MARIANI’S

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  February 21, 2021                                                                                            NEWSLETTER



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IN THIS ISSUE
13 CHANGES AIRLINES MUST
MAKE AFTER COVID IS OVER

By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
LOVE AND PIZZA
Chapter Forty-Eight

By John Mariani


NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
WHY DO SO MANY WINES COST
WAY MORE THAN THEY SHOULD?
By John Mariani




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13 CHANGES AIRLINES MUST
MAKE AFTER COVID IS OVER

By John Mariani


         As I’ve said before, there is every reason to believe the travel industry will survive and thrive after the current pandemic recedes. It is going to take longer than anyone could have imagined a year ago, and the all-clear horns won’t be sounding any time soon. But people are anxious to get back to some kind of normalcy by which they can travel to places they know and don’t know, dine at favorite and new restaurants and forge new adventures.
         On the assumption that the way to rebound from disaster is to not repeat the mistakes of the past, instead to innovate in ways that will truly appeal to potential travelers, the airline industry, more than any, needs completely to re-think policies that are the result of decades of putting profit over comfort and service.
        Indeed, it is laughable even to refer to the airlines as a “service industry.” The fact is, almost no one looks forward to airline travel, which begins with the agony of getting to the airport, standing interminably on check-in and security lines, then enduring delays and cancellations based as much on algorithms as bad weather.
         Here are some critical things the airlines have to do if they have any chance of bringing back the kind of high traffic they enjoyed for the first two decades of this century.
         One, re-engage with travel agents who have been left in the cold by airlines who cut off their commissions—especially since getting a human being to answer the phone at the airline itself is daunting. A good travel agent is an enormous resource, not just for the client but for the airline that gets his/her business based on recommendations, packages and fares only agents can arrange.
         Two, stop the idiocy of changing fares daily, even hourly, to meet supply and demand. You don’t go to the supermarket expecting the price of ice cream or steak to fluctuate throughout the day or overnight, but on-line fares are a miasma of complexity. Commit to fares on a monthly or seasonal basis and keep them there.
         Three, increase the number of business class seats and reduce their prices. So-called “Premium” seats above “Coach” are, by and large, a rip-off, although Delta’s premium seats are a good model to follow.
         Four, since the volume of air travel is not likely to return to the same levels as before, and jumbo jets sit empty on the ground, re-configure seating more to resemble what the relatively comfortable seating in the old 707s and 747s used to be like, rather than the sardine can configurations used today. Modern aircraft are made to maximize numbers and profits, not comfort or convenience.
        Five, restore food service as the norm for any flight longer than two hours. It had been one of the few parts of flying people looked forward to (even if the food was dreck), and people feel insulted being tossed a tiny biscuit or Twix bar.
         Six, bring back having magazines available in all classes, not just the banal airline magazines that are now nothing more than ads for the destinations the airline flies to. And while they’re at, just cut the airline president’s page in which he/she hypes industry statistics and always insists they are improving with one thought in mind, to fly you safe and comfortably to your destination. 
         Seven, use this Covid down time to re-think the logistics of the check-in and security lines. Sensible weight restrictions on how much a passenger can carry on must be adjusted upward, after years when bag size and weight requirements have shrunk radically. And paying for baggage at all is despicable. Increase— rather than decrease, as they have been doing—overhead bin space, which is something every passenger complains about not having enough of.
        Eight, make universal rules about passing through detectors, so that in one city you have to remove your shoes, belts, laptops, iPhones while in another you do not.
         Nine, do away with—and some airlines have—flight change fees, which are possibly the most odious of money-grabbing swindles the airlines perpetrate.
         Ten, get rid of “no refund” tickets, which are designed to disadvantage travelers in every way possible, not least assigning them the worst seats on the plane. Again, some airlines have seen the light on this one.
         Eleven, provide enough seating in the waiting areas, not least because of  the frequency of delays.
         Twelve, logistically shorten the distance of one arrival gate from a departing gate for a connecting flight that the airline knows fifty people are going to rush to get to.
         Thirteen, and perhaps most important, require airline captains and crew to make very regular, timed announcements about any delays and wait times, even if new information is not immediately forthcoming. Every five minutes is little enough to ask, simply to be re-assured that all is being done to re-assure passengers.


         None of these recommendations will cost a lot of money. And many are merely returning to a time when service counted in order to court a passenger’s business. Today, with the exception of some of the Asian airlines’ exceptional business and first-class service, the concern of most airlines is to fight it out to be the least obnoxious among them.
        People want to travel, but they really hate the ordeal of flying to get somewhere. Until airlines realize that, it will take much longer for their business to bounce back.





