Is the Wine List on the Way Out?

My review of the Peninsula Grill, one of the old standbys of high-end downtown Charleston dining,   just hit the streets in the City Paper.  Right before that, I visited The Grocery, Kevin Johnson's hot new restaurant, with its big wood-fired oven, everything local and hyper-fresh, lots of in-house pickling and preserving, and all the other hallmarks of the New New Southern style.

There's quite a difference between the luxurious fine dining style of just a decade ago and the more informal, ingredient-centered local cuisine that is currently on the rise. And, it's not just the the food: the level of service, the atmosphere, the dress code are all changing, too.

And that led to this thought: is the wine list a thing of the past?

Not serving wine, mind you, but having a huge wine cellar and a sommelier (or multiple sommeliers) and not a wine list but a wine book, those big leather bound things with brass trim that you strain to lift and hold awkwardly in your lap as you turn one heavy page after another.

At The Grocery, the wine list is just two pages, able to fit, front and back, on a single piece of paper, whites on one side (seven by the glass and two dozen bottles), reds on the other (five by the glass and thirty bottles).  At The MacIntosh--another of the hot new spots--the selection is a little larger, approaching 100 bottles, but it still fits comfortably on both sides of a single sheet of paper. Compare that to the older Charleston Grill, where sommelier Rick Rubel's acclaimed list runs over forty pages.

So buy, sell, or hold the future of the wine list?  If I had to choose, I would have to say, sadly, "sell." The trends just seem to be moving against it.

Some restaurants, Wine & Spirits Magazine reported recently, are now replacing their big leather books with iPads, which makes it a breeze to swipe and tap your way through thousands of options and has the added advantage of being easy to read even in the dimmest dining room.

But it's not just the physical form of the wine list that may be its downfall.  The whole dining culture just seems to be moving away from it.  The newer hip restaurants are putting as much emphasis into their beer selection and cocktail "programs" as they are their wine cellars.  Beer-paired dinners have been hot for a couple of years, and now cocktail-paired dinners are starting to pop up, too.  (I just experienced my first one a few weeks ago at the Charleston Wine + Food festival.)

But, ultimately I think the demise of the wine list will follow hand-in-hand the disappearance of the coat and tie from the restaurant dining room. More and more people simply have no desire to dress for dinner; some just prefer wearing their regular casual clothes, others are actively uncomfortable and awkward in a tie and are intimidated by environments where they are expect to wear one.  And they are equally uncomfortable with a massive leather bound wine list with a lot of names and countries and dates that mean nothing to them.

That, ultimately, is what I think will be wine's downfall. For far too long wine has maintained an imposing, intimidating stance, one that suggests you need years of study and a dense insiders' vocabulary to not seem like a total idiot. The nine thousand regions of France, all those years, and--of course--those three- and four-figure prices mixed right in with the regular stuff, making us feel like cheapskates for settling on a lowly $75 bottle.  And then there are wine tasting columns that offer "helpful" advice for novices like this: "Learn the meaning of wine terms like fruit forward, smoky, chewy, structured, bright, jowly, citrus, effervescent, creamy and fatty." Holy crap! How long will that take?

Countless sommeliers have made the case that this simply is not true, that there's no reason for regular Joes to be intimidated when ordering wine at a good restaurant.  Just be cool, say what you like or don't like and your price range, and let your wine professional guide you.  By and large I think that's true: in the world of fine dining just a little confidence goes a long way.      

But I'm not sure the average restaurant goer agrees. Curious nugget from the Wine & Spirits piece on the iPad wine apps: at Manhattan's SD26, wine director Paul Guerzon used to have 3 sommeliers working with him.  Now that they've introduced the iPads, he works the dining room alone. Which suggests that in large part the role of the sommelier has served simply to help confused diners navigate the large, overwhelming list of regions and vintages.  Certainly there are a some patrons who value the knowledge and guidance of a trained sommelier, but it seems most just want to quickly narrow it down: Red [tap] Cabernet [tap] $50 to $99 [tap].  Done.

And that raises the question of whether the sommelier is going the way of the travel agent, but that's for another time. For now, I think, suffice it to say, expect to order your wine from a single sheets of cardstock more and more often in the upcoming years.

Charleston Restaurants on the National Scene

Two Charleston restaurants make Opinionated About Dining's list of the Top 100 Restaurants for 2012.  Yes, they both have the same chef at the helm, which should pretty much clue you in to which restaurants they are.

What I think is interesting is that the one that got the highest ranking in the list (at #10) isn't the one that got all the press in 2012.  Yes, McCrady's gets the top Charleston honor, with Husk way down at #90.

And, let's face it, McCrady's deserves it.  It's still cranking out some of the best dishes to be had anywhere.

Pappy on Its Way to South Carolina

Last week in the City Paper I gave a few tips on how to get your hands on a bottle or two of Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon..  In case you haven't had time to check the Van Winkle Facebook page every few hours, here's the big news, and I quote: "South Carolina has shipped. Please allow a week or two for inventory to make it to the distributor and then out to stores."

