|
|
October 22, 2007
Gourmand Paradise, Last Supper, Homage to Blue Skies
Dear Friends and Family,
 This was a week of total immersion in dizzying sensuality. New York can be like that in the fall, especially for a restaurant writer. Chefs bravely put new restaurants into a preview mode, inviting friends and family and the dreaded media to taste and, if willing, comment. So many tastings vie for the honor of our mouths. Places that limped painfully to opening weeks ago are suddenly in bloom, not necessarily full bloom, but still, After 39 years as a hired fork, I still get up every morning with the hope that today will be a day when I discover a new talent or taste something sublime. This week there were moments of inspired revelation.
It began Monday with Zarela Martinez' birthday feast in the garden behind her landmark wood-frame house just steps from Zarela, the restaurant. Then came marvelous sea urchin-filled raviolini in a spicy scallop and cherry tomato ragu, and finally, first truffles of the season, at San Domenico. Wednesday brought a serious celebration of Mougins in, of all places, the meatpacking district, now the astonishing Meet Market. Thursday friends joined me to discover homey comfort food at Shorty's .32. Suckling pig at Le Bernardin was Friday's shocker. Steps from Union Square, Irving Mill opened discreetly for a friends and family outing. Born-again Devi rehearsed its new menu for familiars on Saturday. Sunday the mouth rested. (And snacked mindlessly). I used to say I would pay to be the Insatiable Critic if they didn't pay me. It was one of those weeks..
Honoring Mougins Honoring Us
Fig and Olive at 808 Lexington and its sprawling offspring in the scrummage downtown had arrived and escaped my attention.  Then I accepted an invitation to the 13th Street Fig's "Les Etoiles de Mougins Gala" on Wednesday, not really sure what that meant, but remembering stellar evenings at Moulin de Mougins 40 years ago and the weekend celebration with Roger Vergé of its third Michelin Star in 1974. (If you haven't bought my memoir yet maybe you should -- look for the chapter, I Lost It at the Spa.)
I rarely have time for parties, feeling driven to keep up with what's new on the plate, but I couldn't say no to Mougins nor to Vergé, very ill now, who has sold the inn to Alain Llorca. And there he was, Llorca, a sturdy zambone of a man, standing on a podium with a posse of grinning chefs in uniform and Daniel Boulud in leather mufti, a rag-taggle bar/lounge crowd applauding wildly and sipping champagne. I thought of walking backwards out the door. But I stayed, as did Daniel (in photo), joined later by Jean-George.
Maybe I should go to parties more often. Once the chefs, all stars from the annual Festival of Mougins, trooped off to the kitchen and an army of servers started distributing "heirloom carrot soup and tomato concassé de Mougins with wild bay scallops marinated in lemon, Castelas Olive Oil and 18 year-old balsamic vinegar by Fig & Olive chef Pascal Lorange" (I quote from the menu), it was clear this was serious.
Well, if no one else was serious, the man from Zagat across the table did seem a bit irreverent, the visiting chefs were highly motivated. La Mas Candille chef Serge Gouloumès got to play with our splendid lobster, serving it with caviar and olives in an elegant tomato rosemary emulsion. Alain Llorca's wild striped bass with grilled eggplant was set off by a floral essence jus.
Our host, Fig & Olive co-owner and proud son of Mougins, Laurent Halasz, a financier who has cooked since he was 12, put the dinner together on one of his twice-a-year retreats home, where he says his mother is the best cook he knows. Indeed, that was her carrot soup recipe that so impressed me. Halasz got his MBA at NYU, then got involved helping expand Le Pain Quotidien for its founder, Alain Coumont. "In one week I went from being always in a suit and tie to driving a truck delivering bread to Jean-Georges."
Of course, I'll be going back to 13th Street soon to see what Fig and Olive can do on a normal evening.
A Jean-Georges Protégé for the Neighborhood
Twelve years with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, starting at Jo Jo, convinced chef Josh Eden he wanted his own place to be a neighborhood hangout. "I didn't want to be telling people you can only come at 6 or 10:30 and call one month ahead. So no reservations are taken at Shorty's .32. But I predict the locals be vying with invading uptowners like me for 32 seats when the buzz begins. It didn't help when Page 6 Magazine described Shorty's .32 as "Jean-Georges' new comfort food spot." You'll find a first tasting in the next BITE: My Journal later today (or tomorrow if this phone doesn't stop ringing.)
