Category Archives: de rebus californicis

Mussel porn, best tuna salad, and an old friend’s excellent wine

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Just had to share this photo of a mussel from lunch today at one of our all-time favorite seafood joints, Bay Park Fish Co. in San Diego where we’ll be staying for the next days (Tracie P got in last night). I cannot recommend this place highly enough. And what can I say? One man’s mussel is another’s Rorschach test.

The tuna fish salad at Bay Park may not look as sexy as the mussels but you haven’t had a tuna fish salad sandwich until you’ve had one made with U.S. pole-fished tuna. My good high school buddy Marc Muller, co-owner and founder of Bay Park, only serves old-school pole-fished tuna in his restaurant. (In case you’re interested, here’s a video and some info on the history of pole-fished tuna in San Diego.) The Mexican torta bread takes this sandwich over the top. It’s generally served as a tuna melt but they’ll make it anyway you want. I had mine with mashed avocado, lettuce, tomato, and onion. Utterly delicious…

Yesterday afternoon, I got to taste another high school buddy’s wine: when not working as a cellarmaster for Craggy Range, Pieter Koopman makes wine on his family’s estate in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. I hadn’t seen Pieter 15 years and it was great to connect and talk and taste wine together. I dug his Chardonnay (yes, Chardonnay from New Zealand!), blended with a little bit of Viognier. The wine was fresh and clean, bright but with a slightly unctuous mouthfeel that went brilliantly with some fried calamari at Jaynes Gastropub. Good fruit, good acidity, and balanced alcohol. Pieter and his lovely wife Paige (also from La Jolla where I grew up) are planning to bring their wines to the States and I know they’re going to knock it out of the park…

Texas is my new home and I love it. But man, it sure is nice to be somewhere where everyone knows your name.

Gragnano the wine for “all things warm and gooey”

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Fish tacos probably weren’t what G-d had in mind when he created Gragnano (on the eight day?) — one of favorite wines of the summer of 2011. But, man, was the wine delicious last night at Bahia Don Bravo, our number-one taco shack when we’re in San Diego (where the owner allows me to bring in my own wines).

I’d had some decent however mediocre Gragnano before I met Tracie P but it was on a fateful day in New York City on our way to Europe a few years ago that I tasted a wine that put everything into focus. The wine we tasted was actually Lettere — Gragnano’s sister appellation — but I saw the world in a different light from that day onward.

I am happy to report that the excellent Gragnano by Cantine Federiciane has finally made its way to Southern California. (You can taste it by the glass starting tonight at Sotto in Los Angeles where I’ll be pouring wine tonight and tomorrow night; and the wine is also available through my wine club in this month’s Summer Six-Pack offering.)

There’s no one in my world who knows more about Gragnano than Tracie P, who lived in Gragnanoland (Naples and the Amalfi Coast) for nearly five years. Here’s what she had to say this morning about Gragnano:

    I dare you not to like Gragnano (and its sister Lettere). Born in the Sorrentine peninsula, this is an irresistibly spritzy wine made to go with pizza, panuozzi, and all things warm and gooey. Like the self-deprecating comedian, the humility and spontaneity of this wine are its most endearing traits. Just say Sciascinoso and try not to smile.

Btw, Sciasinoso, one of the grapes in Gragnano together with Piedirosso and Aglianico, is pronounced SHAH-shee-NOH-zoh. Are you smiling yet? And do you see why I love her madly?

The mixed seafood cocktail was also fantastic last night at Bahia and if I do say so myself, my pairing with the Ciù Ciù Offida Pecorino was brilliant (it’s also available in the six-pack, btw).

But the highlight at dinner last night was meeting Jayne and Jon’s newborn Romy!

Isn’t she a beauty???!!! We are so thrilled for Jayne and Jon.

That’s all I got today. Gotta get my butt up to LA! Thanks for reading!

A bottle of red, a bottle of white… some things never change in La Jolla

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Before heading up to Los Angeles this week to work at Sotto where I curate the wine list, I stopped in my hometown of La Jolla, California, to have dinner with father Zane who was in from Indiana visiting my brothers down there. We decided to go to Carino’s Pizza on La Jolla Boulevard, a restaurant where the décor has not changed since 1971, when the current owner bought the joint and when my family moved to Southern California from Chicago (Remember when Annie Hall moves to LA eats in a vegetarian restaurant, smokes pot and uses black soap? That’s essentially what happened.) The place looks like a movie set and is still adorned by murals of Mt. Vesuvius.

