MARIANI’S
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Ken Osawa and Hiedji Otaki in "Tampopo" (1985) ❖❖❖ THIS WEEK ITALY FOR FOOD LOVERS By John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER GENESIS HOUSE By John Mariani GOING AFTER HARRY LIME CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR CHILE'S VIÑEDO CHADWICK VIES WITH BORDEAUX AND NAPA By John Mariani ❖❖❖
On this week's episode of my WVOX
Radio Show "Almost Golden," on Wed. May
24 at 11AM EDT,I will be
interviewing James Dukis on the Undiscovered
Places of NYC. Go to: WVOX.com.
The episode will also be archived at: almostgolden.
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ITALY FOR
FOOD LOVERS
By John Mariani ![]() Through his TV shows and books Rick
Steves is, to
my mind, by far the most
useful of guides to Europe, as affable as
Ted Lasso and more knowledgeable than
scripted TV actors like Stanley Tucci, Eva
Longoria and Anthony Bourdain. Fred Plotkin
has proven himself the most authoritative
food guide to Italy (as well as a highly
regarded opera scholar), so the two getting
together for a just-published book, Italy
for Rick Steves Food Lovers ($22), which
combines his travel expertise with Plotkin’s
exhaustive familiarity with Italian food
culture. The book explains everything, from
why Italian food is different from any other
in Europe; how to pick a restaurant in any
region of Italy; manners and customs;
tipping and not tipping; and recommendations
for their favorite restaurants.
Rick had the idea and
approached me in the Spring of 2021. He had
done 49 books, with his bestseller being his
guidebook to Italy, and decided, for his 50th,
that he would return to an Italian theme. He
had never done a food book before, and Italian
food seemed a natural. I’d appeared on many of
his radio shows going back at least a decade.
Audiences always seemed to respond to my
appearances, and he and I had an easy rapport.
Interestingly, we had never met in person and
had never traveled together. A few years ago
he was in NYC on a quick trip, we had a
30-minute coffee on West 58th Street and did a
selfie that I think is in the book. With no
one traveling in 2021, with Rick in Seattle
and me in NYC, we did this book by writing our
own parts and exchanging documents
electronically, then reading each other’s
work, sorting out details, finding a voice and
agreeing when to disagree and saying that “one
of this book’s authors believes. . .” You will see
that the voice of the book is mostly “I” and
it is us unless we want
to emphasize the experience and outlook of
just one of us. But it was not
intended to be a strict restaurant guide? We both agreed from
the start that this is not a restaurant guide,
because they date quickly. We wanted to create
a book that would give the traveler tools to
not only to find a good place to eat in Rome,
Florence or Venice but to be able to go
anywhere in Italy (as is my wont) and find
what is local, traditional and genuine. That
is why we cover all 20 regions
Your own Italy for the Gourmet
Traveler
has been the best guide to food and
restaurants in Italy. Are you going to do
another edition?
How did you
split up the work? Everything in the
Italian language was my responsibility and, in
reading the book since, I have only found two
typos in Italian—one a name missing a letter
and the other a slight misspelling. These will
be fixed when we reprint. What is the
problem with Michelin Guides’ Italian
guidebook? Italians want you at
the table savoring the food, which represents
the culture and tradition rather than mere
innovation, although they always have
innovated, as with the tomato that comes from
America. Italy historically has extraordinary
ingredients, whereas the French did not have
such excellent crops and had to cover them up
with sauces. Why is Italian
food so great? Italian food
is greet because it’s served with love. Around
the table you don’t age. A conviviality and
family tradition, family recipes and you go to
their homes and pull out old books from 1897
how to make a sauce, and they make these
recipes that represent their own traditions. How do you
pick a restaurant? I am led by my nose,
I smell something rather magnificent and I ask
“Signora,
what are you making?” and that leads to a
conversation. My books reflect home cooking
because I went to school in Italy and had
friends’ family dinners. I didn’t learn from
cooking school but basically the way the
Italian homes teach. If you see very
long menus in many languages, avoid that. You
want a restaurant? Ask what's good that day—5
or 6 items.
The bill. Do
we have to tip?
Do they take credit
cards all over Italy? More so than before,
but some do not take Amex but take the other
cards like Mastercard and Visa. Always good to
check ahead. Traveling
with children is a chore, except in Italy. They and old folks are
guests of honor and treated with great love
and respect, for some reason Italian
children don’t shout. The volume in restaurants
is much
softer than in American restaurants.
