huevos con vino

As I was driving down the Jericho Turnpike on Long Island yesterday, I saw a quintessential Long Island scene.  Two cars were pulled over on the side of the Turnpike because one of them, a Nissan, had rammed the back of the other, a late-model truck.  The damage to the truck looked minimal.  The damage to the Nissan looked a little more serious: The hood was a little crumpled, but it wasn’t terribly messy. 

As we drove by, I saw a middle-aged man pressing his hand down onto the hood of the Nissan.  The only other thing I saw was the man’s face.  It was pure rage, in a way that seemed a little comical to me because this man either smashed into the back of the truck (in which case it may have been his fault), or he was the driver of the truck and he was somehow trying to tell the Nissan drivers that their car’s damage was minimal.  I think the latter is a stretch, so I assume the man rear-ended the truck but was angry because the truck stopped short.  Maybe. 

Anyway, the quintessential Long Island part, for me, was the way this man looked despite the fact that he was probably at fault.  So far, the quintessential scene at the Baltimore Airport is the amount of urine deposited onto the toilet seats.  It’s impressive, really.  The first bathroom I found smelled like the great ape exhibit at the zoo.  The second bathroom I located, which was in an entirely different terminal, smelled better but had the aforementioned urine everywhere.  I was afraid to walk beyond the entrance.  The third bathroom, coincidentally near Vino Volo, seemed the least dirty.  It’s a good thing my flight is so incredibly delayed, I have my pick of the disgusting facilities here at BWI.

I have never actually been to Baltimore, or Washington, DC, and I can only assume the toilets are cleaner in town than they are at the airport.

My last full day on Long Island was great, although a little stressful since I saw one set of grandparents (my mother’s side) at their new assisted living home.  I hadn’t seen them in five years and it was depressing to see how little short-term memory capability my grandmother has left.  She kept thinking I was someone else, or that my wife was my mother, or that my mother wasn’t my mother, and so on.  Luckily, my grandfather (actually my step-grandfather, but I don’t think of him that way) is still with it, mentally at least.  Physically, he has some trouble getting around, but he hasn’t lost his appetite judging by the way he plowed through his porkchops during Sunday dinner.

After driving my wife past my grandparents’ old house, and calling my mom to assure her the house had not burned down, we went back to a terrific Italian restaurant where we had eaten the night before.  Now, as far as I am concerned, pizza only exists on Long Island, in other pockets of New York State, and in a select few cities worldwide.  But outside of New York State, pizza is different and only occasionally good.  Sicilian is my preference, which makes it hard to get good pizza anywhere other than on Long Island.  Last night, I had two slices of Sicilian, and they were damn good.

This entire trip is tempered a little by my interaction with my mom’s parents, and also by the fact that a coworker and friend passed away the day before I left Seattle.  I’m sure if I had not left for vacation, I would have taken this week off and done something other than show up at work.  I probably would have consumed some wine in his honor.  But I think I’ll still enjoy my vacation despite such bad news and depressing family circumstances.  There’s always something positive to take from every situation, and in this particular situation I think one positive thing to bear in mind is that I am not the type of man who urinates on toilet seats.  That’s got to count for something this week.

I ate a canoli today.  A canoli, and some chicken Parmigiana.  And a brownie.  And I think I also had two bagels, but probably just one.  I definitely had some garlic bread.  I almost ate some Sicilian-style pizza, my favorite, but I didn’t want to spoil my appetite.  I love being on vacation.

I can also safely report that Target stores on Long Island are almost identical to the Target stores in the Seattle area.  The only exception seems to be the people inside the two stores: In Seattle, you don’t see too many three cart pile-ups with women screaming at one another over merchandise, or their place in line, or whatever seems to be at hand and up for argument.  I think I prefer Long Island for its scenery and esprit de corps, which is how a Frenchman might describe the sense of righteous indignation that seems to be on display at Long Island supermarkets and outlet malls.  The way many people here strut around reminds me of the feathers of a male peacock, but with more of the shrill peacock noises to go with the plumage.

Speaking of peacocks, I wore one of my favorite T-shirts today.  It’s a drawing of Richard Nixon with the word “dick” spelled out below it.  I like this shirt because it’s so literal in one way, and so accurate in another way.  Both of my grandparents loved it; I think it took them by surprise, actually.  They quickly caught on to the joke, adding their own ribald humor whenever I walked into the room (”Well, well, looks like you’ve got your dick on!”).  I wonder if their children realize this bawdy tendency simmers below the surface of their completely demure, grandparently exteriors.  In this regard, they are more like peahens: unassuming, quiet, but clearly more intelligent than the peacocks.

