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THIS WEEK IS LONDON COPYING ALL OF NEW YORK'S TRENDIEST FOOD FADS? By John Mariani NEW YORK CORNER FOUR TWENTY FIVE By John Mariani THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE By John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR SO YOU WANT TO HOLD A WINE TASTING? By John Mariani ❖❖❖
IS LONDON
COPYING ALL OF
NEW YORK'S TRENDIEST FOOD FADS? By John Mariani The Carving Trolley at Wilton's Storefront
eateries with five tables and communal
seating. A dicey neighborhood. Blasting
loud techno-music. Asian-Latino fusion
food. $25 cocktails. Lines down the block
to get in. And the food media fully in
thrall.
If you
think that is a description of New York’s
current restaurant scene, you would be right.
But you’d be just as right if you said
London’s, because in all those ways London’s
restaurateurs have been copying Gotham’s
frenetic, wildly expensive, impossible-to-get
into dining out scene, and, as in New York,
the media have been hyperventilating over
here-today-and-gone-next year eateries
purporting to serve the most authentic Korean,
Mexican, Peruvian, Vietnamese, East African
dishes—sometimes all on the same plate—most
(as their publicists goad the chefs to tell
the press) in evocation of their grandma’s
cooking (since moms are out working).
Just as Brooklyn and Queens have become
destinations for New
York’s foodie hipsters, many of these new
places in London are in neighborhoods far from
the posh of streets of Notting Hill, Mayfair
and Belgravia, so you’ll have to hop the tube
to Hackney, Spitalfields, Southwark,
Wandsworth, Lambeth and Haringey to find the
newest hot spots. Self-styled rock-and-roll
chefs like Whyte Rushin of Whyte’s (with its
graffiti-scrawled window), courts the press
with ever-changing menus of “mini-smash
burgers, “steak tartare with Rice Krispies,”
tempura of octopus with “bulldog sauce,” and
“burnt Basque cheesecake.”
“Naff” restaurants are ignored for the most
part as too expensive and unfashionable.
New York-style
steakhouses have been all the rage in London
for the past five years, having imported a
Smith & Wollensky (above) branch to
Covent Garden and Wolfgang Puck’s CUT to Park
Lane. The new Dover (right), which the
“50 Best London Restaurants” list in UK House
& Garden calls “a combination of a
super-exclusive members club in New York,” is
already booked weeks in advance for Brits
dying to sink their teeth into its
burgers.mini-hot dogs and lobster rolls. At
Cavita (left) in Marylebone you start
with margaritas and Mexican sushi, while folks
at Decimo are noshing on tostadas filled with
caviar, and fans are knocking back flights of
mezcals at nearby Mezcaleria. Tasting menus have
grown excessive and as expensive as in New
York: dinner at Ikoyi in the
Strand is £350. House & Gardens’
list, as with those of the Times and
Telegraph, are highlighted as
“insider’s” guides. The only two London
restaurants on the rightly ridiculed World’s
“50 Best Restaurants” (sponsored by San
Pellegrino and Acqua Panna) are both Japanese,
including Ikoyi. The very French Michelin
Guide to London is still obsessed with
very French restaurants dining rooms,
including Gordon Ramsay’s flagship, Alain
Ducasse and Helen Darroze at the Connaught.
What are sadly missing on most of these lists
are precisely the kinds of restaurants that
visitors from around the world want to hear
about because they represent long and refined
British traditions of what might be called
“proper” dining. The
once venerable Simpson’s in the Strand is
“temporarily closed,” but Wilton’s, opened in
1742, is still one of the finest in London
for its British cooking and exquisite décor,
with its rolling silver carving carts of
Dorset lamb, Blythburg pork and roast sirloin
of beef with Yorkshire pudding. These
are the kinds of restaurants and dishes that,
even when made more contemporary, keep the
flame of great British cooking alive in ways
that are distinct from New York or any other
city. ❖❖❖
NEW YORK CORNER
FOUR TWENTY FIVE
425 Park Avenue 212-751-6921 By John Mariani Interiors photos by Nicole Franzen
With 52
restaurants bearing his imprint, Jean-Georges
Vongerichten has become global brand as a
global along with colleagues with like Gordon
Ramsay (58) and Alain Ducasse (34). Some, like
his New York flagship Jean-Georges, have
retained their high reputations, others are
copycats set with menus of his signature
dishes, and some are downright mediocre. How
much time Vongerichten spends in any of them,
with only 52 weeks in a year, or how much
input he has with the hundreds of cooks in his
kitchens has become a moot point. But when he
opens a fine dining restaurant like the new
Four Twenty Five, with a stellar chef in the
kitchen, one has to believe he’s still putting
his (or his investors’) money where his mouth
is.
No one entering Four
Twenty Five can fail to recognize the decorous
similarities to the original Four Seasons
restaurant four blocks away, now
called The Grill. The grand, carpeted L-shaped
staircase, the ground floor bar with 48-foot
ceiling and a 24-foot-long long Larry Poons
painting, soft lighting, swaying draperies,
spacious tables and table lamps set with heavy
linens, all evoke Philip Johnson and Bill
Pahlmann’s 1959 design for the Four Seasons
within the classic modernist shaft of Mies van
der Röhe’s Seagram Building.