I don’t want my ears assaulted. What
should we know about pizza? In Italy it’s not laden
with a ton of ingredients or thick crust,
like Chicago-style, which could give you a
coronary. Portions here are enough for three
persons. In Italy you get a smaller, more
digestible portion. Pizza has mozzarella,
olive oil, tomato and basil. In Naples they
might have friarelle bitter greens
that come out only in the winter. A little
bit of fish. Elsewhere they add local
prosciutto, Speck in the Alps. The Neapolitan
pizza is still the gold standard. NEW YORK CORNER
GENESIS
HOUSE
40A 10th Avenue
855-444-0836
By John Mariani
![]()
Open for dinner
Tues.-Sun. ❖❖❖
GOING AFTER HARRY LIME By John Mariani ![]() CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Doesn’t
sound good, does it?” Katie said to David on
their way out the front door.
I
will live and survive and be asked: 'Doesn't
it hurt you to remember?' Not
being
deceived by my outward flippancy. But
the
former names will detonate my memory
– Magnificent
as
old cannon. And I will tell of the
best people in all the earth, The most tender, but
also the most invincible, How they said farewell,
how they went to be tortured, How they waited for
letters from their loved ones. And
I'll
be asked: what helped us to live When
there
were neither letters nor any news - only
walls, And
the
cold of the cell, and the blather of official
lies, And
the
sickening promises made in exchange for
betrayal.
David said,
“Looks like Kim Philby’s showing no remorse.” “English?”
asked
Katie. She then
noticed a middle-aged woman with her hair half
blond, the other half black, wearing what
appeared to be folkloric Georgian dress, with
plenty of silver bracelets and bangles. She
would talk at a high tone of voice to one
table, then, without waiting for a response,
move to the next one over and begin again. All
her guests seemed to be on familiar terms with
her. © John Mariani, 2016 ❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
CHILE'S VIÑEDO CHADWICK WANTS TO VIE WITH BORDEAUX By John Mariani ![]() Winter in the Maipo Valley, Chile In 1980 Chilean
wine production totaled barely 900,000 liters.
In 2022, Chilean wine production totaled 1.244
billion liters, a 7.39 percent decrease from
2021. Likewise, in 2022, Chilean wine export
volume totaled 833.5 million liters, a 4.0
percent decrease from 2021. Long dominated by Concha y Toro (founded
in 1883), Chile's wine industry began to make
fine wines for export only in the 1990s, after
post-war decades of heavy taxation and lowered
wine consumption. But, after changes in
government policy made viticulture profitable,
old and new wineries began ripping out weak
varietals in favor of premium grapes like
Cabernet Sauvignon, Carménère, Merlot,
Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.
The
ancient Chadwick surname originated in Scandinavia
during the Viking period. From there, it
re-emerged in France and later flourished in
England and Scotland before crossing the Atlantic
to North and South America. Don Alfonso Chadwick
was part of the third generation of the Chadwick
family in Chile, descendant from Thomas Chadwick,
who was a British mining engineer who headed to
the new continent looking for opportunities and
settled in the North of Chile in 1820. Don
Alfonso was an accomplished polo player and a
visionary in the modernization of the Chilean wine
industry, and also considered the father of Puente
Alto D.O. Viñedo Chadwick holds his name as it
represents the family’s long-cherished desire to
honor his memory. This unique wine showcases the
family’s heritage and tradition of producing fine
wines, with passion for excellence. Chadwick
began plantings in 1992 but took 7 years to
produce its first vintage. Were you buying
others’ grapes in the meantime? Why did it take
7 years? Aware
of the potential of the Puente Alto terroir,
Eduardo Chadwick convinced his father, after his
retirement from polo, to transform his beloved
polo field into a world-class vineyard, planting
Cabernet Sauvignon vines in 1992. The first
vintage released of Viñedo Chadwick was 1999.
