Dinner in Paris: Fogón

In his book Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters (see review here), Jonathon Nossiter states "For me, one of the most joyous eating experiences to be found in Paris today is at a Spanish restaurant, El Fogón on the quai.  The cuisine of the forty-year-old Galician Alberto Herraiz is a wholly authentic expression of terroir -- and yet there is no more radical and innovative food to be found in Paris ..."  Wanting to be on the receiving end of this "joyous eating experience," I presented myself at the door of Fogón on my most-recent visit to Paris.

Given my predilection for spending my vacation at ruins and museums, I was warned by my travelling companions (my wife Parlo and Lauren, daughter of our good friends) that this trip was going to be short on culture and long on shopping and eating.  That turned out to be the case on our first full day in Paris -- a Sunday -- as we had a late brunch and then began cruising the stores in the vicinity of Rue Rivoli between Boulevard de Sebastopol and Rue de Pont Neuf.  As my feet began to tire under the strain, I began to harbor thoughts of this being the day for Fogón.  I communicated that plan to my team and we headed off in the direction of the restaurant; as indicated by my trusty iPad.  After a fairly lengthy walk, we got to the restaurant at about 6:00 pm ... they were not yet open ... and it was beginning to rain.  The restaurant did not open until 7:00 and the natives were becoming restless.  My travelling companions were not as invested in Fogón as I was and wanted to go elsewhere rather than wait.  As we discussed the options, we ducked into a French "sports bar" where I ordered a glass of cruddy red wine and sulked.

After we had sat around for awhile waiting for the rain to abate, me staring sulkily at the multiple television screens transmitting sports programming as varied as Australian Rules Football and the British Open, and my companions uncomfortably staring at the food menu, Parlo asked to be excused and rolled out of there with Lauren trailing behind her.  When they came back about 10 minutes later, they said that we had a 7:00 pm dinner reservation at Fogón.  I had won.  They could not deal with my surliness and had buckled.  I was ecstatic (not about winning, but about the upcoming meal). It was pretty close to 7:00 so I paid the bill hurriedly, all the while thanking Parlo and Lauren for doing the "right thing", and promising to pay penance the following day on Rue de Faubourg St Honoré (and pay I did the following day).

The restaurant is located at 45 Quai des Grands Augustins, only a block away from the sports bar.  As we approached, we saw potential patrons huddled around a copy of the menu which was emplaced in a glass-enclosed case on the outside wall of the building.  We pulled on the brass door handle, opened the door and

stepped into a narrow dining room with circular tables just inside the doorway and then tablecloth-covered, rectangular tables against both walls and separated by a long, narrow walkway which led to a slightly raised platform at the back of the room with tables for additional customer seating.  The kitchen was located just beyond this platform sitting area.

We were the first customers in the establishment and were ushered to seats at the center of the room on the left side of the passageway.  We took our seats and noted that tabletops were bare save for the coverings and glass candle-holders; no napkins, no silverware, etc.  We twiddled our thumbs and looked around nonchalantly, waiting for something for something to happen when, Voila!  Lauren had pulled on what appeared to be a drawer handle and, lo and behold, it was a drawer; and in it were napkins and cutlery.  And we each had our own drawer.  We were like little kids with this novelty.

A waiter came over and offered us menus.  I ordered a bottle of Duval Leroy Champagne to support us during our review of the food choices.  In our discussions with the waiter, he enthusiastically recommended the paella.  Nossiter was not a big fan of the paella and, instead, had waxed poetic about the tapas offerings.  We wanted to explore a representative slice of the restaurants specilaities and so opted for a mix of tapas dishes and a paella.

The first food item deliverd to us was an off-white Gazpacho in a glass.  The taste and texture was a complex mix of tangy and creamy and it was phenomenal, especially when paired with the Duval Leroy.  While we were emerging from states of stunned reverence induced by the Gazpacho, the waiter brought us a platter of cured ham (Nossiter described this ham lovingly as "... vintage Belota Pata Negra ham, aged in the restaurant for several years ..."), French white bread enclosed in individual brown cloth pillow cases, and a serving of Rolled Beef Brisket.

