Virtual Gourmet

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THIS WEEK

The Tourist Hops From Place To Place,
While The True Traveler Re-Visits
Places Full Of Fond Memories
By John Mariani

NEW YORK CORNER
PERRINE
By John Mariani

HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
CHAPTER SEVEN
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

CABERNET FRANC FOR
UNDER $30 A BOTTLE

by Geoff Kalish

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The Tourist Hops From Place To Place,
While The True Traveler Re-Visits
Places Full Of Fond Memories

Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn in "Two for the Road" (1967)

I have a friend who has enough time and money to travel as she wishes and over a lifetime has visited more cities and countries than anyone I know. She budgets her time to spend exactly one hour touring the Louvre, 45 minutes to eat at a trattoria in Rome and two hours to sun bathe on a beach in Bali. Then she comes home and sticks colored pins into a map of the world for all to see. Yet she never returns to anywhere she’s ever been. London?

Done it. Tokyo? Been there. Rio de Janeiro? Seen it. She will rave about a restaurant she was at twenty years ago but never seek to eat there again.
As a food and travel writer I try to be careful about recommending hotels or restaurants, even sights, I haven’t been to in the last few years, and I remember being appalled at how Vancouver, BC (left), which once had a marvelous low-lying cityscape and background of stunning forests and mountains, had on my return been made over with walls of high-rise buildings

of no distinction blotting out much of the view. Bangkok (right) was once called the “Venice of the East” for its extensive canal system, now almost entirely paved over in exchange for. . . high-rise buildings.
Though I’m still trying to cross off cities on my bucket list, the older I get the more I realize I won’t be able to set foot in every country on earth. Yet I am also more than ever eager to return to places I have visited in the past, perhaps several times. The pleasure of travel, staying in a hotel and eating out is not only about seeing new things but about revisiting what you loved about a place. This could be based on a romantic memory in Lisbon, a trek through gorgeous scenery in Switzerland or a perfect meal out in a Louisiana bayou.

There might well be disappointments in such returns, as when a ride is removed at Disneyland that I thrilled to when I was ten years old, or a restaurant in Copenhagen who switched from traditional Danish cooking to a menu of molecular cuisine. And sometimes the memory is fogged by finding a favorite room in a historic New England inn isn’t nearly as comfortable as it seemed or the food much good at all.
    Sometimes it might not matter: if only I could find the third-floor walk-up room in a Parisian pension where I spent three blissful days with a wonderful Oklahoma girl I’d met at a museum in New York, I’d experience as visiting my boyhood apartment in the Bronx.
         Indeed, time being fleeting, rather than search out the hot new vegetarian eatery in Vienna, I take much more pleasure going back for the perfect Wiener Schnitzel and tafelspitz at Plachuttas Gasthaus zur Opera (below). I would never visit Venice without hoisting a bellini cocktail and eating the wonderful risotto con seppie and tagliatelle gratinata at Harry’s Bar. And were I in Taipei I wouldn’t miss a chance to visit Night Market with endless stalls serving up exotica that includes “Stinky Tofu.”
         I don’t really care about eating Japanese food in Milan or Italian food in Mumbai. I don’t even really care to eat Sicilian food in Rome or Niçoise food in Alsace. I want to seek out the best a particular food culture has to offer.
         Back in 1977 for our honeymoon, my wife and I drove across American and back in a leisurely fashion (fourteen weeks), and, given our modest resources, stayed in small hotels and inns of regional charm, getting educated about the different styles of barbecue from Lexington, Kentucky, to Lockhart, Texas (left). We

attended crab boils in Maryland and boucheries in Louisiana. And although it will never be repeated, I count as one of the finest meals of my life for a breakfast at a misty hanging lake in Colorado with Basque cowboys who cooked up campfire pancakes, bacon, lamb chops and pots of strong coffee just dawn broke.
I yearn to return to eat tacos in the mercado in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, and the extraordinary rich vegetarian fare at the truck stop named Sharma Dhabu in Jaipur. In Paris I have at

