Sunday evening, I finally made it to Momofuku Ssäm Bar in the East Village. I’d been inspired by two of my favorite bloggers. Winnie, a great food writer and friend, is an expert on all things pork in NYC and she has often remarked that Momofuku is one of her favorite places (I love the motto of her blog, ad astra per alia porci). The other is Lyle Fass, whom I really only know through the blogosphere and a few emails we’ve traded but whose wine knowledge I really admire and whose sometimes stinging straightforwardness and genuine humor I greatly appreciate.

I’d learned that Momofuku allows corkage (thanks to Lyle’s blog), and so Winnie and I made a plan to meet there, me with a bottle of 2003 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo by Edoardo Valentini in hand.

Above: spicy squid salad and Trebbiano d’Abruzzo… the wine held up well with the spiciness and intense flavors of the dishes we ordered.

Menu as follows (I asked Winnie to order):

steamed buns stuffed with pork belly

these were great, the buns warm and puffy, the hot pork fat melt-in-your-mouth gelatinous…

spicy squid salad

this was also very good, and, if I recall correctly, there was also some tasty baby octopus in this dish…

Mutsu and Macoun apple kimchi with crispy pork jowl and arugula

here we began to veer slightly into NYC too-precious foodland… the dish wasn’t exactly unforgettable and Winnie explained “kimchi” was a little bit of a misnomer since the apples weren’t really fermented…

báhn mì

from what I could glean, this is the classic Vietnamese sandwich and it was fantastic… highly recommended… it was billed as a “three terrine sandwich”… I’m not sure of all the ingredients but this is rightly one of the joint’s signature dishes…

chicken ballotine

underwhelming, flavorless, and hard to eat with chopsticks!

spicy honeycomb tripe with poached egg and frisée

I loved this dish and its harmony of flavors and textures — caramelized tripe, poached egg, and the crisp bitter frisée lettuce — came together gloriously…

Above: seems that tattoos are not required but encouraged for staff at Momofuku.

Our servers were polite and attentive and all sported impressive tattoos and piercings. The decor is modern downtown chic and the atmosphere is New York hip.

I’ve read on Lyle’s blog that he has opened old Nebbiolo there (even some 1950s Oddero). I’m not sure that I would go that route at Momofuku since the cuisine is so spicy and the stemware is cheap (the glasses arrived at our table warm, right out of the dishwasher).

If you’ve ever had Valentini’s Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, you know that this is no ordinary white wine. Its rich mouthfeel, its subtle tannin (yes, in a white wine), and its intense aroma and flavors sang out over the medley of ingredients that tap-danced their way to our table. Winnie said it was probably the best white wine she’d ever tasted and I believed her… it’s certainly one of the best I’ve ever had.

When we stepped out on to Second Ave., we were both surprised by how cold it is already (or suddenly) in NYC. Fall has finally arrived. Me? I’m California dreaming right now.

*****

I’d be safe and warm
if I were in L.A.

— The Mamas and the Papas

sento solo freddo
sento tanto freddo
fuori e dentro me
fuori e dentro me
ti sogno California
sogno California
e un giorno io verrò

— Mogol

The rain has finally started to fall in NYC and the city has turned grey as it does every year around this time. My heart is heavy and my life unsettled but I am trying to pick up the pieces in the wake of this summer’s tsunami.*

Friends have been reaching out, lending support, sometimes with an email letting me know that they think of me, sometimes with an invitation to dinner and/or a bottle of wine, checking in and catching up.

Ben Shapiro — an old buddy, a great drummer, and radio producer, cinematographer, and journalist — wrote me the other day and we made a date to check out one of the many new downtown places.

I wasn’t inclined to like Gemma. I figured it would be another Da Silvano, Morandi, etc. rip-off, yet another Disneylandish, faux trattoria. And frankly, The New York Times food critic Frank Bruni wasn’t too off the mark when he wrote that Gemma is “a cheat sheet of a restaurant whose proprietors take fewer risks than a hurricane-insurance agent in Nebraska.”

Above, you’ve seen it before: faux trattoria chic. It’s like dining in Fantasyland… Europe via Anaheim.

So, when I arrived (shortly before Ben), and sat at the bar where I chatted briefly with NYC restaurateur Chris Cannon (my only pseudo-star siting), I decided to get right down to business.

“Do you have any white wine that doesn’t see new wood?” I asked the bartender. And I was pleasantly surprised when he said, “Yes, of course, I’ve got a beautiful stainless-steel Sauvignon.”

He proceeded to pour a fresh and delightful 2006 Sauvignon Blanc by Poggio Salvi (who makes both barriqued and traditional wines, btw). You don’t commonly find bartenders with such wine knowledge in places like this, let alone someone who can appreciate that there are those of us who don’t like oaked wine. (In his column this week, The New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov pointed out rightly that “Oaky may be bad, but oak is good.” I may have tempered that by saying “but oak can be good.” Nonetheless, I was glad to see such a widely read authority like Eric tackle such a sticky subject.)

