Wine Tasting

I’ve just returned from the Bahamas, where I worked with my chef Frederic Demers at Café Martinique and chef Alex Powel at Dune. Along with my New York chefs Greg Brainin and Eric Hubert, we introduced them to our new spring dishes. On the island, we get the most amazing produce from Maria-Therese Kemp’s Holey Farm and phenomenal grouper, hog snapper, and spiny lobster from Alan, my spear fishing guy. Our new dishes showcase their ingredients beautifully.
This was the first of many trips this season to my restaurants around the world. I’m leaving for Qatar on Monday, where we’re opening both a Market and Spice Market in Doha’s W Hotel. As you can see, my team has already gone ahead of me.
With the change of seasons comes a change of menus, so I’m off to Shanghai after that to teach our new dishes to my chefs there.
Of course, I’ll be in New York between trips. Since my last post about my new $58 Jean Georges menu, I’ve been getting questions about the half-glass wines that I mentioned. Actually, we’ve been offering half glasses of wine since October, but I began thinking about it long before that. I noticed that people getting together at the bar would start with a glass of wine, and then be stuck in the awkward position of wanting to stay a little while longer, but not for another full glass. (Think first dates.) In the dining room, customers wanted to pair different wines with different courses, but didn’t want a full glass with each course. And colleagues who came in for lunch celebrations would want to order champagne, but a full glass is a bit much when you need to return to work. (In these times, it’s more important than ever to celebrate professional achievements.) Perhaps most importantly, I wanted diners who drove to my restaurants to drive home safely.
My beverage director, Bernard Sun, constantly changes the wine lists at all of my New York restaurants to feature the best wines of the times. And he chooses the most interesting and delicious ones for our wines by the glass and half glass. In addition to sourcing unique wines from top producers around the world, he also chooses wines appropriate to the seasons and our changing menus. That’s the real reason I like our half glasses—you can taste a lot of great wines without breaking the bank. (It’s a great deal because these half glasses are half the price of a full glass.)
I stopped by the restaurant between the airport and home this afternoon and saw that Bernie added a delicious 2004 Peter Lehmann shiraz to the wine list. I think I’ll have just a taste. Cheers!

My Select Menu at Jean Georges

Times are tough, and I think a good meal is a cure-all when things are down. Nothing can lift spirits quite like delicious food, gracious service, and a gorgeous dining room. That’s why I’m introducing a $58 dinner menu at Jean Georges tonight. It’s a four course meal of three of my favorite dishes and your choice of a dessert flight. You can enjoy it Mondays through Thursdays from 5:30 to 6 pm and from 10 to 11 pm. Those are my favorite hours in the dining room, when you can see the sun setting over Central Park and when you can feel the night vibe of the city starting to heat up.
I chose warm, comforting dishes to celebrate the end of winter. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do:

To start, seared gulf shrimp are served on top of a silky pumpkin puree brightened by ginger and basil. A rich risotto follows. We make our version with Nishiki rice, the grain variety traditionally used to brew sake, and season it with an earthy porcini mushroom marmalade and fresh herbs. I give chicken an incredibly crisp “skin” of parmigiano reggiano and serve it over artichokes glazed with a lemon and basil butter sauce.

Our dessert menu changes every week, thanks to my pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini. This is just a sampling of what he’s cooking now, but when you come, you can choose whichever dessert flight you’re craving. Trust me, they’re all good.
And if you’re like me, you’ll want to sample more than one type of wine with dinner without actually drinking too much. In all of my restaurants, you can try “tastes” of our most interesting wines. I’ve started offering half-glasses and found everyone loves this option.
I sometimes think of my $58 chef’s selection menu as “The Obama Special.” No, it’s not a $787 billion stimulus package for the national economy, but it’s my way of bringing some cheer to this depression. Bon appetit!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I’m in Atlanta right now and I wish my wife Marja was here so that we could celebrate Valentine’s Day together at Market, my restaurant in Buckhead’s W Hotel. Of course, I’ll be thrilled to see her back at home tomorrow, but I’d love to share this experience with her. Atlanta is beautiful and green, even in the winter, and everyone is so nice. Also, my menu at Market reads like a collection of my “greatest hits” from all of my New York restaurants, so my favorite dishes are available in one spot.

In fact, I’m here working with chef de cuisine Ian Winslade on new dishes for the menus both here and at Spice Market in the W Midtown. Spring comes early to the south—strawberries will be ripe in the next few weeks. Since Market’s dishes revolve around local, seasonal ingredients, I want to make sure we’re ready to use the great produce here as soon as it’s available. We also incorporate those ingredients into Spice Market’s dishes, and I’ve enjoyed working with Ian at both restaurants.