The food at Carino’s is nothing to write home about. But then again, I was at home. I hadn’t been there in literally 16 years. The antipasto was exactly as I remembered it. Over breakfast the next morning mama Judy said, “honey, I hate to tell you this, but you smell like garlic. You should do something about that before you start your day,” she added. I guess it’s the kinda food that “sticks with you.”

Carino’s has a moderate corkage fee of $8 and so I brought this excellent bottle of 09 Toni Jost Riesling that my buddy Jesse sold me. I’ve been drinking a lot of Riesling this summer (and posting about it over at the Houston Press blog, Eating Our Words).The wine was bright and delicious, with a wonderful 12% alcohol. Great pairing for the antipasto.

The pizza hasn’t changed either. We had the peperoni with jalapeños.

I popped a bottle of 05 Benanti Nerello Mascalese from Etna, Sicily. This has been one of my favorite red wines this year: earth and black and red and berry fruit, with bright bright acidity, and that wonderful balance of elegance, lightness, and power that you find in the pharmacist’s wine (Benanti made his fortune in pharmaceuticals before becoming a winemaker).

Zane doesn’t drink red wine, so he didn’t have any.

He talked to me about the usual subjects: his expertise in aerophysics and the recordings arts, Israeli politics, and his legacy as a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Some things never change… Es muss sein…

Di mamme ce n’è una sola…

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You only have one mother… One of my favorite expressions in Italian…

Grandson Oscar poured milk into mama Judy’s coffee for an early family breakfast.

There were eleven of us for eggs in all kinds of styles and lox and Bloody Marys at Nine Ten, the restaurant in the hotel where Tracie P and I got married in La Jolla, the Grand Colonial, home of the Parzen family’s official Sunday brunch.

Next came some clothes shopping with mama Judy and Tracie P and a visit to our favorite Chinese restaurant in San Diego, Spicy City in Kearny Mesa (and yes, California Chinese is also better than anywhere else in the U.S. imho). The rice noodles were DELICIOUS!

Happy mother’s day, yall! Buona festa della mamma!

Why housemade salsa makes all the difference…

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Flew in to San Diego yesterday from Texas to begin shipping and delivering wine for Do Bianchi Wine Selections and just had to stop at JV’s Mexican, just a few blocks from my warehouse, for lunch. Like all great Mexican joints, JV’s — which has been around since I was a kid — makes all of its salsas and condiments in-house.

The salsa bar = AWESOME.

They’re not kidding about the “reasonable” prices. Love this place…

Three rolled tacos — flautas — stuffed with chicken and topped with creamy guacamole and shredded cheese is just $2.25 (only 25 cents more than when I was 18 years old!). Cannot have the flautas without the horchata.

I’ve had some of the best Mexican food of my life since I moved to Texas, but, man, California will also be my number one. Love this place…

Sculpture Saturday: Mattiacci’s Eye of the Sky @UCLA

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The entire “north campus” of my alma mater, U.C.L.A., is a wonderful sculpture garden, including works by Rodin and Matisse.

On my recent trip to Los Angeles, I visited with my putative father (as he likes to call himself), close friend, and dissertation advisor, Milanese poet Luigi Ballerini.

That’s Luigi, above, with the newest installation in the Murphy Sculpture Garden, “L’occhio del cielo,” by Eliseo Mattiacci, known for his seemingly impossible and often precarious pieces.

It was great to catch up with Luigi and stroll around the campus. The work by Mattiacci stands behind Royce Hall, just below the building’s chapel (which is used as a classroom by the Italian Department). Royce, the symbol of U.C.L.A., is inspired by Milan’s Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, a place dear to Petrarch who lived, studied, and composed there.

Good things I ate in San Diego

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The campechana (marinated seafood salad, with octopus, squid, shrimp, et alia) was off-the-charts good at Bay Park Fish Co. in Mission Bay, San Diego.

So were the grilled halibut fish tacos. Seafood in San Diego ROCKS!

Couldn’t resist the new tortilla soup at Jaynes Gastropub, where I caught up with the crew and drank some killer wines. The crumbled queso fresco and spritz of lime took it over the top… Highly recommended…

Almost sunset from mama Judy’s window, looking out toward the La Jolla Children’s Pool…

Amarcord (I remember): Tonino Guerra honored by WGAW

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Above: A still from Fellini’s 1973 Amarcord, screenplay by Tonino Guerra (image via Verdoux).

As if by some seaside romagnolo-infused magical realism, a press release found its way to my inbox this morning. It recounts how one of the greatest screenwriters of all time, Tonino Guerra (below), is to be “fêted” by the Writer’s Guild of America West: “Iconic Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra has been named the recipient of the WGAW’s 2011 Jean Renoir Award for Screenwriting Achievement, given to an international writer who has advanced the literature of motion pictures and made outstanding contributions to the profession of screenwriter.”

