MARIANI’S

  January 19, 2004                                               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, as well as at  The Grumpy Gourmet at http://www.grumpygourmetusa.com/links.html

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Tuscany Revisited

             The Hills of Tuscany  from the Villa Lecchi                                                                   Photo: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery

by John Mariani

    Out of all proportion to glorious regions like Trentino-Alto Adige, Piedmont, Campania, and Sicily, Tuscany looms over the rest of Italy with a disturbing dominance due as much to fashion as  to the enduring beauty of its arts, its cities, and its countryside, all amply displayed in the recent film “Under the Tuscan Sun,” based on Frances Mayles’ memoir, a charming fairy tale, gorgeously photographed and populated with handsome Tuscan actors, crumbling antique villas, and romantic rides on motorbikes.
      There is certainly every reason to fall in thrall with Tuscany, and, of course, its wines--Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano--are among the finest in the world.  Yet it should be said that Tuscan food is far from the most varied or savory in Italy, based, as it is, on a few simple concepts with little of the flair of regions like Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Campania, and Latium.  Indeed, when master restaurateur and proud Tuscan Sirio Maccioni, owner of NYC’s Le Cirque 2000, told his sons he wanted to open an authentic Tuscan restaurant in NYC, one of them remarked, “If we do, there’ll only be about six dishes on the menu--five of them grilled.”  A slight exaggeration but well to the point. The Maccionis did eventually open their restaurant, Osteria del Circo, on West 55th Street, and, while its menu has evolved, it has always been a mix of Maccioni family dishes along with those of other Italian regions.
    It is certainly true that Tuscans are good at grilling and good at game dishes, and they take full advantage of the seasons.  But, as I found on my most recent trip to the region, very few restaurants or trattorias are serving much beyond those half dozen dishes Sirio’s son spoke of, and, much to my dismay, many of those same restaurants are appealing more and more to undemanding tourist crowds of Americans, German, British and French who seem content with yet another slab of bistecca alla fiorentina.
    Look in any good Tuscan cookbook, like the just-published La Mia Cucina Toscana by Pino Luongo  or The Tuscan Cookbook by Stephanie Alexandra and Maggie Beer, and you’ll find an array of dishes you’d be hard put to find on restaurant menus in Tuscany.  Or go to the new NYC Tuscan restaurant named 50 Carmine (to be reviewed here soon) and you’ll find Tuscan specialties like pork ribs braised in red wine with garlic and pepper,  the black kale called cavolo nero over bucatini, and macaroni with mustard greens and ricotta—rare items on Tuscan menus.  What you find instead, over and over again, are bistecca alla fiorentina, ribollita, crostini di fegato, pappardelle with rabbit sauce, and tiramisù,  much of it prepared very well indeed, much of it not.
    Tuscany has, of course, several great restaurants, like Enoteca Pinchiorri and Cibrèo in Florence, La  Chiusa in Montefollonico,  Ristorante Banfi in Montalcino, and Arnolfo in Colle di Val D’Elsa, though the cooking in such places has become somewhat internationalized, with plenty of foie gras and caviar on their menus.  So on my latest trip I decided to eat only at osterie and trattorie, once the true repositories of traditional Tuscan cooking. 
    We started in Florence, where we checked into the newly renovated Palazzo Niccolini al Duomo (2 Via dei Servi; 055-282-412; www.niccolinidomepalace.com ), a grand fourteenth century urban palace adjacent to the Duomo and once quarters for Donatello's workshop. The present owners, Filippo and Ginevra Niccolini di Camugliano, have restored the extraordinary frescoes in the bedrooms, which make one feel very much like a Grand Signore of another time.  The bedroom in the photo to the left was ours to luxuriate in and dispel jet lag before heading for our first meal, at a marvelous, if uncharacteristic, trattoria near Santa Maria Novella and across from the city’s Central Market.  This is the tiny Trattoria Mario (2r Via Rosina; 055-218-550), whose unprepossessing exterior (below) hides an even less unprepossessing interior of undraped communal tables, an open kitchen, and a single waitress who  pretty much tells you what you should eat that day.  That day in question being Friday, Mario was doing seafood, so our waitress/manager said, ”We have orata and branzino and cannolicchi in tomato sauce, and maybe you’d want to start off with some risotto with cuttlefish or ribollita.”  By the time we had our first sip of simple house wine from a carafe and broke off a piece of saltless Tuscan bread, perfectly al dente creamy risotto hit the table, exuding a steamy aroma of the sea.  We also had spaghetti with mixed seafood, as flavorful as any I've ever enjoyed, followed by a mixed grill of squid and monkfish simply dressed with olive oil, then the cannolicchi (razor clams) in a light tomato sauce, a treatment that was ideal for this briny mollusk.. 
    By the time we finished (our bill with wine, water, service and tax came to $38; all prices listed here are for two people), we’d been joined at our table by two local guys who were very amiable and not in the least distracting.  They ate pretty much what we ate. As we exited the front of the restaurant was thronged with people waiting for a table, so my advice about going to this terrific little trattoria is to go as early as possible, at noon. A half hour later you’ll wait.                                                                                                                                      Photo: G.Stepanoff-Dargery
    
