Category Archives: de vino

The mysteries of evolution and a poker game that never happened

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Above: the tartrates (in the glass to the left) were the biggest I’d ever seen.

There was no poker game the other night in a Chinese BYOB restaurant in lower Manhattan.

In attendance, there weren’t any top sommeliers nor wine directors of high-end restaurant groups.

No wine writers or editors of prestigious food and wine magazines stopped by. Nor were any seductive bottles opened that night.

Of the many heavy-hitting bottles that weren’t uncorked that night, the most interesting was a bottle of 1994 Vouvray Moelleux by Foreau, one of the top producers of Chenin Blanc, a white grape known for its remarkable aging (when it’s produced in a natural style).

In the case of this bottle, the wine had oxidized (“sherryized”) and its color had turned (see the beautiful amber color above). But the wine hadn’t lost any of its vibrancy. It showed great acidity and fruit, it had a wonderfully musky nose, and it tasted fantastic. (1994 was not a great vintage in Vouvray but it’s unlikely that the evolution of this wine was “vintage-driven.”)

It’s not clear how the wine had been affected and even among the wine professionals (not present at the game that never happened), no one could definitively unravel the mystery.

This going-on-fourteen-year-old Chenin Blanc is a great example of how wine — a living organism — can evolve in unexpected and sometimes delightful ways.

I didn’t snatch the bottle up with the excuse that I was going to photograph it later. Nor did I drink the last drop.

The best pizza in New York? I think I’ve found it…

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The best pizza in New York? I think I found it on Sunday night at Lucali Brick Oven in Carroll Gardens.

Pizzaiolo Mark Iacono, owner of Lucali Brick Oven, is a natural. A marble mason by day, he built a beautiful wood-fired oven and open kitchen in an old candy store on Henry St. in Carroll Gardens. The previous owner’s name was Lou and he and his wife Valerie’s daughter is named Kalista, so they called their pizzeria “Lucali.” To watch Mark make pizza is like going to the ballet: his methodical movements are graceful and steady and his timing impeccable. He makes only pizze and calzoni: his crusts are perfectly salted, the thickness consistently ideal, and the toppings are pure and simple (pepperoni, onion, mushroom, basil, and sometimes sausage from the local pork store). For my table, he recommended a pizza with tomato sauce, cheese, and basil: he uses mozzarella di bufala, domestic mozzarella, and then a pinch or two of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Also on Mark’s recomendation, I tried the “five-cheese” calzone: stuffed with ham (he rips the slices by hand into small strips), ricotta, mozzarella di bufala, domestic mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano, and a fifth cheese that he wouldn’t reveal. It was insanely good…

I asked Mark, a Carroll Gardens native, how he learned to make pizza: “I just remembered the way they used to make it in the old days,” he told me.

“Mark just wanted a place,” said his lovely wife Valerie, “where everybody liked the pizza.” He has certainly succeeded.

There are no menus at Lucali, it’s strictly BYOB, and the waits are long (up to three hours on some nights, Mark said). Seems that most patrons are locals who leave their number and wait to be called when their tables are ready.

Above: I paired the pizza and “five-cheese” calzone with a gorgeous Joseph Roty 2003 Marsannay. The combination — the excellent pizza, the earthly wine, and the setting — was purely transcendental.

I rarely drink espresso after dinner these days but had to try Mark’s (he is the only one “allowed” to touch the machine, his wife told me). It wasn’t good… it was divine.

Lucali Brick Oven
575 Henry St (and Carroll)
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY 11231
(718) 858-4086

I’ve been eating pizza all week and below I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite places.

BENSONHURST

Above: Si parla italiano (Italian is spoken) at Da Vinci in Bensonhurst (one of NYC’s vibrant Little Italys).

Da Vinci
6514 18th Ave (and 65th St)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, NY 11204
(718) 232-5855

Da Vinci is my all-time favorite NYC-style pizzeria. The crust is always perfect, not too thin and not too thick. The pizzaioli are always super nice and it’s great to see the families and kids there and hear Italian spoken. Be sure to order a slice with “fresh” mozzarella.

