Dinner the next night at the Blaue Gans, a lovely Austrian neighborhood restaurant owned by the same chef that runs Wallse, and Café Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie Museum on upper Fifth Ave. It’s a small, lively room, and it smells really good in here, plus it’s about 20 degrees cooler than outside – it’s been a sticky hot week. We start at the bar, where there are addictive baked thick pretzels to accompany the beers and glass wines. Dinner is fabulous – a steak tartare is presented in a small round glass bowl, with an egg yolk cradled in a depression in the top of the chopped sirloin, with condiments arranged artfully around the edge of the large square underplate – chopped shallot, cornichons, caperberries, parsley, mustard and spices. I mix it all together - deee-lish. A beet salad and a smoked trout palaschinken are also fantastic. The main courses don’t disappoint either – a suckling pig special is melt-in-your-mouth and the Jägerschnitzel is thin-pounded pan-fried veal topped with a mushroom and bacon cream sauce. Spatzle is well-done, accurately creamy, while a creamed spinach side is so perfectly and intensely spinachy green-tasting that it’s like rediscovering something you thought you knew really well, much to your surprise. The service was self-assured and relatively prompt, if a tad ragged. The wine list is heavily Austrian, short but well-chosen. This is much like the cooking with which I grew up; its cadences and combinations are intimately familiar … comfort food at the deepest level. The Blaue Gans (Blue Goose) bears a culinary resemblance to the nearby Danube (a jewel-box of an Austrian-Hungarian restaurant; I love this one as well), but at a fraction of the price, and you can go to the Blaue Gans in jeans. I’m coming back.
2005 Stadlmann, Rotgipfler “Classic” Austria
This reminds me of a super-dry Gewurztraminer in its flavors, aromas and structure – loads of white spices, apples and cantelope, some floral notes, and loads of spicy red delicious apples on the finish, long and dry. Really nice. Drink young, this one has no ageing potential. (2.5nb)
2005 Karthauserhof, Grüner Veltliner Achleiten, Smaragdt, Austria
Lovely pale color, with the soft fruits I associate with wines from Veltliner. (Did you know that “Veltlin” is the German version of “Valtellina,” the valley in Lombardia that produces such excellent Nebbiolo-based wines? Interestingly, the white wines from Valtellina are called “Chiavennasca” after the village of Chiavenna, and have nothing to do with Grüner Veltliner.) The wine is crisp and lively, with peach and nectarine framed by citrusy and apple elements. There’s a good deal of minerality in this one as well, and it goes perfectly with the first courses. Drink now-2008. (2.5+nb)
2003 Feiler-Artiger, Blaufrankish Umriss, Burgenland, Austria
Typically grapey and forward, with an appealing Beaujolais-Villages-like freshness and unpretentiousness, this one fills out a bit in the mouth, with good plums and earthy notes framed by the slightest hint of tannins. Lovely. Drink now-2010. (2.5+nb)
Vino Vino
After dinner, we head a few blocks over to Vino Vino, a wine shop/wine bar a few blocks from A & T’s home. Along one wall, a long banquette, with low tables, on the opposite wall, divided from the banquettes by a glass wall, a wine shop. At the back, a bar/serving area. All simple, clean design and looking good. There’s a fine selection of wines by the glass, and you can purchase a bottle in the shop and have the servers open it in the bar for a corkage fee. The owner is over in the shop, discussing the relative merits of his Spanish selections, for example – he’s obviously an enthusiast and knows his stuff. The wines in the shop and bar are not all the usual suspects – there’s definitely some intelligence and independence exerting itself here.
T and I stay later, enjoying 2003 Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir and a 2003 Marchesi di Gresy Martinenga Barbaresco. Both are nice, drinkable, serviceable wines, nothing special, just enjoyable with a good conversation. I neglect to take notes. We stumble home about 1. The twin spotlights at the WTC site are shining up in tribute.