Baby Scarlett's tips for Hot-lanta

This is yours truly with Scarlett, the aforementioned niece. She says that Atlanta is full of good food, history and southern charm. Her advice for your next trip to her stomping grounds, although she can't actually stomp yet:

Places to visit:
Carter Center
Martin Luther King Memorial and Historic Site
High Museum
Carlos Museum at Emory
CNN Center

Her dining recommendations:

Swan Coach House:
This joint is dripping with gentility, and a lovely place for a ladies' lunch. I mean, it's been featured in Southern Lady magazine, for heaven's sake. Order the famous chicken salad and have a mint julep for Scarlett because she's underage.

Rathbun's:
Scarlett can't say enough good things about this place, even though she did not get to enjoy it herself. Her mother and Aunt Nicole went there all alone (well, them and the crutches...they left the wheelchair at home) to live it up on their night out. Mom had just gotten a new, slightly smaller and considerably lighter weight cast on her calf and foot and they desperately needed to celebrate.

The menu at Rathbun's is extensive and enticing, and everything is quite reasonably priced. There's an accent on Southern foods with locally-obtained fresh products but with a much wider frame of interesting ingredients under consideration. I had to satisfy a craving for shrimp and grits, and these were probably the best I've had anywhere, rich and flavorful enough to moan about but not crossing the line into heaviness. Texture was perfect. Desserts were human-sized portions and all priced at $3.95; we had a scrumptious white chocolate banana bread pudding, along with a glass of sauternes and a glass of Quady Elysium, which is like liquid heaven (guess that's why it's called Elysium).

Which brings me to the wine list: the offerings at Rathbun's are exceedingly thoughtfully chosen and well-priced. The list itself was wonderfully varied (I hate places that have a zillion chards, a pinot grigio from Italy and a sauvignon blanc, poof, that's it). There were many of my favorite regions and varietals from Oregon pinot gris and pinot blanc to multiple viognier, gewurtztraminer, and white burgundy selections like a true chablis, to interesting chards and sauvignon blancs. On the red side things were just as wide-ranging, with both classic and adventurous selections from the old and new worlds. Prices were arranged at $24, $34, $44, $54 and $64, with glasses starting at a friendly $6.50. And lest you fear that you won't consume a whole bottle and will be stuck with limited by-the-glass options, good news: there are at least thirty wines available by the glass. We drank a bottle of rich and aromatic 2007 Miner viognier from CA, which I would compare favorably to a fine Condrieu in pure sipping pleasure, and it was enjoyable alone as well as with my entrée.

Nothing can ruin a delicious meal like bad wait staff; no matter how memorable the dishes may be, they are blotted out by inferior service. Had you going, didn't I? To top off our fully fabulous experience at Rathbun's, all the service was top-notch. From beginning to end, top to bottom, stem to stern, it was a wonderful dinner.

My only complaint would be that in the converted warehouse that now serves as Rathbun HQ, the surfaces are hard--brick, cement, etc--and thus conversations at the closely-spaced tables in a room with no sound absorption yield a medium-level background rumble and roar. But it's not enough to keep me from going back as soon as humanly possible.

NOWFE, digested

If only wine had no calories! I stepped on the scale and was so frightened that I just fell off without looking. OK, I looked. And I had to avert my eyes. I really should exercise something besides my fingers and my mouth. I was on a walking program with a friend but I think she chose the gym in the end because, unlike walking, it produces measurable effects...

The first day in New Orleans, we shopped. We went to Orleans Coffee Exchange to pick up a grocery bag full of fresh roasted coffee. I always got my coffee from OCE when I lived in N.O.--I was actually one of their early customers back in the old Sandy & Grandma Ruth days. Now Bob runs the place, and the offerings are as delicious, aromatic and diverse as you could wish or dream. I can only drink decaf, and no one else has anything even remotely close to the large selection of decaf coffees that OCE does. We get our coffee via the OCE mail-order program now, but when we are in N.O., we like to make a pilgrimage to their place to get it ourselves.

Our other main shopping goal was seafood. We ended up getting 12 pounds of shrimp and nothing else. And we paid about $35 for them. Fresh (no IQF) shrimp in Dallas--especially shrimp that large--would have cost us 3 to 5 times what we paid. We will be having shrimp for dinner next week, natch.

