Alan Richman: At Estela, An Extraordinary Chef and What Could Be the Steak Dish of the Century (So Far)

If you are an admirer of Houston St., moved by its struggle to rise above a history of drugs, alcohol, and indie rock, reveling in the hilarity of tourists mispronouncing the name, grateful for the existence of Katz's pastrami, you might enjoy finding your way to Estela.

The restaurant is at 47 E. Houston, an address packed with possibilities. On the ground floor is Botanica, a dimly lit bar where to my knowledge nothing requiring sunlight grows. To the left of the bar is a baleful entranceway, the door held open during my visits with a shiny yellow cord, the kind psychos use to tie corpses to bedposts on Law & Order: SVU.

Cloudy with a Chance of Stinging-Nettle Flan and Tomato Coulis

How did Portland, a soggy city on the West Coast, come to be the scrappiest, most original gastronomic destination in America, a town where you can eat everything from food-truck feasts to four-star spreads that rival fancier (and way more expensive) places? Alan Richman explores the food world's new promised land—and explains why you should go now, while the good times last

"I came here in the early '60s," recalls Roger Porter, food critic and professor of English. "I asked someone what Portland was like, and he said, 'It's the kind of town where if you ask for a bottle of wine by name, they think you're a homo.' "

Back then, nearly every American city had shaped an enduring identity. New York was about restaurants and Los Angeles about film, but nobody had any idea what to make of Portland, Oregon. I traveled there regularly in the early '70s as an NBA beat writer for a Philadelphia newspaper, covering the 76ers against the Trail Blazers, and only vague memories remain, none of them relating to a remarkable meal. Other cities in the league, including the second-rate ones, had some food attraction, even if it was an oddity such as the revolving restaurant above the Holiday Inn in Baltimore or Mushy Wexler's Theatrical in Cleveland.

I remember walking through the industrial grayness of Portland forty years ago, passing the occasional pancake house, putting up with the relentless drizzle. James Beard, a founding father of American cuisine, was born there but had long since fled to New York. Neither Blazermania (a few years away) nor the food carts (a few decades away) had appeared.

How did it happen? How did Portland, at best second-tier and certainly worse where food was concerned, ascend to its status as the most fascinating gastronomic city in America, the all-around champion in the category of food and drink? Bragging a bit, I can say that I pretty much predicted it would happen, foresaw that the American Northwest had the potential for culinary preeminence. I anticipated the vineyards, the farmers' markets, the abundant produce and seafood, the leisurely lifestyle, and above all the entrepreneurial spirit.

Perhaps you are wondering why I am not now heralded as the prophet of Portland. I can answer that. It's because I always said such a cultural and culinary makeover would occur in Seattle. But Seattle, it turned out, was just like every other city, and Portland was something else. Explains Karen Brooks, the Portland Monthly restaurant editor and critic, "Portland had the don't-give-a-fuck attitude."

American Pie

http://www.gq.com/food-travel/alan-richman/200905/pizza-american-pie-25-best-slideshow#slide=1

Italians are wrong. Not about cars or suits. About pizza, and they’re not entirely mistaken about that, only about crusts and buffalo-milk mozzarella. They’ve got the tomato part right. Pizza was created by the Italians—or maybe by the Greeks, who brought it to Naples, but let’s not pile on the bad news. Right now it justly belongs to us. We care more about it. We eat more of it, and unlike the Italians, we appreciate it at dinner, at lunch, and at breakfast, when we have it cold, standing up, to make hangovers go away. Italians don’t really understand pizza. They think of it as knife-and-fork food, best after the sun goes down.

Pizza isn’t as fundamental to Italy as it is to America. Over there, it plays a secondary role to pasta, risotto, and polenta. To be candid, I think they could do without it. Not us. Over here, it’s one of the few foreign foods we’ve embraced wholeheartedly, made entirely our own.

The simple truth is that pizza in its most primal form—cheese, tomato, crust—is perfect food. It’s good for vegetarians, even though it contains no vegetables. It’s good for us meat eaters, chiefly because we don’t care much for vegetables but also because pizza is one of the few foods where the absence of meat isn’t missed. (Although, when I think about it, a little sausage never hurts, especially if it’s crumbled up rather than sliced.)

It’s the absolute best food for sharing (unless you’re in love, in which case we’re talking about an ice cream cone). It’s the healthiest of treats; the strictest mother wouldn’t argue that pizza is bad for kids. It’s the most versatile delivery food, because it reheats much better than Chinese, and if you accidentally burn it, pizza is still good. Most important, at least to me: Pizza gives pepperoni a reason to exist.

A word here about Naples, the home of Italian pizza. That’s supposedly where the pie reaches its pinnacle, in a distinct and idiosyncratic style that some American pizzamakers—let’s resist calling them pizzaioli, as the Italians do—are trying to emulate. They’re going for hotter ovens, puffier crusts, and weepy buffalo-milk mozzarella on top. I’m not impressed. Not by the genuine pies in Naples, and usually less by American imitations, although the mission has a certain nobility of purpose.

I’ve eaten in Naples. From the ancient, brutally hot ovens emerge pies that most Americans wouldn’t recognize. The crust is charred and puffy in spots but tragically thin and pale beneath the toppings. The sauce is chiefly chopped tomatoes, sometimes fresh and sometimes canned, but almost always vivid and bright. (Those San Marzano tomatoes are as good as advertised.) The cheese is mozzarella, but the Italians are proudest when they can substitute fresh mozzarella from the milk of buffaloes and label their pies Margherita DOC. (It sounds like a wine thing, but it’s also a pizza thing.) In my opinion, buffalo mozzarella is pizza’s second-worst topping, exceeded only by whole anchovies—no hot, smelly fish on my pies, thank you. After that, those pizzaioli guys add oil, lots of it, and more liquid is precisely what tomato pies do not need.

This is what happens when a Neapolitan pie comes out of the oven, after it’s been cooked a remarkably short time: The nearly liquefied glob of buffalo mozzarella—now resembling a snowman melting on a warm March afternoon—has become runny. Water drains from the tomatoes. Oil joins the flood. All that excess liquid has to go somewhere, which is why the bottom crust turns to mush, not that it was ever particularly crispy.

This is why Italians need a knife and fork. This is why our pizzas are better than theirs.

*****

we have, remarkably, seven distinct kinds of pizza in this country, starting with those Neapolitan imitations that represent style over sustenance. Our most famous (and nonconformist) is probably the Chicago deep-dish pie, essentially a casserole. The crust is sometimes burdened with cornmeal or semolina, and sometimes it is flaky and sweet, like those on fruit pies. It isn’t much like the crust on any pizza outside Chicago, but this style isn’t about crust. It’s about massive amounts of cheese and sauce.

Deep-dish pies became popular in the 1980s when branches of Chicago’s Pizzeria Uno spread everywhere and Americans lined up. It was the last time we felt as strongly about pizza as we do today. I have no recollection of why Americans felt such a need to eat deep-dish pies, although I was elbowing and pushing alongside everyone else. I asked a Chicago friend to remind me, and she said, “They’re carbohydrate-and-cheese bombs. We’d buy a frozen one and throw it in the oven. Two hours later, it was ready.”

She wasn’t exaggerating by much. Indeed, uncooked deep-dish pie is still sold frozen in Chicago, and the instructions say it can be put into the oven that way. Pizza is odd in that its baking times vary widely. What other food sometimes takes two or three minutes to cook and sometimes an hour or more? All my life I’ve wondered about the difference between Chicago’s famous Pizzeria Uno and its almost-as-famous Pizzeria Due, and after traveling there, I found the answer. The numbing wait is one hour at Uno, two hours at Due.

There’s a minor variation on deep-dish that remains fundamental to Chicago: the stuffed pie, number three among the seven distinct species. This is a deep-dish pizza that’s been supersized and topped with a second crust that’s so thin as to be almost invisible. The stuffed pie is the black hole of pizza-eating, thicker than a deep-dish, and when I sat down to eat one, I couldn’t get through a single slice.

More widespread than any of those styles is the pan pizza, sometimes known as Sicilian and sometimes as square. This is a richer, heavier version of focaccia—a soft flat-topped bread prepared with olive oil. Pan pizza is easily at its best in Detroit, where aficionados seek out the corner slices that have caramelized edges blackened through contact with the hot pan. A crunchy bottom, blissfully created by the same process, is also a virtue. Most people, when they think of crunchy pizza, have an unrelated pie in mind, the thin-crusted ones known as Roman-style, tavern-style, or bar pizza. These crusts, at best, have a bit of suppleness; at worst, they are reminiscent of crackers.

