The Wine's the Thing
Mitch Kornfeld
2/6

A Brief Visit to Waughsville

(New York Summer Restaurant Week, Part I)

Harry Waugh passed away recently at the ripe old age of 97. He was a famous English wine writer and wine critic. He sometimes gets mentioned as a sibling of the more famous Waugh brothers, Alec and Evelyn, and even though he was the right age to be the middle brother he apparently wasn't related, and came from humbler origins. There is a famous saying in the wine world often attributed to him, "The first duty of a wine is to be red. The second is to be Burgundy." 

Actually it was Alec Waugh who said that. Harry was more of a red Bordeaux man. Lately there has been even more evidence that red wine is good for you. The good substances in the reds are called "polyphenols," and it seems that our old friend Cabernet Sauvignon, the "informing grape" of the red Bordeaux has the most of them, so old Harry picked the right stuff. Actually Harry Waugh was the first to import Chateau Petrus into England with the 1949. Before that Pomerol was something of a backwater. Remember that it was not included in the 1855 classification? Harry sure knew how to pick them. (Before I forget, Alec Waugh's full quotation was, "At the age of twenty I believed that the first duty of a wine was to be red, the second that it should be Burgundy. During forty years I have lost faith in much, but not in that," but more often than not it gets dumbed down to "The first duty...etc.".) 

I first encountered Harry Waugh's writings in the 1970's when I was just getting into wines seriously and he was a regular contributor to the magazine of the wine lovers organization Les Amis Du Vin. Here's a typical Harry Waugh dispatch, paraphrased extremely liberally,  "For lunch we went to Chateau Margaux where we were served prime rib of beef along with their '47, '49, '53, '59, '61, and the '62. After that we went to Chateau Mouton for dinner where we started with pate de foie gras served with a '52 Chateau D'Yquem  (An underrated vintage), then Baron Rothschild served an excellent filet mignon along  with their '47, '49, '53, '59, '61, and the '62. After that it was time for a good cigar and I  asked the Baron if he had any Vintage Port and we proceeded to his cellar where he...." 

Obviously I'm making that up but it isn't all that far from the truth. I used to seriously study Harry's tasting notes, never mind that in one day he could taste more First Growths than I have had in my life, but I didn't know that much about the subject and I had a thirst for knowledge so I read every word. 

It was many years later when I read an article, and I really can't remember who, when, or where, and the author said (My inclination would be to guess Matt Kramer in The Wine Spectator but I'm really not sure. Kramer is an opinionated fellow, as well as another lover of Burgundy, and it sounds like something he would say.) that he always hated those Harry Waugh type articles where the writer was always reviewing really expensive wines that most of us were never going to get a chance to drink. I didn't give it much thought way back when, but in retrospect I have to agree with that assessment. It's no newsflash that 200 dollar-a- bottle-at-release First Growth Bordeaux are great wines but the point that most people can't afford them and don't get to drink them is well taken. 

I'm going to be reporting on a week's worth of wining and dining in New York including some meals at some really top restaurants. I didn't have any foie gras and I certainly didn't have any First Growths, but I can see where someone could say that I was indulging in some conspicuous consumption that the average person couldn't afford. There is some truth to that, but on the other hand there will be some other people who will think I was scrimping: $280 for four people for lunch, and $600 for seven people at dinner? A mere bag of shells they will say. It's all relative. I'm a great believer in moderation but I have been known to go to excess from time to time, but I don't think things got too excessive. The most expensive wines of the week were only about $35 a bottle retail. Do you think that's excessive? It's all relative and it depends on your point of view. Not to let too much reality creep in (I'll be doing that in future weeks. I have to  say something about the World Trade Center) but there are a billion people in this world who don't get enough to eat, and it would take some of them a couple of weeks wages to earn $35 US. On the other hand you will probably soon be reading reviews of the 2000 Bordeaux wines, and believe me you are going to have to make a little effort to find the ones under $35 and there are going to be plenty of them priced at multiples of 35. 