    “Tonino Guerra is by any standard one of the great writers of our times. His medium is the screenplay. He has written or co-written more than a hundred films, among them L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse, Red Desert, Blow-Up, and Zabriskie Point for Antonioni; Amarcord for Fellini; Nostalghia for Tarkovsky; Landscapes in the Mist for Angelopoulos; and Exquisite Corpses for Rosi. Guerra’s work is the brave and moral thread that runs through the fabric of modernist cinema. He is a breathtaking poet, a generous collaborator, and is possessed of the largest heart. We are fortunate to have him among us and thrilled to honor his astonishing — and astonishingly influential — body of work,” said WGAW Board of Directors member Howard A. Rodman.

Comrade Howard’s list of Guerra’s credits reads like my personal list of all-time favorite movies. IMHO the Antonioni tetralogy L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse, and Red Desert is the greatest work of cinematic art ever achieved. Chapeau bas, WGAW!

That’s comrade Howard, above, fêting us at our wedding nearly one year ago today! (Just wait to see where we’ll be spending our anniversary, btw.)

Watch the whole trailer below… you won’t be disappointed… I promise… and I remember…

Indisputably Natural in San Diego: Cornelissen, Dettori, López de Heredia

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N.B.: Jaynes Gastropub does allow corkage, for a reasonable fee, for wines not offered on their wine list.

Chrissa, her husband Dan, Rikkers, and I opened a memorable flight of indisputably Natural wines last night at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego. I write “indisputably Natural” with a capital N because any mention of Natural wine these days seems to spark the ire of some of the more cranky among us here in the enoblogsphere. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the community of wine bloggers who have laid claim to this precious and widely coveted epithet would agree that the three wines in question fulfill the criteria prescribed by even the most rigorous enforcers of Natural wine doctrine and dogma.

Perhaps nowhere has more been written about the wines of Frank Cornelissen than at Saignee and, ubi major minor cessat, I will defer to Cory’s excellent blog for a treatment of Cornelissen and the cult that has taken shape around him.

The wines, raised on the slopes of Mt. Etna, are not easy to come by in this country and I was thrilled to finally get my hands on some. Together, we tasted the 2007 Munjebel Bianco (native yeast, skin contact, no SO2, no filtration). Munjebel is dialectal toponym for Mt. Etna, btw (akin the Sicilian Muncibeddu or the Italian Mongibello, meaning monte bello or beautiful mountain).

The synthetic cork bulged out slightly from the lip of the bottle’s neck and the shoulder was very high. I believe this was due to a second fermentation in the bottle and the wine had a slight spritz to it.

I don’t have time today to go into the epistemological implications of this wine, which I find fascinating (the wine and the implications). But I can report that I thoroughly enjoyed it (bright acidity, bright citrus fruit, balanced alcohol). I believe the wine has not yet stabilized (it had rested for about a week in my wine locker in San Diego before we opened it last night). I’m looking forward to opening the other bottles in my allocation: this wine is alive, IT’S ALIVE, as Dr. Frankenstein might say.

The 2006 Bianco by Dettori? This was simply one of the best wines I’ve ever had in my life. Not a great vintage for Dettori but sure to be a 20+ in its cellar life. Tannic and rich, bright bright acidity and a crunchy mouthfeel. It took some time for this wine to open up but it was purely sublime.

We also ordered the 1998 López de Heridia Tondonia Rosado from Jayne’s list. The oxidative wine was a perfect closer after the thought-provoking, intense whites (orange wines, really), and was a fantastic pairing for my schnitzel and spaetzle (recommended by Jayne). Anyone who visits Do Bianchi regularly knows just how much Tracie P and I love LdH — anytime, anywhere.

After dinner we went to a new club on El Cajon Blvd. to see Jon’s band the Fairmounts play their blend of 60s soul.

That’s A.J. Croce (yes, Jim Croce’s son!) on keyboards… how cool is that? They completely rocked the house…

Wrapping up this quick San Diego trip (to ship and deliver wine for my wine club 2Bianchi.com), I just had to share this photo of my awesome nephews Abner and Oscar (brother Micah and sister-in-law Marguerite’s children).

Abner is holding a photo of his great-great-grandparents, mama Judy’s grandparents. It’s so remarkable to think about how far we’ve come from Russia, Poland, and Austria. And how radically the world has changed since then.

Would they have ever imagined that their progeny would be drinking unyeasted wines from the slopes of Mt. Etna on the far-flung shores of California?