Red Light

We stayed at the W hotel in South Beach for a few days recently.  The dark and airy lobby of the hotel, which opened less than a year ago, is decorated with striking pieces of contemporary art by major artists—Damien Hirst, George Condo. It’s a salute to Art Basel, but the place didn’t seem lit well enough to really encourage you to stop and look, only to admire their presence there, as celebrities.

Aldo was rather baffled while sitting in the lobby, next to a table adorned with a statue of a small, golden pig: A member of the staff stepped up quietly, said, “I think it looks better here,” and moved it over to the next table. Did she think Aldo would steal it? Or did she really think it deserved to be placed at Spot B instead of Spot A? To Aldo, it felt vaguely like a lost incident from Henry James’ Spoils of Poynton.

But our room was chic and light, with a sort of chandelier made of small cystal discs that reached from ceiling to floor. It was lovely, and stirred like a wind chime whenever the sliding glass doors were open. It also chimed when the air-conditioning was on a night: That was an odd effect, to lie there and hear the whoosh of the fan kicking in and, a few seconds later, the air stirring in the crystals.

We spent a few hours by the pool, but felt rather restless. There is the old wisdom of Pascal: Man’s problems could all be avoided if he would be content to just sit in a room. Or by a pool. Pascal probably never got invited along on anyone’s vacations.

So we drove into Miami and its Design District, where it always seems to be high noon: There’s a shadowless quiet to the streets. I’m surprised skinny dogs aren’t spotted loping around the corners looking hungry and worried. We had our first night’s dinner there at Sra. Martinez. This is a high-end tapas-style restaurant run by Michelle Bernstein. She’s best known for Michy’s, a zesty little restaurant further up Biscayne Boulevard in the funky-desolate row known as MiMo (Miami Modern).We settled on Sra. Martinez this time rather than Michy’s after Frank Bruni wrote it up—yes, we were on the Frank Bruni Trail. You didn’t think we’re the types who rough it, did you?

We can only lament, once again, the tragedy of the American tapas joint. The food was, on the whole, very good—the standout was a small risotto with calamari and chimichuri. But it’s frustrating to determine how much to order, and the plates keep coming out like some enchanted ballet from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The large box of a room (the building used to be a post office) was done up with reds and browns to create the ambiance of a prosperous old bordello or a place where Elvis might have ordered shots of tequila. We drank a rose, Quinta Clarisa 2007, produced by Belondrade y Lurton, but frankly you can’t enjoy a rosé with that sort of color palate. Or that large a space, or that prolific a menu. A rosé calls for less fuss.

The biggest culinary success in the Design District remains Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink, where we had lunch two days in a row—salads: one of rock shrimp, another of heirloom tomatoes and beets. Aldo thought he saw the photographer Bruce Weber there  eating beneath the trees outside, but there are plenty of burly white-bearded men who wear bandanas on their heads. It could have been a retired pirate.

We returned to MiMo for our favorite meal, dinner at the enjoyably bizarre Red Light, stuck to the side of something called Blue Motel—old motels run up and down Biscayne, as if Norman Bates had gone on a building spree. Its ground floor looks like a cheap, retro diner. It made Aldo think of the old 24-hour Manhattan Meat Market hangout, Florent, and also of one of those twilight settings in a David Lynch movie. We ate outdoors and downstairs, at a table overlooking the Little River. This felt, strangely enough, like the waterfront club where Blanche Dubois does her damnedest to win over dumb old Mitch with the help of extremely dim, age-concealing lighting.

The wine list was rather frustrating, since that night it only offered, at most, five bottles. We settled on an albarino, which was served too cold—icy. There was a puzzlingly long wait for appetizer salads—the place wasn’t too busy—but our swordfish was excellent: deeply tangy. We would eat there again, without hesitation. Good food, and an atmosphere that’s both seductive and vaguely disorienting. Aldo in particular seems to enjoy this sort of thing.

