jbonne

oh, that was a fun one. we took those shots about 830am, which is a bit before the time of day i usually stare at lamb carcasses ...

just to add an endorsement: Deutz. if i'm going NM, that's where i'm going, at least in my own house. as noted here and above in this thread, there's the wonderful domestic curiosities everyone should try: Argyle, Mountain Dome, Gruet.

i adore proseccos, but i think of them really as summer wine. the light lemon notes and such in them, tend to be more hot-weather tastes for me. i agree with Jason -- the Argyle is wonderful. my other votes for domestics are Mountain Dome from WA (NV, but the '97 brut is even more gorgeous) and Gruet NV brut from NM. but i'm supposed to cover all this in next week's column, so i'll have to wait 'til then to hold forth.

Pichet rocks. rocks. rocks. rocks. i'd laud them for their snails alone. but one of my really special Seattle pleasures is a simple breakfast at the bar here -- double espresso with a baguette (plus butter and jam).

you're most welcome. just curious -- do you remember which cremant? some of the Alsatians blend in pinot blanc/pinot gris/riesling/whatever. which to me just makes the wine more interesting.

i have a feeling there may be some more subtle blanquettes out there, though it's possible that the AOC requirements just make it so. more likely, i suspect the blanquettes making their way through the Seattle area -- notably the Berlene -- are just not good wine. every time i see it at Whole Foods, i cringe. one of these days, i should put the Limoux up against some real capital-C bubbly, just to compare the yeastiness.

heh. we're headed there next week -- based in part on your review, which i mailed around (the link, that is) to my fellow diners. the soothing tones of "Rage Against the Coffee Machine" have now been played in the halls of MSNBC, fwiw.

speaking of Champagne, i just released our look at French sparklers made a bit further away from Epernay and Rheims: It's French, it's sparkling, it's not Champagne wondering what other eGers' experiences have been of late with these. are you finding cremants you keep coming back to? other obscure stuff that's risen to the surface lately?

i simply hunt for 'em using the "RM" registration mark on the label -- indicating it's from a recoltant-manipulant (grower who makes his own wine). totally varies by region as to what you'll find, and since i'm in the other Washington, i'm not much help. Pierre Peters and Serveaux are two notable finds that come to mind, both NV blanc de blancs. but it's really a bit of a duck hunt.

stranger things have happened.

based on elswanger's experience, i decided to try a little experiment last night. i barely go to Dick's anymore, since i'm a big fan of ground meat i can precisely trace source on and not such a fan of fast-food burgers anymore. that said, Dick's is total i'm-being-bad food, and we were in the mood (my S.O. had never tried a Dick's burger before last night) so i hit the Dick's in Wallingford. i ordered a Deluxe w/o cheese, a Deluxe w/ cheese, 2 hams and a fries. the special order threw a big wrench into their carefully controlled chaos, and i waited in the rain for about five minutes, but i got my order and they were about as nice as fry jockeys -- even those with benefits -- are going to be about some leather-jacketed moron messing with their mojo. anyway, fear not: at least the Wallingford Dick's seems willing to take special orders. and if the Cap Hill Dickians give you lip, just tell 'em, "they do this over in Wallingford."

first, thanks to Really Nice! for including a link to my piece on this. what's interesting is how many questions i've subsequently gotten about *personal* shipments of wine -- i.e., buying a bottle yourself and sending it to Dad for his birthday in NY, MI, MA, OK, &c. state law seems to vary on this point, but so does opinion from consumers, winemakers, legal poobahs, and the like. anyone have any fun insights and/or horror stories about personal shipping? [standard disclaimer: i may end up writing about this topic at some point, but will contact folks before i even think about putting anything in print.]

could well be. what ever happened to the grand old days of scripts posted online (in flagrant copyright violation) post-haste? the IMDB quote page is no help at all, either.

not to diminish the ironic glee of Miles' fondness for Cheval Blanc, but i did want to pass on one possible reason why the '61 Cheval Blanc may be the object of Miles' covetousness. (his desire being quite another issue.) Lettie Teague in her "Educating Peter" series in Food & Wine, quotes Peter Travers describing the Cheval as Alexander Payne's favorite wine: could it be that Payne simply subbed in his own favorite bottle as Miles'? just speculating.

i go to Palace for a hamburger with some frequency. from the ex-veggie thread, sounds like others do too. but then, i never much liked the Matterhorn. never much liked Disneyland at all, in fact.

haven't seen it mentioned anywhere obvious, so ... anyone here been to Casa D'Italia (65th between 26th and 27th Ave.) lately? contemplating a visit, but would love to hear impressions.

Palace Kitchen, Two Bells, Red Mill. that order. the Whitehouse-Crawford in Walla Walla has a stunning burger, but even i acknowledge that's far to go for chopped beef.

i don't expect that level -- the Maccionis are exemplary of it -- but i do expect these things to be covered in standard service training. plenty of places in Seattle have wonderful service. Palace Kitchen can be terrific (and appropriate to their setting) though it's become more uneven lately. Le Pichet is almost uniformly great. Ditto Sambar. Note that none of these are vastly more expensive than Tribunali. In fact, Tribunali could copy Palace's vibe wholesale and nail the perfect balance. In each case, the servers seem to be having fun and enjoying the setting. They make customers feel as though they enjoy serving them. (Whether they do or not is irrelevant; it's about putting a pleasing human face on a restaurant.) All this is very much a matter of tone that, LEdlund is quite correct, can't really be expressed online. A tone of "Here's your darn pizza, you wanna a drink with that?" is only marginally acceptable in the local pie-slinging joint; not at all so in a pizza place that aspires to something more. But that's exactly what we got.

