Château Rieussec 1967

Sweet wines seem to bear age well, and this Sauternes beauty is no exception.

The burnt caramel-to-amber colour immediately gives away the age. The very intense bouquet mixes burnt notes – crème brúlée – with fresher notes of orange blossom water. The palate is surprisingly dry, with plenty of acid and the dominant fruit impression is of grapefruit rather than orange. There are also Sémillon-esque notes of candle wax. Luscious and fresh, probably at its peak, but equally, I suspect this could continue to lie happily in a cellar for many years without changing very much.

Château Talbot 1983

This 4^th growth from St. Julien is drinking beautifully now – everything a mature Bordeaux should be.

There is relatively little bricking at the rim. The classic Bordeaux cassis fruit has moved on, to be replaced by red fruits and particularly plums, followed by black tea, game and graphite. The tannins are fully resolved, leaving a silky wine that is probably drinking at or near its peak. Over time, with exposure to the air, the relatively light gamey notes get meatier; with further cellaring, these notes are likely to develop at the expense of the remaining fruit.

Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley

N1 had wanted to go to Marcus Wareing – by some accounts, London’s best restaurant - for a while, so it seemed the perfect place to celebrate her birthday. Situated in the 5-star surroundings of the Berkeley Hotel in salubrious Mayfair, this is not a restaurant for walk-ins or last-minute bookings. Our previous attempts to get a table had failed, so this time we got on the phone lines several months in advance, and even then had to settle for a reservation time – 6:30 – that seemed a little on the early side. In fact, that turned out to be a good thing. We chose the longest menu, worked through it slowly, asked for a pause at the end of the savoury dishes to finish our wine comfortably before the desserts turned up, and had a glass of armagnac to finish, so it was almost midnight when we left. 

Lunch is simpler, but at dinner, there are a variety of overlapping menus of increasing complexity to choose from. Currently, the restaurant is advertising an à la carte at £80, the Taste menu with more courses at £98 (with a vegetarian alternative for the same price, and wine matching menus at either £85 or £195 for the fine wine selection), and the Gourmand, with yet more courses, at £120. However, when we went there last month, there was also the Chef’s Surprise menu, at £140. We figured that in all likelihood we’d only be coming here the once, and it was N1’s birthday, and we like surprises, at least good ones, so we put ourselves in the hands of the kitchen and waited to see what would turn up. 

They’d put us into a side-room slightly cut-off from the main dining area, and we were the first people there, so we felt a bit isolated to begin with. As other diners arrived, we saw trends in the clientele emerging; we were far from the only anniversary celebration there, and some tables were indiscreetly moneyed – stoles and labels. Our neighbours, who apparently prioritised surroundings over food, chose one of the shorter menus, and dismissed a couple of courses to make their dinner a much shorter affair.

The canapés: a soft, smoked, deep-fried piece of chicken came with mustard. Pigskin crackling came as crisps to serve a taramasalata dip. Tiny grilled quail hearts came on skewers, looking like miniature barbecued kidneys, suitably blackened. An oyster came with caviar and a tapioca ball in a red-wine sauce. A thick onion soup had a parmesan mousse, and we could drink it or spoon it like a cappuccino. The most interesting canapé of all was the pickled egg with caviar, a vinegary, salty combination that tasted like something out of a modernist, molecular fish and chip shop.

With the mains in sight, bread came out. With a lot of food to come, we tried not to eat too much, and the bread was not particularly special, but the butter was fascinating. There was a run-of-the-mill unsalted butter, and then the same butter salted, melted, caramelised and then reset – a weird and delicious thing. We scoffed it. The last time I had anything comparable was in Asador Etxebarri in the mountains of the Basque Country.

It seemed strange to start the mains with a foie dish. Date purée (quite alcoholic) and fermented pear (like quince paste) and some crispy sides, to wit, walnut bread toast and a nutty caramel crisp, were all foils to the foie gras purée; a hit of salt first, then the sugar release, like an Oloroso sherry. This dish was a complete wine killer, and it could have passed for a dessert.

Cheese custard was wonderful – a beef consommé was poured onto the Tomme-based custard, in which we found mushrooms and slices of chestnut. The meaty consommé was superb against the salty cheese in an intensely autumnal dish.

Pan-fried scallops – soft, perfectly done – came with thin slices of cucumber, pineapple weed, toastlets of doughy, chargrilled bread and a yoghurt with chives. The scallops were clearly top quality, and we did wonder if they needed accompanying at all.

Just two (admittedly quite large) pieces of pappardelle pasta made up the next dish, with a butter emulsion, girolle mushrooms, herb, and very generous shavings of truffle. Simple, divine, delicious; probably the dish I most enjoyed all evening.

A divergence now. N1 got lobster (with pea purée, broccoli, seaweed, and a salty reduction), but as I’m allergic to lobster and its kin, I was given game: breast of quail with squash and goats’ curd. I think N1 rather preferred N2’s dish.

Fillet of seabass came in a beautiful matching act with “tastes of cauliflower” – a cauliflower carpaccio stood out – polonaise sauce and pine nuts.

I was surprised by how dark the pigeon breast was. Coming with wild sorrel, celeriac, chestnut purée and artichoke leaf, it was a dish straight out of autumn’s kitchen.  

And there stopped the savoury dishes; this was, after all, a surprise menu, and I was surprised (yes, and a little disappointed, I admit) that there wasn’t a piece of lamb or beef – good job we hadn’t gone down the Bordeaux route when we ordered wine.

