Search Results for: Nutanix - NCP-5.15 - Nutanix Certified Professional - Multi cloud Infrastructure –Valid Valid Vce 😫 The page for free download of ➡ NCP-5.15 ️⬅️ on 「 www.pdfvce.com 」 will open immediately 🥊NCP-5.15 Free Exam

Number of Results: 250

Chef Selfies

Dan P.Friday, April 18, 20140

<br /> Working my way through my reading “pile” (what do we call it these days when it’s electronic?) with a bunch of chef-authored tomes. First up, To the Bone from Paul Liebrandt. I’ve met Paul numerous times though don’t know him well at all. When I worked at AZ he used to come hang out in the kitchen with Patricia Yeo – he was sort of between restaurants and somehow or other connected in to our kitchen and, like any other smart chef spent his downtime learning new stuff. I’ve only had his food once, an evening out with Patricia and our restaurant GM at Atlas during his short tenure there. The food was interesting, if perhaps a little overwrought and precious – it seemed like someone trying way too hard to impress.

Reading the book gives a bit of insight into that, much of his career seems to be just along that vein, trying hard to impress. I’m not sure that I came away with any deep understanding of how he came to be that way, his writing style is fairly reserved and matter of fact (which is kind of how I find him), but certainly there are glimpses from his upbringing of where that might have come from. The book is interesting from the point of view of someone in the field, I wonder if it would be so for someone not. Much of it almost reads like an expanded CV – “I worked here, these were my responsibilities” – then fleshed out by details of what that looked like. There’s very little human interaction in the book, in the sense of we learn little about any of his coworkers or any time he spent with them. Even the various chefs he’s worked for provide little more than background color to the narrative – you could almost come away from the book thinking that he’s forged through his life and career completely solo, with little to no assistance from anyone else, and other people just pop in and out at random, with minimal purpose.

The book is beautifully illustrated with what can only be described as food porn, and there are, scattered here and there, some recipes, or parts of them, for some of the dishes illustrated, and some of those talked about in the text. Many, if not most, or even all, of them go beyond what most people would want to attempt at home, and while any professional cook might be able to turn their hand to them, it would be an exercise in curiosity more than anything. Liebrandt’s style is his own, informed by his impressive resume. If you like the “jewel box” style of food with intricate plating, this is right up your alley.

<br /> At the complete opposite end of the spectrum is The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, by internationally renowned chef Jacques Pepin. Everything about this book and the man is probably close to the opposite side of things from the above as it could be. Now, I’ve never eaten anything that Pepin has cooked, he was out of the restaurant chef world before I ever got to New York City and on into his long career behind the scenes and as a culinary educator.

The book itself reads almost like a novel, a storybook. People are the main focus, far more than the food or his career, and he shares deeply and richly of his personal life, his family, his friends, and his coworkers. We follow him through his childhood on into his teens, we see where and why he made the decisions he did. His life is, literally, an open book. By the end of his descriptions of his time spent at each stage of his career, I felt almost as if I’d been along for the ride. Much like watching him on television, he’s open, warm and welcoming.

This book is filled with illustrations – virtually all of them simply black and white photographs of he, his family and his friends over the years. The recipes are straightforward and the sort that anyone with a kitchen and a couple of pans could jump right into and feel comfortable pulling off.

Both of the books, at least on a professional level, well worth reading. Liebrandt’s book is a night out at the hottest trendy spot in town, Pepin’s is a weekend spent with friends at home. It just depends on what you’re in the mood for.

Books (Reviews)

Biography

Remember the 80s?

Dan P.Wednesday, March 5, 19970

Santé
The Magazine for Restaurant Professionals
March/April 1997
Page 15

table fables
Remember the 80s?

Dan Perlman is the Wine Director at Felidia Ristorante in New York City, a columnist and food and wine editor for Q San Francisco magazine, and a private chef

Chefs threw multicolored, multilayered, phallic architecture on a plate and charged an extra sawbuck.

Caviar, foie gras, truffles and champagne went from movie screen fantasy to daily fare at the diner down the block. Drinks that were rack became call and then top shelf. Top shelf itself came into being and proliferated on every bar back. Tips were as big as the drinks themselves. A sommelier needed knowledge of little more than the five first growths, DRC, Gaja and maybe how to lever out a cork. If the Court of Master Sommeliers had based their exams on a true “need to know” basis, we’d have thousands of MS’s running around the country.

Everyone was spending money on becoming a foodie or trendy drinker. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, professors and anyone else with a professional title were using corporate credit cards to satisfy the slightest culinary craving. Even the file clerk down the hall had an expense account.

Welcome to the 90’s. Tax reform and economic trends have stripped those magical sign-now-pay-later phantasms from all but the top echelon. The question has gone from “what vintage Bordeaux?” to “what bargain Merlot?” Cellar management has become an exercise in breadth rather than depth and sales have gone from a snap of the corkscrew blade back to the art of diplomacy.

Welcome to the ’90s… The question has gone from “what vintage Bordeaux?” to “what bargain Merlot?”

But the top stuff still sells. Who’s buying it? The one class of professional that has the leveraged financing to pull it off is still ordering. The one class that retains those mystical expense accounts are investment bankers – young, hotshot, generally but not always male, looking for that meteoric rise in income, knowing that it won’t last, but enjoying life’s pleasures while it does.

