The Cathedral of San Lorenzo
“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.” – George Miller, Director
ALBA
The 87th Fiera Internazionale Tartufo Bianco D’Alba
“I love eggs. When it’s the season of truffles, scrambled eggs with truffles, and I’m happy. I’m smiling like that.” – Chef Éric Ripert, Le Bernardin, New York.
A Tale of Two (Wine) Cities
“For the present, I confine myself to the physical want of some good Montepulciano…this being a very favorite wine and habit having rendered the light and high flavored wines of a necessary of life with me. It was most superlatively good.” – President Thomas Jefferson
Trattoria Battibecco
La Grassa
Piazza Santo Stefano, Bologna, Italy
“Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.” – Mario Batali
Merry Christmas!
Christmas Tree at the Chateau de Chenonceau
It was a sweltering hot July afternoon in 1945 when famous jazz vocalist Mel Tormé showed up for a writing session at the Toluca Lake house of his lyric partner Bob Wells. Mel let himself in and walked over to the piano. There, on the music board, was a pad of paper with four lines of a verse:
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos
When Wells walked in the room, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, Tormé asked him about the little poem.
“It’s so damn hot today, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off,” Wells replied. “All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.”
And that is “the rest of the story” behind one of America’s most loved contemporary Christmas hits, A Christmas Song. With this intro, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and all of the best for 2018.
A House in Sablet
(This post was originally published on February 11, 2017)
Our vacation house in Sablet*
“Gourmets are thick on the ground in Provence, and pearls of wisdom have sometimes come from the most unlikely sources. We were getting used to the fact that the French are as passionate about food as other nationalities are about sport and politics, but even so it came as a surprise to hear Monsieur Bagnols, the floor cleaner, handicapping three-star restaurants” ― Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence.
The Amuse Bouche
(This post was originally published in January 2017)
An amuse-bouche is served gratis and according to the chef’s selection alone. These, often accompanied by a complementing wine, are served both to prepare the guest for the meal and to offer a glimpse into the chef’s approach to the art of cuisine.
JO2
I ola no ke kino i ka mā’ona o ka ‘ōpū. (The body enjoys health when the stomach is well filled.) – old Hawaiian proverb.
It’s Time for Some Comfort Food
“As you read this, the fires in wine country continue to burn. They’ll burn for a while yet. If you don’t live in Northern California, I’d guess you are hearing less and less about them on the news.” – Ron Washam, HMW – HoseMaster of Wine.
Sometimes the best way to work through a tragedy is to immerse yourself in a familiar routine. Personally, I need comfort food. So, today I am going to talk about one of my favorite restaurants and probably the best deal on the planet: Las Cuatros Milpas. For me, and many others, the front door of this restaurant is a time-warp portal. I walk through and step back in time. Whenever I am in San Diego, this is always one of my “go to” stops.