And so, post wine-pause, to the desserts. Redcurrant sorbet was billed as a pre-dessert – I suppose elsewhere they would have called it a palate cleanser. It came with chili pepper and white chocolate ice cream, and the taste of vanilla pervaded the dish. N1 found it too salty. Personally, I found the saltiness an attractive quality.

Hazelnut cake came with layers of sandwiched praline and chocolate. The thick lump of cream on top was very salty, and altered our appreciation of the whole dish. Again, I found this a very attractive quality, but it is a question of taste. This was still not the “main” dessert, but with the thick flavours it was the antithesis of a palate cleanser – a palate cloyer, perhaps? 

Apple millefeuille was the showcase dessert, with apple in three different forms – sorbet, purée and jelly coming sandwiched between crispy, cornflake-like layers. The variations on apple are the “wow factor” intended to sway us to admire the dish, even as the cornflake irritated me a little; but as a lighter dish that did feel more like a palate cleanser, I can’t help but feel it should have been served before the hazelnut cake.

And there, sadly, ended the desserts. We’d been there so long that we were not feeling uncomfortably full, as tasting menus can sometimes leave you (more than one tasting menu has concluded in the battle between discomfort and delight). It is a great virtue of Marcus Wareing that you get the table all night, although a few diners on the shorter menus managed to be in and out quite quickly.

We’d declined a cheese option, although from what we saw going on at other tables, the selection was immense, and divided by styles, with every diner being invited to choose a soft, a hard, a goat’s and a blue. The waiters seemed impressively knowledgeable about the many cheeses on offer.

At this point the cognac trolley rolled over. They knew it was N1’s birthday, and referenced this – would she like a birthday cognac? I was sure that in the little spiel that was delivered at this point I’d descried the promise that it would be complimentary – N1 later said she wasn’t sure about that at all, and when we got the bill, it certainly hadn’t been complimentary at all, it was £35 worth of uncomplimentary. It was lovely, though, an Armagnac, in fact;

Laberdolive 1976

Nutty, even with notes of green olive, and a slight agave flavour like tequila. Fine, and with the complexity age can offer. Notes of candlewax, like white Bordeaux, make a showing. By all reports, Laberdolive is one of the finest Armagnacs there is.

Along came the petit fours, a selection of mostly dark chocolates. The Turkish delight was the rosiest I have ever had – “not sure I like it,” said N1, but otherwise, they were much what you would expect from your average superior chocolatier – peanut and caramel, banana, orange jelly, a coffee ganache, a very confected rum and coconut. Apparently some diners get post-dinner sweeties in the format of a takeaway bag, which would have suited us better after so much food and such a long evening.

This was an intensely seasonal menu, and with mushrooms, truffles and game on the menu, autumn is nature’s most flavoursome season; N1 has timed her birthday well. We associate such massively multi-course tasting menus with avant-garde institutions such as Alinea, The Fat Duck, and Arzak, with the associated experimental food; so the slow succession of relatively conservative (but perfectly-made) mains actually felt slightly strange, to the point where I was beginning to miss indecipherable cuisine. A tasting menu for those who don’t like their cuisine as a science lab? In the modern gastronomic age, we are spoiled for variety and experimentalism; many of the faultless combinations here would probably have seemed outré a generation ago. In any case, dinner was faultless, perfectly delicious, and to complain it was not experimental enough would be a perverse and uncharitable cavil. London’s best restaurant? It may well be. It’s a question of criteria: for a high-end anniversary blowout unsuited to the new age of austerity, quite possibly.

http://www.the-berkeley.co.uk/marcus_wareing.aspx

Checchino Dal 1887 – Rome

By N1

On previous trips to Rome, I had been a non-meat eater. But no longer. This being the offal-loving N2’s first trip to the Eternal City, and there being a dearth of Roman experiences that would be novel to us both, it seemed like an ideal time to sample Checchino Dal 1887, a well-known fine dining institution that is fittingly located in Testaccio, the old meat packing district.

Things got off to a bad start when we were given menus in English, despite my having booked in Italian and our greeting the staff in Italian on arrival. We would have asked for the Italian version but the waiter didn’t even look at our table again for 40 minutes. Maybe he walked off in disgust at our request for tap water, which was refused.

I can name at least four other well-reputed restaurants serving traditional offal-based Roman cuisine in Testaccio. If only I owned a smart phone, we would have been sitting down to dinner in one of them in less than the time that it took our waiter to return.

I have read that Checchino’s has a formidable cellar. If so, then they didn’t give us the full wine list. We asked for our wine to be double decanted but the request fell on deaf ears. The waiter did go through a ceremony of decanting a large splash of wine through every glass, which he then kept. The rationale, apart from keeping back a tasting portion of the wine, might have been to clean up any lingering smells from our glasses. Or maybe it was just for the tourists.

For the restaurant was full of tourists. Every table was speaking English except one, and they appeared to be Italian tourists from the north. (Maybe that explains the lack of Italian menus.) Even the waiters insisted on speaking English. This was especially irritating when it became clear that, with the exception of the manager, they only had a few stock phrases, and so were unable to answer our questions about the menu.

  

We started with the insalata di zampi (calf trotter salad), the testina de vitello (calf’s head), and the antipasto misto. The trotter was warm and gelatinous; the salad tasted mainly of the strong parsley sauce. The role of the trotter seemed to be more for texture than for taste. The calf’s head had been boiled, boned, mixed with lemon peel and spices (pepper, cloves) and cooked into a terrine that N2 said had the texture of superior, melting corned beef. It was very rich and tasty, if a bit of a wine killer because of the lemon. The antipasto was, well, mixed salami. It would have been nicer if the explanation of what the different cured meats were had arrived before we ate them - and we did save them until last.

