An Honest Man

Perhaps the single greatest food produced in America is the tomato. It is the only vegetable product that can satisfactorily replace meat as the primary ingredient in a sandwich. Thickly slice a ripe tomato, place it on fresh country bread, add mayonnaise. That's all you need. (Peanut-butter-and-jelly is almost as good, but it requires a crutch—an accompanying class of cold milk.) And, of course, there's the beloved bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, certainly among the five greatest of all time.

The simplest tomatoes, in season, are as good as the heirloom varieties that cost $6.98 a pound in silly places like farmer's markets and gourmet stores. In fact, they're better. The very best tomatoes of the year are available right now. They grow in your neighbor's yard.

They are as wonderful as ripe peaches that drop from trees in Georgia or sweet corn languishing in fields in New Jersey. Unlike peaches and corn, neighbor's tomatoes are close at hand. They are unguarded and irresistible. They are asking to be plucked.

With corn and peaches, we have no choice but to eat what is gruesomely referred to as "supermarket produce." The really good stuff is inaccessible. Tomatoes, on the other hand, are in our neighbor's yards. In my case, I can practically reach over and pick a few tomatoes from my neighbor's plants without crossing the property line. What makes them even more irresistible is that my neighbors have foolishly planted these tomato plants out of sight of their house. If I trespassed, they could neither see me nor shoot me.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't eventually notice. If I took a bunch, they'd eventually realize something was missing from their tomato plants—the tomatoes. On the other hand, throughout the course of the summer they have offered me none whatsoever, and isn't that wrong, too?

Is it a bad thing, I ask you, to pilfer a neighbor's tomatoes? Isn't it they who are behaving badly by not sharing? Isn't it true that revolutions are ignited by those who have little, like me, and resent those that have so much, like them? And what of the forgotten fruit, perfectly ripe, that is about to fall from the vine were I not to move quickly and save it from splattering? Would I not be doing the plant a favor by saving its tomatoes from an ignominious fate?

It's not like I could grow my own. I could design a rocket that would hit the moon before I could cause a plant to grow.

There's another point to consider: If the neighbors saw me, would they call the police? I telephoned my village police force and asked the officer on duty if anybody had ever been arrested for stealing a neighbor's tomato. He said, "Not to my knowledge."

I don't know how much longer I can restrain myself. I keep thinking, if the police do come, won't they accept a bribe of a perfect BLT?

America, We Have a Drinking Problem

In recent weeks, I've come across two alcohol oddities.

A friend e-mailed me to say that he tried to have a beer at Mr. Chow TriBeCa, a recently opened New York restaurant, and was thrown out because he didn't have a reservation for dinner. He wrote, "We take seats at the bar, place our order, receive our drinks. The bartender asks us for the name our table is under. I assume she wants to transfer the bar bill to the dining bill."

Well, he assumed wrong. It turns out that if you don't eat at Mr. Chow, you don't drink at Mr. Chow.

My friend says he was informed that the bar was reserved for customers awaiting tables. He pointed out somewhat grumpily that if the restaurant seated people on time, such a rule would be unnecessary.

According to his report, a hostess came over and rudely told him and his friends to finish their drinks and leave. He asked me if I could make sense of such a rule, but I cannot. I called the restaurant to ask for policy enhancement and a reservationist was only able to reiterate that it was "house policy." She had no idea why. My guess is that the Mr. Chow restaurant empire survives by convincing patrons that it is some sort of fashionable and exclusive club, and entrée into the bar is one of the benefits. (For more insights into the wacky world of Mr. Chow, see Frank Bruni's New York Times review, which ran on June 28.)

A little later I saw a story in the St. Petersburg Times about a customer who was tossed from Carlie's Lounge because of a drinking problem—he refused to consume alcohol. According to the story, Gary Maujean Jr., a designated driver, was allegedly told by the owner to drink or leave. The altercation that followed ended, according to the newspaper, with a bouncer jumping to the aid of the owner. Maujean required 18 stitches in his arm.

What these occurrences say to me is that we might want to revisit one of America's great lost traditions. It was called Prohibition.

