When a friend invited me to a five-course, whiskey-paired dinner at Eleven Madison Park last Wednesday, I hesitated before accepting. I’ve been to plenty of wine- and beer-paired dinners, but sipping whiskey through a meal sounded a little intense. If anyone could pull it off, though, it would certainly be genius chef Daniel Humm. And the whiskeys around which he created the menu weren’t just any whiskeys. We were being treated to six limited-edition Balvenie 17-year-old single-malt scotch whiskeys, including the 2001 Balvenie Islay Cask and the super-rare 2006 Balvenie New Wood. The pairing of the night: The 2007 Balvenie Sherry Cask matched with Humm’s black angus tenderloin with roasted summer beans. Most of these scotches are nearly impossible to find, but the newest limited-edition release, the Balvenie Madeira Cask, will be in stores in early October. This extraordinarily rich scotch, matured in oak and finished in casks that were used to make fortified Madeira, was the nightcap to our feast, with sweet vanilla-oak notes that gave way to spices and dried fruit and a seemingly never-ending finish.   

© William Grant & Sons
The Balvenie Madeira Cask 17-Year-Old

Last night, supertalented chef Bobby Hellen of NYC's Resto teamed up with Phil Leinhart, the brewmaster at Cooperstown, New York’s Ommegang brewery, for a gluttonous, nose-to-tail feast. It was the first of a series of Zagat-sponsored, craft-beer dinners taking place throughout the city this week as part of the second annual New York Craft Beer Week.

Chef Hellen broke down an entire pig and a lamb from Violet Hill Farm and turned them into delicious dishes like crispy pig’s-ear popcorn, porchetta and lamb-topped tomato salad with lamb-heart vinaigrette; to match these dishes, Leinhart poured some never-before-served brews, including a test batch of Adoration, Ommegang’s first-ever winter holiday ale. The dark, Belgian-style brew is made with five spices: coriander, sweet orange peel, grains of paradise, cardamom and mace. I was expecting bold, in-your-face spiciness, but the finish is much more subtle, and despite 10-percent alcohol levels, there was very little alcohol burn—a deceptively potent brew. The beer should be available mid-October.

To go with a plate of excellent house-made charcuterie, Leinhart poured the Ommegang Rouge, a Flemish sour-red ale he made in partnership with Belgium's Brouwerij Bockor brewery. This supertart brew, oak-aged for 18 months at Bockor’s brewery, is one of my favorites. Leinhart broke the news that it’s no longer being produced (Brouwerij Bockor no longer wants to share its yeasts strains). But Ommegang plans to replace it with a brown Flemish-style beer they’re working on with Liefmans brewery in Oudenaarde, Belgium. Leinhart hinted we can also expect many more seasonal beers from Ommegang next year.

© Evan Miller
Ommegang's best and newest brews on tap at Resto.

Because I'd been away for a while, spending a placid few days kayaking on the waters of Maine's Somes Sound, it seemed to me (for some lunatic reason) like the proper way to effect a New York re-entry would be by attending a cocktail vs. wine pairing smackdown at Nios, a new midtown wine bar. This is a regular event there, in which home-team sommelier Emily Wines takes on challengers in a battle of who-pairs-best, using chef Patricia Williams's tasty food.

Her opponent this time was bartender extraordinaire Jim Meehan, the man behind the drinks at New York's excellent PDT (and also the co-editor of Food & Wine Cocktails 2009, our pretty dern nifty cocktail book).

First up, to go with Williams's risotto of corn with chanterelles, confit pigeon and castelmagno cheese, Meehan poured his "Imperial Silver Corn Fizz." Brave is the fellow who'll make a stiff drink using corn water, I say (Meehan enlisted chef/pal Wylie Dufresne for corn-water-making advice). But, surprisingly, this concoction of Bourbon, corn water, honey syrup, egg white and Champagne worked incredibly well with the risotto. Wines fought back with a somewhat over-oaky 2007 Gary Farrell Russian River Valley Chardonnay, to no avail. Meehan, wearing a sparkly purple luchador mask with a kind of small-savage-animal pelt attached to the top, took the round.

