NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

BLT Steak
106 East 57^th Street
212-752-7470
BLT-Steak-New-York

   It’s hard to imagine it’s been ten years since the opening of BLT Steak, a restaurant that had more influence on that staid genre than any other up till then. 
     At the time I wrote, “The room here is light and fresh, not burgundy or glitzy; the staff is cordial and well informed rather than brusque and kvetchy . . . The house sandwich is, appropriately, the BLT--though this one’s made with foie gras, which like everything else here, takes it to the next level.”
     Partnering with ESquared Hospitality, renowned French chef Laurent Tourondel crafted an ebullient steakhouse where women felt very welcome and men enjoyed bringing them.  The lighting was good, though the decibel level was terrible. There was a blackboard menu, ebony tables and suede booths.  The beef was Certified Black Angus and USDA Prime cuts, the seafood from impeccable sources.
     In all these years--except for Laurent Tourondel leaving the company to which he gave his initials (he now has his own steakhouse called The Arlington Club)--this BLT flagship, now with 12 branches worldwide, has remained very much the same, and on a recent visit it was so good to see some familiar faces among the managers and captains, still greeting customers with professionalism and gusto. Even the noise level seems somewhat lower.  Only the prices have risen, but they are commensurate with BLT’s myriad NYC competitors'.
        BLT also pioneered the greatest cheese popover (right) the world has ever seen--rising five inches in airy splendor, very crisp on the outside, soft, eggy and cheesy inside, and always brought to the table very very hot, with plenty of butter.
        The menu, overseen by Chef Clifford Crooks, is a reasonable size, enough to satisfy the stalwart carnivore as well as those who’d prefer seafood.  The tuna tartare with avocado ($18) made one of its earliest NYC appearances here, and it’s still one of the best in town.  So, too, was a lobster salad ($23), with plenty of big chunks of seafood in a Cobb-like mince.  There is, of course, a seafood platter at $34, $65 or $98, and ask about their fine charcuterie board.
        The steaks and chops are impeccably cooked, charred but juicy on the outside, medium-rare, as ordered, inside. My favorite cut is the 28-day aged NY strip weighing in at 16 ounces ($48), along with the bone-in ribeye at 22 ounces ($49).  Highly surprising is the fact that BLT serves inferior Australian lamb ($44), when American lamb is so much better.
        Knowing I’d be noshing off my friends’ steaks, I opted for sautéed Dover sole ($48) with a soy-caper-brown butter sauce (right) I asked to be put on the side, so as to appreciate the full-fatted flavor of the sole, cooked on the bone. A sautéed branzino ($30) came with shiitakes, baby carrots, and the scent of basil.  There are always blackboard specials posted.
        Side dishes like hen of the woods mushrooms, potatoes au gratin, and Brussels sprouts seemed revolutionary on a steakhouse menu back when BLT introduced them; all that’s changed is their refinement.  Creamed spinach is really creamy, and the truffled mashed potatoes and golden French fries will not last long at any table.
        Heidi Kornhorst’s desserts, all $10, show a French pastry slant, as in the superb signature crêpe soufflé with passion fruit sauce.      
      Sommelier Alex Berlingeri stocks more than 500 global wines on his list, and he is an ideal and amiable person to ask for advice in any price category.       
        So, Happy Tenth Birthday, BLT.  Don’t ever change what you so distinctively pioneered.

BLT serves lunch Mon.-Fri.  and dinner nightly.

AU REVOIR TO A GREAT FRENCH CUISINIER
By John Mariani

         For some in the food media, the death this week of French master chef and restaurateur Roger Fessaguet at 82 was yet another blow to the legacy of fine dining in NYC.   Yet for me it was more a case of “The king is dead, long live the king!” For Fessaguet’s true legacy was to leave an indelible trail of impeccably crafted cuisine whose principles of French classicism are still the inspiration for fine dining at a time when so many young chefs, held aloft by the same media, delude themselves into believing they are re-inventing the wheel every time they pick up a knife.