For our primo we shared the rigatoni con pajata (lamb intestine in tomato sauce). The intestine had a lovely texture, but (like the trotter) not very much taste. For mains we had the restaurant’s trademark coda alla vaccinara, oxtail stewed with tomato, nuts, raisins and sprinkles of bitter chocolate. This was fine but not particularly special. Alongside, two contorni: cicoria in padella (chicory sauteed with garlic and chili) and melanzane alla piastra (baked eggplant). The chicory was very hot, which tickled N2’s tastebuds. The melanzane was a bit rubbery, like it hadn’t been salted properly.

As for desert, we decided it couldn’t possibly be worth the anticipated wait. Instead, we did as the italians, and stopped off for gelato on our way home.

Via di Monte Testaccio, 30 Testaccio

http://www.checchino-dal-1887.com/

Coda by N2

-    The oxtail was fine, but not a patch on the stellar slow braised oxtails as cooked by N1 (from Paula Wolfert’s Slow Mediterranean Kitchen).

-    After 4 days in Rome, the best Italian food I have ever had remains outside Italy; at Babbo in New York and Bocca di Lupo in London.

La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali - Rome

We were a little worried that the Taverna dei Fori Imperiali - “a restaurant serving traditional Roman food, managed by four generations of the same family” - would be packed with tourists, and give us the kind of deliberately bad food and service reserved for people who will never be coming back anyway; but we were pleasantly surprised. There were plenty of tourists, to be sure, but at least the same number of locals, which was immediately encouraging, and following advice we found on the forums (the internet ones, that is, not ancient graffiti on the nearby capital “F” Forum) got the best food by ordering from the specials list. Service was gratifyingly cheerful.

When in Rome…drink Roman wine? Not necessarily, but we thought we might as well; we had a half of Villa Simone 2007, made from the local Cesanese grape. It turned out to be a quite rustic, quite acidic, medium-bodied mix of black fruit and stewed plum with notes of tar and some fairly prominent wood influence. It did improve with decanting. The wood notes were heavy enough to suggest glue.

For starters, aubergines came alla parmigiana, in tomato sauce with basil; there was almost more cheese than aubergine. Gnocchi con Agnello also came in tomato sauce, with little bits of lamb – not a bad dish, but I think I prefer my gnocchi with sage butter instead of sauce.

Moving on, Ragú di Vitello con Tartufo was superb, veal on tagliatelle with a truffley, herby sauce.  Polpettone was a splendid meat loaf containing pork, ground beef, pistachio and sesame, and was served with sauerkraut and a gravy with juniper. We had a side order of zucchini as well, cut so thinly it looked like more like shellfish than vegetable, absorbing the flavours of garlic, vinegar and mint.

Lulled into a false sense of security, since everything had been fine so far, we shared a zabaione for dessert; but rather than egg yolk with marsala, it turned out to be whipped cream and marsala; N1 was disappointed. Otherwise, a meal and an experience in a bustling, friendly restaurant that exceeded expectations.

Via Madonna dei Monti 9

www.latavernadeiforiimperiali.com

Gaja & Rey 2008

This is the Gaja Chardonnay, probably far too young, but beautiful wine. The first thing the bouquet offers is oak, quite identifiably, if a little unusual – I find it hard to pin down, and settle on “acorns” for a descriptor. In fact, I later learn, it is matured in a wide variety of different barrels; French, Russian, Austrian, Polish, and Hungarian. (Italy does go further afield for its oak barrels, with interesting results.) After the oak comes the fruit, tropical but muted – a blend, initially of pineapple and lemon. N1 approves, comparing it to many a New World Chardonnay: “This is not hideously disgustingly fruity.” And there is a third element we take a little while to identify, but which goes on to become more prominent: goat’s cheese.

The cheese and fruit notes build up with time. It is definitely doing banana at one point, before moving on to lemon, lime and green olive and fennel; and after two hours, we are arguing over whether it smells of pecorino or parmesan.  

By the end of the bottle it is tending towards a slightly more classic Chardonnay character. In any case, I suspect we are just scratching the surface of this wine, and that it will be a different, more powerful beast 10 years down the line.

Mamma Angelina - Rome

Mamma Angelina is a fish and seafood restaurant a fair hike north of the city centre in Rome. It was a Monday evening when we went and it was quiet; apart from us, there were only a couple of Italian families. N1 approved of the lack of tourists. It can get busy, though, by all accounts, so reservations still recommended.

The waiter thought we were asking for a cheaper wine than the one he had recommended, so he dropped down to the cheapest on the list. No, we said, more expensive. He still thought we were garbling our Italian and regretted there was nothing cheaper - then beamed when the penny dropped. At this point we got a visit from the manager, who doubled as sommelier – but no hard sell. We ended up going to the very top of the white wine list for a Gaja & Rey (next post), partly because it was no more expensive than we would pay in any shop. (And, an internet search later confirmed, in fact cheaper than in quite a few shops).

A julienne of seppioline - cuttlefish – was juicy, relatively soft and not too chewy, simply done, sliced and with a vinaigrette. Coppo di polpo, octopus sausage, was served with potatoes and mint. Again, the quality of the basic ingredient really stood out – it was the best octopus I’ve ever had, the flavour brought out by olive oil.

Quite a few of the mains we would have most liked were off the menu that evening – Monday is not the most logical evening to go to a fish restaurant, since not many fishing boats anywhere (in Europe and North America, at least) sail on a Sunday – and so we plumped for a turbot for two. It was a good choice, since it was a fine foil for our wine, and we’d already twigged that here, the ethos is high quality ingredients, simply cooked.

