Mouthing Off

By day three in Berlin I’d already had my fill of bratwurst and wiener schnitzel and was directed to a superhip sushi restaurant on the ground floor of the chic Lux 11 hotel called Shiro I Shiro. The name is Japanese for “white castle” and refers to the amazing white interiors accented with pops of bright blue and pink neo-baroque-style furniture. If Louis XIV were still alive, this is what his modern-day dining room would look like. French-trained chef Eduard Dimant recently took over the kitchen and prepares French-accented Japanese food and exquisite sushi. I also noticed some South American influences on the menu, like a section devoted to tiradito, a Peruvian-style ceviche. I tried the yellowtail tiradito (superfresh yellowtail marinated in citrus and olive oil) and had an excellent rice-paper roll filled with tuna, tobiko (flying fish roe), cucumber and tamago (egg). I always ask what the server recommends and he gushed over the miso cod. I hesitated before ordering something so obvious, but it was superb. The lightest touch of my chopstick broke off tender flakes of black cod marinated in ginger and soy. Nobu would’ve been proud.

Today, I met Wolfgang Nitschke, the fabulous general manager at the Regent Berlin, for lunch at his hotel’s two-Michelin-star restaurant, Fischers Fritz (the name stems from a German tongue twister). Chef Christian Lohse is definitely one of Berlin’s rising stars, creating stunning seafood dishes that get served on gorgeous French china in the elegant dining room. In my mind, this is Germany’s Le Bernardin. Wolfgang and I split an unusual, yet delicious, tartare of smoked eel and foie gras with pepper caramel and eggplant puree (usually only offered on the dinner menu). The wild char was amazing, roasted and served with Lombard-style cabbage and red chicory. All of the fish comes from France. The orange-leather-bound wine list is quite thorough and wide-ranging with depth in the German and French bottles. Dessert was among my favorites of the year: three tiny Persian figs lightly drizzled with honey and olive oil. I’m usually a chocolate lover but this was so interesting and flavorful that I wasn’t even tempted by Wolfgang’s decadent-looking chocolate-caramel fondant. In this economy, the meal felt indulgent and luxurious—and it was—but it reminded me what fine dining should aspire to and why I don't think it will ever die.

I usually spend as little time as possible in my hotel when I travel, particularly when I’m anxious to explore a new city. But it’s been hard to pull myself away from the food at Hotel Adlon Kempinski, where I’m staying this week in Berlin: It has three Michelin-starred restaurants all under one roof.
 
Lorenz Adlon restaurant, the hotel’s elegant, one-Michelin-star French spot, serves classic haute-French food. I was still full from an early bratwurst lunch, so I skipped the frog’s legs and Iranian-caviar blini and instead snacked on the fabulous cheese plate (with luscious raw-milk cheeses) paired with a glass of rosé Champagne.

At Restaurant Gabriele (another one-star), I had out-of-this-world Italian, including a near-perfect bowl of conchiglie vongole (pasta with clams).

Restaurant Quattré may not be Michelin-rated, but it has a super-value, 16 euro business lunch. The menu has both traditional and modern German dishes, including a monster-size plate of Wiener schnitzel, which I devoured as part of my German-dining initiation.
 
Chef Tim Raue is generating tons of buzz right now in the city with the spectacular Asian-fusion dishes he’s cooking at the hotel’s Michelin-starred MA. Locals had been raving about his tamarind-stock lobster soup (amazing), and I adored the pig chin with ginseng beurre blanc served in the more casual dining room, Uma. Even more impressive is that chef Raue uses no white flour or refined sugar in his cooking (a bit of a relief after eating pig in butter sauce, bratwurst and Wiener schnitzel all in one day!).

Even cooler, Raue hosts special wine dinners next door in Hotel Adlon’s year-old wine store. (Lorenz Adlon, the hotel’s founder, ran the world’s largest wine store in Berlin more than 100 years ago.)

More hotel-restaurant updates tomorrow, including details on last night’s dinner at Shiro i Shiro, the hot sushi restaurant in the chic Lux 11 hotel and lunch at Fischers Fritz, the city’s only two-Michelin-star restaurant, located in the Regent Berlin.