CARROLL GARDENS

Lucali Brick Oven
575 Henry St (and Carroll)
Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, NY 11231
(718) 858-4086

See above

EAST VILLAGE

Cacio e Vino
80 2nd Ave (and 5th)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 228-3269

Truly top-knotch sommelier Eleonora Tirapelle (left) at Cacio e Vino (“Cheese and Wine”). She used to work at the famous Bottega del Vino in Verona. Note how she’s bound the cork to the bottle using the foil of the capsule. The night I was there I had an excellent Origanata, a Sicilian-style pizza with anchovies and oregano (hence the name). My friends and pizza experts Charles and Michele Scicolone (check out this profile) like the pizza there but they go for Salvatore Fraterrigo’s Sicilian specialities. “Salvatore is from Trapani,” says Charles, and he makes some of the best Sicilian food outside of Sicily. His pasta con le sarde, ‘pasta with sardines,’ a traditional Sicilian dish, is incredible. He uses dill in the place of the wild fennel they use in Sicily, but it’s better than most restaurants in Sicily.”

GRAMERCY

La Pizza Fresca
31 East 20th Street
(btwn B-way and Park)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 598-0141

“La Pizza Fresca is the best pizzeria in the city for Neapolitan-style pizza,” says Charles, a devotee of the restaurant. “The test for Neapolitan pizza is that you can take it and fold it again and fold again without crust breaking. The pizza at La Pizza Fresca never fails the test. La Pizza Fresca also has one of the best wine lists in Manhattan.”

Check out Charles’ recent post on where to eat pizza in Naples.

LOWER EAST SIDE

Above: Rosario’s is perhaps the last Italian-owned pizzeria on the Lower East Side. It stays open late and, man, I speak from personal experience: a late-night Rosario’s slice after a gig or show in a LES club is awesome.

Rosario’s
173 Orchard St (and Stanton)
New York, NY 10002
(212) 777-9813

Owner Salvatore Bartolomeo (left) came to NYC from Palermo, Sicily in 1960 and has run the classic downtown pizzeria Rosario’s since 1963 (note the archetypical LES would-be hipster with wanna-be Strokes haircut waiting for a slice). If you’re looking for the best NYC-style pepperoni pizza this is the place to go (he actually bakes the sliced pepperoni on each pie, unlike many pizza-by-the-slice joints where the pizzaiolo adds the pepperoni to a regular slice and then reheats it). For large parties, I highly recommend asking the pizzaiolo to bake a whole pie for you. It’s well worth the wait…

Rosario’s doesn’t have a website but it does have a fan site created by one of its die-hard patrons.

PARK SLOPE (PROSPECT HTS)

Franny’s
295 Flatbush Ave
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 11217
(718) 230-0221

The pizza at Franny’s is done in the Neapolitan style and many of the toppings are sourced from artisanal, local cheese- and sausage-makers. The wine list is small but really great, with a good selection of natural wines. Francine has a great palate and she likes one of my favorite Lambruscos, Lini.

What’s your favorite NYC pizza?

Above: Anthony Mangieri, polarizing pizzaiolo at Una Pizza Napoletana (photos by Kelli).

Following my post on pizza in New York City, I received a number of recommendations. Here are some of the most passionate…

Una Pizza Napoletana
349 E 12th St (btwn 1st and 2nd)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 477-9950

New Yorkers love their pizza and they love to share their opinions. No NYC pizzeria seems to be as polarizing as Una Pizza Napoletana in the East Village: there are those who swear it is the most authentic Neapolitan pizza in the city and there are others who claim it is just a would-be hipster cult destination.

Pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri makes only four pizzas: Margherita, Marinara (above, left), Bianca, and Filetti (topped with cherry tomatoes), all of them meatless. Anthony uses sawdust to “bump the oven temp up about 70 degrees for a few seconds to add a little crunch without drying the crust out,” writes Scott. “Worked like a charm on 2 of the 3 pies we had: Marinara was suitable for the Last Supper, Bianca was on its heels and the Margherita was a little soggy which texture-wise is to obvious effect but it also washed out the flavor a bit. The keys to the flavor (for me) are the explosions of different flavors from bite to bite: a hit of salt here, olive oil there and in the case of the Marinara the beautiful oregano.”

Bleeker Street Pizza
69 7th Ave S (at Bleeker St)
New York, NY 10014
(212) 924-4466

“This slice joint stands above. I challenge you to find a better stand-up slice in town than its Nonna Maria — marinara, mozzarella, basta. With just a few tables, I’m not sure how they’d respond to wine from the outside, but it would be worth trying to smuggle in a ’61 Cheval Blanc.”

