Zola in Nashville, Tennessee

The day: 7th July 2007, Dinner.
The place: 3001 West End Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee.
The venue: Resataurant Zola
Closest airport: Nashville International Airport (or if you fancy a drive, Atlanta is five hours away, and you can get there directly from London with BA from Gatwick)
The food: Modern fusion
The drinks: American wines with some European.




THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED
So we wanted to try fine cuisine in the US. Probably, having had the choice, for this experiment we wouldn’t have selected Nashville, a city famous for other offerings. But this is where work brought us to, and anyway we had heard nice things about Zola, where Chef Debra Paquette (co-owner with husband Ernie Paquette) produces dishes inspired by Mediterranean (notably Spanish/Moroccan) and French cuisine.

Let us come clean at the outset: the experiment was not successful. We don’t want to play the part of the snotty Europeans (though what else are we?) so we would prefer to attribute the failure to a seemingly impassable gulf between our concept of fine dining and the Nashvillian one. We also want to point out that the amiable and professional Ernie Paquette had kindly offered us interview time with the chef, time in which we might have attempted to cross the cultural barrier and to foster mutual understanding between the races… but our time (and probably also Chef Debra’s, to judge from how busy Zola was) was too limited to take up the offer (and, also, we wanted to go ‘incognito’, as usual). So please read the negative comments below in this light. And if at all possible, please don’t bomb our countries.

The exterior is unassuming, but inside there are several environments, variedly and colourfully decorated with paintings and other objects. The room was totally full so we did not want to disturb the other customers by taking photographs. The reception involved a long wait to be seated, the first thing we are not used to, though the numerous other customers waiting with us seemed to be perfectly comfortable with it (cultural gulf number one?). After this, anyway, the service got into its stride according to the best of American standards.

The menu has a good range, offering for example from ginger pork belly to crab and potato Martini to Med Lamb salad as starters (in the range $8-$10.50, with a meze platter at $14.50), and for Paella to lobster omelette to New Zealand venison to to Angus fillet for main courses ($20-$40).

Bread was on offer from the waiter (no basket). We skipped the parmesan focaccia and we went for oat, walnut and raisin brown bread. Also olive oil in a bowl was offered (still too good to use in a car, but not the best of qualities).


Our choice of starters:

Crab and Mango Salad ($9.50) and Tuna and Avocado Charmoula ($9.50) for starters.



The crab exemplifies our cultural problems with the cuisine style: to our eyes there are many ingredients thrown in seemingly without a coherent assemblage: the complete description of dish is Bibb lettuce cap filled with mango, crab, maple, smoked bacon, pistachios and sweet potato chips, honey, tarragon vinaigrette. They are fiddly to pick up and eat, with the salad not tossed with the condiment. To top this, the crab lacked flavour, a real disappointment. The sweet note was dominant (maple, honey…), not unpleasant but excessive, completely burying whatever taste the crab might have had.

The tuna came with a Moroccan vegetable salad. Once again, the main disappointment was the amazing lack of flavour in the main ingredient. In addition, the tuna tended to be dry despite being rare. The herbs were nice. A very un-American touch was the meanness of the portion: three very fine, small slices of tuna.

OK, maybe we are snotty Europeans, but be warned that there's more to come...

Our choices of mains: Pork tenderloin ($20.50) and Grilled Vension ($22.50).




The pork came with chorizo brown rice cake topped with caramelized poblano and manchego, shrimp mole, almond vanilla relish. Again no shortage of ingredients...The pork itself was not too tasty but good, tender and cooked well. The accompaniment, though, was slightly problematic, reminding us of stodgy and bland preparations of student days.

And the venison was accompanied by ginger black bean relish, pistachio crusted sweet potato fries, blackberry sauce, mango butter. Once again, the meat's taste was hard to notice. It was New Zealand, mild venison, but as you know from our enjoyment of Franca Merz's cuisine we have no preconception on this provenance. The meat was disconnected from the orgy of other ingredients, which however in themselves gave some satisfaction. Man looked pleased by the sweet potato with nuts, while Woman by now just looked disappointed.

For dessert we shared a Warm Blueberry Cornmeal pudding with three nut brittle ice cream at $6.95 (other desserts all within the $6.75-$7.50 range).

perhaps the best dish of the evening. Nice were the nuts in the icecream, itself fatty but -at last!- tasty. And the blueberry 'cake' was satisfying.

With a bottle of Hess cabernet Sauvignon 2004 from California, Napa valley, at $36 (and free water), teh bill including taxes came to $111.93.

As you might have guessed already the main problem for us was that the multitude of ingredients expressed only muted flavours at best. We prefer dishes with fewer ingredients, but with clear, well extracted flavour. We read in an interview with Chef Paquette (you see, we really do our research) that fun is an essential feauture of her cooking philosophy. And no doubt her cuisine looks joyful, if ungenerous in the meat portions. We wish good luck to Zola, which anyway does not need our wishes because it clearly meets the local taste.

