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ANNOUNCEMENT: Mariani's Virtual Gourmet will not be published next week because Mariani will be in Croatia on research as to where to stay, eat and drink. The next issue will be April 13. However, for those engrossed with my novel Hôtel Allemagne, I've included two chapters this week to tide you over till my return.

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THIS WEEK

With 200% Tariffs Looming,
Buy Champagne Before April 1st.

By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
CAFÉ CARMELLINI
By John Mariani

HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
CHAPTERS FOUR and FIVE
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
WINES FOR PASSOVER
By Geoff Kalish

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Buy ‘em By The Case. With 200% Tariffs Looming Over Champagne, You Still Have Time To Purchase Those Bottles

Already In U.S. Wine Stores

By John Mariani

Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in "The Seven Year Itch" (1955)

         With the threat of 200% tariffs––currently 25%––being put on European wines and spirits as of April 1, the horror of not being able to afford a bottle of Champagne for even a celebration, much less an entire wedding, may soon be upon us. Consider that a bottle of $50 Champagne may soon cost $200 after tariffs go into effect April 1. Even those who think nothing of now spending $300 for a Prestige Cuvée may not can shrug off price increases of 200%.
    The same goes for other European sparkling wines, including France’ s Crémants, Italy’s Proseccos and Spain’s Cavas.
    Europe currently exports more than $4.89 billion worth of wine each year to the US, by far its largest export market, according to the Comités Européens d’Enterprises Vins, which is composed of 25 national organizations that account for over 90% of European wine exports.

This is also true of Champagne exports to the U.S, with 27 million bottles shipped in 2023 with a value of $885 million.
    I know that producers, exporters, importers, distributors and wine store owners are scrambling to figure at how to handle this unprecedented situation. David Levasseur, a third-generation wine grower and owner of a Champagne house, told the Associated Press, “It means I’m in trouble, big trouble. We hope it’s just, as we say, blah blah.”
    Not likely: President Donald Trump contends that it is a reaction to the EU's "nasty" tariff on US whiskey, calling the bloc "hostile and abusive" and "formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States."
    But at least for the next few weeks, the stocks of Champagnes already imported and on shelves in the U.S. are reason to consider buying as many bottles as you can before the prices go through the roof.
         Moreover, there are so many reasonable priced, very good Champagnes already in U.S. wineshops that snapping them up right now makes sense. And if you check a website like Wine.Searcher.com you’ll find prices may differ by $10 a bottle. Buying by the case lowers the price considerably. Here are some worth seeking out.

Nicolas Feuillatte Réserve Extra Brut ($45). This is a balanced blend made by cellar master Guillaume Rofflaen with 40% Pinot Noir, 40% Meunier and 20% Chardonnay, aged three to four years and bottled in their distinctive royal blue label. They also make a Rosé with more Pinot Noir. The price is amazing for this quality.

Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Vintage Brut. The price for this is around $100, but the same producer’s Yellow Label is selling for half that price and manifests the label’s signature style of ripe fruit and toastiness. It’s a blend of 55% Pinot Noir 15% Pinot Meunier and 30% Chardonnay, aged three years.

Laurent-Perrier La Cuvée Brut ($$50-60). A very good price for an excellent Champagne, made of reserve wines including 50% Chardonnay, 30 to 35% Pinot Noir and 10 to 15% of Meunier, aged for four years. It has a delicate bouquet, but the citrus notes and velvety texture give it a long palate.

Deutz Brut Classic ($50). Deutz, a grande marque founded in 1838 in Ay and now owned by Maison Louis Roederer, has a lot of ardent fans who know it as a delicious sparkler without a high price, made of equal parts Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier.

Gosset Grande Réserve Brut ($50). Although non-vintage, this is actually a blend of seven different vintages to add complexity and pleasing acidity. The Revue de France voted Gossett number four on a list of the 50 top Champagne producers. Its elegantly shaped bottle immediately identifies the marque. Odilon de Varine, head winemaker and new cellar master Gabrielle Malagu are keeping the marque’s tradition alive–– their motto is, “At Gosset we first create a wine. The bubbles make it sublime”–– while applying the best ideas of modern enology.

