Mouthing Off

Last night, I met Food & Wine’s super-plugged-in Berlin-based correspondent Gisela Williams for dinner at Weinschenke Weinstein in Berlin. Gisela, among others, had told me that this rustic-looking wine bar in the trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood was a must-try. The smallish, super-casual room, low-lit and lined with shelves of empty wine bottles, was a bit of a local secret. Gisela thought it would be a good first introduction to traditional German food. It also turned out to be my first lesson in why Berlin is such a cool food city: It is unbelievably affordable!

In addition to an intriguing wine-bar menu, with dishes like goulash made from necks of organic Mangalitza pigs with Bohemian dumplings, there were two seasonal tasting menus. Gisela and I opted for a fourth option: the “Less Is More” tasting menu, an eight-course feast of market specials that included marinated lamb on a bed of fennel couscous and fried vendaceon (a small white fish) over potato and mustard-gherkin salad, all for just 38 euros per person. Most wine by the glass on the stellar, Germany-focused list was around 5 to 7 euros. Weinstein, I learned, operates on the Chez Panisse philosophy of highlighting excellent local produce in straightforward, delicious (and super-traditional) preparations.

By the time course number four—an incredible roasted fish called Zander (kind of like perch or pike) that was caught by fisherman Wilhelm Gehrt in the pristine waters of Lake Zechlin in Brandenberg—was served, we were joined by Telse Bus, the creative director of an innovative catering company/art group known as the Foodists. Telse was there to fill us in on her latest food/art project, a collaboration with Mario Grünfelder, the star mixologist at Berlin’s coolest bar, Tausend. The idea was to open a secret restaurant behind the bar at Tausend that will serve modern riffs on traditional German food (“Cool German food,” according to Telse) in an interactive, thought-provoking, artistic manner. She wouldn’t spill more details except to say that it opens next Wednesday. I’m heading to Bar Tausend tomorrow night, so I’ll have to see if I can get Mario to illuminate me more on the new project.

Lately, chefs, writers and friends keep raving about Berlin and the word they’re using to describe the restaurant scene isn’t delicious or amazing or innovative but cool.  What makes a city’s food scene cool? I’m in Berlin this week for ITB, the world’s largest travel conference, and I’m on a mission to find out. I’ll be blogging daily and you can also follow me on twitter (jenfoodandwine) as I eat my way around Berlin with some of the city’s hippest food insiders.

A preview of my itinerary:
*Check out a handful of new organic, eco-chic hot spots, including Foodorama, a newly opened carbon-neutral restaurant (the first in Europe), and Gorilla, a new organic fast-food chain with a juice-making station and vegetarian sandwiches.

*Delve into the underground dining scene with a stop at Cookie’s Cream, a modern vegetarian restaurant hidden behind the traditional Westin Grand hotel and run by the city’s nightlife impresario Cookie.

*Meet the Foodists, the übercool Berlin-based catering company that combines food and art. It will be opening a new “hidden” restaurant next Wednesday behind the bar at Tausend, one of Berlin’s most stylish nightclubs.
 
*Eat at some of the trendy new places that have put an upscale spin on food stand–type foods. Bandol sur Mer, once a kebab stand, is now a tiny Provençal hot spot.

*Taste traditional German dishes (like bratwurst, curry wurst and Wiener schnitzel); eat at some much-buzzed about Michelin-starred restaurants (including Ma Time Rae and Fischers Fritz); and drink a few steins of German beer.

Tonight, I head to Weinschenke Weinstein, on a tip from my friend Braden Perkins of Paris’s Hidden Kitchen.

Not long ago I was eating dinner at a tiny winebar called Cantina Do Spade, in Venice, when a German woman at the table next to me made a request for parmesan on her risotto nero. "I can give it to you. But you will ruin your meal," the woman who was serving her said. Her tone suggested that ruining the chef's risotto would be a very unwise thing to do. (Risotto nero, of course, is black thanks to cuttlefish ink, and as any good Venetian will tell you—evidently quite directly—fish and cheese don't go together. At least when in Italy.)

I feel like a Venetian restaurant proprietor when it comes to Sauvignon Blanc and oak. Why would you want to ruin such a spritely grape by slathering it with a bunch of oak? But, oddly enough, again while I was in Venice, at the Ristorante Lineadombra (which I heartily recommend), the proprietor effectively insisted we drink a magnum—there were six of us, so it wasn't that extreme—of the 2003 Inama Vulcaia Fumé Sauvignon ($30). And I thought it was just terrific.