The most curious of all pies is grilled pizza, invented at the restaurant Al Forno in Providence, and too wonderful to be dismissed as a regional peculiarity. The idea of grilling a pizza doesn’t sound promising: Dough is put on a (hopefully) charcoal fire, flipped, topped, and grilled some more. This results in crusts far more delicious than the sum of their grill marks, so irresistible I turned to a pizza authority to help me understand. Peter Reinhart, a baker and author, understood my bewilderment. He said, “Basically, grilled pizzas are fried dough. The pizza dough sits in oil, and the oil is seared into the crust. How can you go wrong?”

And then, finally and most wonderfully, comes the American pie, actually a recent phenomenon, probably invented by and certainly popularized by Chris Bianco, the godfather of American pizza, who opened Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix in 1994. The pie he prepares and that others emulate is as much about bread-baking as it is about crust-making. It’s primarily identified by two vital, distinct, and non-Italian elements: a golden glow and a chewy yet velvety interior. Such crusts have a resemblance to ciabatta, the light and porous Italian bread.

The American pie is more than crust. It is explosively inventive, with toppings as ingenious as American cuisine gets. In San Francisco, the heartland of innovative toppings, I found fresh thyme instead of dried oregano, Taleggio and Fontina cheeses instead of mozzarella (it’s my belief that getting beyond mozzarella sets a pizzamaker free), and a basil chiffonade instead of basil leaves. A pause here to reflect on the misuse of fresh basil by Italians. They seem to think of it as decorative rather than flavorful, and they spread not nearly enough of it on their fabled-but-flawed Margherita pies.

*****

in searching for the twenty-five best pizzas in America, I traveled to ten American cities, the ones I knew had a lot of pizzerias or a lot of Italians. They seem to go together, although less so anymore. I visited 109 pizzerias and ate 386 pies, although almost never the whole thing. (Remember, I couldn’t finish a single slice of the stuffed.) I know what you’re thinking: You didn’t visit my favorite pizzeria. You missed the best.

I was forced to be merciless about this, because everybody I know has one of those, and everybody believes his is unsurpassed. In essence, a beloved pizzeria is almost always about memories. From friends I heard such claims as “Taking the first bite is to know perfection”…“Every bite is a party in your mouth”…“It has Italian authenticity”…“It is blissful in its crunchiness and perfect chew”… And so it went. There is no way of dealing with such devotion, so I decided to answer all demands that I visit an adored pizzeria with the same irrefutable (if unjust) reply: “No, I am not going to your pizzeria. Your pizzeria is no good.” In fact, on the few occasions when I was so badgered by a friend that I went to one of them, it was no good. Not one prepared a commendable crust.

I include in the list of failed favorites two pizzerias beloved by President Obama: Italian Fiesta in Chicago’s Lake Park plaza (takeout only, so I ate on the trunk of my rental car) and Casa Bianca in Eagle Rock, California, near Occidental College, where he went to school. The pies at both had hard, bland crusts that didn’t look or taste handmade. Out of respect to our president, who has enough problems, I will leave it at that.

Within each of the ten cities, I ranged far. In New York, where I went to thirty-three pizzerias, I ate in every one of the five boroughs, and I ventured deep into the suburb of Westchester, where I live. (I briefly left the state to visit nearby spots in New Jersey but had no success there.) During my tour of Philadelphia, I journeyed to as distant a land as Trenton, New Jersey. (Again, no luck.) In Detroit I drove nearly 500 miles, a consequence of the local pizza diaspora. Phoenix was easy—there’s precisely one pizzeria, Bianco, that anybody recognizes as worth visiting. I would happily have broken my rule and gone to any other personal favorite—but nobody had one.

I tried Polish pizza in Chicago (not bad, except for the nearly raw egg on top), Indian pizza in San Francisco (pretty good, although reheated chicken dries out badly, despite the tikka masala sauce), Turkish pizza in New York (invariably called “pitza” and, because it’s made with pita dough, rather crackly), and Korean pizza in Los Angeles. (The Korean-style Hanchi Gold pie was topped with spicy bean paste, sweet-potato mousse, ground beef, onion, bell pepper, olives, corn, mushrooms, edamame, jalapeño, bacon, Cheddar cheese, marinated calamari, sour cream, garlic, and parsley, and when you have that much piled on, it’s hard to tell the potato mousse from the sour cream.)
Overaccessorizing was far from the worst problem I encountered. There is a dark side to the triumph of the American pie.

Pizza has become the gourmet food of the recession, and the men who create these pies consider themselves artists—narcissistic, reclusive artists, at that. I’ve told you about Margherita DOC. These eccentrics specialize in Pizza OCD, bringing obsessive-compulsive disorders to the once simple business of making pies.

They often refuse to take reservations, thus guaranteeing themselves long lines of worshippers. Their primary weirdness, however, is preparing not quite enough dough for the day ahead so they might turn away the last few desperate customers. Even if they are doing this to ensure freshness, as they claim, they could rely on a practice perfected in modern times that would enable them to never run out of dough—it’s known as refrigeration. Or they could prepare more than enough, but that would create the possibility that a ball or two of the dough that they love more than their customers would have to be thrown out.

These guys find multiple ways of being annoying. At Pizzeria Bianco, a friend and I ordered four pies that we shared with the people who had stood in line with us for more than an hour. Still hungry, I tried to order a fifth, but I was cut off like a roaring drunk in an American Legion hall, told that I had reached my limit. At a pizzeria (I do not recommend) in Chicago, I was informed when I called that I had to order ahead of time, although there is no menu on the restaurant Web site and the lady on the telephone refused to tell me what pies were available. Pizzerias now inhabit a space once occupied by snooty French restaurants, and they are smug, too. One pizzeria in Brooklyn (I do not recommend) lets you know that its pork is sustainable, its beef grass-fed, its eggs organic, and its grease converted into biofuel. (If only as much attention had been given to crusts.)

I have a final thought: ovens. Uniform and very high heat produces the best pies, which is why coal ovens have rightfully been so respected. The coal adds little to the taste, and in fact a retired pizzamaker in New York City, Sal Petrillo, now in his eighties, told me a secret of the trade. He said that at the old Frank’s on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, where he worked with his brother Frank for twenty years, the most important person was the guy who moved the pies around the coal-fired oven. He made certain they were evenly cooked.

A wood-burning oven, in particular the very smoky one at Pizzeria Bianco, can add a pleasant (if superficial) aroma, but I don’t believe wood is behind glorious crusts. Gas and electricity frequently do as well. At Tacconelli’s in Philadelphia, the oven is heated with oil. The truth is that great pizzas aren’t made by great ovens; they’re made by great cooks.

alan richman is a gq correspondent.

AMERICA’S 25 BEST PIZZAS
By Alan Richman

(CHICAGO)
1. Great Lake
Mortadella pie

I phoned at 6:15 p.m., ordered a cheese pie, asked when I could pick it up. The reply: 8 p.m. When I arrived a few minutes early, two of the fourteen people seated in the tiny storefront shop were eating. The rest looked exasperated. Nick Lessins, the Polish-Czech co-owner and pizzamaker, seemed happily oblivious. I stood inside, watching for twenty-five minutes as he fashioned three pies, mine among them. No man is slower. He makes each as though it is his first, manipulating the dough until it appears flawless, putting on toppings one small bit after another. In the time he takes to create a pie, civilizations could rise and fall, not just crusts. His cheese pie, prepared with fresh mozzarella made in-house, grated Wisconsin sheep’s-and-cow’s-milk cheese, and aromatic fresh marjoram instead of basil, was slightly shy of unbelievable. The next day I returned to try the same pie topped with fresh garlic and mortadella, the dirigible-sized Italian sausage that looks like bologna, tastes like salami, and is usually cut into chunks. He sliced the meat very thin and laid slices of it over the pie the moment it came out of the oven. The mortadella, with its combination of burliness and creaminess, was a meaty addition to the earthy, bready crust. This pie—creative, original, and somewhat local—represents everything irresistible about the new American style of pizza-making.

(BROOKLYN)
2. Lucali
Plain pie

Lucali, around since 2006, is an old candy store done up to look like an old pizzeria, and there’s an eerie glow about it. I’m not getting spiritual. There really is. Owner and pizzamaker Mark Iacono stands behind a candlelit counter, wearing a white T shirt, looking mysterious and troubled, our first poster-boy pizzaiolo. It drives the women crazy, or at least the ones who went there with me. “He’s out of a romance novel,” one of them practically sobbed. (To me he looked like the character played by Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck, except with two hands.) Lucali takes no reservations, and standing in line is a necessity, although the staff is courteous and tries to alleviate the suffering by taking a cell-phone number and warning when your turn has arrived. More good news: Every pie that Iacono prepares is worth the wait. I picked the simplest of his creations, in essence a Margherita, although there’s no menu and none of the pies have names. When I asked what to call it, I was told “plain pie.” It has tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, and a sprinkling of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, enormously satisfying for a pie so simple. The crust stands firm. The mozzarella melts exquisitely. The basil is wildly fresh. Should you need additional toppings, go for thinly shaved porcini mushrooms, so good I was tempted to put a second Lucali pie on my list.