the Broadway location has been increasingly less pleasant to go to. i'd say try Wallingford and QA before you give up entirely. i won't enter that JITB for some very specific reasons dating back to the early '90s. (which is before i lived on the West Coast, if that helps at all.)

one essential aspect of service is that the patron never lose face. a good application of this is the date test: if you're on a date and trying to impress someone, is your treatment at the hands of your server going to take some shine off your polish? it's a stupid test, granted, because hopefully we all judge people on better things than their facility with a wine list, but it's also invaluable, because you're going to get people like that as customers, and you need to make them feel as welcome and wise as the well-aged gourmand. the Maccioni family has perfected this, for example. they understand that the human relationship is the most important part of good restauranteurship. there are plenty of ways to accomplish it, but the best is to play up to the customer, just on the off-chance they are indeed a world-class connoisseur. (because they very well might be.) talented servers know how to strike this balance without being snooty. a question like "do you see some bottles there that interest you?" gives the Johnny Apples of the world a chance to hold forth on why this sangiovese is the perfect choice, &c., while allowing someone like SeaGal to ask for any help without feeling at all diminished for doing so. it's a silly bit of social engineering, but then, all service is a silly bit of social engineering. it's also all about tone, and the tone we got was very distinctly one of, "Can I help you make up your minds about what stupid wine to drink, you indecisive morons? It's late in my shift, I'm tired and I don't have time to dally with you wasting my time. It's all a bunch of rotten grape juice anyway." the tone was a clear indicator that she didn't care whether we were going to order a $10 bottle of swill or a $100 amarone, and that she didn't really know the difference aside from her larger tip from the latter. i don't mind Tribunali's hipper-than-thou vibe, though it's not my personal preference. but that too often bleeds into undertrained, smartass service that's essentially become the norm in America. and that's exactly what we got there. aside from the wine, there were several other "have you decided yet?" checkbacks that drove me absolutely nuts, and an only half-hidden look of disdain when we ordered two pizzas and a meal-sized salad for three of us -- at 930p at night, in the bar area, in addition to a $45 bottle of wine. the server was at best only marginally familiar with the menu, and it sounds as though we didn't even get the knife and explanation that Ye-Ye Girl got. (that simple gesture would have gone a long way to improving my assessment.) in short, the whole performance -- which improved notably when another server seemed to step in and help later in the meal -- showed that she couldn't have cared less whether we were enjoying our meal. and that is the cardinal sin of service. it doesn't sound like Tribunali's service is uniformly that way, but the fact they hire people like that shows they aren't doing a good enough job to present a good public face.

i've seen it both ways. if they're aiming for authenticity, they need to get some utensils for the job. unless our table was somehow privy to an unusually crappy batch of flatware. truly, the knife was so dull i almost ripped the damn pie apart. nope, but it's all about tone. one thing to ask, "is there something on the list that looks good to you?" another entirely to ask, "can i help you with the wine list?" as though we were a bunch of blithering idiots. yeah, these are subtleties, but it's a huge difference in tone -- a la salespeople who ask "is that all?" vs. "anything else for you?" -- and one that proper training should address. plus, we'd looked at the list for about two minutes. when you have a list that tops out over $100, it's not unreasonable for patrons to take a few minutes deciding. we ain't talkin' about house Chianti here.

ah, but what if the decor and service are intrusive enough to impact your ability to enjoy the food? someone might be willing to serve me lobster with truffles while i sit next to a jackhammer (someone page the Dadaists!), but i probably won't appreciate it. if the decor and service enhance the food, that would arguably boost impressions. if they intrude -- and it isn't dinner theater -- someone isn't doing their job.

more on Via Tribunale, from a visit last week ... pizza was rather good, if not extraordinary. it's far closer to Neapolitan (or neo-Neapolitan, as described) than New York. the crust sogs a bit in the midst, but that's not out of line with a Grimaldi's or other experience. (it is VERY out of line with a Pepe's experience, but New Haven pizza -- a superior beast to New York -- is a whole other story.) inexplicably, the pizza came neither sliced nor with any useful implement to slice it. the knives on the table were so dull i'm not sure they could spread butter, so they weren't much help. other issues: the service is generally pretty bad. our peppy but otherwise lost server kept asking us if we needed help with the wine list. there's three people sitting at the table, one of whom knows almost every winemaker in the state, the other two of whom write about wine. i think we can parse a wine list. (what we needed, dear, were glasses of water, sliced pizza and appropriate tableware.) the hostess and some of the other floor staff seemed a bit more on the ball, and the bartender comped us after pouring the wrong wine (though i'm still not convinced i ever got my glass of primativo) but they've got to figure out whether they want to function as a bar with pizza or a restaurant, and then tweak accordingly. right now, it's one step from chaos.

Via Tribunali. owned by the roaster at Caffe Vita, i believe. authentic Neapolitan chef. pizza was pretty good, though my companions didn't agree. inexplicably, it came unsliced, with table knives that can barely spread butter. the rest needs work, esp. the service. still, anything better than Pagliacci on Cap Hill is a step up.

there are other domestic viogniers around, too, though many have the same faults as CA viogniers -- too much oak, not nearly enough delicacy and, often, *way* too much residual sugar. (unless they were somehow subtly going for a botrytized version, a la Ayguets, which i doubt.) i've tasted OR viogniers that were downright sweet. i've also tasted viogniers from the same producer (like Rulo in Walla Walla) that bombarded me with R.S. one year, then were almost bone-dry the next. weirdly, the folks in Condrieu seemed to endorse a bit of age on their wines when i asked them -- though they may have meant to keep it within five years. they also appreciate the virtues of just a tiny, tiny bit of oak. not long ago, there was a viognier column in F&W, i think, describing viognier's last ascendancy in the '80s. their conclusion: it was made to be the "next chardonnay," and not surprisingly, failed.