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Archive for the ‘Elsewhere’ Category

Christmas in Norfolk

31 Dec

Very flat, Norfolk

This Christmas we made our escape to Norfolk (England, not Virginia), renting a tiny 17th-century cottage near the coast. It was built as a royalist magazine during the English Civil War, cunningly disguised as a chapel to hide its stores of gunpowder and weaponry from the Puritans. They say there’s a secret tunnel leading from it to the sea but we never found it, preferring to hole up around the blazing log fire after dark, listening to the buffetting wind and walking on the vast, deserted beaches and sand dunes during the daytime. This is the Eastern bulge of England that sticks out into the cold, grey North Sea – marsh and wetlands and tidal channels down which the fishing boats creep to catch crabs and lobsters and small, flavourful brown shrimp. We bought some almost every day from a hut on Brancaster Staithe with bags of cockles, mussels and oysters as relish. The weather was gratifyingly bleak and rainy but we had mornings of unexpected sunshine and nights when the wind died away around three a.m. and the full moon shone like a searchlight through the mullioned windows of our attic bedroom.

Local mussels at Titchwell Manor

We ate very well, needless to say. For Wendy’s birthday dinner we splashed out at The Neptune  (one Michelin star) in Old Hunstanton and tasted grilled partridge breast with sweet red endive leaves, dots of quince jam and dainty sandwiches of fried brioche filled with a paté made from the bird’s lights. We followed that with lobster agnolotti and juicy kohlrabi in a lightweight lobster bisque. Then perfect fillets of baby halibut with crosnes and artichoke hearts.

There were many other feasts, of course. When our daughter came up from London to spend a few days we took her out to lunch at Titchwell Manor for pails of  huge, glossy local mussels steamed with butter and shallots and turbot fillets with hollandaise, roast chestnuts and brussels sprout leaves – a side of green kale with chopped white anchovies almost stole that particular show.

Brancaster oysters, each one the size of a serving spoon

Our favourite spot, however, turned out to be the White Horse at Brancaster, a pub on the edge of the salt flats that stretch out for miles towards the sea. They serve local oysters there – huge, soft, creamy ones that taste of melon and brine and go down spectacularly well with a malty ale called The Wreck, brewed in the village. I couldn’t resist the lemon sole amandine but Wendy’s choice was even better – a slab of grilled smoked haddock perched on a mound of smashed potatoes with wilted spinach and a final flourish of chive oil. Unpretentious pub food, but as good as it gets anywhere. If only we had had time to see our friends in London, but we stayed away from cities this time. Notwithstanding, it was an altogether splendid holiday.

 

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, England, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel

 

Philip’s mezethes

26 Aug

My koubaros relaxing

So we went up to Philip’s bar the other night for the much-anticipated mezethes. I should begin by explaining that Philip has owned and run the kafeneion for as long as we have been coming to Loutses – 33 years. Back in the ’70s, it was one of several places to find a drink in the village – a long, crowded room that was as much a community centre as a pub, with a wood stove in the winter and peanut shells on the floor. It also boasted the only telephone in Loutses and we would wait our turn to step into the private closet to call home. Sometimes it took half an hour to get through to England or Canada; sometimes it didn’t work at all. Philip befriended us and we befriended him; he stood as godfather at our son’s christening, to the astonishment of the local priest who hadn’t seen Philip in his church for decades. In doing so, he became our koubaros and we became koubaros and koubara (surely the same root word as the Neapolitan “gumba”) to his entire family.

Over the years, that relationship has endured. The bar is smaller now since Philip’s renovation in the 1980s and is decorated with a lifetime of souvenirs including paintings of Philip and his late father, Leonidas, arcane photographs, a lithograph of Hopper’s Nighthawks, a ballerina’s shoe from the time when we lent our house to a group from the National Ballet of Canada, some taxidermical caymans from Philip’s time in the Merchant Navy, etcetera, etcetera… This summer, he decided to add a gastronomical component, building a small but very well-equipped kitchen behind the bar and bringing in Spiros Syriotis as chef and partner in the enterprise. There are smart new blue tables and chairs outside on the terrace that overlooks the valley and a new air of energy as locals and tourists and English expat residents drop by to wile away the evenings and watch the newish moon set behind the hills like a sliver of tangerine in a Martini.

Philip provided a great many recipes that Wendy and I used in our book, A Kitchen in Corfu (about to be republished in England) and we have eaten many splendid dinners with him in his home behind the kafeneion. He has an organic garden and much of the produce that now goes into the mezethes comes from there. I reminded him of an antique method for preserving fish by frying it and then confiting it with vinegar, rosemary and raisins. He chuckled and disappeared into the kitchen, re-emerging with a saucer of the identical fish (firm and sweet and tangy and altogether scrumptious) along with some delicate white anchovy fillets marinated in olive oil, vinegar and garlic.

Chef Spiro’s offering were more in the meaty line – small pieces of very tender pork, some in a piquant sauce of mustard, vinegar and rosemary, others in a different treatment of tomato and hot paprika served with crisp fried potatoes and halved cherry tomatoes from the garden. There was chicken in a sweeter, herb-fragrant tomato sauce, and juicy keftedakia – crisp-surfaced little meatballs of minced beef, garlic, onion, parsley and breadcrumbs. When some of our friends held a mosaic school at the bar over a long weekend in June, Spiro made tiny vegetable pies of pumpkin and zucchini in phyllo – irresistible.

Baked feta with philip's tomatoes and peppers

Why start offering food after so many years of refusing his friends’ pleading requests to feed them? Philip shrugs and cites the economy. “When things don’t go so well,” he explains, “I act. Instead of crying and complaining and lying on a sofa feeling sorry for myself, I adapt. I found someone I can trust in Spiro, and we will see what happens. I don’t know how long the experiment will last. I may get tired of it. For now, it’s enjoyable and people seem to like it.”

To be sure, it adds a delicious new dimension to life in Loutses. My favourite dish was feta baked in a shallow earthenware platter with baby tomatoes and hot green peppers until the cheese was almost liquid. Triangles of Spiro’s homemade pita bread were the perfect utensil for digging in. Tomorrow there will be other things on the menu, depending on what is growing in the garden. To wash it down, nothing beats a stoop of Philip’s own rosé wine or a bottle of his own rosé “champagne” – an entirely unexpected creation aged in his apothiki storeroom that combats the relentless heat of Greece in August to perfection.

