Southwestern Mexican Culinary Adventures

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Indulge me with my indulgences: a photo reportage of my trip out west and what I ate…

Grilled yellow peppers at Mexicali Taco in El Centro, California (no link, sorry; see location info below).

Tacos al carbon are wrapped in butcher paper at Mexicali. The slow-roasted pork was tangy and delicate. So good…

The fresh salsa bar at Mexicali. When I stopped there at lunch, they were replenishing the condiments and the grilled peppers were still warm.

Mexicali Taco catapulted itself to the top of my “best Mexican restaurants ever” list. Definitely worth a trip to El Centro. Mexicali Tacos, 2003 S 4th St, El Centro, CA 92243, (760) 353-4505.

A hot dog “estilo sonoro” (Sonoran style) at El Güero Canelo, Tucson, AZ (“The Blond Redhead,” not to be confused with one of my favorite bands, Blonde Redhead). The Sonoran-style hot dog (perrito caliente) is wrapped in bacon, cooked on a griddle, and then topped with pinto beans, finely diced tomatoes, yellow mustard, relish, and mayonnaise.

The griddle for El Güero Canelo’s awesome Sonoran dogs.

The garnish at El Güero Canelo includes grilled spring onions, sliced cucumber, sliced radish, pickled onions, and roast peppers.

El Güero Canelo now has a second location in North Tucson but I went to the original in South Tucson, near the airport, where his old taco stand is still used to make the Sonoran dogs (above).

A visit to a bar — somewhere in the Sonoran desert — was rewarded with a “Michelada,” made with Clamato, Corona, Worchestershire Sauce, and lime juice. I am not a fan of Corona, which tastes more like water than beer to me, but it was great in the Michelada. Tasty and refreshing…

Saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) in the Ironwood Forest National Monument.

I had a late-night snack of homemade menudo (tripe and hominy soup, topped with freshly dished onion and chopped cilantro, not to be confused with my not-so-favorite band). It was leftover from a New Year’s day celebration (Mexican families traditionally eat menudo for breakfast on New Year’s day).

A bowl of homemade 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.

Traditional pan dulce (literally “sweet bread”) which I didn’t get to taste but I photographed nonetheless (it’s usually served for breakfast with coffee).

Back in La Jolla, I had a classic “wet” carne asada burrito at Alfonso’s, one of the old-school Mexican restaurants (probably inspired by El Cholo in Los Angeles, founded 1923) where the comfort food will cure even the most dogged hangover and the margaritas are always great. Alfonso’s, 1251, Prospect St, La Jolla, CA 92037, (858) 454-2232.

They don’t kid around at La Valencia where the huevos rancheros truly “drown” in ranchero sauce. La Valencia is a 1920s, silent-movie era luxury hotel. I wouldn’t exactly call the cuisine “cutting-edge” but it’s always dependable and the views and décor are fantastic. When in town, I can often be found at the hotel’s Whaling Bar at the end of the night.

Sunset in La Jolla. Thanks for indulging me by reading this post (if you’ve made it this far!).

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.

New Year’s Eve: Taittinger alla puttanesca

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Above: brother Tad poses with a magnum of Taittinger La Française and his puttanesca sauce.

The Parzen family brought in the New Year at Tad and Diane’s (my brother and sister-in-law’s) house, where we opened a magnum of Taittinger N[on V[intage] La Française.

Many people drink and think of Champagne solely as a stand-alone, special-occasion wine but it’s one of my favorite “food” wines: when it’s well made, it has good acidity, fruit, and body, and it’s arguably the most versatile wine in terms of its pairing possibilities. We drank the wine throughout our meal and it went great with Tad’s pear wedges (topped with “Maytag” blue and wrapped in prosciutto and arugula), an artichoke and cheese dip (brought by one of the guests), and even Tad’s spicy puttanesca sauce.*

Wine in large format (in this case a magnum or 1.5-liter bottle) is always fun to pour at parties and Champagne in particular shows better when aged in large format (experts haven’t really been able to pinpoint the reason for this but it likely has something to do with the fact that wine generally ages better in large quantities, probably because the oxygen-to-liquid ratio is reduced). The wine was drinking beautifully and paired wonderfully with everything — from the antipasti to ice cream cake and cookies.

