Assessing Restaurants

[Steve Plotnicki]

JD & Cabrales - Well let me just give you a P-ism. There is a difference between eating for pure enjoyment and eating to learn more about cuisine. And if the only reason you ever eat is for pleasure, then of course Cabrales post holds true. It assumes that your palate is fully mature and that your "taste" isn't going to change. But if the reason you eat is to expand your knowledge of cuisine, that's a completely different thing.

For years I avoided going to the restaurant Arpege. It seemed antiseptic to me and there was always something around that sounded more delicious. But when Passard banished meat from his menu and began serving meals that were mostly vegetables, it piqued my curiosity. So I went this past January and I have to say that it was far from the most delicious meal I ever had. But it was definitely one of the most interesting meals I ever had if not the most interesting. But if your purpose is sheer deliciousness, I would never recommend that you go there. But if you are the type who wants to think about a meal like it was conceptual art, by all means hurray up and book.

The reason to go out and try new restaurants and taste things you wouldn't ordinarily taste is not to necessarily learn how to like them, it's to learn how to be a better taster. So the issue isn't that a diner needs to conform their taste to commonly held notions, it's that a diner needs to understand what the commonly held notions are in order to taste well. You know I consider myself a pretty good taster of wine, but I have friends who wipe the floor with me. Why? Because they have extensive experience tasting the great Bordeaux and Burgundy from the 20's through the 40's and I have hardly any experience with those wines. And when a 1999 Musigny exhibits characteristics that were found in 1949 Musigny's, they have the basis for knowing and I don't. And it has nothing to do with liking the '99 Musigny. It has to do with knowing where it falls on the never ending continuum that is wine. The liking part is the gravy.

Hollywood - I wish I could help you but the last vintage I bought Bordeaux in was 1995. And even most of what I bought from that vintage I sold off. But I always thought the best value for classified Bordeaux were wines like Grand Puy Lacoste, Leoville-Barton and Angelus. And even those are not cheap and I have no idea what newer vintages sell for today. But back around 1995 they were selling from about $45-$75 a bottle. But I could give way more info on Rhone wines and they are cheaper too

Wilfrid - The two best bottles of Rioja ever made (at least in my opinion and I know it is shared by quite a few people) are the 1958 Marquis de Riscal and 1954 Cune Vina Real. Fortunately I bought up a slug of each wine when they were cheap. '54 is my birth year and most other wine from that year is amazingly crappy so I got lucky there. When it cools down

and the weather makes us want to eat things like lamb stew, we'll go have dinner at Marichu one night and I'll bring them along. They are both astonishing and what makes then interesting is that they were made during an era when they tried to make Rioja like French wines. The Cune is cut like a Bordeaux with an attempt at depth and the Marquis is all perfumey and cherryish like a Burgundy. After the 50's, except for a few good wines in 1964 and 1968, Rioja went into the crapper. Then in 1981 and 1985, La Rioja Alta made some great wines. And finally in 1994, the whole revitalization of Rioja started and wines from Artadi, Contino and a few others changed the way the market views Rioja (and the pricepoint too.) As for other region in Spain, I've had many of the wines but never developed an affinity for them. Some of those older Vega-Sicilias are great wines, but I find them more Cabernet-like than Rioja which is more in the style of Burgundy which suits me well.

[tommy]

shouldn't you be sitting on a beach somewhere getting a massage? what am i missing here.

[ngatti]

SP said:

And other things while being delicious challange your assumptions about food.

I guess that’s my point. The food or dish stripped of the social constructs and the conventional wisdom of what the individual person expects to taste good. Good food, and here I mean complete dishes and not individual ingredients (those may very well be an acquired taste), is not an acquired taste. Now I’m using the word taste in a quite literal sense here. I like your goujonette/foie gras analogy, as it’s pretty accessible. If you took a person and deprived them of all senses save the sense of taste and then fed them the fish/foie gras, I think you would get a much more favorable response than if you put it on a plate and tried to feed it to that person after offering a description of the dish and then displaying the dish for that same person to eat. Using this example, the dish is inherently delicious. It is the individual’s food prejudice baggage that determines what is an acquired taste and what is not.

It is the fact that a food or dish is inherently delicious that allows it to become an acquired taste at all. Hence my argument that all good food is indeed obviously delicious. That statement should change. I guess our social constructs and prejudices about certain foods keep those foods from being ‘obviously delicious’. But they still taste good!

