A Greek Feast, 2005 Amethystos & 2006 Kouros

Whipped Caviar Tarama, Yogurt Tzatziki, Eggplant Melitzanisalata, Fassolia Beans, Manestra Pasta, Kalamaria, Dolmathes, Keftethes, Spanakopita, Pastitsio,…

These were some of the wonderful Greek dishes I had with my family in the later half of yesterday. Not exactly a traditional Independence Day fares, which usually involve lots of BBQ’s, beers and red Californian zinfandel. Let's just say we celebrated the 4th of July the Greek-American way at a popular local Greek restaurant not more than 5 minutes from where we live, called The Great Greek.


A bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champage got our appetite going as a starter beverage. And then a red 2005 Amethythos and a white 2006 Kouros accompanied the sumptuous Greek feast we had.

The non-vintage Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin is a nice standard fare Champagne…toasty, yeasty, with fine bubbles. It hit the spot well.

The 2006 Kouros, a white wine made from Rhoditis (aka: Roditis) grape variety, is from the southern part of Greece near Patras. This wine tasted dry and a bit citrussy, which went very well with the first course dishes of Greek salad, various creamy, whipped dips and other meze. It reminded me of a simple but pleasant Californian Sauvignon Blanc table wine. 2 stars (quite good).

The 2005 Amethystos from Adriani, Drama, is a blend of local Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Limnio, an indigenous Greek red wine grape variety. This wine apparently was aged in large, 225 litre French Limousin oak barrels for a year before being released. Lots of blueberry, some earthiness, talcum, and a bit of good funk. The tannin is quite pronounced, and the oak soft and judicious. Quite delicious. 3 stars (good, recommended).

I ended the meal with a plate Galaktobouriko, which personally was a bit too runny and salty for a dessert. A cup of super concentrated Greek coffee with a side of sticky sweet compliment called Loukomi ended the meal.

But what is a Greek feast without some live music and dance…

An Outdated Wine Menu and a Snobby Fromager

My wife and I were at the Patina restaurant again at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, and we were reasonably disappointed with the wine selections and the cheese service. (Patina was awarded Michelin 1-star and it is a member of Relais & Châteaux).

With the wine, it’s not that they don't have an expansive list. They do. In fact, their Bordeaux and Burgundy selections are in the hundreds or more. But we were in the mood for a bottle of great German Riesling to go with our light fish entrees. The German selections, consisting of only a few names, some of which are respected producers, occupy at most 1/4 of a page in their very extensive wine menu.

Our first choice was the 2004 Dr. Robert Weil Kiedricher Grafenberg Riesling, but they could not find it in the cellar. The same thing happened with our second choice, a Zeltinger Sonnenurh Riesling from a producer that I can't recall. The polite sommelier apologized and gave us a rather perplexing excuse: the German wines were selected by the previous Sommelier when they were still at the old location on Melrose Avenue, and that section has not been updated since.

Didn’t they move from the old location and into the Walt Disney Concert Hall 5 years ago? And isn’t the current Sommelier supposed to be responsible for what’s in the wine menu – and in the cellar – today?

The sommelier, however, graciously offered us a 2006 Gunderloch Kabinett as a replacement for the first two that they did not have. This wine would have been fine, but we were in the mood for something classier than Gunderloch’s bottom-of-the-line bottling. I declined the bottle.

So I chose an Alsatian Riesling by Zind-Humbretch from his Brand vineyard, instead. When the sommelier came back to the table to show me the label before uncorking the bottle, lo and behold it’s not what I have ordered! Wait a second here, I told him, I ordered Humbrecth’s Brand, not his Rangen de Thann. So again, he apologized and said the Brand was not available, too. Tired of probably sounding like a wine snob to the neighboring patrons, I told him that we’d go with this bottle. It’s a phenomenal and excellent wine by all account, but Alsatian Rieslings were never one I’d prefer with fish dishes. It’s too heavy and overwhelming with the lighter fares.

Fast forward to dessert, it was time for some of Patina’s well-regarded cheese selections. My wife and I love cheeses, but we are ones who never pay any attention to their names, types, where from, what from, etc. But we remembered one name that we liked from when we visited Patina the last time: Humbolt Fog, a California cheese.

The lady Fromager arrived at our table with her cart full of the day's cheese offerings. For some reason, we found her to be extremely snooty, as if the fact that we did not know what cheeses to choose was her license to be snobby. When we mentioned Humbolt Fog, she replied with an air of disdain that she did not carry any mass-produced cheeses. Only small production cheeses, she said. Well, she must not be the same Fromager who attended to us last time. Fine.

So I ordered 2 blue cheeses, one from Spain and the other from Italy (don’t remember the names and don’t really care), 2 soft goat cheeses and a hard French cheese. They were all delicious, despite the service.

All in all, though the foods were good, we left the restaurant feeling rather disappointed with the overall dining experience. A $400 dinner-for-two should not have felt like this. Seems like the talk out there about Patina no longer being a leading L.A. restaurant is true.

