jbonne

(1) if Parker isn't reviewing and scoring Loire reds anymore, along with a host of other types of wine, then the Joe Dressners of the world, along with wine stores, will be faced trying to sell these wines, scoreless, to an unfortunately sizable number of score-whores who buy solely on the numbers and move a lot of wine. if RP wants to declare, "i don't care about X or Y category of wine much anymore, and the WA won't be conducting regular coverage," that would be one thing. but the WA still claims to be a comprehensive source. if RP no longer has the inclination or energy to consider an ever-wider world of wine, it's not unreasonable to ask that he disclaim such things. Rovani's addition to the roster doesn't quite cover the gap. (2) Elin has always acknowledged that Parker devotes at least one issue a year to wine values. But that doesn't quite compensate for his typical focus on high-priced, collectible wines -- a reasonable focus, certainly, since the WA was borne out of the desire to weed out bad-value collectible Bordeaux in the totally screwed-up '70s market. but RP isn't making his money on value-wine ratings, he's making it on assessing big, expensive wines from from regions (including those you mention, like California, Australia and the Rhone) prone to overpricing. it's simply ridiculous to consider the pricing (on the American market) of the massive, alcoholic, overextracted Aussie shirazes that fall within RP's laudatory "vintage port"-like preference. (3) as to your sniping assessment of my comment, JohnL, that RP is a rich man who can buy whatever wine he likes while still somehow viewing himself in the Nader vein, i think Elin was very balanced in her book about *not* making an editorial judgment of his wealth and his lifestyle. the comment was mine, though based on my conversation with Elin -- and rooted in my belief that, yes, a wealthy man who can buy whatever wine he likes is not going to have the same focus on value that he did when he was young and struggling. i'd also be happy to quote from my conversation with Elin on this topic, and the subject of RP's use-them/ignore-them duplicity about his scores: "It's absolutely the opposite of being a consumer advocate. You think of Consumer Reports or something giving a good score to a washing machine ... and the washing machine company does not go out and raise the price of the washing machines. Parker isn't like Consumer Reports because he can afford the price it's sold at." (4) here's the thing, JohnL: you're clearly a Parker partisan, and i would never tell you not to be. (one thing Elin *did* discuss at length in her book is the passion of RP devotees and their desire to defend him.) if you find value in his assessments, and the WA, then you've found a system that works for you. my issue is simply that the wine world is moving forward, and the WA focuses on a limited slice of it. that's fine: i could fill my cellar based solely on buying great, interesting wines that the WA ignores. but as Brad points out, it's simply conjecture that such wines, like red Sancerre, are "not the most interesting reds around today." i could say the same thing about most of the huge California fruit bombs or Aussie cult projects that have been lauded in the WA. who's right? maybe both of us, maybe neither. what i find unsettling is the presumptive objectivity that the WA invokes in such assessments.

i would love to hear more justification for "not among the most 'interesting' wines out there today." give me a mid-grade Sancerre any day over most RP-style wines.

my review and interview with McCoy, published last week. saw Elin at IPNC this weekend, where she sat on a panel with Pierre Rovani. it was civilized on balance, though after he audaciously described an Au Bon Climat wine as "not a Rovani wine," she retorted, "the one thing we can certainly say is that it may not be a Rovani wine, but it is a Clendenen wine." (Jim Clendenen was in the audience at the time.) Parker fans have not been very happy of the book, and RP himself has ranged from dismissive to silent, mostly the latter. i think Elin did a great research job, and the book tells a solid, interesting narrative -- and puts Parker's work in a historical context. in typical Rorschach fashion, i've heard various people say that she either trashes or lionizes RP. in truth, it's a remarkably clear-eyed assessment.

including or excluding Elin McCoy's new book?