The first course was scheduled to be a fish tapas so I ordered a bottle of 2009 El Perro Verde Verdejo as an accompaniment.  This wine was light and aromatic with hints of tomato and anise.  The fish tapas, when it arrived, included Mackerel, Dorad, and Calamari portions.  The Calamari, nestling in a water-glass-shaped container, was light and airy, slightly salty, and was co-resident with shaved, light-green-colored

Plantain chips, all on a bed of salad.  When this concoction was stirred in the glass, it became lemon-infused.  There was a crunchiness in the mouth resulting from concealed nuts as well as the Plantain shavings.  To die for.  The Dorad rested on a bed of pureed tomatoes, green onions, squash, strawberries, and bok choy and was fried to a slight crispiness.  This was another mouth-watering invention.  The Verdejo was more than hanging in there.  The dish was decorated with dried black olives that struck a discordant note on the palate. The Mackerel was wrapped in legumes and surrounded by a Raspberry sauce and Squid Ink.  It had a slightly musty, tangy taste.  Overall, a big tip of a big hat to the tapas offerings.

At about this time we lifted our collective heads from our plates long enough to survey our surroundings.  The restaurant was now pretty crowded (it had seating for about 55 people) and many of the groupings seemed to be family gatherings.  There was a restrained familiarity in the interplay between the waiters and some of the groups which pointed to regularity of patronage.  But, back to the business at hand.

Our main course was a communal Paella which was brought to the table in the pan in which it was prepared.  The rice was intermixed with a heavy brown stew and, like soldiers in formation, a row of Langoustines

was arrayed across the pan on te surface of the rice.  The Langoustines melted in the mouth while the Paella exhibited a smokiness with citrus undertones.  The Paella was excellent but lost the sensory race to the tapas plates.  The Verdejo, which was good unaccompanied, rose to another level when asked to walk hand-in-hand with these culinary delights.

This restaurant is an excellent choice when you are in Paris.  The food is spectacular and the service exemplary (A shout out to Alexon, our gustatory guide on this journey.  Here he is below.).  Reservations are required.

Spanish Wines and the Modernist versus Traditionalist Battles

In his book Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters, Jonathon Nossiter lauds French (Anjou, Touraine, Chablis, Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, Rhone, Provence, and Jura), Italian (Friuli, Sardignia, Umbria), and German wine regions for resisting the homogenization wave but is especially hard on the Spanish wine industry for its "abdication."  According to Nossiter, "a disaster has befallen the Spanish wine industry over the past 15 years."  With very few exceptions (Manzanilla Sherry and 20+-year-old Tondonia Rioja Blanco), the "whites are alcohol heavy, lacking any balancing acidity, cloyingly fruity, battered and botoxed by new oak" while the reds are "overconcentrated, overripe, saccharine, syrupy, and also artificially wrinkle-free."

Writing, longingly, in the Old World Old School blog, Joe Maneken hearkens back to a period 15 years in the past when Spanish winemakers picked their grapes before they became super-ripe and aged their wines for long periods in oak (mostly American) or concrete.  Some of the resulting wines were oaky, dried out, and lacking in vibrancy but many were "distinctive and delicious" at reasonable prices.  Writing in The World of Fine Wines, Mike Steinbereger, commenting on Spanish wines, indicated that "much of Spain is a black hole these days."

Why did Spain, with a wine tradition stretching as far back as its fellow Roman-era European cohorts, and with the largest area under vine of any country in the world, succumb where others did not.  Nossiter points to two potentially contributory factors.  First, Spain had experienced societal repression under Franco and, like the Pastor's children, once freedom was gained they became susceptible to "edgy fruit."  Second, one way for the nouveau riche to gain social acceptance is to own a vineyard and many of Spain's new vineyard owners, according to Nossiter, have made their fortunes outside of the winemaking industry and are driven by other than "traditional" values.  He illustrates the point by relating the story of Fernando Ramirez Ganuza, a real estate tycoon who bought land and established his brand in 1992  and by 1998 was receiving 95 and 96 points from Parker for his "jammy" Rioja wines.  When Nossiter met with him in Madrid in 2006, Ganuza told him that Rioja was a brand ( a marketing conception) rather than a terroir.

