NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR    
         FRENCH WINES VARIETY AND
                                                              PRICES BETTER THAN EVER                                                

                                                                        By John Mariani

BISTRO DE VILLE,

                                                                                   185 Summerfield Street

                                                                                 Scarsdale, NY

  914-574-6364
https://www.bistrodeville.com

By John Mariani

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         The Golden Swan is one of those now rare Greenwich Village restaurants of Old New York of a kind where O. Henry, Walt Whitman and Hart Crane would be regulars as part of a bohemian enclave, while the wealthy lived over east in the Jamesian brick townhouses of Washington Square. There are still a few cobblestone streets (none original) and modern restaurants like Blue Hill, Café Cluny and The Little Owl, now joined by The Golden Swan, whose folkloric wooden shingle hangs above the door.

Long ago there had been another Golden Swan, depicted in a John Sloan painting, owned by Thomas Wallace a member of the Hudson Dusters street gang. It was also said to be the inspiration for “a cheap gin mill of the five-cent whiskey, last-resort variety” named Harry Hope’s saloon in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

    That bar was shuttered by Prohibition and later razed to make way for the West 4th subway station, though a tiny Golden Swan Garden still exists on the corner. 

      The current premise are a charming two-story corner townhouse with a small, snug bar downstairs and a beautiful, romantic dining room with attached cozy nooks. The restaurant was opened last year by Matthew Abramcyk and Chef Doug Brixton on the site previously occupied by once trendy then notorious Spotted Pig, closed after allegations of sexual misconduct.       

It is now about as cordial a place as you’ll find in the Village, where you are well received and served and where Brixton’s cuisine is as wonderful as it is deceptively simple with American and Mediterranean accents. His résumé is strong with big names—Bâtard, the Patina Group and Daniel Boulud’s Dinex Group, and he is not one of those chefs who tries to impress by extravagant concepts and lavish plate presentations but by mastering the classic elements that makes a refreshing chilled corn soup with king prawn (left),  Serrano pepper, red onion and coriander ($24) an enchantment and a fruit sauce reduction a lesson in refinement. 

The menu is an ideal size for the small dining room and a clientele who I suspect are largely locals who have become regulars after only a few months.

         Downstairs is a good-looking bar but it’s pounding with loud music; upstairs it’s quieter, the music not blasting, though who needs any at all? The lighting is very amiable, the parquet floor evocative of another era, the wrap-around banquettes very comfortable, the tablecloths appreciated and the  lighted candles convivial. Thick curtains are drawn back to let twilight in. Tablecloths and lamps complete the casual sophistication of the place.

         The menu is a canny balance of traditional and modern cuisines, which might begin with raw fluke  with chermoula, za'atar and basmati rice crisp ($22) or classic tuna Niçoise ($28). I mentioned that wonderful corn soup, and I’d give equal billing to a creamy foie gras mousse, served at the right temperature ($36) with poached and sweetened rhubarb, pickled strawberry, ginger crumb to add a little zest and warm brioche.

         There are three pastas on the menu, and I loved the house-made al dente cavatelli ($26) with a tomato ragȏut, spicy Italian sausage and Taleggio cheese well melded together as a hearty dish you might share.. Of equal interest is the tender tagliolini with summer truffles, truffle fondue and chives ($28) that packed more flavor than I’d expected from those mild ingredients.

         The Amish chicken (left) seemed to be brined and perhaps robbed of some flavor of the bird itself, but it was well sided with sweet corn, roasted pepper, very tasty braised morels and a sauce diable ($41).

         When considering Dover sole I look for a fish whose own fat and cartilage adds to the richness of the abundant brown butters and tanginess of capers ($89) that cover it, and Brixton’s delivered on every count (right).

         His Iberian pork chop with English peas, chanterelles and sage-infused white wine ($43) was  indicative of his mastery of ways to combine great ingredients as a coalescence, rich with summery woodsy tastes. Most of these dishes are available downstairs at what is called the Wallace Room.

         The Golden Swan has an extensive wine list, not cheap but well chosen to avoid the clichés.

         The desserts ($14) are every bit as delicious as what leads up to them and meant to be shared, including a very fine tiramisù enhanced with berries and sauce reduction; a sumptuous sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream; and for something a tad lighter strawberries with a delightful pistachio crisp (left).

         The Golden Swan was pretty full we arrived about 7:30, and though we took our pleasurable time, by nine it was emptying out on a summer weekday, which I think is a capital time to come, with the sun nudging the horizon as you sit down and the deep blue of the sky enhancing the Village lights.

The neighborhood has a remarkable number of good restaurants that play to high decibel crowds, but at The Golden Swan you really get to relax, talk about of cabbages and kings, maybe even bring your perfectly well-behaved children.

           

 

Dinner Mon.-Sat.; brunch Sat. & Sun.

THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES
By  John Mariani

        “What’s her address at Keaton Street?” said Finger, talking to the assembled police officers. “Telephone number?”