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, Greece, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel

 

On the road

23 Aug

Alongside a quay in Stockholm, this extraordinary piece of art draws attention to the plight of refugees everywhere.

On to Stockholm for four or five days – a city I had never seen but must now place high on the list of favourites. We came upon free rock concerts just across the water from the Parliament buildings, paused to admire the mounted brass band and timpani of the Royal Guard as they played in the courtyard of the Palace, visited some exceptional museums (especially the one built to house the Vasa, that remarkable but unlucky ship that sank after sailing only a few hundred yards on her maiden voyage in 1628) and tasted many delicious things. Best of all was the grilled reindeer at Slingerbulten (incredibly tender, lean, sweet meat) and the mildly salted bleak roe on fried bread at Sture Hof. Almost as good was a dinner in one of the labyrinthine basement rooms of Den Gyldene Freden – a bit of a tourist trap but full of charm. I had heavy cured herring with capers and perfect little boiled new potatoes; delicate, much more lightweight herring with sour cream and a bitter spicy edge from horseradish; sweeter, saltier herring with honey and cherries; and cheese that had been drowned in aquavit for two days. These dishes comprised the first course, to be followed by wild duck (the breast pink and pleasingly tender, the leg frenched and confited).

Wendy and I had hoped to visit our old friend Goran Amnegard who has built an extraordinary hotel/restaurant/vineyard a couple of hours west of the city (his Vidal Icewine wins prizes regularly at the major French wine fairs) but he and his family were away on holiday in Italy. Next time…

Then it was a quick hop to Berlin where we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary with a lavish dinner at the 2-Michelin-starred Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer. The room was delightful – like a peaceful library in a large country house but with a view of the Brandenburg Gate – and the service exemplary. Chef Hendrick Otto’s cooking is in the very haute modern French-European style – complex and clever and evolved. Every component is orchestrated to the nines but such is his mastery of harmony that nothing is ever remotely dissonant: it’s like listening to Haydn played by the Berlin Philharmonic – super if you love Haydn. A parfait of goose liver for example, was graced with brioche cream, orange, coffee and polenta, the natural texture of each ingredient transformed… Silver salmon received the blessing of a white bean fumé, an escabeche of vegetables, tiny cubes of jellied salt water as well as mango and bell pepper. Scallop and pork belly flirted with a curry emulsion, moments of banana, fennel, artichoke and passion fruit… And so on. The wines chosen by the sommelier were all fine but nothing breathtakingly good and original – things like Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc and Schloss Gobelsburg Gruner Veltliner that seem fairly commonplace in Toronto (I was hoping for some spectacular German wines). But it was all very fine but ultimately not nearly as satisfying and pleasurable as the whole turbot we shared for lunch the next day down on Quarré’s sidewalk tables along Unter der Linden. It’s not a fish one comes across often any more – and I can’t really afford it when I do – but we were still under the anniversary spell.

And now we are in Corfu, at our old house, getting ready to go up to the bar where our koubaros, Philip (aka Pakis) has finally decided the moment has come to offer food as well as drink. He has built a small but impressive kitchen, taken on a business partner in a chef called Spiro, and proposes a small menu of mezethes that will change every night according to the whim of the management. We have been asking Philip to do food for more than 30 years but he has always dismissed the idea, though he is a fabulous cook. How will tonight’s mezethes turn out? Please watch this space.

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, Elsewhere, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel, Treats

 

The Admiral Codrington

23 Feb

Three cheers for the Admiral

Admiral Sir Edward Codrington GBC RN (1770-1851) was not one of Nelson’s original Band of Brothers – the captains who fought under him at the Battle of the Nile – but he certainly belongs in the broader Band. He commanded HMS Orion heroically at the Battle of Trafalgar, went on to become Captain of the Fleet, fighting the Americans, during the War of 1812 and later defeated the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleets at the Battle of Navarino. So it’s no wonder that there should be a London pub named after him – the Admiral Codrington on Mossop Street, a quiet backwater around the corner from the posh Chelsea neighbourhood of Sloane Avenue and Draycott Place, home to Daphne’s and Bibendum and other renowned and ludicrously expensive eateries.

            Many a London pub has closed its doors in recent years; others have struggled to reinvent themselves as restaurants. “The Cod” does so with distinction, retaining the proper ambience of a pub in the bar while adding on a long dining room at the back, decorated in a cheerful but dated 1990s style and featuring (who knows why?) a retractable glass roof. The roof was closed recently when I had dinner there with my daughter and her fiancée and we sat in a comfortable green velvet booth and told each other outlandish stories.

            I was impressed with the service and with the food. The menu is eclectic but nothing we ordered was anything less than excellent. I started with tender squid rings that had been deep-fried in a crisp, robust, fish-and-chip-style batter then smothered in finely sliced green chilies and chopped scallions and strewn with coriander and salt. The scrunch of batter and the tongue-tingling hit of chili proved distractingly pleasurable.

The artichoke splayed

            Clams can so often end up like little nubbins of India rubber snipped from the blunt end of a pencil – especially those tiny palourde clams that usually meet their maker as spaghetti vongole. The Cod, however, steams them to a becoming tenderness and piles them in their shells into a bowl of lightweight but intensely flavoured broth featuring flecks of smoked bacon, chopped shallots and fresh, sliced sage. It’s heavenly, slicked up with a final knob of butter and, but for the necessary work of extricating the clams, the whole thing would be gone in a trice.

            I don’t often see a whole globe artichoke on a menu – certainly not in February – but we ordered it and were not disappointed. The picture gives some idea of the attractive presentation – outer leaves pulled off leaving the heart like a conical alien bloom. The kitchen serves it with a thickly emulsified vinaigrette for dipping and a deliciously stiff walnut aioli. And I couldn’t resist seeing how they did a Welsh Rarebit. Pretty good, was my verdict – nicely seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, the melted cheddar rich and bubbling on crusty brown toast though there was too much Dijon in the recipe… Ah, but my WR standards are impossibly high having been set long ago by my Grandmother’s impeccable version.