The steely faux-Gothic design of Lord Norman
Foster’s Four Twenty Five skyscraper,
including the restaurant, was bankrolled by
the same entrepreneurs who took over the
Seagram Building, David
Levinson and Robert Lapidus and Tokyu Land
Corporation. . It's all very
New York swank, elegant and restrained, and I,
for one, cherish that such dining rooms are
still being built in New York, especially
after the failure of the second Four Seasons
off Park Avenue (now Fasano). I might wish for
a more enticing name than Four Twenty Five.
When I visited midday, the room was close to
full with what seemed a business lunch crowd,
mostly men in dark suits without ties, none
shouting to be heard as is now the norm around
town these days.
The true indicator of Chef Jonathan Benno’s
culinary superiority is the approachable
refinement and very civilized menu he’s
created. For years Benno had been chef at
Thomas Keller ‘s Per Se before taking over the
kitchen at Lincoln Ristorante, then on his
own, the short-lived Benno, in the Evelyn
Hotel. After nibbling
on very good, moist dark bread (served with
one silver dollar of butter for the table), we
began with a fresh take on tuna tartare ($29),
diced and placed amidst a sunflower seed
hummus, sparked with lime and chili and
crisp, lotus chips. The corn
agnolotti ($32) shows off the same
inventiveness as when Benno was making pastas
at Lincoln, the sweet corn in balance with
woodsy chanterelle
mushrooms, opal basil, parmigiano and a
Sungold tomato sauce (left).
The last of the
season’s sweetest tomatoes came fanned
out with thin slivers of peppery onion lashed
with a brisk red wine vinaigrette and scent of
basil ($28). Eggplant
Milanese ($28) was a delightful rendering of
small Fairy Tale eggplants breaded and sauteed
till crisp, sparked with Jimmy
Nardello
Italian peppers and a wax bean-lemon salad
($28).
It is impossible to get
bored with chicken when you expertly roast one
from Green Circle so juicy and flavorful,
needing only the enhancement of crushed
peppercorns, with a mashed
potatoes and the richly reduced jus
($46). In a city of great
cheeseburgers, Four Twenty Five’s would not
rank very high: The beef had little flavor and
was slightly overcooked (it happens), there
was not enough Gruyère to ooze, but it was
helped by the crispy onions, green chili
mustard and, instead of ketchup, the beef jus
($34). The French fries were about par for the
course.
Desserts are splendid, modern with need for
the eccentricity of exotic herbs. So the
chocolate almond torte with black
cardamom crémeux, tonka bean whipped ganache,
buckwheat caramel, and marzipan ice cream
($16) was terrific, as was the strawberry
vacherin ($18) with
a lemonade meringue, petit
beurre pastry, elderflower and strawberry
jasmine sorbet. There’s also a soft “cookie
flight” ($14) of four—peanut butter miso,
berry oatmeal, salted caramel chocolate,
strawberry crumble, and to end off the meal
scrumptious bon bons.
The wine list is as
thorough as you’d expect, with 1,200 labels
and 9,000 bottles, including more than 30 by
the glass at reasonable prices.
Prices for this elevated cuisine compare with
restaurants like Gramercy Tavern and Casa
Lever and are somewhat less than The Grill.
It’s notable that there are no price
supplements or dishes at “market price.” The
six-course tasting menu at $188 is a
whole lot less than the $250 at The Modern or
$298 at Jean-Georges’s flagship. The Bar Menu
of small plates offers several options under
$18. Open
for breakfast Mon.-Fri,; Lunch Mon.-Fri.;
Dinner nightly. ❖❖❖
THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES By John Mariani CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“I’m getting pretty tired of this Irish
food,” said David over yet another pub lunch.
*
*
*
“If I were still on the force I could
have the note analyzed,” said David.
*
*
*
Their
first visit was to a priest who
Sarah Garrison said had been helping her with her
research. His
name was Tom Draney and, she said, no one
was more adamant about exposing the corruption of
the Church with regard to
sexual molestation by clergy. For that reason, he
had never risen in the Church
hierarchy and had stayed a local parish priest for
more than a decade at St. Columba. Garrison said that it
was a parish whose stated
mission was to “do all in
our power to
create safe environments
for children and young people
in order to secure their protection
and enable their full
participation in the life of the Church.”
Katie
and David met Tom Draney inside the large stone
church on Iona Road, with a
sun-lighted interior and rose window.
The priest was in his seventies, tall,
white-haired and slender. He
greeted the two Americans with a “Welcome to St.
Columba!” in a voice that
echoed within the church walls. “Shall
we sit here in the pews?” he asked, as if to
suggest God would be in on the
conversation.