With all that said, it's time to report on New York Summer Restaurant Week. As avid watchers of this space know, Summer Restaurant Week comes around in June of every year. The basic deal concerns the fact that you can have lunch at some very classy and top-flight restaurants (and many merely fine ones) for the lofty sum of $20.01 (Last year it was $20.00, next year will be $20.02, etc.). The usual price for a three-course lunch special at one of these first class places is about $35, though there are some that go up to $38 or $39, so you're saving about $15 to $19 a piece, which if figuring for two people, is enough for a good bottle of wine. Can you get a good bottle of wine in a fine New York restaurant in the $30 to $40 range? Yes you can. I was in vacation mode so I went for a little more than that on a few occasions, but most of the wines were in the $40's, and the lowest priced was only $18 for a full bottle, and yes it was a good wine. The most expensive bottles were $55 for a full bottle and $30 for a half. The main idea of this piece is not to illustrate that there are plenty of good wines at reasonable prices, though you can certainly say that for me it is always an underlying theme. This is basically a piece of reporting, but it might illuminate a few things and it will illustrate some of the wining and dining choices available in New York though it is only just scratching the surface. 

I'll be talking about food a little, but this is a wine column so most of the emphasis will be on the twenty-three wines I tasted and drank during the week. It was a warm week in the city and we had a few things in the beer and ale family, but since that is a separate subject it will have to wait for another time so this is the last you will hear about Brooklyn Pilsner from the Brooklyn Brewing Company (located you-know-where), the Blanche de Chambly from the Unibroue brewery of Chambly, Quebec, the Hennepin ale from the Brewery Omme gang of Cooperstown, New York (Yes, that Cooperstown. They say they moved there for the waters although the owner is not named Rick.), the Scaldis ale, all 12% alcohol of it, from Brasserie Dubuisson Freres, of Pipaix, Belgium, or any of the fine products from the Heartland Brewery located conveniently next door to Union Square Wine & Spirits, located on a certain public square in lower Manhattan that begins with the letter U. 

What occasioned all this was an idea I had a few years ago to bring my cousins Fran and Robert, who live in Mendocino County California (not exactly a dry county) out to New York for some wining and dining. After years of saying "You know, Fran and Robert would really like this place," I finally invited them out. Since this year Summer Restaurant Week was the last week in June, instead of the usual third week, and since Fran is a teacher and would be just finished with the school year, we decided to do it in 2001. What follows is a summary of a week in New York City spent mostly wining and dining. 

Day 1 was Monday June 25, 2001. Since my cousins were coming in from the west coast that day the time difference wouldn't allow us to have lunch together, but there  was ample time for dinner. I thought that Champagne and lobster would be a nice touch, and I knew where we could get a good meal locally, and at reasonable prices. I took them to a place called Harbor Restaurant, located on Queens Boulevard in  Elmhurst, New York, which as the name of the thoroughfare suggests, is in my own fair  Borough of Queens. Harbor, as you surely guessed, specializes in seafood, but it's also  a Chinese restaurant, and it is a good one. New York's well-known Chinatown in lower Manhattan has overflowed its banks and now there is practically a Chinatown East centered in Flushing, Queens, maybe three miles (five km.) from Elmhurst. (The name was Vlushing in Dutch. Along with Jamaica it was one of the two original seventeenth century Dutch settlements in Queens, so can the jokes.) One of the good things about Chinese Restaurants, at least in New York, is that they usually let you bring your own wine. Harbor has a liquor license and incredibly they let me bring my own and they don't charge me a fee for corkage. Corkage is the restaurant term for the charge for providing glasses, opening, and pouring the wine. Maybe they don't charge me because I bring my own glasses, or maybe it's because it's good business. I keep coming back and keep ordering lobster and other high-priced things so everyone is happy. 

I brought along two bottles of the traditional celebratory sparkling wines. One was a genuine Champagne and the other was a California sparkler. The Champagne was the non-vintage Brut from Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, and the Californian was the Domaine Chandon Reserve Brut. They list at $35 and $25 respectively. They were both fine wines but they are stylistically different, as you would expect. The Veuve Clicquot is considered one of the finest non-vintage bruts and again it showed why. It was big, full-bodied and rich with deep flavors, a little yeasty, balanced, and had plenty of long lasting tiny bubbles. Just excellent first-rate stuff. The Domaine Chandon Reserve is a fine wine by any standard but it just didn't have the depth of flavor of the Veuve Clicquot. It's a fruity, lithe, lively, bubbly, and elegant sparkling wine (and it tastes fine). Generally, and I do mean generally, this one is not etched in stone, it's the French wines that are considered to be the ones that go for elegance, balance, and grace, while the California wines go for the power and the glory. This time it was pretty much the other way around, though I'm not calling the Veuve Clicquot inelegant. The Domaine Chandonis a very very nice wine but it just couldn't hang in there when compared to a really good Champagne. By itself or in with other international competition it would be very good indeed, but this time the facts supported the observation that "There's really no substitute for real Champagne." 