Viale Arrigo Boito 63

Ice Cream: Paris v. Rome

Modern, chaotic Italy can be traced back to the 5^th century development of pizza and ice cream; hardened Roman soldiers, used to austere diets of buckwheat pancakes, now glutted on these delicious new developments from the imperial kitchen. Stuffed, they found themselves unable to conquer the far side of the street, let alone remote countries. Lean, Germanic barbarians raised on Atkins-friendly sausage diets invaded southwards in search of plunder and better weather, and the once-great Roman Empire fell into a turbulent miasma of toppings, frozen fruit flavours and upset political stomachs. (Historical note: the preceding paragraph may not be entirely accurate).

But surely, as the home of gelato, the very best ice cream is still to be found in Italy? In among the classical fruit flavours of yore, we’ve noticed some herbier, more savoury flavours appearing. Basil or the sage and raspberry at Gelateria del Teatro (Via di San Simeone 22a, Rome) are delicious, but the blowaway winner in my book is the amazing fennel and liquorice at Gelateria Fatamorgana (Via G.Bettoli 7, also at Via di Lago di Lesina 9/11, both in Rome.)  

Can more genteel Paris compete? Maison Bertillon (29-31 Rue Saint Louis en l'Ȋle, on the charming if a little touristic Ȋle Saint-Louis) is the undisputed master of French ice creams, whose wares were so good last weekend that they salved my stomachache. I loved the almond milk flavour, which was really ice cream that tasted of marzipan, and salted butter caramel; but the flavour which we had three times in the course of two days was the incredible combination of marron glacé and rum.

Bertillon makes a sweeter, creamier style, which works better for the chocolate and alcoholic flavours; it is less good for the fruit flavours at which the Italians excel. Bertillon is not serving its ice cream quite cold enough, so it melts a little too quickly. By a small margin, the fennel-and-liquorice at Fatamorgana still has it; so the decline and fall of the Roman Empire may have been worth the Dark Ages.   

Au Passage – Paris

You’d never discover Au Passage by chance. It’s down a dingy back alley barely wide enough for one vehicle, where all you can see are garage entrances, air-conditioning units and washing lines. It is well off the tourist trail. There are no other commercial properties. But when we found it, the restaurant was completely packed apart from the table we had reserved for lunch.

The lunch formula is exceedingly simple. They offer a starter, main, cheese and dessert for a mere 19 euros – less if you start omitting courses. To keep costs low, there is no choice at any stage apart from the main, and no quarter is given to vegetarians. We drank a pair of rustic wines from the Costières de Nîmes – a fat white, and a leathery, acidic red.

The one starter on offer when we were there was a tasty little salad of marinated mackerel with sweet white beets. We had one each of the two choices for main. A piece of barely done (and delicious) trout was served with cauliflower that had been marinated in lemon and oil, and a herby salad. A great dish – lovely elements, lovely combination. The other main was Tartare de boeuf coupé, a deconstructed steak tartare. The beef was coupé, that is, in chunks rather than mince, and all the ingredients came in neat little piles that we had to start by mixing – it felt rather like opening a child’s playset. I’m very partial to steak tartare, but whither this craze for deconstructed dishes? In this case at least, the supposed marginal benefit in customer interactivity with the dish (you mix it yourself – apparently that’s good) is totally offset by the loss of the two or so hours in which flavours of the dish could have been infusing with each other. Oh well.

Time was pressing on and I had a flight to catch. Lunch so far had been a bit slow as our orders seemed to have gotten caught up behind a large tranche of others going through the kitchen, so I couldn’t sample the St.Marcellin or the chocolate mousse.

Dinner is different from lunch – there are choices. Given the low prices and the stripped down décor (it’s close to anti-décor) I’m tempted to call Au Passage the Ryanair of fine dining, but that would be slanderous, as lunch here was an enjoyable experience.

1 bis Passage de Saint-Sebastian 75011

Dans les Landes – Paris

Cuts of offal, ear, nose, head and trotter, it turns out, are as fashionable in France as they are in the UK. Dans les Landes is a bustling wine-bar-cum-bistro offering a Franco-Basque take on tapas, alongside more traditional main courses. We went straight for the tapas.

Parmentier de lièvre au foie gras was a glorified shepherd’s pie with pieces of liver – I wouldn’t have known the mince was hare.

Cous de canards confits et crostillants couldn’t have seemed less Basque: N1 had a lot of fun picking slivers of meat out of every bony nook on the duck necks – an activity I associate more with Chinese restaurants – and the barbecue sauce, which we speculated might have been made with plum wine, didn’t taste like anything we’d expect in a European restaurant. Which isn’t to say it was bad, but it was laden on too heavily for the amount of meat there was.

Pieds de cochons en escabèche came as croquettes filled with gelatinous bits of trotter. We weren’t quite sure where the escabèche came into it; presumably the trotter had spent time in vinegar beforehand. Very tasty, though.

Basque cuisine usually evokes images of hearty peasant food, but it can also mean the far-flung experimental gastronomy of Arzak and Mugaritz, and the more outlandish tapas bars of San Sebastián. The entry on the tapas list at Dans les Landes “Mini hot dog” made me salivate with memories of the tiny Kobe Burger served on a “ketchup bun with banana chips” at A Fuego Negro in San Sebastián; but when the hot dog arrived, it turned out to be exactly what it claimed to be: a tiny chorizo in a bun.

I’ve lost the French for what they were, but we also had fun little rectangular croquette logs filled with polenta and pieces of smoked duck.

