With the end of the year come end-of-the-year lists. Not too much to say about lists, except that there are lots of them. A couple of brave writers also attempt to defy the spirit of the New Year by not writing about champagne. Sadly, they're slapped down by their editors and have to recount the same cliches about sparkles and bubbles and popping corks. Lists and not-quite-effervescent prose aside, recent weeks have found writers in a nostalgic and troubled mood. Patrick Comiskey pines for the cabernets of yesteryear, lamenting how many are now as "challenging as a kitten or a chocolate-covered cherry." Similarly, still languishing with a 500 word limit in the Houston Chronicle, Michael Lonsford takes out his frustrations on overripe and unbalanced reds. Meanwhile, over in France, Eric Asimov finds solace in a bottle of 160-year old Meursault Charmes...
Wine Columns for the Week of December 13th, 2006
This week (or I should say last week), while one poor wine writer seems to have had his word count slashed to less than 400, another squanders a terrific story idea (narrative as a fundamental aspect of the best wines) by recounting a string of fatuous vineyard tales. Elsewhere, Eric Asimov considers the Sideways effect on Merlots and finds hope. There are also some more gift-giving stories for last-minute gift-buyers. (Not that it's really the last minute yet!)
Wine Columns for the Week of December 8th, 2006
Perhaps taking the dictum of Christmas as a time for reflection a little too seriously, wine writers decided this week that instead of all writing about the conifers and tinsel, they'd rather just not write at all. Many newspapers feature a single, perfunctory gift guide (Chicago Tribune, Miami Times, NY Times) plugging dire goods like oenological neckwear. Most of those actually talking about wine give us nothing more than a lonely Wine of the Week column (LA Times, Detroit News, Denver Post). The straggling remnants of sparkling wine and wine pairing pieces ($140 Taittinger with hot dogs, anyone?) have also limped somewhat painfully into print.
With such a shortage of decent wine articles, I've scrabbled together journalistic highlights like wine as disinfectant, gossip about Dan Ackroyd's forthcoming line of moderately-priced wines, and a piece in the Washington Post that's too local to be of any relevance (I'm including it anyway because they earned my goodwill with my favourite headline of the week: "Shabu-Shabu? The Pot Thickens.").
Anyway, for wine coverage, skip straight down to the SF Chronicle. W. Blake Grey's Bargain Wine column dallies as dangerously as ever with the line between charming irreverence and excruciating cringe-inducement. Other than that, Jerry Shriver files an informative wine travel article; Michael Lonsford reports briefly on a visit to a Piedmont winery; there's a nice Gaiter/Brecher piece in the WSJ; and there's one from the AP about young French drinkers.
And that's it.
Fancy Schmancy
Limbering up for Thanksgiving this year, I steeled my stomach for a day of gratuitous over-consumption with a terrific dinner at Cyrus. Even with occasional minor lapses in service, food and decor, something about the place makes me inclined towards generosity. Maybe it has something to do their own kindness. At one point, for instance, our waiter appeared with a large glass of 1981 Margaux poured from a bottle another table had inexplicably left half-full (at that price, it was definitely not half-empty). "Not quite as good as the 1982," he said. "It'll do," we said.
While Cyrus's two Michelin stars reflect the fact that it lacks the overwhelming extravagance of the Parisian three star experience, it's not too far off; and certainly compared with somewhere like l'Ambroisie [it's delicious to think about what a master of foie gras like Bernard Pacaud would make of Douglas Keane's salt-cured "torchon" with peanut butter and jelly] or even the nearby French Laundry, the $110 7-course tasting menu is something of a bargain.
Keane dictates that the entire table must partake of a tasting menu, and sadly my dear dining companions seemed to lack the gall (or cash) for a full seven courses, so I had to settle for six. Highlights included a pitch-perfect truffled red wine risotto, an amuse-bouche of scallop ceviche with an exhilarating explosion of flavors that one of my friends likened to an oyster, and an absolutely stunning cheese course (accompanied by a panforte which was simply one of tastiest things I've put in my mouth all year).
I won't spend too much time describing the food. I have a theory that at what Olga terms "fancy schmancy" restaurants, the hefty price of admission isn't so much for food as it is for the theater of the meal. As such, maybe the most entertaining part of the evening was seeing the waitstaff whirring around the dining room like they were extras in a silent movie. I particularly liked watching a troupe of them march from the kitchen to a large party, and the almost comic timing with which they simultaneously set down plates at the signal of a barely perceptible nod.
There is, I think, nothing wrong with going to a restaurant for reasons that aren't purely gastronomic. Or maybe part of gastronomy is precisely what some see as an accoutrement. Theater and performance are integral to our experience of eating - even at the most basic diner. Even our own acts of consumption are pretty much always performative.