With the wines we had two lobsters, one done dry with sliced scallions (called green onions in some places) and chilies, and one in black bean sauce, always one of my favorites. We also had two orders of soft-shelled crabs prepared the same way. Soft-shelled crabs are an East Coast (and Gulf Coast) delicacy, available only in the spring and early summer. Fran and Robert never had them before and they were so taken by them they keep making appearances throughout the week. The crabs are the familiar East Coast, or Maryland, Blue Crabs. In the spring they molt, or shed, their old shells and begin to grow new larger ones. Soft-shelled crabs are sent to market before the new shells get a chance to harden, so you eat them shell and all. The shells are paper thin and easy to eat. The new soft shells are just slightly crunchy and if anything they add a little texture and interest. Actually eating them is easier than eating hard-shelled crabs by orders of magnitude, and that is part of their appeal (and they taste great too).  If you haven't tried them, you really must at the next available opportunity. They are  absolutely great and there is nothing to be squeamish about. 

We also had a seafood soup and some vegetarian rolls (mostly mushroom) for  appetizers. The whole shooting match, excluding the wines came to $110, tax and tip inclusive. Even with the sparklers it was about $175 for gourmet stuff for four people. Harbor isn't a famous restaurant but it provided a good meal. A really fine Chinese restaurant that lets you bring your own wine is a good find.  Harbor Seafood Restaurant, 84-01 Queens Blvd., Elmhurst. No New York Times rating. No current Zagat Survey rating, though Zagat gives a similar restaurant in Flushing a 20-point food rating. 

On Day 2 of our week we had our first Summer Restaurant Week lunch. I chose Aquavit, an excellent restaurant that serves what can be called modern Swedish-American cuisine. The New York Times gives Aquavit a three-star rating. Four stars is of course the highest but The Times begins with poor to satisfactory before getting to one-star, so three stars is really more like getting five out of six. If you want to take a look at it another way, there are the ratings from the Zagat Survey. In the 2001 Zagat, Aquavit scored 25 for food, 26 for decor, and 24 for service, on their 30-point scale. Keep in mind that no one ever gets a 30 and even 29's are pretty rare. In 2001 no restaurant got a 29 in any category. There are only (and I do mean only) 44 restaurants rated at 26 points or above in the food category, so Aquavit is in a tie for 45th, but that's out of 1,931 eating establishments listed in the survey. That's a higher percentage than Roger Clemens' won-loss. (And keep in mind that there are thousands of other eating places that don't even rate getting rated. Harbor is not even listed.) They may not have that fourth star but the food is first-rate and for my money they're firmly in the first tier of New York City restaurants. 

Being a firm believer in "When in Stockholm do like a Swede," I suggested that we start off with an additional herring appetizer, over and above the three course special. (It's served with a Carlsberg beer and a shot of Aquavit, the national liquor of Sweden, which is a caraway flavored vodka, though there are many flavored Aquavits. We passed on those drinks.) The appetizer is herring done about seven different ways, all of which are excellent. There was a mustard sauce, a tomato sauce, a cream sauce, they were dilled, and they were pickled, and there were a few other ways I can't even remember. Herring is a little bit fatty so I wanted a wine with some acidity to cut through the fat. For high acidity in a wine you should look for something from a cool climate, so I picked something from a wine growing region that's about as far from the equator as you can get, Alsace. The wine was a 2000 Reisling from Paul Blanck, and it was perfect with the herring and with the fishes that followed. It had real Reisling taste (which is over in the apricot-peach end of the spectrum) with a nice balancing acidity. It didn't have the depth or depth of flavors of one of Blanck's single vineyard wines but Robert had it an (internal) clocking of 43 seconds duration of finish, a very respectable figure, especially for a non-vineyard designated bottling, and it just hit the spot with fish. It was $40. 

For my $20.01 lunch I had a tuna roll appetizer, which was not sushi-like in character and was better than it sounds. The tuna was wrapped around some spicy sprouts, cilantro, and minced vegetables including corn and peppers that gave it a zippy sort of Mexican flair which provided a nice counterpoint to the rich tuna. The Reisling was  perfect with it. 