Together with some rustic wines, that was enough to satisfy us, and we felt we had exhausted what sounded like the more interesting dishes on the tapas menu. When we arrived, there were plenty of tables free, but it soon filled up – reservations probably required. The staff were pleasant; the Basque rock music became louder and no better as the bar filled up. Dans les Landes is fun and informal, even if it is nowhere near as good as the offalicious English tapas master St.John.

Dans les Landes, 119 bis Rue Monge, 5^th arrondissement

La Cagouille – Paris

Review-sifting and Google-mapping led us to dinner at La Cagouille in Montparnasse, known for fish, white Burgundies and cognac. It is also open every day of the year, handy for Sundays and Mondays, when many Parisian restaurants close.

The décor is a bit lost in the 1980s, with slightly random close-up photographs set off against a glass case containing sand, buoys and old fishing nets. We sucked our way through the complementary bowl of clams and got to studying the menu, which was presented Paris-style on a portable whiteboard. No sooner had we chosen, than the board was swapped for an updated one and we had to choose again. There seemed to be a lot of waiting staff around, and service ranged from young and enthusiastic to bland, via old-school impatient. We were treading cautiously after annoying the staff at Le Ribouldingue the night before, but they very gracefully changed our order at the last minute.

We started with pan-roasted baby sole – nicely peppery – and anchovies which came garnished with deep-fried parsley. Lots of the mains were pieces of pan-roasted fish; easy to do, difficult to get wrong, opined N1, and she scanned the menu for the more elaborate dishes, to test the kitchen. Sole (oven-roasted – just a little more difficult than pan-frying) went well with ginger, while monkfish cheeks was a surprisingly heavy dish. For a start, the cheeks themselves are quite chunky, and they are served with a buttery anchovy sauce – powerful, delicious, quite a lot to get through. Just as well we had chosen a stronger white Burgundy – something lighter would have been overpowered by this dish. Leroy Bourgogne Blanc 1997: only a regional level wine, but it was powerful and sharp, smoky and nutty, with a residual fruit character mostly replaced by a butterscotch and caramelised onion character. I am sure it would have been much less interesting had it been younger, and it really goes to show that sometimes you are better off with a slightly less good wine with age on it than a better but too-young one.

Many thanks to the kind American gentleman who gave us the remains of his table’s bottle of Butteaux 1er Cru Chablis as they departed – if we’d been sharper off the mark we would have offered him a glass of our Leroy. But by then it was all gone. When a waiter later raised his eyebrows at the extra bottle of wine that had appeared on our table, we pointed out it had been a gift and that we hadn’t helped ourselves. He reflected rather wryly that such gifts were fine here but in another restaurant they wouldn’t allow them – although quite how they stop you gifting something you have paid for I’m not sure.

Cognacs were very good:

Grosperrin 1961 – full of vanilla, pepper, slightly farmyardy notes, orange and elderflower, a very complex drink with a lot of alcohol burn, since it weighs in at 48%.

Château de Beaulon 1975 – smooth, buttery, gingerbread, peanuts, salted caramel and Lyle’s Golden Syrup, slightly easier to manage than the Grosperrin at only 40% alcohol.

We managed to increase our bill substantially with wine and cognac, but La Cagouille is keenly priced if you choose those dishes belonging to the formule: 26 euros for a starter and a main. Choosing other dishes pushes the price for the starter and main combination up by about 10 or 15 euros, but the formule is plenty interesting: two of the dishes we wanted anyway were on it.

La Cagouille, 10, Place Constantin Brancusi

www.la-cagouille.fr

Le Ribouldingue – Paris

Le Ribouldingue seemed a good bet - an offal-heavy restaurant, the only Bib Gourmand recommendation in the 5th arrondisement where we were staying, rather competitively priced for the centre of Paris, in a small but grandly decorated setting. Reviews suggested it had seen through a bad patch and had come out the other end.

I was only just thinking as we arrived that we had been in Paris for almost two days and nobody had been rude to us – everyone, in fact, had been perfectly polite – when Madame opened the restaurant door to us and demanded to know if we had confirmed our reservation. Actually, we had confirmed – the wrong restaurant. We stuttered and hawed, but Madame, blocking our way, was not backing down. It looked like there would be no dinner for us at Ribouldingue, and I was already thinking about the Moroccan restaurant N1 had eaten at and enjoyed the night before (L’Atlas, 12 St.Germaine-des-Prés), which wasn’t far away, when suddenly Madame gave up and let us in.

We were a bit ruffled, and passingly considered making a break for it. But Madame had calmed down and we settled in. She did give us a mysterious explanation why our 2008 Burgundy couldn’t be decanted, which I suspect boiled down to the fact there was no room on the small table (it is a bit cramped here.) We started with rognons blancs (lambs’ testicles) and tetine de vache (udder). The rognons blancs were delicious, tasting less of strong kidney than some I have had, done in small coins in a parsley sauce. The udder came in small, fried squares, and had none of the marbled texture or milky taste it had at Viva M’Boma in Brussels, where they’d assured us the only other place we might find it on a menu would be in Lyon – but it seems these sorts of cuts are coming back into fashion.

Mains: guinea fowl was lovely – crispy skin and nice fatty layer - roasted with mustard seed, citron and ginger, a delicious combination. Partridge was not so well done – one of the two halves of the small bird was not so much undercooked as uncooked. For steak, yes, for poultry, no. It took a few extra slugs of (undecanted) red wine to get through that one. A shame because the accompaniments – a watercress sauce, and a chestnut and celeriac mash – were lovely. Some other lucky diner got the largest serving of bone marrow I have ever seen.