As for enjoying the show, it's just a matter of choosing whether you want to watch an orchestra perform incredible feats of massed-rank precision, or a bunch of punk rockers hammering out sloppy two-minute hits...
Ruminations on Noodles
One of the most wonderful things about gastronomy is how it defies simple laws of economics. You can spend a hundred dollars on a lavish dish, but it won’t necessarily be tastier than a plate of food that cost mere cents. In fact, for every carpaccio of olive-scented langoustine studded with Iranian caviar, there’s an insalata caprese whose raw, insouciant flavours threaten make a mockery of haute cuisine’s meticulous calibrations.
The way I think about it is this: certain dishes (say, the langoustine carpaccio) are fine-tuned so that each component has its place, but never the boldness to disturb the dish’s decorous symphony; the whole is crafted to be precisely the sum of its parts. Yet there are other foods - generally simple, traditional, more emotionally evocative fare - which are defined by being more than the sum of their constituent ingredients. In these cases, even if most of the dish is made from inadequate ingredients, as long as one critical aspect is excellent, it’s already well on its way to transcendence.
Take pizza, for example. If the crust is good (i.e. paper thin, chewy and meltingly light, and wood-oven baked), it doesn’t matter whether you put San Marzano tomatoes or ketchup on it. The result will inevitably be delicious. Granted, I wouldn’t think much of a ketchup pizza - even if it emerged piping hot from the oven of some storied Neapolitan wood-fired oven - but you get my point.
Or look at sandwiches. One of the most memorable sandwiches I’ve ever had was layered with nasty orange Kraft-esque “cheese” and half-wilted iceburg lettuce. The fact that everything was bound in a Gosselin baguette a l’ancienne didn’t just redeem the minor atrocity of a filling; the bread rendered it utterly beside the point. Like a good NYT Magazine fluff piece, the risible content may just have been an excuse for the article’s existence.
My thoughts turn to such abstractions because I’ve been thinking a lot about noodles lately. Specifically of the Japanese variety. I don’t know of any other national cuisine so intensely obsessed with long chewy strands of gluten.
On a recent rainy day, I found myself sitting in Kyo-ya for lunch. Nabeyaki udon. Mmm. The soup had a wonderful, smoke-tinged aroma redolent with shitake mushrooms. It was clean, light, and rich all at once, with addictive undertones of fish stock beneath the mushrooms. Sadly, the swathes of noodles - obviously store-bought, bland, and overcooked - weren’t nearly so good, and the pretty huge bowl (pot?) of noodles was filling but not all that satisfying.
I had always thought of noodles as being in the same vein of food as pizzas and sandwiches. Get one simple element right, and the rest of the dish follows. Who, for instance, eats pho bo for the noodles or even the beef? They are really just placeholders (albeit essential all the same) for the glory of the soup. So what was wrong with the udon?
Maybe it’s as simple as the thickness of udon noodles, which makes them more prominent and noticeable. Similarly, the assertiveness of the buckwheat in soba noodles (which I tried on another day) leads them to take on a more crucial role than the rice noodles in pho. I don’t know too much about the process of making udon, but soba noodles are a much more complicated enterprise than rice noodles.
Hm. Either way, I think the only way to be sure is to eat more noodles.
Day 10: Sunday, Los Vascos
Sunday morning we awoke in our room-fit-for-a-king at Los Vascos. We enjoyed breakfast outside and then decided to drive to Santa Cruz, the small town nearby. The city is very poor, with many old, run-down homes, shacks almost – there are horse drawn carts and farm animals in every yard. In the main city area, there are churches and small shops and restaurants. We walked around the Santa Cruz hotel area. Most tourist stores had jewelry made of Lapislazoulie, a regional stone that is dark sea blue. We bought some for all the ladies in our life. Upon return I went for a quick run through the vineyards, which was amazing. Sometimes running is the best way to get to know an area or appreciate the beauty and peacefulness of where you are. We then enjoyed lunch with Alfredo & his wife, followed by a nice siesta. The afternoon was spent with the row boat on the small lake, until Alfredo and his wife came to tell us that they were leaving, but that we would enjoy dinner that night with the Mexican group visiting. Oh dear, we thought. Dinner with strangers and we speak, no Spanish! We were a bit nervous, but showered and relaxed on our patio, waiting for dinner. At dinner, we met the group of wholesalers and representatives from Mexico and Urugray. At least 3 of them spoke English very well and they turned out to be some of the funniest and enjoyable people we’d met! The evening went on for a while, then Mike and I excused ourselves due to an early morning appointment. It was sad to know we were to leave the incredible Los Vascos home, but we knew the day to follow, our last day, would be amazing as well.