            Mains took matters to a new level. I had the Cod’s cod – a big fillet of moist white fish that parted into juicy petals at the touch of my fork. The fish had been thrice coated – once with a layer of tomato purée, then with a waistcoat of mushroom duxelles and finally with a green blanket of breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme and grated parmesan that held together under the heat. A most accomplished dish.

            Grilled Dorset lamb cutlets were the cod’s equal – the meat good and lamby with a sweet layer of fat and the proper, slightly chewy texture that speaks of actual grazing in green pastures. A gratin of very thinly sliced swede reminded me how much I love the flavour of that particular root (we call it rutabaga here) while caramelized onions and salty little capers completed the dish.

            Desserts are usually worth waiting for when you eat at a pub – definitely so here. Sticky toffee pudding was almost too sticky, almost too buttery and too thoroughly drowned in toffee – almost. Vanilla panna cotta was as rich and slippery as a Russian billionaire.

            You can find the Admiral Codrington at 17 Mossop Street, London SW3. 020 7581 0005. www.theadmiralcodrington.co.uk.

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, England, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel

 

Chabrot Bistrot d’Amis

01 Jun

L'exterieur

When Canadian friends are going to London the question they never ask is “What is the best restaurant in London?” What they do want to know is “Where is a good little place to eat that doesn’t cost the earth?” So I have been looking for such a gem, while also thinking of next July when I’ll be hosting some Canadians over here for the Olympics, courtesy of Gold Medal Plates. Tonight we went to check out Chabrot, a 65-seat bistro in a tiny alleyway running between Knightsbridge and the park, just a pierre’s jetée from Harrods.

Open about three-and-a-half months, it’s the fulfilled ambition of four friends – society florist Pascal Lavorel, wine guru Philippe Messy, Yann Chevris, who set up a number of big-name spots such as Nahm, Nobu London and Atelier Joel Robuchon, and chef Thierry Laborde, who worked at Le Gavroche and with Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV. The name this influential quartet chose refers to a ritual from the Dordogne whereby gourmands pour a little wine into the bottom of their soup bowls to allow every last drop of potage to be consumed. Suitably obsessive… The credentials of the partners caught my eye, to be sure, but so did the menu, gleaming with treats from the south-west of France – sardines marinated in white wine; grilled black pudding with cooked apple; whole roasted foie gras for two (or three); cabbage stuffed with veal, chestnut, foie gras and ceps… So off we went.

The premises are hard to find. Cabbies know Knightsbridge Green and there is a cluster of little restaurants in the knuckle of the laneway that turns back southwards to Knightsbridge. Chabrot lies to the north, up a narrow passage where cars cannot go. It’s a slender little property on two storeys run by a team of young and anxious French people who try very hard to be friendly. We were guided up the steep flight of stairs to a wedge of a salon with painted brick walls, a wooden floor, tiny tables clad in red-and-white striped linen of industrial tea-towel weight, hard wooden chairs and large framed sepia photographs of French bistro scenes. “This will be noisy when the other tables fill up,” we surmised – and so it proved. Good reviews have ensured the place is packed, even on a Tuesday night. A lone waitress coped womanfully with our storey, keeping her temper, bringing excellent crusty brown bread and sweet, firm butter, giving us time to read the menu carefully. The dishes here are unabashedly simple – almost too simple, some might say, though others would disagree. It’s a tough call.

plain but very good - the broad bean salad

A salad of broad beans and ewe cheese is a case in point. The wee dish offered some absolutely impeccable, timed-to-perfection and shelled broad beans with a hint of mint. They were crowned with a dollop of sweet, bland sheep’s milk cheese with the texture of cottage cheese and the same amount of flavour. A sprinkling of piment d’espalette powder, south-west France’s gentle answer to paprika, added a soupcon of seasoning. A dose of very good olive oil offered much more. It was a brilliant little dish, such as one makes for a picnic montage in a Merchant-Ivory film when love is running hot and smooth. Puritan gourmets say “oui, superbe,” but others who might have hoped for a bit more dash and imagination grumble.

Ditto a dish billed as warm duck liver paté. If you have made paté you know there’s a moment when everything is cooked and warm in the pan and ready to be mashed and pressed and cooled into a paté. One can’t help but taste it. Well this dish has arrested the process at that point, presenting a ramekin of warm chopped and sautéed duck liver with capers, herbs and oily juices. Beside it is a giant gougère, the size of three Yorkshire puddings with some Comté cheese baked into the crust. It’s hollow of course, as a gougère should be, but where most gougères are dainty and ethereral little bites this one is the size of a child’s head. So we break bits off and use the undulating hollows of choux pastry as receptacles for a little of the embryonic pate. It tastes wonderful but the premise is a little like eating raw cake mix. What might this dish have been if the paté had been made? As Bubble used to answer in Absolutely Fabulous, Who can say?

Marinated sardines in white wine vinegar are a yummy crowd-pleaser, the fillets firm and juicy, just tangy enough. They come topped with chopped cherry tomato, chopped white grapes for sweetness, shredded basil and tiny dice of oil-fried croutons, crunchy and juicy with good olive oil. Again, it’s lovely but far from special.

my petit chou

Mains loom out of the menu and I find I can’t resist the stuffed cabbage leaves – savoy leaves as it turns out – my favourite cabbage. Inside is a dense meatloaf of finely ground veal studded with soft nuggets of chestnut and cep, enriched with foie gras. On top are some crunchy little croutons and a few burst cranberries which bring the whole thing to life, for the flavours of the cabbage roll are gentle and wistful, like an auntie’s kiss on the forehead. The tart cranberries have decided to make trouble but there are too few of them to bring the too-too-solid flesh to life.

Grilled octopus skewers, partially breadcrumbed, are as tender as the night. That espalette paprika makes a repeat appearance but has nothing to say it didn’t say already. A warm salad of halved fingerling potatoes in olive oil and lemon juice is divine. “But is it art?” Again the question arises.

