Tag Archives: Sotto

Good things we ate and drank at Sotto in LA

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The Neapolitan pizza at Sotto is imho one of the best in the U.S. today. Just had to share this photo of chef and pizzaiolo Zach Pollack and his bubby.

Panelle (Sicilian chickpea fritters).

Griddle-fired sardines with Sicilian winter citrus salad, shaved fennel, crushed olive-pistachio vinaigrette.

Grilled mackerel in scapece with cauliflower, cured lemons, pesto pantesco (Pantelleria’s tomato and basil relish for fish).

Grilled pork meatballs. I believe that chef Steve Samson’s extraordinary talent in all things pork-related is owed to his Bolognese origins (he and I have been friends for more than 20 years, stretching back to our college days in Italy).

This was one Tracie P’s favorites and mine, too. Ciceri e Tria, chick peas and long noodles, a classic dish of Apulia. Chef Zach strays from tradition here by deliciously folding in baccalà, adding another layer of flavor and texture.

Squid ink (long-noodle) fusilli with pistachios, bottarga, and mint. This dish is a true show stopper. Extremely difficult to photograph well and utterly delectable.

One of my privileges as wine director is that I get to put some of my favorite wines on the list! The 2006 skin-contact, wild fermented, unfiltered, and impeccably Natural 100% Vermentino by Dettori continues to “astound” me (to borrow Saignée’s tasting note). Alessandro Dettori wrote me earlier this year explaining that one of the things that makes this vintage stand out is the fact that he chose not to destem and he macerated for two days with the stems as well as the skins. The wine is gorgeously fresh and bright and its balance of fruit and minerality is stunning. And… It makes you poop good the next day… No joke… I LOVE LOVE LOVE this wine.

Devil’s Gulch fennel-crusted pork porterhouse with green tomato mostarda.

Are those some good-looking cannoli or what???!!!

In case you haven’t heard, I curate the list at Sotto and work the floor there a few nights each month. The list is devoted exclusively to southern Italian wine, with a short appendix of rigorously Natural California producers (chemical-free farming, wild fermentation). My next visit is scheduled for June 21 and 22. Hope to see you there!

98 Paolo Bea Sagrantino: HOLY SHIT!

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One of the great things about the nights I work the floor at Sotto in Los Angeles (where I author the wine list) is the wines that collectors share with me (Sotto charges $18 for corkage).

And as much as I was digging the Cos 2008 Nero di Lupo last night (100% Nero d’Avola by one of the great Natural wine producers of Europe, recently added to my list), who could turn down a glass of 1998 Sagrantino by Paolo Bea???!!

HOLY SHIT!

I’ve asked Giampiero Bea what he thinks about the aging potential of his wines. Regrettably, he hasn’t kept a library of old vintages and you rarely come across older bottlings. When I asked him about it a few years ago, he told me that, frankly, he doesn’t know how the wines will hold up.

Dan Fredman, wine industry PR guru who generously shared this wine with me, and I agreed that this wine has many years ahead of it. The tannin has mellowed but is still very much present in the wine. The fruit was ripe red with earthy undertones, the acidity still very much alive and nervy, as the Italians would say. Fanfriggintastic wine… THANK YOU DAN! You rock — literally and figuratively…

We had an amazing dinner rush last night at Sotto and the glitterati were out in full force (who knew that rockstars dig rosé from Negroamaro?). Thank you to everyone who has come out to support me and my friends there. We’re having a great time…

I’ll be there again tonight: please come and see me and I’ll pour you a glass of wonderful…

Southern Italian is sexy…

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Above: Giampaolo Venica has become a good friend. When we’re not talking about wine, we talk about Pasolini and his legacy in Friuli (where Giampaolo and his family live). His Terre di Balbia is 100% Magliocco raised in Calabria (how about that, wine geeks?), one of my favorite wines of 2011. See notes here. I’ve just confirmed that he and I are going to be hosting a dinner at Sotto in Los Angeles on Weds. June 22.

The SOUTHERN ITALIAN SIX-PACK is live over at Do Bianchi Wine Selections, featuring wines from the list I’ve authored for Sotto in Los Angeles.

