If you happen to be looking for a great gastronomique stop in London, I invite you to go to the Ambassade de l’Ile in Kensington. The restaurant is the sister of l’Auberge de l’Ile in Lyon (hence the connection with me since this is where I was born). The place is very nice and the food was top notch for the price. Count on spending some money still (may be 100 pounds/person) but really the food is worth every penny of it.

Link to the web site of L’Ambassade de l’ile: http://www.aubergedelile.com/

Paul Grieco’s wine bar in New York City is wrapping up its Summer of Riesling program presenting a 100% Riesling wine list for the summer! Paul, thank you for the great support for our favorite grape varietal. I hope that more restaurants and wine bars accross the country will follow your steps as we need to keep the Riesling revolution alive and moving. About a 100% Riesling month from a great retailer.

To go to Paul’s site: http://www.wineisterroir.com/

Stir Crazy is a pretty cool restaurant chain in the North East mainly. Their food is great and very Riesling friendly. They have a cool video about asian food and wine pairing at http://www.stircrazy.com/company/news.aspx

I could not copy the video but it is the third video down “how to pair with Asian Food”.

Most often when I go to a small ethnic restaurant (I favor Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, North African and Mexican), I enjoy a bit of spice and sometimes brutal heat. It is always puzzling to find a good drink (with alcohol please) to go along with a good curry, a spicy couscous and other Pad Thais. Often the choice is between the house wine (no thank you, I do not want your white zin…), the beer (not another Kirin or Tsingtao please) or an uninspiring cocktail (likely with Tequila or Vodka that do not taste much of anything). I often retreat to water or, I must admit, a beer (light lagers or pilsners are a favorite if available).

I have found out that most of the smaller ethnic restaurants are likely run by foreign born staff with little wine knowledge. They usually see the wine list as important as the fortune cookies (I would not be surprised if they pay more attention to the cookies at times). The wine is usually provided by the beer salesman of very large wine and beer distributors (they are the only one that really have the time and incentive to visit those smaller accounts). The beer salesman is usually incentivized on beer and his wine book is often dismal. The combination of an uneducated buyer and a sales person that want to push beer is unfortunately an uninspiring wine selection in 99% of small ethnic food restaurant.

If anyone as a solution on how to change this sad state of affair, please leave a post!

PS: Did I say that Riesling (in many forms), can aikido most, if not all, of those ethnic foods…

This week I was visiting a great restaurant in San Francisco called Sens (http://www.sens-sf.com/) with our local sales person (Jo M.). Jo and I were chatting about the cocktail trends in San Francisco and to demonstrate how good wine cocktail can be he asked the bartender to create a Chenin Blanc based cocktail. I am not sure if it has a name yet but it tasted just perfect with the food and the hot weather. Here is the recipe: 1 part Eldelflower liquor (Use St Germain liquor: http://www.stgermain.fr/), one part Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc and one part club soda - all of it in a tall glass on ice with a lemon twist on the rim. This might be the best wine cocktail I ever had.

One trend that I have been following lately is the use of wine in cocktails. I made a few discoveries during my last trip in San Francisco.

Luna Park’s (http://lunaparksf.com/) “Icebreaker” is one of the best Vin De Glaciere cocktail I have tried. It is one part Riesling Vin De Glaciere and one part chilled ciroq vodka with two frozen grapes in a martini glass. Very dangerous and delicious cocktail. Highly recommended.

Thank you Luna park for this inspirational use of our Vin De Glaciere!!

I strongly recommend you visit Gary Vaynerchuk’s daily video blog on http://tv.winelibrary.com/.

It is always great enertainment and this fellow is making some good progress trying to bring up front the insanity of our dear wine industry.

Go Gary (and sorry for the Giant’s victory)

Superb dinner at Boka last Wednesday. Highly, highly recommended. The chef, Giuseppe Tentori (A Charlie Trotter’s alumni), is quite a genius. The fusion food type worked very well with Riesling as one might expect. Check this menu: Stuffed squid on a bed of tapioca in the squid’s ink, golden beet salad on a red beet coulis with yuzu and hickory bacon, veal cheek with homemade grainy mustard, and on and on… Every plate was delicious and beautiful. You have to stop at Boka if you are in Chicago, believe me, you will remember what awesome fusion food is.

Two places to add to this list of great restaurant. The first one is the famous Frontera Grill. I went there yesterday for a Margarita and some topes. The ambiance is great and the topes/margarita combo was awesome. This is one great restaurant for sure.

The other restaurant that is definitely worth mentioning is Vong’s Thai Kitchen. I had a very delicious dinner there. This is not a very hard core Thai, many European influences in the cooking. This type of fusion food works very well with our wines, so it was a memorable event. The dinner was organized in conjunction with Sam’s, the famous Chicago wine retailer.

Dinner last night was excellent. Mike and I had dinner on the Moshulu, a four masts ship anchored on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. There is no doubt in my mind that this could be a temple for Riesling. I’ve enjoyed greatly the story of the boat; a freight vessel was originally German then captured by the US during WWI, then captured back by the German during WWII to be finally purchased by the US in 1970. How can a French guy not love that story?

The food is perfect for Riesling: modern, lots of seafood and accent of asian influences throughout the food. Mike and I tried the duck spring rolls, the spicy tuna tacos and the surf and turf (braised short ribs with seared scallops). We had three wines to enjoy with the food, a French sparkling, our dry Riesling, and a Mosel kabinett. Seriously, our Riesling was the best. The Kabinett was a tid bit too sweet for the food and had a strong banana aroma (not usual in my experience) and the sparkling was a bit simple. I was please to see the dry Riesling pairing well with everything from the wasabi sauce of the tacos to the rich umami taste of the short rib - scallop combo. If you stop by Philadelphia, I recommend the Moshulu for the evening. Thank you Bill Bergan for running a great establishment like the Moshulu.

I had lunch last week at “Taste”, the restaurant in the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). I was meeting with Shannon Borg from the Seattle Magazine and we’ve decided to try Pacific Rim wines with a sample of the menu. The food was freshly delicious and a perfect match for our wines. My favorite combos were the spring pea and sorrel soup with the Chenin Blanc 2006, the hot italian sausage and herb pizza with the dry Riesling and the mini organic burgers (with yummy french fries) with, well actually the sweet Riesling…

Taste is a great place for a quick lunch downtown Seattle and the food is very fresh and organic. Danielle Custer, the general manager, is really running a great restaurant there. Highly recommended.