Paillard de veau is a piece of veal beaten and tortured until it’s as thin as vellum then grilled and sprinkled with rosemary and sage. Any Italian would scoff, having tasted the tender Milanese equivalent. A small mound of well-dressed salad leaves on the side of the plate murmur comments without getting involved.

ma baba avec son verre d'Armagnac

Oui, we had desserts. A bowl of gariguette strawberries with crème chantilly – very nice but too polite and the cream was too sweet to be wicked. Praline ice cream – excellent, but ice cream usually is. I had a baba (okay mostly so I could look the waitress in the eye and say “a baba!”) but this was served in an unusual way. The baba lay in a bowl beside a pillow of crème chantilly looking enchanting, but as I admired it the server whispered that I must now choose one of three vintage Bas Armagnacs (at decidedly vintage prices) to complete the experience. There was also a cheaper hors d’age Armagnac she confessed, but she made a most discouraging face when she mentioned that one. I chose the 1979 and awesome it was, though I couldn’t make out the producer’s name on the label. The waitress poured it into a snifter and murmured that I should now soak the spongey, very fresh, slightly syrup-impregnated baba with the precious eau de vie. Quelle dilemma, mes amis! To pour or not to pour? Whether tis better to annoint the baba or save the armagnac til later – that is the question. I decided to soak my cake and eat it while cunningly saving half the generous snifter for a post-baba libation! Lights flash, bells ring! That is the right thing to do.

There is wine at Chabrot – a lovely list indeed, strong in french regional bottles from cool, well-chosen producers but at London prices, which are higher than we are used to in Canada. The final verdict? We had a good time but next time I will fall back on a more comfortable favourite across the road – Racine.

Closed on Sundays, Chabrot is open for lunch and dinner. 9 Knightsbridge Green, London SW1X 7QL, 207 225 2238, www.chabrot.co.uk.

 
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Posted in Elsewhere, England, Life in General, Restaurants, Travel

 

Slouching to Jerusalem part three

18 Mar

The road to Jericho

 

Overheard in the crazily crowded alleyways of the covered shuk in the heart of old Jerusalem’s Moslem quarter, an earnest English dad telling his equally earnest five-year-old daughter: “Yes, I promise we’ll absolutely keep an eye out for camels.”

The concert in Jerusalem is a resounding success. The program is part of the ongoing exploration of chamber music written by exiled composers of the 1930s, men such as Miecyslaw Weinberg, Walter Braunfels, Paul Ben-Haim, as well as the more renowned Kurt Weill and Erich Korngold, who were persecuted by the Nazis or by Stalin’s regime and whose work is rarely heard. Simon Wynberg is Artistic Director of the Artists of the Royal Conservatory ensemble and has a passion for reviving this remarkable music. Hearing it played so exquisitely in Jerusalem of all places adds an extra emotional resonance. Many people in the audience are old enough to be emigrés themselves – children at the time of the holocaust – and it is impossible not to hear the music as some kind of testament from the past, poignant with thoughts of what was lost or might have been created.

 Next day, the musicians fly out to Amsterdam for two concerts at the Concertgebouw; Wendy and I head off into the Judaean desert, driving to a beach beside the Dead Sea to wallow in the strange, opaque, silky water and smear our startled skins with black mud. Then on to Jericho, prowling the archeological remains of the world’s oldest city. Wendy has a degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and is highly over-excited, leaning over the rail to ogle Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s trench and the incrdibly well preserved base of the oldest defensive tower ever excavated. The nearby ruin of an 8th-century Umayyad palace is even more spectacular, though utterly deserted except for the custodian of the site, a thoroughly urbane gentleman in a tan suit and tie who makes wry jokes in impeccable English and has clearly stepped straight from the pages of a Graham Greene novel. Our cab driver, Abdullah, is more interested in boasting about the qualities of the miniature bananas grown in the oases of Jericho. To make the point, he pulls over to the side of the road and buys us a hand of the little beauties. I thought they were going to be sticky or overly sweet like long yellow dates but the truth isn’t nearly so crude. Even in their skins they have a fresh banana aroma that is most compelling. When peeled, each one is as long as my index finger, fragrant, perfectly textured between ripe and firm and with a surprisingly subtle but persistent banana flavour – altogether delectable.

The cat at Manta Ray using powerful hypno-vision to charm steak from Wendy's plate

And then back to Tel Aviv for our last evening in Israel. A week has changed everything. From cold horizontal rain and crashing breakers it is suddenly summer, the sea a placid, glittering blue, the combed beaches crowded with sunbathers and frisbee players. Cyclists and joggers jostle along the miles of promenade; families stroll with ice cream cones. The afternoon is perforated by the endless, arythmic percussion of wooden bat and hard rubber ball – beach tennis – played all day long until the sound of it threatens to bring madness.

For our last dinner we walk back along the beach towards Jaffa to Manta Ray, a renowned, 12-year-old seafood restaurant built out onto the sand. It’s a ramshackle semi-circular construction that shows a glass façade to the sea and its unadorned rear end to the city but it looks cool after dark with huge amphorae filled with pussy willow boughs reaching up to the blue plank ceiling, six-foot photographs of faces superimposed onto glass, wooden troughs full of perfect vegetables. Tourists and locals are equally at home here, jollied into the details of the menu by a staff of self-confident young women. While considering our options, we drink Onyx Chardonnay 2006 from the Benyamina region, a wine that is showing its age in a rather sexy way, the bloom of fresh fruit departed but a worldly-wise, oxidative character creeping in, the structure still firm.

By now, we are used to the pattern of a meal in this part of the world – the same Ottaman-inspired routine as in Greece or Turkey, Lebanon or Armenia, that begins with bread and a dozen salads on little plates. Here at Manta Ray, those salads are far more inventive than usual and most involve seafood. The server sets a great tray of them beside the table and invites us to choose as many as we like. I’ll just stick with the highlights: a jumble of soft chickpeas, pitted black olives, sliced calamari (beguilingly tender) and slivers of crunchy kohlrabi, all in oil and lemon and parsley. Another intriguing and ultimately delicious combination involved cold steamed cauliflower florets, chopped apple and onion and dots of a soft, white, creamy cheese. Then there was a forthrightly acidic ceviche of fresh sea bass, onion and crunchy raw fennel: the final effect was closer to pickled herring than anything South American, but none the worse for that since I love pickled herring. Shelled shrimp and chunks of ripe canteloupe hiding in baby spinach leaves turned into a game of hunt the protein, the sweet melon-juice dressing a tad overwhelming.

Sea bass with gnocchi at manta Ray

One of the main courses was particularly notable – fresh sea bass simply pan-fried and served with soft, middleweight gnocchi, whole cashews and chunks of juicy eggplant that seemed to be masquerading as mushrooms all in a thick rich butter sauce flavoured with coriander and cured lemon.

