Back
in the 1970s, before Rhode Island’s capital of
Providence began its Renaissance, the Mills
building was just another mis-used old brownstone
retail space on North Main St. But, as the city
began its re-birth, with a diverted river that
brought vitality downtown, Mills was among the
earliest landmark buildings to shed its dusty past
and advance into a new life.
Today, the building’s large
two-story front windows offer a welcoming look into
a spacious dining place with the feel of a
traditional tavern. The soft sepia lighting, the
large dining area and comfortable bar create the
kind of atmosphere where people like to linger.
Chef Edward Bolus, trained at
Providence’s Johnson & Wales culinary school,
has put together a menu that encourages local
foodies to bring their out-of-state friends to the
Mills Tavern for a special taste of Providence. The
menu is seasonal, with many ingredients drawn from
local sources.You might begin with Bolus’s duo of rabbit
roulade and corned duck breast with roasted and
chopped cacao beans, some pickled mustard seeds,
garden-sweet carrot strips and marinated “drunken”
cherries.
For a second course, the game
flavors continue with a confit of wild boar risotto
accompanied by butter-braised pearl onions,
rosemary/scallion pesto and a
delicate spinach puree. Take a few breaths before
digging into one of Mills Tavern’s generous entrees,
like the wild Alaskan King Salmon glazed with honey
mustard and covered with a pumpernickel crust that
melds perfectly with the well-cooked fish,
accompanied by a lemon/dill spaetzle
with fried capers and Sauce Albert. Not in the mood for
fish? How about a hefty hunter-like venison loin
encrusted with pistachio and roasted cacao beans
that add a slightly
chocolat-ey taste, all wrapped in some
smoky bacon?Add
to this some truffled/wild mushroom farrotto,
green beans,a
caramelized sweet huckleberry gastrique sauce,
and you’ve got a signature dish that succeeds on
every culinary level of taste and texture.
Mills Tavern’s ever-changing
dessert list, by another J&A alum, Samantha del
Arroyo,offers
treats like a white chocolate mousse; a wonderfully
textured buckwheat crumble topped with coconut
cream; and passion fruit curd served with
raspberry-hibiscus sorbet.
Mill’s Tavern is open Tues.-Sun. for
dinner. Appetizers $9-$22, main courses $24-$46.
Rhode
Island is the smallest state, but when it comes to
dining venues with spectacular views of busy
harbors, sailboat races, beaches, summer mansions
and lighthouses, the Ocean State can hold its own
on the national level. The panorama seen
from the Boat House restaurant in the small, rural
town of Tiverton (about a 45-minute drive from
Providence) has been recognized as “one of the Top
Ten Scenic Views in the United States” by Open Table
Diners in 2011, 2012 and 2013. But, as special as
the restaurant's view of the waterfront is, the food
is what keeps natives and tourists coming back.Through
the summer months, many devotees arrive on their
boats, and there are indoor and outdoor tables. A
perusal of the menu tells you that a good deal of
thought and creativity have gone into each and every
dish. The
appetizer lists offers a lobster fritter with sweet
corn and chipotle aïoli; Littleneck clams are
steamed “Portuguese-style” with chouriço, onions,
garlic and tomato in a Viñho Verde broth. The
braised beef sort ribs are embellished with root
vegetables, mustard greens, celeriac puree and a red
wine jus. One
of the favorite starters at the Boat House is
steamed mussels artfully paired with roasted
peppers, scallions, garlic, parsley and pine nuts in
a smooth white wine and butter broth, fresh as an
ocean breeze.Another favorite is the crispy Point Judith
calamari served with house-pickled jalapeño peppers,
cilantro, harissa and citrus rémoulade.
The perfect texture of the breaded squid and the
complementary dressings make you realize why
calamari has been recently voted “Rhode Island's
Official Appetizer.” The
entrées are predominantly seafood, like a
pan-roasted Atlantic salmonwith a
rich Swiss-chard-mushroom risotto; or a “seafood
scampi” of poached lobster meat, shrimp and squid
drenched in a roasted garlic-herb butter and served
with some perfectly al dente
linguini. Of course, there are alternatives to
seafood, including an eight-ounce grilled Certified
Angus Beef filet paired with a goat’s cheese-potato
cake, asparagus and creamed leeks. The perfectly
grilled beef is doused with a Port wine-rosemary
demi-glace.For
“Surf & Turf” fans, the Boat House offers
sirloin with a choice of grilled scallops or shrimp.
