Steve Plotnicki

I don't find Grange to be overly weighty or heavy. It's an amazingly balanced wine. Even though there still isn't the same level of complexity that you find in French and Italian wines. And it also depends on the year Grange. For a while, 1981 was drinking really well. Now 1982 is really great. But I aside from the flavor profile, which I agree Grange is the mother of, the modern Shiraz are overoaked and overripe fruit bombs that have enough alcohol in them to be able to use them as aftershave. Grange doesn't have those characteristics in my experience.

No I was speaking about what works for me. For people who like to drink wine daily, they have to adopt a different strategy and find numerous inexpensive wines that are good. And as I said, if I lived in Europe and had that type of diet, I might think differently about it. But living in the U.S., I find that trying to figure out which wine goes with every meal is a square peg in a round hole because my tuna fish sandwich doesn't lend itself to drinking wine. If you spend time on the various wine boards you see various questions about which wines go with what foods. Many of them are just forcing the issue because the people like to drink wine. One of my favorites was what wines go with kosher style pastrami. Another favorite is what wine goes best with Mexican food. As for wine and pizza, well you could drink it. But it's just a beverage. I see no reason to drink wine if it is just going to be a beverage. Water is usually a better beverage then wine is because it doesn't clash with the food. I think Australian shiraz generally sucks. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for a good Grange.

One of the funny things about Milano was that when I was looking for a place for lunch on Friday (we didn't have much time as we had a 4:30 flight to Lyon) I poured through the GR guide. The numerical scores the restaurants were given for their cucina seemed rather low to me. Mostly in the low 40's. So just to calibrate them, I checked the score of the Tratorria de la Posta de Camuilin where I ate in October. I enjoyed that meal, but it was a rustic place. But it scored 46 for cucina, higher then almost every restaurant in Milan except for Aimo and a few others. I thought that was really pathetic for a city of Milan's breeding. What the hell are they eating there day in and day out?

I'd be happy to tell that to M. Clape myself. Actually any oaky wine goes well with those steaks. And Cote Rotie and Chateauneuf go well also because of the pepperiness in the wines. And if you are talking about steak cooked over wood, even Central Coast Pinot Noir goes well and I can't think if anything that is as offensive a wine as CCPN. I am actually against drinking less then terrific wine and I often recommend to people that they buy one bottle for $100 rather then five bottles for $20. Most $20 wines stink. And most food just doesn't go well with wine and the only reason that people drink it is because France and Italy are wine growing countries so they created a culture for it. And if you live there, I can understand drinking it every day because the cuisine is built around it. But I have found for my diet, I am better off drinking serious wine with serious meals and finding something else to drink with a burger and pizza. And while that might change when I am visiting Europe, and I might order a bottle of wine with my pizza, I revert back to form when I return back home.

Sorry but I don't read Italian so numerical scores are a great asset. And flipping through the Slow Food Guide, many of their listings are also listed in GR. And among the ones that aren't, many are listed as tratorria or traditional osteria. So if what you claim exists actually does exist (and I have no reason not to believe you,) the Italians need to do a better job of telling everyone about it. Still, I'm a skeptic. As my Wednesday night dinner companion who lives in Rome told me, there is no cuisine there. You just buy some mozzarella and ...... And in spite of the fact that I know there are places that I would find delicious, I'm sure that what I like about eating in France will never be present in Italy for me and that is spite of how good things can taste, they will always fall short. As Ed Schoenfeld put it so perfectly, in France, they cook things together until it results in a completely new flavor. In Italy, the goal is to taste one ingredient at a time. I am starting to believe they do not have the gustatory skills to taste two flavors and that is why they haven't created a cuisine. The best thing about my visit to Milan was the magnum of 1997 Sandrone La Vigne we bought at Peck which we brought to the Marche au Vin dinner in Lyon. Boy did we down that sucker in record time. Even the "traditionalistas" like Yaniger and Morehouse sucked it down without complaining of the modern, clean style Sandrone makes his wines in.

Thanks for the existential answer. If you read my post, I said that we wanted a more formal meal. If all I wanted to do was to eat at a tratorria, indeed I would have referred to the guide you mentioned. But I didn't. I wanted a world class meal and once again Italy failed (in fact the entire country fails as a country as far as I'm concerned.) As for restaurants remaining great, some of them remain great for quite a long time. Arpege has been great for as long as Aimo et Nadia has been there, and there are other restaurants that have endured as well. But I'm forgetting the reason that we chose Aimo in the first place which was the lack of world class restaurants in Milan to begin with. A failing so profound for a place that prides itself as being a world class city that words escape me.