The cat that owns the restaurant, a zaftig jellicle cat who looks as though he’s wearing a Mexican wrestler’s mask, instantly spotted a patsy in my wife and ended up with most of the decent entrecote steak she had ordered. Dessert was too scrumptious to share – a glossy beige log of fluffy halva mousse (so sweet but so irresistible) served with crushed cocoa nibs, “halva strings” that looked like asbestos but tasted divine, and a crunchy tuile wafer speckled with nigella and sesame.

And now it’s back to Toronto to launch Harry Rosen’s new web site and wait for our brief, intense northern springtime to show up.

halva mousse - a brilliant confection

 
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Jerusalem

14 Mar

Moon over the Red Sea, a dessert at La Rotisserie, Jerusalem

Before we left for Israel, I asked a few friends where we should eat. Bonnie Stern very sweetly emailed me back a bunch of excellent recommendations. Passionate about Israel’s amazing produce and fascinating new gastronomic scene, Bonnie just got back from co-leading her fourth culinary trip to the country, sharing the captaincy with rabbi Elyse Goldstein who covers all aspects cultural and spiritual. It sounds like a great way to see – and taste – the  country, for there is much to be said for having a guide in these parts, especially in the old walled city of Jerusalem where so many cultures, faiths and philosophies are superimposed. Bonnie’s advice has also been invaluable when we made a rendezvous with our friends and needed somewhere to eat where we could be sure the food was excellent and the prices reasonable. Left to our own devices, Wendy and I have encountered a mixed bag in terms of quality, though one or two places have been exceptional.

Last night we followed Bonnie’s guidance and ate at La Rôtisserie. This is part of the Notre  Dame de France Roman Catholic complex built by the Assumptionist Fathers in 1887 and restored to pristine splendour in the 1970s. No one would guess there was a restaurant in there (our friends’ taxi drivers were totally foxed) or that it would be so elegant, a modern space of white stone walls and vaulted ceilings with a very chic bar. Tables are dressed in snowy linen and embroidered grey cloths: it looks like a million dollars so we were all pleasantly surprised that the bill came to only about $40 per person, before wine (all right it was quite a lot more than that, cum vinis).

Fried eggs... or are they?

La Rôtisserie is the domain of Spanish chef Rodrigo Gonzalez-Elias who brings some pretty sophisticated and contemporary notions into play while not forgetting such classics as pata negra ham, foie gras or steak tartare. I started with three soft, superbly tender baked red onions stuffed with soft apricots and crushed pistachios set in a shallow pool of chive-scented cream. It was one of those dishes where you have to be careful loading the fork to achieve the ideal effect, a correct balance not overburdened with fruit or onion. My main course, paupiettes of sole wrapped in bacon, were expertly done, crusted in breadcrumbs then fried and served over a lemon and saffron sauce. Sole has the ideal texture for the dish but there’s always the danger that the bacon will take over in the flavour department.

Chef really lets rip with his desserts, borowing some techniques from the molecular gastronomes and showing a flair for whimsy. Witness “Moon over the Red Sea,” a food-painting on a black plate with tahina sorbet, honey sorbet and date ice cream as the principal mediums and a beach of granola. I ordered “fried eggs,” the lacy-edged whites made of creamed lebanese cheese thickened with xantian, the yolks two runny-centred, wobbly balls of peach purée that burst at the touch of the fork – very egg-like and clever and yummy over sliced butter cake “toasts.”

(La Rôtisserie restaurant & bar is inside the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Centre, 3 Paratrooper’s Road (just outside the New Gate of the Old City), 02 627 9111.)

The night before, we had a very different but equally memorable experience. We’re staying at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, a gorgeous hotel that was once an Ottaman pasha’s palace before being taken over by a family of American philanthropists, the Spaffords, in the 1880s. They turned part of it into a hotel circa 1902 and it was a particular favourite of Lawrence of Arabia. These days, it is one of a couple of places that are seen as “neutral territory” by both Arabs and Jews and the charming Cellar Bar with its discreetly dim lighting and low, vaulted ceilings is often full of murmurous diplomats and journalists.

Pasha's wonderful meze

In this neighbourhood, restaurants outside the hotel are Palestinian and we found a fine spot a ten-minute walk away. From the outside, Pasha’s looks like any number of places in Greece or Turkey – a bungalow with a private garden where fans of the hubbly-bubbly hookah can hang out unmolested. We left it up to the owner to feed us as he thought fit which turned out to be a preliminary spread of 15 different salads. You can see from the picture how lovely they looked to our hungry eyes. Aside from one dish of insipid canned mushrooms, everything had a personality of its own, the commonality being a lightness of touch in terms of spicing and also, more importantly, texture. I’ve never had kubbeh or falafel so light, the shells crisp, the insides fluffy and moist and gone in a trice. Experience has taught us discretion where these meze are concerned so we found room for the main course of grilled lamb chops, cut thin, and kebabs of impeccably moist chicken, lamb and oniony minced lamb. We drank Taybeh, a local beer like a honey lager, and a pretty decent arak. It was only later we found out that there is another more adventurous menu of domestic Arab dishes such as Lamb spleens stuffed with garlic and parsley, or mansaf of seasoned lamb cooked with pine nuts and served with rice and Bedouin yogurt. Next time… (Pasha’s is at 13 Shimon Hazadik Street, East Jerusalem. 02 582 5162.)

What next? Tonight we attend the concert given by the Artists of the Royal Conservatory. Watch this space.

 
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The Ritz – irresistible

03 Jan

The Ritz hotel in London

I’m in England for a few days to welcome the New Year, heading off first to West Sussex on the slow train that stops ten times on its way to the coast. The snowdrifts have all gone from the little valleys tucked into the downs, though the ground is hard and the air sharply cold on the short dark afternoons. Roast pheasant is the big meal, beautifully cooked in the Aga, juicy and moist and tasting subtly but delectably gamey, as pheasants should, but never do in Canada.

