Category Archives: de urbe novo eboraco

Which red wine? And cool Italian-related stuff to do in NYC.

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An article on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times reported that “New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging.” According to the article, pharmaceutical companies are investing unspeakable amounts of money to try to recreate the health-enhancing properties of red wine in the hopes of discovering a would-be fountain of youth.

Europeans have long believed that red wine is part of a healthy diet and life and that red wine can help people to live longer (I remember a 90+ year-old lady I knew in Pieve di Cadore in the Dolomites who poured a glass of red wine in her soup every day; she claimed that it was the secret to her longevity and the quality of her life and lucidity at such an advanced age).

But which red wine are we talking about? Certainly not high-alcohol, concentrated wines, out-of-balance, with fruit created by technology, so viscous you could use them to oil up your Harley Davidson.

No, those aren’t the red wines that the old folk drink. It’s unfortunate when headlines like that appear because they don’t contextualize the health-enhancing properties of wine (red or white): wine is healthy when it is drunk in moderation as part of a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle.

Time for me to stop pontificating now…

I did, however, like Eric’s article on Burgundy.

In other news…

Blow-by-blow, day-by-day, minute-by-minute, mano-a-mano, tête-à-tête, vis-à-vis coverage of my Aspen trip begins on Monday. So stay tuned…

In other other news…

Here are some cool Italian-related things going on in Manhattan in June.

My friend Keith de Lellis, collector extraordinaire of vintage Italian photography, is exhibiting a show entitled “La Strada,” featuring 1950s original black and white prints of street life in Italy. Years ago, I helped Keith research his buying trips to Italy and I was fascinated by the people we met, the stories they told, and the out-of-the-way places Keith travels to find this amazing photography (the prints aren’t cheap, btw). Between the second world war and Italy’s economic miracle in the 1960s, photography became an inexpensive and popular hobby there and even amateur photographers seemed capable of creating neorealist works of art. All of Keith’s prints date back to the 1950s and when you seem them in person, the quality of the paper and the printing techniques give the photos an ineffable aura (think Walter Benjamin’s aura, à la “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”).

Through June 14.

Keith de Lellis Gallery
1045 Madison Ave at 80th St.
(212) 327-1482

Another friend of mine, Caterina Bertolotto, has just mounted a show of her couture, “Dresses of Transportation,” at the Italian American Museum. Born in Piedmont, Caterina is one of the most colorful New Yorkers I’ve ever met, a true original, an artist, whose entire life — and it’s not an exaggeration to say this — is a work of art. She’s also the author of an Italian language instruction manual and a great Italian instructor. She has taught at the New School and also teaches privately.

Through June 30.

Italian American Museum
28 W 44th St between 5th and 6th
(212) 642-2020

The Bartolo Mascarello-Che Guevara mystery resolved.

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Above: me and my friend, top Italian wine blogger Alfonso Cevola at Terroir in the East Village.

When in New York, do as New Yorkers do: go to a wine bah.

Making the most of my New York sojourn, I met up with top Italian wine blogger Alfonso Cevola the other night at Terroir — New York’s first self-proclaimed “punk rock” wine bar.

Owner Paul Grieco and I had finally exchanged emails about the Bartolo-Che mystery and he generously offered to give me a few tees to send to Maria Teresa Mascarello.

Here’s what Paul had to say (in email) about the Bartolo-Che photomontage:

    The image of Bartolo came off of the web and we did a little correction to make it pop from the shirt. The beret is actually Che’s from his famous/infamous t-shirt. If I had a picture of Bartolo in a beret I would have used it. The original idea for the shirts (and there are 4 more Terroir-ists to be featured) came from my son’s Che shirt. I began to wonder why there were not any cool wine shirts and paraphernalia.

I didn’t get a chance to chat with Paul that night (he was “in the weeds,” as they say in the biz) but one of the wait staff told me that Terroir will soon offer its customers an entire line of enopunk-inspired stickers. (Dare say, have I coined a neologism? Enopunk?)