A Dinner in Honor of Death
Another party Friday. This one to celebrate photographer Melanie Dunea's clever "My Last Supper" (Bloomsburg). Dunea asked 50 chefs the question we food professionals always get asked. To lure 50 famous chefs out of their kitchens to celebrate the irresistible package - photos, recipes, confessions - she threw herself a party at Le Bernardin. Yes. Took over the restaurant on a Friday night.
I'm on my way to Irving Mill but I stop by for a toast, wander out to the kitchen and find chef Eric Ripert gazing lovingly at a slightly singed suckling pig.
A pig in the kitchen of Le Bernardin! Who could have dreamed it? Eric looks triumphant, I must say. There's a band playing songs with implications of farewell. Dancing angels in abbreviated nightgowns with molting white feathers -- including a pair of twin adorables, male, bare-chested, winged too -- escort guests through the underbelly of the restaurant and the kitchen to champagne in the dining room. Waiters pass little saucers of sea urchin royale. Across the room the grim reaper, face hidden inside his black hood, pokes an angel with his scythe.
To quote Jacques Pepin's last supper fantasy: "We would cook, drink and eat together until the end -- weeks or months later -- when I would die from péché de gourmandis." I know you don't have room in your loft or kitchen or studio or town house for one more cookbook, but you'll want to have this. It's a lot of book for just $40, given the price of lamb chops these days.
A People's Uprising at Devi
In a people's uprising, co-pilots Suvir Saran and executive chef Hemant Mathur managed to buy Devi after their boss, bedeviled by litigation from unhappy staff, abruptly closed the doors just weeks ago. Now most of the crew is back and Suvir welcomed an eclectic magillah Saturday night.
As before, you can order a la carte or from the $65 six course tasting that won Devi raves. But in a new humanitarian gesture to penny pinchers like me, there is now a $45 three course tasting. Since we were four we got to taste most of our old favorites and a new dish -- Southern fried chicken from Saran's new cookbook, "American Marsala"(from Random House, a new advertiser on InsatiableCritic).
Yes, it's wonderful, just as Devi fans remember: the fiery Manchurian cauliflower, bigger than ever tandoori prawns and our must have, grilled lamp chops, three of them on the three-course menu, with sour pear chutney and tapioca pearl pilaf. If you like your lamb rare, better say "rare and hot inside."
Blue Skies, No Candy Homage
The biggest high of my week was not dancing angels, the season's first truffles, that sensational carrot soup or the return of Devi. No. The Big Moment was discovering that Lynne Cheney has called her new book "Blue Skies, No Fences," an obvious homage to my 1976 erotic novel "Blue Skies, No Candy."
Or so Slate.com's Tim Noah thought, asking my reaction to what he called "the bizarre and, as best I can make out, unremarked similarity..  I realize there are no legal issues here -- you can't copyright a title. But it does seem weird that the vice-president's wife would wish to associate herself with your rollicking and libidinous novel. Since she herself formerly worked at The Washingtonian, the local (and vastly inferior) version of New York Magazine, I find it hard to believe she is unaware of you and your most famous book."
"The woman is married to Dick Cheney, an unreliable marksman as we all know," I responded. "Where else would she turn but to fantasies of being like my protagonist, Kate Alexander, an impassioned adulteress in the afternoon?"
"I have no doubt she has read Blue Skies, No Candy, some fans read it once a year. One exuberant woman told me she reads it 'all the time, whenever I need it.' What else can I say dear Lynne? "I'm deeply flattered."
Click here for Noah's column http://www.slate.com/id/2176192/nav/tap2/
If you missed my belated review of the splendid work Christopher Lee and pastry chef David Carmichael are doing at the under-appreciated Gilt, it's on line now in BITE: My Journal.
Now Appearing..
You can hear me deliver the keynote address Friday, 11 a.m. at COOK. EAT. DRINK. LIVE, a two day food and wine festival on Pier 94 (12th Avenue and 54th Street). A $625 ticket buys entrée to everything: cooking classes, tastings and culinary workshops, 10 wine tasting workshops, the Chocolate Pavilion, home design displays, a market of the latest gadgets and chef demonstrations. Gael's Appearances
I'll also be on stage and signing books with authors Susan Isaacs and Rich Cohen ("Sweet'n'Low) at the Brandeis Book and Author Lunch Monday November 5.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