— Jeff

Di Fara
1424 Avenue J (at 14th St)
Brooklyn, NY 11230
(718) 258-1367

“Di Fara Pizza should definitely be in the top tier. It is an awesome only in NY experience. It is totally chaotic with no order there are 5-6 people deep at a counter and every once in a while the owner looks up and takes and order so you have to be proactive/aggressive. We had a simple cheese pie – it was amazing fresh basil and cheese.”

— Robert

Luzzo’s
211 1st Ave (btwn 12th and 13th Sts)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 473-7447

“That’s amore… warm coals and crusty pizza.”

— Alfonso

Stromboli
83 Saint Marks Pl (at 1st)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 673-3691

“In the drunk pizza category there’s nothing finer than Stromboli on St. Marks and 1st Ave. It’s a block from the Tile Bar (which is my favorite bar in the East Village and possibly all of the city) which makes it perfect in every way.”

— Dana

Totonno’s Pizzeria Napolitano [sic]
1524 Neptune Ave (at West 15th St)
Brooklyn, NY 11224
(718) 372-8606

“Totonno’s out on Coney Island is my favorite. Every time I go there with friends, we order one, and then, after we eat it, we order another and eat that. Thin crust, and more sauce than cheese.”

— Dana (bis)

Barolo, the “sexiest” wine? Eric Asimov mistranslated by Italian news wire

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My inbox greeted me this morning with a message of alarm and disbelief from my friend, top Italian wine blogger, Franco Ziliani:

“The Italian press decided to give the following title to an article about Eric Asimov’s recent and excellent articles on Barolo in The New York Times: ‘According to Americans, Barolo is the sexiest of all wines: it makes you wait just like a beautiful woman [does].’”

In the article, published by one of Italy’s most respected dailies, La Stampa, journalist Roberto Fiori erroneously reports that Eric, writing for The New York Times, calls Barolo “the sexiest wine in the world.”

In Franco’s post on this rigmarole, he points out — among other things — that:

a) Eric never used the word “sexy” (he used the words “seductive” and “sensuous”);

and

b) Fiori also incorrectly translates Eric’s “Burgundy” as “Bordeaux” (yet another instance of sloppy journalism).

Here’s a link to Fiori’s article.

The article in question was just one of a slew of reports that appeared today in the Italian papers, all based on a news flash released by AGI (Agenzia Giornalistica Italiana or “Italian Journalistic Agency,” similar to AP or Reuters):

“The sexiest wine in the world? Barolo, according to The New York Times. Especially when one has the time, patience, and opportunity to age the wine for at least ten years, because only in this manner will it become ‘austere, mature, and sensual.’ These are the words of Eric Asimov, official wine critic for the American daily.”

Evidently, neither the AGI reporter nor Fiori took the time to verify what Eric had actually written.

Adding insult to injury, Fiori writes that his readers should take “satisfaction” in the fact that “The New York Times has acquired a taste for Barolo: just one week ago [The Times published] a long article that listed Italy’s many ills but cited the noble wine of the Langhe as one of its few positive things” (the article to which he is referring was actually published — another instance of sloppy journalism — more than a month ago: Ian Fisher’s “In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment,” December 13, 2007). Good news, he says, “for the 10,000,000 bottles of the 2004 vintage, on the market since January 1.”

I’m only reporting the facts and will spare you my editorial. But I am reminded of what Alessandra Stanley wrote in The Times some years back a propos the Italian press corps and the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: “the Italian press got the prime minister it deserves” (“A Virtuoso At Playing The Press In Italy,” August 21, 2003). Seems that things haven’t changed much since then…

Carbonara (and Matelica)

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Yesterday was international Carbonara Day and New York hosted a number of carbonara celebrations organized by the GVCI (Virtual Group of Italian Chefs). The origin of Spaghetti alla carbonara is unknown but the GVCI has put together this relatively well-informed page citing all the theories as to its provenance (I was glad to see that the group referenced my edition of Ippolito Cavalcanti’s Cucina Teorico-Pratica).

I didn’t get to taste Cesare Casella’s Carbonara with Winnie but I did convince Roman chef Salvatore Corea to whip up a Carbonara just for me at his newest restaurant Bocca.

Above: Salvatore Corea’s Spaghetti alla Carbonara is not on the menu at Bocca but it was great.

I paired it with La Monacesca’s 2005 Verdicchio di Matelica: clean and fresh in the mouth, with nice fruit flavors. While Verdicchio dei Castelli di Iesi, which lies on the Adriatic coast of the Marches, is the more famous of the two appellations, Matelica, which lies in an inland valley, is known for its fruity notes (thanks to the temperature variation of the valley). It’s a wonderfully food-friendly wine and also went well with Salvatore’s grilled scamorza and culatello.

