The Omnivorous Fish - wine

Breath of Fresh Air and Corks

JoeFish — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:25:59 -0400

I feel like a new man. The Agent came to visit, I went home for the day, saw some family and bought a new bed. Actually, The Agent bought the new bed, but I helped pick it out. Planning for the new kitchen and other home improvement projects continues and I still have sixty three meals to eat outside major restaurant cities. I hear Hartford has some good places, any truth to this?

We went to Corks, which I mentioned before, the restaurant with the all-American wine list. The list is fascinating and extensive, with at least 200 labels, and the one wine they were out of they told us about immediately upon presenting the wine list, a very nice and impressive touch. I won’t write a full review, because I was so involved with seeing The Agent my attention was not on the food. I will, however tell you what we ate.

We split a salad with some unmemorable fried oysters. It certainly wasn’t bad, but the oysters had either been washed or were simply not that flavorful to begin with. Eating an oyster is all about taking a tender little bite of the ocean, and these were just crusty little bits; they could have been clams or pieces of chicken. The salad was dressed simply and plated with some infused and/or emulsified oils that I don’t remember as being identified, but one of them involved herbs, the other tomatoes. They were flavorful, but didn’t much help the eh-ness of the oysters. I had the duck, which was not only very good, but a sort of barometer about restaurants in Baltimore: when I ordered it, the waitress sheepishly- almost apologetically- told me that the chef recommended it be cooked medium rare to medium. The inflection told me I should at least try it medium. She looked relieved when I said he should cook it however he liked.

The duck came with better-than-average mashed potatoes and some delicately seasoned, if unseasonal psychologically, braised red cabbage. Although, since Baltimore has been having Seattle weather lately, it was actually somewhat appropriate. The meat was just on the medium side of medium rare, probably a symptom of being gun-shy with poultry in Baltimore. All in all, it was a winner.

The Agent had pork three ways: a braised belly, a terrine and a loin chop. Again, I don’t remember all the details to do it justice but I remember enough not to get it again. The terrine was dry and bland, the belly seemed more poached than braised and the chop was completely overcooked. Pork belly needs a counterpoint to its lovely fatty richness, like a crispy exterior or a strong sauce. This was just a flabby piece of pork belly.

We got the cheese plate after, again all American sundries, but not exactly chosen for diversity. There was a reblochon-ish cheese (think brie, but stronger) and two harder cheeses, much too similar to share a three-selection cheese plate. One was not unlike a good aged dubliner, but without the crystals, the other more cheddar-like and less memorable.

The restaurant has all the raw ingredients of greatness, but needs some attention. The menu advertises a chef/owner, but doesn’t specify whether he’s an executive chef or if he’s sweating the line every day. If he is, he might want to take a night off and eat at his place.

I did chat with the sommelier briefly, a lively and charming man named Chris Corker. He knew his stuff, and knew his winemakers. He told us about some of the small pinot noir producers he carries and made no secret that his restaurant was the only place you’re likely to see them in the area. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the geography of the Central Valley and questions about the AVAs on the wine list were met with enthusiasm and thorough responses.

Short answer: I would go back if I had the time and the crowd to really do the wine list justice, and I would ask a lot more questions about the menu.

Corks

1026 S. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21230

410.752.3810

Eating In Baltimore

JoeFish — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:08:29 -0400

Faidley’s Raw Bar
Sometimes it’s nice to be an all-out unabashed tourist. Sometimes it’s nice to stare at things and take pictures of people that don’t especially want their picture taken. Sometimes, in other words, its nice to go to Faidley’s in Baltimore for a crabcake. Granted, it’s a $20 crabcake, and light, almost like a crabcake souffle, with enormous pieces of crab, and gently cooked, with a crisp, light exterior, rather than a crunchy panzarotti frame. But, merit of the food aside, it’s nice to take pictures like this one:
Oyster Sign

The old days are gone, indeed.

Faidley’s is a fish and shellfish monger cum raw bar cum lunch counter at the “World Famous” Lexington Market. Lexington Market is like many indoor markets in the US that were more or less run down and then reopened or redone with municipal money into food courts with some market vestiges here and there. It is neither as nice as Ferry Building in San Francisco, nor as authentic as the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, but it has some cool little booths, and Faidley’s serving ethereal crabcakes. That’s in the East Market, however. NK and I made the mistake of venturing across Paca to the West Market. It has the look outside of a street market in Hong Kong, bustling with cheap and knock-off goods, and hucksters selling everything from handbags to cell phones, and we thought it might be a fun to wander through.

We were met, once through the doors, with the literally overpowering smell of body odor and forgotten carcasses. I nearly fell over. As we walked through the filthy row of stalls serving unappetizing food, we were amazed that anyone could eat, especially since halfway through the building, the smell worsened and became distinctly odoriferous of human feces. I wish I was exaggerating. It haunts me still.

