, chocolate-, even
chile-based liqueurs are now appearing in the market,
fueled by bartenders crafting new, high-end cocktails.“These
products are popping up in new cocktails because they
add novelty without upping the alcohol too much,” says
Rachel Burkons, senior editor of the industry magazine
The Tasting Panel.
(Most liqueurs range from 15 to 30 percent alcohol.) Yet the category is still led by orange
liqueurs, with plenty of competition capitalizing on
the soaring popularity of premium margaritas, which
also drives the sales of high-end tequilas. According
to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., “high
end” tequilas rose 14.6 percent, “Super premium,” 11.3
percent and “pre-mixed cocktails” with tequila 12.2
percent in 2011. So, Mexico’s Patron, is now making a Citronge
liqueur to add to their line of premium tequilas,
albeit at a high 40 percent alcohol. Cognac maker
Pierre Ferrand is trying to carve a niche in the
market with a new “ancienne
méthode” Dry Curaçao, which is
not so sweet and uses Ferrand’s fine cognacs, not
basic brandy. “A margarita has two iconic ingredients,
tequila and orange liqueur, and people have gotten
very well versed in them,” says Sean Beck, beverage
director at Hugo’s
Mexican restaurant in Houston (above). “The
orange liqueur segment has really grown up, and I
match the specific tequila--we have 60--to a specific
liqueur, like mixing a soft resposado tequila with Grand
Marnier or Royal Combier, both with a cognac base.” Hugo’s
does not even make frozen margaritas, which Beck says
“is just a way for a bar to extend profit margins.
That cold ice just masks the taste and aroma of the
spirits, so they use cheap Triple Sec.”
Bar
chef Abigail Gullo of the new SoBou (left)
bar-restaurant in New Orleans says that customers are
very specific about the orange liqueur they want in
margaritas and other cocktails. “With premium
margaritas, cosmos, and sidecars, you need top
ingredients like Cointreau and Grand Marnier, which
people request by name. There’s also a big resurgence
of those Polynesian-style tiki cocktails like mai tais
that require orange liqueur.” At SoBou, which refers to South Bourbon Street,
the newest featured cocktail at SoBou is the New
Orleans Yacht Club, made with three kinds of rum,
falernum, lime juice, and curacao orange liqueur.
I myself swear by Cointreau, now owned by Remy Martin,
was created in 1875 by Edoaurd Cointreau in Angers,
France, using sweet and bitter orange peels, while
many liqueur makers just use orange flavoring.I once took
a tour of the Cointreau distillery (open to the public
by appointment), and clearly smelled the different
perfumes in the various orange peels, dried before
distillation. Today Cointreau sells 13 million bottles
a year, in more than 150 countries.
What I love about Cointreau is that
it is bittersweet and shows itself in a mixed drink as
more than orange-flavored sugar. More important, on
its own, poured over crushed ice, it is a superb after
dinner drink, as is Grand
Marnier, created in 1880 by Alexandre
Marnier-Lapostolle using cognac, orange essence, and
sugar.Yet
even though they blend impeccably in cocktails, these
two products are very expensive—Cointreau about $35,
Grand Marnier about $40. (Premium bottlings of these
same liqueurs cost much more.) So I assembled a range of orange liqueurs, some
new to the market, tasted them on their own and in
margaritas, which made for a long
afternoon. Here’s my report.
Mathilde Grande XO
($22)—This is another, somewhat cheaper Ferrand Cognac
product from their Dry Curacao, and you can smell and
taste the brandy, with 40 percent alcohol. It has a
fine, bitterness upfront that gives way to a cream
sweetness, then ends with a light sting of heat.
Patron Citronge ($24)—I
was surprised this came across with so much sweetness,
perhaps in the belief that Americans prefer candy-like
spirits. It’s rather like an orange Creamsicle, which
would not be my first choice in a mixed drink.