Now, I preface the next bit with the caveat that this is a generalization. (Any investment banker who is quite sure he or she doesn’t fit this description, please consider yourself an exception.) Let’s face it, as wine buyers, we’ve all attended auctions and seen prices skyrocket as guys with too much cash pay outrageous sums based on vintage charts from their magazine of choice. We’ve all had one who ordered a bottle from the right-hand side of the page without a clue as to its content and then announced to his friends at the table what he was paying for whatever he was getting. High school locker room-size comparisons just change form, they don’t go away.

I give you, however, a particular evening. It was a typical night. A party of four late-twenty-somethings popped in, the host a weekly visitor, each time with a new trio in tow. Without fail, our leader ordered his usual bottle of ‘76 Lafite. I presented the bottle for his inspection, and, as always, presented it to each of this evening’s friends so that they could see what he had bought for them to toss down after a couple rounds of martinis. As I served the bottle, I quietly mentioned to the young gentleman that this was the last in our cellar. He stopped the conversation at the table with a wave of his hand and asked me when I intended to get more. I said, regretfully, that it was unlikely that any more was available for our purchase. Without a pause, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Do you know who I am?! Call the factory and have them make more!”

Santé is a glossy format trade magazine for restaurant wine buyers and educators. I wrote as a freelancer for them on and off from the first issue in November 1996 until November 2002 when they decided to stop using freelance writers.

Magazine articles, Santé

Management, Marketing, Restaurants, Wine

Holiday Spirits

Dan P.Friday, November 5, 19990

Q San Francisco
November 1999
Pages 52-53

Holiday Spirits

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,’ said Fred,’ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, “Uncle Scrooge.”‘ Admittedly, Uncle Scrooge had his own experiences of holiday spirits to deal with. In my mind, his nephew Fred had a much better approach. Holidays have traditionally been times to celebrate with a wide variety of spirits. As children, we waited eagerly for our gaily wrapped packages (in my family no trees were involved, we had a train made out of large foil wrapped cardboard boxes – each car of the train containing the Chanukah gifts for one member of the family).

With just as much anticipation we awaited the annual chance to have just a little bit of rum in our eggnog. Friends down the block got to sample a small taste of that year’s Christmas punch. A few weeks earlier we had fallen over ourselves to get a medicine cup sized glass of port with our thanksgiving pumpkin pie. At New Year’s Eve? Just a taste of delightfully bubbly champagne. Why, for some youngsters, this was more alcohol in a few dozen days than the entire rest of the year put together!

It has been tradition for centuries to serve some form of a punch or flavored wine through the wintery holiday season. That tradition is often lost as we explore our way through wine auction purchases, the latest California cult sampling, or wax philosophically at some single malt scotch. At best, we might find ourselves pulling out a bottle of a particularly favored brandy that we’ve saved for just such a special occasion.

I say it is time to bring back the punch, the grög, the mulled wine, the bishop…

Many a century ago, there was the “punch” – a British colonial drink made from tea, spices, sugar and fruit and spiked with rum. The term came from the Hindustani word pānch, meaning “five”, and tradition has it that a punch should contain the five above listed ingredients. The French came up with their own version: less tea, and brandy substituting for the rum. In fact, until the 1830s, rum was banned in France in order to avoid commercial competition with locally produced brandies. Perhaps the most traditional of the punches is the marquise punch, which I recommend highly.

MARQUISE PUNCH

1 bottle of sauternes
½ cup of sugar
peel of 1 lemon
3 cloves
1 cup brandy or white rum

Heat all the ingredients except the brandy together until a fine foam appears on the surface and it seems just about ready to boil. Stir to make sure all the sugar is dissolved. Pour through a strainer (to remove the peel and cloves) into your warmed punch bowl. Gently warm the brandy in a saucepan and then light. Pour while still flaming into the punch. Do this while your guests are present so that they can “ooh” and “aah” appropriately.

I have no doubt that someone will insist on making grög, that old tradition of the British navy. While perfectly nice, it is a simple warming together of rum, honey, lemon peel and diluted with water in order to stretch the seamen’s rations of rum. Play, experiment, come up with your own version.

Having mentioned it, it is probably incumbent on me to explain the “bishop”. An ancient drink, it is made by heating claret (red Bordeaux) or port with orange peel and cinnamon. Alternate versions use red Rhine wines (a “cardinal”) or white tokay (a “pope”); all basically refer to the color of the drink versus the color of the robes…you get the idea. The most interesting recipe I’ve found for this drink is called the “English Bishop”.

ENGLISH BISHOP

1 bottle of red port (not tawny)
1 orange
1 handful of cloves
¼ cup of brown sugar
1 cup of cognac

Take the orange and stick all the cloves in it so that it is as well studded as a leather boy at the spike… Dip it in a little of the cognac, just enough to wet it thoroughly, then roll it in the brown sugar till well coated. Brown on all sides under a broiler, or held on a skewer over a flame, until the sugar is nicely caramelized. Cut in quarters, drop it in a saucepan with the port, cover tightly and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add half the remaining cognac just before pouring into mugs. Float a tablespoon of cognac on top of each mug, light and serve to “oohs” and “aahs.”

There are probably as many recipes for mulled wines as there are places that get cold. The most unusual I’ve seen comes from Wular Lake in the old British Indian state of Kashmir, a long disputed area between India, Tibet, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It sounds quite odd, and is quite delicious.