We must confess: we were much more thrilled by our dinner the next day at the simple Ted's Montana Grill nearby, a traditional American Grill, where we had really American portions of a really American bison steak (a first for us: an interesting, gamey taste) and intriguing beers. You see, maybe we are not snotty Europeans after all: maybe we are really a cowboy and cowgirl at heart.
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Au Tilleul restaurant in Strasbourg

The day: 2^nd July, Dinner.
The place: 5 Route de Strasbourg 67206 Mittelhausbergen (Strasburg, France)
The venue: Restaurant Au Tilleul
Closest airports: Strasbourg (Air France from London Gatwick)
The food: Fine modern French
The drinks: Impressive list of French wines (around 400 labels)

On our way back to London from Trento (and en route to...Nashville, Tennessee – more on this story later…) we took a break midway in Strasbourg. As usual we chose with our stomachs, but as bonus came the pretty little village in the outskirts, just 5 minutes drive form the main train station in Strasburg.

The Lorentz family have run a simple hotel since the 19^th century, but it is with young chef Jacques that they have been put on the gourmet map of Europe. There are in fact two restaurants in one, a more rustic Stube offering traditional Alsatian fare, and a more formal and gastronomic one, La Table de Jacques, where Chef Jaques gives free rain to his culinary imagination (careful: this is closed on Tuesday evenings and all day on Wednesday). Of course this latter choice is what we went for.

This is the outside for both venues:

The main room is warm and elegant without being pompous, with large and well spaced tables:

(Woman was struck by the old dough mixer you can spot under the large painting). The menu pricing is very simple and quite stunning for cuisine at this level (as we shall see!): three courses (Entrée’, fish or meat main, and cheese or dessert) at €32 and four courses (where you can have both fish and meat) at €37. A la carte the prices are 12.40 for entrees, €17.20 for fish mains, 18.80 for meat mains, €6 for cheeses and €8.30 for desserts.

Although we skipped aperitifs, we were generously entitled to some nibbles meant to accompany them:

Roasted and sugared walnuts and pumpkin seeds, and green and black olives. Nicely unconventional to set the tone (call us provincial but we are used to salty pumpkin seeds).

The room manager insisted that we choose the entire menu ‘au debut’, forcing us a frantic early scan of the dessert list: this touch unconventional too. So we go for... (to convey our strain in ordering –we speak very little French- we give them in French, leaving the accents as an exercise for the readers who wish to brush up their French , and we describe what we ate below) :

Entrees : Creme glacee de petis pois a la trouffe d’ete, fichelle au trois sesames; and Petis farcis de Provence servis froids, et coulis de tomates au basilic

Mains : Rable de lapin farci au homard europeen, fricassee d’artichauts et tomates cerises confites, jus au thym frais ; and Cote de veau aux petites legumes, risotto Carnaroli a l’orange, jus de veau au citron.

Desserts : Creme brulee aux abricots et pistache, sorbet abricots ; and fondante au chocolate noir de la Maison ‘Weiss’, cœur Grand Marnier, creme anglaise au basilic, sorbet chocolat.

The bread arrives :

Two mini-baguettes and two brown rolls (rye ?) with oats. Nice.

But as a reward for exercising our lousy French, there is also an ‘amusant bouche’ (another shock, we’ll never use our usual term ‘amuse bouche’ again!):

Warm asparagus cream with truffle oil, and cold cod and potato quenelles. The cream was a fine one, very thin but not in a negative way, strongly perfumed of truffles and very balanced in Woman’s opinion (Man though enjoying it thoroughly too found the truffle almost too dominating). The quenelles were really excellent, with very clean flavours. There was a perfect interplay of textures and temperatures between the two components of this very well conceived dish: a classy start.

And now the the entrees:

The ‘crème glacee etc.’ was a cold pea soup with black Summer truffle and mangetout. The latter had been cooked excellently and the soup was very perfumed, with the truffle coming out without killing the peas. Perhaps a tad too salty to our taste. Overall very good.

The ‘Petit farcis…’ consisted of three different stuffed vegetables: an artichoke heart filled with olive pate’ and cut into two, a cherry tomato filled with sweated onions, and a round courgette filled with a finely chopped ratatouille (aubergines, peppers, courgettes and tomatoes). The presentation was admirable. The base of tomatoes and basil was very good, and the whole was a triumph of flavours from the garden.

At this point an unexpected interlude:

A passion flower granita (coarse sorbet) marinated in red wine with honey. Delicious flavours, the honey and the wine tannins playing in your mouth, the only negative note being some too large icy chunks.

So we were ready for our mains:

The ‘Rable…’ consisted of rabbit saddle boned and lined with 'homard europeen' (homarus gammarus, a type of lobster), rolled and sliced in small pieces. It came with artichokes (where did he find them in July?) and confit cherry tomatoes, with a thyme reduction. The slight dryness of the saddle was perfectly complemented by the moist confit tomatoes and artichokes, with the homard lining yielding a subtle flavour. The potent reduction was excellent, for Man almost the protagonist of this dish.