         “No phone listed but here’s her address,” said the woman, quickly scribbling down the street number.

         “Let’s get moving. Sergeant, call the cars in the neighborhood, tell them we’ll meet them there in five minutes.”

         Finger, Katie and David scrambled from the hospital and into the police car parked at the door, its lights flashing. Finger turned on the siren and took off, turning it off again as they approached Keaton Street, near the hospital. It was a squalid block, dark, without street lights, and the address they’d been given showed only a faint light through the window of the one-room flat.

         Finger knocked loudly on the door and counted to ten. Someone was shuffling towards the door. Finger had his hand on his revolver in its holster.

        An elderly woman opened the door, startled at the number of Garda and their cars. Before she had a chance to say anything, Finger had his foot in the door and said, “Mum, we’re looking for a woman named Maureen Maloney who lives here.”

         The woman was quaking and stammered, “First flat on the left. Is she in trouble, Officer? I run a good house here. . . .”

         Finger didn’t bother to answer, asking instead if she had a key to the flat. The woman said she’d get it, hobbled down the hall and returned a minute later with a key chain.

         “Mum, would ya’ be so kind as to give me the key and then exit the buildin’ with my colleague here?” asked Finger, as a police officer took her strongly by the arm.

         Finger nodded to his men that he was going in, put the key in the door and it clicked open.  He told Katie and David to stay to the side of the hallway.

         The room was dark except for votive candles on night tables on both sides of the bed. The officers searched the bathroom, closet and under the bed. The windows were all shut and locked.

         Finger ushered Katie and David into the room. The officers checked a chest of drawers, which were full of clothes, as was the closet.

         “Looks like she left in a hurry,” said David. “Left the candles burning and they’re not used up.”

          Finger told two of the Garda to search the neighborhood, then called in a general sweep of the surrounding area and bus stops.   

         Then Katie spotted something shiny on the edge of the bed pillow. She went over to the spot and found four gold rings attached to a large laundry pin.

         “Oh, my God!” she cried. “These must be the nuns’ wedding bands!”

         Finger looked at his sergeants and asked, “Did anybody report that the victims were wearing or missing their rings?” The officers shook their heads.

         “Damnit! Then we must have missed it. Call the morgue and check on the bodies. See if they’re wearing wedding rings.”

         No one touched the rings on the bed because they might be evidence. One of the Garda taking photos of the room snapped several shots of the rings.

         Katie saw a small bookshelf with less than a dozen volumes and a few knickknacks.  To one side, four books had yellow Post-It Notes in their pages.

         “Okay if I look at these books, Inspector?”

         Finger said she should first put on plastic gloves.

         Katie saw that none of the volumes had dust on them and the yellow tags were new. The first volume was an old bible with gold-edged pages. She opened to the tagged page: Deuteronomy 32:35, which read, “Revenge is mine; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”

         She handed it to Finger and David to read.

         The next volume was Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, tagged on the very last page, in which Dr. Frankenstein’s nemesis bids farewell to his creator: “‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct.’”

         The third book was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, whose marked page read, “Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.”

         Katie was shaking her head with a rising sense of fear and pity. The fourth volume was Shakespeare’s Hamlet, tagged at the play’s most famous speech: “To be, or not to be, that is the question:/Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/And by opposing end them.”

         “Oh, God,” said Katie, “I think Maureen Maloney is going to kill herself and she wanted us to find these passages in these books.”

         David and Finger knew the portents in the passages from the Bible and Hamlet, but not Frankenstein or Anna Karenina.

         “Do you know how those two relate, Katie?” asked David.

         “In the book Frankenstein  the so-called monster speaks at length of the agonies his creator inflicted upon him and how he took his revenge on Dr. Frankenstein. If I remember, he killed Frankenstein’s wife and several other people in the novel.”

         “And the other one?”

         “The heroine, Anna Karenina, killed herself to punish her lover. She threw herself under a train.”

         “All right, then,” said Finger, “let’s get on the move and find the woman before she does anythin’ else to herself or someone else,” hoping that the murder spree was over and wanting to find Maureen Maloney alive.

         Then one of the sergeants said, “Captain, call from Sydney Parade.”

         “Who’s Sydney Parade?” asked David.

         “It’s not a person, it’s a place,” said Finger, “a railway station in South Dublin.”

         Finger took the call, saying little, then, “Well, I guess that’s that. We’ll be right over.”

         Katie asked, “What’s going on?”

         “They found Maureen Maloney’s body, or what’s left of it. She went to the station and did just what that Anna Karenina did, except Maloney just put her head on the tracks. The train decapitated her.”

         Katie felt weak and sickened, almost in shock.

         “She apparently left a note, pinned to her chest.”

         “What did it say?” asked David.

         “It gave the names of the four murdered nuns and said, ‘God damn their wicked souls, and God’s mercy for his poor servant Maureen Maloney.’”

        

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French Wines Increase in Variety
and Hold the Prices. Here Are Some
Ideal for Summer, Part Two

By John Mariani