Those Vegas Buffets Are Hard to Beat

Entering a small Las Vegas restaurant not long ago, I paused in the tiny foyer to read a whole wall of reviews, each more flattering than the next. Most declared Lotus of Siam to be the greatest Thai restaurant in America. I had difficulty getting through them all, because I was practically trampled by customers pouring in to get at the buffet the restaurant offers at lunch.

I joined the flow, grabbed a table. The much-praised chef was on the premises, stirring the chow mein on the buffet line. At the table next to mine was an egg-roll-eating, cell-phone-talking buffet patron. From the surprisingly interesting wine list, I ordered a bottle of 1998 Mosel, a German Riesling. The waiter paid little attention and brought me a glass of Riesling from a bottle I'm certain was not opened that day.

I had to decide: Do I go for the buffet or order the greatest Thai food in America? I'm not a buffet guy, so I went for authenticity. I selected two dishes on the Thai menu—deep-fried catfish slices in red-curry paste, and a crispy mussel omelet with spicy sweet sauce. The catfish slices were so thin I could taste nothing but curry paste. The mussel omelet was superb where crispy, but it had a gooey, translucent, gelatinous center, as though an alien life form—or maybe cornstarch—had burrowed its way inside. Maybe I'm not a Thai food guy, either.

I left my food, my wine, and my money. I made my way past the wall of kudos. As I walked to my car, this is what I was thinking: Maybe there is something to be said for Vegas buffets, after all.

McDonald's Was Right

Following a dispute among three McDonald's customers over which of them was next in line to order breakfast, one of the women allegedly waited in ambush outside the restaurant and hit the other two with her car, causing injuries.

Until now, I've never believed McDonald's claim that it wasn't the burgers that would kill you.

Science Marches On

What all of us want is a drinkable $5 wine, don't we? Or maybe what we want is a woman who won't sneer at us when we open a $5 wine.

Wines that inexpensive are not for sniffing or scoring. They don't require a 100-point rating scale. They're strictly pass or fail. They're for gulping, and if you've forgotten how to do that, it's time to stop pondering the meaning of $100 Chardonnays and relax.

Recently I tasted six different $5 wines from Gallo, all of them bottled in standard 750-milliliter sizes. My stash of Gallo Family Vineyards Twin Valley wines included three reds (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Hearty Burgundy), two whites (Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc), and one sweet rosé (White Zinfandel). I cooked up a couple of burgers to find out which wine matched up best.

I have to say, not one was great with an unadorned burger on a bun. The food was just too bland for the wines and exposed their flaws—yes, all $5 wines have flaws. I pressed on with my experimentation, motivated by a deep commitment to science. I added ketchup.

In doing so, I believe I made one of the great discoveries of my lifetime. Two elemental culinary forces—Hearty Burgundy and ketchup—are made for one another.

Hearty Burgundy, once the most cherished of all American jug wines and now elevated to Twin Valley status, is not Burgundy and is only hearty in comparison to, say, a Volnay, which is a Burgundy. In today's world of mammoth red wines, it's a middleweight. But it seems to have been around as long as wine has been in existence. Gallo is an old Italian name, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hearty Burgundy was the house wine at the Roman Coliseum.

Ketchup, of course, is pure Americana, salsa for the midwest. When I realized that it went perfectly with Hearty Burgundy, I felt like Isaac Newton discovering gravity. Ketchup and Hearty Burgundy are strongly similar in sweetness, flavor profile and body. They go best when the wine is slightly chilled, like the ketchup.

I have discovered the secret of Hearty Burgundy's longevity: It's America's ketchup wine.

Not Old Fish—Fish the Old Way

Buffet de la Gare in New York's Westchester County is small, old, funny looking, and a little forgotten. It has a wooden floor, globe lights, a tin ceiling, and—if you can imagine this—tin walls.

A friend who joined me for dinner said he felt like we were stranded in a Paris suburb, which was a great description, except I'd like to know the Paris suburb that is known for tin walls. We went there because I'm always on the lookout for places that do classic French food, which is an all-but-forgotten dining option. Classic French food prepared with care is difficult to find even in France, and I wasn't expecting much from Buffet de la Gare. Westchester County has few restaurants that do any food carefully.

Our food was oversauced, but classic French food often is, so no complaints. And if I can't complain about that, I can't complain about anything. The restaurant does nice work.