Craig - Let's see, I didn't list every region that makes serious wines. If you noticed, I added an etc. at the end of my list. As for Cornas, no I don't think that is serious wine on the level of the other wines I mentioned. Neither do I think Barbera is a serious wine. They can both be very good wines, but they are not serious wines in my book and the market seems to agree with that. And no I don't think anyone outside of Burgundy makes a serious pinot noir either. As for the mouthwash, almost any bottle of zinfandel will do. In fact I have found that if you want to drink zinfandel/mouthwash with food, it goes well with meats and fish grilled over eucalyptus, two vile things where the double negative nearly cancels each other out.

It was all locals including two local families and their children. We were the only people in the restaurant speaking English. Everyone else was speaking Italian.

No it isn't. There is a reason a bottle of 1966 La Tache can cost $2000 and the best Zinfandel (if there is such a thing as a best Zinfandel) costs less then $100 and most likely costs $40. One is a wine of great quality and the other is not. And I can draw the same example for Bordeaux, Cote Rotie, Hermitage, Barolo etc. Quality is not a matter of opinion.

Food tastes better when it's a slice of life don't you think? And when the servers are proud of what they do and the food they serve, it makes all the difference of the world.

Junior's cheesecake being annointed the top cheesecake in the city was as a result of a New York Magazine competition I believe. Some of the other winners of their competitions were Goldberg's Pizza, and The Pastrami Factory. Both of them choices that are extrememely suspect when applying today's food knowledge and sensibilities to them.

There is no such thing as a great varietal without great terroir. The syrah grape outside of Cote Rotie is a mere shadow of itself. Same for pinot noir and Burgundy. Zinfandel I submit, is neither a great varietal, nor do they grow it anywhere where there is great terroir. Even Ridge, who arguably makes the best zinfandel, blends it with other varietals in order to make Geyserville, a wine that I rank on the order of, "order if there is nothing else to drink on the wine list" category. Beer is still better with pizza and zinfandel still tastes like mouthwash.

Unfortunately that rule didn't work at Aimo e Nadia in Milan.

Yeah it's a lively place. There are so many different upscale food shops in that market, I often wonder while walking around how the hell they all stay in business? And if you walk around the main shopping district in the afternoon, it is just buzzing with people. Of course I didn't write about my little promenade to Bernachon after my lunch. I was chomping on the chocolates I brought home yesterday and they were amazing! Truly a disproportionate number of great food shops there on a per person basis.

Suvir - You need to fly to London and have Tony Finch (really Faroe his wife) take you to New Tayeb so you can sample the mixed tandoori platter. The lamb chops are as we discussed. Not the marinade, but the cut. But you should try the meal anyway as I think you would enjoy it. Lots of biranyis afterwards and the food seems to be cooked in baltis. A plate of bitter gourd in a currry sauce was a standout. Also, while they use a tandoor, instead of putting the skewers vertically into the tandoor itself, they just lay them across the top like it was a grill. Can you expound on this method of tandoori?

I had one night in Milan last week. Based on how our schedule was laid out, it was a good night for a more formal meal. I had a number of reservations which included staying in town and eating at Aimo, or we could have taken a train an hour into the hinterlands. But one of the first things I did when I got to town was to buy a copy of the 2003 edition of the Gambero Rosso. Flipping straight to the list of top cucina, Aimo e Nadia was given a score of 52 which put them in the top dozen restaurants in the country. That did it. No schlepping an hour out of town for us. The cab ride there was a long one, even longer then I remembered. It must have been a good 25 minutes. I had been to Aimo once before. My wife and I were there about a dozen years ago. That night they served us a dish I will never forget. Capone con Brodo di Tartufi, capon in a truffle scented broth. It was a stunner. So I was hoping that the restaurant kept up some of the same style and intensity I had recalled. Quite often restaurants lose something over time. Maybe the chefs gets bored cooking the same things night after night. Hopefully that wasn't the case here with that high GR score and all. But all it took was for me to enter the restaurant and to be seated to suspect that the night was not going to turn out as I had hoped for. They sat us in the main room. It was just as I remembered it. A smallish, rectangular affair with about ten tables ringing the room. But the room looked like it needed a few coats of new and glossy paint to cheer it up. As it is, the restaurant is on a dreary street on the outskirts of Milan and there is no outward indication that a fine restaurant would be there. But it used to be stylish inside. Like you were transformed into a different place. That effect is gone now. Combine that with a display of some of the worst art I had ever seen (seems it's a friend of their daughters,) I didn't feel like things were looking up. Our food was, well, okay but resolutely mediocre. We both had started with goose liver served in a cream of cardoons that was perfectly fine except it needed some salt. I followed it with a mix of various fish and shellfish in a cream of white beans and my friend had Aimo's famous pasta with onions (Aimo visited us and told us that the dish won the best pasta crown at some cooking exposition at Palio in NYC.) I finished with a dryish stinco (braised beef shank) and my friend had the duck. All okay, really boring, and as my wife would say, not worth the calories. Fortunately the service was good. Especially the sommelier who recommended a nice barolo (can't remember the producer) that was drinking fairly well for the 1997 vintage. And both Aimo and Nadia visited us on at least three occassions and were very friendly and chatty. And the place was full. Everyone from couples on dates to families having dinner with their children. But it just didn't do it for us. Aimo and Nadia appear to be up around retirement age and from the way their cooking tastes they seem to have one foot out the door. In fact, their daughter has opened a second location near the Piazza di Republica which probably anticipates that happening.