My nephew Cole and I had spent the afternoon writing and recording a song using GarageBand. He was impressed by the size of the bottle and so I gave him some pointers on opening Champagne (his father noted it’s a skill that proves useful later in lafe):

– always have a serviette or clean dish towel handy (to wipe down the bottle and in case of spills)
– after you’ve removed the capsule by pulling the ribbon counter-clockwise, always keep your thumb over the cork as you twist the wire (in case it pops; the wire twists away from you and it always takes six turns to remove it)
– make sure the bottle isn’t pointing at anyone (in case it pops)
– tilt the bottle at a 45° angle, hold the cork firmly, place your thumb over the cork, and then slowly twist the bottle from the bottom as you gently apply pressure to pull out the cork

Above: December’s Children at Beaumont’s in Bird Rock (La Jolla) — Justin Richert, Danny Baker (left), John Yelenosky (center), Andrew Harvey, and Irwin (right).

The strike of midnight found me at a local bar, Beaumont’s, where I sat in with December’s Children.

I’ve known and played music with these dudes since I was a teenager. Each of them is a excellent musician in his own right. Danny Baker has got a great voice and his Les Paul Gold Top sounds great (I believe it’s a 57 reissue). My doppelganger Jeremy Farson, an accomplished painter, also sat in (if you click the link, scroll down the page to read about Jeremy).

I rocked out on Voodoo Child and Come On (Let the Good Times Roll) — a great way to ring in 2008 (which has got to be better than 2007!).

* Contrary to popular belief, pasta alla puttanesca is not so-named because it was or is the preferred victual of prostitutes (a common but erroneous folkloric etymology, owed to the fact that puttana means “prostitute” in contemporary Italian). The noun puttana and the adjective puttanesco are derived from the Italian putto (Latin, putus), “boy.” By the sixteenth-century (long before tomatoes and dried pasta were popular in Italian cuisine), the term puttanesco was already used in Italian to denote something belonging to a “lesser station in life,” so to speak, “boyish” or “girlish” or even “whoreish,” if you like. Pasta alla puttanesca is a pasta tossed in a tomato-sauce that has been flavored typically with cured anchovies, olives, capers, and chili flakes: the qualifier alla puttanesca refers to the fact that it is not a rich dish. In other words, it’s not a meat sauce or a sauce flavored with stock. It’s a dressing for pasta made savory by combining “humble” ingredients (another related word, puttanata means “rubbish” or “crap” in Italian, as in the expression, non dire puttanate, “don’t talk crap,” and has nothing to do with prostitutes). A meretrix may enjoy eating pasta alla puttanesca, but the dish wasn’t named after her.

Check out the follow-up post I did on Sugo alla puttanesca.

Although she makes a brief reference to it in her entry “Pasta Sauces,” Gillian Riley, author of the recently published Oxford Companion to Italian Food (October, 2007), does not offer an entry for pasta alla puttanesca. I’ve been leafing through the book during my trip out west…

What They Drank for Christmas

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Above: Dan Crane (aka Jean-Luc Retard) found this 1976 Heitz Cellars at his mom and step-dad’s place in Napa. The label reads “Alcohol 13% by Volume.” Today, most Napa Cabernets weigh in at a minimum 14.5% (current vintages of Heitz report 14.4% and 14.5% — I checked around at a few grocery stores and pharmacies).

I know I said I’d be taking a break from the blog and I promise that I will. But I couldn’t resist posting today: so many of friends wrote me to tell me the wines they drank for Christmas eve.

Top entry had to be Uli Wiesendanger (Verena aka Céline Dijon’s father) who opened a 1970 and 1979 Château La Lagune (3rd growth) at their home in the 6th.

“The cork of the 1970 Château de la Lagune broke,” writes Uli this morning, “and I had to decant the bottle. The 1979 came out beautifully. Both wines had a certain sharpness (slight acidity?) and were very light (elegant?). Not tired at all.”