Next course was a beautifully cooked rack of American lamb with grilled figs and fingerling potatoes wrapped in jamón serrano. (I've decided, based on this dish, that I'm just going to wrap everything I eat in jamón serrano from now on. There's just no reason not to.) This time Wines came out strong, pouring a smoky, plummy 2006 Gai'a Estates Agiorgitiko from Greece. It was a terrific match for the lamb, and Meehan's "Señor Smackdown"—blanco tequila with lime juice, Dry Sack sherry, Benedictine and a bar spoon of fig jam—took it on the chin. The drink was scrappy, but tequila and lamb are just a rough combo. Could be Meehan was affected by the heat under that vinyl mask.

Finally, dessert: rose petal panna cotta with pomegranate foam. Wines appeared holding glasses holding a splash of rosewater and some floating pomegranate seeds, then topped them with light, berry-sweet NV Patrick Bottex Cerdon de Bugey "La Cuille," an off-dry sparkling wine from France's Savoie region. Meehan countered with his "Raspberries Reaching:" an ounce and a half of Trimbach Framboise eau-de-vie, an ounce of 5 Puttonyos Tokaji Aszú, and a half-ounce of Pama pomegranate liqueur, plus three drops of rose flower water, stirred and strained into a chilled coupe, and garnished with a peach-colored rose petal. This drink blew me away, and I thought the title was destined for Meehan. But I was in the minority; when the votes were counted, Wines was the champion of the evening.

Nios will be holding these smackdowns once a month for the rest of the year, so check it out. Viva la lucha de vino! 

Yesterday on WNYC, radio host Leonard Lopate discussed the subject of running a restaurant during this recession with chefs Daniel Boulud of Manhattan’s DBGB Kitchen & Bar and Sosie Hublitz of Brooklyn’s Watty & Meg, as well as Nation’s Restaurant News editor Pamela Parseghian. Parseghian said the biggest trend has been alcohol—and lots of it. Boulud and Hublitz agreed. It’s no secret that tough times lead people to drink; this time, however, they’re drinking excellent cocktails. That’s good news for restaurants, Boulud said, since the profit margins on drinks are greater than they are for food. Of course, he added, you can’t charge $20 for a martini. That would be pushing it. 

I've been to Fonda del Sol a few times now—it's just down the street from our office, conveniently—and it seems to be on an ever-inclining curve towards extreme tastiness. That's not a surprise to me. When I first met the restaurant's chef, Josh DeChellis, at the culinary festival Madrid Fusión a few years back, he was wandering around gnawing on a black truffle the way one might an apple (the thing was about the size of an apple, too). To my mind, any chef who eats truffles as if they were apples is a man after my own heart. At FdS, DeChellis is channeling his inner Spaniard, perhaps aided by the fact that he was born in Colombia, with impressive success.

The other night I particularly liked a silky scallop tiradito—disks of sweet scallop with shards of hot chilies, dabs of briny sea urchin, and grace notes of cilantro—which wine director Nicholas Nahigian paired with a sympathetically citrus-minerally 2007 Do Ferreiro Albariño (one of the better Albariños around, in fact). Later on, I also enjoyed an incredibly tender Colorado lamb chop aromatized (as it were) over toasted hay and served with tangy sheep's milk yogurt and a lovage puree. In an earlier incarnation of this dish, the lamb was cooked in an earthenware vessel over the hay, the vessel sealed with a bread crust—in that case, the hay, lamb and yogurt were all from the same farm. With the newer version, a 2004 Fratelli Revello Vigna Conca Barolo, surprisingly generous given its intense concentration, and somehow elegant despite that, tasted great.