Well I would have done that except that it doesn't taste like cola and it does taste like toothpaste and mouthwash.

Did it ever occur to you that Lindy's cheesecake and the original Nedick's were really both crap but we just didn't know it?

Yes it is. Maison Borie. We had a dinner there for 14 people on Friday night.

The '99 Gallet was a terrific wine as well. According to one of the wine shops in town, Henri's son has taken over the winemaking chores and that is the reason for the improvement.

Cabby - That's funny. I had that issue of Saveur with me on the trip but never got around to reading it. I guess it goes to show that sometimes the good places have the right feel about them.

I hate it when I know more than the cab drivers do. "C'est la Monsieur" said our cab driver while she was pointing to the Part Dieu train station in Lyon. "Non Madame, c'est la gare, je voudrais les Halles." And no matter how I pronounced it, lay ahles, layzalles, laisse hahles, she didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Our journey had started in Ampuis. We arrived at the Marche au Vin right when the doors were opened at 9:00am. Having beaten the crowds and having tasted through the producers we were interested in by 11:00am, we were off to market in Lyon for a little pre-lunch appetizer of La Mere Richard's terrific St. Marcellin. But by the time our taxi arrived, and with the driver's confusion about where the market was (which I eventually straightened out by taking charge of the situation and barking out directions in spite of her stubbornly telling me over and over that it was in the train station,) we made it there around 12:45. After noticing a sign that said that Petrossian offered a "Menu Degustation" and sampling some terrific smoked salmon at a stand whose name I don't remember, we made it to La Mere. We bought a round of St. Marcellin, went around the corner where my friend bought a mini-baguette, and we tore our little forspeiss apart. Simply marvelous. I don't know if there is a better bargain in food then a round of the Mere's St. Marcellin for 2 euros 60. Once that was out of the way we started to tour the market. The place was abuzz with people having lunch. I had never been there during lunchtime having only visited early in the morning or at the end of the day. But anytime you're in France and it's time to eat, a festive air permeates wherever you happen to be. In Les Halles, it manifested itself at the stands that sold oysters and other shellfish. Alll those stands had people shucking oysters and they had big platters of oysters laid out for people. Near those stands the aisles were full with people holding a shucked oyster in one hand and a small glass of white wine in the other. What a country. But one stand caught my eye because the crowd of people standing in front of it seemed disproportionate to the size of the stand. And they struck me as being in a rather good mood as well which is always a good sign. It also had seating for 6 people at a small bar area along the side of the stand. And on further inspection there was a complete restaurant that sat about 40 people. Looking down at my watch and seeing that it was nearly 1:00pm, and looking at some good looking but near empty bowls of some type of shellfish served in a broth, I announced we should try this place for lunch. At first I tried to figure out how to get into the restaurant. There were doors but they wouldn't open. Then I circled the place and realized that the only door to the restaurant was in the oyster stand itself. Not being the shy type when it comes to food, I tried to enter the stand and at the same time asked one of the shuckers if that was the entrance to the restaurant. He looked at me and said yes, but then asked if I had a reservation. When I said no, he told me they were "complet" for lunch that day. Hmmm, if there is anything that can strengthen my resolve, it's a restaurant that looks good that tells me they have no room for me. Merde. So we decided to camp out at the bar waiting for 2 seats to open up. Fortunately, four of the six people having lunch seemed to be finished with their main dish and in less then 5 minutes all four seats opened up. We sat down and looked at the menu, placed our order and waited. Not too long after we placed our order the two gentlemen sitting next to us were served a gigantic platter of oysters. When they noticed the look of astonishment on our faces, they asked us if we liked oysters. Soon enough, they were passing some Specials No 3 our way which my friend proclaimed as being fabulous. They proceeded to tell us that the Miason Rousseau was a special place and that they often have lunch there. We started with soupe de poissons. Different then the Provencal versions I'm used to. This was lighter and seemed to have had more tomato in the broth. But it was coarsely strained and not pureed the way many of the Provencal versions are. Really tasty stuff. Served in a oversized soup bowl and poured atop croutons that were entire slices of bread. I loaded my