Villa Matilde 2009 Falanghina
Benanti 2008 Etna Bianco Bianco di Caselle
Benanti 2007 Etna Rosso Rosso di Verzella
Gulfi 2009 Cerasuolo di Vittoria
Terre di Balbia 2009 Balbium Rosso
Pietracupa 2007 Quirico

For details and to order, please click here.

A year in Southern Italian wine and the unknown etymology of Puglia

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Above: The Salento peninsula is “big sky” country. I was thrilled to visit for the first time in February of this year. And I’m looking forward to going back in June. You don’t need to be a great photographer to capture beauty there. You just point and shoot.

My relation to Southern Italian wine stretches back to the late 1990s when I began working as a magazine editor in New York and you could often find me at the bar at the Enoteca I Trulli in Manhattan, chatting with Italian wine industry veteran and my good friend Charles Scicolone (who then ran one of the most popular wine programs in the U.S., with a focus on Southern Italy). I was thirty years old then and Charles became one of my Italian wine mentors.

This year, as it turns out, is my year in Southern Italian wine: I’ve authored an exclusively Southern Italian wine list for my friends at Sotto in Los Angeles, next month I’ll be leading seminars on Southern Italian wine at the Atlanta Food and Wine festival, and in June, I’m heading back to Apulia where I’ll be a member of the jury for the Radici Wines festival.

Above: I found this Renaissance-era map of Apulia on a somewhat scary but interesting website devoted to the Knights Templar.

Here on the blog, By the Tun asked me the other day about the origins of the toponym Apulia or Appulia, the name that the Romans used for this region (and the name that gives us the modern-day Puglia).

Many online sources report the erroneous and folkloric etymology a pluvia, which ostensibly means without or lacking rain. There are so many reasons why this etymon is improbable. I won’t bore you with the fine linguistic print but the thesis quickly falls apart when you note that a in this instance is used in a Greek context (a privative prefix, meaning without, as in apathy, without feeling) while pluvia (rain) is Latin. The other reason is that Apulia doesn’t lack rain. In fact, it is the unique combination of plentiful sunlight and precipitation that makes the Apulian peninsula ideal for farming (a fact not lost on the ancients, btw).

Others would have that Apulia and the ancient apuli (the ethnonym used for the region’s inhabitants) comes from ancient king Epulon (Aepulon or Apulo in Italian), an Illyrian ruler of Histria. But this etymology, as most serious scholars note, is equally unlikely.

According to my trusty UTET Dictionary of Toponymy, the name comes from the Greek Iapudes or Iapigi, a toponym or ethnonym that denoted a place or people on the other side of the Adriatic. The ethnonym Apuli appears before the toponym Apulia in ancient Latin and it’s likely that the name comes from pre-Roman settlers of the region.

The meaning of Iapudes is unknown… another beautiful mystery of this mysteriously beautiful place…

Thanks for reading and buon weekend!

Tony Coturri, groovy cocktails, friends, and awesome pizza at Sotto

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Before I started my shift at Sotto’s last night, I asked the “father of Natural winemaking in California,” Tony Coturri, to talk to the staff about Natural wine and the differences between “organic” and “biodynamic” farming (he was in town for a wine dinner and we feature one of his wines at the restaurant). Perhaps more than any other winemaker I know personally, he is the most passionate about Natural wine and chemical-free farming and he sees his mission as vital to our race and our future — I believe that he is right and thank goodness for him. (Thanks again, Tony, for taking the time to talk to us.)

Über hipster mixologist Kate Grutman was doing her magic at the bar last night. She hooked me up with her concoction, “Il Cattivo,” equal parts of Carpano Antica Formula, Branca Menta, and Genever. That soup is hot!

At the end of my shift, I got to sit down with some of my best friends, who came in to support me in this new project. That’s (from left) Heather and Mike Andrews, Gary Jules, and bandmate Dan and Kate Crane (Dan’s band Quick Hellos just released a super cool record and his release party is next week in LA, btw). I just can’t believe how sweet and supportive everyone in LA has been. It’s really meant the world to me.

