FORK PLAY May 5, 2011 Home Again at Boulud Sud. High Life Afloat. Vertical in Valencia. Adria Brothers' Tickets. The Kingdom of Lynch-Bages. Red Rooster. Dear Friends and Family, It's wrenching to come home after three weeks of living rich. No turn-down service. No more feeling like Empress Josephine in the vast suite at Michel and Christine Guérard's exquisitely tended Eugénie les Bains. I especially  loved imagining the padded slipper chairs in our sumptuous bathroom were meant so friends could stop by to chat while I cavorted in the bubbles of my tub. Reality is my 19th century tub on West End Avenue and the tiny sink that had to be re-glued to the wall after a long ago beau sat on it to admire himself more closely while shaving. But that's okay. Got to see so many friends all in one room Monday night at Daniel's latest gift to Citymeals: The benefit dinner at Boulud Sud and his new Epicerie across from Lincoln Center. Long after  the oysters ran out, small plates of luscious sliced lamb, octopus a la plancha and rare rounds of beef on spring pea mash kept coming.
Had to wear a hat, of course, so no one would miss me. Got to pose with Martha Stewart and admire granddaughter Jude on grandma's smart phone. All babies are beautiful, especially to their grandmothers, but this one could have been sent by central casting for a Gerber Ad And styled by Martha. I confessed to Martha that I lusted to match her following on Twitter, but finally gave up. "How many followers have you got?" she asked. Seventy thousand, I told her. "I've got two million, I think," she said. I shall always regret I didn't market Insatiable bath towels and mixing bowls.
With the combined draw of Boulud's starry aura plus the heated traffic of hungry Kulture Vultures, it looks like Daniel's expanded Lincoln Center complex will be a money machine. As board chair of Citymeals, I got to hug Daniel and thank him for the more than five thousand meals the evening would deliver to frail homebound elderly, like those invisible neighbors on 74th Street and Broadway, steps from where we stood. New York worlds collide.
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I found Fork Play's colors, violet and purple, in the gardens and on the tables at Michel Guérard in Eugénie Les Bains.
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High Life Afloat
The Road Food Warrior and I boarded Seabourn's new Sojurn, on the last leg of its first world cruise, in the port near Rome. I'd agreed to be a lecturer and sprinkle a modicum of stardust as a minor celebrity in exchange for a catbird stateroom. Our suite seemed small but luxurious; the bath huge. Cruising has never appealed to me. I'd dismissed it as too black tie and old folks. Now I am old enough to dismiss myself. Anyway, I liked Sojurn's itinerary of stops in  Barcelona, Valencia, Lisbon and Bordeaux. You would have been proud of me in Cartagena, telling Mare Nostrum restaurant owners how to make paella. "Let it sit till it makes the socarrat," I begged. But with a full house, they refused to wait.
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A Vertical View
I recalled reading that Valencia had more Michelin stars than any other spot in Spain. Valencia's local booster, who sent me that item, agreed to give  us a guide for the morning we docked there. I decided to bypass paella in the city of rice and go for a Michelin star.
Sonia met us at McDonald's, a few feet from the Cathedral, Our Lady of the Forsaken, and proved to be a tireless, passionate celebrant of Valencia. She exalted over fresh squeezed O.J. from a fruit stand in the vast art deco covered market. "I love that Valencia orange flavor," she cried as if tasting it for the first time. I loved it too and bought a chunk of cheese that tasted like a rich bel paese to take back to the boat.
We followed Sonia on a gossipy stroll through Santiago Calatrava's "City of the Arts and Sciences," a series of wild, unrelated monuments gathered like an architectural Disneyland. Not that Lincoln Center is particularly thrilling, but at least the buildings speak to each other. "The architect who doesn't pay taxes," she noted as we passed an automated dinosaur outside the Hemesferic, an eyeball-shaped building that winks. He's from Valencia but lives in Switzerland, she observed. The blue building isn't much used, she noted. "It was supposed to open, but it doesn't." Calatrava blames the builder for missing the specs by a few millimeters. She delivered us to modishly modern Vertical, the ambitious one-star almost hidden atop the nearby Hotel Confortel, and persuaded someone to unlock the door even though it was only five minutes to two. Calatrava's overwrought vision stretched out below and the city itself and the port were thrillingly framed across the soaring room - dutifully sound-proofed. If only New York restaurants would dare.