breadless bowl with a garlicky rouille and loads of shredded gruyere cheese. Amazingly fresh and ribstickingly good on what was a cold morning. Then we split a Marmite de Moules avec Creme et Curry. Aside from shellfish every which way, the MR specialize in marmites, pots of mussels prepared in a dozen different styles. We split a pot, and offered a plate to our newly found friends who were so kind enough to offer us their oysters. The mussels were small (as is often the case in France) but the broth was amazing. I can drink cups of that stuff anytime. With our soups we drank a bottle of 2001 Wolfberger Riesling which in spite of the non-descript producer went perfectly. Boy were we stuffed. I could have packed it in right there except our newfound friends were encouraging us to have another round of St. Marcellin. I was trying to resist but I am conviced that we were hypnotized into ordering it. While we were sitting at the bar, they must have served twenty orders of it. The waitress, who was so gentil that she should be chosen by the French government as a role model for how their servers should act, would unwrap a round of cheese and put it in the palm of her left hand (wrapper and all.) Then she would take a knife in her right hand and slice the cheese in half. Then she would bend the cheese over the knife and pull out the right half and put it on a plate with the knife in the cheese. She would then take another knife and scrape the left half of the cheese off the paper and put that onto a plate along with the knife in it. She would then place slices of baguettes onto each plate. I believe that we saw her do it so many times that we were hypnotized by her repeated motions. And then when our French buddies suggested we have the cheese, we had absolutely no self control. Needless to say it was fantastic. I think we had a similar problem with dessert. Occassionally throughout the meal, this same waitress (or one of her co-workers) would place a plate with dessert on it, things like tarte tatin or oeufs ala neige on a plate and they would pour more creme anglaise on it then one would have thought is humanly possible. And after watching a half dozen or so of those performances, how could you resist? But what made it even more ridiculous was the price. Our lunch of two meal size bowls of soupe de poissons, one pot of mussels in curry and cream sauce, a half portion of St. Marcellin, one dessert along with a bottle of Riesling and three or four bottles of Badoit came to 50 euros and 50 centimes. And the cost of the local color at the market was free! And they couldn't have been friendlier. To a person working there, they were a smiley bunch and they loved that we loved our meal. This will now become my regular lunch meal in Lyon. I can't wait to go back. Postcript, we had a good chat with our neighbors at the bar who we had shared food with. They were a French TV documentary director who had gone to the Tisch School of the Arts when he was younger, and who had lived in New York for 10 years, now living near the Sorbonne. And he was making a documentary about the other guys daughter. She is an up and coming classical pianist and he is a professor of classic literature at a university. But boy did they love food. When they first served us our soup and we took a spoon they yelled at us, hurray, taste the wine. We talked about everything imagineable including how he was a member of the group of diners that Adam Gopnik belonged to who had tried to save the Brasserie Balzar in Paris. But one thing led to another and I mentioned that in all the years that I had been coming to Lyon, I had always wanted to bring back one those truffle studded Sabodet sausages from the market but I couldn't find anyone that packed them commercially so I could get it in past customs. The director looked at me seriously and then said, go see SiBilia. She does this. So we had our coffee and we were off to SiBilia and I'm not sure how it came up but as we were about to leave, they dropped their voices and told us they were Jewish. It must have been at least 6 decibels lower. I leaned over to them and said "us too" which they had already figured out. Needless to say, my visit to SiBila was as successful as can be and I am actually on my way out to a friends house for dinner where she is going to cook my gorgeous sausage that is studded with truffles and pistachios for dinner and which I will report on in full later. But I learned an important lesson from my experience. The first thing is, it isn't a bad idea to eat where the locals are eating. If and when you find that place, drop everything and ask for a menu. The second thing I learned was, if you are looking for a way to get pork sausage into the U.S., find a Jew eating a large platter of shellfish and ask him how to do it.

That's exactly how I envisioned you.

I always thought the closer analogy to Zinfandel was mouthwash or toothpaste.

Plus in Manhattan coops the coop boards are often picky and the brokers know which buildings will approve you and which ones won't.