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NEW YORK CORNER

                                                    CAFÉ CARMELLINI

                                                                                            250 Fifth Avenue

                                                                                              212-231-9200

                                                            By John Mariani

Yet again, in the face of those who say, “Nobody wants to eat this way anymore,” a great chef has thrown his hat into the high-stakes arena of Manhattan’s gastroscape. Café Carmellini is in a stunning space, previously the site of the Gilded Age mansion, then of a five-story Renaissance palazzo designed by McKim, Mead & White, and it is now The Fifth Avenue Hotel. Thus, the ceilings soar above the dining room, hung with huge chandeliers of bronze and seeded glass and centered by two huge sculptural trees amidst polished wood and beveled mirror panels. It is all quite dramatic, with blue banquettes and balcony seating, a bright open kitchen and timber bar. The lighting is sufficient for patrons to take it all in, and the sound level, despite the size of the room, has been successfully brought down to a civilized level.

Andrew Carmellini has experience in an array of illustrious restaurants, including L’Arpège in Paris, San Domenico in Imola and in New York, Lespinasse, Le Cirque and Café Boulud. In 2006 he opened his own A Voce in Madison Square Park, then, three years later, with investor Robert DeNiro, Locanda Verde at the Greenwich Hotel. With the NoHo Hospitality Group, he opened The Dutch, and in 2013 the brasserie Lafayette Café, then branched out to Brooklyn’s William Vale Hotel and Carne Mare at New York’s Seaport. And that’s not a complete list. In the fall or 2023 he opened his latest, Café Carmellini, which hardly looks anything like a café but pays homage to his Tuscan family’s coffee importing business.

        Carmellini is one of those rare chefs who, without keeping his finger in every pot, has for the most part maintained his empire with credibility and consistency. Right now he is paying most of his attention to Café Carmellini.
         The wine list immediately became one of New York’s largest and best selected, with 1,800 labels and 9,000 bottles under the supervision of Master Sommelier Josh Nadel and Robin Wright, with four other sommeliers on staff. There are 18 wines by the glass, and while you can spend up to $10,000 for a bottle, you will also find several under $100.
Cocktails are all $22.

The menu, under Executive Chef Kyle Goldstein, is of an ideal size to tempt you without overwhelming your ability to do so. (They also serve breakfast, lunch and brunch.) Some dishes will be familiar to Carmellini regulars, but now a bit refined here. Our table of four chose from all over the menu, which begins with oysters, crudo and carpaccio, then moves to six appetizers, which include the first of the season’s sweet white asparagus in a pink swirl of orange-juice tinged sauce Maltaise. The last of the season’s bay scallops hadn’t the sweetness they might have had earlier but they floated in an aromatic coconut and lemongrass sauce that echoed Carmellini’s friend, the late Floyd Cardoz. Crabmeat is set between millefeuille wafers and upon a brilliant coral-colored pepper sauce.
Only three pastas are offered, including a different risotto each evening, and pray they are serving the sumptuous lobster risotto (left) with claw and body meat along with a tomato-pepper sauce. Caramelle Piemontese are tubes of pasta shaped like wrapped candy, with wild mushrooms, luscious and lavishly sauced.

Duck-Duck-Duck Tortellini are fat packets filled with duck meat and a deep, dark duck and foie gras sauce and brandied foam.
    Among the main courses I most enjoyed the rabbit alla cacciatore, with nice fat rounds of rabbit braised with olives, celery and peppers. Black bass comes in a fine seafood broth, but halibut’s blandness did not gain much from its Riesling sauce or choucroute of vegetables.
    Pastry chef Jeffrey Wurtz, previously with Alain Ducasse, makes some relatively light sweets like olive oil cake; Sorrento lemon coffee “Livornese”’ granita and crema; pistachio gelato and cherry grapefruit sorbetto. Richer are a wonderful passion fruit chiboust with coconut sorbet, and my favorite, the sticky toffee pudding soaked through with flamed aged rum.
         For such a large operation everything clicks together at Café Carmellini to provide an elegant but not in the least stuffy atmosphere buoyed by a delightful wait staff who maintain the same level of American courtesy.

    And for all this––while Café Carmellini is expensive, with appetizers $25-$42, pastas $34-$36 and main courses $47 to $72––ordering à la carte provides some relief, and they compare to similar fine restaurants of its kind, like The Modern, Le Pavillon, Essential by Christophe and L’Abeille.   New York continues to welcome such restaurants in abundance, and Café Carmellini is already among the best.

Open for dinner Tues.-Sat.

