by Julian Schultz
julian@oxfordwineroom.com

                     


I have followed the name changes of P.T. Beanie's, to Blackstone's, to Caesar's Bistro and location changes from mid-Main Street to the Regency Suites on 70 Southbridge Street, Worcester. Fortunately, popular proprietor Papa Paul Bonetti and talented chef son Keith remained unchanged.

Ah, P.T. Beanie's: Some many years ago I wrote, "It is unpretentious and unassuming, is a restaurant with a heart. It provides a romantic escape from seamy reality.... romantic impulses come easily now; they enable me to suppress the grim portents of old age."

Those words hold true today. But first things first; second things will come later.

I opened my mail and excitedly flipped out when I read the names of the prestigious Rhone wines on the enclosed menu that would accompany our International Wine & Food Society dinner. Pleased and in awe, I read the listing of hors d'oeuvres and main courses with mixed delight: Delight because I am well aware of chef Keith's superb kitchen artistry; mixed because I also am well aware of his propensity to embrace the evil bulb...grrrrrrrrlic!

I telephoned Keith: "Remember, my friend," I said, "I am psychosomatically allergic to garlic, having lost the kisses of a lady fair in my ancient college years and having had a basketball opponent I was guarding score 28 points in the first half that got me kicked off the team. About the basketball team? Eh! I don't give a rat's ass! But about the unkissed kisses and the songs never sung - alas, that's another matter! Hence, my psychosomatic psychotic aversion to garlic: In my mind it is a crazy hate."

Keith was sympathetic and reassuring: "Don't eat the paté phyllos (or did he say, phallics?), beef capriccio, stuffed mushrooms with cheese; avoid the bacon wrapped around the scallops (he knows I don't eat pork products); but eat with pleasure the fruit assortment, the cheese varieties and crackers and the delicious crab cakes." Keith's said his selection of the 2003 Guigal Rosé would suit my hors d'oeuvres perfectly: "Trust me!"

He conceded: "There is only a smidgen - miniscule - of garlic in the lobster bisque, so faint that even vampires would relish it and not know the difference." 

"Well, I'm not a vampire but I would know," I said. "And, for your information, I prefer vampires to garlic."

Keith was aghast: "What! You're telling me that you prefer these bloodsucking Bela Lugosis to my little ol' health beneficial, breath-blistering bulb of garlic that's good for revitalizing everything from loss of appetite to loss of libido?"

I answered Keith by relating the story that follows: Some years ago at an International Wine & Food Society dinner in New Braintree, I read the menu of the six-food courses and six-Australian wines. I trembled with dismay.

The entrée read "Roasted Half Duck with Whole Cloves of Garlic." Whole Cloves - plural yet - as though one whole clove wasn't too much already. I envisioned garlic cloves the size of gigantic golf balls.

I was reassured that the Schultz's duck would be free of the odoriferous bulb. Other society members ribbed me about my aversion to garlic, advising that garlic is good for sexual prowess and was also known to frighten away vampires.

I said that I preferred to contribute my blood to vampires, thank you, than to have my fastidious wine palate disedged by the evil bulb.

"Garlic in food," I said, "must be used with the greatest restraint, with devotional forbearance - 'gently, gently, saith the garlic to the chef' (paraphrasing Omar Khayyam's 'gently, gently, saith the clay to the potter') -- and that said, the accompanying wine should be a muscular, robust Rhone or a gutsy, macho Italian Barolo. Lesser-bodied wines," I continued, "usually get wiped out by the garlic."

I must explode the myth that if two people eat garlic, neither will detect it on the breath of the other. I recall the nightmare when my Lillian and I at a dinner dance had eaten hummus and baba ganoosh at a local restaurant noted for its Middle Eastern food. When we got up to dance, assumed the proper closed position for ballroom dancing, and exhaled before stepping out, our knees sagged. Lillian became pale; I felt faint. We almost passed out. 

Some people advise that parsley suppresses the smell of garlic. I am not about to find out. I will avoid garlic and I will court vampires if there is no other way to escape this abhorrence.

With sympathy and humor, Keith assured me that the two main courses were totally free of the onerous big G: roast duck leg with wild rice and Champagne cranberry sauce and salmon Wellington stuffed with wild mushrooms and spinach with a Madeira wine sauce. He added, "Just wait until you taste the two great Rhone wines with them!"

