MARIANI’S
Virtual Gourmet
![]() Baked
Alaska at The Rainbow Room, NYC, circa 1970
❖❖❖ IN THIS ISSUE BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND By John Mariani MASTER FRENCH CHEF JOËL ROBUCHON DIES AT 73 BY John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER TOCQUEVILLE By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR WINES I'M DRINKING NOW By John Mariani ❖❖❖ BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND By John Mariani ![]() Blithewold Mansion & Arboretum (Photo: Galina Dargery) There are more famous historic towns in New England, but few possess the small town prettiness of Bristol, Rhode Island, whose territory was once occupied by the Wampanoag Indians and later became part of the vast Plymouth Colony. Being quite a ways off Interstate 95 and without the island appeal of Newport, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, Bristol has managed to stave off tourism overkill and maintain its character, which is based on colonial, 19th century, Gilded Age and pre-war architectural gems and a notable history as a deepwater sailing port where for a quarter century the America’s Cup yachts were designed and built.
This month the annual Bristol Harbor Festival will include a blessing of the fleet and a stuffed quahog (called “stuffies”) competition. In September, Raptor Weekend at the Audubon Experimental Education Center will feature two days devoted to eagles, owls, falcons and hawks, followed on September 30 by the Bristol Burger Bash and Bluegrass festival at the Linden Place Mansion. Starting in November holiday events abound, leading up to the Grand Illumination of Hope Street.
The principal attractions on
a grand scale include the unique Blithewold Mansion
and Arboretum (above), centered by a
magnificent but unpretentious 45-room
English-style summer manor house owned by the Van
Wickles family and surrounded by 33 acres of both
local and exotic plants, shrubs and trees that
lead down to Bristol Bay. Landscape designer John
DeWolf’s original concepts were to incorporate the
Colonial Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. Linden Place Mansion is a striking “Great House,” whose 19th century owners were among the wealthiest slave traders in the U.S. Today it is a marvelous venue for weddings (my niece was married there) and the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby used it as a location. It also houses the Bristol Art Museum.
My wife and I stayed within the pastoral beauty of
the national historic site Mount Hope Farm,
whose 1745 colonial house was owned by Governor
William Bradford. It has been dubbed by locals as
“the Grand Lady No one with even a vague interest in New England’s maritime history can fail to visit the Herreshoff Marine Museum (below), where the restoration of some glorious old wooden boats goes on slowly and steadily, while in the front of the edifice is an extraordinary exhibition of seafaring dating from1859, when it was a working shipbuilding concern under the Nathanael G. Herreshoff family, who built several America’s Cup contenders. Between 1893 and 1914 Herreshoff designed and built seven of the largest sloops ever launched, and five Cup defenders all won in their year. (It is also home to the America’s Cup Hall of Fame.)
More traditional and representative of the big
seafood houses that line the New England shoreline You can build your own raw bar plate with oysters, clams, shrimps and crabmeat. There’s also quahog clam chowder and a rich lobster bisque, steamers and jumbo lump crabcakes, a very hefty lobster roll with French fries and slaw and a clam roast with grilled artisan bread. Its “classics” include a diversity of lobster dishes, of course, along with baked stuffed jumbo shrimp, broiled scrod, and a baked seafood casserole of fish, scallops, crab, shrimp, clams browned with seasoned breadcrumbs. And there's a whole category of expertly fried seafood. I think a restaurant of this style, caliber and longevity should have a better wine list, but to feast on seafood there while drinking a glass of La Crema Chardonnay and watching the sun dip below the Bay is as pleasant an evening as one can have in New England. In the mornings the options for just taking you’re time and walking through the old streets of town and along Hope Street, its main route, you’ll find bakeries like Angelina’s (good scones and pastries and excellent coffee) and the Beehive Café is always full of locals who come for the brownies, macaroons, Queen Bee chocolate cake and pumpkin pie. There are art galleries and darling boutiques like Grasmere, known for its beautiful preserved flowers. On our morning stroll, we happened upon the Island Child Care Center in the midst of a graduation, with toddlers trying to stay in double file as they received their diplomas. It was the kind of unexpected event that, after a while, you come to expect in a town like Bristol.