Le Petit Restaurant on Ventura Boulevard

Oftentimes, the litmus test of a fine [western] restaurant is its wine service. Simply put, a knowledgeable and gracious waiter or sommelier truly makes a dining experience more sublime. Le Petit Restaurant (formerly Le Petite Bistro) excels in this regard without much pomp.

Located on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, Le Petit has been one of my favorite French bistros. This semi-casual, small restaurant with an intimate and personal atmosphere is a place that my wife and I have patronized for the past 5 years or more (more regularly before the birth our daughter). I would attribute our loyalty as patrons to their courteous service, the good food, decent prices, and perhaps most of all, their gracious wine service.

Their wine menu, while neither extensive nor exquisite, should manage to serve most occasions. Bottle prices are very reasonable (’04 Kistler Les Noisetiers Chardonnay for $75…about the same at retail.) and half-bottles are available as well. Best of all, they allow guests to bring our own wine for a $10 corkage fee. To me, this speaks loudly about how they regard wine as unpretentious accompaniments to their cuisine. On most visits, I bring my own to Le Petit and happily pay the reasonable corkage fee, which pays for a first class service. It’s worth it.

When my wife and I visited Le Petit for the umpteenth time last Saturday, we brought a 2001 Chard Farm Pinot Noir Finla Mor from Central Otago, New Zealand. We purchased this very bottle from a store in the Marlborough wine country during our honeymoon 4 years ago. It was the very same wine that we enjoyed together at Orbit, the restaurant on the top of the Sky City Tower in Auckland. Suffice to say, each delicious sip of this wine brought back fond memories.

Upon arriving, our waiter graciously acknowledged the bottle in my hand, inspected its label, and readily prepared 2 Riedel crystal globes on the table. When we told him that we’d start with something harder as aperitifs, he gladly uncorked the wine to let it “air” while we enjoyed very delicious lime margarita (for her) and a smooth Grey Goose vodka martini with olives. Both cocktails hit the spot just right and wound us down sufficiently.

(At 10pm, less crowded by then)

Our waiter insisted that we did not hurry with ordering our dishes, and we were more than happy to oblige his suggestion. We eventually ended up with a plate of César salad and a bowl of onion soup gratinée with melted Gruyere cheese for starters. As entrées went, we ordered a filet mignon with garlic mashed potatoes and Dijon brandy sauce (for her), and a grilled veal chop with shallots, asparagus and mashed potatoes. Both entrées were cooked to medium temperature perfection. We closed our meal with an order of raspberry crème brûlée to share. Everything was excellent, except for the onion soup, which I found to be a bit too salty.

Another pleasant point about Le Petit’s wine service: asking for a bucket of ice to cool my red wine was a totally painless experience. The request was complied without a single flinch or a note of absurdness. On many occasions at other lesser “fine” establishments, I had to reconfirm my intent, either in response to a polite inquiry or by the server’s unintentional body language.

And the ‘01 Chard Farm Pinot that we brought to the restaurant? Just great to pair with the dishes we had. It was supple and mellow, yet resplendent with red berries, cherries and lively acidity. 4 stars (vg).

The wine took us back to the top of Auckland. The only downside being this was the only bottle I had, and I have not been able to find one by the same producer in the United States (online or otherwise).

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Le Petit Restaurant (formerly Le Petite Bistro)
13360 Ventura Boulevard
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423

Food 3.75 stars (g – vg)
Wine selections 3 stars (g), corkage fee $10 per 750ml
Service 4.5 stars (vg – ex)
Overall 4 stars (vg)

Trip to San Diego

Sorry for the recent lack of update. The blogger beta just went nuts on me for the past few days and it still is. The formatting feature is gone, somehow, so I'm posting this using html, which requires a bit of a learning curve on my part.

The family (me, my wife, baby girl, and wife's parents) spent the Thanksgiving week in San Diego, which was nice. The weather is slightly cooler this time of the year in SD, but it could still pass as beach weather all the same. It was a casual trip with no preconceived mission for wine / tea drinking or any serious tasting notes.

On the way to our hotel in Pacific beach (next to the famous La Jolla beach), we stopped by Carlsbad to lunch at the Bellefleur Winery and Brasserie. The restaurant is also a bonded winery that makes wines under their own label. Since I was driving, I didn't order or bothered to buy any of their wine to go. The restaurant/winery was serving their Sunday Champagne brunch buffet, so they poured for us refill after refill of semi sweet (oxymoron alert!) Californian Champagne. Technically, it was a Sunday Californian sparkling wine brunch, but that doesn't sound as catchy, does it? At first I didn't get why the waiter poured the "Champagne" only halfway the flute, until the unannounced orange juice came. Aha...Mimosa! Go on ladies and gentlemen, load up on sugar and alcohol before you head to the buffet tables! The buffet selections were wide and varied. At $20/head I thought it was quite a good deal...a buffet like this in Las Vegas would probably have cost more.

