Diamonds Are Forever (1956) was Ian Fleming’s fourth novel, adapted for the screen in 1971, starring Sean Connery after he’d left the series after You Only Live Twice. Fleming was inspired by a Sunday Times story about diamond smuggling, and it gave him the opportunity to send 007 to many locations where he had a good number of opportunities to wine and dine.
     The book’s plot involves Bond infiltrating the Spangled Mob smuggling ring in Sierra Leone by impersonating a smuggler himself. There he meets Tiffany Case, a gang member whose hatred for all men is due to being gang raped as a teenager. The action moves to the U.S. as Bond tracks down Seraffino Spang, head of the gang, at Saratoga Race Track in upstate New York, where 007 is told to bet on a rigged horse race in order to get his fee for smuggling in diamonds. Afterwards, he travels to Las Vegas to get his fee, which he obtains in a rigged blackjack game for which Tiffany Case is the dealer. Spang suspects Bond of being a plant and kidnaps him, bringing him to his private estate named Spectreville, where Bond is roughed up before he can escape on a railway push-car, with Spang following on an old Western train. Bond shoots Spang and, with Tiffany, heads for New York to board the RMS Queen Elizabeth. Onboard, two Spang thugs, named Wint and Kidd, seize Tiffany, but Bond rescues her and kills both gangsters. The story then returns to Sierra Leone, where Bond shuts down the diamond-smuggling pipeline and kills Spang in his helicopter.
      At the beginning of the story, Bond is staying at The Ritz (left) in London and takes his MI6 colleague Bill Tanner for a lunch of dressed crab and a “pint of black velvet” at Fleming’s favorite restaurant, Scott’s. The pint of black velvet is not the brand of whiskey by that name but a mix of stout,  ale and Champagne.
       While waiting to board his BOAC flight to New York from Shannon Airport in Ireland, Bond enjoys a steak and Champagne dinner, ending of with Irish coffee, a drink that originated at Foynes Dock, where during the war the seaplanes took off from. The concoction was created by chef Joe Sheridan in 1942 and featured as a promotion for Irish whiskey at Shannon as of 1947. It was introduced to the U.S. in 1952 at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Bar.
     In New York Bond dines upstairs with Felix Leiter at the Theater District restaurant Sardi’s (left), ordering martinis and Nova Scotia salmon that Fleming calls “a poor substitute for the product from Scotland,” followed by “brizzola” (braciola, Italian beef rolls) made with a California vermouth (“best I’ve ever tasted,” says Bond) and half a dressed avocado and espresso. The next day over lunch at ‘21’ Club (right) on West 52nd Street, Tiffany tells him she won’t sleep with him, saying, “It’s going to take more than Crabmeat Ravigote to get me into bed.  In any case, since it’s your check, I’m going to have the caviar and what you English call cutlets and some pink champagne.” The Champagne is a rosé Veuve Clicquot, which they enjoy with the veal cutlets, asparagus with sauce mousseline and white stingers (Cognac and white crème de menthe, potent cocktail that seems wholly out of place with dinner).   
       The real life partner-owner of the restaurant, Pete Kriendler, who with his brother and Charlie Berns had opened ‘21’ during Prohibition, comes over to greet Tiffany as a regular, and she quips that his “little hot-dog stand isn’t doing too badly.” Tiffany does in fact pick up the check, inexplicably, but won’t renege on her promise to stay out of Bond’s bed, later telling him she has never slept with a man after the gang rape incident. The next day Bond dines alone at Voisin (above) on Park Avenue, then one of New York’s most luxurious French-Viennese restaurants, ordering two vodka martinis, eggs Benedict and strawberries.
     In the next chapter Bond leaves with Leiter for Saratoga, stopping along the way for a lunch at Chicken in the Basket on the Taconic Parkway, avoiding the “fresh mountain trout” that “had spent months in some distant deep-freeze,” instead ordering scrambled eggs with rye toast and iced coffee. In Saratoga he checks into the Sagamore Hotel, based on the original Pavilion Hotel (right), built in 1819, which was the most opulent of its time. (There is a Sagamore Resort on Lake George, but it is 60 miles from Saratoga Springs.) Bond takes a walk through town and drops into a local spot for two bourbons and a $4.50 fried chicken dinner. That evening he joins Felix at the Pavilion restaurant in the hotel for a meal of lobsters and martinis made with Cresta Blanca white vermouth. Bond also orders a bourbon with “branch water,” supposedly very pure water from a stream, which Bond notes is not going to be available in Las Vegas (although later a Vegas barman assures him he flies in branch water regularly from Boulder Dam!)
     When the action shifts to Vegas, 007 checks into the fictitious Tiara Hotel, ordering poolside a plate of cherrystone clams and a steak. After his escape with Tiffany from Spang, they head for the Beverly Hills Hotel (left), the famous “Pink Palace” opened in 1912 for Hollywood industry stars and filmmakers, but they soon must leave for the airport to fly  overnight on a Trans-World Airlines Super-G Constellation, Flight 93. Upon arriving in New York, they happily board the “great safe black belly” of the Queen Elizabeth.
      Tiffany suffers from sea sickness, but on the third night out, Bond meets her for martinis at the Observation Ba (below), and they plan to dine at the Verandah Grill. She still insists the Englishman is after “her family jewels,” as they sip vodka martinis, and she asks, “tell me what sort of woman you think would add to you.” Bond responds, “Somebody who can make sauce Béarnaise as well as make love,” causing her to ask him to take her to her stateroom. Bond returns to his cabin, there is a knock at the door, and a waiter brings in a quarter-bottle of Bollinger Champagne, a chafing dish with four slices of beef on toast, a small bowl of sauce Béarnaise and a note reading, “This sauce Béarnaise has just been created by Miss T. Case without any assistance from me. Signed, The Chef.”
      Location-wise, Bond in the movie meets hustler Plenty O’Toole at the Whyte House, owned by the character Willard Whyte, in the movie played by Jimmy Dean, (filmed at The Riviera, though the hotel façade was actually the Las Vegas International Hotel, later the Hilton). Plenty ends up thrown into the pool below Bond’s suite by three henchmen.  Bond was staying at The Tropicana but then moves to Tiffany’s suite at  the Whyte House.   
      