    Sadly, Mario was the culinary high point of our Tuscan sojourn, for while we only had one really bad meal, we never again had a truly wonderful one. One dish would be outstanding, then the next one dull.  The cooking showed signs of tired kitchens, and ingredients were not of the best quality.  We had a pleasant meal at a smart new trattoria attached to a groceria across the Arno near Santa Croce named Olivo & Convivium (4 Via Santo Spirito; 055-26-58-198) where we had a pleasant dinner in a small dining room surrounded by wine walls. We began with ravioli al ragù (meat sauce) and a porcini soup, then thick slices of rare Chianina beef with Parmigiano and balsamico,  and baccalà (cod) with chickpeas, ending with a zuccotino with a peach sauce.  All very pleasant.
    After a stay in the Chianti countryside we headed south and settled into the Villa Lecchi (0577-930-090; www.villalecchi.com), which looks quite spectacular (left and above) perched on the hill above the town of Staggia Senese, but had large, drab rooms and a barely functioning bathroom.  And why is it that European hotels think a 40-watt bulb on your bed stand is in any way useful? The price was right, however, with a double room, booked through the internet, at $128 per night, and it was perfectly serviceable for a resting place.. 
 
Photo: G.Stepanoff-Dargery   

    The Villa’s restaurant was not open at the time, so we trekked off to the charming little mountain village of Monteriggioni, whose two most popular trattorias flank the main square just beyond the ancient stone walls that surround the town.  We opted for Il Piccolo Castello (1 Via Maggio; 0577-30-4370; www.ilpiccolocastello.com ), fortunately with a reservation, for even though this was not peak season, the place was jammed, mostly with tourists.  The place had its charm--the usual dark woods, terra-cotta floors, cream-colored walls, and artwork unidentifiable from any period.  An adjacent room had a very cheery, colorful mural (below), and there is a garden room in good weather.  The restaurant has a very, very good wine list, rich in Tuscan bottlings, with plenty of the great 1997 vintage left,  and the wait staff couldn’t be nicer. The menu was standard Tuscan tourist fare,  though absolutely riddled with funghi porcini dishes that are, apparently, their specialty. Too bad  the picci pasta con funghi not tasted as if the mushrooms were past their prime and overcooked. They certainly did not taste fresh, and, at only $9 per portion for this dish, that's a reasonable assumption.  Lightweight gnocchi with summer truffles was somewhat better.   Grilled beef was chewy, again with slippery funghi, and baked baby pork had very little flavor.  Dinner, with a $40 Vino Nobile, came to $110.  We strolled the piazza in the full moon and headed to our villa.

    The next day we traveled to one of our favorite Tuscan cities—the beautiful and noble Sienna, unfortunately mobbed with tourists even in late September.  But it was a gorgeous sunny day and we visited the city's extraordinary monuments and artwork and walked through the grand dish-like piazza.  We would have returned to one of our favorite osterias, Le Legge, but it was jammed, so we went instead to La Taverna di San Giuseppe (132 Via G. Dupre; 0577-42286; www.tavernasangiuseppe.it ), a lovely very old trattoria in a twelfth century building (left) near the Piazza Del Campo where we ordered risotto with fresh funghi porcini only to be brought a platter of long-grain rice chockfull of  overcooked, livery funghi.  I asked the waiter about the rice, and he said it was arborio, the standard fat-grained rice that takes slow cooking for it to absorb the requisite broth and flavors of the other ingredients.  I disagreed with him, he shrugged, and said he’d ask the chef, who then came out of the kitchen proudly bearing a five-pound plastic bag of Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice, with the word “parboiled” printed on the front!  My shock at this display almost knocked me off my chair.  Is this really what is happening in Tuscany these days?  The other dishes from a so-so menu were no better, including a tame ribollita, and       creditable beef. Lunch, with a $26 bottle of Chianti, came to $75.                              photo: G.Stepanoff-Dargery
                                                                                                            

