One of my colleagues at the office related this incident:

He and three friends had gone to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday. The restaurant is a fairly sleek and contemporary place that serves upscale French bistro fare. It’s moderately expensive and fields a good (and more expensive) wine list. The chef is well-known in town for his talent and affability.

The group ordered martinis, and my colleague had taken a sip or two — in other words, he was not inebriated — when, in making some expansive gesture, he knocked over his cocktail glass and spilled the martini. He used his nakpin to sop up the liquid, called over the waiter, explained what had happened, and asked for a new napkin, which the waiter promptly brought.

At this point in the narrative, I interrupted and said, “And of course they replaced your martini.” A statement, not a question.

“Uh, no,” said my colleague. “The waiter asked if I wanted to order another one.”

All right, this is a simple incident, an accident that could happen to anybody, and I certainly don’t think the restaurant should replace the spilled cocktail of a knee-walking drunk (if such has not already been ejected from the restaurant). But the good will, the rapport that would have been established by replacing my colleague’s spilled cocktail would have been enormous, perhaps incalculable. It’s the sort of unspoken but deftly performed gesture that brings customers back and earns loyal patronage, compared to which the cost of a jigger of call-brand gin and a smidgeon of vermouth is nothing.

We posted this story on the food and dining blog at the newspaper where I work (and which is not connected with biggerthanyourhead.net), and I was surprised by how many responders said, essentially, “Let the guy buy his own drink! Why should the restaurant pay for his clumsiness?”

Well, O.K., you can take that view, but I think it’s ungenerous. No, one doesn’t want our fine restaurants filled with people who sip half of their Cosmopolitans, knock them over and expect a free replacement. I think the ideal is that we would never expect this sort of magnanimity but that it would be extremely gratifying if it happened. And waiters would appreciate the tip such generosity generated in turn.

 

* Saw this on a menu recently, in the appetizer list: “Toasted bread topped with bruschetta.”

No, people, bruschetta isn’t the topping, tomato/basil (though that has become the cliche) or not; bruschetta is the whole thing, the piece of grilled — not toasted — bread, preferably smeared with olive oil and garlic, mounted by any number of toppings, tomato and basil, certainly, or roasted peppers and eggplant or cheeses or strips of meat or  chopped shrimp and octopus, pretty much anything that makes a savory few bites to whet the diner’s appetite and go well with a glass of simple wine.

Now we’re even seeing in grocery stores, in the refrigerator case, little plastic containers labeled “Bruschetta” that hold chopped tomatoes and basil in olive oil with a few herbs. No, sorry, you can use that stuff to make bruschetta, but it’s not the thing itself.

* This happened at a restaurant last night, a warm night, suitable for sitting outside, which we did, and ordering a bottle of Taltarni Sauvignon Blanc 2005 and by the way I hate the new label. Anyway, the waiter brought the wine, we went through the tasting ritual, it’s quite lovely but not really cold enough; I mean, this is a sauvignon blanc. So I ask for an ice bucket, “Yes sir,” and she brings the bucket, which is filled with ice, and she tries to jam the bottle down in there. Of course it won’t go; the thing is packed with almost solid ice. So she gives up and leaves the bottle sort of perched on top of the ice with a white cloth wrapped around it.

If you took physics in high school, you know that a bottle of wine sitting on top of a mass of ice cubes is not going to get chilled; there’s no conductivity; it needs water so the cold can circulate, so, of course, I pour my glass of water in the bucket to try and get the ice loosened up a little. It takes several glasses of water. Three, actually.

The point here is that no one trained this waiter that an ice bucket needs to be filled with half ice and half water in order to chill a white wine or keep it cold; the bottle needs to be down in there. And it’s amazing how often this situation occurs, even in fine dining restaurants with great wine lists where you would think they know better. And you hate to be a smart-ass and pull rank and say to the waiter, “Look here, I’m a wine writer and I need to tell you how to handle the ice bucket problem,” because then they turn on you and say something like, “There’s no problem, sir, this is how we do it,” and there you sit with your bottle of white wine or champagne perched on top of the ice and everybody sort of pissed off. At least me.

I had lunch this week — o.k., 25 other people were there — with Daniel Schuster, an owner and winemaker of the winery in New Zealand that bears his name, and he had so much to say about wine and winemaking that made so much sense that I could hardly keep up with jotting down his words of wisdom. Let me lay out three sentences, however, that seem to me to be essential and timeless in their relationship to this beverage that we love.

1. “Wine is always part of something bigger than yourself.”
2. “Wine should be shaped by the environment where it grows.”
3. “Great wine has structure, a beginning, a middle and an end.”