Above: Salvatore also had me taste his Spaghetti alla gricia, a similar dish, also made with guanciale (and black truffles) but no egg. It wasn’t as good as the carbonara but tasty nonetheless.

Above: to be avoided at all costs! The Spaghetti alla Carbonara at Il Mulino in the West Village was by far the worst I’ve ever tasted.

Late last year I tasted the Spaghetti alla carbonara at Il Mulino, in the West Village, where I had one of the worst meals of my life. It’s really unbelievable — inconceivable in fact — that this would-be landmark restaurant has not been exposed for what it truly is: a sham.

Above: another dish of equally dubious origins, Fettuccine Alfredo, also at Il Mulino, and equally bad as its carbonara.

The only bottle I could find worth drinking at Il Mulino was a 1988 Barolo by Marchesi di Barolo (the rest of the list is over-oaked and WAY over-priced). Thankfully (or sadly, depending on how you look at it), I was the guest of another wine professional. We were both shocked by the obscene prices. So, please, don’t ever go there!

Stick to the professionals (hopefully we can get Salvatore to make his carbonara a regular dish on his menu).

Guanciale and Barolo in The Times

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The Wednesday edition of the The New York Times and its Dining and Wine section is a weekly event for food and wine writers and culinary professionals (New Yorkers and the rest of them west of the Hudson river).

Today’s section caused many of us in the wine world to drool with envy: Eric Asimov published a great story about Barolo and a recent tasting he attended. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime affairs (unfortunately not yet in my life!). I really like how Eric puts Barolo — a wine so misunderstood by so many — into perspective. Check out his post on the tasting at his blog (essential reading for me). It will surely make your mouth water (and bring tears of envy to your eyes as it did to mine).

Florence Fabricant doesn’t have a blog but she did do a great piece on guanciale in today’s somewhat Italophile edition of the Dining and Wine section. She writes: “Guanciale, which means pillow, a description of its shape, has an especially rich, sweetly porky flavor and a buttery texture.” It’s true that guanciale means “pillow” but in another context — that of medieval and Renassiance-era armor — it denotes the cheek pieces that were often attached to helmets (see illustration above, upper left-hand corner). It’s derived from the Italian guancia, which means “cheek” (from the old German, wanga or wanka, akin to the old English wang).

The suffix -ale is very common in Italian (as in nazione, nazionale), hence, guanciale from guancia.

Guanciale — the cured pork — is made from cured pig jowl (the part that runs from the head to the shoulder). So, it’s more likely that guanciale, when used in a gastronomic context, is more akin to “cheek” than it is to “pillow.”

I was so green with envy after reading Eric’s blog that I just had to point that out…

In other news…

I was really glad to see that a Sex Workers Outreach Program linked to my post on Sugo alla puttanesca: “Prostitutes are not responsible for the naming of an Italian dish” (scroll down the page).

Pizza alla puttanesca and 95 Taurasi

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Above: Pizza alla puttanesca paired with 1995 Mastroberardino Taurasi at La Pizza Fresca in Manhattan.

In today’s Italy, pizza is generally paired with beer. Young Italians are drinking more and more wine these days but beer remains the beverage of choice for Italian pizzeria-goers. Although I prefer my pizza with beer, I always make an exception when I eat pizza with my good friends, Italian wine maven Charles Scicolone and his wife Michele, Italian food expert and author of countless Italian cookbooks, including Pizza Any Way You Slice It (which they co-authored). Charles loves to drink Barolo and Aglianico with his pizza and last night found us at his favorite New York pizzeria, La Pizza Fresca, where I couldn’t resist — in the light of my recent posts — ordering a pizza alla puttanesca.

After Naples and Rome, New York is one of the world’s most interesting pizza destinations and the pizza at La Pizza Fresca is very good. It’s done in the Italian (as opposed to NYC) style with Neapolitan (as opposed to Roman) leanings.

Charles had brought a bottle of 1995 Taurasi by Mastroberardino, which showed nicely. Mastroberardino began to oak their Taurasi a few years ago (“they went to the dark side,” as Charles likes to put it) but the 1995 was made in the traditional style. In the spring of 2006, Charles and I attended a vertical tasting of Mastroberardino (led by Piero Mastroberardino) going back to 1968 and we have enjoyed more than one bottle of 68 Taurasi at the Bottega del Vino in Verona. When aged in botti, Taurasi (100% Aglianico) has impressive aging-potential and many call it the “Nebbiolo of the south.”