     This was easily the most distressing food experience I’ve ever had in Italy, and, fortunately, nothing like it occurred again. Nor should I leave the impression that you can’t eat well in Sienna, including at Le Legge, Mugolone, and Antica Trattoria Botteganova.  But other meals rarely rose above the mundane during five days of eating around Tuscany. In Arezzo (a splendid city that deserves far more attention that it usually gets from travelers and guide books) we ate at Trattoria Il Saraceno (6 Via Mazzini; 0575-27-644; www.ilsaraceno.com ), which has been here since 1946, with a ringing recommendation by an American food magazine on its façade.  The place was pretty enough (right), though Tuscan trattoria décor needs some serious updating, and the winelist is superb.  But the service staff barely acknowledged our presence and was none too quick to attend to our table.  We began with paglia e fieno pasta with tomato sauce, which was all right; insipid polenta with funghi porcini (I should add that when funghi are in season, I, like all sensible people, gorge on them), a rather overcooked braciola of pork, and local lamb that hadn’t much more flavor than the rosemary that perfumed it.  Desserts ran the usual gamut—fruit tart, mascarpone cream with coffee, tiramisù, and Tuscan cookies. Our bill, with a $17 bottle of wine, tax, and service came to $64.

    In another mountain village, Castellina in Chianti, we again found a completely packed house at Antica Trattoria La Torre (Piazza Umberto; 0577-740238; www.anticatrattorialatorre.com ; below), run for a century by the Stiaccini family, whose downstairs was buoyant, rustic, and beautifully lighted. It too was packed and we hoped we’d be seated in this delightfully happy room; unfortunately we were led upstairs to a smaller sterile dining room of white-washed walls and garish bright lights that were the antithesis of the bonhomie downstairs.  We struck up conversations with an Indian couple from Silicon Valley, a table of Brits with their two small children, and a nodding acquaintance with the French table along the other wall.  Service was brisk and friendly; the winelist was quite good. The food was good, hearty and served apace, starting with yet another ribollita, then tagliatelle with fungi porcini (nicely done), a mixed grill of guinea hen, duck, chicken and pork riblets (some cooked to a succulent turn, others cooked long in advance), and a decent veal chop that would not have passed muster in any NYC Italian restaurant.   Dinner, with a $15 Chianti, came to $78.
    On our last night in Florence we were up for some place that sounded like fun, and Osteria de’ Benci (13r Via dei Benci; 055 234 4923) certainly fit the bill.  It is a very popular spot on a very popular street, thronged mostly with young people looking for a good meal at a fair price, and there are several trattorias and fast food spots along the route.  Opening onto the street, de’ Benci (left) is basically a big red dining room with wooden tables and waiters who rush around trying to keep up with the flow of guests while maneuvering between tables to deliver steaming plates of food. The menu is pretty long and it offers a little of something for everyone.  But the signature dish here is spaghetti dell’ubriacione, which means “drunken spaghetti,” that is pasta cooked in wine.  It arrives a lovely beet red and  is riddled with red pepper flakes and garlic, dressed with olive oil—an interesting dish but frankly not all that tasty.  Tagliolini with a fresh tomato sauce kind of hit the spot, and roasted rabbit had some good flavor.  But de’Benci is more for fun than for great food. Three courses with house wine ($6), water, service and tax came to about $60.
   I certainly do not wish to suggest that you can’t eat well in Tuscany these days.  I always have in the past and will in the future. But as someone who has traveled here for more than two-and-a-half decades, I’ve noticed a distinct shift away from the careful, homestyle cooking that was almost a sure thing anywhere you ate in Tuscany towards a downscaled style intended to please undiscerning tourists and to cause the least possible work for the kitchen.  Too many trattorias seem simply to be going through the expected motions, and too few tourists are asking for anything more than the half dozen dishes listed in their guidebooks.  It’s no longer true to say that “You can’t get a bad meal in Italy.”  One may have to eat a bit higher on the food chain in Tuscany these days in order to eat really well.

