Talesai

Jean Foillard, Morgon 'Cote du Py' 2008 in the house!

2010-01-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Christmas came late for me this year, but it was worth the wait. Just got this Jean Foillard Morgon 'Cote du Py' from Kermit Lynch. (for those who are not familiar with Monsieur Foillard, please google!) This is one of those wines I like to pour for people who claim that red wine doesn't work with Thai food. Sure, I'll take a dry-farmed Gewurz from up North or a grassy Quincy with my Curry, but I'd just as readily reach for a Loire red or in this case, a Beaujolais. These are wines with freshness, nuance, character, good acidity and usually low alcohol as well--which means I can drink more of it and it will both stand up to and complement an assertively-spiced cuisine, like Thai.

"I don't like Beaujolais," is something I often hear and I usually suspect it's because Beaujolais has somewhat of a bad rap. Said rap stems from the fact that a great deal of it is, in fact, uninteresting and on occasion, just gross. Oftentimes, producers dose it with extra sugar to up the alcohol content after fermentation (a process known as chaptalization) in hopes of creating, perhaps, a more 'substantial' wine. Others use laboratory yeasts which are more reliable than naturally-occurring yeasts and which can be counted on to draw out certain aromas which might be deemed desirable by the producer. Foillard ain't having any of that.

What does this mean for us, as the wine-consuming public? It means that by choosing a wine that has been farmed as consciously as possible and manipulated as little possible, we are experiencing a more interesting, complex, delicious wine and not an innocuous one. The possibilities this sort of winemaking entails is infinitely more exciting to me than good ole reliability.

Merci Merci

2009-12-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

About halfway between the Bastille and Republique on Boulevard Beaumarchais is a store called 'Merci Merci.' Described variously as a 'concept store where visitors can shop with a conscience' (Merci donates all net proceeds to a co-op for young women in Madagascar) and an 'Ali Baba's cave of knickknacks and home supplies' and 'une philosophie de vie proposée par Marie France et Bernard Cohen, que l'on connaissait pour la marque Bonpoint, et qui se veut entièrement novateur', it is all those things, and a bit more. They sell stuff like: awesome white enamel-coated tin tableware with different color rims (similar to the kind you would take on a camping trip), cool jeans, vintage designer stuff for girls, rolls of napkins made from raw cotton

of different colors which you can tear off just as you would a paper towel, and the best-looking camping blankets that rival the Pendleton wool blankets they have at Ace Hotel.

There's also a cafe that sells tons of used books in different laguages and a canteen in the basement where they serve an abbreviated daily market-driven menu.

My lunch in the canteen that day was probably the last 'healthy' meal I had on my 3 week trip--'Poulet a la Vapeur' with haricots verts and betraves. It's not often that I have a non-sushi meal that tastes this pure. I'm a big fan of a lot of food that is manipulated or processed to a certain degree, such as, pate, rolled headcheese or pasta with fillings, but sometimes I find it refreshing to have a meal where each ingredient exhibits a real unique presence by remaining relatively 'whole' and un-manipulated, for lack of a better word. That said, I'll never be a fan of 'figs on a plate.'

Celebrate the holidays at Talesai!

2009-12-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

2009-12-13T09:14:00.000-08:00

Do Pop In | Bacon in the Afternoon

FOOD

By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

| DECEMBER 11, 2009, 3:59 PM

Matthew HranekMatthew Hranek’s savory jams will be available in a pop-up store inside the Cynthia Rowley boutique on Bleecker Street.

Enough with the pop-up stores already, right? But there is one that caught our attention. This Sunday, from 1 to 4 p.m., the William Brown Project sets up shop in the Cynthia Rowley boutique at 376 Bleecker Street, selling hand-crafted pork products (bacon! rillettes!), vinegars and savory jams. Just add ribbon.

The brainchild of Matthew Hranek, a photographer and lifelong hunter who’s been raising pigs with his neighbor in Sullivan County, N.Y., William Brown is a lifestyle-porn company for those of us without houses like this. (Full disclosure: I bought one of his pigs last month and went around the office pushing bellies and roasts like an evil Girl Scout after I realized I couldn’t fit all 180 pounds in my dorm freezer.) Also available: vintage hunting knives, blankets, trunks, bentwood chairs. Where’s the 1985 Land Rover? Maybe next year.

