MARIANI’S

  September 15, 2003                                                  NEWSLETTER

EDITOR'S NOTE: This newsletter is also available on the very comprehensive food site www.sautewednesday.com , which has dozens of other links to food articles from around the world. 

 -Readers trying to reach me through e-mail cannot do so by hitting REPLY to this newsletter. Instead, write to me directly at johnmariani@prodigy.net .    

Cover Story: Eating Around L.A. by John Mariani

New York Corner: Rocco’s 22^nd Street by John Mariani

 Quick Bytes

Cover Story

Eating Around L.A.
by John Mariani

         It’s been a few years since there’s been so much excitement in the Los Angeles dining scene, and for a while it looked like the whole wheezing industry was running out of steam.  The California economy (you might have heard in Recall Hell) has really devastated the restaurant sector, and L.A.’s restaurateurs are suffering as much as any.
      But novelty and buzz still carry enormous weight in L.A., so that there are a slew of new hot spots not that easy to get into on short notice, unless they are among those rare restaurants that are open for lunch, when tables go begging.  The good news is that the food is very good indeed at the best of them, and they are different enough from one another to make a week’s dining out in L.A. a diverse pleasure. Indeed, you could spend a week just eating on the city’s new "restaurant row," Beverly Boulevard, which is lined with Opaline, Sona, Cobras & Matadors, Ita-Cho, Angelini Osteria, Café Tartine, Café Tartine, and Buddha’s Belly.
    Of those I had a chance to visit recently Opaline (7450 Beverly Blvd.; 323-857-6725; www.opaline.org ) was my favorite.   For starters it’s a smart, unpretentious place, a Mediterranean bistro done in clean, cool colors, with a nice mix of rough and polished wood, some industrial ceiling counterpoints, lacquered concrete floors, comfortable booths, and a circular “Brothel Couch” (right).  Managing partner David Rosoff insists the name Opaline  refers to Oscar Wilde’s pet term for absinthe, although I could find no such reference by Wilde. His lover, Ernest Dowson, however, did write a grim little poem called “Absinthia Taetra” in which he called the green liqueur “opaline.” In any case, there’s plenty of opal green used in the restaurant.  
                                                                                                                                                                                                         
       Rosoff, formerly g-m at Michael’s in Santa Monica,  clearly does not want Opaline to be just a restaurant-of-the-moment (although it's tough to keep those pesky Hollywood celebrities out!), and as long as chef David Lenz (who comes from Miami’s Blue Door and China Grill) is in the kitchen, Opaline is likely to glow brightly for those who really like good, gutsy flavor.  His plates are generously proportioned, not architectural, and you get the general idea of his style when a sumptuous serving of braised beef cheek and orecchiette pasta with roasted peppers and tomatoes lands on your shiny wooden table.     
    Before that you may enjoy a lovely butternut squash soup with a sage pesto, a tart of caramelized fennel, pancetta and burrata cheese drizzled with balsamic vinegar, or lusty duck rillettes with blood oranges and mizuna.  Even a lunch salad of grilled radicchio with pumpkin seeds, watercress and pecorino really adds up to a real meal here.  Ricotta gnocchi with a wild mushroom ragoût and foamy sauce didn’t click, however. 
     If you’re in the mood for seafood, there’s a roasted monkfish that gets a real boost from an oxtail ragoût, garlic purée and sherry reduction.  And if you’re really, really hungry, ask for the Moroccan-spiced braised pork shoulder with a sweet quince purée and nicely moist couscous.  If there’s still room, by all means have the hazelnut butter cake with caramel ice cream, crème anglaise, and the delightful spark of a few grains of sea salt.   
    Opaline’s wine list is further demonstration of Rosoff’s user-friendly approach here.  Despite its Southern Cal cast, Opaline carries mostly European regional wines with good acid, and he categorizes them on the list as “light,” “medium” and “full-bodied,” both whites and reds, with the majority of his 125 labels in the $35-$50 range, and many run $25 and under. Wines are also available in half-liter carafes.  I wish more restaurants in L.A. and elsewhere had such a cheery attitude towards wine.
     Opaline’s dinner appetizers run $7-$12, entrees $16-$23—prices that further suggest this place is going to be popular for a long, long time.