MULLED WINE

2 bottles of red burgundy
2 limes, cut in thin slices and seeded
½ banana, sliced
2 cinnamon sticks
12 cloves
6 allspice berries
1 cup dark rum
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup club soda

Tie the slices of fruit together with the spices in a small cheesecloth bag or wrap. Put with the wine in a large pot, cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 8-9 minutes, but not longer or the banana will get pulpy and cloud the drink. Remove the cheesecloth package and discard. Add the rum and sugar and stir to dissolve. Top off with the club soda and serve immediately while still foaming. Garnish, if you like, with a curl of lime peel.

Without question, if you whip up a truly delightful holiday punch, your friends will beg for your recipes. So what if they normally drink vodka-tonics throughout? It’s the holiday season, and for no other reason we should come together around the punch bowl and try something arguably seasonal and tasty!

Q San Francisco magazine premiered in late 1995 as a ultra-slick, ultra-hip gay lifestyle magazine targeted primarily for the San Francisco community. It was launched by my friends Don Tuthill and Robert Adams, respectively the publisher and editor-in-chief, who had owned and run Genre magazine for several years prior. They asked me to come along as the food and wine geek, umm, editor, for this venture as well. In order to devote their time to Passport magazine, their newest venture, they ceased publication of QSF in early 2003.

Magazine articles, Q San Francisco

Cocktails, Spirits, Wine

Inside Out: Building Business Coalitions With OUT City Administrators

Dan P.Thursday, November 1, 19900

GGBC
Greater Gotham Business Council
November 1990
Page 1

Inside Out: Building Business Coalitions With OUT City Administrators
by Dan Perlman, Vice President of Activities

When: Thursday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m.

Where: The Center, 208 W. 13th Street, Network Room

Admission: Members, free; guests, $5.00.

Inside out: to be an openly gay/lesbian working inside New York City government.

For the average gay and lesbian business person, being “out” is seldom an absolute issue. There’s always that moment when the decision to disclose sexual preference is made. But for some of our community, being out has provided a step up on the career ladder and has given the gay and lesbian community a visible presence in City Hall. On Thursday, Nov. 15, GGBC members and guests can meet many of the high-powered, high-ranking City administrators, who are also gay or lesbian.

What’s it like? Do they have offices without closets? Do their pink triangles clash with the Mayor’s blue unity ribbons? Why don’t we qualify for minority set-aside programs? Are low-interest loans available for minority businesses like ours? Who do we speak with when we think we’re being discriminated against? How close is the City to bankruptcy?

A special panel will answer questions, discuss opportunities available to the gay and lesbian businesses and talk about ways professional and business organizations might forge a stronger relationship with City Hall.

The panel will include Dr. Marjorie Hill, the Mayor’s liaison; Rosemary Kuropat, Chief of Staff for Economic Development; and Tom Duane from the Comptroller’s office among others.

This is networking at the highest level. Come for the 6 p.m. social hour and mingle with our guests. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the panel goes on at 7:10 p.m., after a brief business meeting. Members are free and non-members $5.

GGBC, Organization Newsletters

GLBT, Politics

The Random Algorithms of Life

Dan P.Saturday, December 5, 20152

These days everyone has an algorithm. It’s all about predicting our behavior, our impulses, our purchases, our viewing habits, surfing (web) habits, and anything else that some potential advertiser, obscure government agency, or fad non-profit organization might pay for in order to target us with some pitch, product or panacea that 99% of the time we’re going to say no to. They’re gaming for the 1%-ers. The problem is, none of these algorithms seem to work.

Not that they don’t do something predictive. They do. A recent conversation over the dinner table involved one-upping stories of the sudden onslaught of targeted advertising after clearly precipitating events, that simply weren’t substantive. One person related having responded to an email with a hearty congratulations to a friend who had just bought a condo on a beach in Spain. Within 24 hours he was receiving both email and sidebar ads as he surfed, offering up connections to real estate agents on the Spanish coast. Another had clicked “Like” on a picture of a friend’s dog doing some sort of trick and found Facebook suggesting pages of pet training services on a daily basis. And more.

Like everyone else, I’m subjected to algorithms from the moment I wake up in the morning….

I make my coffee and then sit down to peruse my email. According to Google, the gmail application learns over time to predict what sorts of mail should be shown as priority, what shouldn’t, what should go to spam, and what not. I can count on that at best, maybe half of my mail will be sorted correctly. I have a filter for mail coming from the Casa SaltShaker website reservation system to automatically put those into priority mail. Maybe 2/3 of them will be, despite a very clearly worded filter. I’m on several mailing lists for which I get a daily email. Roughly half the time, those emails are marked as spam – despite the fact that they arrived from the same address and with the same subject line, daily, and every time, for years now, they go to spam, I mark them as “Not Spam”.

On the flipside, I get junk mail that I regularly mark as spam which continue to arrive from the same addresses and with the same subject lines, daily. Well over half the time they end up in either my regular or even priority email boxes. I have whitelists and blacklists, neither of which seem to have any effect on where mail ends up. One algorithm down.

My favorite has to be the Netflix “Top Picks for Dan” queue. Yours probably says “Top Picks for Joe” or “Top Picks for Shannon”, or maybe even “Top Picks for Elspeth”, a charming personalization touch meant to make sure we feel loved and cared for. By Netflix. Mine currently has 40 “top picks”, I guess that hearkens back to the days of “Top 40 Hits” or something. Now, if you use Netflix, you know it has a rating system, of 1 to 5 stars. After you watch something, you’re invited to rate it, and that goes into an algorithm, along with the genre and style of film or show, to help create a predictive algorithm. Now, I’ve rated a lot of films over my time on Netflix, so it ought to be narrowed down pretty well, right?