(SAN FRANCISCO)
3. Pizzeria Delfina
Panna pie

I sat at the cramped counter, watching a young woman standing in front of me crimp dough. She crimped and crimped, building in air holes with each purposeful squeeze of finger and thumb. Delfina has easily the best crust in San Francisco, an unusually successful fusion of Neapolitan and American styles. The pie placed before me looked slightly pale, but it had a yeasty aroma and a lovely sweetness. It was unlike any other I found, prepared with tomato sauce, heavy cream, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and olive oil—and priced at a remarkable $10. Indeed, heavy cream does seem peculiar, but if you think about the Italian evolution of cheese for pizza—mozzarella becoming fresh mozzarella and then becoming fresh buffalo-milk mozzarella, each one richer and milkier than the one before—heavy cream is the natural expression of where Italians intend to go. The final addition, shavings of tangy, salty Parmigiano-Reggiano, is a brilliant step in the creation of an extraordinarily well-balanced pie.

(PHOENIX)
4. Pizzeria Bianco
Margherita with prosciutto

Before Chris Bianco, superhero, founded the artisan American-pizza industry, all was seemingly lost. The honored pizzerias with their ancient coal-fired ovens run by families that had arrived with Columbus were settling for pies with moribund crusts. Not that eating at Pizzeria Bianco, which accepts reservations only for jumbo parties, isn’t annoying. You get in line, although if you’re lucky you can grab one of the galvanized-metal chairs left out front. You become parched in the heat and ask the nice person behind you to save your spot while you walk over to Bar Bianco, next door, and buy a glass of faded Rioja from a bottle opened the previous day. You fear you’re not going to get in, because the place seats only about forty. Even if you’re pretty far up in line, as I was, you don’t know how many friends of the folks ahead of you will suddenly materialize and march in before you. (The answer: plenty.) On the other hand, waiting outside is like a big communal party, and had I not become chummy with one regular, I would never have ordered a Margherita pie topped with prosciutto. This fellow had three of them on his table, and he said it was all he ate. Chris Bianco’s fabled Margherita has a smoky and slightly scorched crust, too delicate to handle most toppings, but the uncommonly subtle, tender, and porky Italian prosciutto was a superlative option. Prosciutto is usually not one of my preferred toppings, because it’s often tough, but here it was icing on the crust.

(PROVIDENCE)
5. Bob & Timmy’s
Spinach-and-mushroom pizza

There’s no Bob or Timmy at Bob & Timmy’s. Last I heard, they’d sold to Rick and Jose, and I don’t think those two were there on the quiet weekday afternoon when I arrived with a guest. Our companions were a lonely waitress and a guy drinking at the bar. Bob & Timmy’s is a small tavern with beer bric-a-brac, captain’s chairs, reproduction Tiffany lamps, and a TV that remained on even though nobody was watching. Maybe in another era it was a bar for whalers, but there were no whalers around, either. I tried peering into the kitchen at the huge indoor charcoal grill, curious about grilled pizza, but the cook rushed to the door and chased me away. I’m pretty confident he was the cook, because I didn’t see anybody else back there. The menu is vast, but I stuck to simple variations, and every one was expertly prepared. The pies came in standard grilled-pizza format, irregularly round but cut into squares. The crust appeared too skinny to be interesting, but it seemed about the best flatbread I’d ever eaten. The vegetable toppings were remarkably fresh, and it occurred to me that freshness is something we rarely think about when contemplating what pizza we admire. The pie I loved most had three cheeses, the dominant one being feta, which adds tang and saltiness. Now I understand what every Greek must already know: Feta, spinach, and mushrooms are an astonishingly compatible combination.

(NEW HAVEN, CONN.)
6. Sally’s Apizza
White pie with potato

Sally’s is ancient, in an old Appalachian way. I can’t believe the men’s bathroom has been cleaned since 1938, when the pizzeria opened for business. Service was equally dismal. I noticed regulars getting some attention, not so much that they appeared pampered, but the rest of us waited about ninety minutes before our first pies appeared. To me, Sally’s should be renamed Sartre’s Apizza, home of absurdity and despair. I wasn’t there on any particular holiday, April Fools’ Day or Halloween, but the somnambulant staff wore weird outfits—nutsy party hats, outdated ties, Bermuda shorts, and T-shirts (in winter). I wondered if Sally’s was the headquarters of a work-release program for the culinarily insane. The customers weren’t impressive, either, especially the lady in the booth across from mine, fast asleep. Out of this agonizing ambience appeared a pie of incredible finesse, a tour de force, a white (no tomato sauce) pizza prepared with thinly sliced potatoes cooked to an artful golden brown, a scattering of equally faultless onions, and a masterful touch of rosemary, all perfectly complemented by Sally’s crust, a bit denser, chewier, and thinner than the one up the block at the equally fabled Pepe’s. By the way, I bet Sinatra got great service when he ate here.

(LOS ANGELES)
7. The Grandma
Tomato pie

The pizza is old New York. The mood is old L.A. Tomato Pie is a minuscule shop, entirely modern, hidden in the rear of an irregularly shaped strip mall not far from Hollywood. On a warm day, you might want to take advantage of Tomato Pie’s unique alfresco dining—orange fiberglass tables, blue fiberglass umbrellas, and an array of classic O’Keefe & Merritt kitchen stoves. Long ago, when Los Angeles was the oddball dining capital of America, casual restaurants specializing in such phantasmagorical settings were everywhere. On this day, a friend and I were seated indoors, in a tiny room entirely devoid of comforts, admiring crusts that I thought were the best in the city. Then I bit into a slice of the Grandma—a traditional and gorgeously assembled pizza with crushed tomatoes, fresh garlic, and a scattering of mozzarella, basil, oregano, and Pecorino Romano—I’m a sucker for Romano cheese. My friend and I simultaneously looked up and said, “This is great.” Indeed it was, the ingredients fresher than most, the crust unusually soft and tender, with a crisp bottom and a fluffy, nutty center. We shared a slice with a young mom named Katie, who insisted the pizza was better a few blocks away. Note to Katie: Your favorite pizza is no good.

(NEW YORK CITY)
8. Co.
Margherita

The Margherita here has buffalo-milk mozzarella, but the cheese is applied so expertly and melts so perfectly that the center of the pie doesn’t become a watery mess. All of us in New York who thought owner Jim Lahey knew only about bread now know otherwise. His Margherita, modest in size at a mere eleven inches in diameter, is so delicate that you will be inclined to finish the whole thing and immediately ask for another. A friend of mine, after eating two, said with awe, “I could do with another.” Lahey, revered owner of the beloved Sullivan Street Bakery, apparently had no difficulty becoming a master of crust—his is supple, thin, chewy, and charred, with very little outer ring. And yet, when I think about it, maybe tomato sauce is his strength. Co.’s seemed summery and fresh (although it turned out to be half fresh, half canned), and my jubilation was so apparent that a guy a few seats down looked at me and said disparagingly, “This sauce is no good. The tomatoes on pizza have to be canned.” He’s wrong, of course. I also had a complaint, but mine was sensible. I asked the waiter why the leafy basil had been blasted into a shriveled green blob, rather than being tossed on fresh immediately before serving, and was told that Lahey preferred cooked basil. In fact, customers can have it either way, so I recommend eating one of each.

(PHILADELPHIA)
9. Tacconelli’s
White pie

Sometimes there is no explanation for great pizza. Sometimes there are no great ingredients in great pizza, no specially sourced mozzarella, no hand-harvested garlic. I come from Philadelphia, and I had never heard of Tacconelli’s until recently, even though it was in business when I was growing up, going to school, and working there. What a wasted life. When I asked my waitress how it could have been that Tacconelli’s was unknown for so long, she said obscurity ended when yuppies discovered it, which was after I’d left town. (Finally, a reason to love yuppies.) Tacconelli’s does have a couple of quirks, the sort that I would have expected to bring early notoriety, but back then there were no bloggers to discover places like this. It has no prices on the menu, and when you call for a table you are asked to “reserve your dough” by letting them know how many pies you want. This insistence that you predict when you are going to be full before you start eating is one of the earliest known pizza affectations—it started in the ’80s. I suggest ordering too much, because every pizza here is wonderful, the crust from the huge, oil-burning oven an example of how tremendously satisfying an amalgam of thin, chewy, and crunchy can be. I loved the white pie, so much better than the sum of its packaged parts: ordinary part-skim mozzarella, granulated garlic, salt and pepper. In essence, it’s the ultimate expression of cheese on bread. A note on decor: The hydrangeas, roses, and African violets in the window are artificial. Of course.