When I arrive home tomorrow, I’m going to have to switch gears. It’s definitely still winter in New York. We’re doing a family Valentine’s Day dinner with our daughter Chloe, my son Cedric, and my brother Philippe and his children. (I only wish my daughter Louise could’ve made it up from D.C. too.) I think I’m going to roast a rack of Berkshire pork chops with a maple syrup and soy sauce glaze and pair that with a quince puree. For dessert, I may forgo chocolate in favor of cheesecake. Better yet, maybe I’ll do both. Whatever I cook, I’ll just be happy to share the meal with family.

Marja and I enjoy spending this little holiday at home. Besides, we’re really looking forward to our trip to Egypt the last week of April. Neither of us has ever been and we can’t wait to go. Admiral Travel invited me to be a guest chef on an amazing land and cruise tour. With the other travelers, we’ll get private tours of Queen Nefertari’s tomb, the Karnak Temple, Kom Ombo, and the Temple of Philae.

What I’m most excited about, though, is the final dinner. I’ll be cooking under a Bedouin-style tent on the Giza Plateau, with a spectacular view of the pyramids. Needless to say, this is a first for me. I’m always up for a new cooking adventure, and I can’t imagine a better one. If you’re already planning on going or would like to sign up for this trip, I look forward to seeing you there.

Vong's New (Old) Menu

Just before the holidays, I was craving Vong’s original dishes–I mean the ones from back when the restaurant first opened, in 1992–so I went to the restaurant and asked the kitchen to prepare them for me. I was overwhelmed by how new and fresh and delicious they tasted! I decided then and there that we had to bring the whole menu back. And even though we were already doing the $24 lunch and $35 four-course dinner, I decided to bring back 1992 prices on the a la carte menu too.

Of course, those dishes also brought back a flood of memories. I opened Vong in 1992, a year after opening JoJo, to fuse my French cuisine with the Thai dishes I came to love while cooking in Asia. (Hence its original proposed name: “Far East.”) Florence Fabricant, the New York Times food writer, was the one who suggested “Vong” instead. (Thanks, Florence.)

To create a space reminiscent of Bangkok’s gilded temples, I installed teak floors, painted the ceiling gold, and covered a wall with a collage of my maps, articles, and souvenirs from Thailand. More recently, we added Eames chairs tinted red, the color of good fortune.

One of my favorite “original” dishes actually debuted in 1993. During our first year, we realized that every table ordered a selection of appetizers, so we put together a tasting plate of our signature starters.

Here’s the order in which I like to eat them:
Start with the Peekytoe crab spring rolls. There’s so much crab in the thin wrapper, this is more like a crab cake. I love the contrast between the hot, crisp roll and the cool lettuce, mint, and cilantro that you wrap it in.

A thin coating of coconut mousse and panko crumbs keeps the shrimp in our crunchy shrimp “satay” super-moist. Our raw tuna and avocado summer rolls are so refreshing, as is the lobster wrapped in a paper-thin sheet of daikon radish. The accompanying rosemary ginger vinaigrette was one of my first fusion experiments, blending French herbs and Asian aromatics. I still love this combination today. The roasted quail, marinated in a sweet soy sauce and five-spice marinade, pairs well with the salad of watercress, sliced red cabbage, and slivers of crunchy fried leeks.

Of the entrees, the shrimp with Thai herbs remains one of my favorites. Be sure to enjoy each bite with the garnish on top and the creamy, spiced sauce below.

My interpretation of Vietnamese pho includes seared steak and a roasted marrow bone, both of which add a deep richness to the aromatic ginger broth. But my favorite dish is still the chicken and coconut soup. It was the first thing I ate when I arrived in Thailand years ago, and I continued to eat it after many long days of cooking. This soup was one of the reasons I decided to open a restaurant like Vong.
The desserts are why I like to linger over a meal here.
When you take a bite of the caramelized pineapple, you first get a hint of fruity tartness, then comes the cooling sweetness of vanilla coconut sorbet. Of course, we have our signature warm chocolate cake here, but we also have a bitter chocolate tart with oranges and candied ginger, which offset the molten chocolate richness perfectly. Finally, one of my favorite desserts is the coconut caramel custard with delicate lime cookies. The custard may look simple, but it’s amazingly silky and flavorful. The best part about returning to our 1992 menu and prices?

Vong’s original chefs will be preparing the dishes. Pierre Schutz, who started cooking for me in 1985 and opened Vong, is still running the kitchen. Eric Hubert, our pastry chef who opened Vong and recently returned, is as great as ever. (He always rolls his puff pastry by hand, something I truly admire.)
With their help, I’m making the old new again at Vong. I hope to see many old and new friends there.