I finally got to dig into Chefs Steve and Zach’s Pizza Margarita. Rating: RUN DON’T WALK. This is the good shit, people. I’ve eaten pizza cities all over the U.S. and Italy (including Naples). Sotto’s is in my top 5 and definitely the most authentic Neapolitan this side of the Atlantic.

It’s been super fun to launch my wine program at Sotto and the owners and staff and patrons have been so generous and supportive. We’ve tasted some great wines together over the last few days and the food at Sotto rocks. But now it’s time for me to get back to Texas and my beautiful Tracie P where I belong. Can’t wait to hold her tight and taste her sweet lips! A taste of honey, tasting much sweeter than wine…

Terra di Lavoro (!!!) 2002 and awesome pizza last night at Sotto

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Had a BLAST working the floor at Sotto in Los Angeles last night. We still have some kinks to iron out in our newly minted wine program but folks were digging my all-Southern Italian list with a sprinkling of Natural California wines (the Donkey & Goat Sluicebox really wowed a very glammed-out Hollywood four-top). And I am SO GRATEFUL to all my friends who came out to support me and the new restaurant. THANK YOU!

The wine that really blew me away last night (when I finally got to sit down for dinner), however, was not a wine on my list but a wine brought in by my good friend Schachter (Sotto has a very reasonable corkage fee, btw): 2002 Terra di Lavoro (!!!!!). Man, I rarely get to taste this hard-to-find wine from the Terra di Lavoro in Campania, one of the greatest expressions of Aglianico IMHO (here’s the fact sheet). This wine was all earth and mushrooms, black fruit and cinnamon and eastern spices. Fan-friggin-tastic wine… (Thanks again, Schachter!)

I was also entirely geeked to finally get to try the pizza at Sotto. I had the house-cured guanciale, shaved scallions, and fennel pollen. It was excellent: the dough was baked perfectly Neapolitan style (soggy in the middle, the way Tracie P and I like it).

That’s chef and pizzaiolo Zach Pollack with the Mesquite-fired Neapolitan pizza oven in the background. Zach pretty much rocked my world last night with his pizza. Awesome stuff…

Thanks, again, to everyone who came out to support me last night. I’ll be there again tonight. Hope to see you!

My first wine list: taste with me on Tues. and Weds. in LA at Sotto

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Above: My friend Giampaolo Venica’s Balbium — 100% Magliocco from Calabria — is one of my favorite wines on the list at Sotto in Los Angeles.

When one of my best friends from my college days, Steve Samson, wrote me a few months ago and asked me to author the wine list for his new restaurant in Los Angeles, I jumped at the chance. I’ve always been a fan of Steve’s cooking — his mother is from Bologna and so it runs in his veins — and I’ve followed his career since the beginning, dining at the restaurants where he’s worked (Valentino in LA is one of them).

There was just one catch (two actually): the list had to be ALL southern Italian wine with a handlist of California. I immediately set out sourcing some of the best and best-priced southern Italian wines available in the Golden State and the resulting list is a flight of roughly 50 wines from Campania, Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, Abruzzo, Molise, and Sardinia (including some of my favs like Dettori, Gulfi, Cos, and Venica’s Balbium). And for the California wines, I told Steve and his partners that I was only willing to write the list if we only allowed Natural and chemical-free wines on the list: Donkey & Goat, Coturri, Clarine Farms, etc. — the only Californian wines I’ll drink.

I’m very proud of the list — partly because of our aggressively patron-friendly pricing — and the extreme value that you find in these wines. But mainly I’m excited because southern Italian wine is super sexy and delicious.

Above: The staff at Sotto and I have been tasting and training together during my recent visits to Los Angeles. A fantastic group of restaurant professionals. Right now their favorite wine is the Cerasuolo di Vittoria by Gulfi.

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights next week, I’ll be working the floor and pouring wines by-the-glass for a special wine pairing tasting menu that we’re working on right now.

Here’s the info and reservation link for Sotto (which just opened this week). I’d love to see you there! (And I’ll do a post on the food and the space once I have chance to dine there next week.)