NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani


MORTON'Sthe steakhouse
551 Fifth Avenue (Entrance on 45th Street)
212-972-3315
www.mortons.com

      It is a perfectly reasonable question to ask why anyone coming to NYC would want to go to a steakhouse chain headquartered in another city, and it's one I addressed a few months ago in an article on the NYC branch of the Dallas-based Del Frisco's Grille, writing,  "It's kind of like going to Neiman Marcus rather than  Bergdorf Goodman.   But the fact is, with a very few exceptions, NYC's own steakhouses have themselves branched out across the country, even abroad. . . . Therefore, those `out-of-town' steaks house chains have proliferated based on consistency, each with a different style, like Ruth's Chris sizzling filet mignon and Shula's football memorabilia, which appeals to regulars, even when visiting New York."
    It is also obvious, when I visited the NYC Morton's (soon to be another in the new World Trade Center), you will be seeing a large number of New Yorkers from the area,  just west of Grand Central Terminal, who may well prefer Morton's to more indigenous steakhouses to the east, and, on the basis of a recent visit, I can heartily endorse the food at Morton's, one of 69 locations around the world.  Their beef is unquestionably of high quality--USDA Prime--and the service staff showed a lot more courtesy in their demeanor than you'd find at Palm, Spark's, or Luger's.  Call it a more Midwestern hospitality, if you will, for Morton's started out in Chicago back in 1978, when Arnie Morton and Klaus Fritsch opened on North State Street. That original Morton's was a rather clubbish place, but there is a far more egalitarian spirit at work in the branches, as in NYC, led by g-m Michael Rains.
    They have done a re-design here--the restaurant opened in 1993--which I'm told is a model for others in the chain, involving painting black what was once mahogany wood, and I don't really see that as an improvement on the conviviality of the dining room.  But the lighting is good, the white tablecloths reflect light, the noise level is civilized, the kitchen is semi-open, and the tables well separated from one another.  The wine list, overseen by sommeliers Novel Gonzales and Sawan Thakkar, is more than 200 labels strong, and there are some excellent prestigious bottlings on there that are not overpriced by steakhouse standards. The wine room is a fine, romantic spot for a more intimate dinner.
    Since many new items have been added to Morton's current menu, I asked Exec Chef Elias Iglesias to guide me to them. Among those we tried was an ahi tuna tower of wonderfully clear-flavored, herbed tuna in a cylinder with avocado and tortilla chips, the plate laced with a spicy mayo. There was warm  prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella  and a platter of various seafood, including jumbo shrimp, pearly sweet broiled sea scallops, and a jumbo lump crab cake.  The latter was indeed chock full of  lump crabmeat, though I found  too much filler in the bargain than I'd like. A refreshing Bibb lettuce salad was requisite with a meal that would soon become carnivorous quickly.
    By the way, it was not Morton's idea to put calorie counts next to every dish on the menu. They are forced to by NYC mandate for any restaurant that is a chain. It's ridiculous, of course.  Who ever ordered a 22-ounce ribeye and cared about the calories?
    Thank heavens Morton's has stopped their silly presentation of its raw meats and seafood under plastic wrap shown off at your table. I always thought that was so bush league, so I'm glad to say they don't do it in NYC.
    The filet mignon, not usually my favorite cut, exceeded my expectations both in its size and its texture, with good beefy flavor and fat.  A New York strip was perfectly charred on the outside and medium-rare within, and a bone-in veal chop was succulent and as finely textured as any in  the city. The stand-out dish among the new items, though, was a five-peppercorn strip steak, richly encrusted with assertive crushed pepper spices then seared and grilled so that those elements are really absorbed into the exterior, so you get a fine crunch and a good shot of pepper without it being burned or masking the taste of the beef.  It's a first-rate dish.
    As accompaniments, the fat, crisp, stacked onion rings made a good showing, as did thick grilled asparagus, now in full season, and creamed spinach. The Parmesan-truffle matchsticks didn't taste much of truffles but the whole batch went fast at our table, as fried potatoes tend to.
    Morton's goes a bit beyond the usual steakhouse desserts with a creditable crème brûlée, hefty Key lime pie, its "legendary" hot chocolate cake (quite a portion, as are all the desserts here), and another "legendary" sweet, its huge chocolate sundae, which is catnip to me.  Disappointing was an upside-down apple pie whose pastry and filling didn't meld as it should. A soufflé for two, ordered in advance,  had a festiveness to it.
    So, if you are not tied to going to one of the rare, uniquely New York steakhouses like Porter House, Spark's or Luger's (or the original Palm on Second Avenue, but none of the others), Morton's will give you great beef, consistency, and a degree of hospitality it's not always easy to find in the rough-and-tumble steakhouse biz.