    Quite nearby, Grace (7360 Beverly Blvd.; 323-934-4400)—which is definitely named after the owner’s daughter--is one of those so-called “grown-up” restaurants in L. A.  where the food quite obviously takes precedence over scene stealing and celeb auras.   Like David Lenz, chef-owner Neal Fraser is here for the long haul, and he has clearly worked very hard to create a menu that is both very appealing to a large crowd while being very expressive of his own sensibilities and tastes.  You don’t go to a restaurant with a menu of dishes like tenderloin of wild boar with Savoy cabbage, herbed Yukon gold potato spaetzle and a violet mustard sauce, then just order a salad.  You make a commitment to Grace that you will dine well.
    The 85-seat dining room (below) is quite spacious, with tall coffered ceiling and a wall of cork that keeps the noise level down to a civilized conversation level, so you can easily hear your waiter describe, without too much elaboration, dishes and specials.  Curiously the one lapse of taste here are the tan, epauletted shirts the wait staff wears that make them look like forest rangers or building maintenance men.
     Fraser was last seen turning out 10-course tasting menus at Rix in Santa Monica, but here each dish is so plentiful that you’re not likely to tempt a tasting menu.  The number of dishes on the menu is probably one or two beyond what is sensible or necessary, but of those I tried, there was hardly a misstep, beginning with an appetizer of sautéed skate with roasted cauliflower and raisin-caper emulsion (which the menu mentions was inspired by Jean-George Vongerichten).  Yes, that is an appetizer, as is a braised pork shoulder with corn flan and fried sage—a dish I’d happily have as a main course.  More appetizer-like was his soup—but again, you don't get just one; he gives you three—a zesty Thai lobster soup, a creamy corn soup, and a lovely, light green English pea and soy bean soup (finally a good use for soy beans!).  Even a potato-crusted goat’s cheese with red peppers and goat’s cheese fondue went sufficiently past the expected to emerge as a good new idea.    
    On to the main courses: Oven-roasted halibut came with lentils, roasted heirloom tomatoes, and grilled asparagus—all the vegetables quite necessary to bolster the bland flavor of the halibut. Roasted duck with sweet-and-sour cherries, wild rice and cabbage seemed like a refreshing blast from the past, when duck with cherry sauce and wild rice was a staple of continental restaurants with names like El Perrino's.  Here Fraser restores all that made this dish delectable in the first place, simply by cooking the finely grained duck impeccably and using sweet fresh cherries, nutty wild rice, and tasty cabbage. There is also a vegan dish each night, all quite edible sounding.  By the way, that tenderloin of wild boar, mentioned above, was all right, but smoking it was wholly unnecessary. I also mentioned to management that buying inferior New Zealand rack of lamb falls far short of the quality that otherwise appears throughout the menu ingredients—and, at $32, it's the most expensive item on there.
    Grace has a very nice selection of cheeses, from Petite Pont l’Êveque to a St. Augur triple cream blue, and Elizabeth Belkind’s desserts are bright, homey, and scrumptious—don’t miss the jelly donuts with chilled vanilla custard and strawberry buttermilk ice cream, or the sweet corn pudding with polenta shortbread and pulled sugar brittle.  Grace’s winelist is a serious one and fairly tariffed.  Dinner appetizers run $9-$19, entrees $17-$32. 