By chance, Produttori del Barbaresco winemaker Aldo Vacca (pictured below) was also dining at La Pizza Fresca last night and Charles poured him a glass of the 95 Taurasi. “It shows qualities similar to Nebbiolo,” noted Aldo, who was in town for his importer’s 25th anniversary portfolio tasting.

Above: winemaker Aldo Vacca of Produttori del Barbaresco.

I had a chance to speak with Aldo at the tasting earlier in the day and I’ll be posting my interview with him later this month.

Above: two top bloggers in my book, Alfonso Cevola and Alice Feiring also attended Aldo’s importer’s portfolio tasting.

Pizza and Taurasi? Pretty darn good… any way you slice it.

In other news…

A propos Naples, I recently discovered Wikipedia in Neapolitan dialect! I’m not such a fan of Wikipedia but this site is great…

Puro and Unfiltered at Jean-Georges

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Jean-Georges, the best deal in town? You betcha… $28 lunch menu includes appetizer, entrée, chocolates, nougat, and petits fours. And get this: no jacket required, although I was wearing one, of course (the day I was there, a large group of tourists was seated wearing a mishmash of windbreakers, sweaters, and sweatshirts).

Above: river trout sashimi with sea trout roe, and dill and lemon purée, paired with Movia’s Puro Rosato 1999, at Jean-Georges, NYC.

A business lunch meeting took me the other day to one of New York City’s top dining destinations, Jean-Georges, the Michelin-starred and storied restaurant in the Trump Tower on Central Park West.

Above: bay scallops with roast cauliflower and caper-raisin emulsion.

I must confess I was surprised: who knew that lunch at Jean-Georges cost only $28? A great deal. But an even better surprise was a bottle of Movia’s Puro Rosato 1999 at a reasonable price.

Radically natural in style and in conception, his wines are not for everyone and his Puro is no exception (it’s a classic-method Pinot Noir vinified as a white and rosé, as in this case). Movia doesn’t disgorge the wine before release because he believes — rightly — that leaving the sediment (the yeast left over after the second fermentation) enhances its flavor. When a bottle is opened, it has be disgorged on the spot (see video below) and thus retains a lot of the flavor that would otherwise be lost if the bottle were disgorged at the winery.

Above: the sommelier didn’t know how to disgorge the wine and so I asked her to decant it. I love the color of this wine and it was great with the sediment at the bottom of the decanter.

I’ve tasted the white Puro and liked it as well, but the rosé is simply fantastic. When you taste a natural wine like that and experience its natural fruit flavors (in this case, a beautiful note of grapefruit), you just can’t put it down. Frankly, I liked the mouthfeel that the sediment gave the wine and its acidity was a perfect match for the tartness of the lemon and dill purées accompanying the sea trout and the intense flavors of the caper-raisin emulsion drizzled over the scallops. I could drink this wine every day.

Above: the sweat breads were skewered with licorice sticks and served with grilled pear (I paired with a glass of 2001 Vosne-Romanée by Mommessin).

Too bad that all of life’s surprises can’t be as good as $28 for a three-Michelin-star lunch.

Do try this at home… I found the video below demonstrating how to open and disgorge a bottle of Movia’s Puro. Keep in mind that you have to store the bottle upside-down so that the sediment settles into the neck of the bottle.

One more from the road: posoles…

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I promise this is the last installment of my Mexican culinary adventures.

Above: a bowl of posoles, a traditional Mexican soup, made with pork and hominy, topped with shredded lettuce, sliced radish, and a small dollop of homemade salsa, and garnished with a crispy tortilla.

Monday evening was family dinner at Micah and Marguerite’s (my brother and sister-in-law’s place) where we enjoyed a piping-hot bowl of posoles prepared by their friend Lucia. I was stuffed after the first serving but couldn’t resist a second helping. From the Nahuatl pozolli meaning “stew” or maize-based drink, the term posole dates back to eighteenth-century Mexico.

In other news…

I’ve been following this interesting thread at Vinography.com on vigilantism in the e-commerce world of retail wine sales in the U.S. It seems that a certain online retailer has been reporting other smaller retailers for shipping wine over state lines. The minutiae might bore you but the original post provides background on the anachronistic legislation governing interstate wine commerce in the U.S.