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HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
By John Mariani

CHAPTER FOUR

         Katie did meet David at five o’clock and told him about the call from Alan, and David said he would of course stick around and help Katie any way he could. With all thought of going back to New York put aside, they stayed in the hotel for dinner and made plans for their investigation.
         “Alan said he had some journalist contacts in Paris whose work he’s published,” said Katie, “so I guess I’ll be on the phone tomorrow morning. He’s sending me their contact numbers. Do you know any Paris police?”

Katie never ceased to be amazed that David seemed to have contacts everywhere. After thirty years with NYPD investigating mob connections internationally, he’d worked with members of the FBI, CIA, Interpol and several national police departments on various aspects of various cases.
         “Matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Just before I retired one of my last cases involved the Corsican Mafia, which is also called the French Mob. They were the gangsters involved in The French Connection movie, with Gene Hackman. They had links with the New York Mafia, and back in the fifties had protection from prosecution from our own feds because they helped disrupt communist union activities in Marseilles and other French cities. Scummy as all the rest, of course.”
         “How’d you get involved?”
         “Like I said, they had links with the New York mobs, mostly drug trafficking.”

         “Like in the movie. I always remember that scene where Gene Hackman’s freezing his ass off drinking coffee outside on the street while keeping his eye on the French gangster eating French food inside a fancy East Side restaurant named Copain" (right).
         “Right. That guy never was caught. Anyway, we were trying to figure out where and when the drug shipments were coming in from, and it was natural I’d speak with my opposite in the French police. Guy by the name of Michel Borel, who was fearless and knew how to bend the rules. I spoke to him before leaving New York, said we should get together for lunch. I’ll give him a call, that is, if you help me get through the French switchboard. I don’t know if he knows anything about this hotel business, if he thinks there’s any criminal angle.”
         “What do you think?” asked Katie.
         “It all seems way too coincidental. Three luxury hotels, all hit on the same night with the same virus? Doesn’t make sense to me.”
         “Me neither, which is probably what Alan thinks, too. I was just wondering if maybe all three hotels buy their food supplies, maybe their bread or vegetables, from the same source. One bad batch could unleash a virus or bacterial infection.”
         “Sounds like a stretch, but maybe you should look into that first. What else are you planning for tomorrow?”
         “Like I said, I’ll make some calls to colleagues here. See what they might know or who might know something that hasn’t been reported.”
        “Do you know anyone at the French TV station?”
         “No, but I do have a contact at CNN International with a woman I used to work with when she was a print journalist back in the States. CNN is based in London over here, but she works out of her home as the Paris correspondent.”
         “Okay, then,” said David, who took a last sip of his wine and went silent.
         “What?” asked Katie.
         “It’s just that, last time I was in Paris, I never got to use the subway—what do they called it, the Métro?—because Michel drove me around. I guess I could just take taxis.”

Katie shook her head. “No, you’ve got to learn to use the Métro in Paris. Easiest way to travel because of traffic, just like in New York. Here, let me show you.”
         She took out one of the icons of Parisian culture, the Métro map with its multi-colored lines and dots resembling a complex painting by Mondrian.
         “Now, look, it’s pretty easy. First you decide where you want to get to, then find the Métro stop on the map. The train lines are color coded, so you find where you want to go, which may take a change of lines, and see which direction you’re going. Follow that colored line to its terminal stop and get on that line, getting off when it reaches your stop in between.”
         Katie showed David some sample routes until he got used to it.
         “And get a carnet,” she said. “I’ll buy it for you tomorrow.”
         “What’s a carnet?”
         “It’s a ten-trip ticket, which saves some money.”
         David shook his head, whistled and said, “Well, if we made it around on the Moscow subway systems, I guess I can master this one.”
         “The people who work in the Métro usually speak some English. So do most of the cops. You’ll be fine.”
         “So, bright and early tomorrow? Say, 7:30 for breakfast?”
         “Oui, monsieur.”
         “That I get.”

         David slept better that night and Katie felt very refreshed the next morning. The French TV station’s update on the hotels had not advanced much from the night before except to say there were still no reported deaths among the victims and that the police were looking into foul play. The announcer also reported that, despite the hotels’ refusal to comment on guests’ names, several very prominent foreigners were among them, including quite a few Americans, noting that all the hotels had long been favored by politicians from other countries. CNN International’s coverage was minimal—Katie’s friend did not appear on air—and the International Herald Tribune was, as usual, always a day behind.