          Close by, though not on Beverly Boulevard, A.O.C. (8022 West 3^rd St.; 323-653-6359)--the  abbreviation for appellation d’origine controlée found on wine bottles—is probably the biggest hit of the season.  Suzanne Goin and her partner Caroline Styne are two of the darlings of the L.A. food scene, as much for their own lack of pretension as for delivering food that everyone loves to eat.  They first exhibited their talent at the admirable Lucques, still going very strong, and have this year given the city a drop-in sort of place where they feature dozens of small plates of which the wait staff encourages guests to choose three or four in each category.  At prices that begin at $7 and top out at only $13, this is very sensible guidance, and you can just as easily eat simply and lightly here as you can indulge a grand gorge.     
    Some of the local press has  been overly effusive about what Goin and Styne are trying to do here, and the result has been a stampede each night.  The best thing to do is to drop in and get a seat at the bar, where you can feast as well as at one of the cramped tables fought over by the very casually dressed crowd.  A.O.C. is not trying to be more than it is, and you shouldn’t go expecting a lavish, fine dining experience nor even a particularly comfortable one.  If I lived in L.A. I might be here once a week to sidle up to the bar and nosh away. But I can’t say I’d be very happy in any of the four dining rooms whose noise level is harrowing (with plenty of loud-mouthed guffaws and those incessant cell phones going off), stuffy heat, and a beige-brown decor by designer Barbara Barry so devoid of color as to border on the dreary.
    There are two connecting, very crowded rooms downstairs, a sort of al fresco room upstairs, and at the top of the stairs one of the most disturbingly ugly dining spaces I’ve ever been crammed into: a 15’ x 7’ hallway--and that’s all it is, a hallway--where they've shoved in several tables, including one of the smallest two-tops I’ve ever tried to wedge myself behind.  The space is so cramped I had to stand aside the staircase in order to allow a waitress to slip by.  The walls are bare, the only note of color an EXIT sign.  Here, too, it pays to bring either earplugs or a companion who doesn’t care to listen to anything you might have to say.  It was also sweltering up there..
    That noted, it is difficult not to enjoy the food here, beginning with a selection of unusual cheeses from around the world (one cheese $5, three $14, five $20), like the Spanish torta de la serena extremadura, an Irish Coolea, a Tasmanian Roaring Forties blue, and many others.  The charcuterie is made for the restaurant—everything from coppa and soppressata to foie gras terrine and pork rillettes.  There is Serrano ham and Italian prosciutto, and nice, fatty breaded pig’s feet—the kind of food that gives the lie to everyone in L.A. who says she's on a constant diet.
    From a wood-burning oven come clams with chorizo sausage and chickpeas,  torchio pasta with eggplant, tomato and mozzarella, and black rice with squid and saffron aïoli, and from the sea grilled yellowtail with charmoula.  Meat dishes include grilled mustard chicken with sorrel gratin, braised pork cheeks with mustard gremolata, and succulent duck confit with black rice and cherries.  Kimberly Sklar’s comforting desserts include a pleasing semi-freddo.
    A.O.C.’s wine list has some real bulk to it, 12 pages chock full of good wines by the glass and carafe, plenty of French regional wines from Alsace and the Loire, and a good selection of zinfandels and syrahs that go well with this food.  Prices are pretty fair, averaging double the retail price in California, with a few bucks more tacked on.