SCHLOSSBURG, ALSACE, FRANCE

    They are the color of gold but not at all rare; they are inexpensive yet hard to find on a wine list. Yet they are among the most versatile white wines, not least with dishes that contain a good dose of spice.
    I’m speaking about pinot blanc, once a prolific grape in France’s Burgundy region but now displaced by chardonnay.  It is widely planted in Alsace, where it is sometimes called klevner, in northern Italy, where it is called pinot bianco; in Germany, called weissburgunder; in the Czech Republic, rulandské bilé, and in California, a bottle labeled pinot blanc may actually be another varietal called muscat melon.
    Pinot blanc is such a workhorse grape (left) that it’s difficult to get handle on just what it’s supposed to taste like. In Austria and Alsace, the soils contribute to distinctive spiciness and aromatic qualities that make it as easy to drink as a faintly sweet aperitif as with a wide variety of foods.  It doesn’t have the acidic bite of riesling or the pungent herbaceousness of gewürtztraminer; instead, it achieves a middle ground whereby the wine never overpowers food but buoys up many savory flavors, not least those in Asian dishes.
    Last week in London, I drank pinot blanc at almost every meal, finding it as refreshing with dishes like wild bream and crab as it was with smoked salmon, and with just about all cheeses, from cheddar to Gorgonzola.
    I was most charmed by pinot blanc’s vivacity with the refined Indian seafood food at the restaurant Quilon (right), including curry leaf and lentil crusted fish with ginger and coconut chutney, and a prawn with ground pink peppercorn and byadgi chili. That’s a lot of spices, some hot, each with its own aromas. Yet the combination of citrus fruit, mineral, oak, and spice flavors in a 2009 Haberle Alois Lageder ($20 retail) from Alto Adige, Italy, mingled beautifully with the exotic spices of the meal.
    So, too, at a new hotspot named Social Eating House in Soho, sommelier Boris Poliakov served me a luscious, pear-like, highly aromatic Alsatian pinot blanc from Jean-Marie Haag 2011 ($20), with a modest 12.5 percent alcohol, to go with a salt cod fishcake with lemon butter and chive cream, and a dish of Colchester crab with a roasted tomato vinaigrette, ending with a very sweet honey-almond sponge cake with goat’s curd ice cream and orange, which the wine still had the body to complement.
    At chef Heston Blumenthal’s superb restaurant named Dinner, I ordered another Alsatian beauty from one of the best-known estates in the region—Domaine Zind Humbrecht 2009 ($30), which was a beautiful match with a chicken liver and foie gras parfait; spiced duck breast with a smoked confit of fennel; and brown bread ice cream with salted butter caramel, pear, and malted yeast syrup. Now, that is a difficult array of flavors for any wine to cope with, but the pinot blanc was more than a good companion for it all. With 13.5 percent alcohol it had the power of a good Burgundian chardonnay.
    Even within Alsace, pinot blancs show many different flavor components, and, at lunch at the Brasserie at Ellenborough Park (below) in the Cotswolds, a Paul and Philippe Zinck 2011 ($12) showed a great deal of fruit and very little acid, with a real softness on the palate and a touch of sweetness that went very well with a wild mushroom and vegetable risotto.
    The puzzling thing was that all of these restaurants listed but a single pinot blanc on their wine lists; neither will you find scads of them at wine shops. But when I got home I sampled a couple of others I found without difficulty.
    Domaine Pfister 2009 ($27) was very tangy and delightfully herbal, with a flowery bouquet, and a pretty sweetness, with 12 percent alcohol making it very easy to drink.  By contrast, Domaine Mittnacht Frères Terre d’Étoiles 2011 ($19) was of another style: spicy with a gingery spark and a nose close to a gewürtztraminer.  It was a subdued wine without much punch, but, with chicken burgers on a bun with ketchup, red peppers, and baked beans, I couldn’t have been happier sitting outside for my first early summer’s meal.
    Pinot blanc is that kind of appealing and amenable wine, offering surprises from estate to estate. And if it’s not a wine to go with a porterhouse steak, for most everything else, it will serve.

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The U.N.’s  Food and Agriculture Organization released a report encouraging the consumption of insects, citing that 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits. The agency noted that its Edible Insect Program is also examining the potential of arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions, although they are not strictly speaking insects.

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