MARIANI’S
February 9,
2004
NEWSLETTER
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Cover Story: Connecticut Italian-Style by John Mariani
The Museum of Parmigiano by Lucy Gordan
New York Corner: Riingo by John Mariani
Quick Bytes
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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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CONNECTICUT--ITALIAN STYLE
by John Mariani
For
a state with such a large Italian-American population,
Gusto
Ristorante (275 Main Street;
203-798-7233), in
The very comfortable, casual restaurant is
separated into two rooms (below, right)
large and
expansive, with stained glass windows, cozy booths along one
wall, and romantic lighting; the other is more intimate, with brick
walls and window doors that open onto a patio.
Gusto's menu breaks no new ground in Italian
cookery, but what it does it does very well indeed, and always with
generous portions and a bit of lagniappe from chef Vuli's
kitchen. I've followed his career over the years and watched
his cooking become more refined, so you can depend on his serving
fresh, tender zucchini flowers (in season) stuffed with spinach and
ricotta that are lightly fried and make for a perfect appetizer.
There is a lavish hot antipasto
plate that includes grilled portobellos, crab cakes, creamy eggplant rollatine, and clams casino at only
$12, a good way to go for a table of four.
Or you can move right into the pasta courses,
offered as both starters and main courses. I tried four, one
better than the next, starting
with that cliché of Italian-American restaurants, penne
alla vodka, which gained far more flavor than usual from
diced
prosciutto and sautéed scallions added to the tomato cream and
vodka sauce. Housemade tortellini
are stuffed with roast chicken, spinach and the
unexpected--Brie cheese--then baked in tomato cream to a bubbly
gratin. Nicely made indeed was spinach fettuccine all'amatriciana,
a Roman dish teeming with diced Italian bacon, onions, fresh plum
tomatoes, oregano and the salty bite of pecorino. Best of all was
a dish that is usually a disaster elsewhere--spaghetti
alla carbonara; here the
fresh pasta is tender, the egg yolks skillfully
blended in to cook in the
pasta, a little truffle butter is for added richness, and a smart
soupḉon
of vegetable stock so that it does not come out too thick and gummy--a
real triumph of a classic and the best I've ever had in the USA.
You might want to go simply after all
this, perhaps a 16-ounce Idaho Kobe steak grilled to a turn (they
serve 80 pounds a week!), or
finely grained American rack of lamb.
Otherwise tear up the diet and order very good scaloppine alla Piemonte with
shallots, shiitakes, roasted peppers, and a white wine and veal stock
with diced plum tomatoes. I asked the chef to make my
chicken alla scarpariello with
plenty of garlic and he took me at my word: I was not
disappointed with the amount of
golden-brown slivers and nuggets cooked with juicy pieces of
chicken (on the bone, as requested), housemade sausage, artichoke
hearts and a sprinkling of
rosemary, accompanied by garlic mashed potatoes. What
distinguishes
Vuli's cooking form others in the genre is that ingredients are
added at the right moment, never just dashed together, so that they
retain their texture or their strength, melding into the whole, not
falling apart in a mess.
For dessert there's a well-made crème
brûlée, a semi-freddo-like
zucchino, and a
too-sweet cheesecake with white chocolate; espresso is correctly
served. At
dinner antipasti run $9-$12, pasta (full portions), $15.95-$19.95, and
main courses $17.95-$31.95. Gusto is a place worth a detour if
you're driving through Southern Connecticut or are lucky enough to live
within 50 miles of this wonderful addition to the region.
Greenwich,
which has seen a slew of trendy (though not always very good)
restaurants open in the past couple of
years, finally
has a first-rate Italian restaurant: Ristorante Di Sopra (64 Greenwich Avenue; 203-861-9014),
whose name refers to its being “upstairs” above a loud Irish bar
whose vibes thankfully do not intrude on Di Sopra, which is a pretty
L-shaped restaurant (below, right)
with a rustic country look, tall
windows over Greenwich's main drag, spanking white tablecloths, and
good glassware. Owners Mario Contacessi (formerly of Meigas in
NYC) and Gregory Colica (former manager of the Roger Sherman Inn) are
definitely trying to get away from outmoded Italian-American culinary
stereotypes. The menu diverges from the usual dishes
you find so ubiquitously in Italian restaurants on this side of the
Atlantic, resembling more a good trattoria in Emilia-Romagna,
evident as soon as you see items like pancetta-wrapped quail
baked inside of a sweet bell pepper, and stewed baby octopus with
potatoes, cauliflower and olive oil. Nor you will easily find
elsewhere a gratin of finferli (chanterelles)
baked with smoked prosciutto, besciamella
and Parmigiano--a superb but rich starter. During the season chef
Eugene Jerome (who's worked at NYC's Le Madri and Cocopasso) may have
bay scallops from Taylor Bay and they are
terrific, served in their shell (itself remarkable) with white wines,
herbs and a julienne of vegetables.