This is what fixed ideas are for, I suppose: to be zapped out of existence. Anyway, the Vulcaia Fumé still had the citrus notes characteristic of Sauvignon Blanc, but it also had a savory, leesy depth that was surprisingly appealing, and a silky textural richness that was very un-Sauvignon. Of course, it was also several years old, but even so I had to rethink my absolutes. The wine is fermented in 25% heavily toasted barriques, then given battonage every six weeks for about eight months. It ought to be appalling. Instead it's delightful. And it was very good with the large and, thanks to my rudimentary Italian, somewhat mysterious-of-species roasted fish we had with it.

Anyway, I got back to the states, and decided I ought to taste the 2007 Inama Vulcaia Sauvignon ($23) just for comparison. (Inama, by the way, is in Soave, close to Venice.) Fermented and aged in stainless steel, it's still a fairly rich style of Sauvignon, probably thanks to the malolactic fermentation it undergoes. But it's more familiar in its bright grapefruity citrus character and tart finish. And it's also mighty fine; a pleasure to drink. Unfortunately, neither of these wines are the easiest to find, but if you contact the importer, DallaTerra, they may be able to help.

I celebrated the new year in Boston, which gave me the opportunity to check out Barbara Lynch’s innovative new cocktail bar, Drink. The genius of Drink is that there is no actual drink list—daunting to the cocktail novice, but at the same time, extremely helpful in my pursuit of cocktail knowledge. The lack of choice forced me to ask questions and interact with the bartenders. Bar manager John Gertsen helped me better understand my go-to cocktail, the gin and tonic. I wanted to know what, in his opinion, is required to elevate a G&T to perfection. His expert opinion:

1)   A good, aggressive gin that won’t be overwhelmed by the tonic water. While English gins are always best with a classic G&T, Drink also stocks Anchor Brewing Co.’s Junípero, which has a great, junipery snap.

2) Tonic water that has a bit of a bite to it. Gertsen makes a light-pink-colored tonic water at Drink with citrus peel, citric acid, cinchona bark and quassia chips, which have a resinous, piney quality.

F&W's fabulous Washington, DC correspondent Amanda McClements gave me the idea of hosting a Hawaiian luau on inauguration night. I was thinking of serving a Polynesian-themed tiki cocktail like the Mai Tai but have always found the drink a bit too sweet and fruity. If I was serious about becoming a sophisticated cocktail drinker, could I really get away with serving this? Continuing my 2009 mixology appreciation mission, I called Jennifer Colliau, the trendsetting Bay Area bartender at the Slanted Door and Charles Phan's soon-to-open Chinese restaurant, Heaven's Dog. San Francisco is hot on the heels of NYC's mixology scene and Colliau is leading the chase with her fierce obsession with exceptional ingredients.

Colliau said that the 1944 Trader Vic Mai Tai was actually one of her favorite cocktails. However, for years, she shunned the drink and even refused to serve it at the Slanted Door. A great Mai Tai needs orgeat (almond syrup), and in her opinion there was no good commercial orgeat on the market. The solution: She’d make her own. Colliau’s orgeat is made from real almonds, so it has fat and proteins (unlike commercial varieties made with sugar syrup and almond extract) that add a full-bodied, lush richness to the drink. Colliau started making other elusive pre-Prohibition cocktail ingredients like pineapple gum syrup (which I learned adds viscosity to Pisco punch) and a seasonal raspberry gum syrup, and is distributing them to top Bay Area bartenders through her company Small Hand Foods.

Unfortunately for me, Colliau’s orgeat and other ingredients are available only in the Bay Area (score one for the San Fran cocktail scene). They’re available at Cask, the new artisanal spirits store from the team behind the swanky speakeasy Bourbon & Branch, as well as the Jug Shop. Colliau is hoping to start distributing on the East Coast next year.

Click here for her serious-minded Mai Tai recipe.

I've already hit the slopes twice this season and have at least three more trips planned for 2009. Here are the newest après-ski hangouts I'll be visiting after spending a day in the snowboard park.

*The Hourglass, the laid-back bar in the spectacular new Stowe Mountain Resort at the base of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont, has an awesome selection of regional microwbrews (the signature Hourglass Ale is made exclusively for the resort by Rock Art Brewery) and an überlocal bar menu from chef Sean Buchanan, which includes dishes like dry-rubbed Misty Knoll chicken wings with mint-yogurt sauce and flatbread topped with delicious artisanal ingredients like Grafton aged cheddar and Maple Brook Farm mozzarella.

