A Wine Story

Review: Go Fish in Napa

"Now let's go for sushi!" These are the words I heard leaving a friend's party at an inexpensive diner, where the buffet table groaned over with calorie-centric, deli-style delights that few of the svelte Manhattan-ites at the party would dare eat.

Sushi is big right now in virtually every city in America. Why sushi? It's light, fun to eat, usually low in calories, and good for you. One of the newest Sushi restaurants in the Napa Valley is Go Fish, a creation  Mustard's Grill's Cindy Pawlcyn. If you've been to Mustard's Grill, you know Pawlcyn is all about ultra-fresh ingredients and exploring global cuisine.

At Go Fish, Pawlcyn has turned over her toque to Executive Chef, Victor Scargle, and Sushi Chef, Ken Tominaga. Scargle had cooked for Michael Mina at Agua, and was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's rising young chefs. Tominga is a sushi master, recognized as one of the best sushi chefs in Northern California.

Go Fish has a gorgeous interior with big picture windows that looks out over Highway 29 and the vineyards beyond. The bright white walls and very modern looking sushi bar give the place an airy, relaxed feel. You feel good stepping inside.

Though sushi is a high priority here, the menu also offers a raw bar, sandwiches, entrees (in addition to fish, you can find pasta, chicken, and New York steak), and plenty of unique fish dishes.

For starters, a friend and I shared The Louie - a shrimp and crab salad with iceberg lettuce, cucumber, olives, caper berries, avocado, and hard-boiled eggs. This is a traditional salad, served here with ultra-fresh seafood ($29).

I enjoyed my order of Whole Black Bass, served with wild rice and caramelized onion sherry jus ($29), but I couldn't take my eyes — or my fork — off my friend's plate of Black Cod with Alaska miso marinade in a shitake broth ($26). It was impossibly delicious and highly addictive.

When questioned about what fish dish is best, the waiter did say this was a personal favorite. Though I believed him, I was thinking the dish would be like the nearly caramelized and very sweet miso-marinated cod they serve at Nobu in Manhattan. Happily, this was not the case. The dish was only subtly infused with the sweet miso marinade and so good I can still remember it weeks later. We also enjoyed the Whole Leaf Lettuce salad with avocado and pistachios in a cranberry vinaigrette ($8).

I didn't sample the sushi, but from what I saw on tables near us, it looked quite fresh and was served in a very attractive manner. Sashimi runs from $10-30 and the sushi runs from $5-20. The wine list features beer and various kinds of sake, including a sparkling sake that looked interesting. Kudos to whoever created the wine list - you will find many, many half-bottles so you can explore different varietals and wineries.

Overall, what is most impressive about this restaurant is the freshness of the raw bar, sushi, and fish, the creativity of the way the dishes are plated, and the fact that this restaurant is opened continuously from lunch to dinner. In Napa, this is a good thing since you never know when you want to break for lunch while wine tasting. We arrived promptly at five and found the restaurant already half full with diners. Many of the guests looked like locals catching up with a friend over drinks and sushi. If the locals like it, you will too.

Go Fish
641 Main Street
St. Helena, California
(707) 963-0700

BLT Market rocks in Manhattan

"What a quaint, old time general store," you think, waltzing into the new BLT Market, admiring the cute bottles of $10 vinegar, $14 dollar mustard, and bright red and yellow fresh heirloom tomatoes neatly arranged on spotless blond wood shelves. Then you notice the well-dressed, affluent looking crowd chatting in the airy dining room connected to an open-air terrace overlooking Central Park, and you realize you're in the latest restaurant in Laurent Tourondel's successful BLT franchise.

You will be quick to sense Tourondel's focus is on fresh, seasonal ingredients, especially wild and locally grown items. Though every five-star chef in the city has his or her favorite local specialty purveyors, BLT Market concretely expresses this theme via the Disneyland-esque, country store décor and casual, relaxed ambiance. BLT Market's menu rotates monthly, and blackboard specials are updated weekly with first-of-the-season produce.

As you are shown to your table, you will note the tiny pot of blooming rosemary in place of the more traditional flowers, and a quaint clothespin attached to your prettily designed paper menu. A clothespin! Perhaps it's simply a prop to underscore the reality you are not in yet another slick, Manhattan restaurant space. You are in the country, the clothespin seems to say, where everything is farm fresh. These folksy touches continue with the chef's "home style" amuse bouche of upscale "pigs in a blanket," in which the bread is filled with a mix of pork and beef instead of the traditional hot dog.

Garlic bread, brought to you piping hot in its own baguette bag, sets the tone of excellent service and appetizing cuisine. Raw and confit big-eyed tuna with avocado and fresh heart of palm ($18 appetizer) was served like a composed, plated salad, beautiful to look at, quite fresh and tasty, and gone in two bites. Slightly more substantial was the basil crusted halibut with heirloom tomato water ($32) served in a very large, deep pot. By contrast, the enormous seven-pepper crusted grass fed NY strip steak ($39) was so large three people could easily make a meal of it.

Wine lists are a personal passion, and BLT Market has some interesting choices from all points of the globe. Always eager to check out a potential new trend, I allowed myself to be talked into the Pinot Noir-based Domaine Marc Morey rouge ($70), though the region, Chassagne-Montrachet, is traditionally known for its Chardonnay wines. After switching to the Domaine Fernand Lechéneaut et Fils ($95) from the more traditional Pinot Noir region of Morey St. Denis, one can see that the Romans had the right idea a few thousand years ago when they firmly declared certain regions best for Chardonnay, and others better for Pinot Noir.