The baked lobster is lavishly stuffed with shrimp,
scallops, crab, and herb bread soaked in lemon
butter. Of
course, if you're feeling like something a bit
lighter, there's a soup and salad menu, and the
requisite lobster roll and fish tacos on a corn
tortilla.
The
dessert menu at the Boat House pretty much covers
the waterfront (pun intended) with items like crème
brûlée with a glassy burnt sugar crust, and a
coconut spice cake made with Key lime cream, coconut
crumbs and mango sorbet.
The Boat
House Restaurant serves
lunch and dinner daily, and brunch on Sundays.Dinner appetizers $7-$16 and main courses
$19-$39.
BRISTOL OYSTER BAR 448 Hope Street
Bristol, RI
401-396-5820 bristoloysterbar.com
Located
on the first floor of a stately old brick building
that had once been the town’s post office, the Bristol Oyster Bar
is a great addition to this small harbor town’s
interesting culinary scene. The owner, Pete
Sebring, has spent most of his adult life fishing in
and around Rhode Island waters, which gives him the
experience to seek out the very freshest seafood
available from local providers.
The Oyster Bar is not too small
and not too big; with high ceilings and no padding
on the walls and floors, the noise level is pretty
high and not very conducive to intimate
conversation. But it’s a fun place to people watch
while you enjoy your meal.You can dine at the bar and
enjoy a varied selection of bourbons, Scotches and
whiskies, along with inventive cocktails while
ordering your choice of over a dozen different types
of oysters ($2.50 each), shucked right there before
your eyes. Get there any day between 4 and 6 p.m.
and all raw oysters are just $1 each.
Appetizers feature classic
seafood fare like clams casino consisting of baked
Little Necks with crispy pork belly, garlic herb
butter, and Parmesan crumbs; bacon-wrapped shrimp
with polenta, creamed leeks and balsamic syrup.I’ve
become increasingly fond of the smoked fish plate,
with smoked lobster roe with crème fraîche,
smoked tuna slices, a goat’s cheese crouton and
smoked salmon.
I’ve
tasted my share of lobster bisque around the state,
and the Bristol’s is one of the best, with hints of
sherry and tidbits of lobster meat in a velvety
cream broth. Anotherwonderful
crustacean entree is the plate of fried oysters
dredged in cornmeal and served with a “honey Buffalo
sauce” with blue cheese, crisp carrots and
celery.One of the more substantial entrées is a
version of what’s become a Rhode Island favorite,
the “Patty Melt,” a substantial burger patty wrapped
in bacon and caramelized onions and served between
two thick slices of house-made white toast. Dishes
I’ll go back for are the scallop corn broth, and the
ten-ounce Dakota sirloin steak.
Of the three desserts offered,
you can’t go wrong with the bread pudding made with
Portuguese sweet bread encrusted with caramel,
chocolate and nuts.
Although
the Bristol Oyster Bar doesn’t have one of your
typically Bristol-ian water views, like so many of
the town’s other restaurants have, the ambiance and
the energy in the place makes for a fun, casual
evening with excellent food.
Bristol Oyster Bar open Tues. –Thurs., 4 to 10:30
p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 11:30 a.m. to midnight; Sun.
11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Appetizers $8-$13, main
courses $19-$23.