Above: Trader Joe’s 2006 “Reserva” Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile in Winnetka, CA.

Greg Wawro (aka Professeur Harry Covert) writes in from Winnetka, California where he drank a Trader Joe’s 2006 Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon “Reserva.” He didn’t send any tasting notes: a picture, they say, tells a thousand words. I don’t know how you can call a wine from the 06 vintage a reserva but I’m sure he and his family had a nice holiday (I imagine Greg was pining for a 1967 Barolo that we opened recently together).

Greg adds: “Fortunately, I was able to find a 2003 Produttori del Barbaresco at the local BevMo (the last one they had!)” (click to read his subsequent comment).

Above: Me? I drank a 1997 Billecart-Salmon with friends in the Cognac Room at Astor Court (in the St. Regis Hotel). Billecart-Salmon is more famous for its rosé Champagne and it’s hard to find their blanc de blancs. It drank beautifully and even the natural-wine fanatics among us were impressed with this seemingly dosage-free Champagne (i.e., a Champagne to which no or very little sugar was added for the second fermentation). Astor Court has an amazing Champagne list, including a vertical of R[ecently] D[isgorged] Bollinger and the ultra-hard-to-find Selosse (at $500 a bottle, the latter was a little too steep for my tastes).

Above: Then came 2005 Domaine de la Pépière Granite de Clisson Muscadet in magnum with oysters at my favorite steakhouse, Keen’s.

War Is Over if You Want It

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Photo credit: Heather Bowden, La Jolla Local, December 2008.

Thankfully, I’m getting out of town for a while. I can’t reveal where I’m heading but my destination may look like the holiday card I received from a high school classmate Heather Bowden, a graphic designer and photographer.

Thanks to everyone for reading and clicking the blog this year. The 2007 vintage was a tough one for me: special thanks to my family and friends who have stood by me and lent me their support and love. I couldn’t have done it without “a little help from my friends [and family].”

I’ll be taking a little break for the next week or so but check back after the New Year for tales of my travels (and a big surprise that will be announced in early ’08).

If you want it, War is over now…

*****

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let’s stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now…

— John Lennon, Yoko Ono

Neil Young in Washington Hts. and German Beer Downtown

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Wednesday night, my old friend and once partner in musical crime, Foosh, brought me along as his guest to Neil Young in concert at the ol’ United Palace Theatre in Washington Hts. in the upper extremities of Manhattan.



Above: the United Palace Theatre is an old gem and they don’t mind when patrons rock out.

Definitely one of the top-five concert experiences in my life, the show consisted of an intimate acoustic set where he played a bunch of his old guitars and a mind-blowing, rocked-out electric set including a fantastic twenty-minute guitar solo. The guitar tones were truly amazing, like the notes of an old Nebbiolo, earthy and rich but fresh and surprising — with live acidity and fruit — at the same time.

It was great to see a legendary performer like Neil Young play a small venue like that, with easy-going security, cheap beer, and a raucous crowd of got-my-drink-on fans. It reminded me of when I went to concerts as a kid in the late seventies and early eighties, when rock n’ roll shows were just that: rock n’ roll. Dancing in the aisle by stoned-out-of-their-minds people was allowed.

Above: I enjoyed a Jever at Loreley before Foosh and I headed up to Washington Hts. to see Neil Young in concert.

Some years ago now, Foosh opened the now classic Lower East Side haunt Loreley, a German beer garden and restaurant inspired by his hometown of Cologne, Germany. The all-German beer selection there is great, the bartenders really know how to draft beer properly (with a proper head, see above), and the spaetzle and schnitzel are awesome. The place is always jam-packed on Friday and Saturday nights but you can sometimes find a place to sit on weeknights — if you’re lucky. The first time my band played our now show-stopping version of “99 Luftballons,” it was for the opening of Loreley way back in 2003.

Above: a video of Nous Non Plus playing “99 Luftballons” at the great Lower East Side rock club Sin-é before it was closed to make way for gentrification (read the stockbrokerization) of lower Manhattan.

