MARIANI’S

Virtual Gourmet


  October 13,  2024                                                                                                NEWSLETTER

 


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"Cateluña El Pescado" by Joaquin Sorolla

      "Catalunya  

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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



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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.
     
Rules (above) debuted in 1798,  still serving classics steak and kidney pudding, grilled Cornish sardines, rump steak, sticky toffee pudding and a plate of English cheeses. The Grill at The Dorchester, while newly re-modeled and with a young chef,  Tom Booton, is where  to go for Cornish crab with tomatoes and lemon balm; ribeye on the bone with braised beef doughnuts; and beef Wellington. The Savoy Grill (left) sticks to tradition with its famous Arnold Bennett soufflé with smoked haddock and cheese sauce; treacle and ale-cured pork chop; and strawberry tart with lemon cheese mousse.

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.
    But for all that, the London media are dismissive. Its foodies would rather be somewhere in Southwark scarfing up cheeseburgers and New York-style pizzas.





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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. 
    (One demerit, not uncommon these days, is that there is no phone number, except for a reservationist, for you to speak to anyone at the restaurant itself. If you call the Jean-Georges for General Inquiries or Marketing, no one was available on successive attempts to reach them for information.)
    And so, yet again, the myth that fine dining is dying in New York, despite new restaurants like Le Pavillon, Essential by Christophe, Fasano and Café Carmellini, is dashed upon entering and eating at Four Twenty Five. Reservations are essential (even for the power breakfast crowd) days in advance, and it’s a good place to revel in what makes New York unique in American dining right now.

 

Open for breakfast Mon.-Fri,; Lunch Mon.-Fri.; Dinner nightly.







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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.
         “I know what you mean,” said Katie. “Maybe we should go Indian tonight. One more fish and chips or shepherd’s pie and I’m going to start buying groceries.”
         “Funny how you can’t find corned beef and cabbage over here. Good beer though. Irish coffee ain’t bad either. Though I’d kill for a good espresso.”
         “Without the sambuca.”
         Definitely without the sambuca. I wonder how espresso would taste with a little Irish whiskey in it?”
         Katie and David were quiet for a while, both of them thinking about how to proceed without involving the Garda.
         “Did you hear from Max?” she asked.
         “Not a word. I have feeling he’s under orders not to talk to us.”
         “So you and I are supposed to find and arrest the criminal all by ourselves?”
         “Oh, I’m sure the Garda are hot on the case. It’s too big a case for them not to be. And they’re definitely praying there are no more incidents. Makes them look very bad, since they didn’t find Maureen Maloney before she offed herself.”
         “Do Irish cops pray?”
         “I have no idea, but all cops say things like, ‘I hope to God we find the bastard soon’ and ‘God help us if we don’t find the guy.’ Means nothing.”
         The waitress who had waited on the two Americans came to their table and said, “Your check’s been taken care of.”
         “By who?” asked David.
         “I’ve no idea. But he left this for you.”
         It was a slip of lined notepad paper in an envelope, reading, “NOW GO HOME.”

  

                                             *                         *                         *                        

 

         “If I were still on the force I could have the note analyzed,” said David.
       
“Well, it’s not like it’s a real threat,” said Katie. “Maybe the guy hates Yanks.”
         “This is the way it starts. We don’t go home, there’ll be more notes or nudges of some kind.”
         “Because of one lunatic?”
         “We have no idea if it’s one lunatic, a bunch of lunatics or some drunk who just left this bar. More likely, it was someone outside the bar who asked someone in the bar to give the waitress the note.”
         “So, do we go to the police?
         “This doesn’t exactly rise to the level of a violent threat,” said David.
“And if I were still a cop and you came into my station, I’d tell us not to make too much out a nasty little note. Maybe this guy does have something against Americans. I just wish he’d done it with the check we got at L’Écrivain.”
         “So, what do we do?”
         “We go ahead with our plans and see what happens. Keep in touch with the Garda as much as possible. And watch our backs.”
         They left the pub together and stayed together.

 

 

                                                                       *                         *                         *               

 

 

         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.
         Katie and David liked Father Draney immediately, sensing that his ebullience was key to his character and to his faith. He spoke with an Irish lilt in his voice but barely a trace of brogue.
         “So, you know Sarah,” he said. “One of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met. So dedicated and, just as important, very, very thorough. She knows she’s under scrutiny, so she never utters a word until she’s sure she’s got the evidence.”
         “And by that you mean the evidence about the abuse of children and the women at the Magdalene Laundries?” asked Katie.
         “Precisely,” said Father Draney, “and I’ve tried to help her in any way I can with her research.  It goes slowly.”
        “Obviously you know about what happened to Father Liddy,” said David, “and how it seems probable the perpetrator was a man. And from what we’ve found out, Father Liddy was gay and perhaps a pedophile.”
         Father Draney nodded and said, “Yes, I fear that’s all true.  Denis was a good priest in so many ways, but he also fought with his demons.  We all have them, you know.”
         Katie thought that Father Draney sounded far too sympathetic to a pedophile priest and feared he was going to be an apologist for others like Liddy.
         “Father, we may all have our demons,” said Katie, “but the kind that Liddy and other pedophile priests are seem to be going unreported and unpunished.”    
        
