I was a careful, erratic driver, never exceeding 55, selecting the middle lane out of the cluster and adhering to it. It was close to 2 a.m. when I got home. I sat in the dark with unformed thoughts racing.
I knew I wouldn’t sleep. My brain was on fire. Finally I called her. Rinnggg, rinnggg, ANSWER THE DAMN PHONE! She answered. To her credit, she didn’t give me the “Do you know what time it is?” bit.
“Well, I saw him,” I said in a voice that was close to breaking.
“Saw who?”
“Daniel. I saw Daniel.”
“Daniel? Daniel who?”
“Daniel!” I hollered. “Your goddamn boyfriend at the goddamn Le Cirque!”
“Le Cirque?” she said. “Jean hasn’t worked at Le Cirque in two years.”
I was being wrapped in a ball of fuzz, of cotton candy. Comprehension was slow in coming.
“Huh? Jean? Jean? The writer said …”
The romance ended shortly thereafter. Self-preservation kicked in. That idiot drive home … I mean I could have …
I saw her once a few years later. She had married a guy with a double problem, gambling and drinking. It was a scenario I’d heard repeated by half the waitresses in half the diners in New Jersey. “Well, I love him, but …”
Anyway, by then a Flaming Redhead had entered my life. But that’s another story.
* * *
Eating and Drinking in Spain
This column appeared on SI.com on March 11, 2005.
Who was it who wanted to know what Barcelona was like, especially in the food and wines department? Andrew swears that he had an e-mail or two on the subject. Which will reap a harvest of a more complete reply than anyone dreamed of.
Spanish wines officially have been “discovered.” Actually they were discovered before I was writing the wine column for the New York Post, and that was 30 years ago, but what they have discovered now is how to put a fancy price tag on them. In this country, that is. In Barcelona and the Costa Brava, the Catalan wines and Riojas, and that’s mostly what we drank, are pretty cheap.
For instance, in an intimate little restaurant called El Salon we ordered the most expensive red wine on the list, a beautiful, silky Rioja called Contino, the ’99 Reserva, which cost 23 euros, or $30. The second time we ate there we had one of the high-end whites, a complex, delicate blend of muscat, sauvignon blanc and Gewurztraminer, the 2001 Gessani Gramonae, which cost 16 euros, or $21.
At least twice we had the most expensive Catalan sparkling wine on the list for $29 and $28. We were drinking gorgeous Burgundian-tasting whites, a blend of chardonnay and a beautiful, deeply colored Catalan grape called xarel-lo (pronounced “shar-ail-yo”) for about the same price, if that much.
We made one winery trip, to Torres, the hub of the company’s gigantic wine empire, in Vilafranca del Penedes, about 50 miles southwest of Barcelona. It’s a 45 million-bottle operation, and I’ve known their wines for many, many years. The quality never has gone down. At one time, my house red was their Sangre de Toro at around $4 a bottle. I used to write about it whenever anyone asked for my favorite bargain wine.
Now I can afford to go a little on the higher end, but if anyone asks me what’s really good in the $12-20 range, I’ll tell them the 2000 Torres’ Gran Coronas Reserva — an aristocratic, Bordeaux-tasting blend of 85 percent cabernet sauvignon, 15 percent tempranillo, the classic red grape of Spain. Or for a white, their 2003 Fransola, a sauvignon blanc with real punch and spice.
The Flaming Redhead and I have a complex way of ranking restaurants, and yes, there’s a chart involved. I just compared the grades with those of the wines we drank in Rome, which we visited a couple of years ago. Barcelona, a seven-point underdog, came up with the victory. So I’ll give you our top half dozen or so, in order, and call it a wrap:
1) Tragaluz: One of the most artistic places I’ve ever eaten in — no, not because of what was on the walls but on the plate. Everything was a creation, a little masterpiece. For instance the fish chowder, probably the best I’ve ever eaten, was set off by a pair of clams in its center, intricately wrapped around each other and propped up like a pair of old pals.
2) El Salon: Very serious in the old sauce department, very innovative.
3) Torres: Yes, the wines swung that election.