AND A LITTLE
NORTH OF BRISTOL. . . Persimmon 99 Hope Street Providence, RI 401-432-7422
Up until two years ago Bristol was
home to one of the finest restaurants in New
England, called Persimmon, quite a labor of love
in a small town by chef Champe Speidel and his
wife Lisa. After
eleven years they moved the restaurant to
Providence (about 20 minutes northwest) to larger
quarters (85 seats), with an open kitchen and very
popular bar lounge.
Now, with its reputation intact and a much
bigger pond to draw from, Persimmon is very much
on people’s radar when visiting or passing
through Providence from the north or south.
On a recent visit, my wife began with excellent,
puffy focaccia,
arancini
rice balls in a cream sauce and truffled beignets,
all of which we could have made a meal of. A
beautiful, silky asparagus soup with smoked ham
and duck egg was remarkably light but very rich
($12), and then came “chicken and waffles” made of
chicken
A green salad was composed of native wild greens
in a tangy Green Goddess broth ($9). Canaroli
rice was used for a well-rendered risotto with
tender creamed leeks, glazed baby onions and green
onions ($15). A crispy chicken leg was artfully
stuffed with veal sweetbreads and morel mushroom
sauce ($19).
Never does Champe blur flavors by adding too many
ingredients to a dish. Everything seems perfectly
matched for maximum effect. Equally so, desserts
like a Valrhona chocolate semi-freddo
with hazelnuts ($9) and a citrus custard and
cheese tart ($9) aim for a sharp intensity rather
then frilly aromatics.
Persimmon is an exceptionally friendly place,
casually cast but with a clientele that wears good
sports clothes for a night out. The Speidels (Lisa
recently had a baby) are as devoted to their
cuisine as they are to their guests, and anyone
from Manhattan to Maine looking for a superb meal
must head North Northwest from Bristol. Persimmon is open Tues.-Sat. for
dinner.
❖❖❖ NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani TOCQUEVILLE
1 East 15th Street (near Fifth Avenue) 212-647-1515 ![]() The term “fine dining” has always been in flux, ever since restaurants were created in France in the late 18th century. For more than a century in America the name applied almost exclusively to French restaurants, but by the 20th century there were culinary deviations at some very grand as well as at some very intimate places where the décor, cooking, management, staff and sense of refinement—even when things got rowdy—defined what it meant to dine out above the level of a diner, a beanery, an eatery or roadhouse.
At Tocqueville food obviously plays a major part
in fine dining, but it also has as much to do
with decor,
tablesettings, stemware, silverware, lighting,
noise level, courtesy, professionalism and
commitment to high standards, which extends to
the bar and the wine cellar. You enter a
dining room that epitomizes modern elegance,
with soft lighting, warm colors, a chandelier
set at exactly the right height, golden
curtains, textured carpet, long tablecloths,
very comfortable chairs and complementary
works of art. Women dress well The service staff is always at your beck and call, wanting to know your preferences, happy to discuss wines and food. Owner and executive chef Marco Moreira (right), who grew up in São Paolo, has long experience in high-end New York restaurants, and while his cooking is soundly based on traditions, his cuisine doesn’t taste quite like anyone else’s. With chef de cuisine Julian Wargnies, he has crafted an à la carte menu whose main courses top out at $48—less than the price of a lone ribeye at a Manhattan steakhouse—and there is a five-course menu at $135 (with paired wines $65 extra) and seven courses for $155 (wines $85 more). Compare those with the three-course $172 dinner at La Grénouille. There is also a Greenmarket Menu at dinner for $69 for three courses. Risotto blended with Meyer lemon, summer squash and a nut butter ($24/$38) had plenty of flavor, though the rice was a bit overcooked.