Great cuisine is to be expected in all BLT restaurants, and most top Manhattan restaurants in general, so the freshness of the offerings is as expected. What's most delightful about BLT Market is the lively, open space and upbeat vibe of the place itself. Tourondel, it seems, has figured out who his market is: affluent neighborhood locals and Ritz-Carlton guests who don't mind paying top dollar for healthy, seasonal cuisine and excellent service in an easy-going, informal environment. It's a fun place with great food and excellent service that motivates one to return again and again.

BLT Market
1430 6th Avenue (at Central Park South)
New York, NY 10019
(212) 521-6125

Sips from Decanter Magazine

Here's some news from this month's issue of Decanter magazine ...
--- Bonny Doon producer Randall Grahm is building an all-Riesling winery in Washington State (a breakthrough for Riesling in the Chardnonnay-obsessed US).

--- In the UK, consumers are loosig interest in high alcohol wine ...

--- A juicy feature on Amarone by Margaret Rand, which is overlooked here in the US and, rather shall I say, an acquired taste.

--- And Clive Coates MW's well-timed cover story "The Curious Incident of the Oxidsed White Burgundy," as I've just been to a lecture/tasting in which several white burgundies (the same wine, one in screwcap, one in cork) were judged side by side.

Also, if you are a member of Stephen Tanzer's web site, you will see a long rant about an unhappy US buyer who found wines he ordered from this area were corked and the sellar refused to take them back. Interesting reading!

Review of NYC Eleven Madison Park

I think some of you know I write restaurant reviews for international papers like London's Financial Times.  In Boston I wrote newspaper reviews as well - and now, in NYC, I'm doing the same.

Here's a just -today published reviews of my experience at Eleven Madison Park, one of Danny Meyer's restaurants in mid-December. We had three really great wines with this price-fixe meal, including:

2000 Château Mangot (France, Bordeaux, Libournais, St. Émilion Grand Cru)

First impression upon opening was that it appeared young, with an aroma of violet, fresh tar, earth, some sort of elusive mineral, slate, truffle, and tobacco. On the palate it seemed a bit thin, with flavors mirroring aroma.

1998 Château Deyrem Valentin (France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Margaux)

Preferred wine. Darker purple and more intensely aromatic with a floral aroma hinting at minerals and a deep vegetal scent, and something akin to crushed violets and leaves. Loved the perfumed nose of violets and blackberries. Very silky on the palate with nice balance and a long, sweet finish.

You probably noticed we choose two Bordeaux wines ... this reflects a trend of people ordering the wine they like, rather than pairing it to go with specific dishes - rather difficult when four people are enjoying different tastes and textures.

Happy Valentine's Day!

New Celebrity Spots for 2007

You've probably heard that L'Orangerie in LA is closing - or will have closed - by the time you read this. We had a last meal there (Nancy Regan and her entourage was at the next table) you can read about here

The space will soon become a home for a new Nobu. Tom Colicchio is bringing a craft restaurant to Century City, and Laurent Tourondel is making a BLT in the Le Dome space where I had so many lunch meetings during my TriStar and MGM days.

I also hear Gordon Ramsay will set up a restaurant at the Bel Age hotel. Have to say, we had a rez for lunch at his new restaurant in the New London hotel in NYC yesterday, but everyone seemed to be in St. Barts because it was completely empty. We will try again Thursday and see if it's as great as some reviewers say it is.

Frank Bruni's Review of Wine Service at Russian Tea Room

     If you're reading this blog you have your own wine stories about service in restaurants. A few days ago, Frank Bruni - critic for the NYT - wrote a one star review of the revamped Russian Tea Room (fond memories of having lunch there with my agent in its original incarnation, when it was the penultimate of the literary scene).

First, the review was a bit early. But what I found intriguing is this excerpt from that review.

"And what a problem. Although we had ordered a 1998 French Burgundy for $84, we got a 2001. We flagged the discrepancy, and for the next 15 minutes, as we ate our appetizers and thirsted for pinot noir, both the wine and sommelier were on the lam. When he showed up, he presented us with a similar 1998 — the listed one was unavailable — for $20 more. He paused, seemingly waiting for us to agree to spend that.

Then, in the manner of a car salesman, he said: “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll call it an even $90.”

Could he throw in cruise control? A leather interior?

He later dropped the price to $84, the right end to a wrong situation that typified the restaurant’s clumsiness."

     Now I have to say that it's great PR for a restaurant to use this situation to generously tell the patron he or she will have a subsitution of a higher priced wine at the same price as the one ordered. This happened a few months ago at Chanterelle in NYC, when the maitre d' gave us a bottle around ten dollars more for the same price. He even copied the wine menu so we can study it in advance next time we came in.

    It's said that if a patron is dissatisfied with a restaurant he or she will tell eight people. If satisfied, no one will hear a word, yet if that patron is pleased above expectation they'll become a fan.

     A more recent visit to Chanterelle, in which we splurged on a pricey Bordeaux, revealed some secrets: restaurants, especially smaller restaurants, aren't set up to store wine. They need to buy and sell on a regular basis, with no excess inventory. Increasingly, this is why wines sell out so fast so a patron is forced to order a different, usually more expensive wine.

     It happened today at Danny Meyer's Modern. We were in the mood for a bright, spicy Shiraz and choose one from Australia's Barossa Valley. They were sold out, and suggested one $20 more.

     Clearly, restaurants can go broke if they are forced to substitue sold-out wines with more expensive wines on the list. What do you think? Please use the comment feature to let me know.

     Oh, and here's some feedback from Bruni's review:

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