When they show you their recommendations for top picks, they also show you what the algorithm predicts you’ll rate the film or show. So one might, reasonably, predict that almost all of the top picks would have either five or four stars, no? No. Of those forty, currently, seven of them have five star predictions, fifteen are guestimated to receive a four star review from me, three for three, a whopping nine for two, and even five for one star. Oh, and one television series which I’ve already watched and rated. Four stars. So, why recommend anything that they predict I’ll only give one or two stars? Given the vast catalog, why even three stars?

They are good at picking out some four and five star recommendations that I might not otherwise have picked. It recently led me to binge watching through two different TV series. Nowhere Boys, which I only clicked on because it looked like mindless entertainment with cute boys, I figured I’d watch an episode or two of one evening when I just didn’t want to think. It turned out to be an Australian series, in the all-popular genre of teen witches, but with some dark twists, and it’s well written and well acted, and, well, the boys are cute.

It also led me, inexplicably, to a one-season Korean medical telenovela (soap opera), titled Good Doctor, that likewise looked like there were some cuties in it (maybe that was the predictive element?), which turned out to be the travails of a young surgical resident who has more or less overcome being autistic, enough to just barely function in day to day life, but he’s a savant in the world of medicine. It was, at times, sweet, at others painful, and not only was it well written (the English subtitles probably missed a lot of nuances, but even so), but it didn’t stint on the medical stuff – getting right in, close-up to the blood and guts in the operating theater (I was, at one time in my life, a paramedic, considered going to medical school to become an ER doctor, and am still fascinated by that whole world). But, those were also predicted to, respectively, receive four and five stars from me. Not one or two.

Until recently I was using a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. When I would start to type a message, it would automatically detect whether I was starting off in English or Spanish, and switch dictionaries for predictive entry accordingly. I recently “upgraded” to a Galaxy S6. It doesn’t do that. Apparently (despite the fact that the S4 did it really well, it rarely made a mistake in which language I was working in after the first couple of words), too many people complained that it either a) didn’t pick up the correct language within one or two keystrokes (seriously?) or b) switched to the incorrect language.

So Samsung scrapped it because it wasn’t a good enough predictor, and now has a button to select your language (but every time you start typing a new message, it switches to your main language, which means if you’re having a back and forth conversation, you have to re-select, in my case, Spanish, if you want to use predictive entry, over and over again. It also, annoyingly, sometimes tries to switch me to Chinese (apparently the “international version” phone I bought was pre-programmed with Chinese language bloatware that while I can disable, I can’t remove, and now and again, some of it resurfaces). Thankfully, there are apps you can download to overwrite the Samsung keyboard and give it back automatic switching (thank you SwiftKey).

Foursquare is another one. There’s a bit of rating involved – Liked, Neutral, Didn’t Like – that goes into it. But more, they have a service of recommending restaurant alternatives – “If you like that place, you’ll like this place.” It’s a mystifying selection process. If I look at the listing for my restaurant, a reasonably upscale, albeit casual, experience, with a five course tasting menu, paired wines, at a communal table, FS recommends on the basis of having liked us (we have an 8.6 rating out of 10), one will like: a Mediterranean café and bistro on the opposite side of the city (rated 7.4 out of 10); a Mediterranean restaurant in Palermo (7.0 out of 10); and a bar in Palermo (5.3 out of 10). They’re not in the same neighborhood, they’re not, well, in the same class, nor even the same style of food, or even cuisine. Go figure.

LinkedIn – I’m not sure if this is the same as a predictive analysis, but I get a weekly email from them with “job openings you might be interested in”. The only predictive part of that seems to be that they’re located somewhere in South America, not even always in Argentina. Not once, over more than a decade, has any of the jobs related to either gastronomy or journalism. Generally they’re things like “Chief Operating Officer of a Petroleum company”, or “Executive Director of an Animal Rights Foundation”, or “Receptionist and Whipping Boy in the Fashion industry”.

Coursera seems to think the courses that I would like best are things involving teaching English as a foreign language. I’ve never taken a course from them remotely tied to that theme, they’ve all been either food or history related. Pocket keeps recommending articles for me, on a wide variety of topics. I don’t use Pocket.

I could probably keep going, finding other examples from daily life, but enough. We all know it’s happening around us, we can’t really do anything about it except make annoying blog posts. So be it.

Flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict

Primafila, Janio, Sauvignon Blancs

Dan P.Monday, January 1, 20070

Cuisine & Vins
January 2007, page 51

cuisine insider tips
Argentina for beginners

Summer is definitely upon us. For some, there’s the siren call of a dining room that’s aire acondicionado. For others, it’s a chance to catch some rays and bronze a little while dining al fresco, or enjoy the cooling evening breezes as the heat of the day fades away. Buenos Aires abounds with places where you can grab a seat at a sidewalk or plaza table, ranging from mass gathering places like Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo and Plaza Serrano in Palermo SoHo to side-by-side restaurant rows with outdoor tables, like Village Recoleta, Puerto Madero, or Plaza Costa Rica. With limited regulation on where you can stick a table, even the average neighborhood café is likely to have a table or two strategically placed out on the sidewalk in front.