Founded in 1986, in the Waipara district of North Canterbury, Daniel Schuster Wines is owned by the Schuster and Hull families. The vineyards are farmed organically, and all processes in the winery are kept as simple as possible. Moving and racking of wines is by gravity; as Daniel Schuster said, “Gravity has been here for a long time, and it’s free.” The down-to-earth nature of that statement, with its hints of practicality and wit, summarizes Schuster’s character. With his bristling mustache and casual clothes, his gruff, hearty and friendly manner, he looks and acts like a farmer, not like one of the world’s great winemakers and consultants.

How is wine a part of something bigger than ourselves? A glass of great wine exists at the apex of a pyramid of historical, geographical, culinary and psychological factors. It encompasses the history of the people who made it and the land they inhabit and where the vineyards exist; it involves the food with which it is consumed, whether a grand four-course meal or a heel of bread, a hunk of cheese and a handful of olives, and the myriad sensual and emotional aspects which it appeals to and appeases.

Those factors have something to do with Schuster’s second aphorism, that wine should be shaped by its environment. This statement is a simple way of expressing the notion of what the French call terroir — the congeries of specific geographical and climatic influences that affect a particular vineyard — but the word “shaped” possesses a lovely implication of gentle malleability. Being shaped by the environment also implies that the winemaking process should be as gentle and non-manipulative as possible, more nurturing than demanding. To that end, Schuster eschews the use of small oak barrels and instead employs large casks, hence avoiding the undue influence of wood.

It would seem logical that great wines possess structure — beginning, middle and end — yet too many wines, especially made in California, feel the same in the mouth from start to finish, bursting forth and then collapsing wearily in a welter of toasty new oak and super-ripe fruit. Winemakers seem to have forgotten the importance of precisely balanced acid, the constitutional element that lends wine life and backbone; too much acid and the wine is thin and nervous, too little and it turns soft and flabby.

Here are my notes on the Daniel Schuster wines we tried with lunch at Erling Jensen: The Restaurant in Memphis. Executive chef is the Danish Erling Jensen; his chef de cuisine is Justin Young.

*Daniel Schuster Sauvignon Blanc 2006, Marlborough. This scintillating wine was served as aperitif. It’s terrifically bright, clean and vivid, bursting with lime, grapefruit and limestone jazzed by electrifying acidity that touches to life hints of tarragon and dried thyme, fig and sunny currant. The limestone element expands in the glass, turning the whole package almost crystalline with purity and intensity. Excellent. About $20.
*Daniel Schuster Petrie Vineyard Chardonnay 2002, Waipara. “Huge, oily, buttery chardonnays are barbaric,” said Schuster, and by contrast offered this amazingly clean, vibrant and buoyant rendition of the often-abused grape. This version seethes with classic chardonnay intensity and flavor yet it’s individual too, its grapefruit-pineapple flavors given a sheen of peach and mango, though there’s nothing cloying or overwhelming here. The acid cuts a swath on the palate, lending the wine refreshing liveliness through a lovely, silken texture. The finish is lovely, pure limestone. Excellent. About $28. The dish: House-smoked salmon belly salad with Bibb greens.

*Daniel Schuster Riesling 2006, Waipara. Very clean, pure and intense, with incisive acidity arrowing through beguiling flavors of peach, pear and white pepper permeated by dried spices and limestone. The texture is seductive, crisp, yes, but almost talc-like in softness, and overall, the balance is exquisite. Excellent. About $18, Good Value. The dish: Roasted monkfish on curried parsnip puree.

*Daniel Schuster Pinot Noir 2005, Waipara. As much as I liked all of these wines and the food they accompanied, this pinot and this course were the highlights of the event; the wine points the way to the future of pinot noir in New Zealand, where much has been proclaimed about the grape without the performances yet to back up those assertions. This, however, is superb, an entrancing satiny, smoky and vibrant amalgam of clean earth and minerals, moss and new leather, black cherry, currant and plum flavors, roses and violets, all shaped by subtle and supple wood notes and a bright line of acidity that would make a Burgundian proud. Exceptional. About $28 and Cheap at the Price. The dish, which sticks in my memory: the succulent and deeply flavorful roasted pheasant breast with truffle-risotto croquettes.

*Daniel Schuster Hull Family Vineyard Late Harvest Riesling 2006, Waipara. This is a romantic version of most late-harvest dessert wines, lovely and delicate but with plenty of acid structure, tender pear, peach and apricot flavors — spiced and macerated — and a super-clean, dry finish to round off the hint of sweetness on the entry. Excellent and Very Charming. About $34 for a half-bottle. Dessert was an individual apple-rosemary Charlotte with caramel sauce.