A Night on the Town with Charles Scicolone

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Above: Charles Scicolone, Italian wine maven* extraordinaire (right), with Stefano Campatelli, president of the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino at I Trulli. Charles was the keynote speaker at this year’s Benvenuto Brunello vintage tasting, where I had the chance to taste bottlings going back to 1979. Charles had tasted them all before, of course!

Week before last, I was the guest of my good friend and Italian wine maven Charles Scicolone at a collector’s dinner at Gramercy Tavern. Charles is often to invited out by top wine connoisseurs: he is without a doubt one of the city’s most adored wine personalities and one of the country’s leading experts on Italian wine. The bottomline? He’s a lot of fun to be around and people want to know what he thinks of their wine.



Above: the dinner opened with a 1976 Château d’Yquem and foie gras. Not too shabby… “Sweet without being sweet, dry without being dry,” Charles remarked.

I first met Charles back in 1998 when I was writing about wine for The Magazine of La Cucina Italiana. At the time he was the wine director of I Trulli in Manhattan and most nights you would find him talking to guests about wine in the restaurant’s wine bar. My office was only a few blocks away and I soon found myself glued to my seat at the bar nearly every night after work, tasting through flights of Italian wines and trying to glean every tidbit of knowledge I could from his glib insights.

Above: the star of the night was this beautiful magnum of 1985 Échezeaux by Remoissenet Père e Fils.

Beyond Charles’ encyclopedic knowledge of Italian wine and his humorous and highly informative anecdotes, what intrigues me the most is his palate and his “memory” of Italian wines and vintages. Charles began collecting fine Italian wine in the 1970s when there were only a handful of Italian collectors in the U.S. He was part of an informal group of early Italian wine connoisseurs, an illustrious clique that included Lou Iacucci, who was among the first to import fine Italian wines to North America, and Shelley Wasserman, author of the landmark Italy’s Noble Red Wines, one of the first significant monographs on Italian wine published in this country (originally released in 1985; see Frank Prial’s review of the paperback edition).

A steadfast defender of traditional-style Italian wine and an outspoken critic of barrique aging and concentration, Charles has tasted wines and historic vintages of Italian wines that I can only dream of. More significantly, he has had the opportunity to revisit many of those bottlings on repeated occasions.

He began to taste and experience Italian wine long before barriqued, extracted, highly alcoholic, fruit-forward wine became the prevalent style in Italy. Where homogeneity now reigns, Charles remembers a glorious mosaic — from the Aglianico of Campania to the Petit Rouge of the Val d’Aosta (two of his favorites). Simply put, Charles has insights into Italian wines that few of us will ever have because he began drinking and enjoying Italian wines before the veil of modernization was draped over Italy.

È sempre un piacere, as you like to say, Charles, it’s always a pleasure to taste wine with you.

Check out Peter Hellman’s profile of Charles in The New York Sun.

In recent weeks, Charles has been contributing to IADP. Check out his articles.

* maven, from the “Yiddish meyvn (plural mevinim) expert, connoisseur,” from the “Hebrew mēbîn person with understanding, teacher, participle of hēbîn understand, attend to, teach” (OED, online edition).

NYC’s best-kept secret? Le bar at Le Bernardin

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On Saturday night, I found myself famished with a wine biz colleague in the heart of holiday-crush Midtown. Where to eat? Where to find a table among the throngs of shoppers? It just so happens I was with the one person I know who has enough chutzpah to suggest we descend upon the bar at Le Bernardin — despite the fact that we were both underdressed, both in jeans, no ties, me in a casual tweed jacket. I had never been, and, lo, and behold, we arrived to find two empty seats at the bar. Who would have thunk it? They do indeed serve dinner at the bar. It must be NYC’s best kept secret. If you ever find yourself suffering from a spur-of-the-moment yen to eat at Le Bernadin…

Le bar at Le Bernardin. The Armagnac collection is impressive.

Raw tuna served over a thin, long crostino topped with just a thin layer of foie gras. Decadent…

Peruvian-style marinated conch topped with dried corn.