4) Café Marabu in San Feliu: A seaside town on the way north, up the Costa Brava. We just walked in, cold. The show stopper there was a fresh, perfectly cooked lenguada, the local fish.
5) El Quim: A tapas bar in the mercat de la bouqueria, the big market off the Ramblas. You sit at a counter in the middle of this gigantic temple of food and choose one, choose two, three, four, name it, from a fascinating assortment of dishes of sausage, fresh octopus, potato frittata, blood pudding, all the things I love.
6) Euskal Extea: A Basque place with knock-’em-dead steaks. For some reason Spain, or at least Barcelona, seems to have the kind of beef you just don’t see on the continent. Linda had a delicious filet the size of a sirloin. I had a prime sirloin so big that … I’m ashamed to admit this … for the first time in my life I could not finish a steak served in a restaurant.
Do me one favor. If you’re going to Barcelona, please avoid a place much favored by the tourist publications. The name is Cal Pep. Nasty, miserable folk who refused to honor a reservation or even admit we made one and just about threw us out. Actually the only genuinely nasty people we met in the eight days we were there.
* * *
New Zealand Food and Wine Report
This column appeared on SI.com on June 3, 2005.
Best wine I tasted, as previously mentioned: 2003 Neudorf pinot noir, Home Block. This is a small property in the Moutere hills outside the arts and crafts city of Nelson. It’s pinot noir and chardonnay country, just like in the Cote d’Or. Both Neudorf Pinot and Chardonnay are fine wines, but those with a little extra class carry the Moutere designation.
The Moutere Pinot I tasted, the 2003, was exotic, with anise and clove and spices. New Zealand is capable of pinots like this, especially in the Central Otago mountains in the south, but none are this good. But then, as a topper to the topper, there was the 2003 Home Block.
Put it in front of me on a blind tasting, and I’d guess it’s from Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, which is marked by an almost Oriental kind of opulence. It was a little deeper than the 2003 Moutrere, a bit longer in the finish, the same exotics. I’d have to go back through 35 years of tasting notes, but off the top of my head, I’d say this is the best pinot noir, outside of Burgundy, that I’ve ever tasted.
So we were there on that particular day with the San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Ira Miller, and his wife, Sharon. Ira is a collector. I mean, he brought back enough New Zealand wine to service half the British Navy, and he immediately asked Neudorf’s owner, Tim Finn, if he could buy three bottles ($43 apiece). I almost slammed him in the ribs. Ugly American … I mean, they make about 10 bottles for the whole country (actually 100 cases, which is little enough). Mr. Finn, being a gentleman, said yes, and as they were wrapping up these treasures, I’m standing there with my finger up my … uh, I mean feeling really out of it. So I finally piped up, “Excuse me, comma, but do you think I could also buy a bottle?” Yes. So now I have one. When do I drink it? Whom do I drink it with? Such problems.
Pegasus Bay in Waipara, north of Christchurch: The first of their wines that I tasted, their 2004 Riesling ($32 in the restaurant, around $15 retail), was in a restaurant. Linda and I stared at each other. We’re in the Rheingau. A Spatlese, beautifully made, clean as a whistle bearing the fine Germanic fruit and acidity. The second one, the ’03 Riesling (same price) was at the winery, and it was different, more new world, with a higher, more piercing acidity, but again, beautifully made.
The young co-owner and winemaker, Matthew Donaldson, is passionate about his wines. Please, would you just taste thi
s one … hasn’t been released yet … and I want to know what you think of this … and here are some pinot noir barrel samples, just pulled them … won’t take you long to get through them. Thirteen to be exact. Lovely fruit, for the most part. Velvety racehorse style. Passion in the winemaking, a desire for elegance. Bottled pinots we tasted carry those same trademarks.
Did someone say that New Zealand can’t make red wines? They’re more elegant now than the ones we tasted on our last trip, three years ago, and we thought they were pretty impressive.
Most of their sauvignon blancs, which are usually what you see over here, are not my style. More of the citrus, grapefruit character I’m not nuts about. But the Pegasus Sauvignon ($12) made up for it in intensity, in a richness and floral quality. Right up and down the line, you saw nothing but quality … their merlots, their rieslings, especially their late harvest dessert chardonnay, of which we bought four bottles.