least six bistros and brasseries I always frequent and usually order the signature dishes like the beef tartare and frites at Montparnasse’s La Rotonde and the Dover sole at Le Dome, the pig’s trotter at Au Pied de Cochon at Les Halles near the Pompidou Center, and the crispy sweetbreads at Chez Georges on the Rue de Mail.
Settings that haven’t changed much in decades are always a draw for me because what I liked about them on my first visit has been retained on successive visits, like the downstairs cave-like dining room at Botin in Madrid, the barebones décor of La Campagna in Rome, the Teutonic trappings of The Berghoff in Chicago and the refreshed and now pristine dining room of Galatoire’s in New Orleans.
As everyone knows, fondly remembered dishes stay with you always, so I rush to eat them again at places that haven’t changed the recipe in decades, like the lasagne alla bolognese at Trattoria dal Biassanot in Bologna; the huge portion of choucroute in Le Tire-Bouchon in Strasbourg; the frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity 3 in New York;

and the Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Bar in San Francisco.
You might have noticed that many of these places I’ve mentioned attract large numbers of tourists––who keep them thriving––which doesn’t concern me as it does when American abroad insist on visiting another iteration of Hard Rock Café in Buenos Aires or Del Frisco’s steakhouse in Las Vegas.
I, too, was a tourist once, and I did search out the most heralded hotels and restaurants abroad, at first very cheap ones recommended by the guidebook Europe on $5 a Day (which was wholly possible back in the 1960s). I wanted to eat

where Hemingway ate in Paris, like Brasserie Lipp, and where Sam Spade at in The Maltese Falcon––John’s Grill in San Francisco. I tried to dine at as many restaurants and stay in as many hotels as I could afford in the James Bond novels and films, from ‘21’ Club in New York to the Danieli Hotel (right) in Octopussy.

I know that once a hotel or restaurant appears in a movie, whether the Plaza Hotel in Home Alone 2, or its Oak Bar in North by Northwest they become as iconic for tourists as Vienna’s Ferris wheel in The Third Man and Sacher Hotel (left) in the same movie.
But like my friend who only visits any place once for a peek, those sights may not beg a second visit. Those that do become personal favorites make re-visiting them, staying in the same room and eating the same dishes may well be the most rewarding part of a true traveler’s itinerary. For the receptive heart and soul traveling is not about pins on a map but about the remembrance of the best of things past.

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NEW YORK CORNER

PERRINE

The Pierre
2 East 61st Street
212-838-8000

Photo by Andrew Werner

New York is in the throes of a hotel restaurant renaissance, with the opening of Café Carmellini in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, The Otter in The Manner, Brass in The Evelyn, Vestry in the Dominick and others. By a renaissance I mean that hotel dining rooms of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries like the original Ritz- Carlton, The Plaza, the Waldorf-Astoria and the St. Regis were once held in the highest esteem.

But by the 1950s, the explosion of exciting, free-standing restaurants of individual excellence helped put the kibosh on impersonal hotel dining rooms as dreary alternatives. So, I’m delighted to find so many new hotels are opening so many wonderful restaurants run by top chefs all over town, as I am with the revivification of others that have brought in new chefs and new concepts.
The Pierre Hotel (left) is an exemplar of the latter, which has long been one of the city’s most historic and elegant spots, opening in 1930 on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. For decades its Café Pierre, with its trompe l’oeuil cloudy sky ceiling by Valerian Rybar, was a major watering hole for New York society; Al Pacino’s tango scene in the film Scent of a Woman was shot in The Pierre's Cotillion Room.

Since 2005 under the control of the Taj Group, the space that is now Perrine has had what seems like a shift of focus every few years or so, none successful: at one point it was a snooty offshoot of London’s Le Caprice, then an Italian trattoria named Sirio managed by the Maccioni family, who hired Vincent Garofalo as executive chef. There was a brief tilt towards modern Indian cuisine. Now, with Garofalo back in the kitchen, the menu reflects a balance of contemporary American, French and Italian dishes.