I ordered the striped bass. A big thrill for me was reading on the menu that the fish would be flamed in Pernod. I have to say my excitement abated when the flaming took place in the kitchen, not in the dining room. A major concept behind such a dish, of course, is that diners be entertained, not the kitchen help.

Still, the food was wonderful, and my fish was pristinely fresh. It was prepared in the French style, which means cooked to softness without being dry or overdone, and the sauce was sumptuous, as classic sauces are supposed to be.

I realize that few people on earth, least of all the French, appreciate this sort of eating anymore, but I continue to insist that when it is done well, with excellent ingredients, no cuisine is more breathtaking.

Getting It Right, Finally

Duckhorn's Three Palms Vineyard Merlot comes from one of those individual vineyard sites that increases the value of and the demand for a wine.  (Probably only Heitz's Martha's Vineyard is more famous.)  Three Palms was first produced by Duckhorn in 1978, and since then it has represented tradition and dependability.  I have only one problem with it.  The wine is not particularly good.

For decades, Duckhorn's Cabernets have been better than its Merlots.  Among its Merlots, other bottlings are often superior to Three Palms.

I recently tried Duckhorn's 2004 Migration, a $30 Pinot Noir.  I can't recall being more thrilled by a Duckhorn wine.  It was polished and balanced, bright and bouncy, an exemplary Pinot Noir with a smidgen of Burgundy-like earthiness.  It was everything a California Pinot Noir should be, and it came at a more-than-fair price.

Migration doesn't appear to be particularly important to Duckhorn.  You have to poke around the winery website before it pops up as the secondary wine of Goldeneye, its more expensive Pinot Noir.  It is somewhat disparagingly referred to as "a lighter alternative to the rich, structured" Goldeneye.  Even the name, which refers to the migration of goldeneye ducks, isn't that complimentary.  In other words, if you can't get or afford the Goldeneye Pinot Noir, Migration will do.

There's a pattern here.  Goldeneye, the wine with the fancy pedigree, is celebrated.  Ditto for Three Palms Vineyard Merlot.  There's a lesson here, too.  Quite often wineries do their best work when they don't take themselves so seriously.

Big Tipper

Marvin Shanken, the supreme leader (editor, publisher, chairman) of Wine Spectator, went to dinner with three friends and spent $300 on food and $1200 on wine. This was not a financial strain. Add to his many titles this one: The Richest Wine Magazine Owner on Earth.

He tipped $60 on food. That's fine.

He tipped $90 on wine. He admitted this in the current issue of his magazine. Came right out and said it. I've never thought of the Wine Spectator as a gutsy magazine, but Shanken is one gutsy guy. He basically confessed to being The Most Mean-Spirited Wine Magazine Owner on Earth.

The purpose of his declaration, ostensibly, was to encourage a lively discussion of tipping. Such a dialogue could have been useful, but what he really did was proclaim himself one of the most loathed of restaurant patrons, a rich guy who stiffs the help. Tipping in restaurants is not, as Shanken seems to think, about calculating the minimum amount of cash you can get away with leaving on the table. That's an ugly way to end a meal.

Shanken tipped 7.5 percent on wine. You don't have to know a lot about restaurant etiquette to know that you never tip 7.5 percent on anything. Let's say that you—we'll call you Not the Richest Wine Magazine Owner on Earth—have dinner with a friend and order two entrées and a $45 Merlot. According to Shanken, you should leave a $3.38 tip on the wine. Please don't.

I have better advice. If money is tight, ask for one entrée, split it, and leave a good tip. It's better to be hungry than to be a bum.

Soft Meat, Soft Men

There it was, on the menu at L'Impero: Slow-Roasted Veal Chop. L'Impero is one of the most satisfying restaurants in Manhattan. It's a gem. If you eat there, the extra-creamy polenta with mushrooms is not to be missed. Have the chilled pea soup with crab and the spaghetti with tomato and fresh basil. I do not recommend the slow-roasted veal chop, even if it will be exquisitely prepared, moist, and rich. A friend and I shook our heads when we saw it. What an indignity.

We're seeing more and more of this these days, the shameful roasting of meats meant to be broiled. Remember when cooking for men meant hurling slabs of cow flesh under violent flames? Maybe the cooks of today are afraid of getting their eyebrows singed, because wussy meat is the rage. It's another dining trend to decry.