This is a place you must visit if you’re ever in New Zealand, and plan to have lunch there because right now there is a tremendous competition among the wineries to hire great chefs and put a fine lunch on the table. And at Pegasus, we had the best of all the winery lunches.
The number one meal we had in the entire month, though, was on our last day, and it was at Harbourside in Auckland. It’s not cheap, but it’s a seafood paradise. Two things jumped out at me (I beat ’em back with a spoon). The seafood chowder was loaded with good things, fish, prawns, mussels, etc. And it had neither of the two elements I can’t stand, that thickener stuff that turns chowder into white sludge, and those tasteless, blanded out potatoes.
It was a French-style chowder, on the thinner side with great flavor. Saffron and orange zest in the recipe, both of which worked beautifully. The second was the seafood platter itself, which blended a few things and baked them into a quenelle, or large seafood sausage. Just terrific.
I ate a lot of fish and chips, and the standout was a well-known waterside place high up on the North Island called the Mangonui Fish Shop. And our sleeper find, actually it was the Redhead’s … she saw one of their recipes reprinted in a food magazine … was the Lime Caffeteria in Rotorua, where they have the mineral baths. Just a little lunch place, but everything was done with a deft hand and a light touch.
* * *
More Overseas Adventure
This column appeared on SI.com on June 9, 2006.
I was asked the following: “Did you see anything on your vacation except the inside of wineries?” Yes. We saw vineyards and tasting rooms.
It’s the unexpected that leaves the sharpest memories, as we drove through Germany and Alsace and the Alto Adige in Italy’s far north. Lindau Island in Germany, in Lake Constance, was an unexpected pleasure, an easygoing vacation town sprinkled with surprising grace notes.
St. Peter’s, a modest little alabaster church at one end of the island, is one of Lindau’s grace notes. Plain, just about deserted on the evening when we stepped inside, you were immediately struck by the spirituality of the place. And then near the altar you saw them, twelve 16th century wall murals by Hans Holbein, some fading, totally unprotected, just … well, just there. The 12 stations of the cross.
I thought of them a couple of days later when, foolishly, we followed the hype and signed up for the tour of Linderhof, Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria’s rococo pleasure castle, with its ornate sculpted peacocks and lavish bed embroidery. The place was mobbed. You waited over an hour for a castle tour, which went off every 10 minutes or so. All that for one man’s self-indulgence, while in St. Peter’s, a place of true meaning, nothing but solitude.
The Hotel Turm in the northern Italian town of Fie was a grace note. “You are an artist, is that correct?” The owner, Stefan Pramstrahler, asked Linda. Yes, correct. “So you would like to see what we have in the hotel?”
It was a trip through an art gallery. Original paintings by such as Dali, Klimt, Otto Dix, Picasso, lined the halls, the rooms, the health spa, even the garage. Ancient Russian icons, medieval wood carvings. How many? Maybe 250 pieces, maybe 300. Everything was done with style and exquisite taste, even the ironwork on the railings, the areas of rough marble flooring. We saw doors that went back to the very beginnings of the building, to the 11th or 12th century, doors that almost seemed built in miniature, to accommodate the smaller people of that era. It was a hotel that took your breath away, and the rate sheet was modest. This was no Trump Castle.
I decided that we would drive out of our way to visit my old post in Landstuhl, where the big army hospital is, where I was stationed 50 years ago. Then we would drive the seven or eight K’s up the road to Vogelweh, where our team, the WACOM (Western Area Command) Rhinos, played its home games, and I’d show Linda the field where we played, the gym where I boxed (TKO by LeRoy, Ezekual, Roker at 2:38 of the first).
A big mistake. I had visited my post one time in the last 50 years and seen my barracks without too much hassle, but that was before the word “security” entered the vocabulary. This time I didn’t recognize it. There used to be one gate; now there were five. A German security firm called Pond had been hired by the U.S. Army to handle things. We needed a “sponsor” to get us on the post. I finally got one through the Public Affairs Office, a corporal who couldn’t figure out which building had been my old barracks, even though it was the one in which he was currently billeted. It looked totally unfamiliar. It had had a paint job to get it to conform with the rows of similar buildings. I didn’t even take Linda inside.