The pairing that may have worked the best, though, and that was certainly the most surprising, came when Nahigian brought out glasses of Victory Brewing Company's Prima Pils (which, oddly enough, I just used for my 4th of July segment on summer beers for the Early Show) to pair with DeChellis's Alaskan rock fish a la plancha with salsa moluscada de verano, a Catalan (I think) sauce involving surf clams, mussel jus, squid, octopus, tomato water, clam jus, basil and cherry tomatoes (whew). The fish was expertly cooked, the sauce something between a light seafood stew, a sauce, and a sublime essence of ocean, and the crisp, gently bitter Pilsner was perfect with it—and also extremely refreshing, sandwiched as it was, course-wise, between a fairly substantial white Rioja—a 2003 Marqués de Murrieta Capellania—and the even more substantial Revello Barolo.

And there was dessert. But by then, do you really expect I was taking notes?  

I stopped by NYC's Hill Country Barbecue & Market last night for a semi-impromptu blind tasting of tequilas (no rest for the weary, indeed). The general gist of the thing, concocted by Hill Country bar director extraordinaire Jessica Stone and exec chef extraordinaire Elizabeth Karmel, was to determine whether the tequilas I think of as my default faves were actually that when tasted blind against a gang of other candidates. Not a bad undertaking for a Tuesday night.

Out of the blancos, my top pick turned out not to be my usual El Tesoro but a brand that was new to me, El Mayor (about $40) which combined intense agave character (more on the herbal than vegetal side) with a bit of pepperiness and a sleek finish; no rough edges, but no lack of character either. 

From the reposados, my top pick (over some much more recognized brands) was the Siembra Azul Reposado (about $40). It stuck out from the pack partly because the wood notes it had were so gracefully integrated into the spirit itself—several others tasted like wood planks dipped in hooch—and partly because the agave shone through so clear and pure above those wood/spice characteristics. It was eminently balanced, and eminently drinkable as well.  

Finally we went through a few añejos. Gran Centenario, usually my go-to, non-crazy-expensive añejo, ended up my number two after the Sauza Tres Generaciones (about $46), which I thought was appealingly un-vanilla/caramel-ish, with an intriguing salty note to it and a lot of aromatic spice. (I'm not, as is probably clear, a big fan of añejo tequilas that taste more like wood than like tequila.) 

After that we reached the crucial part of the taste test, which was to determine which of our favorites went best with Bluebell Ice Cream (if you're from Texas, you know how great Bluebell is; if not, go to Texas, or Hill Country in NYC, to find out). The answer? El Mayor Blanco and Bluebell Pecan Pralines n' Cream (think of it as an ad hoc añejo with cream and sugar. Sort of). I admit there might be some skepticism out there as to the wisdom of drinking tequila while eating ice cream, but I'm here to tell you that this particular combination is an all-out party in your mouth.

When I was in Los Angeles recently, I had the good fortune to stumble upon what should be my favorite new winebar (it was sort of directed stumbling, in truth; Minneapolis Star-Tribune food critic Rick Nelson's uncle is the chef, and he sent me toward it). In fact, the only thing keeping it from being my favorite place for a quick glass of vino is that it's about 2,400 miles from my apartment. But that aside, Lou is a nifty little place located in an unlikely corner of a strip shopping center on Vine just north of Melrose, adjacent to a laundromat and about seventy feet from a Thai massage joint. It's relatively unmarked—even though there's a sign saying Lou, I kept thinking I wasn't in the right place—but once you step inside you're in an appealingly low-lit nook full of appealingly low-key-yet-hip Angelenos, most of them holding glasses of wine and noshing on cheese, charcuterie and larger dishes (Chorizo with black lentils, garlic confit and fried egg, for instance) off the menu, under a chalk drawing on the wall of a pig holding a glass of wine.