        Katie and David had a quick continental breakfast of rolls and coffee in the hotel and were out the door by eight. Their first stop was at a pharmacy on the same block where they bought a box of paper face masks, just in case. The saleswoman said she expected to be sold out by noontime.
    The Métro stop was at the end of the block, and the Americans descended the stairs and bought carnets at the automatic ticket dispenser. Katie took David over to the wall map of the Métro lines and told him to plot his route, which he did with one finger.
         “I practiced when I got back to room.”
         The Paris Police Prefecture was located at Place Louis Lépine at the Cité Métro stop. Rather than have Katie call the desk that morning, David had e-mailed Michel Borel the night before and had an answer by seven in the morning, saying he’d be happy to meet David at the Prefecture at 8:30. Katie has already spoken to her CNN contact, whose name was Catherine Newcombe, a woman about Katie’s age who had now been in Paris for five years.
         David walked to the Prefecture, done in a stately French Baroque style dating to the 18^th Century, and identified himself to the guard in a white guard station who called Detective Borel and ushered David through a metal detector. Coming towards him was Borel, who was somewhat younger than his American colleague, tall, a little disheveled looking, with his necktie swinging below his plainclothes collar.

“Davide!” he called, pronouncing his friend’s name in the French way. “So good to hear from you, mon ami!”
         They exchanged greetings, looked each other up and down, made a comment on their both looking pretty fit for men their age then repaired to Borel’s office, which looked exactly as David remembered it, same furniture, same lighting, sterile, except for some finely wrought period crown molding around the ceiling.
         “So, they finally gave you a new computer,” said David.
         “Finally is right. The old one had to explode before I could request a new one, and that took four weeks.”
     “Same old bureaucracy, Paris, New York, everywhere when it comes to cops’ equipment.”
         “Oui, and you know the bad guys all have the latest, most powerful shit on the market. Makes life interesting, though, eh?”
         With the small talk out of the way David said, “So what’s going on with this hotel disaster, Michel?”
         The French detective shook his head and said, “Nothing at all to go on so far. Sick hotels are a bit out of my line of work, you know?––unless there’s some connection to the Mafia or drug trade. Nothing on that score yet.”
         “Any idea who would want to attack these hotels with bugs? Anything about the hotels that are related?”
         “Not much I can think of. They are all very old buildings, once own by wealthy families and converted into hotels before the war. They were aiming for a luxury market, and during the war they were all taken over by the German officers. After the war they enjoyed a boom that goes up and down with the world economy, since all hotels here depend on foreign travelers.”
         “Anything about who owns them?”
         “Various people over the years, but at the moment, like almost of the grandest hotels in Paris, they are owned by Arabs, who also own The Ritz, the Georges V, the Meurice and the Plaza-Athenée (below). The Arabs poured money into Paris starting in the 1990s and owning these prestige properties is, what do you call it, a feather in their cap? They buy them as trophies, shut them down, pour millions of euros into them and re-open. And they expect their management to show a profit quickly.”

           “No Russians?”
         “Not any of the luxury hotels, non,” said Borel. “The Russians spent millions on luxury goods, cars, jewelry from Cartier, Rolexes, Louis Vuitton, restaurants, but they invested more of their money in London and the South of France. They bought thousands of condos in Monaco. They always paid too much and lost value, and when this President Putin came into office, they lost their billions, too.”
         “Okay,” said David, “and the three hotels that were hit were not owned by the same Arab family?”
         “Two are, one is another family, but you know the Arab sheiks all seem to be related to each other, so who knows?”
         “And they were all profitable?”
         “As far as anyone knows. The Arabs don’t report such things. They pay their taxes on time and keep to themselves.”
         “And how do the French take the idea of Arabs owning these historic hotels?”
         “Good question, David. The French are very patriotic until it comes to money. They accepted the Germans when they marched into Paris—not that they had a choice—worked with them, then when the war was over, everyone claimed to have been a part of the patriotic French underground. The French will tolerate anything if it does not disturb their self-image as being the most civilized people on earth, so if the Russians or the Japanese, and now the Chinese, want to buy up all the Louis Vuitton bags, the store pretends to put a quota on their sale to foreigners. If the Arabs buy up our hotels, as long as they don’t start changing the name and décor and putting up tents in the gardens, we say laissez-faire and take their money. Unfortunately, our own old families no longer have the money to compete in buying these hotels. The Taittinger Champagne family still owns the Crillon, but the rumor is they may sell to a Saudi named Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah.”