I don’t have much problem with the food being cerebral. Your lolly example is a good one. My argument would stem from the premise that one should start from the point that the dish is ‘obviously delicious’. Then go ahead and get cerebral, get very cerebral. It still has to taste good lest no one will ever acquire enough of a taste for it to appreciate the intellectual aspects. I think there may be a line that can be crossed here. Too cerebral/ not enough pleasing flavor may well result in an increasingly Pyrrhic culinary victory (lobster with blueberry sauce, anyone?). Valiant yes, but without the taste factor ultimately a failure.

Nick

[Steve Plotnicki]

Nick - Maybe I can cut through it here by pointing out the following about your response. There is no reason that red pepper lollys should work and lobster with blueberry sauce not. Forget about our starting point on those two food items. Because I am certain that the notion of the lollys would sound awful to us before we tasted them, just as the lobster does now. And I am certain the sole/foie combo sounded awful to people once upon a time as well. But what changes people's perceptions are chefs working their magic. Because I am sure that there is a chef out there who can make the lobster and blueberry sauce be wonderful if he analyzes how to get the flavors to balance right.

Last week before I was in the Berkshires, we spent a night in Boston and had dinner at East Coast Grill which was loads of fun. But the ice cream shop Christina's, purpotedly Boston's best is on the same block and we ate dessert there. I had a scoop of subtly delicious Izuki Bean along with a similarly subtle scoop of Banana. At first I was a bit surprised that the banana didn't have more flavor to it, more gusto. But then I looked up at the board of flavors and realized that there were a number of unusual flavors or combinations and that the house style was to keep it subtle across the entire flavor spectrum. That obviously very conscious decision by the ice cream maker allowed him/her not only to make unusual flavors, but to ensure that they didn't clash with any of the othertraditional flavors. This point was perfectly encapsulated the next day when reading in Boston magazine how the owner made Avocado ice cream for a birthday and how delicious it was with the "subtle" taste of avocado.

The point I'm trying to make here is diners do not eat in vacuums. We are subject to the nuances and creativity of chefs. Getting avocado ice cream to work, is the result of applying a certain philosophy towards making ice cream. A certain technique if I may. And diners and their prejudices, both ones they currently have and ones they left behind are products of how good chefs are at their jobs. And why it took until 2000 for someone to figure out how to get people to like a red pepper lolly is one of the great mysteries of food. Because as bad as the combination of steak and bananas sounds, it won't sound bad when someone figures out how to do it right.

I think there is a gap in the way we talk about food, and the way we are taught to analyze it compared to other disciplines. Because there is an aspect to the red pepper lolly story that is dependant on the education of our palates. Some progression of flavors over time that *sets up* our palate to accept the lollys. It's the same in music. Without being able to tell you exactly what the chord changes are, I can tell you that what struck me as funny about the Nirvana era of rock music (not funny ha ha,) was that the basic chord progressions the bands often relied on were ones that used to be rejected by audiences as not obvious in prior generations. Yet, those same changes were dependant on the changes prior generations relied on. And I think that is analagous to your statement of "inherently delicious." But what I'm trying to add to your point is that inherently delicious is both natural, like a ripe peach, and learned, like the same peach sliced and served atop a filet of grouper. And the likelihood is that well before declaring the combination of peach and grouper delicious, someone will find it interesting, i.e. cerebral, and delicious will follow at a later point in time.

[hollywood]

Hollywood - I wish I could help you but the last vintage I bought Bordeaux in was 1995. And even most of what I bought from that vintage I sold off. But I always thought the best value for classified Bordeaux were wines like Grand Puy Lacoste, Leoville-Barton and Angelus. And even those are not cheap and I have no idea what newer vintages sell for today. But back around 1995 they were selling from about $45-$75 a bottle. But I could give way more info on Rhone wines and they are cheaper too 

Cheaper=good. Sign me up as a Rhone Ranger.

As for Nirvana, where would they have been without The Replacements?

[Wilfrid]

Steve, thanks for the discussion of Rioja's. I ate at Marichu once and was a little underwhelmed - maybe we didn't order right. I would like to develop to a greater degree the affinity I already feel for some of the wines of the Ribera del Duero. The guy making Pingus - which is somewhat steeply priced - is also involved in releasing some lesser wines under the Hacienda Monasterio label. They can be found In New York, and they are pretty good.

on the subject of eating out of curiosity, I just read an article in Gourmet about a restaurant in California which serves only "live" food, which turns out - disappointingly - to mean a weird selection ofnon-flesh uncooked stuff. Clearly a "folly". i would be most interested to eat there, but I bet it's horrid - y'know, in the great scheme of things which includes foie gras, grouse and tripe.