Imagine, if you will, a beautiful terrace looking out over a sculpted park. Comfortable cushioned lounge chairs around low tables are scattered across the flagstones. The seats are taken up by a mix of the young and beautiful, the wealthy and famous, the curious, and, simply, the hungry. Primafila, officially at Pueyrredón 2501, but in practice located in the center of the second level terrace of the Buenos Aires Design Center, 4804-0055, is a spot to see and be seen, and to dine truly well. While you can have your meal inside, the place to be is afuera, where you’ll be greeted and taken care of by a cadre of informed, capable staff, who really know something about the food and wine they are serving. The focus is on creative Italian cuisine, with a few Argentine twists. They offer some don’t miss pizzas, beautifully presented salads, and absolutely delicious pastas and main courses. If you’re into the whole world of offal, their spiced and caramelized sweetbreads are quite possibly the finest presentation of this organ meat I’ve ever had the pleasure to try in a restaurant. The restaurant offers one of the better wine lists in the area, and it’s not over-priced. Overall, Primafila is a bit on the expensive side, but not at all out of line for the setting and quality of the food.

One of the prettiest little plazas for dining al fresco is Plaza Costa Rica, located in the heart of Palermo. Surrounding the park are a good number of restaurants and cafes, all of the more casual variety, and many of them serving up some excellent food. One of our favorites is a self-termed lugar de encuentro, or meeting place – a trendy corner Argentine style bistro called Janio, at Malabia 1805, 4833-6540, www.janiorestaurant.com.ar. The outdoor area that surrounds the restaurant is one of the prime people watching spots of the neighborhood, whether it’s people walking by, or your fellow diners, or for that matter, the waiters and waitresses, who are both reasonably versed in the restaurant’s food, and some of the prettiest eye candy in the zone. The food tends towards the light side, with a mix of interesting pastas, vegetarian dishes, and lighter twists on classic porteño fare. It would be a shame to pass up their house-made paté, or their over-sized eggplant and tomato ravioli, or for that matter, one of the better veggie-burgers in the city. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try their meat dishes – they handle those equally well. Their wine list and beer selection is pretty basic and inexpensive, but they also have a well stocked bar and bartenders who know how to mix a drink. On the whole, Janio is a great value, and you certainly won’t be stretching your budget while still having a delightful meal.

The summer is a time when I like an absolutely cold, crisp bottle of white wine, kept on ice right there by my side. A favorite for drinking in hot weather is Sauvignon blanc. It’s hard to find a truly lean and dry styled Sauvignon here, as the preferred style tends to be a bit “fatter” and often having spent a bit of time in an oak barrel. But recently I’ve come across two truly delicious offerings of the former style – which not only is great for the season, but pairs beautifully with food. Both wines range in the low 20 pesos retail, probably running around 30 in a restaurant – and are steals at that price. The first, and my favorite of the two by a slight edge is the La Flor de Pulenta Sauvignon Blanc 2006 – crisp and dry, with delightful lime and grass aromas, amazingly juicy acidity, and a long finish – truly it reminds me of a high quality Sancerre from the Loire Valley. The other is the Los Cardos Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Doña Paula, with a slightly more tropical fruit style, but still with lean acidity and great length – in some ways this version called to mind a classic New Zealand Sauvignon.

January and February, while they’re the height of the tourist season, are also the height of the summer. That means that a lot of locals take off for points like the shore, the south of the country, or neighboring vacation destinations like Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile. While I always recommend making a reservation for dining out, especially at dinner time, in Buenos Aires, I make that an extra strong recommendation during this season, as many restaurants simply close up for anywhere from two to four weeks for a summer vacation. If you’re headed here and there’s somewhere you simply must dine at, it’s worth your while to find out if they’ll be here while you are!

In October 2006, I started writing for this Spanish language magazine, covering their English language section for travellers. I wrote for them for about two years. The copy editor, apparently not fluent in English, used to put each paragraph in its own text box on a two column page, in what often seemed to be random order, making the thread of the column difficult to follow. I’ve restored the paragraphs to their original order.

Cuisine & Vins, Magazine articles

Restaurants, Wine

The Black Sheep Tavern, Anglers & Writers

Dan P.Monday, February 1, 19930

CaB Magazine
February 1993

You Are Where You Eat
Restaurant Reviews

February is a time for romance, for fantasy, for coziness. It’s a time of holidays, of festivals, of celebrations. After starting off the month watching shadow-boxing groundhogs and the Japanese throwing beans on Setsubun, I’m ready for the grand twin festivals of Tu B’Shevat and Mexican Constitution Day. A couple of presidents, were they still alive, would be celebrating birthdays in the three digits.

By the end of the first two weeks I’m ready for the middle of the month fertility rites of Valentine’s Day and Lupercalia. Give me a small, intimate and romantic restaurant, where the staff are willing to have a little fun, and so is the chef. I may even take a date.

In preparation, the gang gathered for advance reconnaissance and took over a quiet corner at The Black Sheep Tavern Nestled in the back streets of the West Village, this corner bistro fits the bill perfectly. I was immediately impressed with the notations at the bottom of the menu that for humanitarian reasons, veal is not served, fish is line caught (no nets that might trap dolphins), and meats are free of steroids and antibiotics. Our health virtually guaranteed, we started a more thorough read of the fare.