Silence, light,  starched linen over a print underskirt, reeds and one orange flower pianted in colored layers of sand. Stunningly crisp and salty rectangles of potato chip. An all-female staff in black suits conducts the exercise. The only menu we see is for water. A maitre d' recites the choices on the 50E menu ($75 plus 4E for various flavored biscuit-like breads). Yes, I'll have another corn semolina. A crayfish croquette with aioli foam is a modest feint among the amusements: a nibble of tuna on a dark pastry crisp, a puff filled with unidentifiable stickiness. No sign of Chef Loles Salvador. But clearly a fine, avant-garde is in the kitchen. Raw clams, calamari and musse ls alternate with small cubes and slivers of ve getables in a fishy little still life. And then something as unoriginal as salmon with avocado rocks the taste buds with a tart swirl of sauce. The furl of chartreuse fruit is a masterly abstraction to see.
Hot onion soup poured at table over a long-poached egg on onion purée with a few crouton pebbles produces another triumph. And though my saffron rice lacks crusty soccarat in its black iron pan, the fat, barely gelled scallop is saintly, making Steven's dried black noodles with mushrooms seem especially woebegone. His call for the check and a taxi can't distract me from a deep, dark brownie topped with espresso ice cream and a chocolate tuile in a crème Anglaise. The superfluous gelatin squares extend the modernism theme. http://www.restaurantevertical.com/
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Channeling Groucho at Tickets
Palm Sunday was not the ideal day to spend seven hours in Barcelona. Even the Sagrada was closed, as well as the Boqueria market. When Las Ramblas finally came alive, it was end to end tourists and shlock with a brief pause for Jesus to ride by.
The best part was visiting with Billy Cross. We hadn't seen each other since the  delicious excess of the Great Chef Cooking Classes at the Mondavi wineries thirty years ago. All grown up and not as adorable as we used to be but sweeter, we met at Casa Billy, his charming and whimsical bed-and-breakfast empire. There he insisted we taste his partner Joachim's potato flauta, fiery salsa and a guacamole we just couldn't stop eating, even though we were heading toward the Ferran brothers' silly and daring new tapas joint, Tickets.
Click here to read my blog and decide if you want to join the online queue for reservation. If you're on a budget, maybe even if you're not, you'll want to check out Casa Billy Barcelona by clicking here. Or look at the House of Turap in Istanbul, the newest guest house.
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At Play in the Fields Ariane Daguin couldn't believe I'd never met Jean-Michel Cazes, the ambitious entrepreneur behind the charming rebirth of Lynch-Bages Village and the venerable red that dates back to the 18th century. She put us together and Jean-Michel invited us to visit when we disembarked from the Sojurn in Bordeaux.
Cazes reminded me of Robert Mondavi, the same pride and energy, the same ebullience and embrace of the good life. Alas, Cazes was recovering from heart surgery and dieting in anticipation of a knee transplant. To spare us the sight of his pitiful lunch (and to spare himself torture) he assigned an aide to show us the winery and take us to lunch at his two- Michelin star Chateau Cordeillan-Bages. It was only a three course 60E lunch compared to a full out seduction from Chef Jean Luc Rocha, but lunch made me wish we'd reserved for dinner. Click here, scroll down and read more to know why you must make the detour. Lynch-Bages never closes. It's open for tours every day of the year (except between Christmas and New Year). Route des Châteaux 33250 Pauillac (Gironde).
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Red Rooster's Crow
All the reports you may have read about Red Rooster are true. It draws a standing-room-only crowd that is as diverse as its menu -- smartly dressed lo cals in fedoras, downtown strivers, foodies and the curious. It's a heady New York rainbow cocktail you don't see anywhere downtown. That's clearly what Marcus Samuelsson had in mind when he talked about giving the neighborhood -- now his own neighborhood -- something different. The menu could only be Samuelsson's: a little soul, some Ethiopian, a few New York touches, contempo American. Click here to know what to order. 310 Lenox Avenue between 125th and 126th Streets. 212 792 9001.
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Photographs from Daniel's Citymeals benefit at Boulud Sud, A daytime look at Piazza Navona, Seabourn's new Sojurn, The view from Vertical, it's seafood - vegetable starter and salmon with avocado, Salty fish crisps at Tickets, and The spicy bird at Red Rooster
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Steven Richter.
Fork Play copyright Gael Greene 2011. |