Given the chance, I’d like to ask Paul why Terroir doesn’t offer Bartolo Mascarello on its growing list of terroir-driven wines. But I fear I know the reason: from what I hear, the importer doesn’t share Terroir’s anarchic spirit.

Food for thought: are enopunk stickers the future of wine writing?

You’ve come a long way, baby.

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“Americans have had a long-standing love affair with the cuisine of Italy,” write Nina and Tim Zagat in the preface to Zagat’s America’s 1,000 Top Italian Restaurants. “Americans say that they prefer Italian food to any other type of food — even American food — in survey after survey.”

Leafing through the new guide, I was impressed by the radical transformation of Americans’ perceptions of Italian food and how they have changed over the last ten years. When I finished my doctorate in Italian in 1997 in Los Angeles and moved to NYC, people still thought of Italian cuisine as “northern” or “southern” (the former being preferable at the time) and few Americans could tell you the difference between gnocchi and cavatelli.

The appearance of the Zagat’s national Italian restaurant directory comes ten years after The New York Times published two articles that — in my opinion — marked the dawn of a new era in Americans’ perceptions of Italian cuisine.

One was Ruth Reichl’s 3-star review of Babbo, “A Radical Departure With Sure Footing” (August 26, 1998), where she anointed Mario Batali as the new prince of Italian cuisine in the U.S. (Just two months earlier, on June 26, she had written of Mario’s previous effort: “I should probably start by telling you that I am not a big fan of Po. So when I heard that Mario Batali, its chef and owner, had taken over the old Coach House on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village…, I was not particularly impressed.”) At the time, 3 stars from The Times for an Italian restaurant were practically inconceivable.

The other was Amanda Hesser’s “A Southern Italian Renaissance; After red sauce, America is discovering the real thing” (October 21, 1998). Albeit not the first but certainly one of the earliest fans of genuine southern Italian food, Amanda wrote convincingly that southern Italian cuisine deserved the epicure’s attention. Her interest in Salvatore Anzalone’s Sicilian restaurant, Caffè Bondi, and Nicola Marzovilla’s Apulian, I Trulli, showed readers that serious food writers (and restaurateurs) were taking southern Italy seriously. Regional Italian cuisine had arrived.

“In the past,” write Nina and Tim, “Italian restaurants in America described themselves as either Northern or Southern, but in recent years more and more Italian chefs have proudly emphasized their regional roots. Thus, Americans are coming to understand the distinct tastes of the many regions of Italy.” [There are 20 regions of Italy, btw.]

The Zagats were among the pioneers of “user-generated content” and the success of their guides is testament to their vision. The downside is that the user-generated reviews are not always reliable. The 2008 Zagat NYC restaurant guide named Babbo — surprise, surprise — the city’s top Italian restaurant. Number 2 was Il Mulino, one of the city’s worst tourist traps and most disappointing landmark restaurants: last year, I had what was possibly the worst and most expensive (adding insult to injury) meals of my life there.

America’s 1,000 Top Italian Restaurants wisely omits a top-5 listing and it includes a useful (however poorly translated) primer to Italian food and wine and regional Italian cuisine.

Whatever your favorite Italian restaurant or regional cuisine, one thing’s for certain: North America’s taste for Italian food has come a long way.

Have you ever been? A glass (or two) in the West Village.

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A friend and I met for a few glasses of wine the other night at The 8th St Wine Cellar, in the heart of the West Village, right down the street from Electric Lady Studio, conceived and created in 1970 by Jimi Hendrix (left), perhaps the first major recording artist to own a studio in the modern era of rock ‘n’ roll. Every time I walk down 8th st., I can’t help but think of the countless classic recordings that were made on this historic block, now lined with head shops and tattoo and piercing parlors (check out the clients page on the studio’s website).

Even after all these years, the West Village has retained its free spirit and the sense of openness that began to form here in the late 1950s and early 60s. The easy-going bartenders at The 8th St. Wine Cellar were friendly and generous with their pours and when I ordered a glass of Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo 2006 Agamium, our waiter said he didn’t mind at all opening a new bottle for me.