The Black Sheep has a great menu setup that allows you to order either a la carte or in complete, 5-course dinner style. Each table starts off the evening with a basket of bread and large crudite bowl (fresh and marinated veggies for the uninitiated) and a good sized ramekin of aioli (garlic mayo) for dipping. With a selection of everything from carrot and celery sticks to cool steamed potatoes and beet-juice marinated cauliflower, this is one of the tastier alternatives we’ve had to start off an evening.

The staff is cheerful, quick and knowledgeable about the food and wines they’re serving. They do have a tendency to hover a bit, especially around those dining solo, as if feeling a need to keep you company. Wine service is a bit of a production, and could be done competently with a bit less effort. But all around, we had fun, and one looked disappointed when we didn’t want fresh pepper on each and every item on the plate.

The food here is hearty, and definitely not for the timid of stomach or light in appetite. Roasted corn chowder, grilled chicken salad, wine-steamed mussels, roast polenta with artichokes and Jarlsberg cheese, and wild mushroom ravioli are enough to whet just about any appetite. The terrine of orange duck, seasoned with brandy, oranges and a touch of wild lavender, is first rate.

The fried calamari is lightly breaded in cornmeal and served with a superb lemon and herb sauce. We found the sauce a little overpowering for the light flavor of the calamari, which we dipped in our aioli instead, and then promptly mopped up every drop of the lemon and herb sauce with the bread and grilled eggplant and zucchini that accompanied it. My personal favorite is, without second thought, the brandade de morue, a puree of salt cod, olive oil, garlic, cream and potatoes served on toasted garlic bread with marinated tomatoes and black olives.

For main courses, there is a range that covers everything from vegetarian fusilli in mushroom, vegetable, cream and fresh basil sauce to roast rack of lamb Provencale with a crust of herbs and mustard. The Norwegian salmon filet is cooked to perfection and served atop a salad of roasted grains and sweet peppers. The tuna steak is grilled rare and served swimming in tomato, olive and caper broth. Medallions of beef tenderloin rest comfortably alongside roasted shallots, lightly dressed in a red wine sauce spiked with smoky bacon.

As usual, we dug into some of the more interesting sounding menu items. The confit of duck leg was tender and meaty. Personally, I’ve had better, but the gang outvoted me, and I had to agree that the sweet and spicy ginger-plum sauce and pineapple chutney were perfect accompaniments. The steak au poivre is done to order and topped with cracked peppercorns, shallots, brandy and cream. At the peak of my list was the barbecued, marinated leg of lamb in North African spices and garlic, with white beans and mint mounded underneath. A light salad to clear the palate and we were ready for dessert.

Unfortunately, after several trips, I must admit that I’m not overly impressed with the desserts. The selections sounds great, especially the old-fashioned bourbon-sweet potato pie with toasted pecans, the Brittany butter-almond cake filled with prune and apricot and the banana cake with praline butterscotch frosting. They’re not bad, but they’re just not as exceptional as the rest of the meal. Creme brulee should have its sugar topping caramelized just before serving so you have not only a texture contrast but a temperature one too. Not here, I’d pass on it. Sample from the great after-dinner drink selection and wander on down to the closest cabaret to round out the night.

The Black Sheep Tavern, 344 West 11th Street (at Washington STreet), 242-1010. Reservations recommended. Cash or American Express only. Open seven days a week. Dinner $35-45.

A year or so ago, I was perusing a local restaurant guide and noticed a place that consistently was rated cozy and fun, with good food besides, by reviewers and patrons alike. Such concordance being fairly unusual, we checked the place out. We were suitably impressed, but hadn’t ventured back. With the theme of this column carved in stone, Angler’s & Writers came to mind immediately. [The apostrophe seems to have crept into the published copy, I’m guessing some sort of spell checker was employed.]

Once again, we garnered a corner table with sweeping view of the room. Of course, the place isn’t all that large, so the sweeping doesn’t take all that long. On the other hand, there’s a lot to see. Fishing and boating memorabilia are scattered throughout the room. ON the walls, on tables, on floors. We didn’t see much in the way of writing implements, other than a pen and guest book on a small desk at the door. Perhaps writers are expected to bring their own, which I had.

The staff is unrelentingly friendly, eager to please, and a trifle confused. IN the course of five minute the maitre d’and two waiters came around to give us the specials list. this initially seemed excessive, but since they each gave us a different list, we weren’t quite sure if it was. We settled on the list given by the second waiter, a charming young man from Alaska, mostly because he was the last. It also turned out he was right.

It was a cold evening, and we all opted for soup to start off. Chicken and vegetable sounded a bit tame, we went for the yellow split pea and the whitefish chowder. Both were absolutely delicious, perfectly seasoned and just the way I’d make them at home. The ubiquitous basket of bread helped us sponge up every last drop.

The menu is split into family-style and lighter-style selections. The implication being, I suppose, that families don’t eat light. Or something. There didn’t seem to be a clear difference in presentation of style, but more int he vein of traditional American cooking versus other stuff. Amongst the “light” offerings were a terrine of goose with lingonberries and sweet mustard providing a nice contrast, a roast half-chicken with sauteed spinach, and a hefty plate of gnocchi. Favorites around the table were the smoked salmon and one of the evening’s specials, chicken romagno, with roasted peppers and mushrooms.