I was a little concerned when André Guerrero, owner of  the wonderful Max in Sherman Oaks, which opened only 19 months ago, announced he would open a Mexican restaurant down the street to be named Señor Fred
(13730 Ventura Blvd.; 818-789-3200; www.senorfred.com ).  I thought the expansion came too quickly and
wasn’t sure Guerrero had the chops to do what he said he intended to do, which was to serve the kind of savory
food his own kitchen workers liked to eat, a kind of Mexican soul food.  As things eventually worked out upon
opening in March, Señor Fred had to accommodate the expectations of a less-than-adventurous Los Angeleno
crowd that demanded their tacos and enchiladas--a point the L.A. Times restaurant critic took the restaurant to task
for, not seeing much on the menu she hadn’t seen a thousand times before.
     But by summer the original chef had left, replaced by Juan-Carlos León, a Puerto Vallartan who has cooked in L.A. at Spago and Granita and  who, with Guerrero, has given the menu a balance of the traditional, the soulful, and the novel, all at a freshness level that is wholly admirable.  No sludgy tomato sauces here; no dried-out yellow rice; even the refried beans have plenty of flavor. And they do a slew of margaritas worth sampling.
    The decor is oddly dark, with black and red walls and a black ceiling (left). Not having dined here at night I can’t report on the vibes after sundown. I did, however, get  to sample some of the items from the dinner menu, starting with a delightfully effulgent  crab salad with avocado, mesclun, mango, habanero sauce and avocado sauce.  So often avocados, even in California, are tasteless, but these had terrific flavor. 
     A simple shrimp cocktail served in a coconut half was good by virtue of its colossal, meaty shrimp, while a quesadilla with quelites (a Mexican red spinach), three cheeses and squash blossoms was delicious.  So, too, another quesadilla with  the corn fungus called huitlacoche was laced with assertive poblano chiles, asadero cheese, and epazote, served with good creamy-chunky guacamole and well-seasoned salsa. Chile verde con nopales was very tender, juicy pork simmered in green chile sauce with sliced cactus pads; best of all was oxtail braised in a chipotle sauce, the nuggets of meats suffused with flavors picked up from long cooking.  None of these dishes was overly spiced by too much heat, and the key to distinguishing the usual run of Mexican fare with what León is doing is in the pristine freshness and quality of his ingredients.
    The best dessert I’ve had this year—one I simply could not help gobbling up, spoonful after spoonful—is Señor Fred's dark, sweet, velvety, intense hot chocolate (left), laced with cinnamon and served with wonderful, just-out-of-the-oven cookies.  Pastry chef Jan Purdy deserves hugs and kisses for this one.
    At lunch appetizers here run $4.50-$7.95, main courses $6.95-$17.95; dinner, $4.50-$8.95 and $9.95-$18.95, which makes this one of the area’s bargains for enticing, modern Mexican food

NEW YORK CORNER

ROCCO’S ON 22nd —WORTH ALL THE FUSS OR JUST THE BUZZ?