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.

Cheeky's Palm Springs

Last weekend on a quick escape to Palm Springs from cold and gloomy NYC, I had brunch at a stylish little restaurant called Cheeky's on North Palm Canyon Drive. Besides the fabulous modern furniture and electric orange communal dining tables, the star at Cheeky's is the extensive seasonal menu of innovative breakfast creations which changes every week. I had to opt for the five part bacon tasting (bacon flights are the new wine flights!). The tasting was comprised of a thick-cut bacon from Connecticut's Nodine's Smokehouse, Vande Rose applewood variety from Iowa, Oscar's honey-cured bacon from the Adirondacks, a turkey bacon, and a jalapeño-spiked bacon. After polishing that off, I could only handle a fruit plate with Pink Flesh honeydew and a mandatory hike in Tahquitz Canyon.

I can't stop peeking at a new book on my desk, Casey O'Brien Blondes's Parisian Hideaways, a coffee-table photo essay on 30 exceptional small hotels across the city, with photographs by Beatrice Amagat. In my fantasy life, I spend at least one weekend a month in Paris and have no end of funds to splurge on boutique hotels. So this book is helping me get my imaginary fix.

Blondes knows her stuff. She has my fantasy life and then some: She's lived in France for 21 years, dividing her time between a restored farmhouse in the Loire Valley and a Paris apartment. She spent months exploring these hotels and interviewing their proprietors. She not only gets the inside skinny (and images) on the best rooms at the inns, but also the owners' "coups de coeur," their favorite nearby cafés and shops, including chef Yves Camdeborde's favorite local bookstore and cutlery shop. So this Saturday, when I'm exploring the rue de l'Odéon—in my dreams—I'll know exactly where to go.

I'm making a list of all the reasons I want to be in Miami starting Thursday, February 19th for the awesome South Beach Wine & Food Festival (and not just because Food & Wine magazine is a sponsor and so I feel like it's my party). I have about 100 reasons, but I've winnowed the list down to 5.

1. The King & Queen of Spain! They'll be there for a deluxe dinner presided over by two of our country's top chefs, Mario Batali and José Andrés.

2. The Bubble Q. My hero Tom Colicchio is hosting the supersonic nighttime party on the beach with Champagne and barbecue from famed pitmasters like Adam Perry Lang of Daisy May's BBQ USA in New York City, Chris Lilly from Big Bob Gibson's Bar-B-Q in Decatur, Alabama and Tony Neely from Neely's Bar-B-Que in Nashville, Tennessee.

3. Joe's Big Chill. For the first time, Joe's Stone Crab will close to the public for a private festival event: a Sunday morning brunch with all-you-can-eat hash browns, fried green tomatoes, and of course, those awesome crab claws, finished off with key lime pie.

4. This year's annual burger bash. Another nighttime beach party, this will have 22 different burgers made with over two tons of ten different kinds of ground meat, 300 pounds of smoked bacon and 100 gallons of ketchup and mustard.

5. Billy Joel! He'll be at the burger bash. I'm not sure if he'll help his wife, Katie Lee, defend her Best Burger title or grab a microphone and start singing, but one can only hope.

At the end of 2008, our trend-spotting restaurant editor, Kate Krader, broke my bread-loving heart when she predicted the extinction of free bread service. So I have to applaud Curtis Duffy, the visionary young chef who recently took over the kitchen at Avenues in the Peninsula Chicago. Bread isn’t just free at Avenues, it’s thoughtfully paired with each course as if it were wine. Curtis takes an egalitarian approach to each dish, so much so that no one element—not even the bread—is ever overshadowed.

The bread, like the rest of the Avenues menu, changes seasonally, and just like the food, it is highly creative, surprising and delicious. My most carb-fearing girlfriends would be hard-pressed to resist the coconut-basil waffle or the mint-infused English muffin. I shamelessly admit that I was so obsessed with the bread that I turned into a bread voyeur when I returned to New York, obsessively checking Curtis’s blog to see what baked masterpieces I was missing out on, like the savory cake-doughnut he is currently conceptualizing for his next menu.
 
