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THIS WEEK
CASERTA:
AN IDEAL DAY TRIP FROM
ROME OR NAPLES
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
CHAMBERS
By John Mariani


HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
CHAPTER  TWENTY-SIX
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE SPIRITS LOCKER
CLOUDY SKIES FOR BOURBON
By John Mariani

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NEW YORK CORNER

CHAMBERS

                                                                                     94 Chambers Street

                                                                                 212-580-3572

By John MARIANI

Interiors photos  by Kate Previte
Food and portrait photos by Alex Staniloff

 

    If Chambers in TriBeCa seems familiar to you upon walking in, the feeling may well be enhanced by seeing the faces of staff who were here when the place was Racines, a charming eno-centric French restaurant that had a good seven-year run.
    The dining room, too, hasn’t been much modified, retaining the old brick wall, the open kitchen and long bar, but now the seating is more open, lighting is better and the sound level remarkable in a downtown restaurant where a din is so often considered a boon. Instead, the owners have made every effort to use sound-absorbing materials, and they work splendidly.

It is just as comforting to find Pascaline Lepeltier (below) as sommelier/partner, as effusive but genteel an adviser as one could wish for, and she’s raised the bar of a once excellent wine list to a finer tone with more international breadth. Her wide experience, including training at George V in Paris, has put her in good stead with small wine estates, and the current list has 2,500 labels (up from 800 at Racine’s).

    “For pricing, we are trying to stay as affordable as possible,” she told me, “with wines starting at $35 the bottle on the list, and $10  by the glass.  In every category the idea is to find great wines at fair price, with the majority of our wines below $100.”

It was also good to see Racines’s general manager/partner, Jared David, here in action, and he’s always on the floor, never intrusive but always informative. Still, although there can be good reasons why food does not come out of the kitchen in a timely manner, it was bewildering and frustrating to be served only one course in two hours, this on a midweek night when Chambers did not appear to be packed.

    What is new here is Jonathan Karis (right), who spent six years at Gramercy Tavern as chef de cuisine, and there is the same easy-going style to his cooking, if somewhat lighter.  His purveyors are largely listed on the menu.       

 

    Whatever else you do, you will devour the bread, called pizza bianca, a crispy, ciabatta-like puff with olive oil and sourdough slices. 

        As part of a summer menu, we enjoyed a first course of sweet mixed sungold, datterini and oxheart tomatoes with ripe peaches and plums dressed with a dashi vinaigrette, purslane, kohlrabi and scallions. Plump  agnolotti pasta was a spin on Mexican street corn, packed with white butter, corn, and mascarpone in  a sauce of corn stock, fragrant cilantro oil and chile oil finished with cotija and pickled pearl onions. An alternate pasta of tagliatelle needed nothing more than shelling beans and romano cheese to epitomize the season’s flavors.

Tender Rhode Island squid rings (right) came with sunchokes and Spanish gordal olives.  Black bass was well and simply accompanied by cucumber and shiso,

It was so good to find a favorite of mine––well prepared sweetbreads on this short menu, served with Tokyo turnips and garlic chives.

Red snapper came with summer squash and yogurt spiked with hot harissa.

   

   
All these dishes manifested Karis’s light touch with big flavors based very convincingly on what’s freshest in the market at the moment.

An indication of heartier dishes to come this fall was a saddle of lamb, its succulent meat composed as a roulade in a heady reduction and served with Japanese eggplant and shishito peppers. But it was rather off-putting to find this showy dish cost $90––especially in a portion not conducive to sharing––which is $20 more than the three-course summer menu then in effect.

Desserts carry the same straightforward, honest goodness, as in fragile phyllo dough encasing mascarpone (below) with cinnamon caramel and lovely lemon pistachios. A Nutella-like dark chocolate comes with hazelnuts and coconut, while the simplest is the ginger ice cream with a pour of yellow  Chartreuse.

    The food at Chambers is an obvious expression of the chef’s own preferences, and his commitment to the finest ingredients he can source shows what a difference they make in taste and texture. Add to that a civilized ambience, well-priced wine list and you have one of New York’s best new restaurants at a time when so many chefs are straining to be flashy rather than impressive by refinement.

        

Open Tues.-Sat. for dinner.

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HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
 By  John Mariani

    “Fashion Week c’est fini!” said Catherine on a phone call to Katie. “It got to be a real slog, and the Paris shows aren’t nearly as much fun as the ones in Milan.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” said Katie. “Maybe I’ll do an exposé on them. Blow the lid off the mysterious fashion industry!”
    “I’d love to help you with that one. It’s such a gossipy business. Everyone would tell stories about everyone else. So, what’s new with the hotel story?”
    Katie filled her in on most of the details and said she and David were just waiting to see if anything else happens with Bazarov.
    “Alan is not going to bankroll my being in Paris much longer unless something else breaks. I’m trying to speak with some of the emergency response people and the hotel staff members, if I can find them. They would add a lot of human interest and the real story of what it was like on that traumatic night.”
    “Is there any way you can get to Bazarov?” asked Catherine.
    “Short of bumping into him in an elevator and hitting the STOP button, probably not. Borel thinks he’s still in Paris because he has no reason to believe he’s a suspect. Yet. But I’m sure he will as soon as he reads the paper about the arrest of three suspects.”
    “Yeah, I’m going to try to do a spot on that. I’ll call Borel and try to get an interview with Yves. Make him look like a big hero.”
    “Yeah, he’s feeling much better about his performance that night now that he got a thumbs up from Borel.”