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NEW YORK CORNER
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
 
 




By John Mariani

Cover Art By Galina Dargery

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT






         After getting out of school for the summer, Catherine did go to Paris on her own, sending antique postcards to Nicola, with one-sentence messages about how fabulous the city was and how she had “much to tell.”
         When she did return at the end of June, Catherine and Nicola got together for lunch at Da Silvano in SoHo.  Catherine asked her where she’d been traveling, but Nicola waved her hand and said,  “Oh, y’know, two days here, three days there. I want to hear about Paris.”
         Catherine began with exuberance, telling Nicola about the beauty of the city and how the weather was consistently good throughout her three-week stay.  Having been to Paris with her parents years before, she had little to say about the usual attractions and said that the city was overrun with tourists lining up to ascend the Eiffel Tower and taking up every square inch of the room in the Louvre where the “Mona Lisa” was hung.
         “And, oh, Nicky, you would have loved the food!  I never had a bad meal. The neighborhood bistros are so terrific, and, y’know, how you always said ingredients count in making a good dish?  Well, I could taste what you meant every time I had a stalk of asparagus or a plate of mussels, and, oh my God, the strawberries! I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  And at the bistros you can still eat so cheaply and have really terrific food.”
         “Did you eat at any of the three-star restaurants?” asked Nicola.
         Catherine’s face suddenly turned glum.  She lowered her chin, looked at her friend and said, “Oh, Nicky, you're going to want to kill me.”
         Nicola could not imagine what Catherine could possibly have done to make her say such a thing.
         “Why would I want to kill you?”
         Catherine pushed herself back from the table, paused and said, “Well, here goes. I did get to one of the three-star restaurants with someone you know.”
         “Who?” asked Nicola, thinking the only people in Paris she knew were some of the fashion crowd.
         “Giancarlo.”  Catherine winced when she said the name, expecting Nicola to sink into her chair.  But Nicola’s gaze was steady, and she let Catherine go on.
         “I was just walking along the Seine one day, minding my own business, when I hear someone call my name.  I turn around and it’s Giancarlo on the other side of the street.  He ran across and came up to me, asked how I was and asked how you were doing.”
         “What did you say?”
         “I told him you were doing great, working very hard modeling and that you still intended to go to grad school next fall.  He seemed very pleased to hear it.”
         “Did he say anything about me?”
         “Yeah, he did.  He said that you were a wonderful, beautiful woman and that he was sorry it didn’t work out for the two of you.”
         “That’s it?”
         “Not really.  We kept talking and walking along the river—it was around one o’clock—and he asked me if I’d have lunch with him.”
         “What was he in Paris for?”
         “Business.  He’d just flown in from Turin and was going to be in Paris for a few days.”
         “So you had lunch with him.”
         “Yes, we just caught a bite at a bistro called Benoit on the corner.”
         “So what’d you talk about?”
         “Milan, mostly. He said he was struggling to hold his family’s business together but thought he was over the worst of it.”
         “How’d he look?”
         Catherine wanted to say “gorgeous” but settled for “very good. He had on a nice tan suit and one of those button-down shirts.”
         “So, for this I want to kill you?”
         “No, Nicky. I guess the afternoon got away from us.  Turns out my family knows a lot of people his family knows, and we started to compare notes and, well, we just got on very well.  And then he said he had meetings until eight o’clock but would be honored if I’d have dinner with him.”
         Nicola remained silent, tilting her head as if to ask, “So?”
      “So he took me to Taillevent, one of those three-star places he said his father always took him to. Frankly, I found the place pretty stodgy.  The décor was very posh but very old-fashioned.  The owner and the entire staff greeted Giancarlo as a V.I.P.,  and within seconds they’d brought out some Champagne.”
         “What’d you wear?”
         “Oh, just a linen shift, nothing too fancy.”
         “And how was the food?”
         “Oh, Nicky, it was sublime.  Foie gras, a beautifully cooked turbot, I don’t know how many desserts.”
         Nicola was still quiet, waiting to hear whatever it was Catherine was about to say.
         “And afterwards, Nicky, I went back to my hotel and he went back to his. I swear, Nick, that was all. He said he’d love to see me again some time if our paths crossed, he gave me a kiss, and that was it.”
         “Well, if that was it, Catherine, why would I want to kill you?”
         “Oh, Nicky, it’s just that what you went through with Giancarlo—and I know you were really crazy about him—I thought I was somehow, I don’t know, betraying our friendship by spending all that time with him.  Afterwards I told myself I should have said no to dinner.”
         Nicola smiled at her friend and said, “Catherine, if nothing happened, nothing happened. And, y’know what? Even if something did happen, I wouldn’t want to kill you.  Rough you up a little maybe.”
         Catherine sort of laughed. 
      Nicola said, “Hey, Catherine, he’s an attractive guy, and, in a way, I could actually see the two of you together.  Obviously, you’re more in his class”—the word made Nicola uncomfortable—“than I’ll ever be.  But what’s more important is that I am way over Giancarlo.  Yeah, I was crazy about him, but the whole affair—if you can even call it that—taught me as much about myself as about his kind of man.  We’re from two different worlds, and no matter how much Giancarlo goes on about distancing himself from the ‘old ways’ and not caring about being a marchese, it’s in his blood, and that blood is still blue.”
         Catherine, still being conciliatory, said, “Well, it’s not like I’m going to be dating the guy, Nick.”
         Nicola took her friend’s hands and said, “Catherine, I really wouldn't mind if you do.  Not that I think Giancarlo could handle someone like you. You’ve got too much independence in you.  He needs someone who will fit in and keep the Cavallacci flame glowing brightly. But, hey, if you want to see him again, I have not the slightest problem.”
         And Nicola truly didn’t.  Sitting with her tall friend in that little eatery in SoHo, clinking their glasses of wine and saying “Cent’anni!” brought a civilized ending to the Giancarlo Cavallacci episode.  But, when Nicola thought of Marco di Noè, the book still seemed open, its pages flapping back and forth.