(BROOKLYN)
10. Totonno’s
Margherita with pepperoni

The fire reportedly started from coals that had been removed from the pizza oven and stored overnight in a firebox. Damage was extensive. If this turns out to be an epitaph for the great Totonno’s in Coney Island, in business for eighty-five years until that fire closed it this past March, I hope it’s a worthy one. In my opinion, Totonno’s is—or possibly was—the template for the new style of pizzerias opening around the country, the ones where the owners prepare pies with deliberation, calculation, and stunning pride. The staff is slow-moving. If you are privileged to go there, you’ll almost certainly have to wait in a line. If it stretches out the door, you’ll have an opportunity to look over the neighborhood, mostly car-repair shops that park vehicles awaiting work on the sidewalks. The pies come in gorgeous hues, an artist’s palette of reds, blacks, and golds. The crusts are supple but crunchy. A friend who ate there with me a month before the fire said, “I know very good crust from the sound of it. As the roller cut through it, I heard the crispness.” The pies tend to be mild and understated, so the best option here is pepperoni, which adds heat and spiciness, and a good dose of dried oregano from one of the shakers scattered about the room. If you love old-style pepperoni pizza as much as I do, you’ll be looking forward to the day when Totonno’s returns.

(PORT CHESTER, NY)
11. Tarry Lodge
Clam pie

The clam pie, legendary in New Haven, is an oddity that seldom succeeds, since clams taken out of their shells and cooked atop a pizza invariably turn into rubbery bits. At Tarry Lodge, an Italian restaurant run by Mario Batali, something profoundly simple and fundamentally correct is done: The clams remain in their shells. On my visit they were Manila clams, delicate and sweet, briny and fresh, tiny beauties accented by the garlic, oregano, red pepper, and Parmigiano-Reggiano atop a thin, nicely charred crust. You have to work to remove the clams from their shells, but compared with everything else required to access great pizza these days, that isn’t much effort.

(NEW HAVEN, CONN.)
12. Frank Pepe
The Original Tomato Pie

I love the crust here—rather thick, quite soft, with nooks, crannies, colors, and char. I felt the same about the tomato sauce, not exactly what you would expect on pizza, a little more like a mild, chunky cooked pasta sauce. As I chewed and ate, ate and chewed, going through seven pies, trying one topping after another, it came to me: Keep it simple. The small, plain tomato pie without mozzarella and stunningly priced at $6.10 is pretty perfect when topped with plenty of silky, salty Pecorino Romano from the shaker on your table. The cheese is freshly grated each day. The single flaw in this pie? After adding so much cheese to so much sauce, you might have to use a knife and fork.


(HARRISON TOWSHIP, MICH.)
13. Luigi’s “the Original”
Gourmet veggie pizza

My nearly endless and seemingly futile quest to find a wonderful vegetable—not merely vegetarian—pizza somehow led me to Luigi’s, which looks like a roadhouse but is apparently a greenhouse. Topping a pie with broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, and onions, as is done here, seems to promise a chaotic chorus of sad, shriveled, sacrificial plant life, and that isn’t the end of the potential problems. The crust contained sesame seeds, and the grated cheese was Asiago. The combination succeeded magnificently. The seeds contributed nuttiness and the cheese pungency to an array of vegetables that tasted remarkably fresh, to say nothing of cooked to order. The secret, according to the waitress: Toss everything on the pie, cook. That’s it.

(SAN FRANCISCO)
14. Gialina
Wild-nettle pie

My friend said the wild nettles reminded her of newly mown artichokes, a lovely if implausible image. I found them a little like broccoli, but fear not: They’re better than that. These were bright forest green as well as earthy, and they came with a spectacular supporting cast of pancetta (unsmoked bacon), sliced portobello mushrooms, and provolone cheese. The pie, prepared without tomatoes or mozzarella in a standard commercial pizza oven, nevertheless lacked for nothing. The crust, cooked longer than most, was bubbly, luscious, and buttery, a little like warm Italian bread. Still, it was the wild nettles that did it, perhaps the best vegetation—okay, second to broccoli rabe—to put on pizza.

(DETROIT)
15. Buddy’s
Cheese pizza

Buddy’s pizza crust is one of the best in America, although it’s unlikely you knew it was in the running for the championship. That’s because Buddy’s, as much a bar and sandwich shop as it is a pizzeria, specializes in Detroit-style square pizza, almost unknown outside the city. The crusts here are a little better than the competition’s, and almost every pizzeria I tried in Detroit did them well. The interior slices on a Buddy’s pizza are light, slightly crunchy, and extremely satisfying, but the goal in any Detroit experience is those slices at the four corners of the pan, where maximum blackening occurs. If you love the burnt ends on pork ribs, Buddy’s isn’t to be missed.

(MARINA DEL REY, CA)
16. Antica Pizzeria
Pizza del cafone

Antica is one of those pizzerias that endeavor to create a classic Neapolitan experience, not easy when you’re located on the second floor of a Los Angeles mall. A multitude of Italian products, from cookies to olive oils, augments the set design, but the best touch is a pile of fifty-five-pound sacks of genuine “00” pizza flour from Naples, the secret to supple crusts. The ones here were entirely successful—light, puffy, and charred. Pizza labeled del cafone—fool’s or peasant’s pizza—isn’t uncommon, and it doesn’t always have precisely the same ingredients, but the combination here was brilliant. Uniting crumbled sausage, broccoli rabe, and smoked mozzarella seems mighty sophisticated to me.

(SAN FRANCISCO)
17. A16
Romana pie

The crust is Neapolitan-style, well prepared, which means soft, soothing, and a little spongy, with pleasing burned spots. The sauce contains anchovies, which I absolutely can’t abide whole, although I appreciate them as well as the next open-minded fellow when they’re chopped up as a flavor element. That’s what’s done here, as it is so often in Southern Italy. I had another fright: Plopped on top of the pie were whole olives, but in this case French Niçoise olives, which are not aggressive enough to scare me away. In Naples such a pie is known as pizza romana, whereas in Rome it’s a pizza napoletana. Before I’d tried A16’s spicy, bold, exuberant version, I would have guessed that each city wanted to blame this pie on somebody else.

(PROVIDENCE)
18. Al Forno
Grilled pizza with roasted eggplant

Al Forno’s grilled pizzas are more than legends; they’re beauties. Our roasted-eggplant pie consisted of creatively arranged toppings on a flat and irregularly shaped crust, perhaps unintentionally resembling an artist’s palette. The pie was assembled with two cheeses, mild and creamy Bel Paese plus sharp and salty Pecorino Romano; dabs of impossibly delicious tomato sauce intensely flavored with eggplant; flecks of parsley for color; and shreds of mild, bright scallions that added a feathery texture. Al Forno was one of the first no-reservation restaurants in America’s modern era of dining. It set the standard not simply for grilled pizza but also for impossibly long waits.

(BOSTON)
19. Galleria Umberto
Square slice

The line fools you. After a half hour, you’re near the counter, a mere five or six customers ahead of you. The next pan, you think. Doesn’t happen, because nobody settles for one slice. Everybody wants six, maybe eight, to go. Galleria Umberto is as big as a cafeteria, rarely crowded but always with a line. The slices are Sicilian, which means squares, thick ones, airier and lighter than most, with a subtle crunch, a splash of tomato sauce, a scattering of cheese. It represents what Boston’s North End once was: bedrock Italian, absolutely old-world. When you get close, you’re sure it’s almost your turn, but an old lady who looks like she’s off the boat from Bari steps in front of you, and you let her, because she was here first and sat down to rest her feet. Strange thoughts come to those in line. Is it possible this place has only one pan?

(NEW YORK CITY)
20. Famous Joe’s
Slice


Once, this slice defined New York City. That was before pizza slices were supersized, became entire meals laden with wacky toppings and extra cheese. Joe’s crust, thin and flexible but not too soft, is perfect for street pizza. Atop it is not much cheese and not much sauce, merely enough, in ideal symmetry. You can ask for a topping, but then everybody in the tiny, cramped shop will know you’re from out of town. The crust has a few lovely burned spots, but the New York slice isn’t about the search for the perfect crust or the perfect sauce. It’s the perfect New York experience. A friend who came with me said, sadly, “In my youth, stores like this ruled the earth. Now they’re almost extinct.” You do know how to fold a slice like this, don’t you? No? I guess you are from out of town.