We weren't able to attend the Royal Street Stroll this year, because we were sharing dinner with our old Dallas next-door neighbors Leo & Bret, who have moved back to New Orleans. They have bought the most incredible 1960's house with a view onto Lake Pontchartrain (ok, onto the levee) and are restoring it to its mod glamor. It's huge--our whole house could fit into the "great room", which is more like the "party room", with Herman Miller built-ins, a wet bar and a koi pond (no new fish yet, but there will be)!! Each bedroom is like a master suite, with a giant bathroom attached. One bathroom has a tub with three steps down into it, my favorite. They even have some of the home's original super-cool HM furniture that was made for the house, and in fact took possession of the home when it was still chock-full of the original residents' belongings. There are so many stories that this house can tell, and it has definitely fallen into the hands of the right couple.

Friday and Saturday we immersed ourselves in the seminars and the Grand tastings of NOWFE. Between us, we heard seminars about 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon, the French bistro craze, Women in the Wine industry, Louisiana-Italian cooking and wine, cooking a whole pig with Donald Link, sustainable production and cooking jambalaya with John Besh, and tête de cuvée champagnes led by Ziggy "The Wine Gal" Eschleman.

A full day of seminars on Friday was followed immediately by the first Grand Tasting, where we had plenty to eat and not too much to drink (this was deliberate). Saturday brought two more seminars and another Grand Tasting. We normally only attend one Grand Tasting but our host and friend Julian decided not to use his own tickets and very generously bestowed them on us. Again, we tried to focus on eating first and drinking second. We have learned from bitter experience that if you don't make sure you get to certain food offerings in the first two (of three) hours, you may just remain empty-handed when you belly up to the booth and there's nothing there but empty pots and pans, and maybe a little pot liquor. Plus it's good to fill up a little bit with food before you dive into the wines, no!? This strategy worked very well for us. I did not feel even tipsy after either tasting, a thing of beauty. It takes discipline to come out standing and smiling rather than staggering and stuffed when there are 75 restaurants dishing up their finest fare and something like a thousand wines being poured. At this point I have it down to a science.

If you've never been to New Orleans, or you have and you are enamored with the fine local cuisine and hedonistic aspect of life there, NOWFE is not to be missed. Of course, it's really a must-do event for wine lovers everywhere. But there are lots of other ways to fill your time there, even if you can't time your trip with NOWFE.

Sunday we crammed in visits with three friends and finally landed at my aunt's house in Baton Rouge, where we spent the last night. It shaves off a bit of the long drive home...

And as soon as we got back, we were in DEEP CLIBURN COMPETITION (see above) with no break in our momentum.

New Orleans Wine & Food Experience, cont'd.

I frequently surf over to the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune when I'm feeling the pull of the Crescent City. In addition to the truly mind-boggling level of political ridiculousness, there are a couple of pithy columnists over there, one of whom is Chris Rose (author of the moving post-Katrina essay collection One Dead in Attic). Today he's got another one of his pleasant dashes of local color in the form of an interview with the king of the Krewe of Corks and maître d'about town Patrick Van Hoorebeek. This is a French-Quarter-based marching krewe of oenophiles and one of their regular activities is to "parade" during next Thursday's Royal Street Stroll, part of NOWFE. Check it out here. See you on the rebound.

À la recherche du temps perdu

I've been planning a trip to France for a client...name of Marcel Proust. Something about a madeleine... Just kidding. But as I was organizing this client's chateau-based accommodations for a side trip away from Paris down to the Loire Valley, I discovered some sad news that made me relive some of the favorite moments from our last trip to France.

That winter, we made an almost-complete route along the Loire, beginning at St-Benoît and Sancerre at the eastern end, going as far as the suburbs of Nantes, on the western end. We began and ended the trip in Paris, but the focus was assuredly vins et chateaux. We did justice to both.

The first lodging we chose to stay was a farmhouse in St. Benoît. Its owner was most hospitable but her English was limited. That just meant I had a great opportunity to dust off my French. Bill undertook his morning runs around her fields, and one evening we shared the family table and enjoyed a delicious dinner of fresh trout from the local river. While we were in that area we visited one of the smaller chateaux, complete with moat if I remember correctly, and discovered some excellent Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé wines made from the sauvignon blanc grape that dominates vineyards at that end of the river.