During those seven years in between, Eduardo (below)
and the team worked tirelessly to nurture and
train the vines to produce the best possible wine,
as it takes time and perseverance to handcraft a
truly fine wine. With the great quality of this
first 1999 vintage, it was clear that Viñedo
Chadwick was off to a flying start. What was the Berlin
Tasting and what was the result in the world
press? On
January 23, 2004, inspired by the Judgment of
Paris, Eduardo Chadwick and Steven Spurrier
invited Europe’s most highly regarded wine experts
to take part in a historic blind tasting in
Berlin. The challenge was to show that Viñedo
Chadwick and other fine Chilean wines were at a
similar level of quality as the most prestigious
wines of the world. The result of this historic
tasting proved to be a true eye-opener: Viñedo
Chadwick 2000 was placed first, above the First
Growth wines from Bordeaux of the millennium
vintage, most of which had been awarded 100 points
by Robert Parker, as well as the Super Tuscans
from Italy. This revolutionary event for the
global wine industry, known as “The Berlin
Tasting”, turned out to be a milestone for the
appreciation of the superb quality of Viñedo
Chadwick and led to the discovery and recognition
of Puente Alto D.O. Maipo Valley as a world-class
appellation. The
number of wineries in Chile rose from 12 in 1995
to over 70 in 2005. What caused this enormous growth? Actually,
vines arrived in South America in the 1600s with
the Spanish Missions, so wine has been part of the
Chilean culture for longer. Later in the 1900s
some traditional Chilean wineries were established
with a more modern approach of winemaking, but it
was still for local consumption. And since 1983
Chile opened to exports and that also boosted the
growth and modernization of established wineries,
as there appeared more business opportunities in
addition to the country’s economic growth and
investment from abroad that started in the 1990s. Chile was never
affected by phylloxera. Do you have any
pre-phylloxera vines in the estate? In
1992, the fifteen-hectare Viñedo Chadwick vineyard
was carefully planted with Cabernet Sauvignon
vines from a massal selection. These were entirely
ungrafted, as is still common in phylloxera-free
Chile, and had been selected on the basis of their
age and quality from another estate of the family.
New plantings were done in 2015 with Cabernet
Sauvignon French clones planted on rootstocks, to
add yet more complexity to the blend.
Vintages
do differ at Viñedo Chadwick and we obtain wines
that express the terroir in those different
conditions. What we have in Puente Alto that is
much beneficial for the vines is that rains are
concentrated in winter and summers are usually
long and dry so we are able to consistently mature
the grapes in very healthy conditions until
picking time. Has
global warming or El Nino affected your wines? Global
warming is affecting the whole planet, so in terms
of winemaking and viticulture, our most important
developments are focused on sustainability and
water management, which today is one of Chile’s
biggest challenges. So we need to be proactive and
use it efficiently. At Viñedo Chadwick we recently
built a water reservoir to ensure its
availability. Politics
once played a decisive role
in Chile’s winemaking. Does it still have a part
to play? It was more of a land reform for
all agricultural purposes in the past, but it
doesn’t have any decisive role in winemaking
today. Chile’s economy
expanded rapidly
in 2002. How did that affect Chadwick
and the sales
of your wine? I don’t believe that had much of
an effect. I believe the success of our sales
comes from the great quality of our wine that has
been recognized internationally and consistently
since its first vintage 1999. Its vintage 2014 was
the first wine in Chile to be awarded the perfect
100 score by James Suckling. What
are worldwide
sales
of your wine? Around
9,500 bottles. It is a very high-end, small-volume
production. How
much is consumed in Chile and how much exported? Around
7% of our production is sold in Chile. Your
prices are high compared with most Chilean
Cabernets. Is that just supply and demand? Viñedo
Chadwick was born to honor a family’s legacy for
excellence. In that sense, it comes from a very
small world class appellation, Puente Alto D.O.
for Cabernet Sauvignon. The quality of our wine
has been recognized by wine critics
internationally and consistently since its first
vintage. With time, it has become a reference any
wine collector must have in its cellar and it has
played a leading role in the recognition of Puente
Alto as a world-class appellation and the
positioning of Chile in the world of fine wine,
hence its price. Are
there plans
for
expansion into
other regions? No.
Viñedo Chadwick is a wine that intends to show
this world class terroir of Cabernet Sauvignon
from Chile. So its production will always be
limited to what its 15 hectares has to offer. ❖❖❖ |
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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.
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MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET
NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Publisher: John Mariani. Editor: Walter Bagley. Contributing Writers: Christopher
Mariani, Misha Mariani, John A. Curtas, Gerry Dawes, Geoff Kalish.
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 2023