Visit http://www.danielschusterwines.com

For information about Erling Jensen: The Restaurant, visit http://www.ejensen.com

A restaurant much like the ones you patronize.

The waiter comes to the table, hands out menus, takes drink orders and so on, and then announces that he will recite the roster of specials, the dishes that the chef — or as the chef is known in the restaurant, “Chef” — has created especially for your enjoyment this evening.

A bit of throat-clearing, and he begins:
“First Chef has prepared an appetizer of pan-roasted day-boat scallops on a bed of fresh micro-greens and cucumber coulis with a, um, a, uh, black cherry-wasabi vinaigrette. Another special appetizer features seared organic foie gras with, with, um, a Granny Smith apple-port wine reduction and, uh, gosh, what was, oh, right, caramelized Szechuan pepper-corns. The entree special is, uh, let’s see, um, o.k., got it, whew, ha, the entree special is a fennel-and-violet-encrusted Chilean sea bass with, um, yes, basil-buttermilk smashed Yukon Gold potatoes and, well, damnit! I mean I thought I had this down pat, I mean, I swear, an hour ago I was rattling this shit off like one-two-three, it’s with, wait, wait, ah, baby asparagus and a Meyer lemon-Savennieres demi-glace! Yes, I did it! Yes, I said, Yes, I will, Yes!”

Let’s call a moratorium on this sort of command performance, which demands that waiters memorize long lists of special items, requires diners to sit patiently as the recitation winds on, and then we still have to ask what the details are since we can’t remember them: “What was the sauce with that elk again?”

Chefs cannot, I suppose, help wanting to break out of the strictures of the menu and show off their talents for inspiration and spontaneity, but the burden on the waiters who have to recite the specials for diners sometimes seems unbearable. I have often seen waiters tuck crib-sheets inside their order books and glance surreptitiously at the list, but they always seem embarrassed if we catch them peeking, as if they have failed in some way.

I say, go ahead, print the specials on a card and let waiters read them, especially at restaurants where the specials seem to go on and on and we gradually dissolve in a haze of boredom and forgetfulness.

Better yet, print specials on cards and insert them in menus or have waiters pass them out so we can read them for ourselves.

That’s why computers and printers were invented.

Can Montrachet be closed?
Here’s what the “Food Stuff” column says in this morning’s New York Times:

This TriBeCa pioneer closed for renovations in early summer but has not reopened. Last week Drew Nieporent, an owner, said he was not ready to discuss his plans for the restaurant, which opened in 1985 with David Bouley in the kitchen and soon received three stars from Bryan Miller in The New York Times. It received two stars in its most recent review, in 2004. It is listed in the 2007 Zagat guide with a note about the renovations, and is on the Zagat Web site with the advisory, “call ahead.” But calls to the restaurant have gone unanswered.

“Temporarily closed,” says gayot.com. “Now closed,” says nymag.com.

Woe is me, for I have a soft spot in my heart for Montrachet. It was the first restaurant I reviewed.

I was in New York in January 1986, my first trip alone to Manhattan. I was teaching college English and writing a weekly wine column, free lance, for The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis. I proposed to my editor that the paper should pay for me to go to New York to cover a couple of wine events, and to my surprise, she said yes. Somewhere I had read about this thrilling restaurant in the far reaches of TriBeCa, and I made a reservation.

I was staying at the St. Moritz, a hotel whose glory had faded to a kind of shabby European elegance reflected in most of the people residing there. My room was very small and looked out onto the air shaft.

The night of my appointment at Montrachet, I got a cab at the hotel and told the driver where I was going, 239 West Broadway. I seem to remember that the driver turned and looked at me as if I had asked him to drive me to Bulgaria. And not the nice part of Bulgaria. I, of course, had no idea where we were going, nor did I realize that TriBeCa in those days was a dark, deserted outpost of Manhattan, an industrial moonscape south of Canal. Soon we were driving less than purposefully through dim, narrow lanes past grim warehouses. The system of one-way streets seemed wholly arbitrary. The driver stopped, backed around corners, started up streets we had already driven down, crossed streets we had already crossed. He muttered. He scratched his head. Finally he stopped.

“O.K.,” he said. “I think it’s over there,” and he waved his hand vaguely to the left.

“Where?” I said.

“Over there. I think maybe in one of those buildings. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it, where those lights are.”

