Virtual
Gourmet
Henri
Serre, Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Vanna
Urbino in "Jules and Jim" (1962)
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IN
THIS ISSUE IL
SALVIATINO NEW
YORK CORNER ❖❖❖
Il Salviatino
by John Mariani
Is
it reasonable to ask of a hotel in Italy set within
a majestic historical building to compete with a
brand new hotel built in Dubai to be
state-of-the-art in everything from bathrooms to
WiFi? Il Salviatino re-opens in the middle of this month. Call 011+39 055 9041111 or (888) 482-8642 (U.S. & Canada toll free).
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NEW
YORK CORNER
By John Mariani VILLARD The New York Palace
Hotel
It
is very rare that I so radically disagree with my
colleagues’ reports as I did with a recent thrashing
by the NY
Times restaurant critic Pete Wells of Chef
Michel Richard’s Villard in the New York Palace
Hotel. Reading it, I could not believe he and I went
to the same restaurant or ate the same food.
(For the record, the staff at Villard knew
each of us on sight on our separate visits.)
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The
Odd History of the Bloody Mary By John Mariani When you think of the few “classic” cocktails that bartenders even know how to make anymore, none has a more storied past than the Bloody Mary. In fact, if it weren’t for the 18th Amendment and the Russian Revolution there would be no Bloody Mary. While the origin of its name and recipe may be disputed, the birthplace of the original drink is not—except by one man, Colin Field of the Hemingway Bar at The Ritz Hotel in Paris, who happens to be the world’s best bartender but who refuses to believe that what is now called the Bloody Mary originated around the corner at Harry’s New York Bar at 5 Rue Danou. Harry’s (which is in no way associated with Harry’s Bar in Venice) was opened Thanksgiving Day 1911 by Harry MacElhone after an American jockey had a New York bar dismantled and shipped to Paris. This novel New York-style bar became such a welcoming destination for liquor-starved Americans during Prohibition that they learned to tell the Parisian taxi drivers “Sank Roo Doe Noo!”—which for a long time now has been painted on the bar’s window. Around 1920, émigrés escaping the Russian Revolution began arriving in Paris, bringing with them vodka and caviar, so Harry’s bartender, Ferdinand “Pete” Petiot, began experimenting with the new spirit, which he found tasteless. At the same time Petiot was introduced to American canned tomato juice, which back in the dry days of Prohibition was called a “tomato juice cocktail” on menus. Over a year’s time Petiot made vodka drink after vodka drink until finally he mixed it with the tomato juice and some seasonings, and, voilà!, a new cocktail was born, called the Bucket of Blood, christened by visiting American entertainer Roy Barton after a West Side Chicago nightclub of the same name. The drink became popular among Americans visiting Paris in the '20s, so when Prohibition ended with the passage of the 21st Amendment, hotelier Vincent Astor brought over Petiot to man the King Cole Bar at the St. Régis Hotel in New York, famous for its 30-foot nursery rhyme mural by Maxfield Parrish. The drink caught on--particularly as a supposed cure for hangovers—but under the less sanguine name “Red Snapper,” which is what it’s still called at the just-restored King Cole Bar (below). (Originally, black peppercorns were steeped in a pint of vodka for six weeks to create a mixture called “liquid black pepper,” a dash of which gave the vodka itself a real blast of flavor.) Here is the current official recipe from the King Cole Bar, which sells about 850 Red Snappers each month: The Red Snapper Original Recipe: 1 oz. Stolichnaya vodka 2 oz. Tomato juice 1 dash lemon juice 2 dashes salt 2 dashes black pepper 2 dashes cayenne pepper 3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce Garnish with a lemon wedge and celery stalk. Exactly when other bars around town began calling it the “Bloody Mary,” with reference to Mary Tudor, Mary I of England and Ireland, who was known for her bloody reign against Protestants, is vague, but in a 1939 ad campaign for American-made Smirnoff vodka, first made in 1934 by Russian émigré Rudolph Kunnetchansky, entertainer George Jessel claimed to have named the drink after a friend, Mary Geraghty. Recipes under the name Bloody Mary date back in print at least to 1946. Butch McGuire’s Bar in Chicago claims to have added the celery stick as a flavorful stirrer. Ernest Hemingway (far left in photo, in Paris), who likely knocked back a few Red Snappers on his visits