Brad Briske is currently playing around with an appetizer of deep magenta roasted beets — Route One — topped with a creamy ricotta favetta and a sprig of infant beet greens. In addition to 30-year-old balsamic, this dish features one more secret bit of luxury.
Stop by Gabriella and find out more.
Back from Vegas, I’m still trying to sort out the declining playground of Frank Sinatra & friends. More posts in the following days. . . .
For now, let’s just say that in addition to a tremendous meal at Mario Batali’s new Carnevino, we discovered an eco-haven (with a Platinum LEED ranking) in the Springs Preserve. Here we lunched – twice – at Wolfgang Puck’s all-organic, utterly delightful cafe (here’s the house salad).
Stay tuned.
At New Leaf in Felton no less! For reasons I am content not to question, the wine buyer at the SLV New Leaf has a wide-ranging appetite Рand there on the shelf I found the highly quaffable Unti Ros̩ ($19), right next to other Unti varietals and a very hefty selection of Santa Cruz Mountain all-star premiums.
So now you know where to go to grab some of this stylish Grenache-intensive blush wine. But if you want to drink it along with that amazing squid ink pasta, you’ll need to go to Gabriella.
A pilgrimage for my grandmother, that’s what last week’s visit was to the sundrenched Liberace Museum. Located conveniently next door to Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport, the museum is a meticulously preserved shrine to all things Liberace, the ultimate dress-up queen and role model for every Vegas ham from Elton John to Sigfried & Roy.
This would be the perfect setting for PhD research on the little-known friendship between Liberace and Elvis. If you think for even one minute about those rhinestone mini-capes The King wore during his late, great Vegas days, you’ll immediately get the connection.
Astonishing in its scope, the Museum holds treasures from the golden age of schlock performance that are worthy of the Smithsonian. Oh I expected clouds of maribou and tons of rhinestones — and I got them! — but I was (more…)
The Vinturi really works, and not just because a dozen winemakers told me so. I got one. I tried it. It delivers.
Purists may scoff, but this clever glass device instantly aerates newly-opened wine, softening the finish and opening the flavors — as if the wine had been uncorked the day before and allowed plenty of time to breathe.
You simply hold the Vinturi — which works by depressurizing the liquid as you pour it through, and thereby pumping more air into the wine (physics!) — over your glass. Pour (see illustration) and voila!
The wine really does open into a more voluptuous, full-figured version of itself after a single pour. And you can repeat this as often as you like.
$39.95 – on Amazon, etc.
Buy this wine! Having said that, let me briefly explain why $9.99 was never better spent than on the freshly-released Ca’ Del Solo Sangiovese 2006, from Bonny Doon Vineyard. Such liquid epiphany reminds us why our Italian brethren often know best, to wit the mighty grape that fueled ten thousand Chianti Classicos, that partnered untold numbers of bisteca fiorentina, and which now has received definitive New World treatment from that shaman of oeno-morphic resonance, Randall Grahm.
It’s beyond me how this brilliantly expressive, graceful, tannically-endowed bottle of wild herbs, dark fruit and dried cherries can cost under $10. But it does. And if you can’t find it at your favorite market, or wine shop then your eyes are probably closed.
(Here’s a hint: New Leaf.)
Sangiovese, biodynamically raised just down the road in Grahm’s San Benito County vineyard, big enough at 14.2 alc to stand up to any red sauce on the planet, yet bouyant enough to warrant a second glass. Better, as are all wines, on Day 2. Molto bene.
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.