© John Mariani, 2020   

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR


WHY DO SO MANY WINES
COST WAY TOO MUCH?

By John Mariani



 

         The wine industry’s term for a “premium wine” is one that costs about $15, which may come as a surprise to those who peruse their wine shop shelves and find that few wines not bottled in jugs by the largest commercial wineries come close to that low price. Of course, there are a few really, really cheap wines for under ten bucks and there are some very good wines that run from $15 to $25, which, quite candidly, is a lot of money for the average wine drinker to shell out for a casual dinner several nights a week. And from there things go askew, with wines that for no reason at all sell for $50 to $100, and then way upward from there. Many Napa Valley Cabernets now sell for in excess of $200. Since all wine essentially is nothing more than fermented grape juice, what could possibly make wines cost so much?
         The simple answer is supply and demand, even though many of the world’s most prestigious wineries play fast and loose with how much they produce and how much they sell, sometimes in the gray market. In advance of the Millennium, Champagne producers warned—quelle horreur!— that there simply wouldn’t be enough of their bubblies to go around because the demand would be so great.
        Guess what: It wasn’t. There were oceans of Champagne stored in their caves (left) available at all price levels. Many people avoided the hiked-up prices of Champagne and drank Italian prosecco or Spanish cavas. And after the recession hit in 2009, with demand down, prices fell, too, with a lot of wines that once sold for $100 marked down to half that amount or less.
         In some countries, like France, the number of bottles allowed to be produced by an historic appellation is restricted, so as to keep producers, even in a highly productive vintage, from upsetting the market prices. Nonetheless—and this is a very good thing—the bottled oversupply was not allowed to carry a premier cru label but the same exact wine could be sold under a secondary label at a fraction of the price.
        In many cases, especially in Burgundy, where merchants called negoçiants keep the market in balance, some do very well with that segment of the market. In Burgundy’s prestigious Côte d’Ôr, which produces famously expensive wines like Romanée-Conti, La Tâche and Richebourg, the amount of red wines in any vintage rarely tops 13,000 hectoliters (343,000 U.S. gallons), which is actually several thousand bottles more than they used to produce before 1985. Romanée-Conti makes only 500 cases (6,000 bottles) each year, selling for $12,000 and up per bottle. Bordeaux’s Lafite-Rothschild produces 35,000 cases overall, although, given the year, the premier cru wines of the estate may number 25,000 cases, which is a whopping 300,000 bottles, each of which sells for about $1,000.
         The question, though, is not whether such wines could possibly be worth that kind of money, assuming there is a market for them, but what, aside from relative supply, is it about them that would allow producers to charge such prices?
        The easy answer is that such wines have, over centuries, earned reputations for excellence that exceeds those wines of the same region that come from the same soil and grapes. This is where “terroir”—the most cherished and marketable of terms—comes in. It refers to the unique confluence of soil composition, sunlight, rain, temperature and other agricultural factors that consistently make such wines taste as wonderful as they do.
        A case in point: Once, standing on the roadside that cuts through the Côte d’Ôr (above), a vigneron gave me grapes off the vine to taste, and, being from the Côte d’Ôr, they were very good, with ample sugar and acids. Then we moved up the slope of the vineyards, no more than a few yards, and tasted those grapes. Hmm, even better. Higher up, where the hillside gets optimum sun, the grapes tasted best of all, rather like Goldilocks finding her ideal porridge. But then, the vigneron took me just a few yards to the left, where the grapes didn’t have much flavor at all. He said that that terroir—right next to the first vineyard—had never produced superior grapes. I understood very clearly at that point the importance of micro-climates and terroir. And those far superior vineyards on the Côte d’Ôr were the most costly as real estate.
        So, too, the prime terroirs of California’s Napa Valley now sell for astounding prices. According to Napa Valley Register, “To own a piece of the choicest land on the valley floor, a buyer will have to pay an average of $310,000 per acre, compared to $270,000 in 2014.” Which is why the old cliché holds true: To make a small fortune in the wine business, you have to start with a big fortune.
        Yet, in order to keep the supply small for the market, these estates, which may not have even a twenty-year pedigree behind them, sell their wines for $200 and up. Granted, that doesn’t come close to Romanée-Conti or Lafite, though a so-called “trophy wine” like Screaming Eagle in Oakville can fetch up to $2,000 a bottle.