Back to London for a quick burger at Joe Allen on Exeter Street. I haven’t been there for 25 years but little has changed. The burger is still not on the menu (you have to ask) and the walls are hung with many of the same old playbills, photographs and signed photos of thespians. Our cheerful waitress spotted a bottle of Inniskillin Icewine I had brought as a present for my English friends Thelma Miller and Steve Grocott and recognized it at once. She explained that she has recently come back from a year in Toronto where she worked at Allen’s on the Danforth. John Maxwell (owner of Allen’s) recommended her for this London job. Maxwell once worked here too and was co-owner and manager of the Toronto Joe Allen from 1980 to 1985. It’s a small world, nicht vahr?

Today, other very kind friends of long standing, the actress Angharad Rees and her husband, David McAlpine, treated my mother and me to an exceptional lunch at The Ritz. Built by César Ritz in 1905, the hotel has been a London landmark ever since, a sturdy colonnaded chateau on the edge of Green Park. But it had suffered in the 1980s, standards slipping thanks to careless foreign owners, the gorgeous interior stonework painted over. In 1995 it was purchased by two brothers, Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay, who spent 10 years and 50 million pounds on a tremendously detailed restoration. It is sumptuous now, a Louis XVI palace inside, and the restaurant is often described as the most beautiful dining room in London. Champagne and cheese carts glide silently across the acreage between perfectly accoutred tables. The well-informed young servers all wear black tails but are not remotely formal or stuffy, understanding that a friendly smile is much more attractive than a haughty glance.

The chef is John Williams who was at Claridge’s before he came here. His cooking is light, contemporary and refined, based on French technique but using superb British ingredients. He can also do molecular, as witnessed by the amuse he sent out – a little glass containing a Virgin Mary of seasoned tomato essence topped with a celeriac foam. A fragile wand of a parmesan crisp lay across the rim of the glass; beside it in a spoon was an “olive,” that was actually tangy olive oil in a skin of green olive purée partially solidified to a quivering jelly by alginate.

We had sipped Taittinger Prelude while pondering the menu. For our first course, David chose a refeshing young Meursault, the 2008 from Domaine Coche-Dury that he enjoys drinking in its youth. It was perfect with my lobster salad – half a tail and a claw, lightly poached so the flesh was rare but flavourful, removed from the shell and laid elegantly on the plate. The garnish involved citrus in various guises – tiny morsels of fresh grapefruit and lemon, dots of pungent sauces and purées, slivers of crunchy fennel. For all its elegance and balance there was drama in the creamy lobster and sharply acidic fruit.

I ordered venison loin for my main course. It was a deliciously sapid little drum of very lean meat cooked just a tad more than I would have liked but exactly as I ordered (one man’s medium-rare is another man’s medium). With it, the kitchen presented a roast parsnip, a comma of parsnip purée, a block of potato mille-feuille, two crosnes and a dainty little roll of crisp dough filled with something we had trouble identifying – mushroom duxelles perhaps? Or was it offal? Finely shredded tripe even? I meant to ask the waiter but was distracted by the wine we were drinking, Château Lynch-Bages 1998, with its demure nose but marvellously intense, impeccably balanced flavours, a moment of liquorice hiding in a basket of black fruit.

We declined cheese but David and I each ordered the chestnut and vanilla soufflé that arrived with a scoop of delicious marmalade ice cream. With this we had a glass of Château d’Yquem 1991 (dark, subtle, sophisticatedly dry) and another of the 1998 for comparison. Then the excellent sommelier brought a taste of the 1999 to complete our education.

It was a flawless lunch, light and clever, and I am astonished that The Ritz restaurant still lacks a couple of Michelin stars. The hotel is fully honoured in Michelin’s hotel guide (one of only 11 properties in England that get the maximum five points out of five) but the restaurant and its chef certainly deserve recognition.

The magnificent mural above the staircase in the William Kent House

After lunch, David and Angharad led us through a mirrored door and into the William Kent House. This was a house built for the Hon. Henry Pelham (the future Prime Minister) by the architect and artist William Kent in 1742. Sir David and Sir Frederick acquired it in 2005 and have restored it to the full magnificence of its original conception. Such remarkably beautiful rooms! The hallway has a sweeping staircase without supports that draws the eye up to an extraordinary mural of 18th-century society. The dining room is splendid with crimson walls, elaborate gilding and a stunning painted ceiling in the Italian Renaissance manner. There are two suites on the higher floors and several salons and sitting rooms. The Ritz uses it as an event space. It also keeps an eye on the place when it’s empty. We were quickly joined in our explorations by a member of the hotel staff who had been sent to investigate our intrusion. He recognized our friends as guests (they are staying at the hotel for a week or two over the holidays) and was charm itself.

 
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England’s top 100 restaurants?

13 Oct

News from London, England… Which may come in  very handy if you’re going there any time soon.

The National Restaurant Awards are the result of an extensive survey that asks chefs, food critics and restaurateurs from all over England to select the seven best restaurants they have eaten in during the last 12 months. From these votes, Restaurant magazine (origin of the San Pellegrino World’s Best Restaurants awards) compiles a list of the UK’s Top 100 Restaurants. The following from food writer Becky Paskin of BigHospitality:

The Ledbury named Restaurant of the Year at National Restaurant Awards 2010

  The Ledbury has tonight been named National Restaurant of the Year, beating The Fat Duck and Bistro Bruno Loubet to the top spot the year’s National Restaurant Awards 2010.

Led by Australian chef Brett Graham, the Notting Hill restaurant also received the Best Front of House Award.

Other awards handed out by Restaurant Magazine at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London tonight (11 October) included The Restaurateurs’ Choice, which went to Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, and Best Gastropub, which went to The Hardwick in Abergavenny.
Claude Bosi of Hibiscus in London, which earlier this year broke into the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants, tonight also won the Chef’s Chef of the Year award.

William Drew, editor of Restaurant magazine editor said: “The UK restaurant sector is back in great shape after the shake-out of the last couple of years – and the standard of the winners in the National Restaurant Awards reflects that.”

“The Ledbury’s coronation as the National Restaurant of the Year is fully deserved: Brett Graham has quietly built it into a quite brilliant restaurant where his stunning but never flashy food is matched by outstanding service in a smart but unstuffy environment.”