There is nothing close to the number of food and drink mentions in the 1971 movie of Diamonds Are Forever, whose plot line differs radically from the novel’s and occurs in 1970, with references to the Apollo moon landing. There are, though, three important incidents in the film involving Bond’s knowledge of wine.
      In the first, 007 is meeting with his boss M and Sir Donald Munger to discuss the South African smuggling operations. Munger hands Bond a glass of Sherry, but M refuses for “health reasons.” Bond sniffs the Sherry (above) and says, “Too bad about your liver, sir. It’s an unusually fine Solera, ‘51, I think.” M snorts, “There are no years for Sherry, 007,” to which Bond replies, “I was speaking about the original Sherry on which it is based . . . 1851.” Bond’s snarky remark refers to the fact that Sherries are made from a blend of various batches from a harvest’s barrels stacked in tiers, to be blended with other, older wines. So, Bond is referring to the harvest of 1851, a brandishing of his connoisseurship nearly impossible for anyone, even in the Sherry trade, to match.
      The second instance is when Bond, posing as a smuggler, visits Tiffany (Jill St. John) in her flat in Amsterdam, impersonating a smuggler she’s expecting. Tiffany invites him to pour himself a drink, and after he does so, she takes his glass and says, “I’ll get you some ice,” then out of sight dusts it for fingerprints, not knowing that he has replicated the man whose identity he has assumed with thin plastic adhesives of his fingerprints provided by his faithful MI6 inventor, Q (above).
       The last occurred while crossing the Atlantic—not on the Elizabeth, which had been taken out of service in 1968, but on the S.S. Canberra (left), which went into service in 1960 (and later served as a troop ship in the Falklands War of 1982). Two of Spang’s henchmen pose as waiters delivering Bond’s dinner of oysters Andaluz (fried with green chilies and chorizo), “tidbits of beef” shashlik on burning skewers,  breadsticks, Courvoisier Cognac, wine and a bombe surprise, which is, of course, an actual bomb.
      Suspicious of the two men, Bond inspects the wine bottle label, a Mouton-Rothschild (above), and says nonchalantly, “Hmm, for such a grand meal I rather expected a claret,” which is the British term for a red Bordeaux.   The villain replies, “Unfortunately our cellar is poorly stocked with clarets.” Bond says, “But Mouton-Rothschild is a claret,” exposing the man on the assumption that a wine steward on a luxury liner would never make such a fundamental mistake, adding, “and I’ve smelled that aftershave twice before, and both times I smelled a rat.” 
      The two villains attack Bond. One comes at him with the burning shashlik skewers; Bond smashes the bottle of Cognac and throws the contents at him, causing the man to burst into flames. The other man Bond flips over the side of the ship, with the bomb between the man’s legs. Bond watches the bomb explode and quips, "Well, he certainly left with his tail between his legs."