“Curry Hill” is the name given to
Manhattan’s Indian neighborhood (among
several in other boroughs) where you’ll
find a slew of good Indian restaurants,
groceries and sweet shops catering mainly
to a local clientele.So
when Arum Mirchandani and his partners
decided to open a different kind of Indian
restaurant, they did so far from Curry
Hill. The Drunken Munkey is way up on East
92nd Street, and now there is a branch
called The Royal Munkey in Kips Bay, both
featuring a menu derived from the colonial
days when the food cultures of Europe and
India melded. “The
Royal Munkey strives to recreate, and pay tribute
to, the legendary flavours, style and the ambiance
reminiscent of the famous cafes, bistros and
supper clubs of ‘Old Bombay,’ while showcasing a
touch of the old Raj,” reads the restaurant’s
announcement of intent, all of which you will
observe in the fascinating collection of
Anglo-Indian artifacts and monkey-related imagery
in the lamps, coat hooks, telephones, sculptures,
chandelier and wallpaper.Bollywood
movies play above the bar.Bartenders
wear Nehru jackets, the servers wear Indian chudidaar
kurtas, the dangling earrings called jhumkaas,
and sport red
bindi dots on their foreheads. The two-level dining room does have the
look of a bar where British diplomats and Indian
royalty might hob-nob to drink “panch,” a Hindi
word for “five,” referring to the five original
ingredients used—lime, sugar, spices, water and a
sap called arrack, which was later transformed to
the alcohol-based punch concocted by British
soldiers in the early 17th century.At The
Royal Munkey there is a “panch of the day,” as
well as an array of other cocktails, including one
called the Patiala Peg (from Punjab), along with
rums, single malts and whiskies. Both of the Munkey
restaurants have Derik Alfaro as Executive
Chef(formerly
of Fatty Crab) and Royal Munkey has Chef de
Cuisine Chetan Patil (from Tulsi), while the final
say is left to Arum Mirchanani’s mother.So,
while you can order the usual Indian dishes like butter chicken tikka masala
($18) and lamb rogan josh
($19), I urge you instead to go for the many
specialties of the kitchen, which in addition to
having a tandoor oven also has a smoker that adds
luster to many dishes.
“Chilie cheese toast” evokes
the kind of fare served in the military mess
halls, in this case Pullman toast and melted
cheddar spiked with green chilies, cilantro and
red onion, kind of a turn on Welsh rarebit.
“Street snacks” include crisp “Dahl (yogurt) Puri
and Paani (water) Puri” of flour puffs filled with
potato and chickpea chaat with spiced yogurt and
tamarind mint water, coming to the table looking
like snails or broken duck eggs.Crispy
okra ($5) is to be popped in the mouth as a palate
stimulant. Deliciously creamy paneer tikka
(right)
is suffused with herbs and spices, Bell peppers
and onions, colored with turmeric. “Railway
Chicken Curry” ($19) is an echo of the kinds of
dishes the British made a part of their own
gastronomy, adding tomato, onion, mustard seed and
curry leaf.It seems everybody’s favorite at Royal
Munkey—and it was mine, too—are the
tandoor-grilled Bombay lamb chops ($27), marinated
in five spices, served with lightly sautéed green
beans, and mint-spiced potatoes (aloo)
with apple-butter chutney.Bagara
Baigan ($14) was superb—a lush preparation
of colorful roasted eggplant in a peanut and
sesame curry and rich ghee
buttered rice with naan
bread. As
is so often the case in Indian restaurants, the
steamy, smoky breads exceed their humble place on
the table as simple accompaniments. They are
irresistible here. The desserts here go a bit beyond the
usual, and are all made on premises, including gajar halwa,
a pudding of sliced, long-cooked carrots whose own
sweetness mingles with the flavor and texture of
crushed pistachios; the too-heavy “Cricket
Rum-Ball” is a dark rum-soaked chocolate cake,
while the warm and comforting seviyaan
vermicelli noodles are caramelized with coconut
milk and brown sugar and spiced with cardamom.
Royal
Munkey would be a destination for its unique take
on Indian food alone, but adding in the raffish
look of a Bombay club replete with its namesake
simians makes it doubly appealing for an
entertaining night out.
The
Royal Munkey is open for lunch and dinner daily
11a.m.-2 a.m., with brunch on weekends.
There is a
dinner prix-fixe is $34 and includes a choice of
cocktail or wine.
