MARIANI’S

October 1, 2006                                                       NEWSLETTER

 

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In This Issue

BIG BERLIN
by Suzanne Wright
 
        You might say Berlin has blinders on:  it's full-speed ahead. But that’s not to say that this world-class city doesn’t pay homage to its painful past.   It’s just that the biggest city in Germany—both in population and cultural cachet—is decidedly forward-facing. Nine times bigger than Paris in acreage, Berlin can be as difficult to grasp emotionally as it is to traverse physically.
         I hadn't been in Germany since I was nine, when my father was in the U.S. Navy and we lived on a base in Bremerhaven, in northwest Germany.  Now I returned to the reunified Berlin, in northeast Germany. One of the sweetest memories I have—now it’s me who’s looking back—is of being a kid visited by St. Nicholas.  I arrived at the tail end of the holiday season, and the wooden kiosks are still hammered into place at the Gendenmarket, one of the best Christmas markets in Berlin.
       Cranes dominate the skyline on both the east and west sides of the city.  It’s as though the shame and blame mantle of the past has been dropped as clear-eyed, canny movers and shakers barrel toward tomorrow.  The thrum is palatable—and exciting.   Amidst jaw-dropping architecture, glugging Glüwein (mulled red wine) and bundled against the brisk weather, I wandered the Gendenmarket, past stalls selling such varied items as rose-flavored sugar and wooden toys.  In a juried section, a flamboyant woman named Fee, who lives part of the year in India, has “channeled” her feminist vision into chunky rings, necklaces and bracelets.  Her artistry is certainly singular and progressive. I bought a two-finger ring as much for its conversational value as its unusual beauty.
       I had a chance to dine at the well-reviewed Vau (Jägerstr. 54/55;  Tel: 202-9730) located nearby, which I found breathtakingly expensive (entrees are 30 Euros and up; desserts ring in at 13 Euros) and cutting-edge in terms of its culinary vision:  Chef-owner Kolja Kleeberg's plump, perfectly seared scallops with lentils and pumpkin, moist John Dory with the bite of capers and lime and mashed white beans, subtly sweet pear cake.  There is a peach salad with coriander, a mushroom soup with roasted quail,  and for dessert a white chocolate soup with citron. It’s so post-modern there’s not even music to soften the minimalist interiors.  There’s no Weiner schnitzel or sauerkraut on the menu and don’t even think of inquiring. It’s all quite severe but very accomplished, as befits its Michelin star.
      KaDeWe (21-24 Tauentzienstrasse), the biggest store in Europe, with sixth-floor food halls that offer everything from cheese to knockwurst, sushi to kugel, 1,300 different cheeses, and 2,400 wines, was frantic on New Year’s Eve. Sadly, I couldn't get  a table for lobster and champagne, but I notices lots of couples, shopping bags piled at their feet, holding forth in animated conversation at table after table in the bustling food halls. But there are more than two dozen eateries here to choose from.  The floor plan alone (right) tells you how vast this place is.
       The Berlin Philharmonic also throbs with exhilarating performance.  Sir Simon Rattle, the conductor with the Art Garfunkel-like hair brings the intimate space alive with his thrilling performances (need I mention the perfection of the acoustics?). At lively Potsdamer Platz, the Berlin equivalent of Times Square, another sort of bracing experience is underway on a wintery evening as kids of all ages shriek as they toboggan down a snowy hill near the underground.  The collision of architectural styles—Renzo Piano’s Debis Tower and Helmut Jahn’s tent-shaped Sony Center—along with a shopping and entertainment arcade, adds to the visual excitement.
       Of course, Berliners also honor their painful past, and visitors flock to Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary border crossing and museum with fascinating objects of escape where two worlds split apart were eventually joined together.  Symbolically, Russian and American soldiers pose for photographs. At the architecturally futuristic-looking Jewish Museum, two thousand years of German Jewish history is presented in all its touching, messy complexity. Perhaps most striking is the large-scale Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (left), row after row of concrete slabs that clutch the heart like the cold air as I solemnly walk single file through the gray maze. It’s like a contemporary cemetery: brutal and beautiful.
     I stayed at the Intercontinental Berlin, a listed architectural landmark in the heart of Berlin near the Kurfürstendamm, a major shopping thoroughfare. (The hotel is also home to the one-Michelin star Hugos Restaurant; unfortunately, it was booked solid during my visit.)  From its black and white checkerboard façade to the Vitality Center and top-floor Club Lounge—the hotel is highly contemporary.  The guest rooms (right) have heated marble floors and sleek furnishings.
        For my final experience in Berlin, I dined at Dunkel (below), where you eat in pitch blackness and are served by blind staffers. After selecting a meat, poultry or vegetarian menu, I am led, into the restaurant by my waitress, my hand on her shoulder.
Plunged into darkness, the first ten minutes were, if not exactly terrifying, anxiety-producing, for sure; the next twenty were more comfortable,  as senses beyond sight took over, and the last hour or more was, frankly, a bit boring as the gimmick wore off.  Although the food was just so-so, the experiment changed perspectives for some:  I heard a nearby dinner exclaim when she was told that she had just eaten—and enjoyed—eggplant. Without the visual cues, she was willing to try something new. Three- and four-course meals are available between 33 and 49.50 Euros.
      