[bushey]

I think the concept of delicious comes first.

It seems intuitive that the cerebral inspiration to pair foods together in a new way or apply a previously untried technique to a new food comes, either consciously or sub-consciously, from a feeling that the end result will be delicious. I know that’s how it works for me, when I decide to make up new recipes. It’s because somewhere in my mind, in the memory bank of tastes and smells and textures, is the assumption that it will “work”, i.e. will taste good. And amazingly, it sometimes does.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Bushey - Some people see a meal being cerebral as being synonymous with enjoyment. So while I certainly can't disagree that delicious goes first, where you will find broad disagreement is definition what delicious is. That's why I think all methods of enjoying something should count.

Wilfrid - You know I am not a fan of the wines of Ribero del Duero. And I specifically dislike Pingus. Here I've included notes to a a Rioja tasting I set up at a friends house last year. I think the Pingus appears at the end.

Topic: TN: Old Rioja in Greenwich Village

Author: Steve Plotnicki

Date: Mon Jun 25 06:21:26 2001

I had been acquiring various bottles of vintage Rioja over the past few years and had been looking for the right opportunity to try them. Finally a friend of mine offered to hold a tasting in his home and hired a chef to cook 10 of us a meal to accompany the wines. A stellar cast of New York wine personalities were in attendence including representatives from Sherry-Lehman, The New York Wine Warehouse and Internet Wine Consulting, not to mention the “civilians” present who are merely maniacal when it comes to wine, especially old wine. All of these wines were acquired from Christie’s in London except for the 1942 Ygay which was acquired at Christie’s in New York and the first three wines which were acquired when they were released at retail in New York.

1981 La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 890 - I’ve had some great bottles of this but it this was somewhat shut down. The usual fragrant nose has abated. It was a touch meatier than I remember it. Let it sit for five years? Will last for a few decades 90 points

1978 La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 890 - Where’s the fruit? Many at the table hated this. I didn’t think it was without charm although I can see what the complaints were about. Is this just closed or is it really void of fruit? 87 points

1976 Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia - Sadly corked

1976 Lopez de Heredia Vina Bosconia - Someone brought this bottle so we actually had a replacement for the Tondonia. I didn’t really pay attention to the bottle but someone said it was the Bosconia. Maybe someone from the Spanish contingent can weigh in with the difference between the two bottlings. Not much too this. Some cherry-cola flavors. Again, a wine that I think was closed and can use a few hours to show it’s stuff 88 points

1968 Marquis de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva- Some tangy fruit here but beneath a sheath of acid which I’ve come to expect from Ygays. Do these wines ever resolve the acid? More on that later. The first really “good” wine of the night but it needs time. At least 10+ years. 91 points

1968 Marquis de Riscal Reserva - A different style than the first three wines. Burgundian in style and much more elegant. Classic tart-cherry flavor with a bit of funk (brett?) American oak present here but it plays up the sweetness. Someone said the wine is on the edge and in their experience you need to drink it up fast after the bottles opened because it’s in danger of dying. I didn’t find that here. In fact, it was improving in the glass and I think it will go for at least five more years maybe more 90 points

1964 Cune Vina Real - The first in a flight of three Cune Vina Reals. As much as the Riscal was Burgundian, this was Bordeaux-like. A huge wine for a rioja. Young, darker berry and meaty flavors, cedar and new oak. Will go for at least fifteen more years, possibly more. Great balance and delicious now but will be even better down the road 92 points

1962 Cune Vina Real - A poor man’s version of the ’64. Lacking the oomph and the focus too. I had this a few months ago and there is not much change from last time. A nice drink but I don’t see this getting much better 90 points

1954 Cune Vina Real - I had been searching for a birth year wine to no avail when Sasha Katsman gave me the lowdown on this beauty. Well he was right and he was there in person for the verification. The first bottle had a loose cork and was completely oxidized. But bottle number two, sheesh, just a giant of a wine. Really Bordeaux like, maybe like a St.Emillion (Angelus?). But as Sasha warned me, this wine is ridiculously young. It wouldn’t surprise me if it could age for another 20 years without missing a beat. This one needs an encore performance so the wine can linger in the glass. My second favorite of the night 94+ points

1959 Marquis de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva- A fine enough wine but not in the class of the three Cunes or even the ’68 Ygay and it certainly suffered by coming after them. This needs to be drunk up before the ’69 and all three Cunes 88 points