it wasn't so much the talking to himself that was weird (though if you've ever watched "Big Brother," you know not to talk to yourself, pick your nose, scratch your butt, &c., at any point given the CAMERAS YOU SHOULD KNOW ARE INSTALLED EVERYWHERE), it was his third-person self-reference, a la Bob Dole, that was freaky. "Now is Michael's time ... ," &c. that, and the fact he was a backstabbing weasel who i'd never let within 10 miles of me if i were cooking. meantime, thanks for the link to the Andrew site. we're enjoying it all here. i'm so unsurprised that he opts for Wal-Mart instead of Wusthof.

i still wouldn't want to eat food cooked by a backstabbing, third-person-referential SOB like Michael. that said, Ralph managed to royally screw himself every way possible. even i wouldn't want to eat his damn porterhouse, what with braised short ribs on offer. the upside of GR's offer is that Michael doesn't actually get the damn prize. and Ramsay gets himself a new punching bag on the line.

i give those picks a 50 percent. whether you want to score that on the usual test-grading curve, i leave up to you. (one quick note on the notion of including Elemental: While I do adore that place, I'd hate to see it mentioned in a travel piece. It's already got overcrowding problems; last thing I want is taxi-riding visitors getting lost in the Fremont-Wallingford badlands while trying to find a place they won't be able to eat at anyway. That said, Jamie, you should try it.)

anyone else notice the "uni vichyssoise" listed atop one of the team's menus when diners were looking it over? (it flashed quickly, and i forget which team, though might have been red.) sounded like the most interesting option they had -- certainly more than that lame halibut. also made me wonder what other items we didn't see featured from their menus that might have actually swayed Ramsay.

by this accounting, i should be ripe and ready for a network-TV gig. of all the items i researched, the backstory on pastrami was by far the most interesting. mostly because i'd never thought about it, either. as any New Yorker would, i just assumed pastrami has always been with us.

i would direct your attention to the smackdown from Bobby Flay that one of the hopefuls (Hans, i believe) got last month on "Next Food Network Star" when he dared talk about salmonella and proper handling. i'd say the fact that cooking shows, among many places, don't want to talk about food safety is indicative of the gap between food fetishism, which seems to account for about 90 percent of all foodie interest these days, and a professional, sensible understanding of safety and handling.

we kept most of the really nasty items out of the reader mailbag. but here's a sample:

don't even get me started on our photo choices. i personally have lots of great pix from N.O., but none of a po-boy. some fun B&W shots inside Liuzza's, though ...

also when you see a steak frites, a moules frites, a fish and chips, and about half the foods of northwestern Europe. while i admire the French fry to no end, i think its provenance is a bit too global to hand credit fully to the USA. Freedom fries, otoh ...

welcome to the world of stock photography, Rachel. and i'll personally give a smackback on the travelin' part. i ate more po-boys in a single week in New Orleans this May than is healthy or wise.

thanks to various folks for the compliments. i assure you, the original list for possibles was very, very, very long. you should, however, see some of the utterly nasty responses we've gotten to the list. i'm just plain ignoring the outrage of a sizable Philly contingent about the cheesesteak (my basic response: tune in next year), but to the scrapple lovers out there (and scrapple was on my initial list), all i can say is: if people hate shoofly pie as much as they seem to, i can only imagine what they'd say about scrapple. ditto chile verde. i particularly took pride in putting that in because it's an original, and it's a very not-too-obvious choice. the NM folks who've seen it were overjoyed, while folks in Philly, Chicago and the entire Midwest think i'm on crack. ah well. we said in the intro that we didn't want to spark a battle about BBQ, mostly since i'll be doing a BBQ item for Labor Day. as someone who lives with a lifelong Austin native, and who has been told under no uncertain terms that no greater food exists than Texas brisket, i wouldn't dare to pretend that BBQ doesn't make the cut. [edited re: chile verde]

fictitious, i believe. your spelling may vary.