On two occasions, my rental GPS unit has steered me wildly wrong as I have tried to locate a hotel and a wine store on Long Island.  Both times, I ended up in residential areas that clearly lack hotels and wine stores, but that have no shortage of New Yorkers who enjoy staring angrily at rental cars with New Jersey license plates.  Such plates come in handy when I need to cut people off while driving down the parkway, but they do nothing to help me slip into the Smithtown beaches undetected.  I was at one of those beaches just long enough today to hold the skeletal remains of a raccoon or opossum before I had to leave.  It was an interesting day.

Actually, it was a very peaceful, uneventful day, and that’s exactly what I look for when I’m on vacation.  I am also trying to decide on a wine for Wine Blogging Wednesday #37, for which the theme is “indigenous grape varieties.”  The idea is to find a wine made in the location where the grape was first discovered, or where the grape varietal calls home from an ancestral perspective, and that is, I assume, made only from that type of grape.  For example, the Symphony grape was developed at UC Davis for the Central Valley in California, so if I can find a Central Valley winery that makes a Symphony wine, I’m on the right track.  It would be ideal to try said Symphony wine in the Central Valley, especially if I can find another Symphony wine as a point of comparison.  Since there do not appear to be any Seattle native grapes, I’m probably out of luck on the location element of this challenge.

So, quite soon I will be seeing my other set of grandparents for dinner, and then my wife and I will be heading down to Virginia Beach for a week of sun, sand, and Sauvignon Blanc.  Or, more likely, thunderstorms, tar, and tobacco smoke.  Either way, VA Beach is our next big stop during Summer Vacation 2007.

In 1963, my grandparents on my father’s side moved into a house on Long Island, which any New Yorker will tell you is the largest island in the contiguous 48 states, an achievement akin to having the largest nose in Ireland.  Speaking of Ireland, more people live on Long Island than in Ireland.  At almost 7.6 million residents, Long Island is so crammed with people I saw some of them falling off the sandy beaches and into the water today, possibly trying to swim to Ireland where the population isn’t quite so densely packed.

As I said, 44 years ago the house in which I am currently typing this blog entry was purchased by my grandparents on my father’s side.  My father himself moved in too, although he spent significantly less time at this house compared to his younger siblings.  It’s quite strange to be back in this house because I came here frequently as a child; I remember crawling up the front steps and sticking my head in between the metal slats of the banister.  It’s also a little strange being here with my wife; the last time I was here (in 2002), I hadn’t met my wife yet.  And, of course, it’s hard for me to forget the birthday I spent in this house back when I turned 4 years old.  The chocolate cake had tiny fingerprints on one corner by the time we were supposed to sit down and celebrate.  I was framed, I swear.

So it is upon this backdrop that Vacation 2007 begins.  I spent the first day catching up with my grandparents, eating a lot of home-cooked food, and looking around Costco to see how the Long Island version compares to the Costco locations in and around Seattle (the ancestral home of Costco).  The biggest difference?  You can buy beer, but not wine, at the Long Island Costco.  New York’s liquor laws are interesting to me.  For example, did you know that if you own a liquor store within the state of New York, you must be the sole owner of the store and live within a set distance from said store?  It’s all true, if you believe Wikipedia.  I’m heading to Virginia next, where any wine over 14% alcohol by volume (ABV) is sold in state “ABC” stores only, apparently.  Perhaps I’ll go for that nice, mild white wine rather than the 16% ABV Zinfandel, eh?

In terms of strange stuff that has happened so far during the trip, the list is fairly short:

• When I asked the stewardess on our flight whether she could take my wife’s food tray away, she said “NOW?!”  This was in first class.
• At least several extremely tan people asked me at the airport whether the luggage being disgorged into the baggage claim was from their Fort Lauderdale flight, and whether I worked for the airline.  I guess I was flattered that, with long hair and a beard, I looked like an airline employee.
• When we were at a store today, a female senior citizen body-checked my wife into a display of pretzels without noticing. Bill Laimbeer would have been proud.
• I had my first real bagel in about five years…very nice.
• Cantaloupe is a type of “musk” melon, which is what they seemingly call cantaloupes here.  Huh.
• I watched a man in an SUV plow his massive vehicle into a shopping cart, which was already touching a parked car.  No serious damage seemed to be done.  The driver took the cart into the store after dislodging his bumper from it.
• In the same parking lot, at about the same time, I watched a car try to pass another car on the left…within the parking lot…with pedestrians everywhere…while a car was trying to back out of a spot.  Nice.
• And finally, my grandmother’s tomatoes outshine anything from the store.  Impressive!  We also had Long Island sweet corn with dinner.  Wow…very impressive.