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NEW YORK CORNER

Cub Room
131 Sullivan Street
212-677-4100

    If it were only for the mac-and-cheese (housemade ziti with a Parmesan-blue cheese gratin,  to put a point on it) the Cub Room would be well worth a taxi to SoHo.  A few steps from Houston Street and thus barely across the threshold, one begins to find the kinds of quirky and eccentric boutiques the neighborhood is known for, and, on the north side of Sullivan Street sits the Cub Room, which for several years now has been one of the foremost and most neighborly restaurants down there, opened in 1994 by Chef Henry Meer (who also runs the restaurant City Hall in TriBeCa).  
    The Cub Room takes its name from an inner sanctum of notables at NYC's old Stork Club, though this is a far more convivial place for the kind of diner who loves robust cooking, not just well-made cocktails.  Its tall windows open onto the street, and the antique brick walls cast an historic glow on the premises.  For once un-clothed tables work for me, mainly because these are made of beautifully burled, buffed wood.
     Last year Meer sold the Cub Room to Shimon Pariente, who brought in Chef Ben Grossman, who has had wide experience cooking at Picholine and La Grenouille in NYC and Les Agaves in Beaulieu. He pays smart homage to his predecessor by retaining some of Meer's signature items while adding his own flick of the wrist to them.  This includes the irresistible mac-and-cheese, which is listed as a side order, so get one for the table--but be aware it will be scarfed up fast. (Get two.) 
    There are a dozen appetizers each night, including specials, that range from a wonderful ricotta gnocchi with a ragout of wild mushrooms, wilted watercress and truffled mushroom sauce (if you don't get your share of the mac-and-cheese, this will serve as a balm to the palate) to excellent Moroccan spiced short-rib tortellino with roast vegetables and a bordelaise sauce.   Grossman redeems an old cliché--fried calamari--by coating it with cornmeal, frying it to a perfect crisp, and serving it with a creamy avocado-lemon vinaigrette, and a special one evening was a delicate napoleon of crab and lobster with avocado and lemon and a potato gaufrette.  He is is rightly proud of his rough-textured pâté de campagne, learned at Les Agaves, and he serves it with sauerkraut, green apple and a whole-grain mustard sauce, which gives the meat a sweet-sour balance.
      Even before I discuss the main courses, I must comment that the range of imaginative ideas here, all of them tied respectfully to well-honed culinary traditions, shows just how wondrous American cooking is today, so that I shake my head over those headlines-seeking chefs who go out of their way to be intimidatingly novel by suggesting that other chefs are simply repeating and repeating the same old thing.  I'll take the same old thing with a marvelous new twist any day over the contrived eccentricities of chefs who believe that their customers should be guinea pigs and the food press their willing idolaters.  Now, back to the entrees.
      Wisely Grossman has kept the Cub steak on the menu, a plump filet mignon roasted with butter and accompanied by a garlic-and-parmesan potato gratin, and sautéed spinach.  Sturgeon is Grossman's favorite fish, and his example from the Columbia River is simply grilled and served with toasted Israeli cous-cous, porcini, baby organic vegetables, and a red wine sauce with foie gras--delicious!  My favorite dish was his "chicken under a brick," an Italian concept of cooking the bird under a weight, which results in a very crisp skin.  I suspect Grossman brines the chicken first, for I've rarely tasted such succulence and flavor--so good that I attempted to make it the next night at home, with fair results.  He serves it with a celeriac purée and herbed poultry jus.  My only disappointment among the entrees was a Chatham cod that needed some kind of fat to bring it alive.  The lemongrass-jasmine rice, tomatoes, lemon confit and olive vinaigrette just didn't do it--too much acid.
     It's winter now so by all means have one of Peter Steele's wintry desserts like warmed plum tart with cinnamon sugar topping and grapefruit sorbet or one of the delectable soufflés here, which includes one of peanut butter and housemade raspberry jelly; otherwise the chocolate with caramel sauce is textbook perfect.
     Cub Room's winelist, like Grossman's menu, is mostly American and solidly knit to complement his cooking, with plenty of hearty reds and full-flavored whites, and there is a menu of classic and specialty cocktails proffered.  There is also a lounge ideal for a casual lunch or dinner. The Cub Room bar (right), which is always lively but rarely raucous, serves food until midnight.
     The Cub Rooms starters run $7-$15, entrees $24-$33.

