Sneakeater

This is in many ways unresponsive to the criteria you've posited -- surprising as it seems, I think it's going to be hard to find a full-fledged late-night tasting menu in New York -- but please consider the late-night menu at Momofuku Ssam. (Look at the "Momofuku Ssam" thread here [ http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=92127&hl=ssam ] and see what you think. But remember that the late-night menu is completely different from the day menu, and you have to get about halfway through that thread before the late-night menu is discussed.)

And just to be clear, when I talked about the law's being "enforced", I meant enforced against the restaurant. If the restaurant is at serious risk of a significant penalty, then of course they should refuse to serve wine to grown minors. But if they aren't (as in fact they aren't), then they're just making a value judgment that I would think should be left up to Bryan's mother.

My guess would be that the Anglo countries don't have indigenous wine cultures. (Even the ones, like here and Australia, that have significant wine industries.) On the whole, European wine countries tend to take their wines much more casually -- much more as just a beverage, and less a fetish object -- than we do.

I think maybe there are a couple of different questions at play here. I think, in general, it's true we've gotten too "matchy". There's no one perfect pairing for every food, but rather a range of different wines that work in different ways (and, to be sure, to different extents). When we go so far as to start talking about matching different wines to different parts of a piece of meat, I do think we're taking things beyond where they need to be. But, as for extended multi-course tasting menus, I think that's a different matter. I have to say that when I first caught on to the idea of per-course pairings with extended tasting menus a few years ago, it was a relief. Because I always found it a chore to try to think of a single white and a single red that would go adequately with all the various, and often highly disparate, meat and fish and vegetable courses in extended tasting menus. It's one thing with a standard three-course meal, but with a seven or eight or nine-course meal, to me it just takes too much thought. (And frankly, I found that a problem in Europe, where I had my first experiences with multi-course tasting menus, as much as I did in America, where the problem has now been alleviated by virtue of the availability of per-course pairings. I'd welcome per-course pairings in European restaurants that feature extended degustation menus.)

FWIW, I completely agree with you that Jordan Kahn's desserts are more "out there" than Will Goldfarb's. That's why I, personally, prefer Chef Goldfarb's. But that's a statement of preference, not a critical judgment. I think people who care about this kind of thing owe it to themselves to try both.

That would be on-point if this law were ever enforced in like places in like circumstances. I don't know what happens in Westchester, but in New York City it isn't. So just trotting out the law doesn't answer the question. If the law is never enforced, we're stuck back with the right or wrong of it. (I'm certainly not advocating that restaurants be put at risk of penalties. My point is, there is virtually no risk of penalties to the restaurant.) And I think we all agree there'd be nothing wrong with serving wine to Bryan. Indeed, since grown-but-underaged children dining with their parents are routinely served wine in fine-dining restaurants in New York, what happened to Bryan represents a policy shift (and I would argue it's one of major proportions). Except that I'm pretty sure it isn't a policy shift, but rather, as Bryan indicated, the acts of an inexperienced waiter.

Explanation please? Are high end restaurants exempt from the law and should have the server taken the chance and served him to avoid a awkward situation? Just curious. ← I've never heard of that law being applied to fine-dining restaurants. This isn't like the megaclubs on West 27th St., or like some kid wandering into a bar. This isn't even like a bunch of teenagers coming into a restaurant unsupervised by any adult (in which case prudence would dictate that the restaurant refuse to serve them). This is a grown child, out to dinner with a parent, ordering wine with the parent's obvious consent. There is no evil that the liquor laws seek to prevent, not a single one, implicated by this circumstance. And, as I said, at least as far as I know, there would be minimal (if even that) risk to the restaurant in serving wine to Bryan. (If anyone has any evidence indicating I'm wrong about that, I'd appreciate hearing it.) Finally, this is what causes overconsumption and binge-drinking in high school and college students. It leads to an unhealthy relationship with alcoholic beverages. Actually, that's not "finally." Finally, I think this was very rude to Bryan's mother.

Admin: Split from the thread on Eleven Madison Park in the NY forum. I personally find that wine thing sort of outrageous.

Just so nobody gets me wrong, I didn't mean that it tasted like grenache or syrah. I just meant that it was made in the style they use for those wines. Meaning, BIG. (I probably should have said, "it was just like their rhone-grape wines, except it tasted like pinot noir.") Actually, I'm sure you know what I meant, and your point obviously still stands.

I just had one of their pinot noirs for the first time (didn't catch the year/specific name/etc.), and it was just like their rhone-grape wines. I mean I didn't think pinot noir could be like that. Not what I look for in a pinot, but . . . well, did you ever hear the story about the first time Igor Stravinsky heard Leonard Bernstein's vicerally exciting but completely over-the-top recording of The Rite of Spring? Stravinsky (not a native English speaker, of course, and someone who never used English slang) just said, "Wow".

I'm really of the Riesling Goes With Practically Anything school, so never listen to me about riesling.

I would say that the single wine that I've ever had that was best received by a non-wine geek dining companion was a late-'90s Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir-Mondeuse blend (they don't make it anymore*) that I would call either "way fruity" or "jammy". It was inexpensive, too. __________________________________________________ * They still blend small amounts of mondeuse into their cheaper pinot noirs -- but this blend was more like 50/50.

Sine Qua Non ← Hugest possible agreement.

For Thanksgiving this year, for a crowd of DEFINITE non-wine drinkers, along with a big-ish California pinot noir, I brought one of those dry California gewurztraminers that Eric Asimov has raved about. I thought the gewurztraminer went great with the turkey. But, more to the point, boy did those guys love it. I think it might even have turned my brother into a wine drinker.

They're not THAT unsophisticated. As for the long, full finish, let me tell you a story. I once took a young woman to a restaurant with a decent wine program. She ordered a glass of Merlot. What they brought her was a glass of Chateau Gloria. She found it disturbing. She didn't like that the taste changed, in flavor as well as intensity, as the wine moved over her tongue. She didn't like that the aftertaste was more intense than the initial taste, and that it lingered for a fairly long time. She thought that all made the wine taste strange. I tried to convince her that in fact all those things made this wine much better than your typical "glass of Merlot." She wasn't having any of that.

I'll finally note that I'm talking about West Coast pinot noir. I woudn't expect these people to get Burgundies. But these West Coast wines are pretty upfront and fruity -- in a more modest than big Zin way.

Are you saying you scooped H. up from the floor and threw her on the grill? Or are you using the term in its non-culinary sense?

This may show you how unsophisticated some of my friends are, but I've found, from their comments, that some of them even find a long, full finish disturbing.

No, I'm telling you that I've put West Coast pinots and zins on the table at different times, with different groups of non-aficionados, and have gotten consistently good responses to the pinots and generally less good responses to the zins. I think the zins were just too big, strange, and (yes) alcoholic for my non-aficionado friends.

What's amazing is, that's 43,999,996 of them spending USD $10 billion, and the other four going to dinner together at Kuruma Zushi.

And then the Artie's Warehouse location became . . . the B&T dance club Aria.

Of course, no matter how diplomatic you try to be, you can never be sure your comments will be taken the way you hope:

Not to further sidetrack it, but to me the advantage of M&H over Little Branch is that M&H (by definition) is never crowded. I hate having to make reservations, but at least I know I'll have a table when I get there.

That's interesting, because my experience has always been, when I serve decent West Coast pinot noirs with beef to non-wineys (whatever the word is), they always love them (presumably because they're flavorful without being so "big" and assertive as to be hard to handle).

Without going into too much detail, if it's just the two of you, I find the booths at Milk & Honey to be kind of unbeatable.