Soft meat makes for soft men. Your beef or veal or pork comes from the oven pale and limp, barely pink in the center, its manliness extinguished. It flops around on the plate when you try to cut it. It melts in your mouth, like tofu.

Missing is the crust, the crunch, the atavistic and symbolic slaying of the beast. And to make matters worse, the absolute worst wine to pair with this kind of preparation is Cabernet Sauvignon. A young, tannic, monstrous red wine will often taste rough until it meets up with fatty, burned beef. Cabernet and char is a perfect pairing.

You might as well get a wine lesson out of this. The correct beverage to match with clammy meat is a German Riesling. Works perfectly. I guess it's time you learned the dubious pleasure of drinking a Spätlese Halbtrocken with your slow-roasted steak.

Mr. Big Shot

I'm a regular at Rao's.

I hope you know what that means. Rao's is not just any Italian restaurant. It's a legendary Italian restaurant in New York's East Harlem where every table is taken every night. Don't even think of trying to get in. You call, nobody answers the phone. You write a letter, your postman wakes up the next morning with the head of his prized racehorse in bed with him.

That last statement is not true. I got carried away. I'll explain why in a minute.

Most people who are regulars at Rao's get a table once a week or once a month. They ask friends to go with them, and no matter what prior arrangement the friends might have, they cancel it and go to Rao's. The seafood salad is that good. As for me, I have a table once every two years. I'm lucky to have that.

One day I went up to owner Frank Pellegrino, who knows me from a story I wrote about Rao's 20 years ago, and said, "I want to be a regular." He said, "What do you want?" I said, "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."

That last statement is not true. I got carried away again. I'll explain why in a minute.

I said, "How about a table every two years?" I figured that was such a pathetic request he couldn't deny it. He said yes. So once every two years, I get a mysterious call and the date and time of my table is revealed. I always show up.

I was at Rao's a couple of weeks ago. You know who else was there? Gianni Russo, who played Carlo in The Godfather. He's the one who married Connie in the opening wedding scene. Maybe you get a thrill out of seeing somebody like Brad Pitt, but for me, seeing Gianni Russo was better. That's why I haven't been able to stop repeating all those Godfather cliches. Russo is in his sixties now and looks great. He played a pathetic wife-beater in the film, but now he looks like he could break any of the other cast members in half. Of course, most of the other cast members are probably in nursing homes.

Enough of The Godfather. Rao's seafood salad (shrimp, crab, calamari in lemon sauce) is the greatest ever. The cheesecake is good, but not as good as it was in the eighties, when a lady from The Bronx made it. And I miss Jocko, the huge old black dog who went table-to-table, bumming cheesecake from guests. The restaurant has changed. It's like a party now, and it used to be more like a club.

The food isn't unbelievable. It's just good. Rao's is expected to open a branch in Las Vegas, at Caesars Palace, later this year. The food will probably be just as good as it is in Harlem, but the real challenge for Pellegrino will be transferring his unparalleled ambience to Vegas. He's one of the best restaurant hosts in America. We'll see if he can pull it off.

Pellegrino sings, too, accompanying the jukebox. I particularly like it when he sings "I Believe" by The Earls. It's great, although maybe not quite as wonderful as Johnny Fontaine singing to Connie when she married Carlo in one of the great doomed relationships of all time.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

My friends like to think of me as the angel of death where restaurants are concerned.

When something goes wrong at one of their meals, I get a call. They issue orders: Get even with that restaurant.

My very oldest friend recently called to complain about the intolerable abuse he suffered at a extremely popular new restaurant in Manhattan. "You won't believe how they treated us," he said.

I was prepared to be outraged.

"We ordered a bottle of wine and it didn't come until after we had finished our entrees."

Not good. The restaurant should have apologized, but it's hard to make up for that sort of slip. I mean, after customers have finished eating, what can a restaurant do? The chef can't very well send out another meal so they can start over again.

He continued: "The waiter came over and asked if we still wanted the wine. My mother-in-law said, 'We want it for free.' The discussion continued. My mother-in-law piped up again, 'We want it for free.'"