Dekuyper
03 Premium ($25)—Made from Brazilian pera
oranges by one of the leading cordial producers, begun
in Holland in 1695, John DeKuyper & Sons, this is
a crystal clear liqueur with a pleasant,
light citrus nose, and, beneath a thick mantle of
sweetness, a good dose of orange flavor that goes well
with a basic blanco tequila or most mixed drinks.
Stock Orange Gran Gala
($21)—Made with VSOP brandy, this has a lovely caramel
orange color, but its bouquet smells and tastes
medicinal, with a chemical aftertaste.
Solerno Blood Orange ($30)—This
Sicilian bottling has plenty of Italian style,
starting with the gorgeous, punted, slim-necked
scarlet bottle and the fact that it’s made from blood
oranges. But the liquid is clear and
colorless, the aroma quite refined, and the taste
unique, with a berry-like flavor, medium sweetness,
and a faint, pleasing burn. Its bitter component keeps
it clean and makes this an excellent alternative to
Cointreau and is a little cheaper.
John Mariani's wine column
appears in Bloomberg
Muse News, from which this story was adapted.
Bloomberg News covers Culture from art, books, and
theater to wine, travel, and food on a daily basis.
❖❖❖
Frank
Prial, Wine Writer, Dies at 82
by John Mariani
There
has never been a more important or seminal wine writer
than Frank Prial, who died this week at the age of
82. One might argue that Robert Parker has had a
more enduring influence on the wine trade, but Frank
was a man who gave the profession of wine writing not
just an American slant but a refreshingly new,
unaffected way of appreciating wine. His wine
column ran in the NY
Times for more than three decades, a venue
that gave him enormous clout and readership.
At the start, in 1970, wine columns
were few and far between in American media, and
Prial's editor, A.M. Rosenthal, told him, "We'll try
it for a couple of months." By 1977 Frank's
column was a fixture in the Times, and everyone in that era of
burgeoning enophilia read him weekly. Most
important about his wine writing was how Frank
approached it as the common man looking for a good
wine over dinner, maybe once a week or once a
month.
At first he dutifully heaped praise
on French wines--he spoke French well--and early on
recognized that California would be a major contender
in the wine world. He also championed Italian
wines like Barolos and Brunellos, which, it can be
said, he literally put on the worldwide map as
examples of modern Italian viticulture. He even
wrote with enthusiasm about Two-Buck Chuck, the
discount wine sold at Trader Joe’s l for $1.99 a
bottle, saying, “Someone referred to it recently
as the ultimate fund-raiser wine — perfect for large
groups of people who really don’t care what they are
drinking.”
As a neophyte wine writer myself, I
didn't hold Frank in awe, because in person he was the
least pompous wine lover you'd ever meet. The
very word "connoisseur" could make him wince, and his
writing, clear, concise, based on solid research, was
an antidote to the traditions of British wine writers
who (churlishly) went into dithyrambs to describe old
vintages. He also loathed having to come up with
those tiresome, useless adjectives and tasting notes
embraced by lesser writers for whom wines contained
flavors of Tahitian lime, Cohiba tobacco, and
Ethiopian cacao. Once asked how he discerned the
various flavors in a tasting of twenty wines or more,
Frank winked and said, "I fake it, like everyone
else."
He was born in Newark, NJ,
graduated from Georgetown, served in the Coast Guard,
and worked his way through the NYC newspaper world.
Even while he wrote his wine column, Prial was still a
street reporter, as at home on a hurricane-blasted
street as in a French dining salon in Paris.
When, in 1979, he stopped writing his column, he
became a Paris correspondent for the Times, and
he was made a member of the Légion d’Honneur by
the French government. He returned to the U.S. and
resuscitated his wine column, after his readers howled
for it, which ended finally in 1984; he retired ten
years later.
I always enjoyed Frank's
company, for his expanse of interests and great
repertoire of stories went way beyond the
navel-contemplating of the wine world. He didn't
much hobnob with the growing wine press and preferred
meeting winemakers on their own turf. He was a
good newspaperman first, a guy after a story, not a
witty phrase.