What a metaphor for Berlin:  thrust into darkness at one point in its history, now hurtling toward a lighter, brighter phase, visitors can literally enter and exit the city’s reality at will.

If You Go
Berlin is especially festive during the holidays. Visit www.wintermagic-berlin.de for details on the month-long celebration.  For general information on the city, log onto www.berlin-tourist-information.de.

NEW YORK CORNER
by John Mariani

Terrace IN THE SKY
400 West 119th Street
212-666-9490
www.terraceinthesky.com

       I suspect there are many New Yorkers unaware that Harlem has long been home to one of the most uniquely elegant restaurants in America, though it's hardly been a secret, even if the Michelin Guide inexplicably failed to list Terrace in the Sky in its first NYC guide (2006). For 30 years now the restaurant  has been perched atop a Columbia University dorm building and run with indefatigable good taste by the Bernic family.  Its beauty alone, with a 360 degree panorama that takes in Morningside and Central Park, every borough, as well as the East River and the Hudson, the Palisades, the carousel lights of the George Washington Bridge, Riverdale and the north Bronx, far-off Westchester County, and the long finger of Long Island, has long made this a destination restaurant, and I suspect it's been the scene of more proposals of marriage than anywhere in New York.  At lunch it is also generally full of university provosts, deans, and professors from Columbia, and does an enormous business in banquets and cocktail parties on its outdoor terrace and in its beautiful glassed-in Belgian Conservatory.
        Chef Dusan and his wife Nada Bernic, two proud Croatians, leased the space three decades ago, and Dusan served a proper continental menu in a wrap-around glassed-in dining room.  Sadly,  Dusan passed away several years ago, but Nada (right), and now her son Chris (who is also the sommelier) have not simply maintained the Terrace's eminence but, through a succession of young chefs, refined the menu year after year.  The current kitchen is headed by Chef Jason Potanovic, who brings fresh, creative ideas to the tables, which are still candlelighted, and where there is soft music played each evening by a harpist from Juilliard.  Service is as professional and cordial as it gets in the city, and Chris has kept the 400-label, 10,000 bottle winelist among the finest in the city.
       The entrance to the Terrace at Butler Hall is like one you'd expect at a university club, a fine Beaux Arts building with wood-paneled lobby. (For those driving here there is valet parking available.)  You then take an elevator straight to the top, where the Bernics greet you with an Old World sophistication that tells you this will be a very special evening.  Well seated--and every table  in the main dining room has a view of New York's glittering cityscape--you are offered several breads as you go over the menu, which is both à la carte (with appetizers from $17-$24 and entrees $33-$40) as well as offering a 4-, 5-, or 6-course tasting menu at $80, $90 and $100, and a prix fixe dinner at $45. Lunch is also à la carte, with a prix fixe of $25. Tablesettings are all first-rate, from silver to stemware, from linens to flowers.
     Potanovich (below, in the Belgian Conservatory), previously at Picholine, is Nada's nephew, and this all-in-the-family arrangement seems to work very well, keeping tradition alive and new ideas at the front.  I opted for a six-course dinner, with additional amuse and desserts, that showed Terrace in the Sky to have as much culinary credibility as it has unquestioned beauty. I began with a generous tartare of Hawaiian bluefin toro (below) with a ponzu sauce infused with just the right amount of wasabi so as not to overpower either the fish or the Laurent Perrier Brut Rosé. Next came a satin-textured sea urchin cream with sesame crisp and Thai basil, where again the assertive flavor of the mollusk was tamed by the cream.
     A pan-seared John Dory was prepared "Adriatic style," with sautéed Swiss chard, fingerling potatoes and garlic, and a tomato-infused olive oil.  Risotto (a little overcooked one evening) was laced with nice chunks of lobster, sweet corn, and truffles, with which I enjoyed a Château de Callas 1999, a beautiful Graves that went perfectly with the dish. Then veal tenderloin, cooked pink and juicy, with braised Tivoli greens, wild mushrooms, and a black truffle-celery foam of great delicacy.
      I love how Potanovich balances his flavors and textures, and I also love the care Chris takes with an amazingly good cheese cart with 40 or more selections from various countries, all in peak condition and a good reason to try a glass of Ivo Skaramuca Vineyard Plavac Mali 2003 from Croatia, which is beginning to make very fine wines these days.  We ended off with  parfait of Meyer lemon and poppyseeds that also bespoke the Eastern Mediterranean, and an exotic fruit and mango sorbet with lemon-infused milk that tasted of Polynesia.
       I hadn't been back to the Terrace in several years,  and, as a Columbia graduate myself, was enchanted to find it better than ever, overlooking the great university and the Harlem renaissance that has made this a very beautiful neighborhood again.  My congratulations to the Bernics and my thanks for carrying on with their own vision of the American dream coupled with their own refined European taste.