Chef Eric Ripert is not afraid to have a little fun with his dishes, like the “Surf and Turf,” white tuna and kobe beef, the former pan-seared, the latter seared Korean barbecue style with fresh kimchi.



Le Bernardin’s sommelier Aldo Sohm was named the “Best Sommelier in America” by the American Association of Sommeliers (and that’s just one of the “bests” he’s won during his international career… check out this profile in The Washington Post). He’s one of the nicest and funniest persons I’ve met in the business and he’s not afraid to take risks with his pairings. With the dessert amuse-bouche (an eggshell filled with chocolate custard), he paired Trappiste (Belgian) beer “to bring out the flavors of the chocolate.” It was also a great palate cleanser. Earlier in the evening, Aldo tasted me blind on a wine I perceived correctly to be Tocai Friulano. But not from Friuli: it was from Channing Daughters (Long Island). A surprise indeed. Maybe they can make good wine out there after all (in all fairness, my friend Jay, who lives part of the year on the Island, had mentioned that the Channing Tocai wasn’t half bad. While it didn’t blow me away, it had the wonderful grassy notes characteristic of the variety).



No, those are not goat eyeballs. The plums were accompanied by a gelatin made of black sesame. I’m not a dessert guy but I couldn’t resist the texture.

Perché New York? (and a dispatch from Ziliani)

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Perché New York?, a collection of essays on what makes New York a unique and interesting place to live (Piacenza, Edizioni Scrittura, 2007, €14), including contributions by an architect, an artist, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, a photographer, and yours truly.

Hot off the presses: I just received my copy of Perché New York? (Why New York?), a collection of essays to which I contributed “Why New York? A gastronome’s point of view.”

In my piece, I recount the heady years of the late 1990s when Italian cuisine, Italian regional cuisine, and — most significantly — Italian wine took the city by storm (I was then writing for The Magazine of La Cucina Italiana). I don’t want to reveal the ending but my somewhat salacious account reveals some of the less savory elements of the NYC restaurant world and includes a show-down between one of NYC’s most famous and notorious restaurateurs and one of my favorite wine directors… and it ain’t so pretty… The book won’t be available in the U.S. (and it’s in Italian) but you can probably order by emailing the publisher at edizioniscritture@libero.it.

In other news:

I couldn’t resist translating the below passage from a post by top Italian wine blogger (and friend) Franco Ziliani, his notes from a blind tasting of 48 bottlings of Barbaresco from the 2004 vintage. The good news is that 2004 appears to have been a great vintage and the even better news (see below) is that many producers are abandoning their modern approach to winemaking in favor of a more natural and traditional style. The tasting was hosted by The World of Wine Fine in London on December 13 and was attended by some of Britain’s top wine writers and reviewers. One of the surprises — Franco concedes — was that he liked the Gaja. “That’s the rule of blind tastings,” wrote Franco. If you like it (even when you have famously written how much you didn’t like previous vintages), you must say as much. Check out Franco’s notes on the 04 Gaja Barbaresco (notes are in English).

The following translation is drawn from Franco’s notes on the tasting. I love Franco’s writing style and his acerbic wit.

In the flawless 2004 vintage — perfect for the ideal, gradual, slow aging of Nebbiolo –- greatness has returned to show itself again without hesitation or trepidation.

Except for a few indomitable Taliban and Japanese rhinoceros warriors from the jungle who still haven’t heard that “the war” has ended (I call it a “war,” this childhood page in this history of Langhe Nebbiolo), the overwhelming majority of producers has accepted the notion that the era of muscular, hyper-concentrated Barbarescos redolent with wood is over (despite guidebooks editors who continue witlessly to keep it alive using artificial respiration).

For the magical 2004 vintage (and just wait for Barolo next year!!!), these winemakers have chosen the golden path of balance, pleasure, and moderation by simply accommodating what the vine has given them: splendid grapes, with a natural balance of fruit, acidity, and tannin (and let me tell you, mister, these are some fine tannins!). Only fools or wine mujahideen would think of ruining this balance with excessive concentration, concentrators (oh yes!), and the shameless, base use of new wood…