My memory is foggy on the exact delineation of the days that followed...apologies to Marcel. But let's just say for the sake of moving the story along that we then traveled to the other end of the Loire. Along the way, as we were driving through a village between there and here, we happened upon an interesting-looking small family winery. We pulled in; before I could achieve the mental calculation that the sign said "closed for winter", the owner appeared right there in the driveway inviting us in. We stayed there for at least an hour, learning about his family history (again, a chance to dust off the French), and he opened a bottle of literally every wine he had bottled there, including many that were still aging, not labeled or released just yet. To top it off, we had the pleasure of using a fresh glass for every wine (photo of us on my website footer). We bought several bottles...you're shocked, I know.

Other end of the river? Crazy logistics? Not in the least. I had discovered a few weeks before our departure that my favorite French musical artist, Sanseverino, was performing near Nantes. Since it was only an extra 110km out of our way, we rearranged our itinerary to accommodate his concert. It was a blast! Just the kind of thing that makes a trip more memorable. We spent that night in the middle of a muscat vineyard.

After that we traveled to Poitou, a bit south of the major chateau zone, because I had ancestors who lived in the region. Our room there was in the turret of an incredibly old and fortified chateau (it's the one on my website's home page), whose proprietress was a chef. Naturally, we consumed a fabulous dinner with fine--and affordable--local wine.

We went to visit some distant LeBlanc cousins who lived near Poitiers, and they took us to see one of the remaining Acadian homes there. My own ancestors, who had gone to Nova Scotia in the early 1600's from a nearby Poitou village (Martaizé), were later deported by the English from Nova Scotia in the Grand Dérangement of 1755, and sent on a boat to Virginia, which refused the Acadians. At that point the English turned the ship around and sent more than 1100 Acadians to England as prisoners of war, and my ancestors, both father and son, were held in Liverpool for almost eight years. France secured their release with a treaty in 1763, and the surviving 800 or so were repatriated to France. Some of them returned to Poitou and it was one of their homes that we were able to check out. My own people, instead, took advantage of the king's offer of free land to farm on the lovely--but very rocky--Belle-Île-en-Mer. Needless to say, planting crops in the rocks did not yield any, uh, bountiful harvests, so after that struggle and a few more years in France, they finally decided to go back to the New World on one of the seven famous Acadian Voyages that took place in 1785 or so. That's how they finally ended up in Louisiana.

So back to France...after Poitou, we headed back to the heart of the chateau country, just across the river from Villandry and its rightfully famous gardens (not quite as impressive in the dead of winter, alas). This time we were at a beautiful French country home, complete with horses, chickens, cats and a dog. The family who welcomed us into its home (B & B) could not have been warmer or more charming, just entirely down to earth. When we took two evening meals with them en famille, it was in the centuries old huge kitchen with a massive fireplace that was clearly used for cooking in its former life. When I say "with them" that would include Anne and Eric, their four kids, one daughter's boyfriend, another guest couple with their baby, and us--all arranged at an endlessly long wooden table in front of that amazing fireplace. Many courses, real home-cooking, great local wine, intelligent conversation (and more French practice)!

There were so many wonderful aspects to the trip, but Bill and I both have especially fond memories of staying with this family and sharing two evening meals with them. Eric was an oenophile and turned us on to a gifted winemaker by the name of Jacky Blot. His labels are Domaine de la Taille aux Loups (whites, Montlouis-sur-Loire and Vouvray) and Domaine de la Butte (reds, Bourgueil). Everything we tasted was excellent, and of course we went home loaded up with wine. One of my clients also went to visit M. Blot and very kindly transported to me another bottle of his wonderful late-harvest Montlouis (chenin blanc) Cuvée des Loups 2003, which I am hoarding for a special occasion. It should keep nicely.

I do believe that it snowed every single day we were in the Valley and Poitou, which is highly unusual in their moderate climate. Here's a picture of the magnificent, river-straddling Chateau de Chenonceau, which I rechristened as ChenonSnow.

And that brings me back to the sad news I have just discovered. I wrote to Anne and Eric this week to inquire about a guest room for my client. Eric wrote me back and said that Anne had died two years ago of cancer, at only 50 years old. She was such a lively, warm person who clearly gave as much pleasure to her guests as they got from her. I am sure she had brought light to the many lives she touched, both in her own family and community as well as through her B & B business. Eric said he has recently started taking guests again (but not having dinners for them), and believes that is what Anne would have wanted.