Ben arrived and we decided to let our bartender order for us: excellent Quattro Stagioni pizzas and a simply gorgeous bottle of 1999 Brunello di Montalcino by La Torre, a winemaker you don’t see very often in the U.S. (I remember it from my days in Bagno Vignoni where I first learned about Brunello nearly twenty years ago with my friends, the Marcucci brothers). Traditional in style, this wine had natural fruit on the nose and in the mouth, bright acidity and tannins that probably could have used a few more years in bottle. Case, our bartender, insisted on decanting the wine for us and the aeration helped it to open up.

Above: the Quattro Stagioni pizza at Gemma, I have to say, was among the most authentic Italian pizza I’ve had in NYC. The crust was light but crispy and firm, the topping savory but not overly salty.

Truth be told, the list at Gemma isn’t exactly overflowing with wines that I like (at the end of the night, one of the sommeliers poured us a barriqued Aglianico del Vulture that tasted like industrial coffee syrup). But there are some true gems at Gemma, like a 2006 Verdicchio dei Castelli di Iesi by Villa Bucci (one of my all-time favs).

But what made the night was a great bartender, who knew his stuff and who understood my palate from the moment I sat down. Maybe Frank should have eaten at the bar.

Above: Case Newcomb, a great bartender and this man’s best friend at Gemma. Pour me some Brunello and I’ll tell you some lies.

*This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house.
It seems like this whole town’s insane.

— Gram Parsons

New York is one of the great restaurant cities of the world. So many restaurants and wine bars open and close so quickly in this town, that it’s often hard to keep track. And while there is a lot of great food here, there’s plenty of bad to go around as well. I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands lately and no kitchen to cook in, so I’ve taken the opportunity to try some new — well, new for me — places.

Above: the only thing I liked about Quality Meats was a few interesting wines on the list, including this Caillou Blanc 2004 Château Talbot.

A few nights ago, Greg and I — we’re both steak lovers — dined at Quality Meats, a recent addition to the Smith & Wollensky mediocrity group. The decor was kinda cool: the restaurant is dressed as a old-school meat locker, with hooks on the ceiling etc.

Our gracious waiter — who later abandoned us when the restaurant got busy — recommended that we not order the rib steak for two (“it can be too fatty,” she said) and so we both ordered the sirloin, bone in, black and blue. Greg’s came so charred that he said it tasted like charcoal. Mine was medium rare and not charred at all on the outside. We also both ordered Caesar salads: the dressing was insipid (“no anchovy,” our waiter said) and the croutons store-bought.

While the wine list was laden with the classic, over-priced, over-oaked, and overblown “Napa Cabs,” there were a few interesting wines like Sinskey, Olga Raffault (we drank the 2002 Les Picasses at a really great price), and a wine I’d never had, Caillou Blanc 2004 Château Talbot, a white made from Sauvignon and Sémillon. You rarely see white Bordeaux in NYC and Greg and I immensely enjoyed this dry, structured wine.

Above: the chef at Centro Vinoteca needs some Italian lessons.

Another recent outing took me to the very new Centro Vinoteca in the Village to meet a good friend of a friend, Ariel, who has just joined the ranks of us wine professionals. I really wanted to like Centro Vinoteca: the list is all Italian and has some great stuff, including a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore Vigna delle Oche 2002 San Lorenzo that was fantastic. I got there early (about 5:50 p.m.) and the place was empty and I sat at the bar. My waiter was knowledgeable and skilled and was happy to open a new bottle for me when I told him the wine he had poured — open from the night before — was dead. They serve wines by the quartino there and the prices are very reasonable for the quality (“wine by the quartino,” equivalent to roughly 2.5 glasses depending on how you pour, is a Batali-Bastianich affectation, but more on that below).

But by the time Ariel arrived, about 20 minutes later, the place was packed, we lost our good waiter, and our new waiter simply didn’t know how to open a bottle of wine. Ariel wanted to try the Verdicchio and so our new waiter opened it by swirling the bottle around to rip the capsule off; she inserted the worm incorrectly and broke the cork as she pulled it out; and then — to my disbelief — she inserted the worm again, put the bottle between her knees (!!!), and ripped the cork out. After Ariel tasted the wine and opted instead for a Falanghina, the waiter poured the Falanghina into the Verdicchio glass. Oy…

Trying to move past this mishap, we did order a few things from the menu. The arancine (above) turned out not to be arancine but just simple fried rice balls dusted with some grated pecorino. Throughout Italy, arancini (masc.) are fried rice balls stuffed with meat, cheese, and/or peas. A classic Sicilian dish, the are called arancine (fem.) in Palermo and Western Sicily, arancini (masc.) in eastern Sicily and the rest of Italy.

We also ordered — partly because it seemed so preposterous — the mortadella pate [sic]. I guess the person who types up their menus doesn’t know how to use diacritics. This dish consisted of ground mortadella. I know that mortadella is “in” these days but why ruin it by destroying its texture?

