Mouthing Off

I recently chatted with Master Sommelier Alpana Singh, director of wine and spirits for the Chicago-based restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. She's just revamped the wine list for one of L.E.Y.E.'s concepts, Big Bowl, with biodynamic and organic wines to pair with its Asian-inspired food. (Full disclosure: I used to work at a Big Bowl restaurant in my teens.) Here, she recommends a rule of thumb for pairing wine with Chinese and Thai flavors and offers three great biodynamic and organic selections. The best part? They all retail for under $20.

What do you look for in wines to go with Asian food?
"I look for wines that offer a good amount of fruitiness since [with Thai and Chinese cooking] you're using ingredients like hoisin, chiles, garlic and ginger that have strong flavors. You need wines that could trump those assertive flavors."

What are three great recommendations?
2006 Santa Julia Vida Organica Malbec "This wine has gobs of berry, plummy flavor with a sweet, round finish. It's great with dishes that are hoisin- or black-bean- sauce-based."

2006 Bonny Doon Ca' Del Solo Sangiovese "This new biodynamic Bonny Doon has a ripe cherry fruit profile. Sangioveses are typically paired with tomato sauce but I think this would be great with pad thai which is limey and has a little bit of sweetness."

2007 Alois Lageder Pinot Grigio "This is a nice crisp, clean white that would go with simple stir-fries with a ginger-based sauce or deep-fried calamari. The winery is completely sustainable—it and even generates electricity for the village it's in."

Thank goodness for the jump button on the remote control; I seem to have one that works even with greasy fingers. Sunday night I'm going to be hopping between the Emmys on ABC and the Packers-Cowboys game on NBC. Now I just have to decide on snacks. There's our pigskin roundup, where chef Tim Love recommends Ro*Tel chiles and Velveeta. Then this week our resident television gurus, Grace Parisi and Christine Quinlan, created their own ingenious pairings, both cocktails and finger foods for some of their favorite nominated shows, so maybe I'll make a Wry Manhattan (Parisi writes: "Elaine Strich is nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress for her performance on 30 Rock as Colleen Donaghy, Jack Donaghy’s insane, emotionally withholding, alcoholic mother. This cocktail is perfect for her: It’s lethal and sneaks up on you.") But that might get in the way of my channel surfing. Decisions, decisions.

While the media remains fascinated by what the presidential candidates are eating — or maybe even more so what their running mates are eating — restaurants and bakeries are trying to predict the outcome of the election based on sales of political-party-themed dishes.

Starting in October, SusieCakes, a Los Angeles bakery that specializes in classic American comfort desserts like whoopee pies and layer cakes, will be selling Red State Red Velvet cupcakes and RNC elephant sugar cookies to Republican sweet tooths, and Blue State Vanilla Cupcakes and DNC donkey sugar cookies to Obama supporters. SusieCakes will be conducting informal polls at its three locations to determine which candidate will win based on sugar sales. The results will be revealed on Election Day.

Abroad, the French are obsessing over two things: burgers and the U.S. presidential race. At Paris’s Hotel Concorde La Fayette, chef Laurent Belijar created special candidate-themed burgers for his menu at La Fayette Bar.

The O-Burger, a nod to senator Barack Obama and his birth city of Honolulu, is made from curried beef and topped with pineapple carpaccio and coriander-flavored shrimp. The Elephant Burger is made of ground lamb and pays homage to senator John McCain’s adopted state of Arizona with Southwestern ingredients like guacamole and a side of nachos and salsa. Guests vote for their preferred burger, and chef Belijar will announce the best-seller on Election Day.

 

 

Obiká, the much-hyped Italian mozzarella bar that created a frenzy when it opened four years ago in Rome, is finally coming to New York. In May, the New York Sun reported that the company had been eyeing Manhattan real estate and I’ve walked past the mysterious space in the atrium of the IMB Building on Madison Avenue daily, wondering if it would ever open.

Today, I finally got the scoop that Obiká NYC will have its soft opening September 20. Obiká is obsessed with the freshest, most delicious Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, which can be ordered in various styles ranging from paestum (delicate in taste) to smoked or stracciatella di burrata (sweat and creamy). Unlike its other locations in London, Rome, Milan and Turin, Obiká NYC was designed by Studio Labs Rome as the first "fast-casual" prototype for the brand and will look more like an airport kiosk than a restaurant. Other distinctions:

*It will open at 7 a.m. to serve breakfast.

*Giving a nod to the American obsession with all things local, it will also serve buffalo mozzarella from Vermont alongside mozzarellas flown in twice-weekly from certified DOP farms in the Campana region.

*Wines will come from Antinori and Feudi di San Gregorio.

*Stuzzichini (Italian appetizers) will be served from 5-7 p.m. during an Italian-style happy hour Obiká calls “apertivo.”

I'm curious to see if it can compete with the much-loved Batali-Silverton Osteria Mozza in L.A. Or perhaps the more serious test will be if it can sway devotees to Queens' famed mozzarella sisters.