Over the years, I have learned a little about problem-solving in restaurants. I know nothing ever gets resolved if a third party pipes up, and it's worse if it's a mother or a mother-in-law. Nobody can tell them to shut up.

A couple days after the call, I telephoned the restaurant and spoke to the manager. There were only small discrepancies in the two versions of what took place. My friend says the wine was never offered free but desserts were, and when they refused desserts, the manager took the cost of their pre-dinner drinks, about $48, off the bill. The manager said the waiter offered free wine and free desserts and, when none of that pleased my friend, all their drinks and appetizers were taken off the bill. The cause of the wine problem seems to be in dispute. The manager says my friend ordered very late. My friend insists he did not.

"Awful, wasn't it?" asked my friend.

It was, but not in the way he thinks. His mother-in-law caused the crisis. The restaurant did fine.

Here's the essential problem, and it's widespread (in New York, it's an epidemic): Restaurant customers seem determined to get stuff free. It doesn't happen in dental offices or beauty salons or anywhere else when things go wrong. People who patronize restaurants seem to have trouble understanding that restaurants are not in business to give away food and wine.

Yes, a complimentary slice of bruschetta sent out from the kitchen is nice if you've been kept waiting at a bar for a half-hour because your table isn't ready. If you want extra bread in your basket, don't hesitate to ask. But if something goes wrong with your meal, don't demand free food or drinks as compensation. It's senseless. It's ugly.

The manager of this restaurant told me that that he thought there was "a certain extortionary quality" to all the demands that customers are making. He said it was getting worse. "People think freebees are an unspoken part of the contract. In addition to that, any good restaurant that has screwed up is going to want to make good. They want to offer an apology and kindness. But once you demand something, it's no longer fun for the restaurant or the customer. They've taken away from what they want, an apology and kindness. We don't feel good about it and the guest doesn't feel good about it."

Here's what to do in a restaurant if you feel you've been wronged: Let the host or the manager know, and allow them to make it up to you. If they fail to do so, you have two choices: 1) Don't go back; 2) Write a letter and see if you get an appropriate response.

By the way, the wine my friend ordered cost less than the $48 that was taken off his bill. The problem with him is that he's a New Yorker, and New Yorkers always want a better deal.

Give the Wine Guy a Save

Mo's New York Grill is a steakhouse (with a more extensive menu than most) named for and owned in part by Mariano Rivera, the much-loved relief pitcher for the New York Yankees. The restaurant opened last month in New Rochelle, a modest city in Westchester County, instead of in Manhattan. One might suspect the advantage of such a location would be plenty of parking, but Mo's has none. Surrounding streets are lined with one-hour meters, many in operation 24 hours a day. When I asked the maitre d' if quarters were available for patrons, he replied, "No." Welcome to Mo's.

The steaks are of pretty good quality, the rolls tasted a day old, and the lobster tails were easily the worst seafood I've had this century—salty, overcooked, and fishy. Eat one of those and you're headed for the 15-day disabled list.

The wine list was perplexing. It offered more than 75 selections, but only two of them included vintage years. Back in the bad old wine days, a trick employed by greedy restaurants was to purchase name wines from bad years for practically nothing and sell them at a high price to uninformed customers. There can be a lot of profit in bad years.

Much to my surprise, that didn't appear to be the motive at Mo's. I asked our waiter to explain the absence of vintage years. He said, "He couldn't get the years he wanted so he didn't put any on." It sounded to me as though "he"—whoever "he" was—had nothing but good intentions but got frustrated by his inability to access the wines he wanted. Still, leaving off vintage years makes no sense. Instead of a customer being disappointed when he looks over the list, the customer picks out a bottle, waits a long time for it to arrive, and is disappointed when he finally sees what it is.

I asked our waiter to find out the years of two red Burgundies, and somebody in a suit came over carrying both of them. The one listed as a village-level Pommard turned out to be a 2003 Jadot Pommard Clos de la Commaraine, a premier cru of some distinction. The price was $62, which is about what you'd pay for the wine in a retail store. The wine was young, but it had plenty of denseness, complexity and acidity, great for a steak.

