May 3
While drinking my Margarita at Bodega Wine bar last night, I heard an exchange between a customer and the bartender that I think means our taste in wines has evolved, but maybe not.
The customer ordered two glasses of White Zinfandel. The bartender said they didn’t have White Zinfandel. Would he like Red Zinfandel? The customer said that would be fine.
Okay, now, White Zinfandel might still be the most popular wine in the United States. It certainly was up until a few years ago. Maybe Chardonnay passed it at that point. I don’t know.
Still, it’s not that surprising that a bartender in a fancy wine bar would either feign ignorance of the stuff or actually not know that White Zinfandel and Red Zinfandel have nothing in common when it comes to taste. It's especially unsurprising in a bar where, I later learned, the only Pinot Grigio available was the least expensive wine by the glass on the list, and thus shunned by customers lest they be considered cheap.
I’m pretty sure Pinot Grigio is gaining popularity in the United States faster than any other varietal. Indeed, in recent years, people ordering a “Pinot” might very well find themselves with a Pinot Grigio instead of a Pinot Noir.
Pinot Grigios tend to be mild, inoffensive, straightforward, easy-to-drink wines and are therefore disdained by most wine cognoscenti.
Back to Zinfandels, red ones tend to be big, fruity, spicy affairs. White Zinfandels are actually pink, quite sweet, and completely out of fashion. They are responsible for giving Rosés a bad name in the United States.
The guy who ordered a white Zinfandel and settled on a red one was in for a surprise, but he didn't come back to complain. I guess he and his companion just wanted something to drink.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Jesse Frost
May 3
Dinner last night started in Estancia’s Bodega Wine Bar. I was told to go there and have a cocktail, and I’d be met by the property’s executive chef, Jesse Frost. I decided to take my instructions literally and had a cocktail instead of a glass of wine. Being near the Mexican border, I had a Margarita.
I showed up just as the bar was in the middle of a little rush. It seemed that everyone in the hotel wanted a pre-dinner drink.
The bar rush ended as fast as it had begun and soon the bartender and I were practically alone.
Soon enough, Jesse came out and we had a chat. He’s an interesting guy. His father is a New Yorker from Queens (Astoria), who ended up working for Pepsi and was stationed in Mexico City, where Jesse spent the first ten years of his life. He later studied cooking in the San Francisco area and then came down to the San Diego area. He has been at Estancia for about three years.
His favorite color is the earth-tone red that is so prevalent in the terrain of the Southwest.
A note at the bottom of the menu requests that guests not use cellular devices because the ultra-high frequencies interfere with chef jesse’s sauces.
His food isn’t as precious as that — it is Southwestern enough to remind us of where we are without hitting us over the head with that fact. Still it’s a cute note.
I was taken next door to Adobe El Restaurante, and this is what I ate and drank:
Jesse started out by bringing me an oblong plate with eight indentations in it. In each one was a little amuse-bouche:
poached lobster with heirloom tomato and citrus crème fraîche
red pepper and white bean hummus with toasted lavosh
saffron poached prawns with silken mayonnaise (made with tofu)
salt roasted beets with olive oil and sea salt
tomato-raisin compote with a tempura croquette of confit pork belly
ahi tuna pastrami with haricots verts and Madras curry emulsion
roasted pecans with cabrales cheese, pears and endive
tequila-cured foie gra with blackberry compote and sourdough wafer
With that I drank a 2006 Campalou Vouvray
I continued drinking that with seared scallops with orange-onion marmalade, lemon beurre blanc, a sweet onion tartlet, corn-crayfish salsa, balsamic vinegar and fried caperberries
Then Jesse sent out a Kobe beef flat iron, topped with a bordelaise sauce and served with a short rib tamale, fried lotus root chips, pumpkin seeds, red pepper purée and chive oil over Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccolini.