I wish I was the one who was smart enough to think of recreating the Michael Phelps diet for a day. Or maybe I'm glad I wasn't. When my excellent colleague Emily Kaiser first blogged about Phelps's penchant for steak and pizza, I thought it sounded pretty easy and appealing. Then more details emerged. A typical Phelps breakfast starts with three mayo-slathered fried egg and cheese sandwiches and ends with three chocolate chip pancakes. Throughout the rest of the day, he consumes, among other things including that pizza, two pounds of pasta and a couple thousand calories worth of energy drinks. Even if I had thought about trying to eat 12,000 calories (in the heat of bathing suit season, no less), the menu would have stopped me cold. I dislike fried egg sandwiches and chocolate chip pancakes, and I hate energy drinks.

Someone was brave enough to try living large on Phelps's diet, though: Jon Henley of the UK's Guardian. I'll leave it to everyone to see how he did when we went pancake for pancake with the Olympic swimmer. But the details are pretty hilarious.

Boston’s South End keeps getting hipper. Every time I return to the charming neighborhood in my college town, I discover new chocolate shops, design stores and restaurants.

Last weekend I was in the city for the Red Sox game (and Celtics celebration), and even though I was craving a Fenway frank, I made time to swing by the much-buzzed-about South End restaurant the Beehive. The space and concept were inspired by and named for a 1920s artists’ residence in the Montparnasse district of Paris, and the downstairs truly feels like an artist’s studio, with live music performances and local art hanging on the walls. Despite the fabulously designed interiors, my friends and I were lured outdoors to a patio table because we wanted to try the new “urban picnic” menu.

My friends and I were handed a list of about a dozen simple yet delicious-sounding items, and after much back and forth, we checked off the Sicilian tuna with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes, Manchego cheese with honey, tuna tartare and seasonal red cherries. Within minutes, our server dropped an oversize picnic basket on our table. Tucked inside were adorable glass jars containing each of our dishes, along with two butcher-paper-wrapped French baguettes. After a round of Beehive juleps (made with two rums and a drop of honey) arrived, we passed around jars, taking forkfuls from each and battling for the last scoops of our favorites (there aren’t plates, so things got a little messy, which was part of the fun). It was the perfect prelude to a game—satisfying, yet not so overwhelming that I couldn't make room for my ballpark dog by the sixth inning.

My super plugged-in colleague Kate Krader is usually the one name-dropping celebrities and rock stars but this weekend I found myself uncharacteristically star-struck while out in Montauk, probably the least celebrity-filled town in the Hamptons.

I was there to volunteer at the second annual Beach Rescue Mission sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation and Barefoot Wine.  Picking up garbage alongside me at Ditch Plains – Montauk’s best surfing beach - was the much-buzzed-about-of-late singer/songwriter Tristan Prettyman and nearly 200 other surfers and eco-crusaders. Surfrider and Barefoot Wine thanked all of us do-gooders by throwing a killer after-party at the newly opened Second House Tavern with unlimited wine (The new Barefoot Moscato could not be restocked quickly enough!) and incredible performances from Tristan and headliner Garrett Dunton – better known as, G. Love from the eclectic hip-hop,funk, psychedelica, blues trio G. Love & Special Sauce.

The night before I was hanging with G. Love at the much-hyped (all of it well deserved) Surf Lodge where Sam Talbot, a fan favorite from season two of Bravo’s Top Chef, is serving serious, summer-style food in a space that’s a total throw-back to 70’s surf culture and Bruce Brown’s iconic Endless Summer movie. G. Love, surprised me with his sophisticated palate (his mom’s a cooking instructor and his sister works for wine importer Daniel Johnnes) and we shared notes on our meals: sweet corn, peeky toe crab salad got a major flavor boost from the brilliant addition of marinated nectarines; lobster rolls were untraditionally served on hamburger buns, making them less messy to devour; and striped bass prepared in an herb and roasted garlic broth was light, yet insanely flavorful.

The Surf Lodge’s excellent food, super laid-back vibe, lakeside bonfire and 3,000 square-foot deck drew our group back for an after, after party Saturday night which went into the late hours with dancing and endless, Endless Summer cocktails (a dangerously delicious concoction that mixes Snow Queen vodka, Chardonnay, seedless red grapes, simple syrup and fresh lemon juice). G. Love summed up the weekend best saying: “We cleaned the beach, we drank some wine and we rocked out in Montauk.”

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported on a new twist in the trend of abolishing menus. Instead of giving the chef total control of the meal, the power is now being placed in the hands of the sommelier. This wine-before-food concept is being played out at Il Vino, a new Paris restaurant opened by Enrico Bernardo, the former sommelier at the Four Seasons Hotel George V. Diners select wines from a seasonal menu that changes about every two weeks, and then the chef cooks a complementary food pairing. Could this be the wine bar of the future? The restaurant of the future? Bernardo seems confident that the idea is more than a passing trend. He opened a second branch of Il Vino in at the French ski resort Courchevel, and the Journal reported that he is contemplating opening a third in New York City or London.

Anyone who's read my blog posts (or even just talked to me in passing), knows I have a major thing for the tiny NYC chainlet, Grand Sichuan. I've been faithfully going to their Hell's Kitchen location—and then their Chelsea spot when the Hell's Kitchen one closed—once a week for as long as I can remember. As New York Magazine just reported, their newest spot, in Manhattan's West Village, will open at the end of the month. For those who can't wait until then (guilty), the Leroy Street spot will be serving a (free!) tasting of their menu starting tomorrow through Thursday at 7PM.