by Christina Waters | Feb 23, 2007 | Food, Home |
In a word, “yes.” But I already knew that, having been lucky enough to dine in the original Paris version of Le Bernardin, as well as the Manhattan one twice before. Perhaps only Jules Verne has done more for seafood than Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert. But then the Michelin people also know that. Three stars.
My dining partner was a Le Bernardin devotée and longtime Manhattan artist and she was as thrilled with the meal as I was. Armed with a glass of Puligny-Montrachet more costly than most bottles of wine I have in my house, I plunged into a beautiful world of flavors.
It began with an amuse fit for the angels. In a shot glass, lavish morsels of Maine lobster, sweet and moist, sat suspended in a warm lobster foam. My appetizer of yellow fin, pounded thin enough to read through, was layered over a frosting of foie gras, over a paper-thin slice of baguette toast. Each bite moved down through the sparkling tuna, the creamy foie gras and into the crisp toast. Sensational.
Next came a course of warm peeky-toe crab, (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 23, 2007 | Food, Home |
Manhattan – where the national color is black and the diversity is abundant. You can tell the tourists immediately – they are not wearing black, and they aren’t wearing one of those big, cashmere mufflers that are required in the City. In an effort to stretch my culinary dollars I lived a schizophrenic food life last week, ranging from lunches of trail mix to 3-star Michelin dinners. In between, I walked as far as the snowy, slushy streets would allow and inhaled great architecture and even greater artworks. In a nutshell:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – still the greatest single temple of art in the country – where I drooled shamelessly over the mind-melting couture collection of Nan Kempner, whose Yves St. Laurent-clad figure adorned the pages of
Vogue Magazine regularly during my girlhood. . . . I visited my personal favorites in the Rembrandt room, and discovered surprising new passions in the “Glitter & Doom” show. A major revelation – Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and Max Beckmann exposing the craven underbelly of German cafe culture between the wars. . . .
The Met also offered my wonderful final meal of the trip. I went on Friday evening — the Met is open until 9pm on Fri & Sat – and found a string quartet filling the graceful lobby rotunda with music. At a table along the upper mezzanine balcony, I enjoyed a trio of cheeses, with crostini, grapes and figs – plus a McLaran Vale Shiraz 2Up, 2005, filled with berries and earth-tones. Incomparable ambience, nice food, for $21 – including bubbling water. When you go to New York, by all means visit the Met on a weekend evening. Lots of action, and fewer crowds.
It was, other than the trail mix, the cheapest meal I had in the City.
The Modern: MOMA, despite its hefty $20 admission, delivered the goods. The Jackson Pollack room alone is worth the twenty bucks. But then so were a few choice Diebenkorns and DeKoonings. I always visit the Terrace Cafe at MOMA, on the 5th floor. Seriously beautiful food, served in an austere white room (really smart, since your eyes need a break after feasting on all that modern art), and for reasonable prices.
My lunch consisted of sliced duck, fanned out on a salad of Yukon gold potatoes bathed in aged goat sheese and horse radish ($15). A fluff of infant cabbage spouts sat at the top of the plate. A slick of Port glaze went nicely with the duck — but then, they knew that — and a little mound of fruit that had been simmered in the Port sat on the side. Raisins, cranberries, sultanas, oh my. Conceptually perfect. Add a pot of herbal tea, absolutely right for the cold weather (the high that day was 24 degrees!), and you have heaven for twentysomething dollars.
Another night I dined at Lupa Osteria Romana — another one of Mario Batali’s loud, exciting, to-die-for food palaces in Greenwich Village. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 23, 2007 | Home, Movies |
We Don’t Play Golf Here, a half-hour documentary film by prolific political auteur Saul Landau, screens at 4pm this Wednesday, February 28, at UCSC’s Conference Room D, Bay Tree Building. Come meet the filmmaker, watch the new film and listen to some choice analysis of the current global miasma, followed by a reception for Landau. A lifelong observer of Latin American politics and culture, Landau once again turns his passionate liberal eye on our neighbor to the south. What he finds provides eloquent documentation —edgy and embarrassing — of the eco-cultural perils of economic globalization.
The half-hour film works, in classic Landau style, by means of wry, engaging images and interviews, to show us the real casualties of first world greed — the hard-working poor of Mexico. Comprising a trio of educational vignettes, the film opens with a withering dismissal of plans to put a full-on golf course and country club in the town of Tepoztlan, whose environmentally-savvy citicizens mocked the planned corporate disaster. “We don’t want this type of progress,†notes the newly-elected Tepoztlan mayor.
Another segment takes aim at Boise Cascade’s take-over of logging in Guerrero, complete with tales of torture endured by Mexican peasants who attempted to stop the clear-cutting of local forests. The filmmaker captures painful confessions of former Levi Strauss factory workers whose El Paso jobs were abruptly terminated in favor of the cheaper labor pool of China.
Landau’s eye sees it all – toxic waste, loss of jobs, eco-disasters, and the irrationality of capitalism. (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 23, 2007 | Food, Home, Travel |
Yes, it was snowy in Manhattan last week! Beautiful, crisp and COLD. But that didn’t stop me from devouring all the food and art the law would allow.
Central Park, as you can see (that’s the Dakota, where John Lennon lived, in the background) looked gorgeous. I drove through it on my way to breakfast at the Neue Galerie‘s decadent Cafe Sabarsky. Pastries lined up like it was Vienna 1923 all over again.
The Neue Galerie, art lovers will recall, is the
jewelbox mansion on 5th Avenue (at 86th) that Ronald Lauder (Estee’s son) transformed into a home for Austrian and German artwork. The current exhibition includes four rooms of furniture, textiles, wallpaper – the works – designed by the Wiener Werkstatt’s Josef Hoffman (the Viennese equivalent of Charles Rennie MacIntosh). (more…)
by Christina Waters | Feb 22, 2007 | Movies |
Who can resist making Oscar predictions? Not me – so here goes.
In a word – Babel, Babel, Babel. I like this intricate love song to trans-cultural existentialism to win Best Picture. Babel should also take Best Director, but given the collective guilt the Academy feels over not having awarded Martin Scorsese the directing award for his Howard Hughes film, it will probably be the much-unOscar’d auteur who steps up to the podium for his directorial work in The Departed.
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker – pretty obvious.
Best Actress: Who else? The Queen. What a terrible year to have been anyone other than Helen Mirren.
Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin, because he is a national treasure.
Supporting Actress: Little miss Abigail Breslin
Original Screenplay: Babel (you should be detecting a theme here…)
Foreign Language Film: Pan’s Labyrinth, because it turned cinema into archetype
Animated Feature: Happy Feet – cute overload, and who doesn’t love penguins?
Original Score: Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting, trans-ethnic music from Babel
Art Direction: Pan’s Labyrinth, such dark and charismatic film stock
Cinematography: Pan’s Labyrinth
Makeup and Sound: Apocalypto – calm down! such over-the-top sensory miracles should be rewarded
Documentary Feature: An Inconvenient Truth, made by the man who should have been the current president.
Film Editing: UCSC alum Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise, for Babel.