Lou focuses on small-production, organic/biodynamic/post-organic (whatever post-organic means) wines, thirty of which are available by the glass at any given time, and is "unabashedly Eurocentric," as the website says. If you're into that sort of thing, you'll recognize or at least be intrigued by offerings like the 2006 Guy Breton Morgon for $14 a glass, 2007 Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon Blanc for $8 a glass, or Huber & Bleger Crémant d'Alsace Rosé NV for $10 a glass...though it may well be that those choices have changed since I was there. Regardless, I still think they're providing plates of "pig candy," which is essentially candied artisanal bacon, for five bucks. Candied pork? Uh-huh. I'm in.

I stopped in the other night at the Macao Trading Co., which occupies a desolate block of the Tribeca landscape (or at least it seems desolate at 11 PM when there's sleet blowing in your face). It's a neat trick, then, to walk in and abruptly find oneself transported back to some fanciful version of colonial days in Macao; Somerset Maugham may have spent more time at the long bar at Raffles in Singapore, but I still wouldn't have been surprised to find him lurking in a linen suit somewhere in a back booth.

The restaurant brings together the disparate talents of David Waltuck, Chanterelle's longtime chef-owner, and Dushan Zaric & Jason Kosmas of the West Village cocktailian watering hole Employees Only. Waltuck handles the food end, which splits somewhat oddly between Portuguese-influenced and Chinese-influenced dishes (a nod to Macao's colonial history, but—like that history—a somewhat conflicted relationship). For my part, the winning dishes were mostly on the Chinese side of the menu, like an appealingly earthy-briny bowl of Manila clams with black beans and chilies, and a whole sea bass with a ginger-scallion sauce that was fun to pick at and expertly cooked.

But the real reason to head here is the cocktails. In the interests of scientific inquiry, I felt it incumbent on me to try all nine or ten of the house cocktails. They were uniformly excellent both in concept and execution, the sort of cocktail experience that's becoming oddly easy to come across in NYC these days (think Clover Club, Tailor, Pegu Club, PDT, and six or seven other places) and that tends to make one think we're living in a kind of cocktail golden age—an excellent thing, since every other aspect of our age seems rapidly to be turning into some base metal, say lead, or brass.

Anyway, here are two of my faves, recipes courtesy of Mssrs Zaric & Kosmas:

Esmeralda
3 cubes of fresh honeydew melon
1 heaping demitasse spoon of cubed ginger
2 demitasse spoons of sugar
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
1/4 oz. Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
1 1/4 oz. Esmeralda Cachaça
 
Directions: Muddle the melon, ginger and sugar in the bottom of the mixing glass. Add the rest of the ingredients and ice. Shake and pour unstrained back into a rocks glass. Garnish with a honeydew cut as a "sharks fin."
 
Kaffir Jimlet
3 oz. Kaffir leaf infused Plymouth gin
1 oz. fresh lime Juice
1/2 oz. agave nectar
Green Chartreuse
Kaffir leaf
 
Directions: Wash the inside of a cocktail glass with Green Chartreuse. Pour Gin, lime juice and agave nectar into a mixing glass. Add ice and shake vigorously for 7-8 seconds. Strain into the prepared cocktail glass. Garnish with a Kaffir leaf.

I'll add as a final note: go for the Esmeralda, if you can find it; it's a great aged cachaça, and has more depth than run-of-the-mill white cachaças (for more on artisan cachaças, see my F&W article here). And if you don't feel like infusing your own gin with kaffir leaves, Hangar One makes a kaffir-lime vodka that would probably work as a good substitute.

Sometimes a wine is so good that you immediately have to get on a plane and fly to Italy for five days just to calm down, which is apparently what happened to me after I went to the Champagne Jacques Selosse dinner at 11 Madison Park about a week and a half ago. Now that the synapses are back in working order, here are a couple of observations.

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Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of how radically wine lists in restaurants have changed over the past, oh, fifteen years or so. I've been on a sort of Italian-resto-spree lately, and I'm coming out of it thinking that I'm either dreaming or I'm living in a golden age of Italian wine and food here in NYC.