Desserts were actually wonderful. A gentian ice cream with Campari and pink grapefruit was sharp, creamy, but bitterly palate cleansing – top class. Poached pear came with spices and a marron cream, and was again notable for not having been sweetened – superb.

So, a hit, apart from an undercooked (uncooked) partridge and hit-and-miss relations with the staff. N1 is convinced that the very quiet waiter did tell us we were being “filthy” for mopping with bread, but I can’t believe that, since it came as such a genuine, simple comment. Lost in translation, I am sure. Madame did seem to think we were unmannered English peasants, so much so that I may actually be tempted to turn up one day in a peasant costume and see how that goes down. N1 thoroughly approved of the fact that we were the only non-French diners there.

Restaurant Le Ribouldingue – 10, Rue Saint Julien le Pauve, Paris

Viña Ardanza 2000, 2001 – La Rioja Alta

Talking of great Rioja vintages, 2001 is among the very best, a year of Grandes Reservas and Reservas Especiales not made in lesser vintages. Viña Ardanza is the name given to one of the range of wines made by La Rioja Alta, one the more classic bodegas. They produce a range of wines from lighter to greater, thus:

Viña Alberdi – a crianza

Viña Arana – a slightly lighter reserva

Viña Ardanza – a fuller-bodied reserva

Gran Reserva 904 - getting powerful

Gran Reserva 890 - rather grand! And not cheap, nor for drinking young.

They are all made from the classic Rioja blend, essentially Tempranillo backed up by Garnacha, then small amounts of Graciano and Mazuelo. 2000 was a pretty decent vintage in Rioja, but 2001 was stellar; La Rioja Alta is proud to declare that Viña Ardanza has been released as a reserva especial only three times, in the great vintage of 1964, in 1973 and now in 2001. (I’m surprised they missed 1970, also a great vintage – and 1981, too, come to think of it).

Viña Ardanza Reserva 2000

Quite dark for a Rioja, still with a bit of a purple tint suggesting youth. Classic Rioja on the nose: creamy vanilla with forest fruits, a little cinnamon. There’s plenty of oak there, though not as much as in some reservas. It’s a shade thinner in the mouth than the bouquet led me to expect, smooth, with notes of mushroom and game showing up as I give it time. Smooth and ready, but still quite young, it could happily evolve over another decade. (I do like my wines mature; and Rioja is especially well-suited to aging.)

Viña Ardanza Reserva Especial 2001

Forest floor again, but immediately heavier and gamier than I’m used to in Ardanza – also the oak seems noticeably more toasted. Tart, tannic and leafy on the palate, it definitely needs aging – more so than the 2000. The mushroom and game notes grow with time. Quite powerful for a Rioja, quite heavy-bodied, not as good a drink yet as the 2000, but when it’s had that tannic edge taken off it will be superb.

DON PX - La Noria – 2003

Pedro Ximénez is one of the classic Spanish grape varieties. It flourishes in the hot climate of the south, producing musts which are high in sugar and low in acid, and so ideally suited to the making of sweet wines. It will occasionally be vinified so as to produce dry wines, but it is almost universally perceived as a “sweet” grape.

La Noria is a typically Spanish dessert wine made from Pedro Ximénez. It looks thick just from the colour - dark mahogany – and the visibly gloopy texture. The first thing I notice on the nose is Lyle’s Treacle Pudding, followed by (I swear) celery. On the palate, that celery note strengthens quite powerfully into aniseed balls. I also find it reminds me of mincemeat in grappa. Interesting as these flavours may be, the wine cloys quickly, as there is not much acid to balance the sugar. It might be quite nice poured on vanilla ice cream.

Viña Tondonia – Blanco – Gran Reserva 1981

Tondonia comes from another of the great Rioja houses, López de Heredia, perhaps the most traditional of them all. Longevity is the name of the game, with high acidity to balance out the heavy oak and support extended aging.

The golden colour of this wine is showing its age in amber highlights, and the nose offers a dusty, oxidised character. On the palate the immediate effect is of a tart, oaky wine, and yet with not quite the huge hit of oak I was expecting from a wine of its reputation. It is intensely dry, and a little less heavy-bodied than I expected, with a smooth rear palate that has a little tang of salt like sherry. There is no fruit quality left at all; it is a dry, divine, bitter, oxidised blend of acid and oak.

Vintages may vary, but ‘81 and ‘82 were a pair of the best in Rioja, and a Gran Reserva like this will only be made in the better years. Vintages apart, I cannot imagine a more sublime expression of white Rioja.

Viña Real 1964

Viña Real – CVNE – Reserva Especial – 1964

CVNE or CUNE (“coo-ney”) stands for “Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España”, the bodega that makes Viña Real, and it is one of the more traditional Rioja establishments. Traditional is definitely a good thing in Rioja, and 1964 is sometimes quoted as the best Rioja vintage ever, so expectations for this wine are high. Reserva Especial is a categorization only declared in the best years.

It is quite brown around the rim, as one would expect in such an aged wine, but I have seen wines plenty browner. Startlingly, the bouquet is still quite primary, offering red fruit blended in with the traditional Rioja oak. (Which does not dominate as it does in the red Tondonia.) On the palate, it is mature but impressively well conserved, with smooth tannins supporting a fruit-and-tea character. Soon, secondaries emerge, notes of both fresh orange and overripe, slightly rotting oranges. The red fruit character becomes more like raspberry (a classic Tempranillo note) and the vanilla cream from the oak more pronounced. 

Lesser vintages of this wine may not have lasted so well, but this smooth and beautifully preserved wine feels like it is in no particular rush to be drunk.