Above: bacon-wrapped figs with mascarpone with a glass of Agamium.

Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo (Ancient Vines of Cantalupo) is one of my favorite producers of Nebbiolo and it makes a fairly wide range of traditional-style wines, from their single-vineyard Collis Carellae and Collis Breclemae to the Agamium, their entry-level label. One of the things I love about Cantalupo is the winery’s interest in local ancient history, which expresses itself in the names of their wines: Agamium is the Latin name of Ghemme (a township in the province of Novara) where the grapes are grown and the wines are produced. Ghemme is one of the great, to borrow a Manhattan-centric phrase, “outer-borough” expressions of Nebbiolo (i.e., Nebbiolo grown outside the more noted Barolo and Barbaresco appellations; look for an upcoming post on the historical role of “outer-borough” Nebbiolo).

The 2006 Agamium was fresh and light in style and I believe that the winery limits maceration time in order to rein in the grape’s tannin, thus making it more approachable at such a young age. Check out the winery’s website. Although the English translations are sometimes awkward, the otherwise excellent site is easy to navigate and highly informative.

Above: 1480 – 1819 were the start and end dates of the Inquisition, one of the waiters told me. I inferred that his t-shirt’s message was meant to remind us that the Inquisition is indeed over. (For the record, I’m not really sure what information those dates are based on because it’s generally accepted that the official dates of the Spanish Inquisition were 1478 – 1834. A quick Google search revealed that the t-shirts was created by Humanitarians Not Heroes.)

I really liked the vibe at The 8th St. Wine Cellar and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a handful of wines that I liked on their relatively small list, including a half bottle of NV Taittinger La Française and Teodobaldo Cappellano Barolo. Honestly, I didn’t expect to find a cool little wine bar on 8th St. between Gray’s Papaya and the bong and tattoo shops. I guess it’s time for me to “cast all my hang-ups over the seaside,” as Jimi once sang (in a song he recorded right down the street).

The 8th St Wine Cellar
28 W 8th St
(btwn 5th and 6th ave)
New York, NY 10011
(212) 260-9463

*****

Have you ever been (have you ever been) to Electric Ladyland?
The magic carpet waits for you so don’t you be late
Oh, (I wanna show you) the different emotions
(I wanna run to) the sounds and motions
Electric woman waits for you and me
So it’s time we take a ride, we can cast all of your hang-ups over
the seaside
While we fly right over the love filled sea
Look up ahead, I see the loveland, soon you’ll understand.

Make love, make love, make love, make love.

The angels will spread their wings, spread their wings
Good and evil lay side by side while electric love penetrates the sky
Lord, Lord I wanna show you
Hmm, hmmm, hmmm
Show you

— Jimi Hendrix

A visit to the “new” 2nd Ave.

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2nd Avenue Deli
162 E 33rd St
(btwn 3rd and Lex)
New York, NY 10016
(212) 689-9000

The bottom line: the “new” 2nd Avenue Deli (on 33rd st) is nearly identical to the original (it’s just not on 2nd Avenue anymore). If you liked it then, you’ll like it now. It’s the same schmaltzy trip down memory lane (photo by Winnie; check out her awesome photos here).

Some years ago, I included the 2nd Avenue Deli in a piece I wrote about culinary anamorphism for Gastronomica (as I defined it, culinary anamorphism is a refashioning of food to make it resemble something else; in this case, towers — in pre-9/11 New York and fifteenth-century Cremona). Here’s the relevant passage (for the full text, click here):

    One of the most unforgettable instances of culinary anamorphism in recent memory must be attributed to restaurateur Abe Lebewohl, the late owner of the celebrated Second Avenue Deli in Manhattan, who was famous for his chop liver sculptures (he was also known for his Mock Chop Liver, a faux version of the old-world classic that wasn’t even vegetarian because it included schmaltz, i.e., chicken fat; it was just faux for the sake of being so). According to the deli’s eponymous cook book:

    “In 1976, Abe donated 350 pounds of chopped liver—not for the bar mitzvah of an indigent thirteen-year-old, but to New York magazine designer Milton Glaser’s graphic-design studio, Pushpin. Working feverishly in their highly perishable medium (by its second day, the exhibit was deemed ‘ripe’ for destruction), nineteen of the studio’s artists put together a show at Manhattan’s Greengrass Media Art Gallery called ‘Man and Liver’… The winning entry was James Grashow’s monumental six-and-a-half-foot-high rendering of King Kong straddling the World Trade Center’s twin towers.” (p. 4)

    Food in the form of buildings has been popular since the Renaissance. One of the most noted examples in the Italian Renaissance involved Torrone, the famous nougat of Cremona. On the occasion of the wedding of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza, October 25, 1441, the bride and groom were presented with a nougat replica of the city’s church bell tower, the so-called Torrione (today known as the Torrazzo) from which the sweet derived its name. Towers were a sign of power and wealth in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and it was not uncommon for gastronomic effigies to be erected in their likeness. The towers depicted by James Grashow were also a symbol of power, and like the tower of Cremona, they were a synecdoche for the city of New York. That the artist and restaurateur undertook such a labor-intensive rendering of the famous site from the New York skyline was testimony to the irresistible allure of culinary anamorphism.

I had fun the other night at the “new” 2nd Avenue Deli…

Ptcha is jellied calves’ feet. It was good with a little horse radish on rye. Mario Batali, eat your heart out.

Some prefer the matzoh ball fluffy and light, others firmer and denser. This one tended toward light, just like the old days when the 2nd Ave. Deli was on 2nd Ave.

One of my earliest memories is wondering why people in gray suits ate tongue at funerals. Tip or center? We had center.

The pastrami was well sliced but a little dry. Once I asked a Hungarian woman, a family friend and a wonderful lady, what she ate when her family landed on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. “Meat,” she said. “We ate meat.” She’s in her 90s and doing great.

Another Night to Remember at Manducatis

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For many years, Manducatis in Long Island City (Queens) has been one of my favorite food and wine destinations in New York City. It remains, for me, an entirely unique, always surprising, and thoroughly rewarding culinary experience. I know some would disagree with me: many friends claim the list has been “too picked over” while others say the food is uneven (and some are afraid to cross the East River into Queens when it’s actually just two stops on the 7 train from Grand Central!).

But let me let you in on a secret: whenever I dine at Manducatis, I never order from menu; I always let wine director Anthony Cerbone create a menu for me and I simply tell him what I’d like to drink and how much I’d like to spend. He’s never disappointed…

Last week, I made a trip to visit Anthony and his father Vincent with a group of wine professionals.

Above: Anthony’s mother’s scialatelli were made with little bits of fresh basil in the noodles themselves. Dressed with extra-virgin olive oil, cannellini beans, and a basil leaf, it was one of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had there. Besides the classic antipasti, the highlight for me was roast suckling pig served with braised cabbage (a traditional Neapolitan contorno or side for meat) and sautéed broccoli rabe.

It’s true that most of the older wines have been drunk: when I first started going to Manducatis in 2000, you would invariably see wine directors from across the city there on any given night, opening bottle after bottle (I actually wrote a vignette about an encounter between Anthony, left, and one of NYC’s most unsavory restaurateurs in my contribution to Perché New York?, “Il punto di vista di un gastronomo,” Piacenza, Scritture, 2007, and you’ll have to read the salacious account in Italian). But Anthony (left) continues to develop the wine program there and you might be surprised by what you find. There seem to be a lot of Tuscan wines from the 1990s, for example. The last time I was there, I had a wonderful 1997 Mastrojanni Brunello di Montalcino, for example, at a very reasonable price.

