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"Alan Richman on \"two potentially delightful establishments where I might be perceived as less than objective\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nAbove: Ardesia\n\nMy wine expert, brought in for the occasion, chose not to order wine. He looked at the beverage list of L&amp;amp;#x2019;Ecole, the restaurant of the French Culinary Institute, and asked for a Sazerac, which is a legendary New Orleans cocktail made with absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit that used to be fatal. That wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t what worried me, since the formula has been thoughtfully altered. I was concerned that the powerful cocktail would kill my expert&amp;amp;#x2019;s palate.\n\nHe was Josh Wesson, who co-founded Best Cellars, a chain of wine shops that now belongs to A &amp;amp; P, where he serves as the company&amp;amp;#x2019;s senior director of wine, beer, and spirits. I asked him to assist me because I wanted to investigate two potentially delightful establishments where I might be perceived as less than objective. That&amp;amp;#x2019;s why I have recused myself from offering opinions of what we are about to eat and drink, although you will soon learn that keeping silent is not what I do best.\n\nAt the FCI, I teach and have a snappy title. I have also dined frequently at L&amp;amp;#x2019;Ecole. To me, this Soho restaurant is one of the most enjoyable and economical spots in Manhattan to pursue the glorious trinity of wine, bread, and cheese. The second restaurant, actually a wine bar, was co-founded by Mandy Oser, who has a snappy title of her own at the restaurant Le Bernardin and has served as an assistant to chef Eric Ripert. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s Ardesia, in Hell&amp;amp;#x2019;s Kitchen. I got the impression from her\u2014not explicitly stated\u2014that if I said anything derogatory about Ardesia, my life would become a living hell. You might think you know everything that restaurant critics endure, but you have no idea.\n\nWesson, my expert, was drinking the cocktail for a simple reason: &amp;amp;#x201C;It&amp;amp;#x2019;s one of the few things in life I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve never had,&amp;amp;#x201D; he said. I asked for a sip, and I will say this: When a cocktail is as good as a Sazerac, which was invented more than a century ago, why does everybody demand that bartenders (a.k.a. mixologists) create new ones every day?\n\nSometimes Wesson gets paid a lot of money for doing wine events, into the five figures. I asked him if he would ever drink cocktails before emceeing one of his galas, and he replied, &amp;amp;#x201C;No. For those I start with a B-12 pill and a glass of sparkling water. If you were paying me anything, I would have been happy to abstain.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nAfter perusing the ambitious, 22-page L&amp;amp;#x2019;Ecole beverage list, he suggested drinking sherry or beer with the cheese. I told him I was indifferent to the idea, since we were there to contemplate wine, cheese, and bread. He ignored me and said that the list invited diners to play with different kinds of drinks. He ordered Oloroso sherry, French cider, and two French wines\u2014a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire and a Morgon, which is a Cru Beaujolais.\n\n L&amp;amp;#x2019;Ecole offers three cheeses every night, each with a different accompaniment. This is a fairly recent trend, matching something preserved, nutty, pickled, or dried with cheese. Essentially, it means that not only does a diner have to think about whether his beverage is the correct accompaniment for the cheese, he also must consider if it is the correct accompaniment for the accompaniment. To me, this is way too complicated.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nAbove: L'Ecole\n\nIt makes sense if you believe the dining world is moving away from technical precision and toward sheer flavor chaos\u2014you might in the future find yourself at a restaurant offering Sardinian sheep&amp;amp;#x2019;s milk cheese matched with sour cherry preserves from Armenia&amp;amp;#x2019;s Ararat Valley matched with a Bellini Meanie Martini. Indeed, the sherry and the cider that Wesson chose at L&amp;amp;#x2019;Ecole worked better than any of the wines when the cheeses and their accompaniments were factored in. They added to the exuberance of the experience.\n\nThe three cheeses, all American, were a fresh goat&amp;amp;#x2019;s milk log, a cow&amp;amp;#x2019;s milk cheddar, and a raw cow&amp;amp;#x2019;s milk blue. The accompaniments were a chutney, a compote, and a marmalade\u2014the citrus marmalade was so vivid and tangy I would have loved it for breakfast, with a FCI baguette. I didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t need Wesson to tell me that the bread here is impressive, to say nothing of fresh. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s baked upstairs, in the school kitchens.\n\nWesson said of the wine list, &amp;amp;#x201C;This is highly curated. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s a list for curious drinkers. There&amp;amp;#x2019;s an embarrassment of offerings, and the mark-ups are kind. Who knew? This is a school restaurant, here to train students. For that, the list is above and beyond. The rest of the culinary schools I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve been to are not as cool as this. This is not just the best list I&amp;amp;#x2019;ve seen at a culinary school; it&amp;amp;#x2019;s a highly credible list for any restaurant.&amp;amp;#x201D; He even praised the wine-by-the-glass program, noting that it had &amp;amp;#x201C;$10-12 wines in a world of $15 wines.