         I’m not sure why there is such a current uptick in the number of fine new Indian restaurants around town and outside of the traditional Indian neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Curry Hill, but I could hardly be happier to find them showing more and more regional and contemporary flair than in the past. Baazi, meaning “bet” in Hindi (as well as the name of a Bollywood action movie), is a significant entry and a departure, which is what I’ve come to expect from chef/owner Gaurav Anand (left), who for the past dozen years has opened a slew of restaurants both here and in New Delhi and Goa. In New York they have included Bhatti Indian Grill, Awadh and Moti Mahal Deluxe (which still does the best butter chicken anywhere).

      Anand is an ebullient fellow, bounding from the kitchen to the front door (there is outside dining) and from table to table, genially assisted by the engaging and lovely general manager Abla Atoubi. Baazi is set on two levels in a motif of royal blue and daffodil yellow, with a live olive tree inside and a wall of flowers. The bar is a smart place for Upper West Siders to meet, and, for once, I actually enjoyed the spiced-up cocktails, like the Old Monk Daiquiri with Old Monk 7-year aged Indian rum, pomegranate, lime, and a Spicy Ginger Margarita.

        The size of the menu makes perfect sense, just as the size of old-line Indian restaurants’ do not, filled with columns of dishes offering beef, lamb, chicken or shrimp cooked up in the same five sauces. At Baazi you find what you do not elsewhere, so the number of dishes—12 appetizers ($15-$26) and an equal number of main courses ($22-$29), all easy enough to share and to allow the kitchen to take the time focusing on their individuality.

     Peruse the menu and you’ll find dishes wholly new to New York, beginning with kali kachori ($15), a snack dish from Uttar Pradesh,  made with a charcoal cracker plumped up as moist lentil dumplings, along with chickpeas with aromatic mint, thick yogurt and pomegranate pearls.  Shakarkandi ($15) has nothing to do with the “Sharknado” comedies or candy: it is a chaat dish of crispy yams and fingerling potatoes dusted with chili lime and a sweet sour tamarind emulsion. If you like Indian paneer cheese dishes the ke sholey ($15) is a form of bread roll made with house made cottage cheese stuffed with raisins and a more cheese that is grilled. Papad kebab ($15) is presented in an elegant wooden box as a bite-size morsel of lentil cracker crusted with tangy Greek yogurt and a saffron aïoli.

      The only way I like to eat cauliflower is at Indian restaurants as aloo gobi ($16), a classic vegetarian dish at Baazi served with a sweet coating and onion seeds. Chicken cafreal ($19), whose origins in Goa derive from Portuguese merchants, is quite hearty for an appetizer, made with juicy Cornish hen marinated in mint and coriander.  So, too, the lamb ribs ($26) are delectably glazed with a sticky sweet tamarind-based sauce and the surprise of a coriander-sesame crunch (below). There are of course meat kebabs, here minced lamb patties breaded with papadum cracker crumbs with Greek tzatziki yogurt, pickle onions and the Tamil Nadu street bread paratha ($20).

      Although popular in India, you don’t expect to find cod (rohu) on an Indian menu in New York, but here it is as koliwada ($22), a Mumbai specialty of beautiful, succulent white cod with a salty and crispy okra and tartar sauce, while shrimp balchou (below) is another Goan dish of pan-seared prawn  with a very spicy, hot with chili pickle ($22).

      Anand does a vegetarian twist on butter chicken with his butter kala ($16) made with mushrooms and chickpeas. Butternut squash kofta with sweet corn curry, toasted pepitas and pumpkin oil ($16) is a gorgeous dish and will persuade any carnivore of the unique excellence of Indian vegetable curries.   

       Onion kulcha ($5) with whole wheat flour makes for a good side dish, and the basmati rice ($4) is flavored with lemon.

        Desserts, too, are far from the usual Indian sweets: a jalebi sandwich is a turn on the pastry funnel cake here with masala chai ice cream; Coconut sago payasam is a luscious dish of shaved roasted coconut, soft tapioca pearls, honey and served with mango sorbet.

      Baazi’s food by any name would be exciting, and as Indian food goes in  New York Anand is expanding the palette of the myriad styles of cuisine in the South with color, dash and tantalizing aromas, all served with exceptional grace.

Open nightly for dinner.