My first waiter, whom I liked, mentioned that the chef at Centro Vinoteca had been Mario Batali’s sous chef on the Iron Chef TV show. Evidently she learned a lot from Molto “make-it-up-as-you-go-along-and-then-claim-it’s-authentic-Italian-food” Mario. The so-called quartino is another Batali-Bastianich affectation that you never see in Italy. It’s really too bad… I really wanted to like Centro Vinoteca. The wine list there is interesting but the service and the affectation just ruined it for me.

Above: Tommaso Restaurant is located in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, one of New York City’s thriving Little Italys.

Words of wisdom were imparted to us last night by restaurateur Tommaso Verdillo of Tommaso Restaurant in Brooklyn where I joined Alice Feiring, Elizabeth Spiers, and Lawrence Osborne for some old wine, great food, and a truly enjoyable and stimulating confabulatio.

Tommaso and his restaurant may be counted among NYC’s best-kept secrets and so be it. Perhaps because Bensonhurst, Brooklyn (one of New York’s true Little Italys) seems so exotic to the uninitiated, perhaps because Tommaso hasn’t received the attention his food and his wine list deserve, his excellent cooking and thrilling-if-ecclectic cellar (a true trésor of old wine) just aren’t on the culinary radar of Manhattanite would-be gourmets.

When it became clear to Signor Tommaso that we were there to raid his cave, he warned, “You never know how these bottles will drink. There’s a wise, old saying: ‘there are no good wines… just good bottles.'” And he’s right: when it comes to old wine, even when provenance is unquestionable and a given bottle has been cellared properly, age invariably increases the chance that a bottling will have gone bad.

The menu and pairings:

Polpettine di Riso and Mozzarella in Carozza

St Joseph Offerus 1999 Chave

Porcini-Filled Tortellini dressed with melted Castelmagno Cheese

Corton Bressan Grand Cru 1983 Chandon de Briailles

Spiedini alla siciliana (breaded and skewered veal served with roast potatoes)

Barolo Le Rocche di Castiglione Falletto 1986 Bruno Giacosa

While the mozzarella in carozza was superb, the tortellini were by far the stand-out dish (I couldn’t resist sopping up the melted Castelmagno in my dish).

The St Joseph lacked the depth that I expected from such a highly touted producer but was good (granted, this is the winery’s “entry-level” wine). The 1983 Burgundy was very tired and had lost most of its body and acidity but its astoundingly low price made it well worth the experience (there are some great bargains on Tommaso’s list).

When we asked Tommaso about the Giacosa Barolo on the list, he told us he would go down in the cellar to see what was actually there. He returned with three bottles and proposed that we open the 1986 Barolo Le Rocche di Castiglione Falletto.

The 1986 harvest was a sleeper vintage, he explained, probably because it was overshadowed by the more famous and much warmer 1985. He and Bruno Giacosa were old friends, he said, and the winemaker had often spoken to him about the underrated and underappreciated ’86. The fact of the matter was that none of us had could remember having tasted ’86 Giacosa. And while I’ve tasted many excellent bottlings of Barolo Falletto by Giacosa, I’d never tasted the cru “Le Rocche di Castiglione Falletto.” (I’ve just discovered this excellent Table of Bruno Giacosa Barolo by nebbiolophile Ken Vastola. It reveals that 1987 was Giacosa’s last bottling of this cru.)

Now in the autumn of his life and career, Bruno Giacosa is one of Italy’s most revered winemakers and many would argue that his wines are among the best Italian ever (the 1990 Red Label Barolo Falletto is certainly one of the best wines I’ve ever tasted in my life). According to legend, Giacosa never studied winemaking. Tommaso told us that during the 1960s, before Italy’s economic miracle reached the Langhe hills (where Barolo and Barbaresco are made), many winemakers were forced to abandon their vineyards and travel abroad to find work to support their families. Giacosa, he told us, generously offerred to make their wines for them while they were gone, thus ensuring that their land would not be snatched up by unscrupulous speculators in their absence. This experience, he said, allowed Giacosa to refine his skill and knowledge and helped to shape his legacy as one of Italy’s greatest vintners.

Although it showed admirably for its age, the 1986 Le Rocche di Castiglione Falletto was tired (it had some good fruit left in it but the tannin had faded). It would have been better a few years ago and I wished we had opened the 1990 Villero (another cru I’ve never tasted from Giacosa). But the price was reasonable and the experience truly memorable. And after all, our simpatico host had gently warned us beforehand, “there are no good wines… just good bottles.”

Above: Barolo Le Rocche di Castiglione Falletto 1986 Bruno Giacosa paired with Spiedini alla siciliana and roast potatoes at Tommaso’s. The bottle of 1986 Giacosa didn’t have the government warning “front label” on the back of the bottle (yes, it’s called a “front label” by the TTB, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, even though it appears on the back of the bottle). But it did have a strip label that reported the following text: “Experience, love and passion allows [sic] us to obtain this product of the highest quality coming from grapes chosen and selected exclusively by us.”