It was the best part of our dinner. After one visit, I'd say Mo's needs plenty of work, but what's most easily fixed is that wine list, which is a lot better than it looks. The old hidden-ball trick no longer works in baseball, and the old hidden-vintage trick isn't appropriate in restaurants anymore, either.

Such a Deal

New York magazine recently published a list: The 101 Best Cheap Eats Restaurants in New York. I couldn't have been happier. I immediately headed off to the number two place on the list, Momofukou Noodle Bar. It gets five stars from the magazine. That's pretty good for noodles.

I had promised to treat three friends to dinner and it was going to cost me nothing. Nothing. I guess I'd forgotten in my cost-effective frenzy that the restaurant was in Manhattan's East Village. Nothing is cheap there anymore.

My friends and I sat in the rear, next to the very hot kitchen, on particularly uncomfortable stools. We ordered four appetizers, four noodle dishes, one bottle of sparkling water, and three extra-large beers. Service was exceptionally friendly. The appetizers were indeed five-star, particularly the pork buns (pork, hoisin-style sauce and cucumber on steamed buns) and the popcorn-sweetbreads. By the way, if you order the sweetbreads, skip the sweetbread dipping sauce. Even the sound of that—sweetbread dipping sauce—is disturbing. The noodle dishes were beautifully assembled, and I know they contained heirloom pig parts, or something nearly that swell, but they were still noodle dishes.

The cost of the meal, with tip, was almost $200. I admit that's not terrible for New York, but by any rational thinking, is that cheap? For noodles. On hard stools. I commend New York magazine on a wonderful list, but perhaps next year it should be labeled The 101 Best Not-Insanely-Expensive Restaurants In New York.

No Man's a Hero

To my regret, I recently had Sunday dinner with good friends. I picked a restaurant. My friend Michael rejected my choice because "the guys at work" had told him about a little Italian spot they said was great. You can see what was going on here—if you think restaurant critics are considered infallible, you've never been one. To him, my pick was no good. But "the guys at work" were masters of the culinary arts.

During dinner at this not-so-great little Italian spot, I told my friend's two sons that their father just wanted to prove that he and his pals knew more about food than I did. The nine-year old, Sandy, said, "I'll go with that." The seven-year old, Julian, the only person at the table on my side, added, "Even though he has no chance."

I behaved politely until my friend praised the cheese ravioli. I understand perfectly why he liked them. They were big and stuffed and heavy. They could have done secondary duty as sandbags. (We've been having a lot of flooding in this part of New York lately. We've even had a tornado.) Ravioli are among the most abused of Italian-American foods. In Italy, they are often delicacies. Over here, they are often canned. I can tell you where to find the absolutely best cheese ravioli in America. Maybe you, unlike my friends, will listen to me. The place is San Domenico, in Manhattan. The ravioli I'm talking about have a pretty pompous name—Ravioli Capresi Con Passato Di Pomodorini Di Collina—but they're actually quite simple: caciotta (mostly sheep's milk) cheese in a strained tomato sauce. They are nothing but lightness and flavor. I don't believe I've ever had their equal, even in Italy. If you think you've had better in America, please let me know.

Not Screwed At All

What all serious wine drinkers fear from the substitution of corks with screwtops is that aged wine won't taste the same. After all, years in contact with an organic material such as cork is likely to alter flavors. I sure don't care about the other major concern—that corks look expensive and screwcaps look like they belong on a $5.99 bottle. I don't think you should care, either. Screwtops do a great job if you're drinking the wine when it's young. No question about that.

But what about a wine with a few years in a bottle? I recently tried a 1999 PlumpJack Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon with a screwcap—I consider seven years to be medium aging for a California Cabernet. I wondered what the effects would be.

The wine was brick-red rather than vivid purple, a sign that the aging process was nicely underway. I detected two of the classic signs of a nicely developing Cabernet, spice and black currants, scents I'm reasonably certain wouldn't have been there at the time of bottling. Another plus: It was a lovely drink.

PlumpJack has been bottling its Reserve Cabernet with both corks and with screwcaps since 1997, as a test of divergence, and the winery claims that no noticeable differences have been detected. (The 2003 reserve is about to be released, if you want to conduct your own experiment.) It's too soon to tell for sure, but if screwtops continue to be successful, corks are doomed. And a lot of trees are saved.