         David rubbed the back of his neck and said, “So you don’t think this is an attempt by some rich Frenchman, or maybe a Russian or Chinese, to ruin these three hotels in a way that they’d sell for next-to-nothing?”
         “Mon ami, anything’s possible when it comes to large fortunes. But doing it through a virus? Tricky and very risky.”
         “Well,” said David, “there was a case—though it wasn’t a criminal case—with a hotel in Philadelphia that was put out of commission by what they called the ‘Legionnaires’ Disease.’”

         Borel looked puzzled. “You mean, the French Foreign Legionnaires?”
         “No, they called it that because back in the seventies a convention of American Legion members was staying at the Bellevue Hotel (right) and a couple hundred of them contracted this bacterial pneumonia and a few dozen died. They said it spread through the hotel’s water system, and they never developed a vaccine, so no one in their right minds wanted to stay there and the hotel had to close, for years, before somebody bought it and gutted the place.”
         “But there was never a crime committed?”
         “Not that anybody could find.”
         “Well, it crossed my mind that this could be an Israeli terrorist attack using a chemical weapon,” said Borel. “Embarrass the Arabs. And the radical Israelis have never trusted the French.”
         “But what, except publicity, would they get out of it?” asked David.
         Borel put his hands in the air. “I don’t know. Kill some Arabs perhaps. It is just conjecture on my part.”
         “So, you don’t see any mob participation in this?”
         “You never know, do you, David? But right now, non.”
         “No big drug deals at the hotel? Maybe the Arabs refused to work with the Mafia?”
         “Very, very unlikely. The Mafia leaves the Arabs alone because they pay off very well.”
         They spoke for a few minutes more, but David knew Borel had given him whatever information he had.
         “So, we still on for lunch?” he asked.
         “Of course! One o’clock, around the corner, a little bistro called Chez Marie Borel.”
         “Friend of yours?”
         “My wife. Best cook in Paris, you’ll see.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Katie prepared to meet with her colleague Catherine Newcombe, (left) thinking of what she should wear.
She remembered Catherine had always been very fashion conscious and came from a wealthy New York family who lived on Park Avenue. After college she earned an MA in journalism at Columbia University and had had a successful career, first as a freelancer, then doing well-read political profiles at Vanity Fair before moving to Paris to take the CNN job. That meant she got to travel a good deal to report in from wherever she was sent if something newsworthy was happening. When Katie and she got together, they compared notes.

Katie assumed Catherine could afford couture clothes, but she dressed in a far more personalized style when not appearing on CNN, where the dress code was to look appropriate to the location being shot, which meant she had safari shirts in various colors. So, Katie stayed simple, in black jeans, a cream-colored blouse and flowered print scarf.

Catherine lived in the fashionably burgeoning Marais district (right), where she had a loft-like apartment with walls only for the bathroom. It was decorated with large modern paintings, art déco furniture and objets d’art she’d picked up at the Paris Flea Market called Les Puces. She was wearing jeans and a blue turtleneck.
         At 35, Catherine seemed to get more beautiful as she grew older, blonde as ever, never gaining a pound. She greeted Katie in French with kisses on the cheeks and said, “Mind if we speak English? I think I need the practice.”
         After reliving some old times, the two journalists began to talk about the hotel news.
         “So, CNN didn’t ask you to cover it yesterday?” asked Katie.
         “No, they did, and I got some interviews but I didn’t have a camera crew, so I just filed whatever I found out and the London bureau took it from there. I’m due to go out with a crew this afternoon.”
         “So, what do you think is going on?”
         “I don’t really have a clue. If there’s someone or some organization behind it, it’s going to be tough to find a smoking gun.”
         “Is there anything the three hotels have in common?”

Catherine repeated what Borel had told David, that they were all Arab owned. “But who would want to contaminate a hotel? Why not just set it on fire or bomb it? Much more dramatic and definitive. Then an organization like the PLO could claim they’d done it. Yasser Arafat (left) is no friend of the Saudis. Neither is Osama bin Laden (right) of Al-Qaeda, even though he is himself a Saudi.”