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PROLE FOOD

BASSETT’S
Philadelphia, PA
215-925-4315

    Back in 1861 Quaker schoolteacher Louis Dubois Bassett of Salem, New Jersey, distinguished himself as an ice cream maker with a quirky vision: He hooked up his mule to churn tomato-flavored ice cream and, believe it or not, made quite a hit with it. (Of course, some chefs in high-end restaurants today are trying the same thing.)  So much so that he moved his farm stand indoors to the Reading Terminal Market  (below) in Philadelphia in 1893, where it stands to this day amid one of the greatest of all American food halls.
    Long known only locally for its extremely rich, high in butterfat (16.5 percent) ice cream in both old favorite flavors like chocolate and vanilla and exotic new flavors like kiwi, guava, Irish coffee and even borscht, Bassett's is now available in stores. But there’s nothing like taking a stool at the counter at the original Bassett's, after consuming a Philly cheesesteak at the next counter over at Rick’s, then to stroll the long aisles of the Terminal (remember the Reading Railroad in the Monopoly game?), soaking up American food culture as you lick your way down to the last slurp of Bassetts. In Philadelphia you don’t say, “I’m going out for ice cream”; you say, “Let’s go get a Bassett's.”                                                                 

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WORST TITLE FOR A BOOK SO FAR IN 2004

              

An Embarrassment of Mangoes                                                                            by Ann Vanderhoof (Broadway).

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GOD FORBID!

 “High prices . . . can act as a kind of velvet rope to keep                   out tourists and people paying their own way, allowing                           a big hitter to tuck in a napkin secure in the belief that                          no one who works for him can afford to walk in the door.” 
  —David Carr, “The Powering Up of the Power Lunch,”                     New York Times  (Dec. 11, 2003).

QUICK BYTES

* New Orleans’ Rene Bistrot offers a series of 5-course French wine region dinners--Burgundy, Bordeaux, Alsace, Loire, the Rhone & Languedoc, and Champagne, starting  Jan. 22 with Burgundy at $75 pp. Call 
504-412-2580.

* On Jan. 22 Atlanta’s Kyma will hold a 2nd anniversary dinner  with  Chef Pano I. Karatassos welcoming  Chefs Jamie Adams of Veni Vidi Vici, Marc Sublette of Pricci and Piero Premoli of Milan, Italy, for a 6-course dinner themed "The Best of the Mediterranean." Traditional Greek bouzouki guitar music and Greek dancers.  $65 pp,  wine pairings  $15. Call 404-262-0702.

 * On Jan. 25 the  American Institute of Wine & Food hosts Desserts & Tea at Hugo’s in West Hollywood, CA, with speakers Sherry Yard, Spago pastry chef and author of The Secrets of Baking; Robert Steinberg from Berkeley’s Scharfenberger Chocolate Factory; and Tom Kaplan, tea expert of Hugo’s. $40 Members, $50 Guests. Call 310-535-6090.

* NYC’s `21’ Club kicks off its 75^th anniversary with a Winemakers Series hosted by wine director Christopher Shipley, at 4-course dinners. Jan. 26--Grower Champagnes with Terry Theise, $125 pp; Feb. 23 - Peter Morrel Pinot Noir tasting, $125; May 10 - Burgundy vs. Oregon with Veronique Drouhin; June 14 - Spring Mountain Vineyards with Kathy Meeks. Call 212-582-7200 or reservations@21club.com.

* On Jan. 27 Chicago’s Vermilion presents  "Reds at Vermilion” at $45 pp., featuring red wines from Latin America and Spain and a  menu by Chef Maneet Chauhan, with a tapas flight, entree. and dessert tasting.  Call 312-527-4060.

* On Jan. 27 Philadelphia’s  City Tavern Chef/Proprietor Walter Staib will feature the wines of MacMurray Ranch in a 4-course prix-fixe wine dinner at $75 pp. Call 215- 413-1443; www.citytavern.com.

* NYC’s Keens Steakhouse announces its winter series of tastings (with hors d’oeuvres): Jan 29: Robbie Burns Night—Strange and Oddball Malts; Feb 10: 12 New World Super Wines; March 17: Scotch Single Malts. Each $65 pp; all three, $175 pp. Call 212-947-3636.

*  Baltimore’s Charleston restaurant Chef Cindy Wolf announces a series of wine dinners:  Jan. 22: Bordeaux;  $269 pp; March 26:  4 vintages (1998-2001) of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with a 6-course menu, $195 pp.; April 23--Zinfandel and the True South, $165 pp.; June 24: Champagne Tasting Dinner, $215 pp. Call 410-332-7373.  . .  Wolfe and Dr. Jay Miller from Bin 604 Wines Sellers will also hold  are holding a series of “Wine excursion Dinners” at Petit Louis Bistro:  Jan. 27--Rhone Valley;  March 23—Loire Valley; May 24—Burgundy; Each dinner $79 pp.  Call 410-366-9393; www.petitlouis.com

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MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly.  Editor/Publisher: John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani.  Naomi  Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson,  Edward Brivio, Robert Mariani, Mort Hochstein. Contributing Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery,  Bobby Pirillo. Technical Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.

 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