We rented 2 cottages at the historic Crystal Pier Hotel where we literally slept above the lapping waves. The view from our private patio was just amazing, especially at sunrise and at sunset! The cottages are nice, too. Everything is clean and feel newly renovated with a comfortable large bed. The feature we liked best as young parents traveling with a kid is the full size kitchen. We could make food for our daughter in the comforts of our cottage before heading out to tour the city. And did I mention the view was great?

(Click to enlarge picture of the view from our patio. My baby and dad-in-law.)

I decided not to pack my tea set with me but just bring along 3 types of tea in stainless steel canisters: the Hong Shui oolong from Houde, the Spring 2006 Da Hong Pao from Teaspring, and the jasmine dragon pearls that my wife so loves. Since I brought with us a few bottles of wine in an ice box, and that we are not light travellers, the tea set had to give way, unfortunately. I should probably buy a small travelling set. It wasn't ideal, but I was able to improvise and managed to get decent cuppa every time.

On one cool, foggy night we dined at a Thai restaurant called Karinya nearby our hotel. The food was good and the spices was just what we needed to warm up our bodies. Every dish had a touch of homemade feel to it, which I appreciated. The price is a tad high since they are located in a high rent district (on Garnett Street, which is the main retail and commercial vein leading to the Crystal Pier). I forgo ordering from the wine list, though the Ch. Ste. Michelle Gewurztraminer would be a good match for the dishes we had. Instead I just asked for a large pot of hot water for brewing the Hong Shui oolong that I brought along in my backpack.

For breakfasts in our cottage, I brewed mostly the Da Hong Pao in the hotel's coffee pot. As long as I was careful not to overbrew it, the tea was quite good. Everybody liked it and I thought the tea went quite well with the eggs, cheese, sausage, bread, jam and tvorak (a sort of Russian cottage cheese). Fellow tea purists, please don't crucify me for brewing DHP in such a way and for drinking it with food. :)

After coming back from the zoo, the Sea World, and what not (yes, this trip was about entertaining and showing our baby "the world"...not really for the adults) we usually spent the rest of the day at the beach below our hotel or just hang out in our private patio with a glass of wine (or two or three). I'm glad to have brought the wines myself because we do spend a fair amount of our time in our cottage, with the little one's nap and meal schedule. I just didn't have time to look for a proper wine store in the area. Some of the wines I brought and opened:

N/V Billecart-Salmon Brut Champagne
($40) Fine mousse and bubbles. The nose is of sharp citrus and grapefruit. A little tight and needed decanting to soften it a bit, but I didn't have any workable decanter with me. The taste reflects the nose plus a hint of green apple. It's a mezzo-soprano of a Champagne. The finish is rather swift.








2004 Bodega Norton Reserva Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina
($15) We opened this one night while watching The Da Vinci Code on DVD in our cottage. Both the movie and the wine came up short. This Malbec bottling was mellow and rounded but lacked acidity, so it tasted flabby. An overall earthy wine with a somber note of blackberry. Rather depressing, actually, despite that it came highly recommended by some Winexilers.





2003 Joh Jos Christoffel Riesling Spatlese, Urziger Wurzgarten, Mosel-Saar-Ruwer, Germany
($25) Simply lovely! All the characters of a balanced Mosel Riesling in play: yellow fruits, rocky slate minerality, acidity and sweetness. A polished, detailed, juicy and delicious wine. The sweetness is a bit high for a Spatlese, which is a typical character of the hot weather in 2003.















On the way home to LA, we lunched at an upscale looking white-linen restaurant called The CrabCatcher. The restaurant looked very nice and expensive, and it came complete with a snobbish lady maitre'd (perhaps because I had a little baby with me...a sign of potential mess and noise, which exactly what happened). Anyways, we were sorely disappointed with the quality of the food given the price, location and the manicured look of the restaurant. We ordered the crispy calamari as an appetizer, and for the entree we had the shrimp scampi, a $10 burger, the fish of the day (sea bass) cooked with a spicy salsa-like sauce ($24) and the Cioppino. The premium pricing was expected given the ambience and location of the venue...too bad the food didn't live up to the expectation that they themselves created, however. The service was gracious, I should note, so I still at least left them a generous tip at the end of our meal.

Their wine list was OK...they seem to have chosen their CA Pinot Noir and CA Cabernet Sauvignon selections with the recent trend in mind (Williams Selyem, Sea Smoke were 2 PNs I remember seeing on their list). The Champagne choices were good, too. Everything else other than those three wine categories felt like they are there only for the sake of having something on their wine list...not particularly exciting. As on the way to San Diego, I didn't order any wine again since I was the driver (I really wanted to order the Sea Smoke Pinot Noir, but nobody felt like having wine with their lunches, and it didn't come by the glass). So I just had two glasses of Anchor Steam beer, which was nice. After the dissapointing lunch, we walked around La Jolla a bit until the alcohol effect subsided before we headed back home; a journey that involved an excruciating 7 hours of heavy traffic.

To be continued...Thanksgiving dinner and a picnic with friends.