You enter through gleaming brass doors into a long dining room as sleek as ever, with a classy bar up front, and done in tones of gray, black, white and silver to give it a sophisticated ambiance that is very much New York in spirit, like the white bow on a Tiffany box. The fine lighting, thick tablecloths, settings and stemware are first class, and the waitstaff, since my last visit a few years back, is now measurably improved in its amiable professionalism. The wine list, which is quite modest, has not.
Perrine’s clientele ranges widely, from Upper East Siders, hotel guests and tourists who include stylish young Japanese women toting designer bags from the high-fashion shops along the

nexus of Madison, 57^th Street and Fifth Avenue.
    Chef Garofalo’s menu is clearly composed to please all of them, full of classic dishes like French onion soup and salade Niçoise along with American favorites like lobster rolls as well as steak au poivre and the Pierre burger. Given his background, the chef also makes four main course pastas.
    I was especially pleased by two appetizers found in abundance around Manhattan, because Garofalo’s lobster bisque (below) has the deep, briny flavor of the shellfish, enriched with a citrus-laced crème fraîche and a pretty green swirl of tarragon oil; tuna tartare is impeccably balanced between very flavorful, dark red tuna chunks and the subtlety of many seasonings and Dijon mustard, along with thin haricot verts, olives and basil-scented pistou.

“Coronation Chicken” takes its name from a retro dish created in 1952 for the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, made of tender poached chicken with a curry mayonnaise, raisins, apple, cilantro and a dash of chili oil. It was unexpectedly delicious and deserves a wider audience. The warm lobster roll came with plenty of butter-poached meat in am equally buttery brioche roll with crisp French fries, and at $34 it’s a refined match for lobster rolls sold for an equal price out of seafood shacks up and down Long Island.

Among the pastas I tried, I thoroughly enjoyed the ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach dressed with a creamy Alfredo-style sauce. House-made tagliatelle with some of that lobster bisque and fava beans livened with tarragon is as sumptuous as it sounds.

The “Pierre Burger” toes the current line of overstuffed, overwrought, adequate burgers in fine dining rooms in New York, but the roasted half chicken with baby potatoes, mushrooms and salsa verde was a textbook example of how this bird can be ennobled with finesse. Half a dozen fat scallops are arrayed with a highly complementary sweet and sour puree sweet corn

springtime’s asparagus and a lemon-saffron sauce.

         Hotels, which must cater to weddings and anniversaries, usually excel at desserts, and at the Perrine they most certainly do with items like Pavlova (now having something of its own renaissance), the pretty pink meringue confection (left) made to honor the prima Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as a peach Melba similarly honoring Dame Nellie Melba, and a rum-soaked baba with citrus cream.

         For nearly a century now The Pierre has never lost its cosmopolitan luster, and Perrine, now re-incarnated with Chef Garofalo, matches that appeal as a restaurant of convincing posh and good taste. And a good lunch spot in which to show off your shopping bags.



Open for breakfast daily, lunch Mon.-Sat., Brunch Sun., dinner nightly.

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HÔTEL ALLEMAGNE
By John Mariani

CHAPTER SEVEN

    The next day—Saturday—the news was as sluggish as the tenor of the city itself, the welcome lethargy of a Paris weekend, when the morning's only sound was that of a street washer's swish.
   Katie had agreed to let Catherine take her shopping and David said he’d be happy to trudge along with two beautiful American girls, a cavalier attitude he regretted after spending 40 minutes in one store on the high fashion Rue Saint-Honoré (left). Catherine, who could have afforded to buy much of what the two women looked at, said, “You can buy a lot of this stuff in any big city,” reeling off French-based fashion companies selling their wares everywhere, even the duty-free shops in the airports. “Let’s go to one of my favorite shopping districts on the Left Bank where they have small young designers and the prices aren’t so ridiculous.”