❖❖❖
NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
THE ART OF
WINERIES by Mort Hochstein
Painting by
Franz Gertsch at Hess Collection
You may pay to sip wine
and dine throughout Napa, but savoring art is
often a delightful and free experience. Many
wineries have become showcases for art in all
its forms and worth visiting for their cultural
aspect. The
leading gallery in my estimation is at the Hess
Collection winery high atop Mount
Veeder, where there’s no charge for viewing
museum-quality work in near perfect
surroundings. Visitors
get the benefit of owner Donald Hess’s passion for
contemporary art. It’s an appetite he has been
indulging for well over a half century and his
enthusiasm is on display at wineries on three
continents.At Napa,his museum rambles over several floors,
sharing space with a modern winery in an imposing
structure which once housed the legendary
Christian Brothers monastery and winery. Hess,
born
to an entrepreneurial Swiss father who had little
regard for fine art, purchased his first painting
in 1960,a
portrait of Ambroise Vollard, a Parisian art
dealer, and only later did he learn that it was an
original by Picasso. He opened the Napa exhibit in
1989 and followed withinstallations at Glen Carlou
Vineyards in Paarl, South Africa, in 2006 and in
2009 at the James Turrell Museum at Bodega &
Estancia Colome in northwest Argentina He has
since amassed more than 1,000 pieces, and those
three galleries and a Swiss storehouse are barely
able to hold all his acquisitions.Many
are often on loan to other museums. I was fortunate
to attend the opening at Napa. One piece that
struck me then remains in my memory, and it was
the first work I sought out when I visited
recently.It
is an ancient Underwood typewriter with flames
flaring from its frame.Those flames shock visitors
at an upper floor entrance.
The jolting work by Leopoldo Maier honors his
uncle, a fiery editor who was assassinated for his
criticism of the Argentine government. Familiar
names like Robert Motherwell, Francis Bacon,
Gerhard Richter and Franz Gertsch stand out in the
collection of more than 150 pieces, all hung with
ample space and literate wall plaques far superior
to those often found in museums. Hess acquires
pieces that touch him personally and is primarily
interested in work by living artists, often at the
start of their careers. By following them over the
years, he has amassed one of the most important
private art collections in the world. The museum
emphasizes an exceptional outreach program that
attracts grade school students from nearby schools
as well as high school and college art class
groups.The
younger children are invited to a private tour,
ending with a tasting of cookies and milk served
in a wine glass.The museum is open daily, without charge,
from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and self-guided iPod
audio tours are available.Visitors
can also join a docent in a Tour of the Palate,
ending their viewing with a pairing of wine and
food in a private dining room ($40).
The
art at Hall
Wineryin
St.
Helena is more limited, about half the number on
view at Hess, but pieces are displayed in more
dramatic fashion in a strikingly modern visitors’
center. Floor to ceiling windows looking out on
green vineyards provide an airy feel to the
tasting room, while also allowing visitors natural
light exposure to the art as well as another view
of giant stand-alone pieces which greeted them on
arrival (left). Like Donald Hess, Kathryn and Craig Hall
are collectors and patrons, and the art is a
showcase for their personal tastes.The
museum reflects a liking for modern, colorful,
eye-popping designs, an attitude manifested in the
attention-grabbing “Garden Plot,” a giant circular
piece known as a tondo by
Nick Cave at the tasting room entrance. Other
works by artists such as Lawrence Argent, John
Baldessari, Graham Caldwell and Jaume Piensa are
mounted in public spaces, between stacked barrels
in the wine cellar and alongside processing gear.
It is an informal form of art display, one
that excites the imagination by its proximity to
the facilities it neighbors. The winery is open to the public from 10
a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily, with no charge for
individual roaming. A45 -minute tour of the
winery, its grounds, art and architecture is
conducted periodically each day, ($40), including
a private, seated tasting. Each Sunday at 11 a.m.,
Hall offers a wine and art tour for $40, and has
waived that fee in April to celebrate Art Month.
Visitors may take an advance look by visiting the
website:
Artesa
Wineryin the Carneros district of
Napa is an outpost of Codorniu Cellars, the
Spanish sparkling wine giant whose original
facility is a landmarked artisticand
historical monument.That heritage continues at
Artesa, which proudly boasts an artist in
residence.Gordon Heuther’s glass and sculpture
installations can be found in airports,
universities and corporate environments as well as
in private homes. At Artesa, Heuther creates works
in glass, metal and canvas, periodically
introducing new pieces and conducting showings.
Cliff Lede,
founder of the eponymous winery in Yountville, is
a rock music devotee, so the art here includes six
signed guitars and 30 paintings by Jerry Garcia,
part of an exhibit which changes periodically. Two
giant sculptures greet visitors and other
contemporary paintings are scattered throughout
the winery and in private tasting rooms in the
state of the art facility.
Mumm Napa,
which was the first sparkling wine producer to be
founded in Napa by a French champagne company,
pays homage to the great American photographer
Ansel Adams. Mumm’s art gallery features 27 silver
prints of scenes at Yosemite, the Western desert
and national parks and lakes (right).