Mugaritz

Mugaritz is a key player in the gastronomic cluster that is the Spanish Basque Country. It now comes in at number 3 in the San Pellegrino list of the World’s Top 50 Restaurants, higher than its competitor Arzak (number 8). It’s too long since we went to Arzak to make a fair comparison, but it did seem to us that Alinea (in Chicago, number 6) offered a significantly more interesting and more successful expression of molecular gastronomy. Some dishes at Mugaritz were fascinating, but some did seem a little forced and even a little pointless.

The first little dish is a delicate surprise, “An envelope of flowers”, says the tasting menu; a transparent “plastic” bag, filled with flowers, dissolves instantly as we eat it, leaving a light caramel taste not heavy enough to intrude on our enjoyment of the flowers. One of them tastes like lemon verbena.

Now the famous “edible stone”, or clay potato; what appears to be a stone in a bowl of volcanic sand. The stone is in fact a potato covered in an ashy substance, and the sand, while edible (if tasteless), apparently isn’t meant to be eaten, since there’s far too much of it. The raison d'être of this dish is, apparently, the visual incongruity of eating a stone; I don’t find it particularly interesting as food, a bit like Heston’s “sound of the sea” dish.

The “focaccia” looks like a folded napkin covered with dirty smudges of black olive sauce. It arrives hot, popping and cracking before we get to it. It snaps in our hands like thin clay – N1 says it’s like carta da musica - and it tastes more like a poppadom than a focaccia.

One of the loveliest dishes is the apparently unassuming piscolabis (snack), two small pieces of tuna with pepper and tiny cucumbers. There’s a fruit element too that we never quite put our finger on, but the combination of fruit and fish is unexpectedly delicious. This is what I want – new taste sensations.

The next dish is “fake saffron rice”, a creamy cheesy risotto with zucchini seeds. I don’t quite know what’s “fake” about the saffron, but it’s delicious, anyway.

Now, an interactive dish. To begin with, we are invited to thoroughly grind linseed, toasted sesame and pink peppercorns in a mortar. Then the waiting staff add herbs – including mint and shiso, a leaf, I have noticed, much beloved of restaurants in this category – and pour on a stocky fish soup. It’s fine, but I rather fail to see the point, or rather, I suspect that the point was to make us feel that we were participating. Otherwise, it was a heavily-spiced fish soup.

Then comes a dish of tiny brown tomatoes that have spent a little time in the oven with garlic, all served with some basil. No doubt the point here is to make us enjoy a lovely local ingredient, but the garlic rather overwhelms any subtlety of flavour the tomato might have.

The next dish looks like a bird’s nest with flowers woven through. The “twigs” making up the nest are strands of meat fibre possibly frozen or flash cooked, and we are invited to guess what kind of meat they are. Somewhere in the dish, onion has been added, or the meat has been cooked with an oniony stock. Lovely, anyway; the meat turns out to be filaments of beef tongue.

Bread had not hitherto come with the meal; but now we are offered a kuzu bread (from kudzu, a creeper with starchy roots) as part of the next dish. Bread, though? It looks like a goats’ cheese, round and white. It is soft, gluey and bland, and very filling; we are advised we might like to eat only what we need to go with the artichoke and bone marrow it is served with. It is the bread that dominates the dish, though. We decline to finish it, knowing there are a lot more dishes to come, but I notice that at another table, a hearty young local on a special night out gets through a whole one and moves on to another.

The next dish of pork noodles in a fish sauce is something I’d expect in one of the more authentic sorts of Chinese restaurant. The next dish again goes down the “bland-meets-weird” route; it is described as “cheese” and looks like another small goats’ cheese, but is nothing of the sort. Cutting into it, we find a rather tasteless beige mixture with the texture of uncooked dough. We eventually get out of the waiter that it is cow’s milk boiled with flax seed. “Weird rather than good,” says N1. Probably not one we’ll be trying to replicate at home.

Ventresca paired with pepper is a simple, classic combination, quite palate-refreshing after some of the oddities.

“Textures of coastal fish” really means a selection of the different bits of bream, quite a savoury dish; some of the fish is crisped, fried quite heavy, really calling for red and not white wine. Which in fact makes it a quite natural bridge to the first meat course: “Beef with a steak emulsion and salt crystals”, small pieces of steak with a creamy butter made from the fat, like eating lardo, says N1, or beef dripping.

The next dish is utterly fabulous; “pork tails, crispy leaves and toasted millet oil”. The “crispy leaves” are a cereal simulation of oak leaves, and taste rather like Special K, but the pork tails themselves are a joy; dry and crispy on one side, sweet, fatty and gelatinous on the other.

No topping that in main courses, so we are moved on to dessert. Chamomile ice cream is absolutely lovely, although we feel it is mismatched with candied fruits that are too sweet for it.

Then we are brought a curdy milk ice cream with flowers, walnuts and milk chocolate in the shape of more walnuts, only these are filled with an Armagnac jelly – I can’t help but feel I would have happily settled for just the ice cream and flowers on their own.

The third and final dessert is also ice cream, lemon this time, served with a daikon radish. The radish reminds me of school dinner turnip and tastes completely out of place. Three ice creams in a row feel like a bit of a cheat; they may have been lovely, but ice cream is not difficult to make, and we’d like to have seen a kitchen of this calibre stretch itself a little more.

So, hits and misses at Mugaritz. Service was a little mixed, too…I think someone in the kitchen may have gotten a bollocking (pardon me) when N1 found a fish scale in one of the dishes where one certainly wasn’t meant to be. But rather than offer us free drinks as compensation, they could have taken more notice of N1’s repeatedly expressed desire to have the fig dessert that we knew some people were getting. One can eat so well in the tapas bars of San Sebastián that it hardly seems necessary to push the boat out on top tier San Pellegrino list restaurants; but I think we’d give Arzak another chance before repeating Mugaritz.