© John Mariani, 2018 ❖❖❖ NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
SO YOU WANT TO HOLD A WINE TASTING? By John Mariani
Once the very idea of
holding a wine tasting at one’s home
was considered a pretentious way of ruining a
convivial party. Now such
tastings are considerably less high-minded, and, if
conducted with conviviality
in mind, a way of getting together without the
preparation and expense of a
full dinner party. The first rule of thumb is
not to serve too many wines—six is an ideal amount. Fewer
makes no sense; much more becomes a
slog. Next, decide
if you’ve going to taste the wines
blind, that is, without revealing their names. This
is not to fool or embarrass
anyone but to be able to judge the wines without
bias of known labels. If so, cover
the bottles with a paper bag to hide the labels and
the shape of the bottle
because some varietals, like Pinot Noir and
Riesling, are always sold in
specifically shaped bottles. Then
number
the bags and reveal the labels only after all are
tasted. You
might feature wines from
a particular region, like Tuscany or New Zealand,
Napa Valley or Sicily. Or by
varietal grape, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache or
Chardonnay. A
vertical tasting is one in
which you taste the exact same wine from the same
producer but in different
vintages, which is probably not a good idea for the
idle, uninformed imbiber. A
horizontal tasting is when
you taste wines from the same vintage or the same
grape varietal but from different
producers. As to glassware,
connoisseurs stick with a single shape, even though
restaurants may serve
different varietals in different shapes, according
to the kind of wine, like
Alsatian wines in green-stemmed glassware. The glass
should be thin, in which a
four-ounce pour fills about half the glass. This
allows for swirling and
sniffing the aroma of the wine, itself a point of
discussion. Needless to say,
a tasting is not the same as drinking five
half-glasses over dinner. By the
way, you can buy perfectly good, thin wineglasses
for under five dollars at big
stores like Costco.
If
you are serving
the wines with dinner, keep the food simple so that
the wine remains the focus:
simply grilled red meat with big reds, cheeses or
seafood with whites, and
vice-versa. As
host, you should try to
stir discussion, perhaps with a toast, like Lord
Byron’s, “Let us have wine and
women, mirth and laughter,/ Sermons and soda-water
the day after.” Last,
someone has to pay for
the wines, and friends may want to defray those
expenses. Remember that one
bottle will allow, say, six friends to have a
tasting sample, so six bottles
will certainly suffice. ❖❖❖ ARTICLES
WE NEVER FINISHED READING “'Most people
don’t throw up,” the attendant admitted to me as I
entered the Disgusting Food Museum with a vomit bag that
doubles as an entry ticket. 'But isn’t it better
to be prepared?' The museum, in Malmo’s central
old town, has generated plenty of reactions (beyond just the bodily
ones) since opening in 2018. But its displays of
global delicacies, from Mongolian sheep eyeball
juice to Sweden’s own surstromming, a
fermented canned herring that has to be opened
under water to control the odor, encourages you to
think about your own response, too. The exhibition
culminates in a tasting bar (optional, included in
ticket) where the daring can sample the products
[such as] the Chinese rice wine haggis-guinea-pig
fermented baby mice and the crispy mopane worms
from Botswana are Twinkies and root beer, a
reminder that the line between disgusting and
delicious is in the mouth of the beholder."--Lisa
Abend, "24 Hours in Malmo, Sweden. NY Times
(9/29/24) ❖❖❖ Any of John Mariani's books below may be ordered from amazon.com. The Hound in Heaven (21st Century Lion Books) is a novella, and for anyone who loves dogs, Christmas, romance, inspiration, even the supernatural, I hope you'll find this to be a treasured favorite. The story concerns how, after a New England teacher, his wife and their two daughters adopt a stray puppy found in their barn in northern Maine, their lives seem full of promise. But when tragedy strikes, their wonderful dog Lazarus and the spirit of Christmas are the only things that may bring his master back from the edge of despair. WATCH THE VIDEO! “What a huge surprise turn this story took! I was completely stunned! I truly enjoyed this book and its message.” – Actress Ali MacGraw “He had me at Page One. The amount of heart, human insight, soul searching, and deft literary strength that John Mariani pours into this airtight novella is vertigo-inducing. Perhaps ‘wow’ would be the best comment.” – James Dalessandro, author of Bohemian Heart and 1906. “John Mariani’s Hound in Heaven starts with a well-painted portrayal of an American family, along with the requisite dog. A surprise event flips the action of the novel and captures us for a voyage leading to a hopeful and heart-warming message. A page turning, one sitting read, it’s the perfect antidote for the winter and promotion of holiday celebration.” – Ann Pearlman, author of The Christmas Cookie Club and A Gift for my Sister. “John Mariani’s concise, achingly beautiful novella pulls a literary rabbit out of a hat – a mash-up of the cosmic and the intimate, the tragic and the heart-warming – a Christmas tale for all ages, and all faiths. Read it to your children, read it to yourself… but read it. Early and often. Highly recommended.” – Jay Bonansinga, New York Times bestselling author of Pinkerton’s War, The Sinking of The Eastland, and The Walking Dead: The Road To Woodbury. “Amazing things happen when you open your heart to an animal. The Hound in Heaven delivers a powerful story of healing that is forged in the spiritual relationship between a man and his best friend. The book brings a message of hope that can enrich our images of family, love, and loss.” – Dr. Barbara Royal, author of The Royal Treatment. ❖❖❖
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