Father Draney smiled, to convey that he’d heard Katie’s assertion a thousand times.
         “Katie, I’m not going to repeat what you’ve probably gotten from the Church hierarchy, about how they take care of their own and provide both forgiveness and help to have such priests work through their problems. I am as appalled as you are—even more so—by these priests. I know so many of them, I know how some struggle their whole lives with their sins. But I also know priests who use their power to commit abominations and to spend a good deal of time making sure no one, not even the Church, finds out.
         “For those I have neither pity nor offer penance.  And if there is a Hell, they will go there for all eternity.  But here on Earth they practice their abominations and are protected by the Church. I’m just asking you not to confuse the two types.”
         “What type was Father Liddy and who might have wanted to cut off his genitals?” asked David.
         “Denis Liddy was horribly troubled by the duality of his life. He confessed it to me, and I told him he had to get professional help outside the Church.”
         “Did he?”
         “He did, and from all I know he was eventually able to keep those demons at bay.  Early on he wrestled with being gay, then with his pedophilia, which he exacted on young boys in his parish.  But I truly believe that he stopped all sexual activity several years ago.  Whoever attacked Denis had probably been molested years ago.  I can only imagine how powerfully that young man was hurt and how revenge was beyond his capacity to act until now.”
         “Do you think this man acted after hearing of the sisters being murdered?” asked Katie.
         “Yes, I do. It’s highly likely that the wound-up spring in his brain was sprung when he read of the murders, believing that Maureen Maloney had achieved tremendous relief from her actions, however deadly they were.”
         “But then she killed herself,” said Katie.
         “Aye, which is not unusual for such sad people. She most likely knew she was going to do so only after she’d committed the crimes.  And she knew that suicide is as great a sin as murder, but it, too, brought relief.”
         “And you think that this guy who castrated Liddy may commit more crimes before he kills himself?” asked David.
         “I have no idea,” said the priest. “I’ve known the victims of pedophilia to finally overcome their agonies and ultimately to forgive their attackers. The same with many of the women in the Laundries. They must be very, very strong and brave to achieve such a triumph over their past, especially since their attackers went free. Some turn to therapy, some manage to marry and put it all behind them. Some have even become priests and nuns themselves and live lives of extraordinary devotion to the Church.”
         Katie said, “And some become prostitutes and create a world in which abnormal sexuality becomes their norm.”
         “You’re speaking of Sharon Burns, I think. She’s not the only one to go that route, and I won’t judge her. No one can understand the pain these men and women suffered unless they’ve been through it themselves.”
         “Just how rampant is pedophilia among Catholic priests?” asked Katie.
         “Rampant is a loaded word,” said Father Draney. “It means however many or few as you wish it to mean. In my experience having researched this problem, I would say that perhaps twenty percent of Catholic priests are homosexual. But few of them are pedophiles, which is an aberration. Being gay, even in Ireland, is no longer thought of as being deviant. I don’t think the majority of priests are gay, but every one of us struggles with sexuality because of the rule of celibacy.”
         “Which you’re for or against?” asked Katie.
         “Oh, it’s rubbish! There’s not a word in the Bible to justify it, and it has caused far more harm than any other factor in the last two millennia.”
         David said, “You sound like Richard Sipe.”
         “Ah, dear Richard. Capital fellow. Very, very smart, very, very committed, and, having been a priest, very, very understanding of what we priests go through.”
         “And what do you think of his idea that there's a book of names and addresses of places where these priests  could go for sexual activities?"
         Father Draney paused, then said, “I think there’s a very good chance of that. I’ve heard that there is a book circulated of like-minded priests and brothers and addresses of places where they can find easy prey.  I’ve never seen such a book—few apparently have—but some of the priests have told me of its existence.”
         “Is it possible it’s not a book but just jottings that are passed around?” asked David.
         “Possibly. But I’ve heard that it is a kind of directory.”
         “And who might have a copy?”
         “That I have no idea about. Someone who is in the hierarchy certainly.”
         “What about the Archbishop?” asked Katie.
         Father Draney took his time answering, then said, “Yes. If such a book exists, he must know of it and therefore must have a copy.”
         Father Draney gave the Americans the names of six men who had declared they’d had sexual intimacy with Liddy. The youngest had been fifteen, the oldest eighteen. Four had been altar boys at Liddy’s parish. At least two of them admitted the sex had been consensual.
         “Some of these young men were gay and gave into their urges with Mons. Liddy,” he said, “and he knew just how to make them feel that it was perfectly all right for them to follow their urges with him, telling them it is not a sin and they would not go to Hell for their acts. How could they resist a priest who told them such a thing?  As for the others, the trauma was devastating.”
         Katie and David thanked Father Draney for his help and insight and left to make calls to some of the men with whom Liddy had had sex.
         “I guess I hadn’t thought about those boys who might have welcomed sex with Liddy,” said David.
         “Well, it doesn’t make it any less perverse for him to act upon it, even if he himself was distressed by his own proclivities.”
         “Yeah, all he had to do was go to confession, and bingo! He’s forgiven in the eyes of the Church.”
         “And not be reported to the police.”

