n.d.p. in le mâconnais: le carafé, mâcon

The other day my kind friends drove us fifty minutes north of Beaujolais to taste just four wines. The wines, while well-made, were not life-changing. (The winemaker in question is, alas, a strong believer in kieselguhr filtration, which in my estimation affects gamay the way direct sunlight affects unexposed film.)

"Well," I said, sheepishly, returning to the car. "That was that."

What redeemed the morning was a visit, on the trip back, to Le Carafé in Mâcon, a charming and understated wine-centric bistrot in the shadow of the Eglise Saint Pierre. Founded by a longtime supporter of the region's natural winemakers, Patrick Pigouet, Le Carafé was sold in 2013 to young chef Damien Blaszczyk, who in addition to proposing marvelous country comfort food, has retained the character and integrity of the heavily Mâconnais / Beaujolais wine list. I'm also certifiably addicted to the restaurant's particular brand of Spanish olives, which I purchase take-out by the jarful after each meal.

beyond compare : le mary celeste, 75003

Most comparisons of cities are offered as a way for the speaker - usually an inhabitant of the smaller or less lively of the two cities being compared - to make a display of worldliness and, in doing so, reassure him or herself of the wisdom of winding up in the smaller or less lively city. It's a human phenomenon, as common in Paris as in Boston and San Diego. One also hears it constantly from any New Yorker who has ever chosen to settle elsewhere.*

But, as Italo Calvino hints in his book Invisible Cities, in which narrator Marco Polo describes a seeming infinity of exotic metropolises that all turn out to be Venice, cities might more accurately be considered closed system unto themselves, incomprehensible to outsiders. Narrator Marco Polo's descriptions exceed the imagination his interpellator Kublai Khan, and indeed of the reader. It's impossible to accurately judge one city by the scale of another.

So far, the greatest benefit I've derived from this way of thinking is that it has permitted me to love Le Mary Celeste, an oyster bar some good friends recently opened in the Marais.

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine alain burguet, gevrey-chambertin

My caviste friend J had prepped me for my first jaunt through Burgundy by explaining that while the vignerons we know in the Loire and the Jura might be charming hosts, their counterparts in Burgundy typically react to new buyers by performing a sort of social tornado drill, covering the head with both arms and hiding under a desk away from windows until danger has passed. With the awareness that it's nothing personal, just a function of overwhelming demand, one just grins through it and learns not to expect too much from first-time visits.

What we certainly didn't expect from our first visit to Domaine Alain Burguet in Gevrey-Chambertin was to encounter two extremely genial, curious, dynamic young winemakers - Burguet's sons, Eric and Jean-Luc - whose Odd Couple-esque dialogues during the tasting were nearly as enjoyable as the wines themselves.

sancerre & sweetbread: christophe, 75005

Until just recently I'd had the erroneous impression that when one ordered sweetbreads, it was generally a plural thing. Several little ones, like chicken nuggets, as several chefs have affectionately described them to me over the years. Turns out I'd been thinking only of the thymus or "throat" sweetbread, not of the similarly named but rather larger pancreas or "heart" sweetbread.

Odd that one almost never sees the distinction made on menus. Perhaps the unconcious logic of this is that sweetbreads are more appealing the less diners know about their origins.

Anyway, as pictured above, it is the pancreas they serve at 5ème vegetarian-unfriendly restaurant Christophe. A particularly large one at that. When it hit the table the other night I actually gasped, thinking I'd been served some kind of primordial Pangea sweetbread sourced from the neck of Babe the Blue Ox, or something.