*The new $1 billion Snowmass Base Village in Aspen, Colorado, has a handful of hot new post-ski spots, including Liquid Sky at the base of the new gondola, plus two new restaurants in the pipes from Jeffrey Klein, founder of Aspen’s Matsuhisa.
   
*The 8100 Mountainside Bar and Grill in the new Park Hyatt Beaver Creek in Colorado is conveniently located at the base of Beaver Creek Mountain. Its 20-seat bar has a small-plates menu featuring local ingredients (buffalo from Great Range Buffalo Farms in Colorado; salmon and halibut flown in daily from Seattle’s Pikes Place Fish Market), as well as local Colorado wines, microbrews and local organic spirits. Chef Reese Hay is gong to be making marshmallows in flavors like Grand Marnier for toasting during s’mores happy hour at the outdoor fire pit.

*I fell in love with Moody’s in Truckee, California, a few years back and am thrilled to learn that its supertalented chef, Mark Estee, is opening a second restaurant, Baxter’s, at the Village at Northstar in Tahoe, California. Expect the same selection of exceptional house-made charcuterie and salumi, as well as an extensive list of eaux-de-vie, a wine list heavy on Pinot Noirs and dangerously good cocktails like Baxter’s Naughty Cider–a concoction of unfiltered organic apple juice, Charbay Tahitian vanilla rum and brown sugar topped with spiced-rum whipped cream.

In our December issue, we give a food-and-design-savvy insider’s guide to Miami’s Design District —a must-read for anyone headed to Art Basel Miami Beach. The sister fair to Art Basel Switzerland—and the most important art fair in the U.S.—kicks off tomorrow and runs through the weekend. Here, insider’s tips on where to eat and shop while navigating the art-filled weekend.

Retail design extraordinaire Murray Moss tells the New York Times which bars have the most incredible crowds.

F&W dishes on what Miami’s local art-and-design crowd orders at their favorite Design District hangout, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink.

Nisi Berryman, cofounder of the incredible style store NiBa Home, e-mailed me today to say Senora Martinez, the new venture from Miami darling Michelle Bernstein, opened last night and has a stellar tapas menu. For shopping, Nisi says Marni just opened last night, Tomas Maier opened last week and En Avance recently moved locations from SoBe to the Design District—all are a couple of doors up from Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto’s boutique, Y-3, and close to Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink.

Stephanie Monserrat Laurent has plans for a Miami branch of Buzina Pop, her superstylish Brazilian restaurant on New York City’s Upper East Side. Tonight, she’s taking over Miami's Maison d’ Azur and will be serving Buzina Pop’s signature dishes (grilled prawns over honey-ginger coconut quinoa) and cachaca-spiked cocktails and debuting her new bikini collection.        

Le Tourment Vert, an authentic French absinthe, makes its South Florida debut this week with a special tasting tomorrow night at the Florida Room in the Delano Hotel featuring cocktail recipes created by master mixologist John Lermayer.      

A few hours of sleep and a run in Hyde Park revived me after nearly eight straight hours of eating and drinking, and had me anticipating breakfast at Daylesford Organic’s flagship London store. I have long been waiting for Britain to export Daylesford Organic to the States. The Martha Stewart-meets-Blue Hill at Stone Barns philosophy stems from Sir Anthony and Lady Carole Bamford, who 20 years ago turned their 6,000 acres of farm land in Gloucestershire and Staffordshire organic and started raising free-range poultry, Aberdeen Angus beef, making their own milk and cheese and growing their own produce. The family even produces wines and olive oils from its vineyards and olive groves in France. I experienced the Daylesford trifecta in London’s Pimlico neighborhood: At the café, breakfast at the long wooden communal table included an expertly prepared cappuccino and poached eggs and mushrooms on thick, toasted homemade whole-grain bread. Up the street is Daylesford’s garden store, a greenhouse style shop that sells flowers, garden supplies and country-chic home furnishings and antiques. And across from the café is Daylesford Butcher, where the farm’s organic, sustainably raised meats are sold. (Before I left London I got one last Daylesford fix at the just opened Notting Hill store. The upstairs has the same country market feel of the other stores with shelves of artisanal foods and just-picked produce. Downstairs is something completely new: a raw food bar.)