On the family side, the battered whitefish was light and crispy, and the stew gave us a nice choice of beef, veal and venison. I went for the roasted chicken with stuffing (okay, for the native easterners, dressing) which was cooked just right and had a nice selection of roasted vegetables on the side. The lamb and mashed potato casserole was also a hit.

Desserts are appropriately family style also, with a selection of pies and cakes in portions big enough to really dig into. Ignore the list at the bottom of the menu, just ask one of the waiters for the evening’s selctions. Just ask one though, or you may get a different opinion. From a myriad of fruit pies and cakes, we selected the mixed brry pie and the apple-plum crumble. Both were, quite simply, good.

Angler’s & Writers offers a nice selection of teas and after dinner coffees to finish off your meal. We unreservedly recommend the Rum Runner’s Cafe, a blend of coffee, maple syrup, rum and cocoa.

Angler’s & Writers, 420 Hudson Street (at St. Luke’s Place), 675-0810. Cash or check only. No reservations. Open seven days a week for lunch/brunch and dinner. Dinner, $30-40.

Somewhere back in the early 00s, long before I’d converted this website to a blog format, I just had these reviews up, along with all the rest, as pages on a regular website. I was contacted by someone, claiming to be involved in a lawsuit that had something to do with The Black Sheep Tavern (long closed at that point), I wasn’t clear whether he was representing the restaurant, employees, or someone else, and demanding that I remove the review from my site as it was prejudicial and could be used against him. WTF? I mean, this is just an electronic record of a print review that was already out there, and I can’t imagine anything in what I said about the restaurant influencing a legal proceeding. Needless to say, despite his demands and threats of suing me if I didn’t, I ignored him, and never heard from him again.

CaB magazine was one of the first publications I ever wrote for. Published by my dear friend Andrew Martin, it covered the Cabaret, Theater, Music and Dining scene in New York City, long before slick publications like Time Out NY and Where NY became popular. We had great fun writing it, and some wonderful writers contributed to its pages. When the magazine folded in the mid-90s, Andrew disappeared from the scene, and rumors had it that he departed from this existence not long after. I was thrilled to find out in mid-October 2005, a decade later, that the rumors were just that. Andrew contacted me after finding my site via that omnipresent force, Google. He’s alive and well and a member of a comedy troupe called Meet the Mistake. Somehow quite fitting!

CaB Magazine, Magazine articles

Restaurants

Putting It All Together

Dan P.Thursday, April 1, 19990

Santé
The Magazine for Restaurant Professionals
April/May 1999
Page 59Putting It All Together

The Veritas team, back row from left, Sommelier David Singer, Sommelier Ben Breen, Owner Gino Diaferia, front row from left, Wine Director Dan Perlman, General Mananger Ron Lybeck

The phone rings early. The voice on the line says, “X told us to call you. We’re opening a restaurant. We have a private collection of 70,000 bottles of wine to create a reserve list, but if you want to add to it, you can buy what you think you need. We’re going to do low markups to attract people who are into wine. The chef is really talented. Even though it’s a 65-seat restaurant, you’re going to have two assistant sommeliers. We’re opening in four weeks. Interested?”

I’ve just finished my first pot of coffee. The caffeine hasn’t quite kicked in. I’m highly susceptible to both flattery and intrigue. At least I can go talk to these guys. It’s not as if I’m committing to anything… Yeah, sure.

I go chat. Two weeks later, I’m at 20th Street in Manhattan, sitting in the basement of a construction site that will become Veritas, wondering just where I’m going to put 1,500 selections of wine. I have room for 500 – if I squeeze.

Taking Stock

Reality can bring tears to your eyes. There are personalities involved – four owners, three of whom are offering their personal wine collections for me to cull through. What complicates matters is that each of them has their own idea about what should be on the list. One partner hands over his entire collection. A second sends a list of what he is contributing to the restaurant. Partner number three knows what he has – it just isn’t written down anywhere. I make a trip to his cellar, and we comb through his collection.

I end up with over 1,200 selections of wine. They are heavily concentrated in “trophy” wines – top-growth Bordeaux, Burgundy and Rhône, California cult Cabs, Barolo, scattered selections from Spain (a large vertical of Unico) and Australia (ditto for Grange). There are few whites, lots of big bottles (25 percent is in magnum or larger) and virtually no half-bottles.

My two cellar rooms are both temperature controlled. I create “red” and “white” roooms, with double-depth, single-bottle racking. Initially, my reaction is one of dismay; how am I going to create bins?, there’s a lot of wasted space, etc. When I stop to think about how the wines are coming in, however, I realize that this configuration is necessary. Traditional bins would end up with five or six different wines piled on top of each other. On the other hand, because of the “selection” process, I can’t preassign bin numbers and spacing to wines. I end up creating bin number categories (e.g., 2000-2200 for red Bordeaux) and then assigning the bin numbers as the wines arrive.

Collaboration

There are two assistants to hire, one capable of creating the bar that will carry eclectic and interesting selections, not “well” brands and not even standard “call” brands. Also, I want someone who can manage a small, constantly changing, wine-by-the-glass program. We interview and hire, and we put one of the assistants, David Singer, on payroll and get him working. Between the two of us and General Manager Ron Lybeck, also a sommelier, we hammer out the concept, and Singer starts making selections. My second assistant, Ben Breen, joins us. He not only will handle floor service, but also much of the restaurant’s computerization, including the redesign of the preliminary web site where our wine list and menus are posted.