(FARMINGTON HILLS, MICH.)
21. Tomatoes Apizza
Pepperoni pie

Here you’ll find a coal-fired oven big enough to barbecue a cow, and here I found the purest expression of pepperoni pizza as I love it. Forgive me if you prefer your pepperoni thick (I don’t) or soft (I don’t) or covered by cheese and sauce—as is traditional in Detroit, but thankfully not at Tomatoes Apizza. The non-Sicilian crust was soft, slightly charred, and entirely appealing, the tomato sauce and cheese more than satisfactory. All was swell, but the precise pepperoni preparation was most appealing. There was lots of it, sliced thin, sprinkled with Parmigiano-Reggiano, and allowed to curl and crisp up in the oven. My compliments to Danielle, our waitress, who took the order, put down her pad, and under an emergency staffing shortage prepared our pepperoni pie exactly right.

(PHILADELPHIA)
22. Osteria
Zucca pie

Zucca means “squash.” Yes, I know. Nobody sitting around the house suddenly says to the wife and kids, “Hey, let’s go out for a squash pizza.” I’m telling you, it’s terrific. The crust is thin and crispy, not ordinarily my preference, but the sweetness of this pizza is great when matched with crunchiness and char. Oh, I didn’t say it was sweet, did I? Don’t worry. There’s a little sweetness, not too much. It comes from the golden raisins and the toasted pine nuts, not from the puree or cubes of squash. There’s cheese, too, mozzarella. That helps, right? I’m telling you that this is a stylish, intense, dramatic, and absolutely special pizza, and you’ll love it. I didn’t believe I would, but I did.

(BOSTON)
23. Santarpio’s
Homemade-sausage pie

Talk about old-world. As we walk in, the guy up front yells, “Tony, table for two.” Cases of beer are stacked in the back, next to the jukebox and a bank of gumball machines. The gas-fired oven operates like no other I’ve seen—it has rotating shelves that look like the ones in diners that display cream pies. The kid busing tables has to be playing hooky, and I expect a truant officer to walk in, blow his whistle, and start chasing him around the room. All the pies are exactly right, but the one with sausage is better than that. Santarpio’s crusts are hearty, a little roughhouse, very much in the baked-bread family, and the homemade sausage comes crumbled, skillfully integrated into the tomato sauce. I know for certain that the owners are proud of that sauce: On the steps outside, where you might find stone lions guarding the entrance to a library, stand two industrial-size Pastene tomato cans.

(DETROIT)
24. Niki’s
Cheese pizza with feta

I searched for the meaning of Greek pizza, a topic often discussed, undoubtedly because so many Greeks own pizzerias. I never found it, but the quest was worthwhile, because at Niki’s I discovered feta cheese as a topping. Niki’s doesn’t have Greek pizza. It has Detroit pizza, and one optional topping is feta cheese, which adds creaminess and tanginess while brightening up (and somewhat dominating) any pie. The feta here is crumbled, tossed atop the pizza, and baked. It becomes toasty and crispy, giving any pizza from plain to pepperoni a singular zip. Now that I’ve made this important discovery, my next goal is searching for the meaning of bouzouki music, finding out whether a man can go mad endlessly listening to it in Greek pizzerias.

(NEW YORK CITY)
25. Una Pizza Napoletana
Margherita

This is the most beautiful pizza in America, the outer ring grand and pillowy, the San Marzano tomatoes bright, the buffalo mozzarella dazzlingly melted. Neapolitan pizzas are undeniably gorgeous, and Una Pizza Napoletana replicates their style and attractiveness better than any other pizzeria in this country. This Margherita, an expression of purity and restraint, could be immortalized in a painting entitled Still Life in Pizza. Many admirers consider this the best pizza in America. I don’t go that far, but I believe it’s more enjoyable than almost any pizza in Naples—maybe in all of Italy.

Diner for Schmucks

Sooner or later, depending on how long it takes to get a reservation, you'll end up having a bad time at what is supposed to be a good restaurant.

When that happens, you might be startled by how upset you become. It probably won't be the food that's to blame. You can always shrug off a tough steak, since the chef didn't mean to disappoint you. But everyone takes poor service personally. Get a bad table and you'll wonder if the hostess finds you unworthy. Find yourself with a disrespectful server and you'll feel worse, because you're expected to tip.

Now and then, poor service is the result of a restaurant having an unfortunate day. Maybe the chef snapped at your waiter and made him sulk. Maybe the front of the house, as it's called, is short-staffed because a waiter called in sick.

More than likely, poor service is inherent, caused by a staff with lackluster spirit or a manager with a lax attitude. Here in New York, with our restaurants tumbling into informality, a guest can easily become a casualty of incompetence. We've entered the post-service era, where fewer and fewer restaurateurs still stand watch.

Which brings me to M. Wells, a metal-clad diner as shiny as a magpie's trinket, situated on a corner in Queens as dead-drab as one of the borough's countless cemeteries. A little more than a year ago, the diner was an abandoned shell, and now it symbolizes the renewal of Long Island City as surely as the MoMA PS1 art museum and the Silvercup film studios. I don't know what a burger once cost at the derelict diner that became M. Wells, since I never ate there, but I'm betting it was about $2.99. M. Wells sells one for $42, proof that gentrification is thriving in Queens.

Walk in and you might presume that you've stumbled on a formulaic re-creation of the diner genre, but you'd be wrong. M. Wells is not a faux-old-fashioned spot with black-and-white shakes and brassy waitresses to put you in your place. It's not retro-romantic, with votive candles, arugula salads, and flourless chocolate cake.

My experience there was like no other. The motto is "All's well at M. Wells." I assure you it is not.

The proprietors are Hugue Dufour and Sarah Obraitis, husband and wife. He is from Montreal, where he was a partner at Au Pied de Cochon, a modern legend that might well have launched lowbrow-made-highbrow dining. The restaurant's most enduring accomplishment was the uplifting of poutine, a dish usually found in rural Quebec dives that consists of fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy. Au Pied de Cochon added seared foie gras and was besieged with praise. M. Wells calls itself, oddly, a Quebeco-American diner. It specializes in freakishly appealing combinations, some brilliant and some frivolous, most unkempt but a few artistic. It also offers inspired pastry classics. The pineapple upside-down cake, as it's made here, is clear evidence that this dessert deserves enshrinement alongside Babe Ruth and FDR as an icon of twentieth-century America.

Dufour is a quirky presence. On one of my early visits, he wore fleur-de-lis-patterned pants while sitting on one of his counter stools, drumming his fingers, looking anxious. Obraitis, who is from Queens, runs the front of the house with considerable charm and little attention to detail. Or maybe the chipped plates, distracted staff, and badly washed glasses are intended to enhance an unceremonious ambience. She is totally relaxed, seemingly everywhere, talking to everyone, a wonderful hostess but a less than attentive supervisor.

My editors and I first went there for dinner because we had heard that it was exceptional, which is certainly true of the atmosphere, part raucous frat boys on a bus, part tranquil middle-aged women in cute shifts, plus a whole lot in between. Queens is not a destination for residents of other boroughs, other than those en route to airports, but M. Wells appears to be changing that.

We were happily stunned by a gargantuan meat-loaf sandwich stabbed through its heart with a serrated knife, and by a côte-de-boeuf-and-fried-soft-shell-crab combo plate, the meat a showcase of succulence, massive and mouthwatering, while the poor crabs had to settle for burial under a mound of rare flesh, drowning in animal blood. It was cuisine and carnage combined.

I assumed Obraitis and Dufour didn't know I was a critic, even when I showed up for a second meal. The first dish I ate could not have been better—escargots and marrow set in the trench of a bisected shinbone. The marrow enriched the escargots, and the escargots gave heft to the marrow, which is usually perceived as little more than quivering fat. Topping it all were minute, crunchy breadcrumbs. The beef tartare was a bit too moist and much too chunky, precisely as it was intended to be. The cooking here has two styles: a little too much or a lot too much.

I admired the M. Wells interpretation of Caesar salad, which has smoked herring substituting for anchovies. It did have one flaw, in that the herring obliterated the flavor of the grated Parmesan. (Anchovies, magically, don't do that.) Porchetta Sierra was a spin on vitello tonnato—slices of rare, rosy, roasted veal covered with a mild tuna sauce. Dufour's version was half-good: The mackerel-mayonnaise sauce was wondrously clever, but it couldn't save the dry, overcooked pork beneath it. If you admire audaciousness over achievement, both preparations could be described as intriguing. Then came the greatest pineapple upside-down cake of my life.