 The UK’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2010 are:

1 The Ledbury, London
2 The Fat Duck, Berkshire
3 Bistro Bruno Loubet, London
4 Hibiscus, London
5 The Walnut Tree, Monmouthshire
6 Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham
7 Bar Boulud, London
8 The Square, London
9 The Waterside Inn, Berkshire
10 Galvin La Chapelle, London
11 Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Rock
12 Pied a Terre, London
13 The Hardwick, Monmouthshire
14 Hix, London
15 l’Anima, London
16 Le Champignon Sauvage, Gloucestershire
17 Terroirs, London
18 Arbutus, London
19 Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons, Oxfordshire
20 Restaurant Andrew Fairlie, Perthshire
21 Wild Honey, London
22 Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, London
23 Bocca Di Lupo, London
24 The Kitchin, Edinburgh
25 The River Café, London
26 Northcote Manor, Lancashire
27 Hix Oyster and Fish House, Dorset
28 St John, London
29 Galvin Bistro de Luxe, London
30 Polpo, London
31 The Sportsman, Kent
32 Maze, London
33 Hand and Flowers, Berkshire
34 The Star Inn, North Yorkshire
35 Hakkasan, London
36 L’Enclume, Cumbria
37 Trullo, London
38 L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, London
39 Roka, London
40 Simpsons, Birmingham
41 Elephant Restaurant, Torquay
42 Chez Bruce, London
43 Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, London
44 La Becasse, Shropshire
45 Harwood Arms, London
46 Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, London
47 Koffmann’s, London
48 Midsummer House, Cambridgeshire
49 Petrus, London
50 Mya Lacarte, Berkshire
51 Hereford Road, London
52 Jack in the Green, Devon
53 The Modern Pantry, London
54 Zuma, London
55 Le Café Anglais, London
56 Porthminster Beach Café, Cornwall
57 Galvin at Windows, London
58 The Quilon Restaurant & Bar, London
59 Viajante, London
60 Zucca, London
61 The Three Chimneys, Isle of Skye
62 Le Gavroche, London
63 Hipping Hall, Kirkby Lonsdale
64 The Dogs, Edinburgh
65 Restaurant Martin Wishart, Edinburgh
66 Great Queen Street, London
67 21212, Edinburgh
68 Fraiche, Oxton
69 The Hinds Head, Berkshire
70 Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, London
71 Gidleigh Park, Devon
72 Corrigan’s Mayfair, London
73 Racine, London
74 James Street South, Belfast
75 Launceston Place, London
76 Ondine Restaurant, Edinburgh
77 Kitchen W8, London
78 L’Ortolan, Berkshire
79 Lucknam Park, Wiltshire
80 Purnell’s, Birmingham
81 Ode, Devon
82 Scotts, London
83 Bell’s Diner, Bristol
84 The Cinnamon Club, London
85 JoJo’s, Kent
86 Pipe & Glass Inn, East Yorkshire
87 Cafe Spice Namaste, London
88 Indian Zing, London
89 Hawksmoor, London
90 Barrafina, London
91 The Magdalen Arms, Oxford
92 Petersham Nurseries, Surrey
93 Tom Aikens, London
94 Wabi, West Sussex
95 Tyddyn Llan Restaurant with Rooms, North Wales
96 Koya, London
97 Browns Hotel, Tavistock
98 Murano, London
99 Braidwoods, Dalry
100 Yauatcha, London

 
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Alinea – Chicago

27 Sep

No flashes permitted at Alinea - hence the dull yellow hue to this picture.

There are surprisingly few restaurants open for dinner on Sunday in Chicago but luckily Alinea is one of them. “Why go there,” asked friends in Toronto. “Okay, it’s number seven in the world according to the San Pellegrino charts, but everything has already been written about the place.” And about Grant Achatz, its chef and co-owner, a man still in his mid-30s whose artistic energies were honed at Charlie Trotter’s and the French Laundry and then molecularly realigned (so the story goes) by a trip to Ferran Adria’s El Bulli in Catalonia. He created Alinea five years ago and has not yet opened his next Chicago venture or ventures – The Aviary and/or Next Restaurant – which may or may not be the same place – despite a staggering amount of prescient press pressure that has been going on for months… Such are the games this chef plays with the world.

The Sunday in question was spent walking round Oak Park’s leafy avenues admiring Frank Lloyd Wrighteous architecture, humming Paul Simon’s beautiful song and agreeing that FLW was indeed a precociously modern genius of both arts and crafts (like Chef Achatz) and a man dictatorially determined that his vision and his taste should completely surround and envelop his customers (like Chef Achatz).

Our heads were full of Wright’s visual rhythms and melodic lines as we dressed for dinner in the hotel. Then – suddenly – sapristi! Where the devil were my cufflinks? Egad… Still in a box in Toronto. A potential disaster was only averted by some swift MacGyvering, twisting four bobby pins into makeshift links like anorexic spiders to grip the snowy cuffs. Robert Tateossian’s preeminence was in no danger but I was rather proud of myself for taking something commonplace and turning it into something strange and unlikely but satisfying and successful (again, just like Chef Achatz).

Alinea looks like a regular house from the outside – a black façade with modest signage. Open the door and you are faced with an introductory moment of theatre, a black corridor lit by concealed pink lights that narrows dramatically so that for a fraction of a second it seems very long, until your eyes correct the mistake. Some might call it a cheap trick, a moment borrowed from a carnival haunted house, but it made me smile.

Take a left turn and now you are in the building proper. A glimpse of the kitchen to the right – dozens of cooks bent in concentration over their work stations – a lounge to the left, another salon perhaps – but our table is up the glass-hedged stairs in one of three or four small rooms. This way. The staff here are dressed by Ermenegildo Zegna – bussers and waiters in the sporty Z-Zegna line, sommeliers and maitre d’ in the more formal Sartorial suits and ties. They are polite but firm and they will be with us all evening, explaining, instructing, hovering, listening (once commenting on something my wife had just said to me – which was a step too far). For the first 15 minutes, we find ourselves bridling at such a bossy tone and longing for a moment of privacy, but gradually we are won over, coaxed and seduced into the Alinea experience. It isn’t the house that is responsible – the décor looks lovely on the web site but is banal in reality with dull paintings on the wall – it’s the food and the clever wine choices and the quirky eccentricity of the servers (our wine waiter has hair like Edward Scissorhands and the mannerisms of David Tennant’s Doctor Who)… But mostly it’s the food.