❖❖❖
MOST OF
THE ARMY GUYS OPTED IN
FAVOR OF SPAM
Three-star Michelin chef Heston Blumenthal of the Fat
Duck in Bray, England, will be making a
two-and-half-meter high Christmas pudding in a cement
m mixer, to serve up to service men and women working
over the holidays. It will contain 600 kg of dried
fruits. "Last week, I met this loony pyrotechnic from
UCL," said
Blumenthal "who was showing me how to use chemicals to
make green and red flames, and, if you spin the
pudding, you can create a vortex of the colored
flames. That's what we're going to try to do with
this."
WHAT TIME'S THE
NEXT SLED TO FAVIKEN?
"Phaidon, lately, has led the way in quirky, uniquely
designed, international cookbooks. The press raises
the bar dramatically here with 100 recipes taken from
Faviken Magasinet, a restaurant in a remote area of
Sweden, some 375 miles north of Stockholm, that serves
only 12 people a day, but is fast becoming a bastion
of New Nordic Cuisine, thanks to head chef Nilsson. .
. . Entries primarily consist of very small
plates with very long names such as, `Rose fish,
coarsely chopped pieces of its liver and raw
langoustine stirred with really good butter, lichens
and a broth of forest floor,' or, `Grilled pine
mushrooms, vinegar matured in the burned-out trunk of
a spruce tree.' If a spruce trunk is unavailable, do
not fear. . . . In his introduction, Bill Buford
writes of, `an air of unworldly disconnect,' and
indeed it's a palpable feeling moving through these
pages, dense with the history of the foods and
landscapes that are Nilsson's metier."--Publishers
Weekly (8/16/12)
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
My
latest book, which just won the prize for best
book from International Gourmand, written with
Jim Heimann and Steven Heller,Menu Design in America,1850-1985 (Taschen
Books), has just appeared, with nearly 1,000
beautiful, historic, hilarious, sometimes
shocking menus dating back to before the Civil
War and going through the Gilded Age, the Jazz
Age, the Depression, the nightclub era of the
1930s and 1940s, the Space Age era, and the age
when menus were a form of advertising in
innovative explosions of color and modern
design.The book is
a chronicle of changing tastes and mores and
says as much about America as about its food and
drink.
“Luxuriating
vicariously
in the pleasures of this book. . . you can’t
help but become hungry. . .for the food of
course, but also for something more: the bygone
days of our country’s splendidly rich and
complex past.Epicureans
of both good food and artful design will do well
to make it their coffee table’s main
course.”—Chip Kidd, Wall Street
Journal.
“[The
menus] reflect the amazing craftsmanship that
many restaurants applied to their bills of fare,
and suggest that today’s restaurateurs could
learn a lot from their predecessors.”—Rebecca
Marx, The Village Voice.
My new book--Now in Paperback,
too--How Italian Food Conquered the
World (Palgrave Macmillan) has just won top prize 2011 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,
Gotham Bar & Grill, 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: LE
MASSIF, SAN FRANCISO ANTIQUEING, COSTA RICO.
Eating Las Vegas
is the new on-line site for Virtual Gourmet
contributor John A. Curtas., who since 1995
has been commenting on the Las Vegas food
scene and reviewing restaurants for Nevada
Public Radio. He is also the
restaurant critic for KLAS TV, Channel 8 in
Las Vegas, and his past reviews can be
accessed at KNPR.org.
Click on the logo below to go directly to
his site.
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).
nickonwine:
An engaging, interactive
wine column by Nick Passmore, Artisanal Editor, Four
Seasons Magazine; Wine Columnist, BusinessWeek.com;
nick@nickonwine.com; www.nickonwine.com.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John
Mariani.
Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani, Robert Mariani,
John A. Curtas, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein,
Suzanne Wright,and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,
Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.