Our last dinner was at Area 31 in the Epic hotel: We ate high up in the sky, on a terrace overlooking the city. Aldo, in fact, began suffering little twinges of vertico, and had to move his chair to look away. No one seemed to have thought to make this huge terrace a more attractive dining area: The lighting was harsh and, for some reason, clustered around the floor of the main entrance to the terrace. You felt as if accent lighting was being directed toward your seated torso. But we both had excellent servings of cuttlefish, which you don’t see often in Manhattan, and with it we selected a delightful Jura wine, the Arbois Puffeny 2003, from a very pleasing wine list.

We were seated next to a table of terribly arty people with two little dogs. Terribly arty people seem even more terribly arty outside the context of New York, and their little dogs seem even more ridiculously dainty—although these people and their dogs may have been from Manhattan.

This is snobbery, I suppose, but it’s true.

The Little River

Sextant
2007
12.8% alc.
Bourgogne
St. Aubin, France

This is an unusual pale-gold Burgundian chardonnay—something of a chameleon.  After opening it, I encountered initial aromas of moss, bark and bay leaves. There were rear-palate flavors of clove, lemon, grapefruit, cinnamon and crisp apple. The wine’s high acidity gave it a long length.  Later, however, the nose deepened, giving off whiffs of lilac. The flavors on the palate moved to the front and were less fruity, while leaving a creamier, sensual mouthfeel.  As if Gigi grew into a fetching courtesan in a matter of hours. Importer: Savio Soares Selecions. $19.00

Andreas Baron Widman
Sudtiroler
Vernatsch
2008
12.5%
Alto Adige, Italy

Schiva. In the UK, it is Black Hamburg.  The Germans call it trollinger. In Northern Italy’s South Tyrol, it is vernatsch.  The vine thrives in the Tyrol with little attention. The grape is hardy, productive.  Maybe that’s why the vine is popular in the flatter lands of the region.  It serves as the base of many tourist wines, often blended with ligroin.  But plant Schiava on the steep hillsides of the Alto Adige, prune the vine, ripen it and carefully vinify it, and a good producer can win some charm from this ordinary table grape.  The 2008 vintage has a pale ruby core accompanied by pleasant aromas of tea, cranberry, orange peel and rose petals.  The broad midpalate flavors of musk, dry leaves and cranberry (and a slight touch barnyard) were immediate with medium length. This medium-bodied, medium-concentrated wine had low firm tannins. Overall, the impression was of a lean, supple wine. You could drink it daily with most meals. In my house, it was a perfect accompaniment to sausages, polenta and stir-fried green beans with basil. Importer: Petit Pois Corp.  $23.00.

Aziendo Agricola Bruna
u Baccan
Pigato
2007
13.5% alc.
Liguria, Italy

Ten years ago, you might find a bottle or two of a pigato from Liguria in New York.  Now pigato is more prevalent here. This one is among the best.  A well-structured tonic, it has a stylized peasant allure that speaks of the steep Ligurian seaside vineyards.  (And who says you can’t have a stylish peasant?) In the glass, this wine sits pale gold with an appealing waxy floral aroma.  The wine had a crispness that gave its medium intense flavors of ginger, pear, pine, herbs and white peaches a long length with a slight pear finish. As the wine opens, more tropical notes are revealed.  Though not quite full-bodied, it had a nice rounded concentration of flavor.  This is not the quaffer pigato your parents may have had at a bus stop in San Remo. And what did I eat with it? Pesto walnut pasta with yellow squash.    Robert Chadderdon Selectons.  $31.00.

3/1/10

A memory from a few, very cold days spent in Alsace. One afternoon we left Strasbourg for a drive through the small vineyard towns to the south. Frigid air, intermittent sun, fields mostly brown and, one might think, shivering beneath a light blanket of old snow. Andrew Wyeth in France.  This vineyard was just outside Ribeauvillé.