It turns out the beef was actually a Wagyu-Black Angus hybrid from Texas. To go with it they poured a 2004 Arrendell Vineyards Pinot Noir (Russian River)
With dessert, a pineapple upside-down cake with toasted coconut, pineapple sorbet and a chile-spiked tuile, they poured a surprisingly raisiny 2000 Freemark Abbey Edelweis Gold late harvest Johannesberg Riesling
Dinner last night started in Estancia’s Bodega Wine Bar. I was told to go there and have a cocktail, and I’d be met by the property’s executive chef, Jesse Frost. I decided to take my instructions literally and had a cocktail instead of a glass of wine. Being near the Mexican border, I had a Margarita.
I showed up just as the bar was in the middle of a little rush. It seemed that everyone in the hotel wanted a pre-dinner drink.
The bar rush ended as fast as it had begun and soon the bartender and I were practically alone.
Soon enough, Jesse came out and we had a chat. He’s an interesting guy. His father is a New Yorker from Queens (Astoria), who ended up working for Pepsi and was stationed in Mexico City, where Jesse spent the first ten years of his life. He later studied cooking in the San Francisco area and then came down to the San Diego area. He has been at Estancia for about three years.
His favorite color is the earth-tone red that is so prevalent in the terrain of the Southwest.
A note at the bottom of the menu requests that guests not use cellular devices because the ultra-high frequencies interfere with chef jesse’s sauces.
His food isn’t as precious as that — it is Southwestern enough to remind us of where we are without hitting us over the head with that fact. Still it’s a cute note.
I was taken next door to Adobe El Restaurante, and this is what I ate and drank:
Jesse started out by bringing me an oblong plate with eight indentations in it. In each one was a little amuse-bouche:
poached lobster with heirloom tomato and citrus crème fraîche
red pepper and white bean hummus with toasted lavosh
saffron poached prawns with silken mayonnaise (made with tofu)
salt roasted beets with olive oil and sea salt
tomato-raisin compote with a tempura croquette of confit pork belly
ahi tuna pastrami with haricots verts and Madras curry emulsion
roasted pecans with cabrales cheese, pears and endive
tequila-cured foie gra with blackberry compote and sourdough wafer
With that I drank a 2006 Campalou Vouvray
I continued drinking that with seared scallops with orange-onion marmalade, lemon beurre blanc, a sweet onion tartlet, corn-crayfish salsa, balsamic vinegar and fried caperberries
Then Jesse sent out a Kobe beef flat iron, topped with a bordelaise sauce and served with a short rib tamale, fried lotus root chips, pumpkin seeds, red pepper purée and chive oil over Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccolini.
It turns out the beef was actually a Wagyu-Black Angus hybrid from Texas. To go with it they poured a 2004 Arrendell Vineyards Pinot Noir (Russian River)
With dessert, a pineapple upside-down cake with toasted coconut, pineapple sorbet and a chile-spiked tuile, they poured a surprisingly raisiny 2000 Freemark Abbey Edelweis Gold late harvest Johannesberg Riesling
It’s easy being green
May 3
A few months ago, our information technology department sent an e-mail to everyone in the company saying that Lebhar-Friedman, the parent company of Nation’s Restaurant News, was now a green company as they had developed a little green dingbat — a picture of a tree in front of a lawn and a winding river. We were to paste that dingbat on the bottom of all of our e-mails along with the words “Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.”
Our IT department is loaded with bright and capable people, and the statement that developing a dingbat made us green was tongue-in-cheek, I think, but it could have come with great sincerity from any of a number of PR firms, telling me about a new restaurant or company that had changed its light bulbs or was recycling its paper or turning down its thermostats in the winter and was therefore now environmentally sound and worthy of our attention. I get e-mails like that every day. I consider the environment and don’t print them.
It’s 2008. I was born in 1967 and was potty-trained in cloth diapers because my mother didn't want to contribute to disposable diapers clogging landfills. She wouldn’t start the dishwasher if there was still room for a shot-glass in there. Our thermostat in the winter hovered around 58 (we were encouraged to wear sweaters). My parents saved their paper and aluminum and took it to the supermarket the one day a month that recyclable materials were accepted there. That's just the way it was. I was raised to pay attention to the environmental impact of my actions.