So I was practically bounding when I approached Obraitis to ask if I could set up an interview with her and her husband. She seemed delighted and immediately agreed—and added that she knew who I was, even if I had made my reservation using a pseudonym. She promised to get back to me within a few days.

The days passed. I didn't hear from her. I called the restaurant and left a message. I e-mailed her at an address recommended by the fellow who answered the phone: write@mwellsdiner.com. I have my share of detractors, but Obraitis had given no indication that she wished to avoid me.

···

I've been reviewing restaurants for more than twenty years, almost always for GQ. Unlike other critics, I'm not particularly interested in disguises—camouflage seems so World War II. When I'm reviewing, I always hope to eat like an anonymous patron and be treated as such. That means not being noticed, but people in the restaurant business make fun of me whenever I claim I'm not recognized. They say I always am. To answer the question most asked, I don't know if my photograph is on any kitchen wall. If it is, I hope it's above the pastry station.

Restaurant reviewing, as you probably suspect, is a nice way to make a living, although spending your waking hours overstuffed is not as much fun as you might think. Being recognized isn't so delightful, either. The food does not improve for a critic once he is known, although service tends to change dramatically. Consider a world where you are perceived to be captivating and where each word you speak is deemed to be of dazzling import. Whatever you desire—clean plates, crisp napkins, warm rolls—is yours for the asking. Restaurants occasionally send out extra dishes to people like me, which is something we don't desire, yet it would be churlish to refuse the gesture, to insist that unordered entrées be taken away. Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't think of these offerings as bribes; they're more like an opportunity for the chef to show off.

When I'm on assignment, I pay for every meal. In case you're wondering, now and then a restaurant owner who has known me forever refuses to give me a check. When I'm not working, I take it—and always leave an oversize tip, in cash. When I am working, we battle until I am permitted to pay. I always try to be truthful and candid in my evaluations, which has cost me dearly. The great chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who long ago invited me to eat with his parents in Alsace, no longer speaks to me because of a story I wrote.

This is the ethical core of who I am and what I do, yet the ethics of food writing don't end there. I'm also extremely aware of my behavior in restaurants. I try to be diplomatic and considerate. Never in my professional life has anyone in the restaurant business questioned my conduct. Not until I ate my third meal at M. Wells.

Finally, eight days after our first meeting, Obraitis wrote and asked if the story was still possible. I wasn't surprised or offended by the delayed response. Wizened journalists have learned to suppress such reactions. Anyway, M. Wells felt like a restaurant still in training, even if it had been operating for nearly a year, and I wasn't expecting efficiency. I figured I'd get my story done.

I wrote back to her on a Sunday morning, cheerily telling her we were on. I told her I already had made a reservation at M. Wells for the following Tuesday evening and was thinking of having the Peking duck. She replied, "You would absolutely adore the Peking duck, but we need 48 hours to get it ready." Hmm. In my business we don't expect excellent math skills from the folks we write about, either.

We later spoke on the phone and arranged a future dinner date for me, her, and her husband. She seemed pleased with my choice of restaurants, a small Cantonese seafood palace in Manhattan's Chinatown. We would do the interview there.

Tuesday night arrived. My 6 P.M. reservation was for four persons: myself, two other journalists, and a woman in the restaurant business. The doors opened promptly, and we were amiably sent off to the right. On my second visit I had been seated to the left of the front door at a long wooden communal table set with Mexican religious candles. That's by far the more comfortable section of the long, narrow diner space. The right side has cramped booths, a majority of the counter stools, and heat rising from cooking surfaces.

The two men were across from me, the woman next to me. I sat on the outside, which gave me the best view of the room. We ordered wine and bar snacks, smoked mussels and papas bravas, potatoes that are a specialty of Spanish tapas restaurants. The wine, a rosé, was crisply excellent. The mussels were superb: plump, fresh, oily, and lightly smoked. The potatoes were bland despite the supposedly spicy tomato sauce.

Our waiter, a young fellow, never returned. We sat amid the detritus of our snack course—soiled plates, crumpled napkins, empty glasses. At least forty-five minutes went by. My friends were unhappy, one of them vocally. I pleaded for patience. When I'm working, I always wait as long as it takes to get whatever service the restaurant is capable of providing. That's part of being a critic, a way of evaluating whether it's well run or not.

This time I realized my guests were becoming far too restless, not just from the lack of attention but also from the heat, the stickiness, the dearth of space. I finally got the attention of a young waitress. She came over and said, unconcerned, "Do you know what you want?" I admit that her brusqueness caused me to snap. I replied, "We knew what we wanted forty-five minutes ago." She did not respond. Perhaps she deserves credit for remaining unruffled, although I think a more likely explanation is that she didn't give a damn. She took our order. We ate.

The best dish of this meal was the massive, underpriced ($9) blue-cheese salad with monstrous chunks of cheese and hunks of candied walnuts as big and burnished as jeweled Fabergé eggs. Lee Perkins Tuna, a kind of overdressed sashimi, fell flat, dead on arrival, and the pommes de terre fondantes, spuds with veal demi-glace and summer truffles, were both overly rich and inexplicably flavorless. The barbecued short ribs consisted of caramelized meat on prehistoric-size bones, not bad eating but not much of it, a rarity for an establishment that likes to send out an avalanche of food. These are splendid bones for your dog, if you own a very big dog.

Then came the banana-cream pie, textbook perfect. That's the pie I want smashed in my face when I play for the Yankees and hit a walk-off home run.

Nothing else of significance happened during that dinner. What stands out is the heat and the long waits. During our meal, Obraitis came by to say that she and her husband had to leave to attend an event and were looking forward to seeing me in a few days. I felt the same, although I didn't enjoy the food as much as I had at the first two dinners, and the service was dreadful. In order to get a check, I had to wave to our elusive waitress.

Late the next afternoon, an e-mail arrived from Obraitis. This is what it said:

I am a bit distressed by the feedback I received after your visit last night. Either you had despicable service or you guys were in an awful mood. It seems we couldn't make you happy, several servers heard you complain and ask for more attention. One of those servers, a female, received a hardy pat on the ass from you. Totally unacceptable in our world. I don't know what to think or how to proceed. But I must relay my worry.

I sat numb, experiencing the kind of paralysis a person feels when he picks up the phone and learns of a ghastly accident or a horrific illness. I was being accused of sexually harassing a member of a restaurant staff. After a few minutes, I wrote back, and this is what I said:

Absolutely, 100 percent untrue. I just went bone-cold when I read that. In all my years going to restaurants, I have never done that and never been accused of doing that. I would not do that. Who in the world told you that? I will be happy to come to your restaurant tonight and confront that person, face-to-face. It's a lie.

I will comment quickly on the other stuff. First, I thought one of the men in my group was totally out of line with his mouth and his comments. I just couldn't get him to shut up. Second, we had two servers. A young kid, practically a boy, who brought the bar snacks and then forgot about us for 45 minutes, and a taller woman (blonde, wearing yellow?) who took over. Yes, I said something to her about nobody taking our order for 45 minutes, but that was the extent of my comments about service.

But it simply isn't important compared to that accusation. I assure you it never happened, not by me.

That indictment from Obraitis was wickedly reckless—unless, of course, she had witnessed me doing such a thing, which she had not. She did not ask for my account of what occurred after she and her husband left the restaurant. Under other circumstances, I might have dwelled on the illogicality of the first part of her message. Here was a restaurant proprietor blaming guests for being in a bad mood because they were treated hideously. But at the moment, it didn't get my attention. The accusation was way too momentous.

I think all of us, men and women, fear the false allegation, being put on trial for something we did not do. For a man, a charge of sexual harassment is nuclear, because we are always perceived as guilty. It's damned if you do and damned if someone says you did.

People who have dealt with me in restaurants know I didn't do this. I'm far from beloved as a critic, but I've never been accused of pawing a waitress. Think about it. Would a critic who is dining in a restaurant where he has been recognized do something like this? It seems too stupid to be believed, and I don't think anybody considers me brainless.

I was left breathless, not only by the accusation but by the offhand manner in which it was delivered. Something this damning should be treated with the utmost seriousness. And of course, the complainant has to be identified—the ugliness of an anonymous accusation is beyond measure.

Eventually I decided there could be only two explanations for Obraitis's e-mail. The first assumes that the waitress really did make a complaint. One of my companions put forth a theory: The waitress created a fabrication to deflect attention from the appalling job she had done.

There's another possibility, my theory. I wonder if Obraitis made it all up in order to intimidate me, stop a restaurant critic from writing an unflattering review. Either one of these scenarios is possible. It could have been the waitress fearing for her job or Obraitis fearing for her restaurant. I asked my three friends for their recollections. The first guest, a man, said, "I didn't see any of the behavior that Sarah is alleging. I find her comment ridiculous."