Steinberger, while being firmly rooted in the traditionalist camp, does see some benefits accruing to the wine industry as a result of the modernist movement.  For example, while their luster is fading, Super Tuscans gave "Tuscan winemaking a dynamism" that was sorely lacking and raised winemaking standards throughout the region.  French garage wines, while in retreat, have attracted great attention to the St. Emilion region and have shown that winemaking can be practiced outside the hallowed halls of the Bordeaux chateaux.  Steinberger sees the modernist movement in retreat (changing sensibilities; global economic crisis; a renewed passion for the authentic, the local, the natural; and the waning influence of previously influential wine critics) but posits that the modern versus traditional battle has redounded to the overall benefit of the wine industry.

Book Review: Liquid Memory

Jonathon Nossiter's Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters, with its treatment of taste, power, and globalization, is a very good cultural anthropology treatise.  Those treatments, plus its treatment of "winespeak", selected wine regions, abdication of wine culture by a number of wine regions, and the psyche and philosophy of some of the leading Burgundian vignerons, makes this one of the best wine books I have ever read.

The author is a filmmaker, probably best known for his film Mondovino, a documentary on the impact of wine globalization.   He has studied Greek language, literature and history; worked as a sommelier; lived in Paris (where his father was stationed as an international correspondent); and is currently living in Brazil, where there is a body of socially conscious, some would say reactionary, literature and film.  All of these influences are reflected in this work.  The author describes the book as an "involuntary guidebook" and a "polemic against all those critics and arbiters who purport to speak with authority and are taking most of the fun and almost all of the culture out of wine these days."  Its purpose, stated in the Introduction, is to "attempt to transmit something of the sensual and intellectual delight that wine has brought me since childhood" and its audience is those who are "skeptical of jargon, defensive snobbery, or any one of power that obstructs the uncovering of one's own taste."

The book is organized along three broad themes.  In the early sections, the author is focused on defining and identifying taste.  For most of its second half, the author is focused on coming up with alternatives to the dreaded winespeak. In the last part of the book, it is Mondovino redux (somewhat) as the author decries the effects of globalization/homgenization on the world's wine regions and the contributions of Michel Rolland and Robert Parker to this "travesty."

In the introductory section of the book, the author engages in a thought-provoking discussion of wine as liquid memory (the title of the book) and as a medium for an evolving transmitter of terroir as it changes in the bottle (In the first chapter the author acknowledges that there are forces arrayed against the notion of terroir. Terroir, he says, is not "a reactionary, unquestioning clinging to tradition."  Instead, it is a "will to progress into the future with a firm rootedness in the past ... a way to counteract the relentless homogenization of certain global forces.").  From this base he continues on to a discussion of taste and power and how important it is for an individual to be the arbiter of his/her own taste. "The moment you abdicate responsibility for your own taste is the moment you voluntarily abdicate your own freedom."

The first two chapters appeared to be as much about film as it was about wine and I found this disconcerting.  The author was liberal in his use of analogies and these analogies were always drawn from the world of film and film making.  Two especially jarring practices were the gratuitous use of "flashback" and imbuing us with the pervasive sense that we were reading "the Making of Mondivino."  At one point the references to Mondovino were so thick and so fast that I wondered whether Mondivino should be a pre-requisite to the book. But he rights the ship and takes us on a journey to some of his favored (and not so favored) restaurants, wine bars, and wine shops in Paris and through gripping, in-depth interactions with Burgundian vignerons Jean-Marc Roulet, Christophe Roumier, and Dominique Lafon.

This is a well-written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book written with a filmmaker's eye for detail and clearly presents the author as a learned individual possessing excellent breadth as well as depth.  The author is not at all ambivalent about what he thinks is wrong with today's wine culture or who is responsible for the current state of affairs.  He is laudatory of Burgundy, Italy (with the exception of the Super Tuscans), Germany and Austria for not succumbing to the siren song of Parker-influenced, American-market-driven taste and excoriates Spain (especially), Argentina, and Chile for yielding their internal winemaking traditions (in the case of Spain going back centuries) to the Rolland/Parker vision of what taste is.  Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this book is a must-read.