to Harry’s New York Bar in the 1920s, wrote in a 1947 letter that he had introduced the Bloody Mary to Hong Kong in 1941, an act he said “did more than any other single factor except the Japanese Army to precipitate the Fall of that Crown Colony.” (Hemingway also claimed to have “liberated” The Ritz in August 1944, actually arriving a few hours late.) Papa had very specific instructions on how to make a Bloody: “To make a pitcher of Blood Marys (any smaller amount is worthless) take a good sized pitcher and put in it as big a lump of ice as it will hold. (This to prevent too rapid melting and watering of our product.) Mix a pint of good russian vodka and an equal amount of chilled tomato juice. Add a table spoon full of Worchester Sauce. Lea and Perrins is usual but can use AI or any good beef-steak sauce. Stirr. (with two rs) Then add a jigger of fresh squeezed lime juice. Stirr. Then add small amounts of celery salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper. Keep on stirring and taste to see how it is doing. If you get it too powerful weaken with more tomato juice. If it lacks authority add more vodka.” One way or the other a Bloody Mary possesses plenty of authority, so to celebrate the octogenarian cocktail’s coming to America, went to the King Cole Bar (right), ordered a Red Snapper and drank it with excellent grilled prawns with a smoked aïoli and a chopped salad with arugula, chickpeas, cheese and avocado. I drank a toast to Pete Petiot, to my wife's Russian family, who emigrated to Paris in the 1920s, to Vincent Astor (whose face is that of King Cole in the mural), and to the end of Prohibition on Dec. 5, 1933, which opened the way for the advent of the Bloody Mary in this country eighty years ago. And when you go to the King Cole Bar, discreetly ask bartender Mike Reagan about the secret every regular knows about what’s going on in the painting. ❖❖❖ Wine Column Sponsored by Banfi Vintners
Reliable Old Friends
by Cristina Mariani-May
As wonderful as it is to try
new things and expand one’s horizons, sometimes life
throws so many complications at us that sometimes the
virtual gourmet in each of us just needs to fall back
on a reliable standby.
In the world of wine, examples of such
touchstones are what we call “seminal” wines,
recognizable brands from simpler days gone by. Perhaps it
was the wine that a regular guest brought to Sunday
dinner at Grandma's, or the one that we ordered at our
favorite neighborhood restaurant with a special
someone. They
may not be the latest varietal discovered or hail from
the hottest region, but they are consistently good. Sometimes
it is not the job of the wine to bring an audience to
its feet, but to keep it happy in its seat. The job of
a good table wine should be to let the meal or the
company stand out, subtly complementing but never
stealing the thunder. Recommended
Comfort Wines Fontana Candida
Frascati – A light, tasty wine with
a dry, crisp finish that’s built on a zesty citrus
backbone. The
grapes for this dry, clean wine are grown in the
porous, volcanic soils located in the Frascati commune
near Rome. Easy
to drink, it pairs well with salads, pasta, veal,
chicken, vegetable soups, mild seafood dishes and mild
cheeses. Average US
retail around $10.
Fontana Candida also produces two ranges up the
scale, normally available only on restaurant wine
lists -- Terre
dei Grifi, a special selection of their Frascati from
select vineyards, and Luna Mater, a very special
bottling that combines age-old traditions with
innovative winemaking techniques – and proves that the
term Great Frascati is not an oxymoron, but a new
entry to world class standards.
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"The matzo-ball soup comes with bone
marrow to stir in; a variant on the Happy Waitress, as
New Jersey as a traffic jam, features not just a
poached egg but also Taylor ham and a cheddar-cheese
sauce resembling hollandaise."--Amelia Lester, "Empire
Diner," The New
Yorker (2/17/14). ❖❖❖
The
annual Charleston
Food + Wine Festival will be held March
6-9, with more than 80 events and a stellar line-up
of chefs and food writers including Frank Lee,
Jeremiah Bacon, Anthony Lamas, Chris Shepherd, Frank
Stitt, John T. Edge, Andy Ricker, Anne Quatrano,
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
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FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites: 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." THIS WEEK: AMSTDERDAM
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).
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.
© copyright John Mariani 2014 |