Tomorrow the plan is to find a replacement for my wife’s carry-on bag, the zipper on which has rendered the bag useless.  And with that, it’s time to go to sleep and pretend it isn’t 3 hours earlier than it is now.

Before I share my tasting notes, I want to say something about cherimoya and how lazy some wine reviewers can be, myself included. When a review claims that a wine smells or tastes like “cola,” I always get annoyed because cola is really just cherry, lemon, and vanilla in such measure as to create a new flavor: cola. So when I read “cola,” I wonder whether the vanilla is more pronounced (is this “vanilla cola” we’re talking about?) or whether the cherry is really a bit stronger. The same thing holds true with “citrus.” You don’t mean orange, surely!

So I’m warning you right now, the wine that I am about to review has a lot of cherimoya in it, both in the bouquet and in the taste. Cherimoya is usually described as tasting like a combination of mango, pineapple, and strawberry.  Trust me, cherimoya is an apt description, at least when the bottle is freshly unsealed.
Okay, that’s enough about cherimoya for now. The WBW task this month is simple: unoaked Chardonnay. No problem! Unoaked Chardonnay is becoming more and more popular.

But then I hit the Internet, and the stores. I wanted to find a highly-rated unoaked Chardonnay. Good luck with that. Unoaked Chardonnay seems to hold a position of “value” wine right now, at least in the Seattle area. The vast majority of American Chardonnay, anyway, comes into contact with oak, frequently extensive contact. At the same time, New Zealand unoaked Chardonnay has a strong connotation of “value” rather than “top quality.” The wine-buying public in Seattle still seems to prefer California oaked Chardonnay.

That said, the 7/31/07 issue of Wine Spectator has a section on California Chardonnay, including a page (76) on unoaked California Chardonnay.  I decided to choose the highest-rated wine from this issue of Wine Spectator, in part because I was able to find this wine in person, but also because I want to put the venerable WS to the test.  Does this wine merit 92 points?

The wine in question is the 2005 Mer Soleil Silver Unoaked Chardonnay, a 5,000-case offering that apparently sold out quickly.  Mer Soleil is the brainchild of the Wagner family, which is also the family behind the Caymus winery.  That’s some decent lineage, to say the least, and I think reading about their approach to winemaking also convinced me to try the 2005 Mer Soleil Silver for this month’s WBW challenge.

The Santa Lucia Highlands in Monterey County, California, are the home of the Mer Soleil vineyards.  According to the winery’s Web site, which appears to be a year or two out of date, they have nine different Chardonnay clones planted in this challenging natural setting.  A rich assortment of other white wine varietals round out the Mer Soleil vineyards, but clearly it is Chardonnay for which they are known.

And rightfully so.  I liked this wine!  Here are my notes:

• Aroma: Straight from the fridge, there was a good balance of freshly-tilled earth and strong fruit up front, mostly peach and lychee, with mild clover honey, custard, and a bit of mustard seed spice lurking behind the fruit. I actually stuck my nose into the wine (on accident) trying to identify the bouquet. Once the wine warms up near room temperature, the best way I can describe the aroma is “cherimoya,” a fruit that has a lot of pineapple and mango overtones along with the custard mouthfeel that this wine promises.
• Flavor: That custard flavor comes through, which is interesting because it isn’t a vanilla custard flavor. But really the custard flavor shows how creamy this Chardonnay really tastes. Strong acidic backbone, perhaps almost too acidic in the glass at first pour. Very juicy on the back of the tongue and through the lengthy finish. I think the notion of the custard apple is the way to describe this wine, although I also taste green pear and apricots that seem to lend a bit of sweetness if you drink the wine too quickly. Pineapple shows up rather sharply as the wine warms up, and it tastes good. After sitting open in my fridge for two days (under screwcap closure, of course), the wine lost its cherimoya and custard sensations, but still tasted good as a more traditional Chardonnay.
• General impression: Is it worth all that money? I wasn’t sure at first. But the next day, as I recalled sipping this wine, I wanted more. I believe this wine is worth the cost and I recommend it…especially if you like cherimoya.

In the end, unoaked California Chardonnay seems quite promising.  Is this wine worth 92 points from a professional publication?  Probably.  But as more California wineries try their hand at leaving their Chardonnay to rest in steel or concrete, I predict Mer Soleil will have some competition on their hands.

