If you need much more than a taste, head over to Marczyk's Fine Foods (770 East 17th Avenue), where the recently added wine shop is doing Pete's Picks -- twelve-bottle cases containing six different wines. Owner Pete Marczyk came up with the Noah's Ark philosophy of doing things by twos. "Sometimes it takes a lot to decide if you really like something," he explains. "You could be in a bad mood when you open a bottle or something, and sometimes you need more than one bottle."
I couldn't agree more.
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Pete's picks -- which this month are likely to be a tag-team event, Old World versus New World Cabs and Shirazes -- are not on the shelf at the time of their inclusion in the deal, so no one's able to go sniffing around the shelves looking at price tags or descriptions. Says Marczyk: "You just have to trust your palate" -- not your wallet or the experts. Case prices are always the same, $119.99, and since Marczyk himself tastes every brand, label and varietal that makes it into the store, he can confidently say that his picks will always be "good, solid juice. And that's the bottom line."
If you don't care about the pedigree of what you're guzzling, Marczyk's also has a special shelf labeled "I'm just drinkin'." The stuff here is perfect for when you don't want to talk about the legs, nose or leather of what you're imbibing: bargain reds, Chilean Cabernet and cheap Pinots, all vetted by Marczyk, who promises they're nothing "to be ashamed of drinking."
Leftovers: Frank Bonanno of Mizuna (225 East Seventh Avenue) and now Luca d'Italia (711 Grant Street) kicked ass and took names at Westword's Artopia Steel Chef competition on March 1. Bonanno's opponent, Eric Roeder (whose cafe-style French restaurant, Bistro Vendome, will be opening soon at 1424 Larimer Street), seemed to struggle under the tight constraints of the forty-minute time limit, still plating his own dishes while the judges (including yours truly, working incognito in a traffic-cone-orange polyester tuxedo and frighteningly lifelike latex Nixon mask) tasted Bonanno's five offerings. The highlight on Roeder's side? A red snapper (the secret main ingredient) tartare in a ginger sauce topped with black caviar, and "big-ass shrimp" mounted on top of poached snapper swimming in a citrus-butter emulsion. And on Frank's side? Everything. He fit a staggering amount of cooking into those forty minutes and didn't have a miss in the bunch.
Poached red snapper in a citrus-butter sauce too much for you? Try something lighter at Cava Greens, a recent addition to the Republic Plaza food court. The concept here is custom salads with ingredients all chosen by you, the consumer, assembled in front of you by chef Patrick Fox, then drizzled with a little oil and some aged balsamic vinegar and sold at fifty cents an ounce. (The cost is higher if you want something like shrimp or tofu in the mix.) You might want to pick up a salad to snack on if you're heading over to Sam's No. 3, now back in its original location at 1512 Curtis Street. The lunch crowd was so big on opening day that partner Patrick Armatas reportedly locked the doors to keep people from crowding in until the joint exploded.
Finally, from the "I can almost taste the irony" department, it was announced last week that Landry's Seafood Inc. has won the bidding war for the belittled and beleaguered Colorado's Ocean Journey.
Let me repeat that: Landry's -- the Houston-based company that owns 280 fish restaurants across the country, including Landry's Seafood House, Joe's Crab Shack, Charley's Crab, The Crab House and Willie G's Seafood and Steakhouse -- has just bought Denver's aquarium. How the TV anchors were able to read this news with a straight face is beyond me.
Although Ripley's (as in Ripley's Believe It or Not) was the first company to put a bid in with bankruptcy court -- for a paltry $4.5 million -- Landry's president and CEO Tilman Fertitta was just waiting for the chance to bump the bidding up to $13.6 million. Why such a steep price tag? Think about it: Owning Ocean Journey totally cuts out all of those annoying (and costly) middlemen. Once Fertitta signs on the dotted line, it's no more fishermen, no more dock workers, no more shipping costs. Hungry aquarium-goers can just roll up their pant legs like Huck on the Mississippi, rent a pole and line and catch themselves a nice manta ray for dinner. And imagine how easy it'll be to get those recalcitrant sea critters to do tricks when you have a chef standing next to their tank with a boning knife and a hot skillet. Hell, I'll bet those damn lionfish will be doing Shakespeare inside of a week.
Landry's marketing division (in a fit of stunningly poetic creativity) has decided that Ocean Journey shall hereafter be known as Downtown Aquarium but will remain in its current location on the banks of Large Gray Waterway and in sight of the stunning Continental Geological Formations. And with the company planning to dump a few million more into this money pit, it will wind up creating an aquarium/dining/entertainment super-center that will surely rival in tackiness anything Ripley's could have imagined.
Hey, Tilman, I've got two words for you: otter dogs.