I know he is right.

That Italy trip: fantastico, but...

The folks I mentioned in the previous post had a great trip to Tuscany and Rome. They spent a few days at a top Florence hotel and from there took a docent-led walking tour of ancient Florence one day and on another they enjoyed a full-day wine tour accompanied by two certified sommeliers. They had a special lunch at a biodynamic goat cheese farm along with an array of Tuscan wines, as an introduction. Then they went to some of the finest chianti classico wineries for extensive private tastings. After their brief stay in Florence, they stayed at a huge organic farm estate with a castle. On the property the staff and interns raise heirloom produce and animals, cured meats are made, art and lifestyle workshops are held...what a special experience is available to guests there! From the estate they visited Siena and also took another wine tour, this one highlighting the famous Super Tuscans as well as some of the amazing wines coming from the Tuscan coast, believe it or not. Finally, they went to Rome, where in addition to all the usual Roman delights, they took docent-guided tours of ancient Rome and the Vatican. Every day I wished I was with them, especially for the wine tours!!
The only day I might have passed on was their day of arrival...I found out a few days before their departure that there was going to be a nationwide transportation strike. Yikes! But hey, this is Europe, and labor strikes are part of life, just like those four weeks of average vacation they get. I prepared the travelers as best I could with back-up plans on how to get where they needed to go, and advised them to pack a suitcase full of patience. When you are traveling and faced with a situation you can't control, but which does have a foreseeable conclusion and does not physically threaten you, sometimes it's best to just take a deep breath and have a cocktail or glass of wine if you can find one! I myself can get too stressed out if things do not appear to be unfolding as planned when I travel, so I probably need to heed my own advice more often. But I am usually armed with information and can find a way to remedy any problem that may arise, and that is what I try to do for my clients. I say this all the time when I'm researching health issues, but KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. That applies to travel, too.

17th Annual New Orleans Wine and Food Experience

Now that I've more or less finished my Istanbul posts, I need to jump back to the US and give a shout out to the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience! It's held every year around Memorial Day weekend and a fantastic way to enjoy one of my favorite cities (and my hometown, in essence). I could go the shorthand route: New Orleans...Wine...Food...enough said!!!

But seriously, it's five days of indulgence in one of the epicurean capitals of the western hemisphere. What's not to like?

75 Chefs
175 Wineries
5 Days
1000 Wines

Are you getting the vapors just thinking about it?

Tuesday: Premium Fine Wine Dinner with celebrity Louisiana chef.

Wednesday: Start off with a bang, or a pop! Vintner dinners are held at scores of the city's top restaurants. Many courses, many wines.

Thursday: Vinola premium Tasting and Auction...taste the super-duper wines, the secret reserves, the stuff that you can barely get your hands on, and bid on coveted collectible wines and exclusive (that means really cool) wine or food-related auction packages. After that...Royal Street Stroll...cocktail hour(s) winding your way in and out of the superb galleries and shops of Royal Street, inside which you will discover not only appealing art but wineries pouring their latest offerings...and of course, delicious food along the way.

Friday: Seminars all day long, some serious, some lighter, covering all aspects of food and wine...probably the only time I will ever get to even taste a $500 wine...followed by the first of the Grand Tastings, an evening where you can barely make a dent in the 50 or 60 restaurants serving scrumptious yummies to at least 150 wineries, each of whom is presenting several wines. I feel decadent and satisfied just thinking about what I consumed in those short three hours (and I was not even tipsy, in case you are wondering!)

Saturday: more seminars till lunchtime, and then when it's time to eat it's off to Grand Tasting, Round Two, this time with different restaurants.

Yes, it costs money but it goes to good causes. You can pick and choose your event(s) or buy the whole schmeer if you figure you can keep up. I promise you, it's a tough row to hoe to really accomplish and attend everything you might have on that list. NOWFE makes generous donations to New Orleans and Louisiana charities from culinary scholarships to helping firemen rebuild their homes post-Katrina. There are about 250 volunteers who really make the whole Experience complete!

If you enjoy New Orleans, if you are an oenophile even in the most casual sense, if you appreciate fine cuisine...mark your calendar for May 19-23, 2009. And if you can't wait that long, try Tales of the Cocktail, July 16-20, 2008.