 

 




©
John Mariani, 2018



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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.
    And no one’s likely to throw his poker cards against the wall upon losing ten straight hands.
    The idea of simply assembling a bunch of wines to taste without any focus can, however, become a dead end. Inviting friends who have an avid interest in wine is not paramount, but asking those with only a moderate taste for wine can become the most pleasant form of self-education.
    So, here are a few guidelines to holding a wine tasting for people who have a general knowledge and interest in wine rather than those who consider discussion of Ph levels and vine trellising fit conversation at a 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.


You should  have plain water and crackers or bread available to restore your palate wine after tasting the wine.  Salted butter on the cracker is also an excellent way to intensify the flavors of the wine, because fat carries flavor.

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.

 






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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)

 



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 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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The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink by John F. Mariani (Bloomsbury USA, $35)

Modesty forbids me to praise my own new book, but let me proudly say that it is an extensive revision of the 4th edition that appeared more than a decade ago, before locavores, molecular cuisine, modernist cuisine, the Food Network and so much more, now included. Word origins have been completely updated, as have per capita consumption and production stats. Most important, for the first time since publication in the 1980s, the book includes more than 100 biographies of Americans who have changed the way we cook, eat and drink -- from Fannie Farmer and Julia Child to Robert Mondavi and Thomas Keller.


"This book is amazing! It has entries for everything from `abalone' to `zwieback,' plus more than 500 recipes for classic American dishes and drinks."--Devra First, The Boston Globe.

"Much needed in any kitchen library."--Bon Appetit.




Now in Paperback, too--How Italian Food Conquered the World (Palgrave Macmillan)  has won top prize  from the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.  It is a rollicking history of the food culture of Italy and its ravenous embrace in the 21st century by the entire world. From ancient Rome to la dolce vita of post-war Italy, from Italian immigrant cooks to celebrity chefs, from pizzerias to high-class ristoranti, this chronicle of a culinary diaspora is as much about the world's changing tastes, prejudices,  and dietary fads as about our obsessions with culinary fashion and style.--John Mariani

"Eating Italian will never be the same after reading John Mariani's entertaining and savory gastronomical history of the cuisine of Italy and how it won over appetites worldwide. . . . This book is such a tasteful narrative that it will literally make you hungry for Italian food and arouse your appetite for gastronomical history."--Don Oldenburg, USA Today. 

"Italian restaurants--some good, some glitzy--far outnumber their French rivals.  Many of these establishments are zestfully described in How Italian Food Conquered the World, an entertaining and fact-filled chronicle by food-and-wine correspondent John F. Mariani."--Aram Bakshian Jr., Wall Street Journal.


"Mariani admirably dishes out the story of Italy’s remarkable global ascent to virtual culinary hegemony....Like a chef gladly divulging a cherished family recipe, Mariani’s book reveals the secret sauce about how Italy’s cuisine put gusto in gusto!"--David Lincoln Ross, thedailybeast.com

"Equal parts history, sociology, gastronomy, and just plain fun, How Italian Food Conquered the World tells the captivating and delicious story of the (let's face it) everybody's favorite cuisine with clarity, verve and more than one surprise."--Colman Andrews, editorial director of The Daily Meal.com.

"A fantastic and fascinating read, covering everything from the influence of Venice's spice trade to the impact of Italian immigrants in America and the evolution of alta cucina. This book will serve as a terrific resource to anyone interested in the real story of Italian food."--Mary Ann Esposito, host of PBS-TV's Ciao Italia.

"John Mariani has written the definitive history of how Italians won their way into our hearts, minds, and stomachs.  It's a story of pleasure over pomp and taste over technique."--Danny Meyer, owner of NYC restaurants Union Square Cafe,  The Modern, and Maialino.

                                                                             








              

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.

 

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