Somehow, when we got back to the hotel, NK was hungry again, and he went off to Pizzeria Uno with another coworker of ours. I couldn’t understand how he was hungry again, after all, he left a teaspoon of coleslaw and a slice of tomato. (I left more than half of my slaw and a good measure of potato salad; the pile of slaw was easily five inches high.)
Nick’s Plate

We’ve also been eating at a fantastic Irish pub and restaurant called Maggie Moore’s on Eutaw and Fayette, across from the Hippodrome. I’ve eaten several meals there, including lunch today and dinner yesterday, and I’m not showing any signs of slowing. Baltimore is a car town, so our options here are somewhat limited. Maggie’s however, is no compromise. I would eat there every third meal or so even if I lived here. It’s like all of the good food of the new and old Irish traditions, except cooked by someone who knows how. Just about everything is homemade, and the quality is high. The prices aren’t daunting, either, especially given the level of the ingredients and the portion sizes. I had corned beef both on its own with cabbage and roasted root vegetables (I always forget how much I like parsnips) and also in a reuben on excellent marble rye bread with strong swiss cheese and moist, chewy sauerkraut, not that mushy stuff from a can. The corned beef is the real deal. They either make it themselves or they get it from a butcher who knows how to float an egg.

There is a modern take on bangers and mash, more like a saute of bangers and scallions with white wine over mash: innovative and very tasty. Being a bar, they have a predictable array of sandwiches: burgers, salmon (haven’t tried), BLT with chicken (excellent), ther aforementioned reuben and a few others. Fish and chips and lamb chops both get an A+ also.

I have some friends who live here and last night they took me to a place called Brewer’s Art, a brewhouse and gastropub in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. We were too late for dinner, but I had a decent pizza with an adequate crust, but excellent sauce, dry (style of mozz, not an invective) mozzarella and sausage. My friends had a cured salmon sandwhich with sauce gribiche (an often overlooked but delicious sauce, much like mayonnaise, but made with cooked egg yolks, and with salty bits added, usually some combination of cornichons, capers and onions) and a bowl of Vichyssoise(chilled cream of leek and potato soup, usually pureed). I didn’t try the Vichyssoise, but it looked excellent and, really, who’s going to go to the trouble of Vichyssoise unless it’s decent? We also shared some rosemary-flecked garlic fries, and no matter how standard I like my standards, these fries were wait-out-in-the-rain, kick-you-in-the-crotch good.

I had the “Proletary” dark beer, which came out of the tap with the enormous pitchfork as a handle, and my companions had the “Resurrection” abbey-style dubbel, an excellent, barely sweet red dubbel which, premature in its metaphor, came from the tap with a crucifix on it (or maybe too late, depending on how you look at it). The dark beer was perfect: not as thick as Guinness, and more flavorful, but a little lighter than Murphy’s; if they sold it in bottles I would have taken home a case. My friends know the brewer and told me I’d have to come back when he’s there. Apparently, he’s a nut, but can talk beer like there’s no tomorrow, and I’d love to hear what he has to say. And I’d like the opportunity to talk him into bottling some Proletary.

There’s a wine-oriented restaurant called Corks about a mile from the theater. I have traded a few emails with the sommelier, and although the menu is a little busy for my taste, the wine list is around 300 selections, every one of them domestic. Yes, that’s right, every one domestic. No Champagne, no Burgundy, no Bordeaux, no Super-Tuscans. It’s a fascinating list including a large selection from Oregon and a smattering of East Coast wines, although, to their discredit, none from New York. Regional pride aside, New York is now a major wine producing region, third among states, with the quality (especially among whites) to back it up. For me, a comprehensive list of American wines is incomplete without rieslings, at least, from New York. It’s also strange, since Corks’ wine list is set up to mimic a geographically European list (cabs under “Bordeaux,” pinots under “Burgundy,” etc.), to exclude the “Germany” (or Austria or Alsace) of the US. What’s missing aside, what’s there is worth checking out. I’m hoping to have dinner there next week sometime.

So far, I have to say it is great to be back in a more or less big city, and I am looking forward to a quick trip home on our only day off, Labor Day (which is just a coincidence, we happened to be booked in Baltimore for two weeks, so there’s no travel-and-load-in Monday next week).

Listening: Chris Smiter, Train Home and Chris Thile, Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Wine Shopping Surprises

JoeFish — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 00:10:22 -0400

Stop me if you heard it: guy travels all over the world, eating, drinking and shopping for gastronomic oddities. Lives in New York City and does extensive shopping online. He walks into a wine store in Greenville, SC and…

finds the second-best wine store he has ever been to.