I paid the fare, walked across the wide pavement, heading toward the beacon of a few lit windows. And that’s where Montrachet was.

It was the first restaurant I had been in which the waiters wore all black. I was staggered by the chicness. Montrachet was simple and spare, and so was the David Bouley’s cuisine, yet that simplicity and spareness were infused with flavor and character. And cheap! Appetizers on that menu dated “12/85,” which I have here on the desk, ran from $7 to $15; entrees were $18 to $25, desserts $6 to $8. I suppose at the time that the prices were standard for fine dining, but I had few comparisons. Prices now — at least on the company’s website, where Montrachet is still prominently featured — are $12 to $24 for appetizers and $27 to $38 for entrees.
I remember that I chose an appetizer special, grilled shrimp wrapped in paper-thin strips of cucumber. For entree I bravely selected the pigeon with Savoy cabbage; I had never eaten pigeon. The dessert I don’t remember. The bread was wonderful, each roll bearing a crusty chapeau. I must have had a glass of wine but I don’t recall what that was either. What I do remember, so clearly, was that I had never experienced a restaurant like that, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the newspaper to write about it. My editor said O.K., because plenty of people from Memphis went to New York and would like to know about Montrachet. Though I didn’t take up restaurant reviewing as a permanent beat until January 1988 — after joining the newspaper full-time in August 1986 — Montrachet was the beginning.

Montrachet was also the launch-pad for Nieporent’s ambition, and what was one shining restaurant in the obscurity of TriBeCa became TriBeCa Grill and Nobu and Nobu Next Door and the defunct Layla and the new Centrico and Rubicon in San Francisco and restaurant elsewhere, all under the umbrella of the Myriad Restaurant Group.

Montrachet has seen many chefs steering the stove in 22 years, and dips and rises in quality. We had a splendid dinner there 10 or 12 years ago, but we were in New York for an early birthday in November 2002 and the meal there was, oh, it was fine, but not exceptional, not something you would tell people about with pleasure and glee and awe.

And now this. Is the end coming with a whimper, a few notices on websites, rumors exchanged across other tables, a brief buzz in the papers and magazines, a sorrowful shake of a head. Nobody really knows it seems, perhaps not even Drew Nieporent. But I know one thing. I miss my first great restaurant.

If music be the food of love, by all means, play on, but in restaurants, when food is paramount, silence is the best sound of all.

In other words, I hate music in restaurants.

This statement is inspired by a piece about music sound tracks in Manhattan restaurants in yesterday’s New York Times written by Peter Meehan, who also writes the “$25 and Under” dining reviews, the point being that the vast majority of restaurant owners and managers don’t even consider not having a musical backdrop in their dining rooms. The main questions are what kind of music to provide and who will compile the selections, the owner or manager, the staff, or an outside company like the famed Muzak or some other company with a younger, hipper focus.

Nobody brought up the crucial issue of how loud, I mean how LOUD the music should be played.

Here’s an example. We went to The Mermaid Inn (96 Second Ave in Manhattan.) not long after it opened and found the food OK — the restaurant was slammed — but not as good as The Red Cat or The Harrison, which are under the same ownership. The chief problem wasn’t the food, however, but the music, downtown alt rock, that was played so loudly that waiters had to shout at diners, diners had to shout back at waiters and nobody at the table could have a conversation or even say “Pass the bread” without bellowing or writing a note. It was like being in a club, not a restaurant. Restaurant owners may think that’s cool, but it ain’t.
In fact, I find this experience not merely irritating or off-putting but deadly. Playing music — any kind of music — in a restaurant so loudly that the sound dominates the room, calls attention to itself and shatters the concentration that should be centered on the food and wine ruins dining out for me, and I would bet that I’m not alone in this reaction. It seems counter-intuitive to me that restaurants would continue, actually aggressively continue, in a practice that can alienate diners. Isn’t the idea in business to cater to customers?

Equally bad is inappropriate music in restaurants. I can’t tell you the times I have sat in a fine-dining establishment, trying to enjoy some splendid dish, while Tony Bennett practically stands next to the table leaving his heart in San Francisco or Frank Sinatra has a very good year or reggae throbs through the dining room. Or hits of the Eighties! Do we have to be reminded?

No, my friends, if there must be music, let it be almost subliminal, a sound that stays so firmly in the background that we perceive it only when there’s a lull in the activity.
Even better, let there be no music at all except for the sounds that should be music to all our ears: The mild clatter of cutlery, the low murmur or conversation, the sigh of enjoyment and pleasure.