Example One: Scarpetta. I've been a fan of Scott Conant's cooking since the first bite I had of his luscious polenta with wild mushroom fricassee at L'Impero, a dish which, I'm thrilled to find, he's replicated on the menu at his new restaurant, Scarpetta. I've been here a few times in the past month or so, and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite spots in the city, partly because it seems like Conant has finally landed in a place where the ambience of the room is of a piece with the character of the food. I loved L'Impero, but it was a tad formal for my taste; Alto was like watching Cezanne try to paint like Tintoretto or something; Scarpetta nails it. And besides the presence of things like Conant's signature capretto (roasted baby goat, and mighty darn good it is), there's also the smart, adventurous, and fairly priced wine list. We drank a terrific white, the 2006 Vadiaperti Fiano di Avellino, about which I know nothing but that it's packed with flavor and focused all at once. Next, a bottle of the 2006 Hofstätter Lagrein. Its bright acidity played foil to its dark, chewy fruit, and both went ideally well with Conant's rich duck-and-foie gras ravioli, not to mention his fall-apart-tender short ribs.

Example Two: Bar Milano. First off, if you're lucky, then partner Tony Abou-Ganim is going to be behind the bar mixing drinks here, as he was the night I stopped in. I asked him to make me something interesting with rye. He replied with a Rattlesnake, which, according to the 1947 edition of Trader Vic's Bartender's Guide is one ounce of rye, two dashes of Pernod, a teaspoon of lemon juice, a half-teaspoon of powdered sugar, and half an egg white, shaken with cracked ice and (in my case) strained onto rocks. Sublime on a steamy evening, and a good lead-in to poking around Bar Milano's all-Northern-Italian wine list. I bypassed the exceptionally weird 2005 Movia Lunar—I love Ales Kristancic's wines, but this stuff is odd to a fault—and instead settled on a bottle of the 2006 Grosjean Freres Cornalin from the Valle D'Aosta. This is the kind of wine that never, ever, in a million years would have appeared on a wine list back in, say, 1985 or even 1995. Utterly obscure, it was also mighty darn delicious—bright red fruit, potent but not weighty, distinctive and very fresh. Good with duck, you might think. I did, and it was. Plus the duck itself was superb, the skin crisp to a just-so toothsomeness, the meat tender and deeply flavorful (Pekin from D'Artagnan—good to know), the rhubarb compote that came with it a nice tangy-sweet touch as were the earthy, savory lentils.

Example Three: Dell' Anima. One thing I like about this place is that practically every bottle that wine director Joe Campanale offers probably wouldn't have appeared on a wine list back in 1995 (with maybe the exception of some of the Tuscan & Piedmontese wines). The list is like a playground for Italian wine fanatics. In the mood for a little Fumin? A glass of Cesanese del Piglio? Or maybe some Petite Arvine—I was, for the latter, since I was still on my Valle d'Aosta kick. The 2006 Grosjean Freres Petite Arvine (those guys again!) was unctuous and rich; lots of texture, lots of minerality, and very good with avocado & preserved lemon bruschetta, a snack which wasn't exactly Italian but somehow very much was, all at the same time. Next up was a 2007 Romano Clelia Fiano d'Avelino "Colli di Lapio", about the best Fiano I've run across (including the Vadiaperti, much as I liked it). Melony, aromatic, and long, it was substantial enough to go with chef Gabe Thompson's intensely woodsy Garganelli with mushroom ragu (a died-and-gone-to-heaven dish for mushroom fanatics) yet graceful enough to also go with something as evocative of springtime as Thompson's farfalline with asparagus, ricotta salata and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms.

And I forgot to mention: we started off at Dell'Anima with a bottle of white Lini Lambrusco, which is made from red Lambrusco Salamino grapes, just to make things even a tad more complicated. It was like drinking lightly sweet flowers.

Man, this Italian wine-list thing. Esoterica everywhere. But it sure is fun.