actually, it wasn't a top 10 list, just a 10 list. you'd never catch me trying to create a hierarchy between po-boys, clam chowder and ham. i'm not *that* stupid. the "they" was me, and it's a subjective list -- not supposed to be exhuastive, not meant to proclaim the value of these 10 over any others. my basic critieria: (1) it had to have some element to its history that made it demonstrably American. And it had to be associated with a specific location -- steak or fried chicken don't really speak of a place, they're just generically American. Fajitas, even though they're eaten nationally, are still very much a Texas tradition. (2) it couldn't have too much overlap with another item selected -- po-boys vs. Italian sub sandwiches, for instance. (3) no BBQ or pizza, since we're doing those both later in the summer as their own stories. (4) geography. the list had to cover every region of the country, though some might argue the Midwest got a bit shortchanged. no duplicating states (hence no Philly cheesesteak when we had shoofly pie). (5) a balance of famous and obscure. that's why some more obscure picks (chile verde, Olympia oysters) made the list alongside the obvious (clam chowder). hope that helps a bit. on the topic of top-10 lists, i'd say it's a safe bet you'll be seeing more. for whatever reason, people always read them -- even if they hate 'em. consumer magazines learned this lesson long ago.

absolutely! it's not a perfect measurement, but when you factor in a heat index with hangtime, winter dormancy, air drainage, &c., you begin to see how wine styles really do reflect the climate of their terroir. now i'm curious where Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace and the Rhone fit into the mix. and of course, how the Napa microclimates factor in. the cool climate/hot year-hot climate/cool year is something i'm hearing more often. Pierre Rovani was saying something to that effect earlier this year, though it was in the context of defending big, concentrated wines. a hot-year Bordeaux is still a pretty different animal than an average-year Napa Cab.

i'd promised a while ago to fill in the details of our previous dinner at Elemental. we went in on a Wed. about 945p. Phred looked like he was being a bit heavy-handed at the FOH, but he also recognized us immediately and was warm and welcoming, though he mentioned a few decibels too loudly about a nearby table having lingered for over two hours. (i assumed it was deliberate.) when we queried him about the post-review crush, he said that things had gotten hairy for a while and lots of people had come in, been told there was a two-hour wait, agreed to wait and then started getting impatient after 45 minutes. so he started to just tell people they were full for the night. (no idea what tone he took when he told folks this, but i can see where that information, delivered in a stern tone, would be interpreted as a seating-Nazi move.) it sounded as though the goal was to start chasing away one-timers and ensure there was enough room for his regulars. i wouldn't personally agree with the approach, but that's his decision, not mine. in any case, it sounds like there are enough regulars to keep them plenty full. also, they appear to have added an additional server pretty much full-time. one-tops are an obvious problem for them, and not sure how they can solve that. no reservations also an obvious problem, and i'd personally wish that they instituted a rez-only policy, but that's because i'm a reservations fan. every time i've gone in there, we got a seat without a problem. but we also have never walked in before 9p. i asked him what the safest time would be to come in and get seated, perhaps 10p or so? he said things usually start to calm down after 830-9p, when the 2nd seatings are finishing up. i'm sticking with 930-10p as a failsafe. only problem with that: limited kitchen stock. they were out of one dish i'd really hoped to try (calamari canneloni) when we got there. my takeaway lesson: i think Phred is taking the court-your-regulars approach to an extreme. that may not be the best business decision, but he's chosen it and he's sticking by it, and i wish them well. certainly i'll do my part, because i like them and i like their food and the whole approach. but many people won't. many people also don't like Lampreia for a similar reason, though others have argued that Scott Carsberg is just misunderstood. in New York and other cities, you'll find little boites that have what can initially be a snooty attitude because they're catering to their regulars. most have been around longer than Elemental (Rao's comes to mind) and gained their reputation over time, but again, if they can make it work, more power to 'em. they're committed to fostering a small, close-knit community of diners there, and while i think that's an inappropriate approach for a larger venue, it's not completely unreasonable for one this small.

thanks so much, Rose. this is terrific data, even if slightly aged. also curious how subappellations break down. Napa may be Region II, but I imagine that Stags Leap and Howell Mountain are probably at either end of that, if not in different categories altogether.

