Virtual Gourmet

"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.”

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.