OK, let’s look at the field, at the gym. The Public Affairs lady had called ahead to get someone to come down to the security office and get us in. She had spoken to the NCO at the gym, who went by the name of Sergeant Fred. I called him when we got down to Vogelweh, which now goes by the name of Pulaski Barracks. He said he couldn’t spare anybody and hung up. No sense getting mad … look, I lived in the temporary duty barracks here … I just want to show my wife where I … etc.
“Try me in half an hour,” he said. I called in half an hour. Nobody home. I kept trying. The German security guards weren’t happy about my using their phone. Finally I reached him.
“Look, I told you there’s nobody here.” Gosh, what’s a sponsor, anyway? Just grab a guy who has five minutes to kill, who can come down and sign us in.
“No is no, see?” And then it all started coming back. The Army. The tight, stupid faces. The denials — just to show they could do it. The barracks sergeant who cleaned out my locker the day the football season ended and threw out, among other things, draft cards I’d gotten from the Colts and the Browns.
“Let’s get the hell out of this place,” I said to Linda.
I haven’t mentioned restaurants yet. Every trip we make we rate them on a 10-point system that’s too complicated to go into right now. Then we rank them all from one to whatever. Before I give you our top 10, let me say that the only Michelin French three-star establishment that Linda and I ever ate in together was ranked tied for 22nd of 29 restaurants.
Now I know you want to say, aha, reverse snobbishness, but let me explain. We are rating not only the quality of food, and there’s no question that the chefs at our three-star place could put away those of the modest restaurants that got higher rankings. We’re judging the quality of the whole experience. And when you look back at something and groan, then it has fallen short.
The Auberge de L’Ill in Illhaeusern is Alsace’s only three-star. It has proudly carried that banner for as long as anyone can remember. Everyone speaks of it fondly. Less stuffy, less pricey, a really friendly feeling, and so forth. I ate there 31 years ago, all by myself, a very modest little meal, mainly because of the funds situation. It was delicious.
I don’t know if the place has changed that much, or maybe I have or perhaps just the times. The first thing that happens, on setting foot upon the threshold, is that you are instantly made aware of your status, not only as a diner but as a human being. This i
s established by where you are placed in the room or rooms.
Thus the Japanese gentleman and his female companion (wife?), both of them beautifully and expensively dressed, got the table overlooking not one, but two of the carefully maintained gardens. Next rung belonged to those who got the table looking out on one garden. They had the look of spenders. Then came those who were placed in the center of the room because, I would assume, they wanted to be seen. Then came Linda and me, not at the lowest rung. That was reserved for the loud German fella (actually a pretty funny guy; we engaged him in conversation for most of the evening) in the shaggy sweater, accompanied by his tootsie girlfriend.
I was dressed neatly if not expensively. Tweed jacket and black turtleneck, my Gerard Depardieu look. No, not a shirt and tie, but acceptable, if not prosperous looking. Looks a little crazy, actually. Might get a bit troublesome when into the old vino. We got the seat adjoining a window, but a window leading to nothing … a yard, some nondescript machinery, you know, nothing you’d want to look at, but still … glass!
The fifth-rung German and his ladyfriend got the seat under some wall decoration thing that looked like a huge pan. God forbid it should have come loose. Both of them would have been crushed to death.
Well, like idiots we fell into the trap, the 142-euro tasting menu. That’s per person, and it wasn’t served unless both of us got it. (The Redhead made the sacrifice.) And as these meals usually go, the amuse bouche was lovely, the next course was light and friendly, and then boom, boom, boom, here they came, the cream sauce specials, three straight courses, each heavily creamed.
And your system rebels. Getting the bites down becomes a struggle. The third one was a trio of little veal medallions and some mushy green gnocchi. I was finished. I realized that if I took one more bite of either of those things I was in danger of throwing up. There should have been a photographer there to take a picture of me leaving a piece of meat on the plate. The last time that happened was, I believe, in 1958.
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