hey, is there anyone who lists the heat/sunshine indices of the various Calif. appellations? always seemed like something it'd be fun to compare.

there's something else going on too, at least by the theory i was assembling last night in the midst of barbeque chatter. the presence of oak on French chardonnay certainly can be significance, but even the ripest Burgundy grapes are generally starting at a deficit of heat and light compared to even cool-site California fruit. (or WA fruit, given the mention of CSM Cold Creek above, which certainly is more moderate but still very much in the domestic oak-o-riffic vein.) no question there's been hundreds of years to sort out which tiny patches of Cote de Beaune terroir provide the best white wine grapes, but anywhere in the Cote d'Or, you're going to be starting out with grapes that are usually fighting an uphill battle toward ripeness; acids will be high, flavors often focused on leaner fruits more than those fat tropical flavors. both old and new oak can help build this fruit into a great wine, while steel can offer the beautiful clarity of flavor you get with a decent Chablis. if you're starting with California fruit, you've got an enormous climatic advantage when it comes to ripeness. but it's going to be a ripe-flavor wine, and under the French model, probably requires a lot less time in barrel to evolve. if you put a French winemaking regimen on California fruit, you're going to end up with ... the now-typical California chardonnay. consider two wines mentioned above -- the Qupe and the Abeja. Qupe: 20% new oak, 9 months on lees. Abeja: 50% new oak, 10 months aging, 6 on lees. so far as i know, these aren't typical California regimes.

as noted above, not drinking chardonnay basically eliminates all of white Burgundy. you'd be writing off Meursault, Chassagne-Montrachet and St. Aubin, just for a start. even some Chablis gains profound depth and richness in wood, like some of those from Laroche. the problem, obviously, is with domestic chard, and i don't deny there's a problem. but the stainless versions (Morgan Metallico and Chehalem Inox being two that immediately come to mind) are often very good, and there are oak-enabled chards that have great balance and finesse. Clos du Val comes to mind, and i'm a huge fan of the chard from Abeja in Walla Walla. (good luck finding any, though.) here's the problem: you have to look pretty hard to find balanced, integrated classically produced domestic chards. for my money, i'm going to turn to France most of the time, at least so long as there's good Chablis under $30 a bottle. but i'm always on the hunt for more proof that domestic chard can recover from its oak addiction. never tried the Qupe chard, but Bob Lindquist has a terrific winemaking palate and his wines always have a rather European elegance to them.

"him," actually. it doesn't seem a huge stretch to expect children to be no more intrusive to my dining experience than any other customer at a restaurant. a restaurant is shared space, and part of what i'm paying for while there is the temporary lease of the table space so i can sit there and be served. my butt in the seat implies that i will be spending a certain amount of money. i know this argument doesn't always fly in Seattle, where takeout seems to have been deemed tip-worthy, despite the fact that the extra work is done in the KITCHEN, which isn't seeing those tips, and that it's not actually being served to me, and that i've never seen it as common practice anywhere else. but try sitting at a table somewhere, without ordering more than an iced tea, and see how long that works. i believe we've been through the rest of this already. actually, if i'm dining out, i'm not supposed to have to focus on someone else's condition. that's the whole point. if i choose to engage with my fellow patrons, that's certainly a feasible choice -- but not a mandatory one. that said, some establishments have decided their eating experience should be communal. Vios has clearly decided it wants to be a place like that. now, having had time to think about it, i can safely say my odds of eating there again are slim to none. this isn't meant as punishment; Vios has decided on its business model, it's doing very well and they've obviously found a niche that's profitable and creates an environment they're proud of. that's a laudable achievement. it's just not an environment i'm going to pay to be in. neither is Disneyland. and if they are, good on 'em. like i said, Vios has chosen its business model, and it's found lots of patrons who buy into it. i'm just not one of 'em.

rolling seatings. apparently they turn tables 2-3 times a night, sometimes more. we were in again last night, and had another terrific experience. full details later ...