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nHe had two criticisms. He noted something I had not, that even though the FCI has been around for 25 years, this was a list without a history. Virtually every wine was young. And he wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t convinced that arranging the list according to grape varietals was a customer-friendly idea. &amp;amp;#x201C;If you know something about wine, this might be a good way to parse a list,&amp;amp;#x201D; he said, &amp;amp;#x201C;but if you&amp;amp;#x2019;re a customer who doesn&amp;amp;#x2019;t know anything about wine, it will make a problematical decision even more difficult.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nWe both liked the quality of the cheeses but thought they were uniformly tame and didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t offer enough contrast. The blue was so mild it paired up best with the Sauvignon Blanc, a wine most blue cheeses would overwhelm. The tangy, grassy cheddar worked nicely with the Beaujolais. Wesson was impressed that this wine was served slightly chilled, which he called &amp;amp;#x201C;an attention to detail I wouldn&amp;amp;#x2019;t expect.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nAcross town, at Ardesia, we immediately noticed one bit of designer brilliance: Here the chairs stay put, but some tables can be picked up and moved around. Most of them are tiny, about the size of the trays that drop down from the seats in front of you in airplanes. If extra space is needed, more tables are brought out. The room, including the bar, is modern, somewhat European, certainly not typical of still-shabby Hell&amp;amp;#x2019;s Kitchen. There is one rather odd architectural detail to the restaurant, and I have no idea of its purpose: a second-story catwalk that reminded me of the ones where half-naked hostesses parade to thunderous applause at Hawaiian Tropic Zone.\n\nNo women strutted here, although there were plenty of them around. In New York, wine bars appear to have become places of refuge for women, the way churches in Europe once offered sanctuary in medieval days. My theory is that New York women drink wine in order to relax because they&amp;amp;#x2019;re too stressed to knit.\n\nArdesia&amp;amp;#x2019;s kitchen is ridiculously tiny, although the menu is unexpectedly extensive. The wine list is divided into Old World and New World, then broken down by country. Simple enough.\n\nWesson ordered by the glass, three whites and three reds, and the one he proclaimed the best was the least expensive\u2014a 2008 Hungarian Tricollis Cuv\u00E9e for $7. He called it &amp;amp;#x201C;wonderful\u2014dry, balanced, fruity, delicious.&amp;amp;#x201D; The winner among the reds was a $14 2007 Catena Malbec, lovely, polished, and pure. A 2007 Tramin Lagrein from the Alto Adige region of Italy got mid reviews\u2014&amp;amp;#x201C;metallic, fruity, refreshing,&amp;amp;#x201D; but two American wines didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t do well. He said the $9 Albari&amp;amp;#xF1;o &amp;amp;#x201C;had a bad finish and wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t so good to start with,&amp;amp;#x201D; and he dismissed an $18 Pinot Noir as tasting &amp;amp;#x201C;pretty ordinary.&amp;amp;#x201D; The wine, a 2008 Hirsch Bohan Dillon, is somewhat prestigious, and it raised the question of whether understated wines such as Pinot Noir are ever at their best in informal, noisy, unsubtle situations. I think not. The wines you should order in boisterous establishments are the ones with plenty of juiciness and acidity.\n\nSaid Wesson of Ardesia&amp;amp;#x2019;s list, &amp;amp;#x201C;There&amp;amp;#x2019;s something for everybody. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s small with a big range of styles and tastes. Personally, I didn&amp;amp;#x2019;t like a number of the selections, but the pours are generous, the glassware is nice, and they don&amp;amp;#x2019;t have an agenda\u2014wine bars are always pushing something or trying to teach the customers something, but not here. The bar is not trying to be smarter than the patrons.&amp;amp;#x201D;\n\nThe food surprised us. Salt cod cakes were a creamier version of the fish cakes I loved as a kid, with a satisfyingly crunchy crust. Mortadella, one of the housemade meats, was fabulous. Italian mortadella, which I like, tastes like a fatty bologna, but this version was creamy and juicy, more reminiscent of a p&amp;amp;#xE2;t\u00E9 than a cold cut. We tried two sandwiches, neither quite what we expected. Pastrami came as a panini\u2014grilled bread incorporating a few slices of very lean meat. A Vietnamese bahn mi with &amp;amp;#x201C;spicy duck p&amp;amp;#xE2;t\u00E9&amp;amp;#x201D; tasted of little but spicy duck p&amp;amp;#xE2;t\u00E9. The vegetables were almost nonexistent.\n\nWe hoped for dessert but gave up. The staff is highly trained but creepily robotic. Although pleasant when you get their attention, they have little interest in customers. They pay attention only to the food and the wine. By the time we were ready for dessert, the room was almost empty. We were sitting behind a huge pile of empty plates and glasses, but nobody came our way. All the waiters were cleaning and polishing table tops. We tried waving, standing, everything imaginable. Nobody looked our way. I finally got up and walked over to the bar to get my check.\n\nI want to point out that the previous paragraph, as well as all other reproachful comments, are to be blamed on Josh Wesson. It&amp;amp;#x2019;s like I wasn&amp;amp;#x2019;t even there.\n\nL'Ecole: 462 Broadway, New York, NY; 212-219-3300; www.frenchculinary.com\n\nArdesia: 510 West 52nd Street, New York, NY; www.ardesia-ny.com"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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