                                                            Rocco and his Seven  Gals

    The reasons congenial chef Rocco DiSpirito, who enjoys a well-deserved culinary reputation at his first restaurant, Union Pacific,  agreed to put himself in the national spotlight on a "reality" TV show called “The Restaurant” are easy enough to puzzle out.   For one thing it feeds an ego—amply on display throughout the show’s six episodes—long fueled by a New York female food media that breathlessly describe him as the sexiest thing in chef’s whites, and he seems to do almost as many fashion shoots as commercial testimonies;  for another, it pretty much guaranteed that his new restaurant, Rocco’s on 22nd (12 E. 22nd St.; 212-353-0500), would be jammed with curiosity seekers, restaurant groupies, and mere tourists for weeks, if not months, to follow.
      Money was obviously no object (reportedly $4 million).  Backed by NBC, American Express, and Coors beer—all of which get bald-faced brand recognition in the show—DiSpirito and his partner, restaurant developer Jeffrey Chodorow (who runs Hudson Cafeteria and Tuscan in New York, as well as several restaurants on Miami Beach), picked out a place one day and by the next morning a whole crew of construction workers showed up.  Nothing to it! A few weeks later and Rocco's, warts and all, opened and was thronged with people who came as much for the buzz as for Rocco’s mother’s much ballyhooed meatballs.  This dear, saintly woman--never given a name except "Mama" (it's Nicolina)--drifts in and out of each episode like a figure in a Greek tragedy, ever beseeching her son to let her work herself sick between moments of telling him how much she adores him.  The meatballs, always, the meatballs must be made!
    Having watched five out of the six episodes with decreasing interest and, on occasion, considerable distaste, I was impressed more by the seeming honesty of the series in showing the dreadful things that occur on both sides of the kitchen door at Rocco’s than by the dedication of those associated with the place.  So much goes wrong so often, including a kitchen fire on opening night,  that one can’t imagine ever wanting to open a restaurant—especially one where DiSpirito, unshaven and wearing a distressingly shabby, wrinkled white jacket, is always too busy schmoozing with giddy patrons to bother remedying the disasters occurring all around him. 
    Clearly Rocco’s staff was not chosen for their professionalism, starting with a sour-faced French manager named Laurent Saillard who never smiles, never offers any advice worth taking, seems to distrust everyone, and never evidences the slightest interest in the world collapsing around him.  The give-and-take of running a restaurant kitchen and dining room staff is well documented, though highly edited for maximum dramatic effect—this is a TV series after all.  In one embarrassing segment, gonzo chef-and self-appointed guru Anthony Bourdain, consciously playing to cameras trained on him at a table, lectures chef-colleague Eric Ripert on the socio-psychological-cultural aspects of being a chef—“we are not just cooks but artists!”—sounding as if he's reading from one of the druggier chapters in his book Kitchen Confidential.
    The series grinds on, cooks walk out, cooks are fired, waiters scream, waiters cry.  Yet, as Robert Bianco reported in USA Today (August 22), “The problem is, neither [DiSpirito] nor his problems are particularly interesting.  This is a man who already has two successful restaurants. His desire for a third is not exactly the stuff of which great drama is made, especially when he seems to put less work into it than anyone else, including his own mother.”  Indeed, more than one a staff member at Rocco's comments on his long absences from Rocco's.
    Meanwhile DiSpirito develops a chronic hang-dog face and far-off look whenever anything goes wrong, which causes him to walk around the kitchen, then walk around the dining room like a zombie, muttering things like, “The food’s got to be better,” before returning to his perch next to yet another goo-goo-eyed girl.  In one astounding display of mindless management skills he lures back a pretty waitress by giving her the company’s Vespa—a move so absurd as to bring the rest of the wait staff to justifiable rage. 
     In one telling moment, in voice-over, DiSpirito senses that the kitchen is never going to be able to turn out decent Italian-American food, saying, “It was time for me to do what I do best—go back into the kitchen and cook.”  Hel-lo! It took four episodes for that bulb to go off in his curly head?  Cut to commercial (for Amex and Coors); dissolve to Rocco cutting vegetables lickety-split. But he doesn’t go back in the kitchen for long, because that would make for boring TV..  He just keeps canoodling with the customers, some of whom actually think it’s perfectly acceptable  to rub their hands over a waiter’s torso and squeeze his chest muscles—activity neither DiSpirito nor anyone  in management does anything to squelch.  Such behavior would be liable for prosecution even at the old Playboy Clubs. Here it makes for sleazy “reality TV.”  As one restaurateur wrote to Nation’s Restaurant News, “DiSpirito doesn’t have a clue as to running a restaurant.  If you wanted to serve 200 and you have 300 on the books, I know where I would be—in the kitchen, not getting felt up in a booth.”
    In the last episode Rocco charters a bus to take his entire staff out to Long Island (don't all restaurateurs do that?), where, under the influence of plenty of Coors, everyone gets sappy and sloppy and loopy and expresses undying devotion to Rocco and his restaurant.  Well, fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day!
    One can readily understand why the National Restaurant Association’s chairman Regynald Washington and CEO Steven Anderson fired off a letter to NBC entertainment president Jeffrey Zucker contending, “The first four episodes of `The Restaurant’ have depicted a sensational, if not ridiculous, view and mischaracterization of the restaurant industry.  From the callous disregard by management in accommodating the restaurant’s guests to [its] particularly troubling treatment of the staff, these incidents are magnified in an effort to secure ratings, and unfortunately, are at the expense of the entire staff of Rocco’s.” 