Lybeck and I come up with the concept of a “market” list. We approach it like a chef going shopping, finding ingredients and then creating a menu. I’m not going to worry about filling holes in this list. I look for wines that I like, that I can get at good values and offer at prices that beat the competition. We collect wine lists from all over the city and start comparing prices. If someone bought something years ago, we may not be able to beat the price. Instead, we go for giving the best value that we can.

There’s the menu to consider. Executive Chef/Owner Scott Bryan and I worked together years ago in another restaurant. Initially, his menu looks like typical fusion cuisine, but he has his own twists. Aiming for simplicity in a city where more is better, he pairs a minimum of ingredients to create a maximum effect. We taste through the menu with the staff – the food is amazing! From my perspective as Wine Director, however, most of what’s on the reserve list doesn’t pair with the food. A huge percentage of these are big, “chewy”wines. The food is lighter and simpler with touches of Asian spices. There are lighter, more elegant wines to add.

I’m a huge fan of half-bottles. We already have a ton of large bottles. I start collecting halves, and I ask one of the partners to do the same. He heads for the auction houses and starts bidding.

Presentation

I wish that I could remember the thought processes that went into the list design. I do remember waking up in a cold sweat at four in the morning and jotting down nightmares. Some of the presentation was dictated by prior decisions; a designer already had selected the physical book that would contain the list. It’s a half-width ring binder holding sheets of paper that are 4¼ by 11 inches. I decide to print pages on one side and fold them in half. The physical design allows me to update the list daily, a necessity given the wine-crazed clientele that we attract. Customers expect that the wine they see on the list to be there; being out of one item is guaranteed to convince them that we’re all smoke and mirrors.

I decide on a reference section for the list. Customers are always asking questions about bottle sizes, geography and wine trivia. I create a chart of bottle sizes, and I add some maps. Inspiration strikes, and I spend a couple of days researching an idea. I gather reviews of a recently released wine. As we all know, wine reviews vary considerably. I insert a blurb about the importance of trusting one’s own palate and quote from the reviews. Every flavor profile is different and the ratings vary widely. I show it to colleagues. They love it.

I want color on the list – just enough to accent the pages. I purchase an inkjet printer, which means slow printouts and regular replacement of pages when someone smears the ink with wet or greasy fingers, but we all like the look. I want to feature wines by the glass up front. A last minute call to the designer yields a pocket added to the inside cover.

We decide that we’re going to have the market and reserve lists in the same book. We want a certain level of impact in dining and wining here. We don’t want people to feel intimidated asking for the reserve list.

I gather a hundred selections or so as an opening market list. Given our “market” approach, I opt for separating them by varietal, not geography. I write a one-sentence blurb for each wine, but as time goes on, we’ll use commentary from staff tastings.

[Veritas – marketlist]

The reserve list requires a different approach. I go after it with a copy of a wine atlas in one hand. I try different formats until I find one that we all like. The page width requires certain decisions. I don’t want individual wines to take up two or three lines of text. My solution amounts to an outline of the wine world; true, customers must look at the top of the page to know where they are on the planet, but my scheme gives a simple categorization to the list.

Training

I have to deal with staff training. I decide that, over time, we will cover the equivalent of a sommelier’s course for the entire staff. Most of the wine education will be handled by me. I decide to leave the spirits education in Singer’s hands; though he’s new to managing a bar and teaching, it is a perfect opportunity for him to grow into a position.

The chef is approached. He’d love to have the kitchen staff participate. We plan classes and tastings, a demanding schedule that will tax the staff’s time and energy. The waitstaff is hired with that in mind. We look for people wo are personally into wine right from the start.

First Returns

Opening day arrives. The reserve list will open with holes intact. It will be a constantly evolving list, as any good wine list should be. Everyone says that their list is constantly evolving, but most aren’t. They become static creations because no one has the time to constantly update them. Our approach has to be different, and my assistants will free more of my time to do that.

I wish I had months to add more whites and to add wines from other parts of the world. I’d like to see more wines representing the lighter side of life. Balance will come with time. On the other hand, we know that the public, and the critics, will come looking for the holes and, finding them, will assume that we haven’t thought it through.

I add an opening statement onto the first page of the wine list, explaining our concept and evolutionary approach. It has no effect on a restaurant critic who arrives before we open, looks at a draft of the list and pronounces judgment on it. One shows up the day after we open and announces that we don’t have the wine that the reviewer wants. We have 11 other vintages of the very wine, but… yawn… well, an interesting list. A neighborhood restaurateur comes in, combs through the list and asks for an obscure wine. “You don’t have it? I thought you were going to cover everything.” He leaves, no doubt to return to his own restaurant and pass the word about Veritas’ inadequate wine list.

After a day or two, I realize that when you come into the New York City market with what we are offering, this reaction is unavoidable. Most patrons and colleagues are excited for us. There are always going to be those who feel that they have to criticize. We have over 1,300 wines on a brand new list. We’ll never cover everything. If we tried to cover everything in a list this size, we’d have one selection from each appellation, and that’s about it. Who’d be interested? Who’d be excited?

Santé is a glossy format trade magazine for restaurant wine buyers and educators. I wrote as a freelancer for them on and off from the first issue in November 1996 until November 2002 when they decided to stop using freelance writers.

Magazine articles, Santé

Marketing, NYC, Restaurants, Sommeliers, Wine