Turnbull Wine
Cellars in Oakville is also home to
dramatic photography by Adams. His breathtaking
nature pictures are mounted throughout the winery,
many of them in spaces between barrels.
Del Dotto Venetian
Estate Winery at St. Helena lives
up to its name as an Italian castle in wine
country. It celebrates the family’s roots, traced
back to 1150 Venice.The rooms and caves are
lined with Italian marble and ancient tiles
depicting the history of wine.
❖❖❖
ALL THE MORE
REASON MORNING COFFEE BREAKS
SHOULD LAST AT LEAST AN HOUR
A study by Yale and U. Connecticut in Pediatric
Obesity followed
600 middle-school students for two years with regard
to their eating patterns and weight, if they
had zero breakfast,
breakfast either at home or at school, or breakfast
in both places. They found that weight gain among
second-breakfast eaters (one in ten children) was no
different from the average gain seen among all
students. Kids who didn't eat breakfast, or ate it
only sometimes, were twice as likely to be
overweight or obese as double-breakfasters.
ANDREW
ZIMMERN ASKED IF THERE WERE ANY LEFTOVERS
You also write about consuming your
daughter’s placenta in dried, powdered form. You
characterize that as a difficult decision to make.
Was there some cultural taboo that was holding you
back?
"No! I was just grossed out. I mean, look, you’re
talking to a girl who grew up as a Brahmin Hindu and was
a vegetarian for her formative years, so the idea of
eating any meat, let alone your own, took some time for
me to get used to. I think making that final leap to
eating my own flesh, in whatever form, was a little
difficult. I wanted to write about it because I never
had the chance to talk about that sort of thing on `Top
Chef.'’’—"Padma Lakshmi
Won’t Date Men Who Aren’t Feminists" interview with Ana
Marie Cox, NY Times
(3/17/16).
❖❖❖
This
article is sponsored by Banfi Wines.
Celebrate
National Grilled Cheese Month with Pesto
Mozzarella Grilled Cheese By April Preisler,FoodnFocus
If you
were to ask me about my favorite cuisine I would hands
down say Italian. All things Italian. Pasta, pesto,
delicious cheese, you name it and I love it. Perhaps the
fact that I’m half-Italian plays into this love. I was
also born and raised in Wisconsin which means that I’m
also a lover of cheese so the fact that April is
National Grilled Cheese Month has me swooning over
deliciously cheesy sandwiches.
Combining my two loves I decided to
create a delicious grilled cheese sandwich to celebrate
the occasion. And of course, I’ve paired it with a
classic Italian wine: Chianti. The sandwich is comprised
of a hearty Italian bread, fresh mozzarella cheese,
pesto and tomatoes. This sandwich is best in the summer
when the tomatoes are in season and you can prepare
fresh pesto but there is certainly jarred pesto
available that work well too.
I paired this grilled cheese sandwich
with the Banfi Tuscany Chianti
Classico
DOCG, a wine that features big flavors of
cherries, plums and violet. This wine is rich enough to
compliment the flavors of the fresh mozzarella and pesto
but not overpower them.
This sandwich is hearty enough to eat
for dinner with a glass of chianti or light enough to
enjoy for lunch. If you’re looking for a reason to
celebrate National Grilled Cheese Month, this sandwich
and wine pairing are certainly the way to do it!
Recipe:
Pesto Mozzarella Grilled Cheese
Serves 2
Ingredients:
4 slices hearty Italian
bread
1/3 cup pesto
1 medium tomato, sliced
1 8-ounce mozzarella ball,
sliced
2 tablespoons butter
Directions:
Heat a large cast iron
skillet over medium-high heat. Butter 1 side of each of
the 4 slices of bread.
Place two slices of bread,
butter side down, in the heated pan. Divide the pesto
between the two slices and spread evenly. Top the pesto
with cheese, tomatoes and cheese again and place the
second slice of bread on top, butter side up.
Cook the sandwich until it
is golden brown on each side and serve immediately.
❖❖❖
Any of John Mariani's
books below may be ordered from amazon.com.
