L’Oca’s Anchovies

by Brian Freedman

Filed Under Food & Wine

This past week, we held the second Sommelier Smackdown to be catered by L’Oca, the delicious Italian restaurant across the street from the school. Also for the second time, they provided us with house-cured white anchovies that reminded most of the people in attendance how delicious these little fishies can be. Far from those vaguely frightening, pallid gray fillets that you can buy at the supermarket, these tender anchovies sang with a finely calibrated zip of citrus, which both set the fish’s natural flavor in sharp relief and cut through the oil that had been used in the curing. The result was not only a dish that seemed tailor made for crisp white wines, but one that reminded us all, yet again, of how unjustly maligned anchovies are. And how wonderful they can be when done right.


1 Comment

Old World in Old City

by Frank Cipparone

Filed Under Food & Wine

Maybe you can’t break away to Rome or Florence this summer but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a taste of the good life, Italian style, right here in town. Josephine Russo and Bruno Mallo, natives of Sicily and Naples respectively, have transported their “Best of Philly 2006″ gelati recipes to the recently opened BonBon on the 200 block of Market.Their newest venture is a gelateria/cafe featuring their signature artisinal dessert as well as pannini, coffees, Italian soft drinks, and an array of “dolce” that will test your commitment to begin counting calories. Josephine studied the craft of making gelato in Bologna, giving her creamy concoctions a rare stamp of authenticity seldom found hereabouts…aided by the use of imported ingredients. Read more


Leave a Comment

The Top Five Wines for Raw Oysters

by Keith Wallace

Filed Under Food & Wine

food & wine pairingThe brine and sweet fragrant flesh of a shucked oyster is an essential tribute to the summer. The wines served alongside should reflect a bit of sunshine and refreshment, too. Here is our guide to five wines, all for under $15, that are a wonderful match.

Lustau Manzanilla Reserva (Jerez, Spain)

This bone-dry sherry is a perfect match for oysters. Its olive-brine and fresh citrus flavors are a perfect accompaniment. A great way to be introduced to the pleasures of this Manzanilla sherry.

Gramona Gessami 2005 Vino Blanco (Catalunya, Spain)

Floral on nose (not surprisingly, the Spanish “Gessami” translates to Jasmine), with lemon-grass and ginger on a round frame balanced with a jolt of acidity.

Read more


3 Comments

Justified Extravagance

by Brian Freedman

Filed Under Food & Wine

I made it home last night by 8:30—the first time I’d been back to Chateau Brian before 10:00pm since the previous Friday. So to say I was ready to keel over would be an understatement.

Upon landing on the couch with a surprisingly convincing thud—at approximately 57 pounds fully clothed, my thuds are different than most people’s—I announced to my fearless bride that she should be ready to go in ten minutes.

I had plans for us, and there was no way I’d let mere exhaustion ruin them. In fact, the plans themselves were predicated on my tiredness: Monday morning, knowing that the following week would be rather on the brutal side, I vowed to go to one of my favorite restaurants Thursday night, have an actual conversation with the one who inexplicably said “I do,” and open up a bottle of wine that’s been tempting me from its perch in the living-room wine cellar sine February. Read more


Leave a Comment

The Sommelier Smackdown!

by Keith Wallace

Filed Under Food & Wine

Win Free Wine!Check it out our Sommelier Smackdown. The best food & wine pairing event this year. Philly’s top sommeliers and my Wine School peeps compete to make the best food & wine pairings. And you get to try them all! Best of all, the people in the audience get to vote who wins the smackdown!


Leave a Comment

Cheap White Wine

by Brian Freedman

Filed Under Food & Wine

VerdeAnd now the time has come to praise cheap white wine. Or, to be accurate, green wine. I recently returned from a trip to Portugal, and much to my wife’s chagrin, there’s a new love in my life: Vinho Verde.

It won’t replace her, of course—she’s put up with far too much of my whining over the years to be gotten rid of that easily. Plus, she has a great palate, which has always topped my list of marriage-material criteria. But the green stuff was a revelation, and I don’t think it was the fact that I drank it in 70-degree-and-sunny weather while I was across the pond. Read more


1 Comment

The Robotic Sommelier

by Keith Wallace

Filed Under Food & Wine

robot sommellierLooks like the sommeliers of the world may soon look be run on batteries. A new wine-tasting robot has been unveiled by researchers working for NEC System Technologies in conjunction with Mie University (of Japan).

Work began in 2004 on a food tasting robot, which could analyze the ingredients of foods it “ate” by using infrared spectroscopic technology. This new robot is the second generation model and was built to “taste” the difference between wines. Not only does the robot taste wines, it can carry a conversation and make wine recommendations bases on the user’s preferences.

Maybe we should invite this robot to our next sommelier smackdown? Source: NEC
Technorati Tags: , ,

Leave a Comment

Thanksgiving Food & Wine Pairing Guide

by Keith Wallace

Filed Under Food & Wine

Wine pairingIf you read any wine or food publications, you will hear one thing over-and-over “it’s impossible to pick the right wines for Thanksgiving”. This is the yearly gripe that magazines, newspapers, and your crazy Internet winos truck out year after year. While it may quite nice to complain about how difficult it is to pair food & wine, the consumer really should take all the bitching with a grain of salt. Really, does that sommelier really stay up at night trying to figure out how to pair a wine with cranberry sauce? I think not.

Technorati Tags: , ,
Read more


Leave a Comment

The B’More Roadtrip

by Keith Wallace

Filed Under Food & Wine

charleston

Was in Baltimore over Labor Day weekend, and thought it would be a good time to have dinner at Charleston. I had worked with Chef Cindy Wolf over a decade ago. Back then, I was part of the team that opened Savannah, her first Charm City restaurant. It was a great experience, and the perfect way end to my 10-year culinary career (I went to work as a journalist afterwards, satified that I had worked with some of the best chefs on the east coast).

Read more


Leave a Comment
« go back