I never - sob, sob! -- arrived at Caesar's: slippery skidding snow streets proved me less than a fearless Fosdick. I passed on the dinner. I had planned to rush into the kitchen to remind Keith that I was the obnoxious guru of forbidden gruesome garlic and to spare me...oh, please, to spare me! 

The dinner: I asked my friend, the gourmet food and wine maven, the intrepid Dr. Bob Ouellette, for his opinion of the hors d' oeuvres that I would have disdained: the paté, beef capriccio, bacon scalped - I mean -bacon-ed scallops, and stuffed mushrooms. 

Dr. Bob said that everyone seemed to enthusiastically enjoy all six hors d' oeuvres, some illustrating their pleasure with rounded thumb and forefinger directed to other tables. The Guigal Rosé, a blend of Rhone wines, is an innocuous wine, he said, but with hors d'oeuvres is acceptable enough.

With respect to the lobster bisque: Keith had told me it contained so little garlic that even vampires would relish it. It was paired with Chateau La Nerthe Chateauneuf du Pape 2002, an "outstanding white Chateauneuf and an outstanding match with the thick, generous pieces of lobster in the lobster bisque," as Dr. Bob described them. He rated the wine 92 points on a scale of 100. He replied to my question about the garlic in the bisque, saying that there was "not an even discernible whisper of garlic." 

Listening to the good doctor's analysis, I was happy for him...and I was depressed for me.


"It was the juiciest, most tender, most succulent duck dish that I have ever eaten and enjoyed!" Dr. Bob said, "And with the Champagne cranberry sauce and wild rice, together with the 2003 vintage Domaine de St. Cosme Cotes-du-Rhone 'Deux Albions', the course combination defies the need for even a single iota of improvement."

He rated the wine 91-plus: "red and black fruit, cherry, spice, hint of lemon, soft tannin, smooth finish, lingering aftertaste. Excellent as it is now, needs aging to achieve complexity and perfection."

Listening to the good doctor's analysis, I was happy for him...and I was depressed for me.

"There was so much food already served that Lu and I were surfeited, so I had Paul Bonetti put my portion of salmon Wellington stuffed with wild mushrooms and spinach, and additionally flavored with a Madeira wine sauce, into a container for take home, and Lu and I would share her course.

"Too bad you weren't here," he continued. I know how much you would have enjoyed the artistically presented salmon. It was tender, moist, flavorsome, just so airy light - like poached. The accompanying mushrooms, spinach and sauce with the salmon, and the 2001 Gigondas were, as emotionally inclined people are to say, 'to die for'."

He added, chuckling: "Of course, my friend, although I wished you had been here, I wouldn't have wanted you 'to die for' from the ecstasy of consuming the dish."

Dr. Bob described the Patrick LeSec Gigondas les Espalines: "dark berry fruit, cherry, coffee, hint of barnyard nose, black pepper, balanced." He apologized for saying he discerned flavors of violets and iodine - terms he rarely uses, if at all, especially iodine. He rated it 89.

Listening to the good doctor's analysis, I was happy for him...and I was depressed for me.

Dessert: "The listed 'Trio of Chocolate' dessert was actually a quartet of chocolate," he said, enumerating: "chocolate with crème Brule, chocolate shortcake - like a scone, standing stick of chocolate, and creamy chocolate cake.

"Desserts plague me," he said, "but these I could not resist: The sweet chocolates interplayed nicely with the accompanying luscious 2001 sweet - but in no way cloying -- Domaine de Coueux Muscat Beaunes de Venise. It augmented the rich delectable flavors of the chocolate...and I found room for them and exuberantly with devil-may-care gusto I ate away."

Listening to the good doctor's analysis, I was happy for him...and I was depressed for me.

Thus concluded Dr. Bob's perceptions of the food and wine. In a small measure they enabled me to vicariously enjoy the dinner. But vicarious enjoyment (substitute, alternative) to actually my tasting the food and wine doesn't add much to my memory of this grand dinner.

So...only Schultz was the dinner no-show among the 42 International Wine & Food Society members who reserved; and as one person reportedly said, I was "The lonesome polecat" dining alone at home. Lonesome, yes; but how could I be the polecat, if I don't eat garlic?