It’s time to bring my trip report for Chicago to a close. And I can’t think of a better way to do it than to talk about my dinner at Avenues.

In the few spare minutes I had while I was in Chicago for a conference recently, I was talked into going to one of the premiere restaurants in Chicago. Avenues is located in the Peninsula Hotel, which is like the Ritz or the Pierre but it’s in Chicago. I wound up being quite happy that I bought my first suit the other day as Avenues was a strictly jacket and tie type of place. In the end, my suit cost less than the meal, in part because I paid for a colleague as well as myself. Long story.

Anyway, Avenues is absurdly good. The current master chef (or chef de cuisine if you prefer) is Graham Elliot Bowles, and the man is indeed a culinary master. From what I understand about his work, he takes a deconstructionist approach to food. For example, as you’ll see below, you may still be hungry if you ask him for a BLT and a Caesar salad.
Avenues had three different tasting menus on the night I was there, and I had what might be considered the middle tier:

• An amuse bouche of fennel seed custard with cracked fennel on top - Absolutely delicious and somehow creamy and delightful without any thick cream in it.
• Sevruga caviar atop salmon with cucumber - Wow! I didn’t realize that I liked caviar this much. The flavor combination was absolutely ideal.
• Caesar salad, with a sliver of Romaine lettuce and melting Parmesan Reggiano inside a square brioche - Again, wow! How the heck did the chef make an entire Caesar salad in one bite? Amazing.
• White gazpacho with Meyer lemon and basil - The only thing that was less than flawless was this course…it was a little too sharply acidic, although I think a good wine pairing would have made this soup perfect.
• A “BLT” with sole steamed in a lettuce leaf plus crisp bacon and juicy tomato - Much like the Caesar “salad,” this BLT was astoundingly good.  The sole wrapped in steamed lettuce seemed quite French; you certainly don’t find steamed lettuce in many American restaurants.  Very, very tasty with the bacon and tomato.
• Seared tuna with olive and artichoke - Delicious fish, prepared as lightly as possible, well paired with the olive and artichoke flavors.
• Bison steak with a sweet corn and BBQ sauce finish plus a watermelon square - Wild, delectable flavors here, mainly a sarsaparilla or root beer essence to the sauce when combined with the watermelon.  Crazy, but it all worked perfectly.
• Chocolate, three ways, with a vanilla shake - Very cute and tasty.  The shake was the size of my thumb, in a properly-shaped malted milk glass, with tiny straw for effect.

Of course, you must never eat a meal this good without appropriate wine:

• 2000 Pommard - too acidic after 45-60 minutes, sent back.
• 2002 Volnay - amazing, ripe raspberry at first, eventually evolved into a settled blend of vanilla, hay, strawberry, and black cherry; very complex and absolutely delicious.
• 2002 Far Niente “Dolce” - phenomenally rich, sweet, swirling array of honey, almond, and golden raspberry; seductive and lovely, but never cloying. Amazing.

The wine deserves some explanation. First, I don’t recall exactly which 2000 Pommard we tried, but it doesn’t really matter because it turned after 45 minutes or so. It started out nice, but tightly wound, and then it unwound all over itself. The exceptional sommelier, Michael, allowed us to choose a different wine, and we went with his perfect suggestion. The 2002 Volnay was outstanding! Again, though, I don’t recall which Volnay we drank. It was simply called “Volnay.” I swear.

Second, the sommelier and I had some things in common. For example, when I asked for his suggestion from the wine list, he immediately flipped to the California Pinot Noir section and pointed to two wines: the 2004 Radio-Coteau Savoy and the 2005 Radio-Coteau Alberigi. I was stunned! I have both of these wines and I was excited to see they had Radio-Coteau wines at all. The prices were decent, too: around $150/bottle. Their 2004 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors was $350/bottle as a point of comparison.  Ouch.

The sommelier also knew Shayn Bjornholm, the distinguished master sommelier who was formerly at Canlis.  I mentioned that I had been to Canlis only a week or two earlier and that I had tried a half-bottle of 2000 Domaine Drouhin Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.  So that put me in good stead with Michael very quickly, despite a few naive questions from me.  I was very excited to hear about his taste for Radio-Coteau; not too many restaurants are so familiar with Eric Sussman’s work.  Then again, Radio-Coteau has quite a contingent of Chicagoland restaurants on their list.

In the end, this dinner may be the best I have ever enjoyed from a food perspective.  I mean, yes, I have had some fabulous dinners with friends where the food didn’t come close to Avenues, but the company made the dinner great.  At Avenues, the food makes the dinner great.  I’d go back anytime!