There are seven entrees, each very distinctive
but clearly guided by the same hand. A dish that
seems rarely to leave the menu is seared sea
scallops paired beautifully with freshly sautéed
foie gras, wild mushrooms, fava beans, braised
artichokes and a brisk cider vinegar ($46),
while lobster poached in butter came with
rosemary-flecked potatoes, Tuscan kale and a
marvelous reduction of Barolo wine ($48), an
extremely rich and completely satisfying dish. There
was more foie gras (Moreira is intent on winning
you over) accompanied by impeccably roasted
chicken and a chicken galantine you won’t find
easily elsewhere, sided with Savoy cabbage, a
potato mousseline that will put you in mind of
Joël Robuchon’s, black truffles and a confit of
carrots ($38).
He gives a very light smokiness to
tender, pink duck breast with caramelized endive
and pineapple for sweetness as a foil to the
duck juice reduction ($42). There is a good selection of cheeses ($18), currently from France, Spain, Wisconsin and Vermont, and just five desserts, by Armando Mendez, which include a lovely passion fruit Pavolva meringue with coconut flan ($15); a sweet-sour Granny Smith tart with acacia-honey ice cream ($15); a strawberry rhubarb napoleon of to-the-touch fragility ($15), and two terrific chocolate desserts: a dark chocolate and hazelnut bon bon with hazelnut ice cream ($16), and an impressive textured bittersweet chocolate soufflé with refreshing fresh mint ice cream ($18). You expect a great and well-chosen wine list from a restaurant of this caliber and longevity, and it certainly ranks among New York’s best. Do not expect bargains. You need not look far in New York to find refined dining, but at Tocqueville the evolution of such a personal style shows the folly of mere fashion and frenzied invention. Tocqueville is always changing in order to remain wholly itself. Tocqueville is open for lunch and dinner Tues.-Sat.; for dinner only on Sun. ❖❖❖ MASTER FRENCH CHEF JOËL ROBUCHON DIES AT 73 By John Mariani During his 60-year career his restaurants would win 28 Michelin stars—the most of any chef in the world—yet he was, ironically, best known for his decadent butter-rich mashed potatoes (below) rather than for any other dishes he created for any of his kitchens. Born
in Poitiers to a stonemason father and a mother
who cleaned houses, he learned to cook from the
local nuns and his first job as a cook was at the
Mauéon-sur-Sévres seminary in Deux-Sévres. After
his culinary apprenticeship, Robuchon was able to
travel through Europe cooking at various
restaurants, and by the age of 31
Robuchon’s international fame came in the 1990s
with the opening of his Paris restaurant Jamin,
which won three Michelin stars, but by 1995 the
stress of maintaining the rigorously demanding
standards and expense of such a restaurant forced
him into retirement at the age of 50. When he
did make a comeback he eschewed haute cuisine to
open a far more casual-style modern bistro called
L’Atelier de
Joël Robuchon, which had counter service and a
global menu. He repeated that formula in New York
and Las Vegas, where the MGM Grand also made him
an offer he couldn’t refuse to open a very posh,
exceedingly expensive restaurant that, with his
colleague Guy Savoy’s namesake restaurant, truly
brought high-end fine dining to a Careful not to burn out, Robuchon rarely appeared and almost never cooked in any of his restaurants, becoming more of an overseer of his international empire, usually signing management contracts and stocking the restaurants with brigades of cooks he trained. This year, after closing two Singapore restaurants, he went back into the New York market with another L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in the Financial District. In the kitchen Robuchon could be a hard-driving taskmaster—Ramsay said Robuchon once threw a plate of poorly cooked ravioli at him—but outside of it he seemed very shy. I recall the story of how driven he was to obtain only the best of the best ingredients available in a city, once refusing perhaps eight out of a dozen baskets of raspberries brought to him for inspection. I met Robuchon once while he was in New York opening L’Atelier, in an interview conducted through an interpreter, since the master’s English was close to non-existent and my French was high school level. I found he answered questions with little emotion, like someone who wanted to be anywhere else than in an interview. He spoke of how he was trying very hard to find ingredients the equal of those he obtained in Paris and how he really didn’t know the American palate. Working in a union-dominated kitchen eventually compromised Robuchon’s abilities to orchestrate as he wished and the restaurant closed.
