[title type="h5"] Tuesday, October 14, 2014, Part 2.[/title]
Molly Wismeier, the director of wine for Restaurant R'Evolution, is on the radio with me to promote a Krug Champagne dinner tonight. It's been a long time since my last taste of the high-end bubbly. And the menu sounds good enough that Mary Ann tells me we must attend. Not that it takes much pushing to persuade her to go to R'Evolution for any reason. She also says I may be her date.
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The table begins to fill at R'Evolution for the Krug Champagne dinner. Where is the tablecloth for this $250 dinner?[/caption]I walk over at six from the radio station--it's only nine blocks, and doing so will save me from Mary Ann's exasperating quest for a legal, curbside parking space in the French Quarter, to avoid having some filthy parking valet get in her car. (I think the valet would be the one that gets dirtier, what with all the transporting of dogs to veterinarians lately.)
I'm a little early, and Molly rewards me with a taste of the Grand Cuvee at the bar. This, as we would be told numerous times during the dinner, is the ultimate expression of the main goal of Krug: to create a Champagne with the best wines it has available, resulting in a consistent pleasure from year to year, in perpetuity. In this Krug differs from other Champagnes. Standard practice is for the non-vintage Champagne to be the basic, least-expensive product, with vintage bubbly being the more luxurious and supposedly better wine. Krug turns that complexly around.
And with good reason. The job of blending (that's what "cuvee" means) involves over 120 wines from different vineyards, grape varieties and even years. No other major wine category works that way. And the complexity of keeping a house style over generations strikes me as the greatest feat in the entire art of winemaking.
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Some of the many glasses filled with Krug this night. No Champagne flutes appeared at any time. The Krug guy says these are better.[/caption]
The twenty-something people participating tonight seat themselves at a long, long table in an improvised dining room that stretches from the chef's table to the main entrance. The first thing I notice about the party is that the women are all beautiful and well-arrayed, including my wife. Recalling that now moves me to say that despite what I said above, I don't think Champagne is the best wine on earth, not by a longshot. But I certainly do enjoy the way it brings out the ultimate sweetness in the ladies.
We begin with what MA and I agree (!) is the best dish of the night: an intense, thick vichyssoise blended with huitlacoche. The latter, as I've had occasion to say here four times in the past two months, is a fungus that grows inside of corn husks, and is considered a delicacy in Mexico. With good reason. I am astonished that MA, who is a very hard sell on something like that, did everything she could to extract every drop of the stuff from the shot glasses in which the concoction is served. The magic of Champagne!
The next course gets the Most Interesting award. It's a salad of heirloom beets marinated (pickled, they say) in vanilla. That's a new one on me, but a strikingly good one. A toast to chef Chris Lusk. (Neither John Folse nor Rick Tramonto, the titular proprietors, is here.)
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Grouper poached in verjus.[/caption]
The fish course is black grouper (can't say I remember having that exact species before) poached in verjus. The latter ingredient is the grape juice destined to become wine, but arrested before that develops. Not as big a statement as the two previous, but very good, and allows concentration on the Krug vintage Champagne from 2000, the current offering. Krug's vintages are made only in years which a) produce exceptional wines and 2) supply more than enough of the right kind of wine for the Grand Cuvee. I think this is the wine of the night, making a much bigger statement than the Grand Cuvee. This question makes for lively discussion from one end of the table to the other.
I make the rounds of the table and find Drs. Brobson Lutz and Ken Combs. The latter was my internist for many years, until I moved across the lake. The former is well known for his many television appearances over the years. And for being a serious student of fine restaurants and wine. He calls me now and then on the radio show.
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Pork belly, hiding behind a large upcropping of fried casoncelli pasta with lobster.[/caption]
The entree is my least-favorite trendy food: braised pork belly. It comes with casoncelli--a pasta dish from northern Italy that starts out like ravioli and ends up more like a very loose lasagna. It's stuffed with lobster. Good deal: Mary Ann, who loves pork belly, takes all of mine and I take all of her casoncelli.
The Champagne with this one is Krug Rose. Like the Grand Cuvee, it is made from several vintages. It's also unique among Champagnes in being colored not with the light red wine called Bouzy Rouge, made in Champagne for that purpose, but from a wine Krug makes itself in the style of other rosés the world round.
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The cheese course.[/caption]
We finish up with a plate of cheeses, one presented inside puff pastry, another being that wonderfully rich, soft cheese L’Explorateur. Something called a Krug cocktail--like a French 75, they say--accompanies this. But I am sated.
A grand, glorious evening. I hope it will not be this long until my next encounter with Krug.
[title type="h5"]R'evolution. French Quarter: 777 Bienville (in the Royal Sonesta Hotel). 504-553-2277. [/title]
