What is the life of a food editor or a food critic like and how do they rate restaurants? I asked Sam Sifton New York Times Food Editor. He gives us a fascinating look. And wine writer Sunny Fraser talks about Pelleriti Priore Fine Wines from Mendoza, Argentina.
Food, News & Views with Linda Gassenheimer
Food, News & Views, Ep 235: Sam Sifton, NYT Food Editor, Sunny Fraser, Pellerti Priore, Argentinian Wine
(upbeat music) - Well, hi, I'm Linda Gassyheimer, and welcome to Food News and Views. Have you ever wondered what the life of a restaurant critic or a food journalist is like? Is it all glamour going to restaurants all the time? - Well, Sam Siften has some answers for us. He's the food editor for the New York Times, the former chief restaurant critic there, and cooking columnist for the New York Times Magazine. So welcome, Sam Siften. - Thank you, it's good to be here. - I'm sure you've come down to Miami from New York or from West Palm Beach, actually, (laughs) - I needed to escape the cold. - Well, he's got a big smile on his face every when I don't blame him. In addition, Sam, you write other columns what to cook, what to cook and eat daily. Sam Siften, it seems you live and sleep food nonstop. Is that right? - It does seem that way. I eat up to three times a day. - Well, hello. (laughs) - No, I actually eat a lot more than that. There is a kind of pressing need on my part to fill these columns, to fill these newsletters, to find new things to cook, to find old things to cook and make them new again. And it's a pretty good way to make a living. - Yeah, well, I can see that you're very happy about it. So, what brought you to the food world? I mean, do you have a culinary degree? - No, I was a student of history and literature in college and I needed a job to help pay my tuition and I got a job in a restaurant. And I worked in that restaurant and discovered within it a lot of amazing stories. The first time I walked into a restaurant kitchen, I really didn't know what I was doing, but it seemed-- - So how old were you at that time? - I was 18 and I walked in and it seemed in a strange way quite glamorous to me. I mean, it was blue collar work. People in uniforms, chopping vegetables, steam and shouting and adrenaline. - And that was glamorous too. - Yeah, it seemed so different from the life of the library and the schoolyard and I wanted to be a part of it. Plus, you got paid and there were waitresses. It was very exciting. - Well, the paid and the waitresses were a good-- - That was a nice combination. - All right, so much, then you don't have a culinary degree? - No, I don't have a culinary degree, but one of the things about being a journalist is you don't need that degree. You just need passionate curiosity and experience and you ask a lot of questions and you go a lot of places and you open a lot of doors and you learn a lot and all of a sudden you kinda know what you're talking about. - Well, I always find as another food journalist, a food journalist, that you also have to have an educated palate. - Absolutely. - 'Cause you have to know what it should taste like and does it taste like that kind of thing. So how did you get that education? - Over time. - Did you grow up cooking? Did your family cook a lot? - I grew up in New York City, which is a food city like almost no other and it was a highlight of my childhood to A, eat home cooked meals all the time because my mother was a passionate cook, but B, to spend weekends with both of my parents, traveling the city kind of relentlessly, both looking for ingredients to cook with. They had stops for ham and particular places and bread and others and particular cold cuts here and this butcher and that pie maker and the like and we would drive around and collect all this stuff for great feasts on the weekend and during the week. And then of course, a vibrant food culture on the street that was available to guys. - Absolutely, I grew up in New York City. I was the luckiest kid in the world. - But also, as we all discover that if you have really wonderful ingredients, you don't have to almost know how to cook them because they're so good, just plainly cooked. - That's correct, a bunch of great figs on a plate and all of a sudden you're a chef, it's pretty amazing. - Wonderful, isn't that great? Well, I know you're not a food critic anymore, but people always ask, what's it like going to the restaurants all the time? What's it like to be a food critic? - Well, I'd love to complain about being a restaurant critic. I have many complaints, but they always seem to fall in deaf ears, I wonder why. I say sometimes it's like death by massage. You think really another massage? Again, with the massage, but the fact of the matter is it's an absolutely exciting and memorable and I think important way of understanding what's going on in a particular city or region or country at a particular time to eat in the restaurants and to try and understand what it is that's going on in those kitchens and in those dining rooms. Who's eating and why, who's cooking and why, is it successful, is it unsuccessful? What does it all mean? The chance to look at Manhattan through the lens of its restaurants was just a tremendous joy for me. - Well, now, I want to know if you're wearing a cognito because I was surprised to find out that in some restaurants, they've got the picture, the photograph of the food editors and the food people as the waiter walks out the door. They know who's in the restaurant. - That's absolutely true. We do at the times eat anonymously or we try to. I reserved under false names. I reserved using fake phone numbers. I paid with credit cards that didn't have my name on it. Basically, I was Jason Bourne without any danger whatsoever to my life. The point being that we would try as much as possible to experience the restaurant as any diner would. Now, were we recognized? Yes, occasionally we were recognized on the