The Hound in Heaven
(21st Century Lion Books) is a novella, and
for anyone who loves dogs, Christmas, romance,
inspiration, even the supernatural, I hope you'll find
this to be a treasured favorite. The story
concerns how, after a New England teacher, his wife and
their two daughters adopt a stray puppy found in their
barn in northern Maine, their lives seem full of promise.
But when tragedy strikes, their wonderful dog Lazarus and
the spirit of Christmas are the only things that may bring
his master back from the edge of despair.
“What a huge surprise turn this story took! I was
completely stunned! I truly enjoyed this book and its
message.” – Actress Ali MacGraw
“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.
“John Mariani’s Hound in
Heaven starts with a well-painted portrayal of an
American family, along with the requisite dog. A surprise
event flips the action of the novel and captures us for a
voyage leading to a hopeful and heart-warming message. A
page turning, one sitting read, it’s the perfect antidote
for the winter and promotion of holiday celebration.” – Ann
Pearlman, author of The
Christmas Cookie Club and A Gift for my Sister.
“John Mariani’s concise, achingly beautiful novella pulls a
literary rabbit out of a hat – a mash-up of the cosmic and
the intimate, the tragic and the heart-warming – a Christmas
tale for all ages, and all faiths. Read it to your children,
read it to yourself… but read it. Early and often. Highly
recommended.” – Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling
author of Pinkerton’s War,
The Sinking of The Eastland, and The Walking Dead: The Road To
Woodbury.
“Amazing things happen when you open your heart to an
animal. The Hound in
Heaven delivers a powerful story of healing that
is forged in the spiritual relationship between a man and
his best friend. The book brings a message of hope that can
enrich our images of family, love, and loss.” – Dr. Barbara
Royal, author of The
Royal Treatment.
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.
"This book is amazing! It has entries for
everything from `abalone' to `zwieback,' plus more
than 500 recipes for classic American dishes and
drinks."--Devra First, The Boston Globe.
"Much needed in any kitchen library."--Bon Appetit.
Now in Paperback,
too--How Italian Food Conquered the
World (Palgrave Macmillan) has won top prize from the
Gourmand
World Cookbook Awards. It is
a rollicking history of the food culture of
Italy and its ravenous embrace in the 21st
century by the entire world. From ancient Rome
to la dolce
vita of post-war Italy, from Italian
immigrant cooks to celebrity chefs, from
pizzerias to high-class ristoranti,
this chronicle of a culinary diaspora is as
much about the world's changing tastes,
prejudices, and dietary fads as about
our obsessions with culinary fashion and
style.--John Mariani
"Eating Italian will
never be the same after reading
John Mariani's entertaining and
savory gastronomical history of
the cuisine of Italy and how it
won over appetites worldwide. . .
. This book is such a tasteful
narrative that it will literally
make you hungry for Italian food
and arouse your appetite for
gastronomical history."--Don
Oldenburg, USA Today.
"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.
"Mariani
admirably dishes out the story of
Italy’s remarkable global ascent
to virtual culinary
hegemony....Like a chef gladly
divulging a cherished family
recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the
secret sauce about how Italy’s
cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David
Lincoln Ross,
thedailybeast.com
"Equal parts
history, sociology, gastronomy, and just
plain fun, How Italian Food Conquered the
World tells the captivating and delicious
story of the (let's face it) everybody's
favorite cuisine with clarity, verve and
more than one surprise."--Colman Andrews,
editorial director of The Daily
Meal.com.
"A fantastic and fascinating
read, covering everything from the influence
of Venice's spice trade to the impact of
Italian immigrants in America and the
evolution of alta cucina. This book will
serve as a terrific resource to anyone
interested in the real story of Italian
food."--Mary Ann Esposito, host of PBS-TV's
Ciao
Italia.
"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.
❖❖❖
FEATURED
LINKS: I am happy to report
that the Virtual
Gourmet is linked to four excellent
travel sites:
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 (the fourth
edition of which will be published in early
2016), 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.
nickonwine:
An engaging, interactive
wine column by Nick Passmore, Artisanal Editor, Four
Seasons Magazine; Wine Columnist, BusinessWeek.com;
nick@nickonwine.com; www.nickonwine.com.
MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher: John
Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher Mariani,
Robert Mariani,Misha
Mariani,
John A. Curtas, Edward Brivio, Mort Hochstein,
Andrew Chalk,Dotty Griffith and Brian Freedman. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Dargery, Bobby
Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.