[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: June 23, 2008]
Typing this on a sticky evening at the end of a week fit to induce une crise de foie. Cries for madder music and stronger wine were repeatedly answered in the affirmative, as I cavorted through the Spanish Wine Festival, the closing debauche at San Domenico, a series of vintage cocktails in the East Village, and sundry private soirées.
First, the toping in support of City Harvest...
Scroll down for the San Domenico closing party.
PJ Wine, the estimable vendor in Inwood, specialist in the wines of Spain, was the prime convenor of the Spanish Wine Festival at a converted church known as the Landmark on the Park on Central Park West. I believe this is the second year of the shindig, and it provides an occasion for the thirsty to spend a fairly large sum of money - around $100 - in the anticipation of being able to taste some of the newly established superstars of Spanish wine, as well as a few older bottles.
The initial outlay is steep, but considering the likely retail price of a half-pour of Pingus, readily recouped. Indeed, I believe the most recent release of Pingus, the 2005, was the costliest wine being poured (and poured fairly freely). It was a frustrating taste, though; obviously far too young to open, the fruit and tobacco of tomorrow was concealed by a puckering buzz of tannins. The 2003 "family" bottling of Felix Callejo was also a tease.
A 1998 Unico was much friendlier: dark fruits and chewy bacon. The 1996 Contino Gran Reserva was as good as I'd remembered, but the most obvious pleasure of the evening was tasting through several years of Riojas by Rioja Alta and Lopez de Heredia: the latter's 1973 Tondonia Gran Reserva amazingly still has legs.
San Domenico Lets Its Hair Down
Two weeks ago I wrote with sadness of my last dinner at San Domenico, the grand old Central Park South Italian which has been on my rotation for more than a decade. It was a privilege to be invited, along with other long-time customers, to an informal closing party which seemed designed, among other things, to ensure the bar was drunk dry.
As has now been widely reported, San Domenico is set to rise from the ashes as SD 26, a much larger and less formal restaurant near Madison Park. The opening is scheduled for April 2009. In celebration, one of the city's most self-effacing chefs, Odette Fada, remained chained to the kitchen sending out a steady stream of items to the buffet table while the crowd sucked up prosecco and vodka cocktails and white wine.
In the chaos, I could still relish a fresh celery salad steeped in melted pancetta fat, excellent cheeses, and a wonderful jellied terrine, either of veal tongue or head - forgive me if I can't be specific. It was about this time that a party-goer threw a glass of wine over me before falling up the stairs. And the dee-jay played on, and dancers aged twenty to seventy made cheerful fools of themselves.
Celebrities passed through, most dramatically Le Cirque's Sirio, resplendent in a candy pink blazer. I sat over two bottles of Perroni until, finally, it was time to say ciao...ci vediamo.