    I have withheld commentary on the show until after I had a chance to get to the restaurant and eat there in order to see whether, after all, the charade had been worth it once the cameras were gone.  I loved DiSpirito's food at Union Pacific and not long ago applauded his consultancy at Chodorow’s re-hab of Tuscan, which did similar Italian menu items, though it seems obvious DiSpirito has little time for that enterprise any longer. 
    First of all, contrary to reports that Rocco’s is booked out weeks, even months, in advance, I called and was able to get a table easily—as long as I was willing to eat at 5:30 or 10:30—but, with some flexibility, I was able to snare a 9 p.m. table about eight days in advance.  When  I arrived  I found two or three tables outside and several inside unoccupied.  We were cordially greeted and shown right to our table in a room rather garishly decorated to look like an Italian-American restaurant circa 1962 (it sure didn't look like four million bucks!), with a 40-foot bar, a handsome glassed-in wall of wine, uncomfortable booths, and a mural of the Bay of Naples constructed of 250,000 strung glass beads.   Waiters  and busboys are dressed variously in blue jeans  and  ugly red shirts that seem part standard issue pizzeria garb and part soccer team.  The crowd, which has an unusually high percentage of women, seems to favor T.J. Maxx and Dockers.
      The noise level is intolerable, made moreso by blaring Italian-American pop music like Connie Francis bleating "Mama."   The staff seems eager to please and very friendly (I saw none of those overnight stars from the TV show, nor was Rocco in evidence, though I did lay eyes on the repellent Mr. Saillard for about five seconds before he disappeared somewhere), but that doesn't mean they are attentive or that they can get the food out of the kitchen any faster.  You wait and wait and wait here until you can flag down someone to get your wine, which you, not they, will pour throughout the night.  Cocktails come in tacky little cocktail glasses with a carafe on the side that gets warm within moments.  There are a few wines served in pretty animal-shaped ceramic carafes, but none worth drinking.   The principal wine list is a pretty good one, with lots of fine selections under $40.  It just takes forever to get any of them, while your food sits in front of you.
     The food.  Ah, yes, the food.  Well, the good news is that it's not all that terrible, certainly well above the level of, say, Macaroni Grill and as good as any of a thousand Italian-American restaurants in any town in the  Northeast. Then again,  there's nothing here to distinguish the food from  anywhere else, so one wonders, what is  DiSpirito's point?  He is certainly a chef wholly capable of turning out superior Italian-American food--a genre  I adore and even wrote about, with my wife, in a 450-page book (see below).   That he hasn't come up with great food here makes one wonder just how engaged DiSpirito was in this whole project. 
     The menu (on the back of which is printed a daily gazette) is categorized into Fritti, Al Forno, Crudo, Insalate, Salumi, Pasta, Pesce, Carni, and Contorni, all at pretty fair prices, with appetizers $4-$12, pastas $12-$19, and entrees $19-$26.  The $39 fixed price antipasto/pasta/entree is highly recommended because you can literally choose anything from those categories without a single supplement, and portions are hefty.  We began with fried zucchini flowers that tasted more of oil than flowers, a mozzarella in carrozza that was mostly thick slices of gooey bread, and a platter of Italian cold cuts, of which the prosciutto and mortadella were of good quality but whose soppressata smelled terribly sour.  Best of the antipasti was a delicious eggplant rollatini.
    It's difficult to escape Mama's Meatballs, which are all over the menu, but I'm sorry to report that they haven't much going for them in terms of flavor, tasting more like unseasoned balls of barely browned meat, not heavy but not sublime.  (Mi dispiace, Mama.)   We got two with a plate of spaghetti in a run-of-the-mill tomato sauce, but two more showed up on a plate of rigatoni al ragù, along with a good chunk of bland sausage.  Orrechiette with broccoli rabe and more sausage was swimming in some kind of broth, the orrechiette slippery and afloat.  Linguine with white clam sauce also had plenty of sauce but you had to troll around to find the clams.
    We opted for two fish, two meat.  The heads-on shrimp were good, nice fat, meaty shrimp whose shell you picked off with your fingers (but never receive a napkin with which to wipe your hands with).  Decapitated black sea bass came to the table smelling very fishy, which is not good, and it needed a lot of lemon to squelch.  Chicken parmigiana was at about the same level as you'd find at any decent pizzeria, but the baby lamb scotaditto [sic]was inedible--the lamb of poor quality and steamy, not at all what scottaditto means--"finger burner," a chop you pick up right off the grill, with a nice charred exterior.
    By now we weren't particularly thrilled about the prospect of dessert, but suddenly a waiter we hadn't seen all night arrived to suggest the cheesecake (very good, very creamy, very light) and a wretched cold chocolate pastry thing we barely touched.
    So, we went, we saw, we tasted, pondering why anyone would actually want to eat here more than once other than out of curiosity.  The word is that NBC may be contracting for more episodes of "The Restaurant," although I can't imagine what more there is to show, unless Rocco adds karaoke or an opportunity to win-a-date-with-the-chef. Then again, as we exited onto 22nd Street, a woman was snapping a photograph of the awning.