I was reading a piece in the Gourmet magazine for January about the restaurant Gambero Rosso, run by self-taught chef Fulvio Pierangelini, in the Tuscan coastal town of San Vicenzo, the thrust being whether it’s the best restaurant in Italy. Well, that’s not really the point writer Colman Andrews sensibly implies. It’s just all about the food, which Andrews describes as “straightforward” and “guileless” and “surprisingly simple and pure.”
Those remarks impelled me to consider the two types of chefs that seem to dominate the culinary world: Those who are straightforward and guileless and produce simple pure food, embodied by Alice Waters, of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and her many disciples; and the impresarios of ingredients, the grand-standing magicians, manifest in Ferran Adria, of El Bulli outside Barcelona, frequently described as the world’s most important chef, and his proliferating emulators who have unleashed a tide of asparagus foam and spherification upon the land.

I have known people, even chefs, who dined at Chez Panisse and came back to report their disappointment, saying , “There’s nothing to it. Anybody could do that.” There is, actually and deceptively, a great deal to the cuisine at Chez Panisse and just anybody can’t do it, which is what makes eating at the restaurant such a pleasure. Waters’ doctrine of fresh, local ingredients treated with respect and minimal manipulation — but always impeccable technique in the kitchen — produces cuisine of jewel-like flavors and quiet integrity.

I have not eaten at El Bulli — there are 300,000 requests a year for the 8,000 seats available during the season — but in the summer of 2004 I dined at the restaurant La Alqueria, part of a fabulously beautiful and romantic 10th Century Moorish estate in Sanlucar La Mayor, outside Seville. The chef, Rafael Morales, trained at El Bulli and subscribes to Adria’s doctrine that a restaurant kitchen is an extension of the chemistry and physics laboratories and that a chef’s business is to astonish diners by yoking wildly disparate ingredients in startling forms.
The succession of 20 small courses, improbable and extravagant, brought on spoons or little plates, cunningly presented, led to responses that distilled to “Well, that worked” or “Well, that didn’t work,” notions that don’t have much to do with the satisfaction of one’s appetites. Not that the experience wasn’t interesting, intriguing and sometimes fun, but eating at a carnival can also be interesting, intriguing and sometimes fun. Whatever the case, I think that astonishment is not as important as gratification when it comes to fine dining.

Anyway, apropos of simplicity, a few days ago, LL said, “You haven’t made macaroni and cheese in a long time. I think not since we moved to the house,” which was about a year ago. Might as well say it: we love macaroni and cheese. My family ate the dish frequently when my brother and I were growing up, but it came out of a box named Kraft. My model is the macaroni and cheese at the Zabar family’s E.A.T.S. restaurant on Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. An order brings a monumental slab of dense baked macaroni permeated by sharp, tangy, creamy cheeses and surmounted by a thick breadcrumb crust also thick with cheese.
So, my procedure is to make a bechamel sauce (good ol’ Fanny Farmer!) and stir into it in the last moments about a cup and a half of shredded cheeses, on this occasion sharp cheddar, Colby and Monterey Jack. I combine that with the cooked macaroni in a buttered casserole, sprinkle on some quartered cherry tomatoes and diced country ham and then shovel on a mixture of breadcrumbs and more cheese: Parmesan, Gruyere and cheddar. Japanese panko breadcrumbs are available at many groceries nowadays; I use those because they create a crisp crust and they last forever if you store them tightly sealed. Then bake the casserole for 35 to 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Lord have mercy, it was good.

I dithered about trying to decide what wine to serve with the mac and cheese, and finally LL said, “How about something basic and simple.” So I popped the cork on this Da Vinci Chianti 2005 (about $16) and it was indeed, basic and simple and fruity, just the thing, though for the life of me I don’t understand why the Italians, of all people, wouldn’t call the label “Leonardo.” I mean, fer gawd’s sake, the wine in made in the hometown of the great artist, engineer and the worlds’ smartest person ever; how about a little respect?

And then yesterday, which was chilly and rainy, I said, “How about some oatmeal?” because some hot oatmeal would really hit the spot. Now you will accuse me of being excessively purist when I tell you that we use only McCann’s Irish Oatmeal, but truly I have tried every oatmeal I can find and this is actually the best. Yes, you have to stand at the stove and stir the stuff for 35 or 40 minutes, as if you were making risotto, but the result is so rich and nutty, so oaty, so hearty in flavor and texture that it beats all other contenders. LL takes hers with butter and salt; I use brown sugar. Just a bit of milk to stir in. Pure goodness. Wonderful. Satisfying.