Cornichon.org

Mauro's Passion

Published today, Assaggio Ristorante Cookbook: Mauro's Passion presents dozens of recipes by Belltown's favorite Italian chef, Mauro Golmarvi, for signature dishes like insalata Francesca, sautéed gamberoni, osso buco ala milanese.

Mauro with Assaggio's general manager Kristen Johnson; sautéed gamberoni

Mouthwatering photos (by Angie Norwood Browne) and plenty of good advice, like "Keep it fresh, simple and honest." And "The point is not to make your home kitchen like a restaurant kitchen. It should be the other way around."

You can pick up autographed copies at the restaurant for $24.95 (or go online to read endorsements from Mauro fans Howard Schultz, Greg Atkinson and John Sarich).

Mauro says he wrote the book for his daughter, "future chef Francesca," so she can show it to her friends and say, "This is from my father." Lucky girl.

Assaggio Ristorante, 2010 4th Ave., 206-441-1339

Cocktail Hour

Behold the cocktail, embodiment of Western Civilization. Evolved from ancient technology (distillation was known to Babylonian alchemists 25 centuries ago; medieval pharmacists concocted flavored alcohols) and enhanced by contemporary imagination, designer drinks have graduated from patent medicine to emblems of sophistication.

Unobtrusive doorway; barman Amon Mende adds fresh egg; Pisco Sour

The latest spot to cater to our fascination with retro nostrums is Suite 410, around the corner from Toi on the slippery slope between the Mariners Store and Rochester Big & Tall. Toi’s owners, Damon Maletta and Max Borthwick, had already demonstrated a knack for exotic beverages; their move to Suite 410 has left culinary pretensions behind to concentrate on beverages, period.

They hired drinks guru Ryan Magarian (remember when he was the barman at Zoe?) to develop a list of “resurrected” and “original” cocktails, and brought in Robert Hess (whose website, drinkboy.com, is the authoritative record for cocktail recipes) to train the staff in mixological history.

The result is a lounge that’s gratifyingly serious about its drinks, not in a snobby “battle of the premium vodkas” way, but serious like great restaurants. Serving a vodka-soda would be like the chef sending out an unadorned head of lettuce.

The “chef” at Suite 410 is Amon Mende, lately at Via Tribunale and remembered by downtown imbibers as Murray Stenson’s talented understudy at Café ZigZag. No free-pours here; everything is measured into a mixing glass, some aromatic ingredients literally by the drop. Ice is added only when the blend is perfect. And worth the wait.

Suite 410 isn’t a loss-leader for a dance club with $1 well drinks, not the waiting room for a restaurant. In fact, everything’s the same price, $8.75. Steep but fair. I just hope the throngs of pretty young things packing the joint every night understand what they’re in for: a lounge with real drinks that are hand-mixed, not squirted. A round of shots? Not likely.

Classic and fanciful names alternate on the drinks list. Have you tried a Blackthorn? Gin, Dubonnet and kirschwasser: it tastes like a Manhattan. The Corpse Reviver is lemony, with gin, freshly squeezed lemon juice, Cointreau, Lillet and a drop of Pastis. The Pisco Sour uses an organic egg white; a dash of Angostura bitters floats across the top, providing a fragrant accent of … chocolate!

Amon and his coterie worship at the altar of Audrey Saunders, who opened her own bar, Pegu Club, in New York only weeks ago; worshipful review in Friday's New York Times. She’s the deity, they’re the disciples. We’re fortunate to have an outpost.

Suite 410: 410 Stewart St., 206-624-9911

Bilingual mischief in "Les Romanesques"

UPDATE: download a PDF of the program here (750K)

It's a play in the romantic French tradition by Edmond Rostand, best known as author of the swashbuckling Cyrano de Bergerac. He wrote Les Romanesques as a twist on the Romeo & Juliet story of young lovers from feuding families: in this case, the fathers actually want ther children to marry (so they can combine their adjacent properties) and pretend to be enemies so the kids will meet in secret and fall in love; they even organize a feigned abduction so the boy can rescue the girl and resolve the "feud."

Cute premise, n'est-ce pas? and demonstrably popular: Les Romanesques was the basis for the longest-running play in American musical theater, The Fantasticks ("Try to Remember," "Soon It's Gonna Rain," etc.).

