[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: November 3, 2008]
Last week found me unpacking boxes and settling in at a new ground floor condo in Gramercy Park. I'd hardly slept in the bed, however, before I was off to London again.
Family matters this time, rather than business, and nothing happy about any of it. But I did find time to eat. First stop, Club Gascon, a successful upscale theme restaurant in the neighborhood of Smithfield's, the city's old meat market.
Highly rated today, Club Gascon was a relative newcomer back in '98. Chef Pascal Aussignac, from Toulouse, seemed to be pushing the envelope when he proposed serving a menu of foie gras preparations, plus a few Southwestern French classics like cassoulet, in a small plate/tapas format which has since become so familiar in New York as well as London.
It proved a sensation, spawning siblings - Cellar Gascon and Comptoir Gascon - in the same neighborhood. I was pretty happy with a crispy smoked eel appetizer, followed by a warm foie gras mousse. I ordered one of the more substantial plates, an impeccable confit de canard with pommes frites, then cheese. Not much in the way of vegetables there, I confess. A Pomerol unidentified by my notes accompanied the meal.
Next night, back to an old standby, Marco Pierre White's Quo Vadis on Dean Street, Soho. Oyster risotto was followed by a classic fricassée of rabbit in a white wine sauce. I can tell you this time that the Nuits-St.-George was a '95, and a Premier Cru, but that's all. As I mention in this week's Fall Wines summary, I have always been lazy about wine notes. A digestif was taken in the Dog and Duck, a tiny Soho corner bar with gorgeous old tiles depicting hunting scenes.
I must have stayed in Soho, either at Hazlitt's Hotel on Frith Street or in a room over Manzi's, the seafood restaurant off Leicester Square, because the next evening featured drinks at the French House, followed by dinner at L'Escargot.
Housed in an eighteenth century building near the famous Ronnie Scott's jazz club, L'Escargot opened in 1927 as a French restaurant specializing in snails. Logical enough. In the last couple of decades, it has passed through a bewildering succession of incarnations. In the 1980s, wine writer Jancis Robinson and her husband Nick Lander split the business into a formal upstairs dining room and a more casual ground floor bistro. At one point, a different Michelin-starred chef commanded each floor. The operation sails more or less serenely on.
In 1998, I started with a rocket salad strewn with chunks of smoked duck breast, and followed with Bresse pigeon served on a potato rösti with buttered cabbage and turnips. A curious choice of dessert: the almond-flavored tart known in Britain as a "Bakewell", filled with cherries and offered à la mode. I must have been thirsty too, because a glass of champagne preceded a bottle of Chorey-les Beaune 1996 from Dme Tollot-Beaut; a glass of Sauternes followed. This was certainly a meat-and-Burgundy trip.
I just had time to take in the Aubrey Beardsley show at the V&A before zipping back to the airport next day and heading for home and Hallowe'en. The latter fell on Saturday, and I joined a party in an apartment with splendid views of the Hudson River before repairing to L'Absinthe for a late supper: warm skate salad with fingerling potatoes, boeuf aux carrottes, and - continuing the theme of the week - a 1996 Vosne-Romanée. I don't know where I found it, but the week finished with me pot-roasting a partridge for Sunday lunch. Then back to the drudgery of unpacking.