Anthony’s wine knowledge never fails to impress me and for my money, a meal at Manducatis just can’t be beat: classic Neapolitan antipasti, homemade pasta, classically prepared Italian secondi, and a warm, spacious dining room with an old-world feel, where I’ve never felt rushed.

Needless to say, we stayed to close the place, chatting with Anthony and his father Vincent.

I was surprised to learn that before coming the U.S. (where he joined the army, I believe in the 1960s), Vincent had served in the Italian Carabinieri (Italy’s national police force). A native of Naples, he learned about the wines of Piedmont and the Veneto, he told us, because he had been stationed in many different parts of the country. This experience — unusual for a twenty-something Neapolitan in post-war Italy — changed the way he thought about Italian wine. After leaving the U.S. Army, he decided to go into the restaurant business and became friends with the legendary Lou Iacucci, who was among the first to import the great wines of Piedmont to the U.S. The rest is history…

Above: even the most vehement detractors of new-world-style Nebbiolo appreciate the glory of old Gaja. The 1978 drank beautifully. I am convinced — more than ever — that he added some Barbera to his wines back then. As was the tradition before the Barolo and Barbaresco DOCs were created, producers regularly added small amounts of Barbera to their Nebbiolo. The acidity of the Barbera helped to balance the intense tannin of the Nebbiolo and thus made the wine approachable at an earlier age. But it also helped the wine to age more gracefully: Barbera can age upward of thirty years (when vinified in a traditional style) and I believe this wine’s vibrant acidity was owed to the presence of the humbler grape.

Manducatis
1327 Jackson Ave (at 21st St)
Long Island City (Queens), NY 11101
(718) 729-4602

*****

No one really remembers why the restaurant is called “Manducatis.” I believe that the name is an allusion to Psalm 126 (or 127 depending on the critical apparatus). In this “gradual canticle” (or “song of degrees” or “song of ascents”) attributed to King Solomon, the singer reminds the listener that all toil is useless unless “the Lord builds the house.” In other words, unless you believe in God, you will live your life in vain.

The line in the Latin Vulgate:

qui manducatis panem idolorum [alternatively doloris]

A literal translation:

you who eat (are eating) the bread of pain [toil, grief, sorrow]

Friends in High Places

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Life’s coincidences are funny, aren’t they? The lead singer of my band (Nous Non Plus) Céline Dijon (aka Verena Wiesendanger) knows Peter Ruggie (right), who works for Henriot, because his wife’s dad and her dad are old friends. She knows Babbo’s wine director Peter Jamros (left) because he’s dating one her best friends.

Céline was in town to celebrate the birthday of her beau, Patrick Woodcock, former member of the French band Air and the founder of Mellow.

Among other libations, we enjoyed a bottle of non-vintage Henriot rosé. It’s nice to have friends in high places…

Circa 1913: Grand Central’s Oyster Bar

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Winnie and I met the other day for a snack at the storied Oyster Bar (above) in Grand Central Terminal. I used to eat there a lot when I first came to New York and was broke, back in 1997: a friend had hipped me to the fact that its clam chowder ($5.75) is one of the best lunch deals in town.

Above: potager Komor Rudin mans the soup station at the original counter.

Many of the milk-based “stews” are created using a pair of steam-powered double-boilers (bains-marie) bolted into the original counter circa 1913. The potager assembles the soups by tossing seafood, milk, and/or tomato sauce in the two vessels. It’s very entertaining to watch.

Above: Panroast Oyster stew ($9.95) is a new favorite at the Oyster Bar but classic Oyster Stew (also $9.95) is still a winner.

Above: there’s not a lot worth drinking on the list at the Oyster Bar (mostly Californian) but the naturally made Domaine de la Pepière 2006 Muscadet is fantastic, the only Muscadet — the traditionally pairing for oysters — on the list! At $7 a glass and $28 a bottle, it’s also one of most reasonably priced lots (go for the bottle).

Above: the arm chair (hand chair?) in the bathroom lounge looks like it came straight from Woody Allen’s 1973 Sleeper.