Percinet argues with Bergamin; Straforella "abducts" Sylvette

Enter Tom Ansart of Steeplechase, a producer without a troupe ever since West Seattle's Liberty Deli shut down. His notion: perform the self-contained first act of Les Romanesques in French and in English. And what better venue than Wallingford's venerable Good Shepherd Center, headquarters for the Alliance Française in Seattle, where, as it happens, Historic Seattle has been restoring the high-ceilinged chapel as a performance space.

Ah, but can you find actors able to perform with equal competence in both French and English? As it turns out, the answer is yes. That junior year abroad, that semester in Paris, whether recent or long ago, is paying off.

The young lovers are played by Seattle University student Colton Carothers (Percinet) and playwright Darian Lindl (Sylvette); the fathers by a classically trained actor with a secret love for French language, David S. Klein (Bergamin) and by moi-même (Pasquinot); and the swashbuckler hired for the abduction by Kady Douglas (Staforella), also a professional actor. Scott Taylor, PhD, a professor of French at Pacific Lutheran University, is the director.

More about the cast here; Tom's blogged production notes here. Preview in North Seattle Herald-Outlook here.

Trivia: I performed in The Fantasticks many, many years ago, playing the same role, the girl's father.

Do come out to Wallingford and see the show!

Les Romanesques runs from Sept 22nd through October 8th at Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford.

Reservations: BrownPaperTickets.org

The Emperor naked, the Perfectionist flawed

Two recent books about megalomaniacs: genial, larger-than-life luminaries of the food and wine world, Robert Parker, the American wine critic, and Bernard Loiseau, the French chef. They both tell of youthful talent that became increasingly ambitious as it ripened. Parker, the most powerful individual in the wine industry, ultimately claimed virtual infallibility; Loiseau, anointed with three Michelin stars but beset with doubts, ultimately committed suicide.

Exceptional books written by sympathetic journalists with inside knowledge. A unique perspective on the private lives of two men with very public working lives.

The Emperor of Wine:the Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste by Elin McCoy
The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine by Rudolph Chelminksi

The Emperor of Wine, by Elin McCoy (herself a respected wine writer), describes Parker's steady ascendancy to the pulpit of supreme enological arbiter thanks to his gifted palate and demonic resolve. But those two qualities alone wouldn't have made him Emperor; it took Parker's easy-to-understand 100-point ratings and America's "discovery" that wine wasn't just for effete snobs.

McCoy's conclusion comes down hard on Parker: the tyranny of a single palate, a scoring system that's "a joke in scientific terms" and a misleading indicator of quality or pleasure. Parker, says McCoy, turns wine into a contest rather than an experience. Worse, he brooks no challenge to his authority, to his moral and gustatory infallability.

Cornichon is no particular fan of Parker's, either. Time and again, growers in France have admitted or complained that Parker's popularity is forcing them to make a certain style of wine. Which is why I that wish McCoy--who had full access to Parker over a period of several months--had given us a sense of how a Parker tasting note comes about: Parker in the vineyard or the cellar with the winemaker, Parker in his tasting lab with a sample bottle, at his computer writing out his notes, so we'd what went into the actual publication and could compare Parker's words with McCoy's observations.

One final thing I miss: a clear explanation of how (relatively) small the American market is, even for the very top French estates. I wish McCoy's book explained that the USA accounts for only one-sixth of all French wine exports (Belgium and Denmark buy more French wine than we do). So why did so many French winemakers quickly become such pushovers for an American critic?

The Perfectionist is the saga of Bernard Loiseau, big, outwardly gregarious and confident, inwardly shy and insecure, whose traveling salesman father apprentices him, as a teenager, to the chef at his favorite restaurant. As it happens, while young Bernard is flailing away at his first kitchen tasks, the Michelin guide awards the restaurant three stars. Bernard, who's a competent though not exceptional cook, is awestruck: winning those three stars for himself become his life's obsession.

Bernard is fortunate to find a patron who sets him up at a country inn, the famous Côte d'Or in Saulieu, a once-thriving market town in northern Burgundy now bypassed by the autoroute. No matter: Bernard settles in for the long haul. He assembles a talented team for his kitchen and dining room, he courts the Parisian press, he develops a network of local suppliers. He's unlucky in love (his first wife cheats on him with the maitre d'hôtel) but has a knack for the restaurant business (food journalists adore him); he wins back one Michelin star for venerable auberge, then two.