After recording Dr. Bob's insights, corroborated by his even more palate discriminating wifey, Lu, I told myself angrily that I should have disregarded my play-it-safe timidity and attended the dinner. It was a magnificent dinner agreed to by all members who attended...and -- 'sob', 'sob' - by me who also agreed, but only from having been told about it.

Caesar's Bistro is an intimate restaurant presided over by owner Paul Bonetti. The quality and preparation of the food is big city, prestigious dining room stuff. 

How many times have I written this: The bluebird of happiness is in our own backyard. Who needs to schlep to Boston or Providence for gourmet dining enjoyment when we have restaurants like Caesar's in our area? If this be error and upon me proved, I never wrote a wine column, nor ever have I enjoyed fine food and wine. (Paraphrase from Shakespeare's Sonnet, #116.)

And speaking of wine dinners: The Webster House Restaurant will offer its annual Valentine Day chocolate kissed wine dinner on Wednesday, February 16, 6 p.m. Dr. Bob, O'Hara's Jim Vasiliadis, M.S. Walker's Jeff Ghertler, Chris Liazos and I sampled the trial dinner and as usual massaged the food and wine, striving for perfection. We believe we succeeded.

The courses: welcoming cheese, crackers and fruit varieties with Sparkling Wine.

Seared and sauteed scallops salad with shaved white chocolate, creamy balsamic reduction, and mesclun greens. Wine: Spanish Albarino.

Mexican tender beef soup with vegetables, cumin, and underpinning of dark chocolate. Wine: Alsatian Riesling.

Coconut crusted shrimp with mixed white chocolate liqueur/orange juice on the side for dipping, mixed green and red leaf vegetables. Wine: Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon.

Seared veal with white and dark chocolate sauce ringing the edges, dark rum, fresh broccolini, duchess potato. Wine: Two Spanish Reds.

Dessert: Helena's Chocolate Surprise Cake guaranteed to add exotic, ecstatic, exuberant, enthusiastic, exceptional, excessive calories onto your tummies. Only wimps and nutcake dieters - and, unfortunately, diabetics -- will pass on this.

"Last things last," I said earlier: It was remembrance of things past. Lillian and I were dining at Beanie's; we were holding hands. "Quaint," murmured a woman seated behind our table. The moment was perfect. I had suggested to Lillian that she try the Alsatian Hugel Gentil wine. I hoped she would enjoy it inasmuch she is not a wine enthusiast.

She hazarded a sip to please me, slowly and thoughtfully she tasted, turned to me, smiled, nodded, and said, "Yes, nice." I took her hand, held it, not letting go lest it interrupt the exquisite moment of mood and tenderness.

I turned to the woman seated behind me. She laughed and said again, "Quaint." She poked her husband, saying, "I wish he would take a lesson from you!"

He grumbled dismissively, "Yeah, yeah." 

Once before Lillian and I had heard, "Quaint." We were observed holding hands in a romantic music, wine and food setting. That was in Rio de Janeiro, 26 years ago.

We had finished dancing a rhumba and I resumed my sipping of Bordeaux Chateau Rauzan Segla. That moment, too, was perfect. I took Lillian's hand with my other hand. A Sweet Life supermarket owner's wife, a dear friend, approached our table smiling. She kissed us and said how quaint we were to be so incurably romantic at our age, and how touching it was that were uninhibited about expressing love and devotion for each other and the romantic emotions of youth after so many years of marriage!

So...when I see the name P.T. Beanie's, hear the name P.T. Beanie's, I remember wistfully "quaint" moments, tender moments, moments of togetherness, moments before she....

Wine Pick: Victor Hugo Petite Sirah 1999 (any vintage is guaranteed to please as much), around $20. Gold Medal and Best of Class Trophy Winner in 2001 New World Wine Competition; four more Gold Medals in other 2001 wine competitions.

Tasting notes: "Delightful aromas of ripe plum, toffee and spice predominate with some black pepper and spicy oak in the background; a mouthful of complexity with flavor elegance, sufficiency of rich tannins and toasty oak; smooth viscous swallow and extended rich aftertaste." Just...one...super...wine!

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julian@oxfordwineroom.com