But I also remember that, as he stood behind the
marble counter, quietly directing his French
cooks, inspecting each dish for the tiniest Weeks later I returned to L’Atelier and had one of the more disappointing meals of my life, with little of the vitality and intensity of the one I’d so enjoyed when Robuchon was there. But Robuchon could not be everywhere and now he is nowhere on earth to be found. He’s only to be greatly missed, for he was a beacon of the grand traditions of French cuisine and a chef who urged his people to go further and taste more, learn new techniques and make trends, not follow them. He was never in the molecular cuisine mode, nor did he much enjoy being a celebrity chef, unless it was together with his friends like other master chefs Paul Bocuse, Roger Vergé, Alain Senderens and others, now also gone. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine another like Robuchon appearing at a time when fine dining is under siege. Fortunately, we’ll always have his books and his recipes and his enduring influence on at least two generations of chefs.
❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
![]() By John Mariani Summer, I’m told, will end and the heat will lift, but I’m hedging my bets by drinking a lot of lighter bodied wines and spirits and trying out some well-priced bottlings I’ve never had before. LES DAUPHINS CÔTES DU RHONE RÉSERVE
BLANC 2016 ($9)—Very, very few wines
under ten dollars have the charm of this blend
of 65% Grenache, 15% ALPHA ESTATE AXIA RED 2014 ($20)—Although Greek whites are among the best wines for summer, the country’s reds tend to have a lighter body than those of western Europe, and this 50-50 blend of Xinomavro and Syrah spends seven months on the lees to gain structure, but twelve months in oak softens the tannins of the Xinomavro, while the Syrah brings rich fruit to the mix. Very good with lamb, as you’d expect from a Greek wine. INAMA VIN SOAVE CLASSICO 2017 ($15)—After Bolla had enormous success with Soave in the late 1960s, a tsunami of inferior Soave hit the global market and, with few exceptions, were not worth drinking. Inama, whose family owners date to the 1960s in Soave production, make this fine example without using any oak aging, so it’s as fresh, fruity and sprightly as the varietal can be. At 12% alcohol it’s easy to drink, perfect with sushi. ÉMILE BEYER PINOT GRIS TRADITION 2016 ($18)—As one of Alsace’s premier estates, dating back to the 16th century in Eguisheim, Émile Beyer has 42 acres of vineyards, one-third classified as Grand Cru. This is a Pinot Gris with good body, a pleasing 13.5% alcohol, and a decided sweetness of style with none of the acrid notes of so many Italian Pinot Grigios. It’s made to chill well and be served with melon and ham or with cheeses and fruit. SCAIA ROSATO 2017 ($13)—A pale-colored Italian rosé with summery qualities of peaches and pears and a good acidity for balance. Made by the Castagnedi family of Veneto from Rondinella grapes at 12.5% alcohol, it is what a simple rosé should be at a reasonable price, with more aromatics than so many other bland examples. ARGYLE RESERVE PINOT NOIR 2015 ($30)—Argyle
was one of the first Oregon wineries I ever
visited, where I discovered that the terroir
out there was very promising for growing Pinot
Noir. Now,
decades
later, Argyle is one of the Willamette
Valley’s finest producers, and this Reserve
Pinot Noir, with 14.1% alcohol, blending
grapes from three PAPA’S PILAR PLATINUM BLONDE RUM ($30)—I suppose the Hemingway Rum Company out of Key West, where Papa Hemingway moored his boat The Pilar, got permission to use the late author’s name for this line, which has a dark as well as a blonde version. Hemingway’s own rum of choice was Bacardi white or, in Cuba, Havana Club. In any case, what I liked about this pale rum, at 92 proof, aged in Sherry casks, is that it has a fine balance between white rum and dark, making it ideal for a Daiquiri, my drink of choice year round.
❖❖❖
|
![]() |
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. "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. |
"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.
"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.
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
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
newsletter, please click here: http://www.johnmariani.com/subscribe/index.html
© copyright John Mariani 2017