1958 Marquis de Riscal Reserva - I’ve had this a few times before and boy I love this wine. It has Rioja magic going for it. It’s balanced just like a good Burgundy which is the style of Rioja I find most appealing. Beautiful sour-cherries mixed with almonds which comes from the new oak. Just lovely on the palate without any coarseness at all. Good weight for a rioja. It’s hit and miss with this one as I’ve had bottles that were completely dead but this one still had a good 5-10 years to go and will keep developing. My wine of the night 96 points

1954 Marquis de Murrieta Ygay Reserva - When a second birth year wine showed up at auction I figured I would give it a try. Sure enough, at the end of the night I polled the table on their favorites and this received the most first place votes. 5 people voted for it and 3 for the ’58 Riscal. I think it was the most complete wine of the night and has hit full maturity. Not quite like the ’58 Riscal but surprisingly more like that than the other Ygays. This wasn’t marked Castillo Ygay, just Ygay. I’m not sure what the difference is. Drink now. 92 points

1942 Marquis de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva - Fifty nine year old wine? It’s not possible. I’ve had wines that didn’t have this much fruit and structure to go with it that were just out of the cask. After having the ’68 earlier in the evening, this bottle made sense. I’m sorry we didn’t serve them together. Will this wine last 50 more years? I’m not sure but I would bet on 25. Still not a lot of secondary flavors (amazing) and I think the score will improve when that happens 92+ points

1942 Lopez de Heredia Vina Bosconia - Everyone is going to have forgive me as I''ve drawn a blank on this one. By this time of the night, a bit of palate fatigue had set in and there aren''t any distinguishing charcateristics that are helping me write notes 5 days later. But that can’t be a good sign as I clearly remember the next 2 wines. I’m going to have to read someone elses notes to refresh my memory.

1920 Lopez de Heredia - No Bosconia or Tondonia here. I guess they didn’t bottle them that way back then. The only markings on the label were “Cosecho 1920” and, excuse me if I get this wrong, “Ripense Partes Todas” which none of use could figure out how to translate. Really interesting. We thought it would be dead but it was quite alive. It still had loads of fruit but a little disjointed. It suffered from being the 14th wine served. It needed a good long airing out in a decanter as well as some time to brood in the glass. I’m sorry it didn’t get the chance to show its stuff as I think it would have been special. 81 year old wine? It can’t possibly be. If you told me it was wine from the 50’s I would believe you 90 points

1996 Pingus - Okay someone snuck this in. There’s always a wise guy in every crowd. This was my first Pingus. It smelled like Rayas to me but mentholated. Okay can I say I hated it? Maybe it was that it was served after 14 “elegant” wines or maybe because it’s such a fruit bomb at this stage? I don’t know. But it kept reminding me of an Aussie Shiraz. I recently experienced the same phenomenon when Fox Creek Reserve was served after wines like ’78 and ’61 La Tache and ’59 Latour. But I have to say the Fox Creek was much worse than this. No rating and I’m trying to be opened minded when I have it again without the clutter of mature wines around it.

I thought it a really good night. Some of the tasters were a bit underwhelmed but Rioja is like that. It’s elegant and if you like more powerful wines you might miss the point of it all. Call it an acquired taste. One thing I learned from the tasting is that the house style really varies. The differences were much broader than I expected and wines like the Vina Real were at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Castillo Ygays. It''s hard to get a handle on what one would call the best representation although my gut tells me the Riscal style is on point but maybe I''m biased because that is my favorite.

But no matter which style you preferred, nobody could deny that these wines were amazingly young. We were afraid to open them much before serving as we thought they might die quickly but that turned out to be a mistake. My understanding is that most of these wines were re-released by the wineries especially for Christie’s and if that’s true, it would explain their condition. Almost every wine could have used a good one hour decant and some in excess of two hours. I’m looking forward to doing this again in a few years as I have additional bottles of every wine except the 1920 and 1942 Lopez.

[Wilfrid]

Thanks, Steve. It does seem odd to go to the Pingus after those other bottles. Your comments don't entirely surprise me. The sommelier at Beacon, who was excited about having some bottles of Pingus on his list (maybe a year back), made an analogy with what the Grange had done for Australian wine, which is entirely consistent with your reaction. Maybe I'll get around to satisfying my curiosity one day - but I do enjoy the Hacienda Monasterio Reserva as a drinking wine.