        Screaming Eagle is an example of how the market responds to wine media ratings—the highest being 100 points—by publications like Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator, whose declaration of  a “wine of the year” may cause its price to triple or quadruple as a result of publicity. No other agricultural product can make that claim. 
        There will always be those—and they are usually not true connoisseurs—for whom price is no object, reminding me of Oscar Wilde’s observation of a cynic: “A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” In so many cases, you do get what you pay for, which is a label.
         Back in the late 1990s every casino restaurant in Las Vegas clamored to stock Chateau Pétrus, a Pomerol that some wine media exalt as the finest in the world, year after year, which in a wine shop can cost $4,000 a bottle. Double or triple that on a Vegas wine list and you can pretty quickly assume who’s drinking Pétrus. Or, more to the point, what Taiwanese high roller has it sent free of charge to his comped suite, hamburger included and fetched by a "wine angel" (below).
         To come back down to earth—and mindful that there is, indeed, a sucker born every minute—one has to question why of, say, twenty different Barolos or so-called “Super Tuscans,” from the same hillsides in Piedmont and Chianti, some cost a very reasonable $40 while others cost $600. Again, the price of real estate figures into the equation, and there is no question that the best wineries do tremendous research to find the best varietal clones to plant, which will cost more than others.
        Also, the wineries themselves may be state-of-the-art, multi-million- dollar investments that might also include tasting rooms, small hotels, even golf courses. Then there is marketing, advertising and schmoozing with the wine media, who are expected never to turn up their noses at a prestigious label. Believe me, I’ve had a lot of those wines and some of them have gone south fast, especially the high-alcohol wines of California and, increasingly, Spain and Italy.
         The fact is, even if it all begins as fermented grape juice, several other factors go to making it a really good wine,  but it is certainly not a Maserati or an Aston-Martin, where the intense workmanship and price of research and materials is as evident as their beauty. One glass of wine looks pretty much like every other glass of wine, and winemakers, who are very, very dedicated, only have so much to work with.
         I can tell you this: There are bad wines, good wines, very good wines and extraordinary wines. But between very good and extraordinary there are innumerable wines from many countries in the global market that are priced right, and these days, with the pandemic still keeping people from dining out and restaurants and hotels not re-stocking their cellars, there’s never been a better time to find some real bargains.  
 







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THINGS OUR GRANDMOTHERS USED TO SAY
BUT WERE NEVER ACTUALLY TRUE


"It Is Really Cathartic to Make Dough."—
"Klancy Miller Relaxes With Cinnamon Rolls," New York Magazine (2/12/21)


 

 












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Sponsored by






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 Any of John Mariani's books below may be ordered from amazon.com.



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“He had me at Page One. The amount of heart, human insight, soul searching, and deft literary strength that John Mariani pours into this airtight novella is vertigo-inducing. Perhaps ‘wow’ would be the best comment.” – James Dalessandro, author of Bohemian Heart and 1906.


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The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink by John F. Mariani (Bloomsbury USA, $35)

Modesty forbids me to praise my own new book, but let me proudly say that it is an extensive revision of the 4th edition that appeared more than a decade ago, before locavores, molecular cuisine, modernist cuisine, the Food Network and so much more, now included. Word origins have been completely updated, as have per capita consumption and production stats. Most important, for the first time since publication in the 1980s, the book includes more than 100 biographies of Americans who have changed the way we cook, eat and drink -- from Fannie Farmer and Julia Child to Robert Mondavi and Thomas Keller.


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"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.


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"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,  The Modern, and Maialino.

                                                                             





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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.

 

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