Atkins be damned, one doesn't go to an Italian
restaurant without ordering pasta, especially when they are as
delicious as Di Sopra's agnolotti stuffed
with roast duck and mushrooms in a sweet pepper butter sauce--a dish
that will show who your true friends are when they begin battling over
every last morsel. Almost as telling would be fine, light gnocchi flavored with saffron and
served in a lovely lamb ragù,
and while ravioli with Swiss chard and walnuts, served in a plum tomato
broth, was fine, it lacked the discernible flavor of Gorgonzola as
described on the menu.
There's always a fish of the day here, perhaps
well-grilled orata or branzino, and you'll find rabbit
stewed in a sweet and sour sauce as delectable as any this side of the
Atlantic. It was of fine flavor (rarely the case with farmed
rabbits), cooked till it came easily from the bones and subsumed with
the tangy-sweet sauce. Almost as impressive was a wine-dark
braising of oxtail with prosciutto, pine nuts and the wonderfully
Mediterranean addition of raisins.
Desserts did not quite come up to par with the rest
of the meal, though I'd try again the pastry filled with berries and
zabaglione or the espresso semifreddo. Gelati, one night, were served too
firm.
How solidly knit the wine list is--neither broad nor
deep in offerings, but targeted to go with this kind of lusty food. It
is telling that red wines outnumber reds by two to one. The selections
are sound, from unusual small estates like Piliziano and Gianni Voerzio
along with some big names like Ornellaia, Gaja, and Jermann.
Pretty much across the board the mark-ups are a gentle 100% above
retail, with plenty of bottlings under $40.
Di Sopra's antipasti run $8-$18, full-course
pastas $17-$19, and entrees $23-$34. Dinner only.
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PARMIGIANO-REGGIANO--A
Museum of Its Own
by Lucy Gordan
Last
December 13, after a two-year tug-of-war, the European Union
finally appointed
Housed
in the only surviving mid-19th century "casello" of
cheese works once owned by the Prince Meli
Lupi, the museum has three rooms. In the
first the various production phases are explained through the display
of equipment and hundreds of
utensils necessary for hand-making and
distributing this "King of Cheese": an
18th-century copper cauldron, an early steam boiler to
heat the milk
in the cauldron uniformly, an early 20th-century churn, and an old milk
wagon
that was pulled by hand, to name a few. Only between April 15
and November 15,
when the animal feed (mixed grasses and clover) is at its best and the
milk at
its richest, is Parmigiano-reggiano made.
In
the second called "Sala della Salamoia"
(salting room) are panels illustrating the history of Parmigiano--a
very old
cheese mentioned by
Columella, Varro, and Martial that seems to date back to ancient Roman
times; the
first surviving historical documents date to
The
third room, "Sala del Latte"
("Milk Room") is
devoted to the aging process--at least two years (vecchio, old),
better yet three (stravecchio, very
old), and preferably four (stravecchione,
the oldest), though a wheel can keep for as long as 20 years, getting
better
with age. The room also offers a history of the Consorzio or producers'
co-operative. The latest statistics (from
2002) count
547 members, who rely on 270,000 cows belonging to 7,000 farmers for
their
milk: annually about 409,425,000 gallons
produce 245,691,904 pounds of cheese (a wheel is about 66 pounds), for
a
total of 2,937,535 wheels. In 2002
production was up from 2,877,883
wheels in 2001 and 2,851,918 wheels in 2000. Between
88-90% of these wheels are eaten in
The
NEW
YORK CORNER
Riingo
205 East 45th Street
212-867-4200
www.riingo.com
Let
me accentuate the positive
right away and say that I have long considered Marcus Samuelsson (below, left) one of
the ten best chefs in the USA, having proven himself a master of modern
Scandinavian cuisine at Aquavit over the last decade. Almost
single-handedly, Samuelsson took a relatively unknown and unappreciated
food
culture and buoyed it with his imagination to be one of the most
exciting, even exotic in New York, thereby becoming something of a
local hero back in Gothenberg, Sweden, where he was raised after
being adopted in his native Ethiopia. Which
is
why every foodie expected something unique and very special when
Samuelsson (left) and
his partner Håkan Swann announced the opening of another
restaurant, Riingo, in NYC
(they'd run a
branch of Aquavit in Minneapolis that closed last year).
It is
a rare thing when a great chef creates a
second, great restaurant; indeed, it may be impossible, given the
time, dedication and energy required to do run such a venture.
Each new restaurant opened by great chefs like Jean-Georges
Vongerichten, Alain Ducasse, Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, and Marco
Pierre White has been a dumbing down of their original genius in favor
of
commercial profit--a perfectly legitimate goal. Yet each new venture
still carries something of the chef's spirit and
originality. So the opening of Riingo was much anticipated
as a restaurant wherein Samuelsson might show a new direction for
casual dining, the way Vongerichten did with his bistro JoJo in 1990
and Joël Robuchon did last year with his marvelous new
counter-top eatery in Paris called L'Atelier.