David was already exhausted by the trek from store to store and said he’d like to go off on his own for a while and would meet them for lunch. Katie gave him her guidebook and Catherine gave him the address of where she’d booked lunch on the Left Bank and asked if one o’clock was good for him. That gave David two hours just to roam about at his leisure, maybe head over to the hotel sites to see if he could pick up any news. They parted at the Pont Neuf, in view of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which David headed for.
         Having spent only two days inside Borel’s office on his last trip to Paris, David had seen next to nothing of the city, and he was enchanted with the way it was so broadly laid out, with wide boulevards and so many squares and bridges. He found Notre Dame breathtaking in its beauty, even if, again, he was disappointed to see its exterior so dark with centuries of grime. He crossed over the Pont Neuf and headed for Montparnasse where he was to meet Katie and Catherine for lunch at La Rotonde, which was situated at a nexus of brasseries at Boulevard Raspail and Port Royal. It was easy enough to spot, with its brilliant red awnings and wicker chairs outside, and large art déco sign above them. Inside it glistened with mirrors, reflecting glass and art nouveau chandeliers set above burgundy-colored tables and brown booths.
         A jovial black-suited maître d’ knew immediately that David was an American and greeted him cordially with, “Bonjour, monsieur, you have a reservation for lunch?” Relieved the man spoke English, David said it was under Newcombe, and the maître d’ said, “Ah, oui, they have just arrived. This way, Monsieur,” showing the American to a booth overlooking the boulevard.
         “So, you didn’t buy anything?” asked David, settling onto the leather seat and seeing no packages.

         “Oh, we did some damage, all right,” said Katie. “They stored our packages in the coat room. I got some terrific stuff at really good prices.”
         “Do you bargain over here?”
         Catherine looked at Katie and said, “I have no idea," indicating the idea of bargaining for a better price was not something she’d ever considered.
         The rest of the afternoon was spent eating good brasserie fare—salade Niçoise (below), soupe de poisson, turbot with Hollandaise, a filet of beef with Béarnaise and cod with a rich aïoli and a bottle of Chablis. The events at the hotels didn’t come up until the end, over a shared crème brûlée. Neither Katie nor David had heard anything from their contacts except Catherine, who knew all the concierges at the best hotels, including those attached by the disease.
    “I told Katie that the concierge at the Anastasia—a guy named Yves— called me just before lunch,” Catherine told David, “and he said the bug came through the air ducts.”
         “Same as the Legionnaires Disease in Philadelphia,” said David.
         Catherine remembered that. “So, although they haven’t had a chance to test any of the food yet—it’s all got to be bagged and thrown out—there’s no indication, as yet, it was contamination that caused it, unless they could show that every single person who ate the oysters or the asparagus came down with the disease.”
         “Which means we can probably eliminate my idea that it came from food that was shipped in from the same source,” said Katie.
         “Probably. So, somehow it got into the air ducts.”
         “Do all these hotels have air-conditioning?” asked David, who recalled his did not when he was last in Paris.

   “Yes, these are luxury hotels with a big clientele of Americans, who can’t live without a/c. The French hate a/c. They think it gives them summer colds. I put it in my apartment and was told ‘Oh, zat ees so-o-o Amair-ee-cain, Cath-reen!’ Anyway, the hotels wouldn’t have turned the a/c on now. It’s only the end of March.”
         “What about the heat?” asked Katie.
         “It probably depends on the day. I don’t know if all the hotels have individual thermostats in the rooms. Probably not.”
         “How did the concierge know it came through the ducts?” asked David.
         “He didn’t say. Maybe he was just guessing, but the germs had to be inside all the rooms, including the lobby and staff area because so many of them got sick, too. He did say that he thought that the disease may have affected those on the lower floors and public areas, but who knows? We’re just going to have to wait for the official reports next week.”
         The two women gathered up their packages, which David helped them carry. He would have liked to have walked around Montparnasse some more, but Katie said maybe they could save that for their proposed Hemingway tour, which Catherine said she had information about because so many Americans took it. They went to the taxi stand, piled in and dropped Catherine off before going back to Katie and David’s hotel.
         “So, what do you think so far?” asked Katie.
         “About Catherine? She’s a doll. Smart lady and doesn’t flaunt her background. You think she’s a good journalist?”
         Without wanting to sound the least condescending, Katie said, “Yeah, for the kind of journalism she does. Y’know, all those sixty-second sound bites. I don’t know how she’d do on an investigative story that took weeks or more. She’d never get the chance to. I think Catherine is very happy here, though. Paris becomes a woman like Catherine and vice-versa. And having that American kind of dash makes her all the more willing for French people to open up to her. It’s just like her to know all the concierges on a first name basis. Her French is near perfect.”
         “Well,” said David, “I don’t mind having her along with us. Especially since she paid for lunch.”
         “Right, and not on her expense account.”

