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Austrian Wine Dinner
I celebrated my first day in Manhattan after Sandy by signing up last minute for the Austrian Wine Dinner at Corkbuzz on Monday night. There were just four of us, due to hurricane related cancellations, which meant we got plenty of one-on-one attention. The wine was all served cool or on ice, which was counter-intuitively…
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Astoria Tango Club
On my first visit to Buenos Aires, an expatriate American that I became acquainted with said to me that the city had a “theme”, which he smartly suggested to me was “nostalgia”. He pointed to the Kennedy-era cars on every block, the coffeehouses with their bow-tied waiters, the grand Parisian architecture, and, although he scarcely…
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Truffle Dinner
Halfway through this week’s Truffle Dinner at Corkbuzz, the sommelier’s table was a chaotic jumble of half consumed bottles of Nebbiolo, along with a few extras, but still awaiting the Pedro Ximenez that would top off the experience. As usual, both the food and the wine were superb, and went well together, with little flecks…
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Spanish Wine Dinner
At the Spanish Wine Dinner at Corkbuzz on Tuesday night, the labels alone were pretty intriguing, including one printed in Braille from a winery that uses blind persons, with their heightened taste buds and olfactory abilities, to test the wines. An interesting slide show accompanied the meal, narrated by Kerin Auth, who owns the excellent…
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Paul Auster
New York has a lot of national centers and institutes whose programming I follow, but FIAF (French Institute Alliance Français) may have the most interesting and provocative. I say that as someone whose second language, such as it is, is Spanish, and who knows French only insofar as it resembles that other Romance language, or…
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The Things of Life
I was attracted to the THE THINGS OF LIFE, the Claude Sautet series at The Film Society of Lincoln Center, as he is one of those directors whose work I do not know well but which is of evident quality and importance. A contemporary of Nouvelle Vague figures like Godard, Rohmer, Varda and Truffaut, he…
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Summer of Reisling
Since attending the SUMMER OF REISLING dinner at Corkbuzz on Monday evening I have stood corrected on the subject of Rieslings, which I have always regarded as a light, non-serious white, and usually a little too sweet, although refreshing enough as a summer accompaniment. Now I know courtesy of sommelier Laura Maniec and Reisling enthusiast…
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Spaghetti Western Festival
A Spaghetti Western Festival at Film Forum? I am SO in. I started with THE BIG GUNDOWN, which I had never seen, and that contains the memorable line: “In America being quick on the draw is more important than precise shooting,” and am looking forward to hour after hour of sweaty gunmen, ambiguous heroes, some…
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Pisco Portón
That, in the photo, is pisco in a specially designed pisco glass and how you sniff the pisco in advance of swushing it about in your mouth to adjudge its subtleties. It was a very informative talk that Pisco Portón founder Johnny Schuler gave on Saturday at Tutuma Social Club‘s Happy Hour, an event lubricated…
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White Box Project
I went through the Black and White Gallery in Williamsburg (manifestly in its white phase) beyond the white curtains into the white and off-white cinderblock courtyard to watch, hear, feel and participate in the WHITE BOX PROJECT by Noémie Lafrance. In the white-walled patio a crowd collected, slowly, of performers and guests, distinguishable only by…