         Back in 1968 Fessaguet, then executive chef (later partner) at the renowned La Caravelle on West 55^th Street, made dishes praised by the Times’ restaurant critic Craig Claiborne: “The stuffed turbot, imported fresh from European waters but as sweet in flavor and as tender in texture as if it had been pulled within the hour from the waters off Long Island. The stuffing was Nantaise style — a mousse of sole, fresh cream, deftly mixed herbs such as rosemary, bay leaf and thyme, and a suggestion of shallots"--obviously a classic dish requiring immense precision to make correctly, but one probably considered passé today.  Yet imagine for a moment that the same dish were to be found on the menu at a hip new downtown restaurant with an under-30, tattooed chef.  Chances are the food press would fawn over both the chef and the dish, for Fessaguet’s dish is not so different from one currently being cooked up in Chelsea at the new Willow Road, as described by The New Yorker’s Ariel Levy: “Risotto is made with barley, which the kitchen folds with fat clam bellies, leeks, and a touch of crème fraîche dissolved in clam broth.”  
         It is true that French Cuisine à la NYC had become stultified on menus back in the 1960s when they were near Xerox copies of the one at the most famous restaurant of its day, Le Pavillon, where Fessaguet and La Caravelle’s first owners, Fred Decré and Robert Meyzen had all worked.  But it was in the daily specials that chefs like Fessaguet showed the endless variations French classicism offered from soup to dessert and everything in between, all of it requiring enormous training to produce—this at a time when access to first-quality ingredients was often impossible.  No wild mushrooms, no fresh foie gras, no virgin olive oil.
     Fessaguet was born in Villefranche sur Saône in 1931, dropped out of school at 14 and apprenticed at a wide range of restaurants in France before coming to NYC to work at Le Pavillon, then at La Caravelle, becoming a partner in 1980. 
    From the start, La Caravelle was a new kind of French restaurant, far brighter and less fussy than Le Pavillon and others in midtown, and, although the snob factor was still part of the ethos back then, La Caravelle was a more ebullient place with less attitude towards guests who did not have names like regulars Prince Rainier, Marlene Dietrich, Noël Coward, Cecil Beaton, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, and Bill Blass.
    The premises were enlivened by impressionistic Jean Pages murals of Paris, so that in 1977 Gourmet Magazine wrote, “Seventeen years after its launching, the restaurant steers as steady a course as ever. Paris, dressed in its holiday best and transported to New York.” By then, Le Pavillon had been shuttered for seven years and La Caravelle had become a classic all its own.
    In 1980 Fessaguet retired from the kitchen but still was a formidable eminence in the dining room, where his infectious bonhomie was palpable.  Stout and ruddy-faced, the very image of the French chef, he always had a twinkle in his eye, a nose built for sniffing wine, knew his social strengths, and hobnobbed with his French colleagues on weekends.  Fessaguet would leave service early on Saturday, hop in his Porsche and speed headlong to his New England country house, returning on Monday afternoon in time for dinner.
      Eventually La Caravelle was sold to André Jammet (his father had run Le Bristol Hotel in Paris) and his wife Rita, who maintained the restaurant’s eminence while freshening the menu by bringing in an impressive number of young chefs who went on to great careers of their own, including Michael Romano, Cyril Rénaud, David Pasternak and Tadashi Ono. La Caravelle closed in 2004, owing not to changes in culinary fashion but to the hard facts of NYC realty: a new owner of the building wanted a fortune for a new lease.
    Meanwhile Fessaguet, whom I only really knew after he’d left his kitchen for the dining room, was enjoying his retirement with friends, perhaps lamenting a certain decline in civilized dining but never for a moment in doubt of the power and glory of French cuisine as the underpinning of all modern non-Asian gastronomy.
       He was once one of many respected masters in NYC back then; now none of his kind is left working in NYC. But their influence is everywhere, in every kitchen, whether a young chef who’s never eaten turbot with sauce Nantaise knows it or not.  At a time when chefs have become celebrities and smug egomaniacs, it is a good thing to remember what Duke Ellington said when asked what he really thought of an old-timer like Louis Armstrong. Ellington just smiled ad said, “No he, no me.”  