By Christine Muhlke

NY Times Published: December 11, 2009

Good Looking Bags

2009-12-10T16:25:00.001-08:00

My old jeans were getting smelly, so I bought a new pair today. The jeans themselves were no revelation--they are the exact same kind as I always wear, just new, stiff and not stinky. The bag they came in, however, was pretty neat--cotton tote with an almost minimal design (skyline? Rorschach test? wav forms?) which I could plausibly reuse. (Ed. Note: 'Neat' is my new favorite word, replacing 'Nice') Owning and running a restaurant, I am naturally inclined to keep things like merchandising and packaging on my mind. I feel it necessary to seek specific purpose when presenting something, be it the food, wine, website, or the physical structure of the restaurant. One of the first things I thought of during our renovation last summer was that we needed a proper wine room. Aside from the primary concern of storage and temperature, the purpose was to make a statement about the importance of wine to the experience I wanted my guests to have. I had it built in a fairly unassuming fashion with an oak structure, steel rods for the 'racks' and glass encasing and decided to place it slightly angled at the back corner so that it would be in direct line of sight from the entrance to the restaurant yet not dominate the space as it would if it were built in the middle of the dining room (one of the original ideas that was kicked around). That wine room is probably one of the more successful examples of merchandising in the restaurant. A less successful example would be the oak tables I had my carpenter friend make for me. It seemed fairly obvious to me at the time that the room needed to feel warmer and, in a sense, more domestic. For a while I left the tabletops bare (aside from the place settings). I wanted to showcase my lovely new tables and thought linens to be somewhat of an obsolete notion (both for environmental reasons as well as aesthetic ones). Later I decided on recycled brown butcher paper to cover most of the surface area of the tables while leaving the sides exposed. This kept in line with the aesthetic and was still a better option than linens, in my opinion. Not everyone agreed. It seemed that a certain highly opinionated contingent preferred the elegance that comes with linen tablecloths. After much debate, I relented. If the linens made these guests feel more comfortable, I'd be cool with it. After all, there's nothing worse, in my mind, than a restaurant that blindly upholds an ideal or sensibility above the practical appeal to the audience. It's a two-way street. While I won't stand for someone walking into the restaurant and requesting Chow Mein, I will gladly (or begrudgingly) make certain concessions on issues like how to dress the tables. But to the linen contingent, please know that the day will come when I will again pull the linens and you will be left staring at beautiful, environmentally friendly butcher paper.

Tis the season to be gifting...

2009-12-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas shopping: done! Year after year, I rack my brain in an inspired yet futile attempt to find the perfect Christmas gift. This holiday season, it seems the tide has turned. I was enjoying a bottle of the '06 Vieux Telegraphe 'La Crau' Chateauneuf-du-Pape with my braised shortribs the other night and 2 thoughts kept recurring in my head: 1.) 'This La Crau is remarkably expressive for such a young CDP' and

2.) 'Who in their right mind doesn't like a good Chateauneuf?' For daily drinking, I admit to being extremely biased towards the wines of the Loire, red and white. There is no pleasure greater to me than gulping down a chilled young Bourgueil (Les Galichets from Pierre and Catherine Breton, for instance) but I realize that to some, the seemingly austere palate and light body are not qualities they immediately embrace. A CDP, however, is such a crowd pleaser in ways that the 'little wines' of the Loire are not. It's a big blockbuster wine yet when properly farmed and vinified it can also exhibit a great deal of complexity and character. And there it is--the perfect gift for the widest number of people. To me this is a wine that can just as well be enjoyed now as it can benefit from 10 years or beyond in the cellar. And that is my goal, to keep enough of it cellared so that on Christmas Day 2019 I can allow this no longer young Chateauneuf-du-Pape to pummel me with revelations.

Cremant de Bourgogne meets Psych Rock Wizards

2009-12-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

My first day in Paris, after an intense half-day nap, I decided that a celebratory libation was in order. And so we checked out Bar Denis on Rue St. Sabin in the 11eme. Bar Denis is a quaint little spot that serves a variety of toasts (foie gras, machego and ham, creme fraiche and caviar, et al) and a healthy selection of wines (including the Hippolyte Reverdy Sancerre which I pour at Talesai) run by a Javier Bardem lookalike who would say to girls saddling up to the bar, "Qu'est-ce que vous fait plaisir?", a far cry from the all to common "What can I get you guys?"

This was a spot I returned to several times throughout my three week trip and is the sort of destination I try to seek out anytime I'm travelling--a charming, comfortable and civil watering hole where the bar guy knows exactly what you need (towards the end of the trip, he nursed my severe cold with a killer Calvados) and where you feel just as comfortable going solo as you do with a group of friends. Curiously enough, I can't seem to find anything about it on the internet, but maybe that's for the better. For those who wish to seek it out, it's right across from Cafe l'Industrie (my favorite cafe with the highest ratio of pretty waitresses to mediocre Duck

Confit) on Rue St. Sabin, Metro Bastille.

Here's a video of a couple Parisian psychedelic rock wizards who did their best to faire plaisir to everyone in attendance.

Also, this bar is child friendly:

A man walks into a blog...

2009-11-20T19:02:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of the Talesai blog. Honestly, I never thought blogging would take such effort. I have a general idea what this blog will be about (good food, great wine, aesthetics) but trying to find any semblance of cohesion among these vague notions is proving to be no walk in the park.

That is why I laid out a two part plan:

1.) 'read some blogs and figure out what's good about them' (i like www.acontinuouslean.com for instance) , and

2.) 'come up with something very specific to blog about that might be of interest to others' (i decided to go to europe, eat and drink, then write about it). That photo was my gear for the 3 week trip which took me to Paris, the Loire Valley, and Sicily.