AND THE WINNER OF THE REALLY BAD HEMINGWAY WRITING CONTEST IS. . .

 “What Eric found was that fresh new ideas came.  First a couple and then more and more, and he realized that the act of sitting down could itself generate ideas, and a few ideas generated more ideas.  It was infinite, and he never worried again.  He knew the ideas would always come as long as he remembered to throw away all the notes every now and then.  And some of the meals that emerge have never seen life as written words until after they are eaten; these meals begin as one thing and change in midair. Such as the crayfish recipe on page 272.” 
                                                    --Michael Ruhlman, A Return to Cooking (2002).

JENNIFER LOPEZ’S BEAUTY SECRET REVEALED!

“A latte kills the bitterness of bad
 espresso with milk.  Then you have
 bitter milk and you kill the taste with
 sugar.  Lattes are also a way to get
 big buttocks in a short amount of time.”
           —Dr. Ernesto Illy, head of Illycaffe in 7x7SF (Sept. 2003).

QUICK BYTES

* On Sept. 16, 30 NYC chefs, including  Scott Conant (L’Impero),  Terrance Brennan (Artisanal Cheese Ctr) , Richard Sandoval (Pampano), Jonathan Waxman (Washington Park), Wylie Dufresne (WD-50), Tom Colicchio (‘Wichcraft), and Geoffrey Zakarian (Town), will serve from their menus at  the Bon Appétit Wine and Spirits Focus Grand Tasting to benefit The Make-A-Wish Foundation®, with a silent auction of wines, travel packages, and designer plates, held at the New York Marriott Marquis (1535 Broadway). $115 before Sept.  2; $125 afterwards or at the door. Call 888-34-FOCUS  or go to www.bonappetit.com/promo.

 * This fall NYC’s Alfama (551 Hudson Street ) begins its series of regional Portuguese gastronomic weeks, on the 3^rd week of the month. Sept. 3: The Algarve; Oct.: Alentejo; Nov.: Estremadura; Dec.: Ribatejo; Jan.: Beira Litoral; Feb.:  Beira Baixa; March: Beira Alta; April: Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro; May: Entre-Douro e Minho; June: Madeira; July: The Azores; Aug. : World Influences on Portuguese cuisine.  The 4-course menu is  $45 pp. Call 212-645-2500 or visit ww.alfamarestaurant.com

* On Sept. 20 more than 30 of NYC’s Greenwich Village chefs will throw a street party on Carmine Street, with proceeds to the Downing Street Pre-School Cooperative, Our Lady of Pompeii Elementary, and the Block Association. There will be tastings, live music, food demos and prizes. Tix are $5 per tasting. Tix  may be purchased at Drougas Book Store (34 Carmine St.)  For info call 212-242-0488.
 

* On Sept. 21 Boston’s  5th Annual Celebrity Chef Event will be held at Radius (8 High Street ) to benefit Big Sister Association of Greater Boston.  Some of the evening's featured Chefs include:  Joanne Chang – Flour; Barbara Lynch - No. 9 Park; Brian Reimer – Radius; Luis Morales - Via Matta; Jeremy Sewall - Great Bay; Tix $125 pp; 2 for $200.  Visit  www.bigsister.org or call 617-236-8060.

