MARIANI’S
Virtual
Gourmet
Gemma Arterton in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (2008) ❖❖❖ IN THIS ISSUE
Does a Chef Have
To Be Italian
MASTER HOUSTON
RESTAURATEUR LOVE AND PIZZA CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR SOME WINE BARGAINS By Geoffery Kalish ◆◆◆ FOUR NEW EPISODES: "See the USA"; "Tailgating"; "How Italian Food
Conquered the World"; "Detroit Bounces
Back."
❖❖❖
Does a
Chef Have To Be Italian
To Cook
Italian Food Or Chinese
to Cook
Chinese Food?
By John Mariani Minnie Driver, Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini in "Big Night" (1996)
Take as long as you like to think about
it: How many of your favorite Chinese
restaurants have non-Chinese chefs at
the stoves? Or non-Thai chefs in
Thai restaurants? Or sushi bars run by American
chefs? But, how many Italian restaurants do you
know that have non-Italian chefs in the
kitchen? I’ll bet it’s plenty. And, of course,
there are plenty of American chefs cooking
French cuisine, perhaps trained at the Culinary
Institute of America or the French Culinary
Institute (now called the International Culinary
Center), whose courses, not without good reason,
focus on basic classic French technique. ❖❖❖ MASTER HOUSTON
RESTAURATEUR By John Mariani
Chefs
and
restaurateurs often say that you have to deeply
love cooking and serving people to survive the
rigors of their chosen profession, and for any
restaurant to survive past the ten-year mark is
a remarkable achievement. So, for one man to
keep his restaurant at the top of its form for
55 years is nothing short of astonishing. But
this is what Tony Vallone, owner of Tony’s in
Houston, achieved and he did it all with that
grace under pressure few could maintain in a
world of fashion, trends, economic downturns,
even pandemics. He passed away this week at the
age of 75. ❖❖❖ NEW
YORK CORNER
By
John Mariani By John Mariani LOVE AND PIZZA Since, for the time being, I am unable to write about or review New York City restaurants, I have decided instead to print a serialized version of my (unpublished) novel Love and Pizza, which takes place in New York and Italy and involves a young, beautiful Bronx woman named Nicola Santini from an Italian family impassioned about food. As the story goes on, Nicola, who is a student at Columbia University, struggles to maintain her roots while seeing a future that could lead her far from them—a future that involves a career and a love affair that would change her life forever. So, while New York’s restaurants remain closed, I will run a chapter of the Love and Pizza each week until the crisis is over. Afterwards I shall be offering the entire book digitally. I hope you like the idea and even more that you will love Nicola, her family and her friends. I’d love to know what you think. Contact me at loveandpizza123@gmail.com —John Mariani To read previous chapters go to archive (beginning with March 29, 2020, issue. LOVE AND PIZZA Cover Art By Galina Dargery CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
The day before leaving for the States,
Nicola received another call from the International
Herald-Tribune writer, whose name was
Hermione Schlosser,
asking if this was a better time for Nicola to
do an interview. Bagutta
© John Mariani, 2020
❖❖❖
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
BARGAIN
BOTTLES TO MATE
What makes a bottle of wine a
bargain? Yes, it’s locating bottles you like
at less than normal price or buying 6 or 12
bottles at a shop and getting a markedly
reduced overall cost, often from a bargain bin
box. But, there’s other bargains, like finding
reasonably priced bottles that far exceed the
expectations of the usual quality of that type
of wine or the wine from a particular area,
for example Beaujolais or Chablis. Or finding
top-quality products at a good price (say
under $30 a bottle) from little known areas or
from areas not in the current mainstream of
popularity (like Fixin in Burgundy). However,
no matter what the price, if you don’t enjoy
the wine it’s never a bargain. So, based on
tastings over the past year, here are some of
my selections (by category) that “fill the
bill” as bargains and great mates for hearty
fare.
CRISP
CHABLIS
2016 La Chablisienne
Chablis La Pierrelée ($27)
2015 Louise Dubois
Chablis ($25)
Located about halfway
between Paris and Beaune, the Chablis region is
noted for unique soils containing clay and
limestone as well as ocean fossils, giving most
of the wines produced in the area a distinctive
crispness in their finish in addition to their
ripe apple and lemony bouquet and taste. These
two wines have that crispness and both mate well
with appetizers like smoked salmon and olive
tapenade on toast as well as with main course
items like grilled swordfish or pasta with
cheese sauces. What makes these two wines
bargains is that they drink like much more
expensive Premier and Grand Cru selections from
the same region.
RACY
RIESLINGS
2018 Forge Cellars
Dry Riesling ($17)
2016 Hermann J.
Wiemer Dry Riesling ($21)
KOSHER
CABERNET
2016 Gamlal Cabernet
Sauvignon ($19)
2016 Segal’s Fusion
($17)
The Gamlal is an
easy-drinking oak-aged wine, made primarily of
Cabernet Sauvignon and some Merlot and Cabernet
Franc from the Golan Heights and Upper Galilee
It offers a well integrated bouquet and taste of
cherries, plums and cassis. Additionally,
it’s meshuval
(important for Orthodox Jews), meaning it can be
handled and served by non-Jews. And, hailing
from Israel’s Galilee Heights, the Segal Fusion
is not technically a Cabernet (it contains 60%
Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Cabernet
Franc), yet it tastes more like one than a
typical Merlot, showing dry, long-lasting
flavors of cassis and blackberries and a bit of
tannin in its finish.
BERRY-RICH
BROUILLY & BURGUNDY
2018 Nicole Chanrion
Domaine de la Vouté des Crozes
Côte-de-Brouilly ($20)
2016 Robert Perroud L’Enfer des
Ballouquets Brouilly ($17)
2011 Albert Bichot
Fixin ($24)
2016 Lucien Muzard & Fils
Vielles Vignes Santenay ($34)
While neither of these Brouillys
made of Gamay grapes from southern Beaujolais
are on the tip of even the tongues of the wine
cognoscenti, they both offer great value in bold
full-flavored wines that show bouquets and
tastes of ripe cherries and raspberries with
hints of spice in their finish. Pair either with
casseroles, charcuterie or pasta with meat
sauces.
The other two
Burgundies (a bit aged but still available in
the marketplace) are great choices for those
that enjoy the fragrant bouquet and smooth,
elegant plummy, cranberry taste of good Burgundy
but are unwilling to pay the upwards of $100 a
bottle now being asked for many bottles of this
quality from this now prized region of France.
They both make perfect accompaniment for duck,
seared tuna, rack of lamb or veal.
❖❖❖
Sponsored by ❖❖❖
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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:
Eating Las
Vegas JOHN CURTAS has been covering
the Las Vegas food and restaurant scene
since 1995. He is the co-author of EATING LAS
VEGAS – The 50 Essential Restaurants (as
well as the author of the Eating Las
Vegas web site: www.eatinglasvegas.
He can also be seen every Friday morning as
the “resident foodie” for Wake Up With the
Wagners on KSNV TV (NBC) Channel 3 in
Las Vegas.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
Robert Mariani, Misha Mariani, John A. Curtas, Gerry Dawes, Geoff Kalish,
and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographer: Galina Dargery. Technical
Advisor: Gerry
McLoughlin. If you wish to subscribe to this
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