Tondonia 1970

This gorgeously mature exemplar of one of the classic old-school Riojas is dominated by notes of toast (from the long stay in oak) and coffee, which remain constant over the evening; but it is also truffley, with cherries still in there, and hints of caramel and blue cheese making appearances. The tannins are smooth and discreet in this 41 year-old wine, making it very easy drinking. In no way is it over the hill; I could easily imagine it going on for longer. Superb – a real pleasure.

The pintxo trail in San Sebastián

“Pintxo” is the Basque version of the Spanish “pincho”, bar snacks, not tapas exactly – the word “tapas”, properly used, refers to the small snack given free with a drink in many parts of Spain. Pinchos you pay for separately, and their indubitable heartland is in that capital of gastronomic ferment, San Sebastián in the Spanish Basque Country. We packed a lot of bars and pintxos into a short stay. In approximate order of preference, these are (most of) the bars we ate at and (many of) the pintxos we tried.

A Fuego Negro Pay attention to the waiter here; he’s charming, but gets a slightly psychopathic smile if he thinks you are not giving him his due attention.

-          Mole helado is an ice cream made from Mexican mole sauce, and it is the most sublime gastronomic memory I take away from San Sebastián, and that includes our trip to Mugaritz. It comes with pickled ear.

-          Ajoblanco is normally a cold Southern Spanish soup based on garlic and almonds; here it comes as a bonbón (a bonbon, a sweetie, really a bubble that bursts and needs to be enjoyed in one mouthful).

-          The signature dish here is the tiny Kobe Burger, Kobe beef served on a red “ketchup bun” with banana chips on the side.

-          I’m sure we also enjoyed the chicken and seaweed pintxo, but its memory has disappeared in the shadow of the other dishes.

La Cuchara de San Telmo Often difficult to squeeze in here. Old school rather than molecular, but delicious.

-          Oreja is pig’s ear, prepared just right for those of us who love these things.

-          The risotto is not made with rice but orzo pasta (which looks like large grains of rice) and goat’s cheese – lovely.

-          The grilled octopus was, again, just right.

Zeruko A “molecular” style place. The pintxos all look like modernistic works of art, and the better ones would be worthy of a place in the tasting menu of the great molecular Basque restaurants. But some flops too.

-          Erizo de mar is sea urchin, made into a rich cream and prepared in its shell, so delicious we repeated.

-          The hoguera (hearth) is a salt cod dish you smoke yourself; the grill is part of the presentation of the dish. It comes with a test-tube of slightly sweet “liquid salad”. A stellar dish.

-          Bacalao (cod) is also served as a cold cream with tiny cheese sticks; lovely.

-          A bubble of something green and gelatinous served on a ceramic spoon reveals itself as the great taste combination of anchovy and pickled pepper.

-          Foie and mushroom is more visually impressive than gastronomically breathtaking; a mushroomy cream is wrapped in a transparent jelly and topped by what looks like shredded gold, and turns out to be painted burnt potato. More odd than good.

-          Pulpo a la gallega is Galician-style octopus, a.k.a. with paprika: here, it comes as a fascinating-looking lollipop. But not much octopus, it’s mostly mashed potato.

-          A green-studded log is morcilla (roughly, Spanish black pudding) covered in pistachio. It flops rather badly as the barman barely heats it and morcilla needs to come hot.

-          Membrillo (quince paste) is a natural accompaniment to matured sheep cheese; it comes here as a Membrillo cube with the cheese inset. But a little quince goes a long way, and here there is so much it makes N1 feel sick.

Borda Berri  Supposed to have good veal cheeks, but in our rush to get through three bars before the end of the lunch shift – with most kitchens closing at 3:30 or 4 – we didn’t get round to trying them.

-          Marmitako is a traditional Basque stew of potato, tuna and peppers. Rustic peasant food, good with a hunk of bread.

-          Gazpacho is another classic Southern Spanish cold soup. Here it is served with tuna, and supposedly made with watermelon alongside the traditional tomato, garlic, oil, vinegar and peppers. The tuna didn’t honestly add anything, and I couldn’t perceive any watermelon influence – N1 said she thought it had a slightly sweeter-than-usual note.

-          Vieiras (scallops) were perfectly done.

Casa Senra The place to come for croquetas – a good half-dozen different varieties. We had morcilla croquettes and a separate pincho of morcilla for good measure. Quite a nice nutty flavoured morcilla.

Bergara A bit of a disappointment, really – advertises the fact that it has previously won the prize for Best Pincho Bar in Spain (which presumably means the world) but it feels like it may have been resting on its laurels for too long. Everything was fine, but nothing was stellar.

-          Foie gras prepared in Port was suitably rich, calling for raisins and a glass of sweet wine.

-          Txipiron encebollada (squid with onions) comes as a piece of squid bursting juicy liquid when you poke at it.

-          Anchovy tortilla is a fishy take on the classic Spanish potato omelette.

-          There was also a piece of fried bread with a hard-boiled egg on it, with shredded egg white on top of that. N1 liked it – I think on textural grounds – I’m not sure I really saw the point.

And the two that got away…

Astelena We knew this place from a previous visit. Great for frogs’ legs and grilled quail.

Gandarias We really meant to get here to try the milhojas de manitas y hongos (millefeuille of pigs’ trotter with mushrooms) but there are only so many food slots in the day…go to San Sebastián.