The rest of my day was dedicated to Marylebone High Street where I  browsed Sir Terrance Conran’s design mecca, The Conran Shop; ducked down Moxon Street for lunch at the café in La Fromagerie, one of the most amazing cheese shops I’ve ever visited; explored the shelves of Daunt Books, a 19th-century book shop that organizes both its fiction and nonfiction by geographic region – a travel junkies dream. I was still on the same street come dinnertime so I grabbed a stool at the communal table of The Tapa Room, the casual sister restaurant of the elegant, pricier Providores, which is just upstairs. For less than $25 I had one of the most satisfying meals of my trip. I ordered a glass of Mt. Difficulty Bannockburn Pinot Noir from the New Zealand-focused wine list and two small plates: a pan-fried Manouri cheese with black fig and pea shoots and a paprika roasted sweet potato topped with caramelized onion, edamame, Greek yogurt and arugula. Bob Marley and Tom Petty played from the speakers and the young couple next to me insisted I try their mochi-wrapped banana and caramel ice cream dessert that was topped with Thai puffed rice and strawberries — amazing!

I couldn’t leave London without visiting a British pub, so I made a late night trip to Waterloo for a pint of Wells Bombardier cask ale at The Anchor & Hope, London’s version of the Spotted Pig - a very proper ending to my first whirlwind tour of London.

I was overly ambitious when planning the itinerary for my first trip to London. I wanted to see the iconic sights (the London Eye, Big Ben); do some cheesy tourist things (be photographed in a red phone booth and try to make the guards at Buckingham Palace smile); and eat at the great restaurants and food spots (Borough Market, St. John). But my inner Food & Wine curiosities had me reaching out to the city’s food and style insiders in search of the newest bars, shops, restaurants and trendsetters in the city. I didn’t sleep much, but I did leave feeling like I'd tasted the perfect mix of old and new.

The rundown:

I had the pleasure of meeting visionary designer Ilse Crawford at her studio, where she and her super-talented team updated me on their latest projects (Soho House Miami for 2010; a new boutique hotel in Stockholm; and the fabulous remake of the just-about-to-open Kettner’s restaurant and bar in London’s Soho neighborhood). Over drinks at Cecconi’s, a classic Italian restaurant in the Mayfair district that Ilse redesigned spectacularly in 2005, she fed me her of-the-moment recommendations: the Rothko exhibit at the Tate Modern; the extraordinary Patricia Urquiola exhibit at the Design Museum exploring the creative process behind Landscape, the Spanish designer's recent tabletop collection for Rosenthal; the Comme des Garçons Printed Matter exhibit at Dover Street Market, the six-floor designer-label mecca conceived by Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo that stocks Lanvin, Rodarte, Zero Maria Cornejo and, tucked away on the fourth floor, an outpost of Paris’s divine Rose Bakery; and finally lunch at chef Skye Gyngell’s adorable garden café at Petersham Nurseries.

Notes in hand, I rushed around the corner for dinner at the Connaught.The hotel recently underwent a huge refurbishment that has transformed it into the latest hot spot, anchored by Michelin-starred French chef Hélène Darroze’s eponymous restaurant. There, I had an extravagant meal that included her signature starter, an oyster tartare topped with caviar jelly and a purée of haricots verts, and a decadent spit-roasted grouse with grilled foie gras and Brussels sprouts.

After dinner I ignored my jet lag so that I could properly experience the hotel's much-buzzed-about new bars. I was smitten with India Mahdavi’s playful design in the Coburg Bar and equally impressed by the mixology geek menu of drinks dating back to the 1700s. In stark contrast is the flashier Connaught Bar, which received a sparkly, Deco redesign from David Collins. By 1 a.m. the leather and marble space was still packed with a glam crowd sipping vintage cocktails, absinthe and Champagne from gorgeous stemware. I knew I’d need a killer recovery breakfast in the morning and luckily had a long list of options that I’ll blog more about next week.
 

© courtesy of The Connaught/Damian Russell
The Coburg Bar at the Connaught hotel in London

Starchefs.com has just released the stellar lineup for its International Chefs Congress taking place later this month in New York City's Park Avenue Armory with, amusingly (oddly?) enough, a catalog featuring two underwear-clad, cut-out chef paper dolls. But the humor doesn't stop there. Among the talks and workshops led by some of the food world's most talented personalities, two get the prize for most creative name: "Voulez-vous sous vide avec moi (ce soir)"? (Paul Liebrandt at the soon-to-open Corton) and "Gin... The Other White Meat" (Audrey Saunders at Pegu Club).