* Starting Sept. 24 Petrossian (911 Seventh Avenue) of NYC launches a series of deluxe caviar workshops in which participants will learn the celebrated history of the sturgeon, offered once a month from Sept. – Jan., will include a seminar on caviar basics, from harvesting to the current state of the international caviar industry; a cooking demo and a comparative caviar tasting—complete with a champagne toast, conducted by Eve Vega and chef Michael Lipp will offer the cooking demonstration. $150 pp. Call 212-765-6641.

* Cocktail authority Dale DeGroff announces a new cocktail seminar series at NYC’s Marriott Marquis (1535 Broadway) called “Cocktail College on Broadway.” Sept. 25—The Magnificent Martini; Oct. 22—The Wonderful World of Whiskey; Nov. 11—Nogs, Grogs, and Gloggs; Dec. 9—Tropical Tiki Temptations. $30 per session, $99 for all. Call 212-704-8900.

*From Sept. 25-Oct. 13 the Chamber of Commerce of Udine in Friuli will present Festival Friuli NY 2003, with local restaurants featuring the foods and wines of that Italian region, including Barbaluc, Café des Artistes, I Trulli, Felidia, Il Budco, Le Cirque 2000, San Domenico, and many more. Food stores include Agata & Valentina, Fairway Market, Murray’s Cheese Shop, et al; Wine shops include Best cellars, Italian Wine Merchants, Sutten Wine Shop, et al. For more info visit www.FriuliNewYork.org

 * On Oct. 1 Tru (676 N. Saint Clair St) in Chicago chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand have invited artist Vik Muniz for an evening showcasing his work and their high-style cuisine. $250 pp. Call 312-202-0001 ext. 230;  www.trurestaurant.com. 

 * On Oct. 4 “ Cooking for a Cause” will be, an evening of food and wine to benefit Cambridge-based East End House, with area chefs  Carmen Quagliata, The Vault; Tom Berry, Bambara; Benjamin Knack, Beacon Hill Hotel & Bistr; Steven Oliveto, Birch Street Bistr;  Antoine Camin, Brasserie Jo;  Ben Nathan, Centro; Paul O’Connell, Chez Henri; Jim Solomon, Fireplac; David Silva, Gallia; Andy Husbands, Roug;  Bill Bradley, Rustic Kitchen;  Anthony Susi, Sage;  Dan Pogue, Temple Bar;  Evan Deluty, Torch. To be held at 8 Park Street, Boston.  $125 pp. Call 617-876-4444.

* From Oct. 30-Nov. 2  the 14^th annual Stone Crab Festival will be held at The Colony Beach & Tennis Resort in Longboat Key, FL. (This newsletter’s publisher,  John Mariani, returns as Guest Emcee for the 9^th year in a row. ) Joining Colony Chef Roger Hopkins will be guest chefs Greg Alauzen of The Steelhead Grill in Pittsburgh;  Dena Marino from Ajax Tavern in Aspen; Mark Militello  of Mark's Las Olas in Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Floyd Cardoz of Tabla in NYC; Rocco Whalen of Fahrenheit in Cleveland;  James Laird of Restaurant Serenade in Chatham, NJ; John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans. Winemakers include Kirby Anderson of Gainey Vineyard, Hugh Davies of Schramsberg Vineyards & Cellars, Tom Leonardini Jr. of Whitehall Lane, Bill Kunde of Kunde Estate Winery & Vineyards and Elaine Honig of Honig Vineyard and Winer. Weekend packages including accommodations are available by calling 941-383-6464, or visit  www.colonybeachresort.com.

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John Mariani is a columnist for Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink (Lebhar-Friedman), The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink (Broadway), and, with his wife Galina, the award-winning new Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press).   To  purchase from amazon.com, click on the image below.

copyright John Mariani 2003