       It was an historic moment when Robert Mondavi founded his eponymous winery in 1966. What is less well known is that he jointly founded it with his oldest son, Michael. More than just a name on a legal document, Michael was actively involved in the establishment and evolution of that winery with its focus on superior wines and made the wine for the first eight years of its existence. Subsequently, he took charge of sales and marketing and later became CEO.
     Some wine it was. The first Robert Mondavi Winery Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon that I ever tasted was the 1974. It bested the bunch at a 1984 private tasting of great California 1974 red wines and is one of the wines that helped put the Robert Mondavi Winery name on the map.
    Michael left the winery in 2004, shortly before its acquisition by Constellation Brands, and founded a company to import wines from family-owned and managed wineries, Folio Wine Partners; two years later he launched a new boutique winery, Michael Mondavi Family Estate, where he and his wife Isabel make wine with their son, Rob, and daughter Dina (below). Their first wine. “M by Michael Mondavi,”  was released in 2008.
    There is an unmistakable family structure to affairs at the winery. Michael is in overall charge but clearly wants to delegate to his children. Rob is President of Winemaking, Dina is in charge of marketing. They make seven different wines totalling just 18,000 cases a year. They source fruit from throughout Napa Valley but pride of place goes to the family-owned vineyards. Animo Vineyard (above)--Italian for spirit or soul--is 15 acres located on Atlas Peak at 1,270-1,350 feet. The soil is rocky and volcanic and planted to Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 4 on 110R rootstock. This vineyard was purchased by Michael in 1996 and planted from scratch. As a result, current releases are from vines that are 10-15 years old.
     Oso Vineyard, purchased in 2006, is at the other end of Napa Valley between Sugarloaf and Howell Mountain at 1,250 feet, its vines planted on stone-lined terraces in rocky, porous soil. Excellent drainage stresses the vines, leading to concentration of flavors, and the smaller diurnal shift than on the valley floor, with warmer nights and cooler days, results in fresh, vibrant fruit.
     The Isabel Mondavi (below, right) line includes a Chardonnay ($30), a Pinot Noir ($40) and a rosé ($20). The latter is especially  unusual for being made almost entirely (91.5%) from Cabernet Sauvignon, the remainder Petit Verdot. The fullness of the Cabernet fruit makes this a more fruity and beefier rosé than most. It is enjoyable on hot days as an aperitif wine or with Mediterranean hors d’oeuvres.     The other four wines are all Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa Valley. The 2011 Emblem, Napa Valley ($35) is sourced from multiple locations, with some fruit from the Oso Vineyard, some from growers on the valley floor in Rutherford. This wine is a barely legal under California wine laws that dictate 75 percent of the grapes must be from Cabernet Sauvignon to use that name on the label; this one is 76% Cabernet Sauvignon,  blended with 7% Syrah, 6% Petite Sirah, 4% Zinfandel, 4% Petit Verdot and 2% Merlot. The main effect of such a complicated cépage appears to be a softening of the wine for early consumption and aromatic embellishment. This wine is very approachable but will improve with aging for 3-5 years.
     The 2011 Emblem Oso Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, with 87% Cabernet Sauvignon,  and 13% Petit Verdot ($60),  is a more structured wine than the Napa Emblem. Unlike many producers, the winery does not appear to have been negatively impacted by the cool growing conditions of this vintage, allowing a longer hang time to achieve full ripeness. If you consume this wine now, choose a well-marbled steak such as rib eye or T-bone and salt it well. It will cut through the tannins. Better still, age 3-6 years to allow the wine to resolve.
     The tête de cuvée wines of the house are those from the Animo Vineyard. The 2010 Animo Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Atlas Peak, with 87% Cabernet Sauvignon and 13% Petit Verdot ($85), is picked in multiple passes, then cold-soaked for four days after destemming. Aging is for 20 months in 87% new French oak. The result is very concentrated fruit and hints of vanilla and spice. The tannins are supple enough to drink now, albeit with the same steak advisory as above, but this wine will keep and improve a decade or more.
      The flagship wine is the 2009 “M by Michael Mondavi” Animo Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Atlas Peak, with 96% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4% Petit Verdot ($199). The objective here was to craft a wine redolent of the Robert Mondavi Reserve Cabernets of the 1960s and early 1970s. It is sourced from the “Crown Block” in the Animo Vineyard harvested over four weeks starting with the highest elevation and working down. The harvested fruit is hand-selected, destemmed and lightly crushed. The grapes see a 5-day cold-soak period, fermentation at 27-30⁰C and extended post-fermentation maceration for around three weeks. Aging is in 87% new French oak for 22 months, followed by 15 months in bottle. 
     This is a wine to cellar with your other “reference Napa Cabernets” as a marker of the evolution of Napa styles and effects of vintage variation. It is immensely concentrated with formidable tannins, dark fruit, black pepper and cooking spices. Keep 10-20 years.
     In one sense, Michael Mondavi Family Estate is Robert Mondavi Winery redux; in another, it has evolved. The commitment to Napa fruit and the iconographic Cabernet Sauvignons that the terroir produces is as strong as ever. But whereas Robert chose To-Kalon on the valley floor, Michael prefers mountain fruit. And whereas Robert revolutionized viniculture with the laboratory and squeaky-clean winemaking (a vital step in those days), Michael practices the minimal intervention and sustainability practices front and center in this century.
     For wine drinkers, all seven wines here are interesting and many tasted at the winery (left). The single most important piece of news, if you pinned me down and forced me to confess, is that “M by Michael Mondavi” is a candidate for admission to the pantheon of top-tier Napa Cabernet Sauvignons.