So, by my count, that means you should start hounding your local liquor store owner about next Tuesday or so. Heck, why take chances: go in and start hounding him or her this afternoon. That's my plan.

Stick a fork . . . or, er, a knife . . . in it

To continue my ongoing monomania about current burger trends, here's a seemingly new facet I've stumbled across lately: the practice of serving big, fat, gourmet hamburgers with a steak knife plunged into the middle of them.  One can immediately see the marketing appeal: what more dramatic way to illustrate exactly how big, fat, disgusting, and decadent a burger is? 

Maybe this technique has been around for a while and I just missed it, but I swear I've seen it cropping up in half a dozen restaurants in just the last few months.  (The picture here is from Pawley's Porch, a brand new gourmet burger joint in Mt. Pleasant, a town which already has far more gourmet burger joints than it could possibly need.)

So, this goes right up there with the other big burger trend I've been monitoring: eye-catching burger names.  The Liberty Tap room has its Freedom Burger, which demonstrates that in America we are free to order our burgers with bacon, a fried egg, and fried onion straws if we damn well please.  Poe's on Sullivan's Island has a similar concoction dubbed the Tell-Tale Heart (fried egg, bacon, and cheddar), while Triangle Char Bar ups the ante with the Hot Sh** (their emendation, not mine) which of course has a fried egg on it but also adds chorizo, jalapenos, and pepper jack cheese just in case you thought you could make it through the night without Tums.

But, the leading burger name contender in Charleston right now is the W.T.F. Burger from Boone's Bar & Grill downtown on King Street.  It features a big ground beef patty with pepper jack and cheddar cheese, fried onions, and a bunch of fries--yes, french fries--sandwiched between not a bun but rather two grilled cheese sandwiches.  

W.T.F. indeed.

Brand Ambassadors

A Pink Peppercorn Paloma from Charlotte Voisey

Last night was a first for me: a cocktail-paired dinner.  It was the Cocktail Dinner at the Culinary Institute of Charleston, part of the 2012 Charleston Wine+Food Festival.   The food was fabulous, and the cocktail pairings worked pretty well.  My account of all that and a few pics of the event will be hitting the City Paper's Eat blog soon.

One of the pleasures of the night was sitting next to Michael Saboe, the dean of the Culinary Institute of Charleston, and chatting about his years in the Charleston restaurant world. He noted that one of the great things about being at the Institute was that it allowed him to stay in the fine-dining and hospitality world and still be able to spend nights and weekends with his family.

And that got me thinking a little bit about career paths beyond the restaurant and bar--a world of late nights and high anxiety with a nights-and-weekends schedule that's almost diametrically opposed to the rest of the working world.  It was appropriate for the evening, since the cocktails were being shaken up by two former-bartenders who had managed to stake out professions that got them out from behind the bar and on the road.

Junior Merino shaking up a
rose-infused Rosita margarita

The first was Charlotte Voisey, a British mixologist who struck it big in London with her classic cocktail bar Apartment 195.  Now she's the "brand ambassador" for William Grant and Sons, the makers of Hendrick's Gin and Milagro Tequila, which sponsored for the Wine+Food event.  She teamed up with Junior Merino, worked his way up the ranks at Roth's Westside Steakbouse in New York and then launched his own cocktail consultancy, The Liquid Chef, which in addition to events like the Cocktail Dinner has him designing cocktail programs for cruise ship lines and theme parks.

That sounds at first like a "good gig if you can get it" sort of thing.  The New York Times ran a nice piece on the new world of liquor brand ambassadors a few years back, and you can see the appeal--a regular salary, travel to exciting places, flashy parties, and crazy perks like actual health insurance benefits.

But, to my eye it still looks like an awful lot of work to me.  Voisey and Merino were certainly hustling last night, mixing up a course of eight different cocktails for dozens of guests.  And that doesn't count the hours of prep work that went into the evening--from squeezing fresh juices to set up--and the breakdown, and the event tomorrow, too.  

Tasting notes and Merino's  Rogue cocktail
(featuring apricot infused Milagro Anejo,
hibiscus syrup, Cherry Heering, cream sherry, and
chocolate bitters)

And then there's the travel. Yes, it's glamorous for a little while.  But, as someone who travels frequently as part of my job, I can attest that spending lots of nights alone in a hotel room far from family and friends can be a tough gig, too.

But I can say one thing: they mix some splendid cocktails, and they're bringing new flavors and experiences to a wide range of people who might not otherwise try, say, a French 75 laced with coriander and cucumber simple syrup or a margarita enlivened by tamarinds and Velvet Falernum.

Amid the celebrity chefs and the big-time television personalities, the brand ambassador is a curious new wrinkle in an industry where a job behind the bar or on the line had few options apart from perhaps working your way up to owning a restaurant or bar. 