The second guest, another man, called it "absurd—I witnessed nothing untoward on your part." He went on to say how "bizarre" it was "that we, the patrons, are somehow to blame for not having a good experience. An experience that consisted of dirty dishes and glassware, lack of utensils when plates are served or careless thrusting of utensils, huffy attitude, and all-around eye-rolling. I guess that's the whole hipster restaurant proposition: Service is for stiffs."

The woman added, "I was sitting beside you for the entire meal and did not see you touch anyone. I walked behind you when we left the restaurant and didn't see you touch anyone. It's sickening that someone would make this up and direct it at you. It crosses a line. They treated us badly, were not sorry about it, and then decided to attack you further with untrue accusations. It's the worst restaurant experience I've ever had."

Three days later, I got another e-mail from Obraitis, the last one. The first thing she said was that she and her husband were canceling our dinner plans and no longer wished "to pursue the interview." I remember thinking how disconnected she was from reality, that after making such a terrible denunciation, she could think that I would be interested in eating with her. I did not speak or write to her again.

That last e-mail from her contained slightly more details on the alleged incident. Obraitis wrote, "...apparently upon requesting your check you tapped one of our female servers inappropriately." I suppose she's backing off somewhat by adding the word "apparently" and by changing the "hardy pat on the ass" to a simple tap.

I've reported what occurred at M. Wells. I believe I have been accurate. I do think the "hipster restaurant" mentality mentioned by one of my friends is partly to blame for what occurred. There is a reason why serious restaurants train people working for them to be polite and attentive. After my three dinners at M. Wells, I am reasonably certain that thorough schooling has never taken place there.

Critics like me deserve some blame for the current proliferation of impossibly low service standards in so many casual New York restaurants. We tend not to censure lackadaisical conduct, thinking this is what customers want and that we would appear out of touch if we disapproved. In fact, the article I was planning to write most likely wouldn't have dwelled on the egregious manners I'd encountered.

I wish I had never been so forgiving in my reviews of New York restaurants. I should long ago have paid attention to this disastrous decline in service. Casualness in restaurants does not automatically make customers feel more relaxed. It often has the opposite effect. Remember how tense my friends became when we received no attention at M. Wells.

I appreciate an atmosphere lacking formality. I love Momofuku Ssäm Bar in Manhattan and Schwa in Chicago, both unpretentious and unfussy—but also attentive. They employ people who know how to take orders, fill glasses, clear plates, drop checks. Neither neglects customers. These days, too many new restaurants do. Their motto might as well be Too Cool to Care.

Well-run restaurants recognize that thoughtful service enhances an evening out, and that a bit of formality might be required in order to reach that goal. Customers these days tend to confuse discipline and manners with arrogance. Perhaps they are remembering the excess stuffiness of decades past. That hardly exists any longer. Arrogance today is exhibited by inconsiderate servers who do almost nothing for customers other than slap plates down in front of them and expect a generous tip. Arrogance is a restaurant believing it can prosper without looking after its customers.

I will tell you what else is extraordinarily self-defeating: We empower popular restaurants, and M. Wells is very much one of them. All we care about is accessibility, getting through the door. Such restaurants are rarely held accountable, no matter how uncaring they might be. I doubt that the people who operate these sought-after spots ask themselves if they are treating their customers properly. They are not obliged to do so.

There is one thing more to say. It is not charitable, so I don't suppose it will reflect well on me. I do not forgive the people at M. Wells for what they have said. I wish there were some way they would not get away with it. I'm pretty certain they will, and I will always be sorry for that.

Alan Richman's Wine Guide: White Burgundy

Even a Riesling lover like me will readily concede that the greatest white wines in the world are white Burgundies, more specifically those from the grand cru vineyards of France's Côte de Beaune. If you don't believe me, pick up a 1995 or a 1996 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet, available in retail outlets. You'll find them tasty, I guarantee. You'll also find them for about $5,000 a bottle.

It's not the majesty of the grapes vinified for these wines that make them unrivaled. The grapes are Chardonnay, which we've all drunk. Chardonnay is easily grown everywhere, although most of what Americans consume comes from California, and we think it's pretty good. A little boring, but good. Chardonnay is mindlessly appreciated by a majority of American wine-drinkers. It's reflexively vilified by a majority of American wine experts—when it's not from those remarkable vineyards in France.

Standing alone, undisguised, Chardonnay is a bland grape, relatively punchless, easily manipulated by winemakers. It's productive enough that mediocre bottlings can be made inexpensively. Maybe we like it because it has human attributes. When life is too easy, it grows fat and lazy.

But it has certain qualities that make it capable of greatness. Because it is essentially subtle, it picks up flavors from the soil and the earth—few other grapes are so influenced by the concept of terroir, the French word for sense of place. It reacts well to coddling. It's willing to improve. It's a swell learner. When challenged, it rises to the occasion. The best white Burgundies are spare, concentrated, focused and noble.

What's significant to me is that the overall region where white Burgundies are produced doesn't just encompass the famous vineyard sites of Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet. There are vineyards throughout the Côte de Beaune and farther south that produce genuine white Burgundy that can be sold for modest prices—well, in the double-digits, at least.

I gathered up about three dozen bottles to taste. A great many came from the Mâconnais and the Côte Chalonnaise, two of those southerly areas. What they have going for them is limestone soil similar to that found in the famous villages. I also tasted the most basic, least-expensive wines from Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet, those that are called "village wines" because they are made from blends of wines from the least prestigious sites within the villages.

My goal was to see if any of them could match, or even approach, the taste of wonderful white Burgundy. At their best, the great ones have power that comes not from new oak, as is commonplace in California, but from the stress of growing on starving vines. They are austere, rather than fat, dry rather than sweet, and yet they have enormous intensity. They have minerality, sometimes nuttiness. In certain years, they are honeyed, which not everyone likes, but I do. They are restrained and understated, yet profound. They are even a touch oaky—French winemakers, unlike American winemakers, use new oak to balance, not prop-up, their Chardonnays. They can age, which even the best California Chardonnays rarely do well. (One friend of mine calls California Chardonnay "the inbred cousin of real Chardonnay.")

How can I even suggest that white Burgundy bottlings from lesser regions can be anywhere close to the greats? Because anything is possible in good vintage years, and because I always remember something one of the greatest of the white Burgundy producers, Vincent Leflaive of Domaine Leflaive told me, when I visited him at his estate nearly two decades ago. He said, "You know, white wine is very easy to make."

Days of Wine and Poseurs

I came close. Very close.

Not to winning the Best Sommelier in America 2011 contest.

To becoming a legend among sommeliers by setting fire to my $3000 Zegna Su Misura suit during the decanting portion of the competition. Decanting includes holding a bottle above a lit candle, which is playing with fire for someone like me.

Just in time, Aldo Sohm, one of the organizers, raced in from the sidelines and lifted my arm from the flame. Actually, I wouldn't have been the first to add conflagration to my credentials. A judge, Roger Dagorn, told me about a long-ago competitor, a former sommelier at Restaurant Daniel in New York, who carelessly allowed the wicker basket holding his wine to become engulfed in flames.

I entered the two-day contest, hosted by American Sommelier and held earlier this month in New York, with dual status. I was not quite a participant and by no means a challenger for the title. I was permitted to take the same tests as the 29 genuine entrants, and I was given a bye into the second-day finals, usually limited to those who have placed in the top four on day one. For me, it meant an opportunity to get an insider's look at an arcane profession that is rapidly gaining popularity even as mass-market interest in the ceremony and formality of fine dining decreases. Dagorn recalls only about a half-dozen professionals working in Manhattan 20 years ago, but these days restaurants are sprouting sommeliers. The collecting and drinking of fine wine is an obsession of the very wealthy, and, at the same time, interest in lower-priced wines from around the world has become a passion of those with lesser incomes. The sommelier, of course, must be a master of both the rare and the unusual.

I have never worked in a restaurant. A few days before the competition, I asked Sohm if there was anything I could do to improve my chances of performing credibly, and he suggested I read up on service. I did not take his advice. It seemed as unlikely to advance my chances for success as skimming the Kama Sutra would prepare a man for his first night of making love.

My confidence ebbed further when I told a friend with knowledge of these events that I planned to enter. Her reaction was more than unkind.

"You're out of your mind," she said. "You're going to get killed. I thought you were going to be a judge."

"I'm not qualified to judge," I replied.

"No, you're not qualified to compete. You're not a professional. You're a...a...a...writer! Why don't you take the New York State Bar Exam. You have as much chance of doing well on that."