I don’t know how long this link will be available (before you have to pay for it) but someone just forwarded me this article on interstate wine sales in The Los Angeles Times. I guess it had to come to a head sooner or later… The sad part is the consumer is the loser here…

In other other news…

I was pleased to find this reference to my blog on Veronelli.com (in Italian). Here’s the original post.

A New and Important Wine Blogger

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One of voices I respect most in oenocyberspace, Eric Lecours, weighed in over the weekend with this comment and clarification on my recent post about La Chablisienne:

“Great choice…La Chablisienne produces excellent wines at great prices. The producer is actually a cooperative, considered by many to be the best in France. Despite escalating prices, I find Chablis itself is an excellent value in general. I recently ran across a Domaine (not négociant) Fevre ‘04 Grand Cru Preuses @ 35 euros in Beaune. That level of quality requires 2x+ the price in the Côte de Beaune.

(The best cooperative in the world however…Produttori del Barbaresco, of course).”

I couldn’t agree more with Eric that Produttori del Barbaresco is the “best cooperative in the world” (those of you who read my blog regularly know that it’s one of my all-time favorite producers).

It’s great to know that there are still some good values in Burgundy (especially in the light of the Euro’s rising value).

But the best news is that Eric has published a new blog called The Burgundy Journal. Eric is currently working with Étienne Grivot (of Jean Grivot) in Vosne-Romanée and his insights into the current state of Burgundian winemaking are riveting. His blog will quickly become required reading for a wide swath of Burgundy lovers and wine writers. Check it out…

Chablis by the Sea

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Above: a classic Southern California Caesar salad, tossed tableside on a guéridon by Meliton Lescana at The Marine Room in La Jolla, CA – a relic of Cold-War-era “continental” dining (click image for animation).

A trip home for New Year’s conjured up nostalgia of growing up in a sleepy seaside community where the waves are big and the beach is your backyard. Besides an excellent dinner at my mom’s (braised brisket, roast potatoes, and wilted spinach with a López de Heredia Viña Tondoñia 1999 that I found on sale at the local BevMo), great sushi (So. Cal. has some of the best in my book), and a bevy of burritos, tacos, tostadas, and flautas (look for a post next week on Mexican culinary adventures), we made a trip down to The Marine Room in the La Jolla Shores, a blue-blazer, khaki-pants-and-docksiders restaurant that sits right on the beach with floor-to-ceiling waterfront windows.

Above: 2002 Montmain (Premier Cru) by La Chablisienne. Sommelier Jeff Hoover surprised and impressed me with a list that offered some options to those of us who cannot drink barriqued Chardonnay. The shrimp cocktail is no longer on the menu but they made it for me anyway.

The once strictly “continental” menu has undergone some changes since I was a kid and although the surf and turf still makes an appearance (at $70+), most of the classics have been replaced by things like the “Mulberry Kalbi Glazed Organic Pompano,” which I ordered.

The pleasant surprise was the wine list. I wasn’t expecting to find a lot of things that I could drink and indeed the list was comprised mostly of heavily oaked Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon (for the most part, Marine Room diners get what they deserve: at the table behind ours, I heard a gentlewoman pontificate about wine, extolling the virtues of Merlot, which, she informed her companions, “is a blend”). But after leafing through the heavy-handed California chapters of the list, I was relieved to find one of my all-time favorite Chablis producers, La Chablisienne.

Chablisienne makes traditional-style wines that show the characteristic minerality of distinctive Chablis. The wines are very reasonably priced: the premier crus generally retail for less than $30 and the Petit Chablis and Chablis AOCs can come in under $16. I had never tried the Montmain Premier Cru and it went great with a jumbo shrimp cocktail (the latter doesn’t appear on the menu anymore but can still be ordered). I just love these wines…

We also drank a 375 ml of Guigal’s 2003 Condrieu, a 100% Viognier that definitely sees some time in barrique (about a third of the wine was vinified and aged in new wood according his website). It was unctuous and rich, perfect for the Pompano and the fruity flavors of its sauce.

The Marine Room isn’t cheap, the food is somewhat affected and slightly tired, but the views and the Cold-War-era feel are worth every penny (that you don’t put in your loafers).

Above: an image of the Marine Room, battered by the surf in 1949. The Marine Room sits right on the beach and has been closed numerous times over the years because of weather damage. It’s not cheap but the views are worth it. The night I was there, sandpipers scurried and danced across La Jolla Shores beach like ballerinas.