The Main Dining Room at The Terrace
“A View from the Terrace," celebrating three decades of food will be held on Nov. 15 at a 5-course dinner, honoring  Gael Greene, food author and co-founder of Citymeals-on-Wheels;  Tina Ramirez, Founder and Director of  Ballet Hispanico; and Herman “Denny” Farrell, Assemblyman for NYC's 71st District. Lloyd Williams,  President of Harlem’s Chamber of Commerce, will be Honorary Chairman. Thirty silent auction items will be offered, incl.  a trip for two to Rab, an island off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, where the Bernic family will soon be opening “Arbiana,” a turn-of-the-century hotel, and its three neighboring villas.  Guests will also be bidding on tickets for the best seats at the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade and the NYC Marathon, a private puppet show for 50 at the Swedish marionette cottage in Central Park, and a private tour of the Historic Parks of Harlem by Commissioner Adrian Benepe himself. In the restaurant’s Belgian Conservatory members from the Ballet Hispanico will interpret a dance from “West Side Story.” The event, limited to 100 guests, is priced at $1000 pp, or  $8000 per table.  Call 212 666-9490.


 
 

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MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly.  Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani,  Naomi  Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson,  Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein, Suzanne Wright. Contributing Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,  Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.

 John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire, Wine Spectator, Bloomberg News and Radio, and Diversion.  He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman), The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway), and, with his wife Galina, the award-winning new Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press).

 Any of John Mariani's books below may be ordered from amazon.com by clicking on the cover image.

My newest book, written with my brother Robert Mariani, is a memoir of our years growing up in the North Bronx. It's called Almost Golden because it re-visits an idyllic place and time in our lives when so many wonderful things seemed possible.     For those of you who don't think of the Bronx as “idyllic,” this book will be a revelation. It’s about a place called the Country Club area, on the shores of Pelham Bay. A beautiful neighborhood filled with great friends and wonderful adventures that helped shape our lives. It's about a culture, still vibrant, and a place that is still almost the same as when we grew up there.     Robert and I think you'll enjoy this very personal look at our Bronx childhood. It is not yet available in bookstores, so to purchase a copy, go to amazon.com or click on  Almost Golden.                                                                                                                     --John Mariani

copyright John Mariani 2006