My parents were ahead of their time (they still are), but they were hardly revolutionary. Where has everyone been for the past 40 years? A former vice president makes a movie and all of a sudden everyone’s making token gestures. They’re suddenly realizing, now that gasoline is approaching $4 a gallon, that maybe they shouldn’t have been driving those SUVs throughout the 1990s.
Do people really print e-mails without considering the environment? Is our company really green now that we tell everyone else how to behave? Will the addition of that line at the bottom of our e-mails possibly push our messages over the edge of one page, so that if their recipients do decide to go ahead and print them anyway they'll end up printing two pages instead of one?
These thoughts were on my mind yesterday as I landed in San Diego. The National Pork Board’s annual Taste of Elegance is being held here, starting on Sunday. I’m in town a couple of days early, because I’ve never been to San Diego before and it makes sense to check out some of the food here.
As a New Yorker, I can be a smug environmentalist. I can shake a disapproving head at southern Californians and say “I don’t even own a car.”
But of course in New York, I don’t need a car. I have access to the country’s best mass transit system.
But in San Diego I need a car, so I rented a hybrid.
Of course, not driving a car at all is better for the environment than driving a hybrid, so once I arrived at Estancia La Jolla, where I’m staying, I handed the weird non-key starter device to a valet and headed inside, turning off some of the lamps in my room, as well as the machine that was making theoretically calming ocean sounds.
I would have dinner in the hotel.
A few months ago, our information technology department sent an e-mail to everyone in the company saying that Lebhar-Friedman, the parent company of Nation’s Restaurant News, was now a green company as they had developed a little green dingbat — a picture of a tree in front of a lawn and a winding river. We were to paste that dingbat on the bottom of all of our e-mails along with the words “Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.”
Our IT department is loaded with bright and capable people, and the statement that developing a dingbat made us green was tongue-in-cheek, I think, but it could have come with great sincerity from any of a number of PR firms, telling me about a new restaurant or company that had changed its light bulbs or was recycling its paper or turning down its thermostats in the winter and was therefore now environmentally sound and worthy of our attention. I get e-mails like that every day. I consider the environment and don’t print them.
It’s 2008. I was born in 1967 and was potty-trained in cloth diapers because my mother didn't want to contribute to disposable diapers clogging landfills. She wouldn’t start the dishwasher if there was still room for a shot-glass in there. Our thermostat in the winter hovered around 58 (we were encouraged to wear sweaters). My parents saved their paper and aluminum and took it to the supermarket the one day a month that recyclable materials were accepted there. That's just the way it was. I was raised to pay attention to the environmental impact of my actions.
My parents were ahead of their time (they still are), but they were hardly revolutionary. Where has everyone been for the past 40 years? A former vice president makes a movie and all of a sudden everyone’s making token gestures. They’re suddenly realizing, now that gasoline is approaching $4 a gallon, that maybe they shouldn’t have been driving those SUVs throughout the 1990s.
Do people really print e-mails without considering the environment? Is our company really green now that we tell everyone else how to behave? Will the addition of that line at the bottom of our e-mails possibly push our messages over the edge of one page, so that if their recipients do decide to go ahead and print them anyway they'll end up printing two pages instead of one?
These thoughts were on my mind yesterday as I landed in San Diego. The National Pork Board’s annual Taste of Elegance is being held here, starting on Sunday. I’m in town a couple of days early, because I’ve never been to San Diego before and it makes sense to check out some of the food here.
As a New Yorker, I can be a smug environmentalist. I can shake a disapproving head at southern Californians and say “I don’t even own a car.”
But of course in New York, I don’t need a car. I have access to the country’s best mass transit system.
But in San Diego I need a car, so I rented a hybrid.
Of course, not driving a car at all is better for the environment than driving a hybrid, so once I arrived at Estancia La Jolla, where I’m staying, I handed the weird non-key starter device to a valet and headed inside, turning off some of the lamps in my room, as well as the machine that was making theoretically calming ocean sounds.
I would have dinner in the hotel.
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