Our research had implied there are two menus at Alinea, one longer and even more expensive than the shorter version. On our visit there was only one. It consisted of 21 courses, some very small, others not, all of them fascinating – and it cost the earth. From the outset, there is a palpable insistence that the customer should give up all sense of independence and go with the program. We were offered our choice of waters but it was the last moment of freedom. Before I could form a request for a cocktail, one was set in front of me – a frozen, chewy Pisco Sour, like a mixture between nougat and ice cream in terms of texture but tasting intensely of a real-life Pisco Sour.

Course two was another cocktail, called a Juliet and Romeo, or so we were instructed. Its texture was similar to compressed watermelon or even the crunchy jelly of sea cucumber – it was a green gelatinous cube and it tasted, miraculously, of Plymouth gin, cucumber, rosewater and mint. I felt a little like an adult confronted by an accomplished conjuror. I could figure out how he did it but that didn’t detract from my admiration at how skillfully he pulled off the trick.

The third cocktail was a play on a Manhattan – half a macerated cherry topped by a foam – tasting just like a Manhattan. Achatz has been to Barchef on Queen Street in Toronto and tasted some of Frankie Solarik’s work. We’re talking kindred spirits.

Course four is the one that blew the last vestige of doubt and cynicism from Wendy’s mind. Picture a chilled pea soup garnished with drops of olive oil, a little Iberico ham, some honeydew melon, fresh basil and a trace of sherry. Got that? But here it came in a tumbler and the soup was a very cold powder, soft as talc, and packed like yesterday’s snow, with some crunchy round green moments, some salty, hammy flashes, some sudden jellies, etcetera… But tasting like the real thing as the textures melted and adjusted on the tongue. Was it better or more satisfying than an actual bowl of soup would have been? Nope. But it was no worse. Just different and clever. And it was unlike our experience at L20 the night before because the tricks were working. The wow factor was there – five out of five – because there really was an awesome flavour of pea and ham and all the other elements in that glass of powder.

Next came a very crispy wand like a tiny caduceus with serpents of raw white shrimp twsited around it. It was made of dehydrated soy milk skin but it tasted like a cross between very fine pastry and ethereal pork crackling. The shrimp flesh was real, sprinkled with black and white sesame and the whole thing was stuck into a tiny inkwell filled with a rich miso dipping sauce. Part of the same presentation was a fibrous morsel of sugar cane that had been infused under pressure with shrimp stock. “Chew it then spit it out like gum into the paper provided,” were the orders.

Now came the dish that won my curmudgeonly heart. It was almost the first thing we had eaten in Chicago that had some local provenance, some geographical relevance – a presentation of heirloom tomatoes from Michigan (almost as good as their Niagara kin) some very thinly sliced, some tiny and blanched and peeled, surrounded by eight mounds of different powdered condiments, some chilled, some crunchy – things like pine nut or fennel or basil or balsamic. Great ideas. And the whole plate was set down gently on an inflated pillow filled with air that had been carefully scented with the smell of freshly cut grass. The weight of the plate gradually pressed the air out of the pores of the pillowcase, adding a new aromatic dimension to the dish. I loved the idea.

And so on – and on… Here a roto evaporator had been used to create a low-temperature “distillation” of Thai flavours. There we were invited to build a structure of metal legs that could support a tiny flag, glossy as latex, emblazoned with flower petals that were once things like mustard and mango, and to load it up with dried garlic chips, a kind of belly pork rillettes, cucumber spheres, lime zest jelly, red bell pepper coulis, young coconut ribbon, etcetera etcetera. Such a lot of work for one slightly sticky bite in which all the flavours and textures combined into a single mouthful.

Then there were games with crabmeat and plum or with a piece of pheasant fried like tempura with walnut, green grape and sage to be eaten in one bite while oak leaves smolder and smoke.

Another dish showed off the flavour of a local lamb with such props as the fat from the saddle fried in panko crumbs (the size of a bean), fried green scallions, a maple bourbon gastrique…

A hot confit of potato with a slice of truffle was poised like a brooch on a pin over a spoonful of chilled truffle and potato soup. “See how we contrast hot and cold textures!!” the dish declared. (Yes dear, very clever.)

There was a main course. It was a cylinder of Australian wagyu tenderloin beef cooked according to a classic recipe from Escoffier, circa 1902, surrounded by morsels of fried banana, grilled green chilies stuffed with foie-gras-enhanced rice, peeled tomtaoes and a little classic Chateaubriand sauce. It was intended as a moment of respect and antique purity (and a reminder of the labour-intensive techniques of the past) and we were given antique cutlery to eat it with and an antique wine glass to accommodate the supersmooth wine – an Anima Negra An 2005 from Mallorca. Then a black truffle explosion (“put it all in your mouth and close your lips when you bite”). Then a scrap of bacon wrapped in apple and hung out to dry on a wire frame (“pull off the bacon and eat it in one go”). Then it was into the five dessert courses, one of which necessitated the spreading of a pale green silicone cloth over the bare wooden table so we could dispense with plates and mess up chocolate mousse frozen to crumbly honeycomb in liquid nitrogen and dressed with all sorts of candy sauces and menthol whipped cream and crispy herbs and micro-anise-hyssop. But let us draw a modest veil over all of them (it’s late, they were great).

Indeed, the whole experience has a greatness to it. It is very carefully choreographed and constructed – so precisely that there is no room for any improvisation from the customer (if I had embarked on a five-minute chat with the wine waiter about the relative merits of blaufrankisch or pinot noir in an Austrian bubbly the whole kitchen might have imploded). It is theatre. It is Cirque du Soleil and the fact that the miracles will be repeated later in the evening for each and every customer – and again tomorrow and again, hundreds of times, in the months to come – does spoil the show a little. If you like jazz – in other words, if you like improvisation and risk-taking in real time – you will hate Alinea. If you like avant-garde architecture – blending art and science and engineering to create an art form that is repeatable and spectacular (the first time you see it), this is the restaurant for you. Do expect to be amazed by the technical excellence of the dozens of cooks in the kitchen and by Chef Achatz’s vision – and by the quality of the cooking and ingredients and wine matching. Real gastronomy is happening here, not just smoke and mirrors. Do not hope for even a single minute when you can actually talk to your wife before the next course comes.

 Alinea (rhymes with Lavinia) Dinner only, Wednesday through Sunday. 1723 North Halsted, Chicago. 312 867-0110. www.alinea-restaurant.com.

 
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