         “What would they achieve?” asked Katie.
         “Terrorist groups over here just like to make their enemies know they’re able to strike anywhere and anytime they want to. Arafat and bin Laden are megalomaniacs who probably don’t believe they’re ever going to destroy Israel or the Emirates, but they keep everybody on edge, chipping away at these monolithic nations. The Emirati have their heads in the sand, and the PLO is hanging on by its nails.”
         “What about Iran?”
         “Could be, though they’ve been in a pretty weak condition since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. They’ve got nothing to gain by ruining old hotels, even if they hate the Saudis.”
         “But you think one of those organizations would have used a bomb, not a biological weapon? Iraq has such weapons, Syria does, too. I don’t know about Iran.”
         “They all have them,” said Catherine, bringing two cups of espresso to the dining table. “Y’know, like Rumsfeld (left) and Bush kept ranting, ‘Murdered their own people with chemical weapons!’ even though Rummy was a big supporter of the Iraqis during the war with Iran. What do you think is going on, Katie?”
         “

Well, what occurred to me was that those three hotels might all very well buy their food and produce from the same source, and that something, the lettuce, the spinach, whatever, was contaminated.”
         “Which means by a killer bacteria.”
        “Yes, but then again it could be a virus, not bacteria.”
         “Well, you know what else bothers me?” said Catherine. “You know those horror movies where these girls are in a house being terrified by a caller on the phone threatening to kill them all, and then one of them says,”—Catherine made a face of abject horror —‘But what if the calls are coming from inside the house?’ Scary as shit, right? So, what if the contamination came from inside the hotels?”
         “You mean from the bad vegetables?”
          “No, by an employee, some nutcase, some disgruntled staff member who had easy access to the interior.”
         “All three?”
         “Yeah, that does make my theory weaker, although the guy could have been the florist who worked all three hotels, and sometimes hotels share a bakery and send their bread and rolls to the others.”
         “That makes a certain amount of sense, but it would have to be someone very familiar with the biological effects of whatever he or she planted. Not to mention a complete nut job.”
       “Paris has plenty of them,” said Catherine. “Just spend a little time in the Métro and you find them all over the place. I mean, not as bad as on the New York subways, but here they get a smarter class of nut jobs.”
         “You know what this case needs?” said Katie. “A first-rate infectious disease scientist who can maybe provide us with some clues. Know where we can find one?”
         “Are we working on this ‘case’ together, if there is a case?”

         “Of course not. You’re a daily reporter and any story I might do won’t run in the magazine for months from now.”
         “Oh, it’s not that I’d mind working together,” said Catherine, “it’s just that CNN International likes its stories short and sweet and all tidy. We have, like, this one-hour reel that keeps going throughout a 24-hour cycle, and a quarter of that is financial news and another quarter sports. And for some reason we have an entire show called ‘Inside Africa.’ I’ll be lucky if I get on air three times in the next week unless a pandemic hits Paris, and then they’ll send in big name reporters from London. Meanwhile, I’m off to get video at the three hotels this afternoon. Why don’t you see if you can get in touch with an expert scientist? Then we can fill each other in on what we find.”
         “Sounds like a plan,” said Katie. “Now, where do I find an expert scientist? Any ideas?”
         Catherine said, “I guess I’d try the Pasteur Institute. They’re supposed to be one of the best in the world. They’re over on the Rue du Dr. Roux near the Montparnasse Métro station.”
         “Know anybody over there?”
         “I did a story last year I needed to contact them for. I interviewed some smart cookie. Let me get her name.”
         Catherine went to her laptop and brought up the story.
         “Here it is. Her name was Dr. Judith Baer, with the, uh. . . Center for Biology of Viral Emerging Infections. Sounds just like whom you’d want to speak to. She wasn’t exactly Madame Warmth, but I got a couple of sound bites out of her. Here’s her number. Use my name, if she remembers me. She speaks good English.”
        “What did you interview her about?”
        “Something about how bad the flu season was going to be last winter in Europe. I don’t even know if it ran on air.”
        “Okay, thanks, I’ll see if she’ll talk to me.”
        “I’m off. Stick around here if you like. Use that phone: It’s a work number, so you won’t have to use up the data on your iPhone.”
        Catherine tied a scarf around her neck, threw on a black blazer, said, “Ciao!,” and left looking like she was on her way to have her nails done.”
         Katie called the Center and asked for Dr. Baer, who took the call, listened silently to what Katie had to say and replied, “I am working till six o’clock tonight, and tomorrow is Saturday, so the earliest we could meet would be Monday before work at eight in the morning.”
        Katie said that would be fine and upon thanking the doctor, the phone clicked off without any shared goodbyes.

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.

Buy ‘em By The Case. With 200% Tariffs Looming Over Champagne, You Still Have Time To Purchase Those Bottles

Already In U.S. Wine Stores

"Because I Don't Know How

To Explain Longing to Her;

I Teach My Daughter to

Name the Peaches"

by Emily Louise Smith, Southern Table