I thought she was deliberately exaggerating. I know how to open a bottle. I understand wine lists. I can taste wine as well as the next amateur, use words like "brambly" and phrases like "redolent of honeysuckle." She asked me if I knew how to use a gueridon. I'd never heard of a gueridon, the little cart on wheels that sommeliers push around the dining room.

"Listen," she sneered, "there's always a couple surprises in these things. Someone who's brilliant and adored and runs a top dining room comes in and bombs, and then there's somebody from a dump of a town in Michigan who beats the guy from Le Bernardin. Sometimes people come out of nowhere and do fabulously. But it's not going to be you."

···

I put a corkscrew and a box of wooden matches in the pocket of my suit jacket, and headed for the Jumeirah Essex House, just off Central Park in Manhattan. Only later did I learn how badly armed I was. Serious competitors are known to carry two corkscrews, two lighters, two cigar clips, one cigar punch (whatever that is), matches, business cards, a pad, and several pens. Cigar-service is part of the competition. I've never smoked a cigar, let alone advised anybody on how to select one.

The first day started with two seated tests, the first a written exam, the second a blind tasting. I took a table across from Ian Cauble, wine director of the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, who was intensely studying three-by-five cards. He had box after box of them, and I asked permission to look at a few. What are the main soils of the Jura? (Soils? I only know one wine from the Jura, vin jaune, or yellow wine, and I have no idea if that's a nickname.) Name the districts and wards of the Western Cape. (No idea.) I asked Cauble if the Western Cape was part of Australia. He assured me it was not. I guess I'm not so good at geography, either.

Sydney Paris, the beverage director of Prima restaurant in San Francisco, overheard our conversation.

"Remember," he said, anticipating my test results, "there is no crying in sommelier competitions."

I assumed he was making a joke.

"I am not," he said. "I've seen people cry, faint, even fall over from stress."

Everyone in the room except me looked young, smart, and well-prepared. They also looked nervous. I was not. They had their careers. All I had was my self-esteem, practically nonexistent where wine is concerned. I once identified a Moscato d'Asti poured by a famously cranky importer who needed to be impressed in order to continue our interview, but that was more than 20 years ago, and I had never topped that simplistic feat. I thought I was dressed better than my competitors. Oddly, sommeliers tend to favor very wide ties.

Our first test was The Written Theory Exam. As best I could tell, none of the 77 questions had anything to do with theory. They delved into obscurity. Define Falernian. (Define it? I've never heard of it. The answer: A word describing a wine produced from grapes grown on the slopes of Mount Falernus in the time of ancient Rome.) What is a feuillette? (No idea. The answer: A French wine barrel—maybe I should have known that.)

I'm pretty sure I got three questions right. Maybe a dozen other answers were almost got right, like this one: In what modern country is thought to be relics of the oldest winery? How old are those relics thought to be? The answer was Armenia, 6100 years ago. I said Greece, 2300 years ago. Almost perfect, by my generous reckoning.

I asked Cauble how he had done. He shook his head. "Nothing they asked was on my cards. None of these answers are in those 500-page wine books. You can't study for a test like this. It's about experience and conversations."

I had hoped for a few questions that reflected my personal knowledge of wine, almost all of it picked up in the mid-to-late 20th century. Here's one: What's the word? Answer: Thunderbird.

I did a little better on the second exam, a blind tasting, although I don't believe I got anything exactly right. I came close, but in the alcoholic-beverage business, close only counts on breathalyzer tests.

Decanting and serving wine tableside was the ultimate trial of day one. I walked into a room with a table and two seated customers awaiting service. Sohm said the couple was celebrating the gentleman's birthday and that they had ordered a 1990 Cuvée Cathelin, purposely providing an incomplete description of the wine. The woman was the host—no longer can sommeliers assume that the fattest man at the table orders the wine. Off I went, to disaster. Try as I might, I could not remember the producer of Cuvée Cathelin or where it was from. (It's J-L Chave, and his 1990 Chave Cuvée Cathelin Ermitage is a $3000 wine from the Rhone.)

I grabbed a wine cradle—metal has replaced those flammable baskets. I took a bottle of wine standing in for Cuée Cathelin. I couldn't get it to sit properly on the newfangled cradle. It kept slipping off. I could not extract the cork, even by tugging. I was paralyzed by inferiority. By the time I did get it out, my little rolling cart—gueridon to those snooty sommeliers—was littered with bits of foil, hunks of cork, and blood-red drops of spilled wine. It looked like Freddy Krueger had entered the competition. It was during the extraction process that I placed my sleeve in the flame of the candle. I did everything but run screaming from the room with my hair on fire.

Afterward, I was permitted to watch other contestants perform. Quite a few, like me, did not recognize Cuvée Cathelin. Some had the same problems as I did with the cradle. One in five had the same problem extracting the cork. The wine substituting for the Cuvée Cathelin was a nine-year old Italian Grignolino that almost certainly was bottled with cheap corks. (Italian corks are not beloved in the industry.) After one entrant had exceeded even my level of ineptitude, a judge, Robert Bohr, leaned toward me and said, "You're not dead last."

···

The job of sommelier is back-breaking physically and mind-bending mentally. He or she must carry cases of wine from delivery vans, and I've known female sommeliers who did it in high heels. Sommeliers answer more questions than quiz-show contestants, and not just about Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rheingau, the only regions they had to master a half-century ago. Sometimes, the questions are simplistic. Giselle Hamburg, sommelier at the Tarry Lodge in Port Chester, told me what she's most often asked: "We want a really good wine and don't want to spend a lot of money. What do you recommend?" In the service portion of the competition, the sommelier was asked by a make-believe guest what clone of Nebbiolo was used in making 1985 Giacomo Conterno Barolo Riserva Monfortino. (You think I knew?)

The position of sommelier incorporates ritualistic and ceremonial elements of the sort found in religious services, especially when sommeliers wear their shiny silver tastevins, not much different from the pectoral crosses that hang from the necks of clergy. Athleticism is required, too. We often hear that the difference between amateur sports and professional sports is speed, and that also goes for wine service. Finally, a good sommelier must be a competent psychologist, responsible for stabilizing the mental health of uneasy customers. No longer do the duties of the sommelier, as in my early days visiting French restaurants, include foisting oxidized wines on the unknowing and sneaking sips of `55 Latour from the decanters of customers naïve enough to let them out of their sight.

As day two started, I wondered if my performance could get worse. Certainement. Day two was in front of a live audience. I left a pad with Hamburg, with instructions to take notes on my performance. This is her first one: "Richman is about to get a whopping he'll never forget."

I was disgraceful in the blind tasting. I didn't like any of the wines placed before me, and I realized that I had no experience analyzing wines I wasn't enjoying. Always, I'd dump them and move on to something better. Sommeliers have to be more composed than that. In another of the six segments, candidates had to recognize obscure local names for wines and expound on their properties. I got zero right. (The one I thought I knew turned out to be a red wine, not a white, as I had confidently announced.) I excused myself from the cigar competition. I suppose I could identify an exploding cigar if it blew up in my face, but that's the extent of my expertise. I did fairly well finding mistakes on a made-up wine list. I even noticed that Château Lascombes, a second-growth Bordeaux, was misidentified as a third growth. I was irrationally proud of that.

The service competition was impossible. Each candidate was given 22 minutes to deal with three tables and execute tasks that included identifying, decanting, and pouring a wine; serving champagne to a party of two (that suddenly became a party of three); and suggesting wine pairings to a couple that had chosen a six-course menu. As soon as I realized I had no chance, I transformed myself. I adapted the persona of a character never before seen in a sommelier competition. I became an Old Jewish Waiter. I told jokes, often at the expense of the people I was serving. While pouring champagne, I reminded customers of the philosophy of Chuckles The Clown, a character from the old Mary Tyler Moore Show: A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants. Bohr said he wouldn't mind hiring someone like me for his restaurant, "...but you would have to be supervised."

The final segment was a head-to-head challenge. Each of the four finalists plus me stood before a table holding 20 champagne flutes. We were given a magnum (equivalent to two bottles) of champagne and these instructions: Fill all 20 glasses evenly. After pouring into a glass, no going back and adding more. The magnum should be empty at the end. I killed the competition. On my second glass, I estimated that the pour was perfect. I also heard a glug, glug as the champagne came out. Inspired, I moved as rapidly as possible, pouring to the sound of the glug, glug. I was faster than anyone else, by several minutes. I was more accurate than anyone else.

Afterward, I overheard Jared Fischer of Le Bernardin, who finished second in the competition to Alexander LaPratt, sommelier at db Bistro Moderne, talking to a friend. He was conceding that I had won the champagne pour. "It was a million-to-one-shot," he said, not in scorn but in wonder. I don't agree. I acquired my champagne habit before most of these kids were born, and something good was bound to come of it.