My main course was called "Hot Smoked Salmon," and I was expecting hot lox,  something that my parents used to serve, and I haven't had it in many years, but to my surprise what I got wasn't smoked salmon that had been heated, but salmon that had been hot smoked, not cold smoked. Cold smoking is actually the technical term for what  is commonly and normally referred to as smoking. It's basically cooking that's done over a low heat for a long period of time instead of regular cooking, which is of course done over high heat for a short period of time. Hot smoking is in between and it's closer to  normal cooking. (No wonder it took a long time for my salmon to get to the table.) They gave me a generous portion of two pieces of rare on the inside, smoky on the outside, and succulent through and through salmon. It wasn't just another piece of salmon. 

For desert I had a cylinder of vanilla ice cream, filled with passion fruit custard, topped with raspberry sorbet, and presented on a plate filled with swirls of raspberry puree. It was visually stunning, something you only get in a top-tier restaurant, and almost looked too good to eat. Naturally I finished every drop, and enjoyed it immensely. Since I'm usually making some attempt at watching calories I often skip desert but I don't like to skip desert wine (or a cognac, or another brandy, or a grappa, etc.). With the desert I had a glass of Banyuls, which as I have mentioned in an earlier edition is basically a French version of Port. It's a little more elegant and refined than your average Port and I'm rather fond of it, but since it's not that well known there is sometimes a problem coming across a fresh bottle in a restaurant. The one that Aquavit had was from the Domaine de la Rectorie ($11 the glass). It was nice but it had probably been open for a few days so it lacked a certain freshness. I figure it's not the restaurant's fault that too few people order it. At least they carry it. The next time I order one it's going to be at a French restaurant where presumably there's more call for it. Fran and Robert each had a glass of Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, a '99 from Paul Jaboulet ($8 a glass) which comes from the Cotes du Rhone and is a fortified wine. It's something like a French version of White Port. I've never had a White Port (Even though I live in a city that has a radio station that's named after White Port and Lemon Juice. It's at 95.5FM.) but I suspect this French Muscat-based wine is usually much better than your average White Port. It's fortified to only 15% alcohol, and when made well is fragrant and lovely. It's at its best when one or two years old. It's not expensive and that helps to make it a good choice for a glass of desert wine at a restaurant. I've always liked them and Fran and Robert were very happy with theirs. 

All in all Aquavit provided a first-rate dining experience and we all walked away extremely satisfied. The restaurant is in what used to be a townhouse owned by the Rockefeller family and there is something satisfying about having a fine wining and dining experience in the former digs of rich Robber-Baron Republicans (things that no one in my family has ever been), and then there is the waterfall. I figured I had to mention it because it is so prominent. The last time The New York Times reviewed Aquavit (Spring of 2001) the reviewer didn't care for it. I know it's something of a cheap trick but I liked it and found it to be soothing, maybe because I was born and raised in a seaside community. Personally all I think they need for that fourth star is to add a dose of sea salt. Restaurant Aquavit, 13 W. 54th Street, New York. New York Times rating -- 3 Stars, 2001 Zagat ratings, 25 Food, 26 Decor, 24 Service, $59 Cost for dinner with one drink. 

I'll end Part I here and resume nest week with Tuesday night's dinner where I picked out a few choice bottles from my storage facility. Hope to see you then. 

© Mitch Kornfeld 2002 All rights reserved

Send your comments or questions to...
mitchk@unionsquarejournal.com


Previously by Mitch Kornfeld...

Get Bubbling with California Sparklers (12/27/01)

The Napa Valley Comes to Town, Part II (09/04/01)

The Napa Valley Comes to Town, Part I (07/12/01)

Windows on Long Island (06/13/01)

Bully for Your (05/30/01)

Big Euro Tasting, Part III -- Remembrance of Bouquets Past (05/17/01)

Big Euro Tasting, Part II -- Greater Burgundy (05/09/01)

Grand European Tasting (05/01/01)

King Cab, Part V -- Spain, Chile, Argentina, Australia (04/18/01)

King Cab, Part IV -- Italy (04/04/01)

King Cab, Part III -- California (03/21/01)

King Cab, Part II -- Bordeaux (03/07/01)

King Cab, Part I -- Some Basics (02/27/01)

For a Big Red, Think Petite (02/18/02)

Tannic Monsters from the ID (02/08/01)

New York Wine and Restaurant Deals (01/30/01)

Dad's Cardinal Zins and Other Clichés (01/20/01)

Some Basics for a Winter's Eve (01/12/01)

And if They're Spanish That's Fine (01/05/01)

Hello Carbon Dioxide (12/29/00)

Wines for Christmas (12/22/00)

Nouveau Beaujolais, Etc. (11/24/00)

Going to a Tasting 101 (12/01/00)