Busy Week

I looked up the other day and realized I'd had a flurry of pieces come out at the City Paper.  These included:

A Cover Story on the Current State of Bourbon

A Bourbon Tour of Charleston

A Review of Kevin Johnson's The Grocery

An Eat Blog Post on Husk's Barrel of Van Winkle Bourbon

A List of the Top 10 Places to Eat in Charleston Right Now

An Article on Magwood's Shrimp and How Two Boroughs Larder Uses It

and this doesn't even count the Wine+Food festival coverage from this coming weekend and the Best of Charleston issue due out next week!

Phew.

Can Indian Food Go Mainstream?

Breakfast in India

I first became enamored with Indian food almost a decade ago when I was doing a lot of work in central London, where Indian restaurants are no more esoteric than Italian pasta joints.  A trip to India this past summer sealed the deal.

It has long seemed a little puzzling to me that, in an era when Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and even Thai food have merged their way into the American fast-casual and even fast food markets, Indian food has stubbornly resisted going mainstream--being relegated to one or two steam table buffet joints in any mid-sized American city, places that attract only a small sub-population of Indian expats and adventurous Western culinary souls.

But maybe not anymore.  As John T. Edge reports in a really nicely done piece for the New York Times,  a few ambitious Indian entrepreneurs are starting to take their native fare to the mass American market, and, in the process, taking their game head to head with the likes of Qdoba, Chipotle, and Panera Bread.

In this game marketability trumps authenticity. And is that a good thing? Perhaps the most troubling quote from the whole piece is this one from the owner of a nascent chain of fast-casual Indian restaurants: "We have to break down traditional dishes into gravy and protein components so that our guests can gain control of their experience, and build their own meal."

Who the what? Perhaps the absolute best thing about Indian cuisine is how everything is slow cooked together into a rich concoction that you serve alongside rice. Why on earth would you want to separate the "protein" from the "gravy"? I hear echoes of the Home Economics School of cooking whispering at us from the musty corridors of a century ago . . .

But, I do love Indian food, and I sincerely hope it continues to gain new admirers here in the U.S.  Would it still be worth it if the cuisine gets dumbed down into paint by numbers proteins and sauces?

Ask me in two years.

Jack in the Truck

Though the phrase "jump the shark" jumped the shark about five years ago, I still can't helping being fascinated when a trend starts creaking toward its deathbed.  With a hat tip to Robb Walsh, I think it's safe to say that food trucks are officially done.

Negronis with FIG, Live and Online!

Brooks Reitz, who oversees the splendid bar down at FIG, will be making an appearance Wednesday night (February 1st) at 8:00 p.m. on HDNet's Drinking Made Easy video podcast.

Reitz will be talking Negronis with host Zane Lamprey, and they couldn't have picked a better topic. FIG doesn't just serve a Negroni but rather an entire menu of Negronis--nine variations on the gin-and-campari classics, to be exact, a refreshing break from our fallen world of specialty Cosmos and citrus-infused vodka Martini concoctions.

Check it out Wednesday night.

Growing up Poor in the South (or, The Southern Cross)

So, just a little while ago I was reading a nice Talk of the Town piece in The New Yorker by Tad Friend about the actor/comedian David Cross.  Cross apparently just moved from the East Village to "Dumbo", which sounds like it might be the Gotham equivalent of  "B. F. E.", but turns out to actually stand for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" in Brooklyn, which, if you ask me, is taking this whole SoHo, NoMa, etc. thing way too far.

Anyhow, the thing that grabbed me was not the silly acronyms but rather this line: "The comedian grew up poor in the South."  Actually, what really grabbed me was not the line itself but rather what surprisingly did NOT come after it, which was an explanation of where it was in the South that Mr. Cross grew up.  It's not like Cross has a distinctive Texas drawl or one of those rapid-fire Piedmont Carolina accents that immediately nail down someone's hometown.

The geographical description "in the South" is simply too vague and non-descriptive, not quite so bad as saying "from North America", but certainly not too much more precise.  Perhaps to a New Yorker it's all the same, but to me, at least, there's a huge difference between, say, growing up poor in Miami, Florida, than there is in Elkins, West Virginia, or Houston, Texas, or Demopolis, Alabama.

Cross, if Wikipedia is to be believed, was actually born in Atlanta and grew up mostly in Roswell, an Atlanta suburb, broken up with a few stints in New York and Connecticut--and, his father is British.  Which may help explain why when I asked my wife (who, as it happens, lived briefly as a child in Elkins, West Virginia) where she thought David Cross was born, she said, "I don't know. Canada?"

I'm heading to Manhattan on Wednesday for work. I doubt I'll find time to visit Dumbo, but when people ask me where I'm from, I'm just going to say, "the South."  I'm curious to see whether that'll satisfy 'em.  Hell, they might assume I mean Red Bank, New Jersey, and just leave it at that.