If you can’t make the trip to Chicago for a meal, you can read about the philosophy behind the bread service and be tempted by the gorgeous food photos that Curtis posts on his blog.

Needing an escape from the cold and chaos of NYC, I recently booked an impulsive long weekend in San Juan, Puerto Rico. All I wanted was a relatively cheap vacation someplace warm and supercasual, where I could relax with a good book, eat fresh seafood and sip a mojito on the beach. What I didn't realize was that I'd unknowingly booked my trip for San Sebastian Festival weekend (Puerto Rico's version of Mardi Gras), and that I would run into a crew of NYC magazine editors in town for a guys’ weekend who would invite me to join them for a night out. The result: A taste of both sides of Puerto Rico—the wild and glam, and the quiet and laid-back.

High-Style Fun
We dined in style at Picayo, rock-star chef Wilo Benet's white-tablecloth restaurant in the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Modern art and funky, feathered lamps make the dining room feel like a private gallery, and Benet’s food is artfully plated, showcasing global riffs on traditional Puerto Rican ingredients. We indulged in a perfectly executed tasting menu that included a superflavorful lollipop of truffle-oil-spiked beef carpaccio and Parmesan cheese, crackling-studded risotto and, of course, crisp, salty tostones.

After dinner we went out to the superposh, South Beach–meets–Vegas hotel La Concha, in San Juan’s hip Condado neighborhood. A $220 million revamp transformed the lobby into a 24-hour thumping disco, and the outside is a maze of pools, hot tubs and tented cabanas.

Affordable Relaxation
My hotel, Hosteria del Mar, a great-value beachfront bed and breakfast hidden away in San Juan's residential Ocean Park neighborhood, was the antithesis of La Concha. Rooms are simple but spacious, the staff is friendly but the bar does serve an excellent mojito.

I got to taste the other spectrum of Wilo Benet's culinary talents at his newly opened wood-fired rotisserie spot, Varita, inside Condado Plaza hotel. The casual space—a modern take on a country lechonera—serves a value-minded menu of all things wood-fired. Fifteen dollars can get you a thin-crust pulled pork–and–Amarillo pizza or rotisserie-fired pork belly and a side of ripe plantain fritters. Benet’s even serving his own wine, made with grapes harvested in Spain.

© Varita
Lechon roasting on Varita's turbo-powered rotisserie.

Last month, I took a few days off to snowboard at Mammoth Mountain in Mammoth Lakes, California (now easier than ever to reach with Horizon Air’s new hour-long flights out of LAX.) I don’t have high expectations when it comes to on-mountain dining, but I was completely blown away when we stopped for lunch at McCoy Station’s food court–style marketplace. The enormous salad bar was loaded with superfresh local produce and homemade hummus. Killer burgers were grilled to order and made from all-natural Niman Ranch beef, freshly ground onsite. And they have a great selection of microbrews, including Mammoth Brewing Company’s IPA 395.

The new focus on local and organic is the result of a recent partnership between Mammoth Mountain and chef Joachim Splichal’s Patina Restaurant Group. Splichal has overhauled all of the resort’s F&B, from the food courts to the fine dining. The classic après ski hangout across from Main Lodge, the Yodler, received a complete makeover (with the exception of the bathrooms, which remain an eerie electric blue). Renamed Cervinia, after the ski resort in northwest Italy, the new menu is predominantly Italian and absolutely delicious. We feasted on thin-crust pizzas from the wood-burning oven, a plate of cured meats (La Quercia organic prosciutto, San Danielle prosciutto, Fra Mani sopresatta) a ridiculously indulgent pappardelle with Texas boar sugo. And the bread was out of this world, with just the right chewiness and perfect crispy crust. I couldn’t stop talking about it and finally found out that Patina installed a new bakeshop in Main Lodge, where they bake all of Cervinia’s excellent bread.

The bar for on-mountain dining has definitely been raised. My only complaint is that I was boarding with a fully belly the whole trip!