Sadly,
Riingo shows little innovation at
all, neither in concept nor execution, design nor cooking.
Riingo (a word "inspired" by the
Japanese for "apple," NYC's pop symbol) is located in the new Alex
Hotel near Grand Central Terminal, not a particularly lively
neighborhood, and being
attached to
the hotel, the restaurant must serve breakfast, brunch, lunch and
dinner--never a
good omen for a serious restaurant. The restaurant, to the left of
the lobby, is poorly configured so that upon entering you find yourself
in a small lounge, 8-seat sushi bar, and reception area out of sight of
the dining rooms. Upon arrival with a 7:30 reservation we were
told they "would see which table is available" (there were many
unoccupied) and, after waiting several minutes, shown upstairs to a
room barren of all but one forlorn-looking couple. We asked if
there was any table available downstairs--we could see from that gloomy
aerie there were several--to be told they would have to go look.
Finally we were led back down, through a hallway-like dining room off
the lounge and into a small rear room where we were seated at one of
three
unoccupied tables. The dining room never filled up while we were
there.
Riingo had only been open for less than
a week, so I won't comment on the service except to say it can only
improve in the weeks ahead. There are some signature
cocktails--with silly names like "new fashion" and "yuzu drop"--none
sounding enticing enough to order, and a wine list ho-hum enough to
make you think of ordering one of the two dozen sakes with curious
appellations like "plum's seent," "primal strength" and "only one
daughter" instead. Like many contemporary menus, Riingo's needs
explanation from a waiter, who will tell you that on the right hand
side is the sushi and on the left hand is--oh, I haven't a clue what he
was talking about except to confuse me, so we ordered a round of sushi,
prepared by Shigenori Tanaka, formerly of Jewel Bako. Some other items
that
appeared to be appetizers, and some others appeared to be main
courses. None was exceptional.
The maki rolls were recommended and we
did enjoy the toro with scallion,
along with various pieces of nigiri-sushi
(which run $3-$8 each, so the tab can mount up easily), including an
interesting, though unconvincing, mix of tuna and foie gras. Rice
puff-crusted shrimp was a tasty, crisp bite or two. Kobe
carpaccio was pleasant enough but had little spark to its accompaniment
of warm eel.
Of the main courses (which range from $14-$35), prepared by
exec chef Johan Svensson, there is more fusion
and more American items, including roast chicken with a sweet-sour
sauce, an unremarkable ribeye with onion-marrow chutney, and bland
poached bass with octopus and wild mushrooms. There was also the
fad dish of 2004--braised pork belly, which has a long and honorable
culinary history in Chinese cookery as a slowly cooked block of fatback
and bacon meat; at Riingo there was a cloying amount of the former
and barely any of the former, and the preparation itself with a honey
and glazed garlic basting did nothing to improve on the succulent
versions I've enjoyed in Chinatowns from NYC to San Francisco.
Not a single dish engaged any in
our party of four to return for more, nor did the design and
service. None of us felt like ordering dessert, but on the way
home
my wife and I looked at each other as we passed a
Häagen-Daz and said in unison,
"Let's stop," which was more a comment on the desire for something
yummy
than for more food at that point in a disappointing evening.
I'm clueless as to what Samuelsson and his team
intended to do at Riingo. It's not much of a statement about anything
except mix-and-match noshing. Frankly, I'm out and out puzzled
why it isn't something wonderful.
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ALL RIGHT, DITCH BEYONCÉ
KNOWLES AND THE
SOUND TRACK FROM “SCARFACE” AND SLIP IN THE CD OF “EINE KLIENE NACHTMUSIK”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EH, JACQUES, WATCH OUT
FOR ZEE EE-DEE-OTT AT TABLE NINE. EE’Z
FROM O-HIO!
“The cheese trolley wheels
our way now: there must be at least 30 types, representing the glory of
French
dairy farmers. Choose I must, so choose
I do, picking out a three-year old comte. The
cheese waiter slices some for me and then pauses, as
my date looks
my way questioningly. `Is that all, monsieur?’ asks the young waiter.
What a
dope! One is supposed to choose three or four different cheeses in
--Ted Stanger, “Douce
France. . . An American in
Air
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QUICK BYTES
*
From now until March 4 “
*
On Feb. 17 Toronto chef Susur Lee of Susur joins
David Hawksworth at West
Restaurant in Vancouver for a 9-course dinner at $135 pp. Call
604-738-8938 or
visit www.westrestaurant.com
*
From March 5-7 the 2004 South
Beach Wine & Food Festival, presented by
Food & Wine magazine will have Emeril
Lagasse, Alain
Ducasse, Bobby Flay, Eric Ripert, Alton Brown, Rachael Ray, Tyler
Florence,
Ming Tsai and dozens of others, hosted by
Southern
Wine & Spirits of Florida. The Festival will hold its signature
Sun.
afternoon Grand Tasting and its Moët &
Chandon
Bubble Q on the sands of
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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.
copyright John Mariani 2003