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NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

CABERNET FRANC FOR
UNDER $30 A BOTTLE

by Geoff Kalish

Against a recent trend of declining US wine sales, especially among younger consumers, there’s a growing popularity of modestly-priced bottles containing wine made from the Cabernet Franc grape. In fact, once mainly grown as a “blending” grape, wines fashioned from predominantly Cabernet Franc grapes are now vinified as great food-friendly, stand-alone reds, with wineries increasingly learning the best places to plant these grapes and the best methods of production. In addition, there’s a wide range of these bottles available, with some hailing from wine regions as diverse as France’s Loire Valley, Argentina’s Uco Valley, the New York’s Finger Lakes and Hudson Valley areas. And while my experience is that most retail outlets currently only carry a brand or two, making a search for them a bit of a challenge (a situation sure to change as the popularity of these products continues to grow) it’s well worth the effort.

As to matching these wines with food, in general they go great with roasts like brisket and leg of lamb and especially fare containing tomatoes, like pasta with red sauce, pizza and even gazpacho. Also, they pair perfectly with well-aged cheddar, Jarlsberg and Gouda cheeses. Of note, they usually benefit form a bit of aeration and by and large most age well over 5-7 years from vintage date, with an increase in notes of violets and chocolate in the finish of older wines. And, based on a series of recent tastings of Cabernet Francs retailing for under $30 a bottle, the following were my favorites.

2022 Château de la Bonneliére “Les Lisons” Chinon ($18)

From renowned vintner Marc Plouzeau, this organic wine was fashioned from hand-picked grapes on vines grown in clay-limestone soil on the slopes of the Commune of Ligré in Central France. It shows a bouquet and taste of violets and cherries with a smooth finish and lingering notes of thyme.

2022 Fjord Vineyard Cabernet Franc ($29)

Lighter in color and a bit more herbaceous than most Cabernet Francs, this wine from New York’s Hudson Valley shows a bouquet and flavor of cherry and raspberry with a smooth finish.

2022 Dr. Konstantin Frank Cabernet Franc ($28)

Made from vines older than 25 years old, grown in shale-based soil in New York’s Finger Lake region, this wine was fermented in temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks and then aged for 16 months in French oak (20% new). It has a bouquet and taste of ripe plums and cassis, with notes of cherry and exotic spice in its finish.

2022 Catena San Carlos Cabernet Franc ($23)

From grapes grown in the Uco Valley in Argentina, this wine that was aged for over a year in French oak barrels. It shows a bouquet and taste of plums and cherries with notes of cedar and roasted red peppers in its finish.

2022 Scarpetta Cabernet Franc ($18)

This wine was made from grapes grown in the Fruili-Venezia Giulia region of northern Italy with bottling after fermentation and 10 months of aging. It shows a bouquet and taste of raspberry and plums with hints of thyme and black pepper in its finish.

2021 Domaine Bousquet Gaia Organic Cabernet Franc ($17)

Made from 100 % hand-harvested organic Cabernet Franc grapes grown at the foothills of Argentina’s Andes Mountains, this wine underwent aging of 8-10 months in French oak before bottling. It has a flavor cherries and fresh herbs.

2023 La Coucoute de Fontenille Cabernet Franc

For this wine grapes (100% Cabernet Franc), grown in soil composed of loam and gravel were fermented and aged in stainless-steel tanks and bottled unfined and unfiltered. It shows a bouquet and flavor of raspberries with a touch of cranberry in its finish.

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.