Now, as Bernard puts it, the trouble with success in the restaurant world is, "C'est jamais gagné." The battle's never over. First you strive for ten or twenty years to reach the top. It's not like training for the Olympics, where a single perfect routine wins you the gold medal; you've got to score a ten every day, twice a day. But then, after you've won, you panic even more: now that you've been given those stars, what if they take them away?

And poor Bernard, though happily married to his second wife, was bipolar. Mostly manic: that was the perfectionist his staff knew, the outgoing giant adored by the media and the public.

(He was ebulliant, too, when I met him in Saulieu in the fall of 1998, eager to discuss his plans for a new bistro in Paris--eventually three--and an unprecendented plan to raise money by being listed on the Paris stock exchange.)

Then third Michelin star did come along, and it seemed Bernard could do no wrong. But the tentacles of darkness were stronger than anyone knew.

A slight slip in one of the guidebooks, a rumor that his third Michelin star was in jeopardy, a change in the culinary fashion dictated by Paris critics: it all took its toll on Bernard.

His manic-depressive disorder--easy to diagnose in retrospect--was never treated. The right medications, it's assumed, could have saved him from his private demons. Instead he succumbed.

Rudolph Chelminski, a keenly observant foreign correspondent, had already written one of the liveliest books about gastronomy, The French At Table, some 20 years ago. This longevity--critical to professional acceptance in France--and his deep understanding of French culinary history gave him unprecedented access to all the actors in this drama, including Bernard himself over a period of many years.

You taste Bernard's recipes, savor his enthusiasm for hospitality on every page. Even as you cringe at his effusiveness, you savor his generosity.

In the end, you mourn his death, but when the latest Michelin guide again awards his restaurant three stars, you recognize that Bernard Loiseau's spirit lives on.

Bumbershoot Restrained

A light crowd at Bumbershoot, clear skies, aging rocker Elvis Costello the sole remaining star after Devo bailed. But Devo's Burritos made it over from Pullman, along with a lineup of new and returning vendors.

Overall, menus seemed both healthier and less expensive than last year. For every booth selling traditional deep-fried fare like Elephant Ears, there was one offering grilled fish or fresh fruit. Even the ubiquitous hot dog vendors have seen the light: I gobbled down a delicious low-fat Vietnamese chicken sausage from Frankfurter, of all places.

As for that pink Volcano at the International Fountain Lawn, it was just a backdrop for entertainment, not the flue from one of the mobile kitchens.

Bon Temps, Mauvais Temps

Nawlins three-four years ago: sipping Hurricanes in the courtyard of Pat O'Brien's. Seriously doubt those times ("laissez les bons temps rouler!") are going to come round again, even though NYTimes has a story today that French Quarter seems to be relatively unscathed. Similar report on CNN. (Over in the flooded 9th Ward, rumors abound that the levee was breached on purpose, so that the French Quarter would stay dry. Strange, cynical theories, even by NOLA standards.)

But here's a reasonable question for the disaster planners: it's no secret that many poor people in New Orleans don't own cars, or can't afford to buy gas at the end of the month. How can you order the evacuation of a city without providing transportation? Like convoys of trucks & buses through low-lying neighborhoods to take people to safety? And bring in enough National Guard troops beforehand to maintain order. Unless they're deployed elsewhere, like Iraq.

As blogs of all stripes are pointing out, the warnings have been around for years, decades. The "Corpse" of Engineers has been messing with the Mississippi River for almost a century; Herbert Hoover started it, and FEMA's incompetence this week is its direct descendant.

Slate, Freakonomics and Daily Kos seem to have the most comprehensive threads going. And even if you hate Fox News and find Geraldo contemptible, you've got to give the guy credit for ripping into Hannity & Colmes last night. Click on the thumbnail below for a link to the video. Meanwhile, observers everywhere are frustrated beyond words.

In Sunday's grey morning light, an Op-Ed piece by Anne Rice, the city's conscience, explains all.

Further updates: read Sen. Barack Obama's speech here, and a suggestion for "flipping the rock" here.