Wine. Travel. Food.
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’m not a huge fan of fancy Michelin 3 star-type restaurants. I admire them, but I not only chafe at the cost, I find most of them a little too precious and full of themselves. Plus, dinner takes too long and my butt gets sore.
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The food world is full of connoisseurs – steak fans, oyster mavens, cheese authorities, whisky and wine snobs, even soup Nazis. But have you ever once met a chicken aficionado?
For a long time, I felt there really wasn’t a whole lot of difference between one roasted chicken and another. They all seemed pretty good to me – kind of like pizza (“The worst pizza I’ve ever had was pretty darn good.”).
Occasionally I tried roasting a better bird – organic, pasture-raised, “walking about” birds, etc. They were twice the price and marginally better than the garden variety supermarket industrial chicken.
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I’ve always loved Chinese restaurants – from our neighborhood take-out operations to the high-end, red-lacquered palaces in New York and San Francisco. I remember my first trips to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and how thrilling they were.
But more often than not, Chinese food is a disappointment. Maybe because so many Chinese restaurants dumb it down for the non-Chinese. It may also owe to the public’s belief that no matter how good the ingredients are, and how much skill goes into their preparation, prices should match those of the little takeout place down the street. Faced with a clientele that simply won’t pay for quality, the restaurants serve up an inferior product by necessity.
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Long, long ago – before I got into the restaurant business — I was a commercial interior designer who traveled frequently to New York. Even then, dining out was a passion.
I can recall the beauty of Andree Soltner’s dishes at Lutece. I remember the thrill of eating at La Cote Basque, La Caravelle and Gino Robusti and Bruno Caravaggi’s spectacular Quo Vadis. In the mid-‘80s, when Jonathan Waxman opened Jams in New York, his stunning and thoughtful combinations of sweet and savory, soft and crunchy, blew me away.
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As the owner of a steakhouse that aspires to be the best of the best, I have a responsibility to check out the competition. It’s hard work sometimes (Heavy is the hand that hoists the steak knife.), but I do it without complaint.
A quarter-century after opening Manny’s, I’ve eaten at probably every significant steakhouse around the globe. Some are traditional icons (think Peter Luger). Some are more adventurous, like Prime in Las Vegas or Kevin Rathburn in Atlanta. Some are more Italian, like Gene and Georgetti’s in Chicago, and of course there are the Argentinian restaurants like Cabana Las Lilas in Buenos Aires, which I blogged about earlier.
I love ‘em all.
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Joanne and I just returned from a two-week visit to Paris with three of our grandkids – ages 9, 10 and 14.
And you ask, “What on earth do you do with kids in Paris? Is there a family-friendly version of the Folies Bergère?”
To be honest, I was a little concerned about that, too. But guess what? WE CRACKED THE CODE.
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Back in the day, before Pete and I started what was to become Parasole, we both had jobs that required a great deal of travel – Pete was a marketer for Pillsbury, with key accounts on the West Coast. I was a commercial interior designer with most of my clients in New York City.
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A few years back Bon Appetit magazine published its list of America’s Top 10 restaurants, and The Optimist Fish Camp and Oyster Bar in Atlanta came in at number seven. The name apparently refers to a kids’ sailing dinghy (first time I’d heard that).
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I first became aware of Francis Mallmann a few years back when Joanne and I visited Mendoza, in the heart of Argentina’s winemaking region. Our concierge strongly recommended his restaurant and praised his cooking technique, apparently inspired by the Argentine Gauchos, so we gave it a try. Read more
Joanne and I took a road trip last week through the South. One stop was Louisville, Kentucky and its Grande Dame hotel, The Brown – home to the Mint Julep, all kinds of bourbon and one of the world’s great sandwiches (more on that in a moment).
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