Now listen, I am not one of those people who thinks that anything worth seeing/doing/eating is in NYC/Northeast/East Coast/West Coast. There are little nuggets of genius and culinary miracles EVERYWHERE, but, to be fair, there are some impressive things and stores in NYC, SF, LA, London, Paris, Rome, etc. Well, today I can tell you that there is an incredible, world-class wine store in Greenville called Northhampton Wines. It also has an in-store wine bar and restaurant that I can’t wait to try (hopefully Saturday between shows).

I won’t go on and on, but here’s what I picked up today, in addition to a cheap corkscrew, extra vacu-vin caps and some raw-milk Manchego:

Cline Ancient Vines Carignane 04
Rosenblum Redwood Valley Zinfandel, Annette’s Reserve 04
Louis Jadot Capelle aux Loups Saint-Veran 02
Chameleon Charbono 02
Provenance Napa Valley Rutherford Cab 03

Not exactly stuff lying around the corner store. They also had a remarkable selection of half bottles, including Domaine Serene and Martinelli.

Tasting notes to come. FYI, 24 hours later, the blackberry fruit did come out on the Rosenblum Eagle Point. I’m sure it would have after an hour or so of aggressive aeration. I’ll write about that in a while, too (aggressive aeration, that is).

Listening: Fire Water by the Jazz Crusaders from the The Best Of the Jazz Crusaders

Wine Tasting: Zinfandel

JoeFish — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:58:36 -0400

Rosenblum Eagle Point Zin

The wine: Eagle Point Vineyard Zinfandel 2003

The winery: Rosenblum Cellars

The store: Turkey Creek Wines and Spirits, Knoxville, TN

The price: $26.99

The color: opaque black cherry, deep garnet rim

The nose: black fruit, earth, cherries, cola, hints of smoke

The taste: Very tight, tannins would benefit from extended aeration (say 1 hour or more); plums, cassis, cloves; hints of leather and cherries

The finish: acidic, but not unpleasantly so; slight sour pucker, not unlike that from cheese

The verdict: It’s another excellent, site-driven zin from the best winery ever in an industrial park. Kidding aside, Rosenblum consistently makes transcendent zinfandels that echo their soil and soul. And for what you get, you can’t beat the price. Someday, when I have someplace to put it, I would love to cellar one of these powerful zins and come to my own conclusions about it. Ridge’s website kind of makes me pine for the idea.

The food: Belgioioso extra sharp provolone. They perhaps make the best cheeses you’re going to find in a supermarket in Greenville, SC. I bought some grapes, too, but they’re pretty thick-skinned, therefore tannic, and I don’t think it’s going to work out.

I won’t drink it all tonight, so we’ll see how it opens up tomorrow. I expect it to be fruitier and soften the tannins a little. The label says “this wine shows stunning bright blackberry fruit….” We’ll see.

And the Captain Obvious Award for Exceptional Arrogance goes to...

JoeFish — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:58:07 -0400

And the Captain Obvious Award for Exceptional Arrogance goes to: Wine Spectator’s James Suckling. Somehow, WS has seen fit to give this nimrod a oped alongside those two excellent writers and wine crusaders James Laube and Matt Kramer. This is a recent development which is completely inexplicable given his utter lack of a gift for language and the pretentious, pedantic way in which he conducts himself in the world of wine.

Let’s look back for a moment on that embarrassing treatise he published in the “Great Cork Debate,” opposite a piece by James Laube that was both an invigorating piece of writing and a cogent argument for alternative closures for all but the most age-worthy wines. James Laube had necessary facts and figures about screw caps, technical corks, synthetic corks, natural corks and other media, like foil-lined boxes. He had scientific information- and industry conjecture- about each and their effect on aging and longevity and laid out the simple truth that TCA and brett contamination equal one thing to wine lovers: a waste of money.

James Suckling said cork was traditional, and that having a screw cap undermined the ceremony of opening wine.

Give me a break. The Agent and I crack open four or five bottles a week, twice that if we entertain. Does he really think I get excited every time I have to wrestle the cork out of a bottle (even though I do have a tortoiseshell Laguiole corkscrew)?

Back to the Award. The latest from this St-Emillon obsessed ignoramus is his oped this issue (WS 31 Aug 06) called “I Have Joined the Cult.” It’s a sleepy little article about how he went to a tasting of heavy-hit cult cabs from the nineties, given by Swiss collector Silvio Denz. He goes on to list all of his own misguided conceptions about California wines, like how they’re all high-alcohol fruit-bombs, and how he would never have put them aside the wines of Bordeaux. My personal favorite line is “I never thought they would age very well.” I’m glad I pay $50 a year to be told that Napa cab ages well. I’m glad he has the attention of an international audience, because we all sat around drinking our Jordans and Caymuses on release, because we could never get 5 or 10 years out of them. Thank you, James Suckling, for saving us.

Does he really think he’s informing us by saying that Araujo and Screaming Eagle are pretty good after all? He ends the article telling us he’s “now a full-fledged member of the California cult.”

Guess what, Mr Suckling, we don’t need you. Here’s your sign.