The ‘Cote de veau…’ was in fact a nice piece of veal which had been stuffed with morels, olives and vegetables, roasted and then sliced in two very generous chunks – any London restaurant could have easily got away with one. This too was a very successful dish, with an intense lemon scented reduction. The orange flavoured risotto on the side (on its top you see a piece of ‘crispified’ ham), continued the citrus fruit theme; while a little too ‘compact’ by Italian standards (i.e. not ‘al dente’, it provided an interesting match to the meat. The meat itself was cooked excellently.

Man found these two dishes a joy to look at, in their pseudo-rustic and colourful robe, expressing great personality. Woman kept munching

Now the bit Woman likes best, desserts!

The apricot crème brulee was well made, with the half apricots giving a nice bite. We trust the pistachio was there, but we did not detect it. The accompanying apricot sorbet was also powerful, very pleasing.

And how about the chocolate fondant? Supreme, with a delicate and creamy Grand Marnier core, and very thin basil custard (here again we did not distinguish the basil, but it was still excellent). Woman is convinced that the chocolate sorbet was in fact chocolate ice-cream, but who cares about terminology when the thing is this good?

We finished with two coffees, definitely not the strongest point of the dinner , which came with a small selection of petit fours:

Coffee meringues, chocolate ‘thingies’ (we did not taste them), and… in place of those red dots on the right there were two blackberry jellies which we were too greedy to leave there for the picture!

With a one litre bottle of water at €4.20 and a bottle of Minervois Domaine de Gally Cuvee Pierre Joseph Cros 2001 at €30, the bill came at €103.20, much below our expectations: next time should we splash on a €75 Pinot Noir to get up to our £100 limit?

We found this operation charming all the way: service is friendly and unstuffy, remarkable for this kind of establishment. Congratulations are due to the whole Lorentz family, but of course most of all to the young (he is a Jeune Restaurateur d’Europe, so must be below 40 years of age) talent Jacques. A real pity, because this way we’ll never try the Stube…unless he cooks there too. Why this place hasn’t got a Michelin star (from the same guide that gives a bib-gourmand to the place we reviewed here) is completely beyond our comprehension. As few other of the places we have reviewed so far (most notably Latium/Maurizio Morelli, both the former Fior di Roccia/Walter Miori and Osteria fior di Roccia/Michele Menestrina , not to forget L' Ortica/Piercarlo Zanotti), this is exactly what we are looking for: top level cuisine, real passion and stunning prices. Go there if you happen to pass by Strasbourg.

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The failings of restaurant guides

One of the reasons for us starting this modest blog was the unreliability of the ‘official’ guides. If you think about it, it is just impossible (apart from any more sinister consideration ) that homogeneity and accuracy of judgement can be produced by a guide across the board when there are thousands of restaurants to inspect and classify. Mistakes, and some gross ones at that, are not only unavoidable but probable. So we find all guides mostly useless.

Nonetheless, we confess: sometimes we succumb to laziness and instead of doing proper research we do rely on guides when deciding which restaurant to visit. The last time we did that, our moral frailty was met with a just punishment…but at least we found a confirmation of the absurdities present even in the most illustrious of publications.

We picked a restaurant in Bologna (Italy) rewarded by the Michelin guide with the coveted Bib Gourmand title: it’s the Ristorante Posta, Via della Grada, 21/A 40122 Bologna, Italy, which specialises in Tuscan cuisine (the owner/manager is from Tuscany). Apart from the cuisine, which was generally mediocre, we were flabbergasted by the lack of interest and knowledge on the part of all staff for the food they served, and this in a ‘trattoria’ style place where the simple cooking will not mask any fault in the raw material. For example nobody, not the waiters, not the manager, could tell us where these mushrooms (€13) came from:

‘Probably from Yugoslavia’ was the best we could get from the manager. While the lack of knowledge is nothing more than a worrying signal of how the restaurant is run, the sheer badness of this simple dish was memorable. The mushrooms themselves were watery and lacked any primary flavour, but the inept grilling had conferred them one single flavour: burned bitterness. Yugoslavian or not, these mushrooms should not have been served.

Having made our way to the desserts, we asked the waitress whether these ‘peach al cartoccio’ and chocolate cake (‘morbidina al cioccolato’) were made on the premises:

‘The peach is made on the premises, but the cake is not’

‘Ah, and where is it made?’

‘I don’t know, it comes from a box’.

Funnily enough, the chocolate cake was one of the best dishes of the night, though Man and Woman worried about the list of ingredients they might have read on that box…

The impression we got was that this establishment focuses on appearance more than on substance – look for example at how cute the room is:

It is sad that the Michelin inspectors should fall for this type of operation. While ultimately only the mushrooms were seriously bad, the rest being merely forgettable, there are hundreds of better trattorias than this one in Italy, which are based on real care for the raw materials and on simple but expressive cooking. Remember: in Italy the raw material is at the core of traditional cuisine, and any serious owner or chef will scurry around and make a strenuous effort to find the supplier which is ‘just right’.

We are afraid the Bib Gourmand does not belong in Ristorante Posta in Bologna (rather, for example, here and here).

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