    Once the news of the arrest of Massot broke, Katie and David felt sure that Bazarov would bolt back to Russia on the first Aeroflot flight. Borel agreed with David that Bazarov would claim diplomatic immunity and insist on flying out of France as soon as possible. There would be security police at Charles DeGaulle to try to stop him, but asking Russian authorities for him to be extradited would take a long while and probably prove fruitless. But Borel had every intention of linking Bazarov to Charles Massot in as public a way as possible to cause embarrassment for the Russians. Just how deeply involved the ambassador was would have to be extracted from Massot first.
    David was feeling useless but content to pay his own way in Paris just following Katie around for her human interest  interviews. He knew that Katie only had a couple days left on Dobell’s dime, but if that happened, they could get back to what was left of their vacation. They still hadn’t even gotten to the Louvre or Versailles, and David was truly enjoying the meals in Paris.
    He knew that Borel’s hands were tied vis-à-vis Bazarov and that the Sûreté in Marseille, working for Interpol, was handling Marciano’s case. That left Saad Salah for Borel to work with, but the police kept all news about the young Syrian very quiet for the time being, giving only his name and nationality to the press.
    During the initial interrogation Salah had remained silent and was offered legal advice, but he delayed responding. Then, during the third interrogation—different interrogators were used in each session to keep him off guard, with Borel and David behind the one-way mirror wall—Salah was told he was looking at a lifetime behind bars if convicted of the crime, and the possession of a gun and his reaching for it when the police broke into his apartment were added factors; if he co-operated, that might be cut to as few as ten years, unless someone died. It then occurred to the Syrian that if he could make a deal right away, before anyone might die, he would be spared a life sentence; if someone did die, that chance was dashed. Salah then asked to see a lawyer, to be supplied by the court.
       With a lawyer involved, a deal was quickly worked out: If Salah admitted complicity and told the police everything he knew about those who engaged him in the crime, a deal might be offered. The lawyer had already spoken to the prosecutor as to what that might be. The charges of gun possession and usage would be dropped.
    In broken French, Salah told his story: He had once been part of the Syrian underground as a rebel against the Assad regime and had been arrested and tortured by its secret service, called the Mukhabarat. He showed the district attorney—called a procureur de la République—where his fingers had been broken by a hammer. After some discussion Salah was offered a simple deal: either Salah becomes an agent of the Mukhabarat or be beheaded. It wasn’t a difficult choice.
    Salah tried to give up as little information about his colleagues as possible—and there was a great deal he did not know—but it was enough to begin negotiations for a for a plea bargain.
    After training Salah had been given small assignments with little danger in them, and when he was posted to Paris they told him nothing at all of an assignment, just to wait until he heard something.  That something would be the hotel event. He would be met by someone who would give him the stolen virus, the HAZMAT suit and instructions on how to introduce the virus into the air duct. He was also to be made to look presentable enough to check into a luxury hotel like the Prince de Carignan, a haircut, a tidier beard, good clothes and shoes. (Hotel staff always looked at guests’ shoes.) He would arrive at the hotel in a hired town car, check in around six, plant the virus around nine and leave the hotel to return to his apartment in Montreuil. No arrangements had been made to extract him from France.
        Borel, from behind the glass, relayed questions to the a procureur to ask Salah. Those questions were overseen by his lawyer.
       “So, Monsieur Salah,” the procureur began, “you were given this virus container by someone here in Paris?”
         Salah nodded.
         “And was he Syrian or was he French?”
         “He was neither,” said Salah, looking at the tabletop.
         “Then what was he?”
          Salah looked up and said, “He was Russian, but he spoke French.”
         Borel and David looked at each other. Borel told the  procureur to have Salah describe the man. Salah said he was ar    ound fifty, a little stout, half bald, brown eyes and a double chin. He was describing Ilya Bazarov.
        “And did this Russian give you any money?”
        “No,” said Salah. “It was a job I was performing for the Mukhabarat and Saddad Hussein (below). I did not even know what the goal was. They were my orders and I followed them.”
        “Orders from the Mukhabarat?”
        “Yes, but I assumed it was a Russian operation, because of the man who gave me the virus.”
        “Do you know why?”
        Salah shook his head.
        “And the Mukhabarat never told you the reason you were ordered to do what they asked of you?”
        “Only that it would have an impact on the Saudis, whom Assad hates.”
        “And the Russians support Assad?”
        “Yes, absolutely.”
        The interrogation went on about details, and a discussion of a plea bargain would begin. Borel had told David the procureur would drop the gun charges and sentence him to ten years in prison, assuming further cooperation with the police.
        David and Katie had now heard what they needed to connect Bazarov to at least two of the hotel events. The next thing to do was to connect him to Marciano in Marseille.