first or second or third or fourth visit, but we honored a kind of social contract between the restaurants and us that we tried our best to be anonymous and they tried their best not to break that. - How funny story years ago, do you remember Gail Green? - Of course. - A wonderful restaurant credit in New York. And she said to me, she noticed it one time. She had ordered this duck dish and she looked out the window. It was taking a long time. They were carrying the dish across the street from some other restaurant to some store. - That is hilarious. Yeah, I've seen some pretty amazing things. I was recognized once early in a restaurant. That is to say, when I was waiting for the table and there was some urgent talk around the Matridis station, I saw a phone call was made and about 10 minutes after I got there, the chef who had not been in the restaurant arrived sort of as if you'd just woken up to make the meal and it was pretty hilarious. But we try as much as possible to remain anonymous. - Okay, so now you're not a restaurant critic anymore, but you go to restaurants. - Yes. - Can you relax? Are you still mentally? - I can relax and entirely. It's perhaps the only part of my life that allows me to identify with Bill Clinton in that it seems to me Bill Clinton enjoys being the ex-president more than being the president and being the ex- restaurant critic of the times is pretty enjoyable. My inclination is to ask questions as I've said, to talk to people, to learn more, that sort of journalistic aspiration to know everything. And that's much easier when I am me and not pretending to be someone else. - All right, well, now I understand you have a column in the New York Times magazine that translates restaurant dishes into the home kitchen. - Yes. - So how does that, how do you do this? Is it the exact dishes, just a flavor of the dish? - Well, it's not the exact dish and it never will be the exact dish because the fact the matter is that restaurant food is created serially by numbers of different prep cooks, right? - Right, they've got a whole team of people. - They have a whole team of people who are working all day. So it's nothing to them to flavor it with a veal stock that they make overnight. It's nothing for them to add a few flakes of gold leaf or whatever. And that doesn't work for the home cook. We don't have those resources and it would be kind of ridiculous if we cooked that way anyway. So that's number one. Number two is chefs are the worst writers of recipes on the planet because they speak in a kind of shorthand to other professionals who know what they're talking about. - Well, also the recipes would be large. - Yes, sometimes. - Sometimes two gallons of sauce or something. - Sometimes that happens as well. So everything is out of scale. And it's my job to take a first cut at seeing if I can figure out how to do it myself, to interview the chef. A lot of times I will go to the restaurant and barge into the kitchen and have the chef prepare the dish so that I can watch and interrogate and ask questions, dumb questions, and then see if I can't rebuild the recipe in such a way that people can make it at home. And when we succeed, that's a delicious thing. - Okay, well then, therefore, aside from that, what is a food writer steeped in food culture? What do you make for yourself at home? What's your favorite dish? - Oh, listen, I have two kids, a demanding job. I'm cooking all the time, testing recipes all the time. There's no way for me to have a sort of, you know, go-to outside of like a classic American sandwich, like a PB&J. The fact of the matter is I have to cook for the job so much that I don't really have that kind of like standard go-to. Although I will say a morning bagel with a little whitefish spread on it, that can be pretty good. - I see, okay. So now you were a national editor at one time, so you must have traveled a lot. - Yes, the New York Times maintains national bureaus all across the United States in 13 news bureaus outside of New York and Washington, D.C. And I felt as national editor that I should spend a lot of time on the road traveling to them and then between them. The life of the national reporter or correspondent, he or she may be based in a particular city, but is responsible for the coverage of a whole area around that city. And generally speaking, if it's within a five-hour drive, they drive rather than fly. And so I spent a lot of time aping their activities by driving around the country. - So, but you must still be in touch with them. - Oh, absolutely. - So they must be able to let you know what's going on in the food scene is, are there any special new trends or anything across our nation? - Well, as not just from talking to the national correspondence, but from running NYT cooking or a recipe app by corresponding with our readers who respond to the what to cook newsletter that we send out now to 3 million people across the country, I get a sense of what may be coming. And one of the things that I think may be coming is a diminishment in the amount of meat protein that we're putting on our plates regularly. Now, this is not to say that I think that there's gonna be a rise in vegetarianism or veganism, although those things are-- - They're very hot. It's another-- - They're very hot at the moment. - But what I see is smaller portion sizes on meat and increased portion sizes on brightly flavored vegetables in the life. It's pretty interesting. And I'm a meat-butated kind of guy, like I cook more meat than your average bear. That said, we see again and again and again that recipes are moving in this direction that puts plant-based foods ahead of animal protein. - Well, it's kind of where our government would like us to go, more of a balance. - Yeah, I'm not, yeah, and it's where a lot of people who spend time thinking about food want us to go. Michael Pollan has been making this argument for years now, eat, you know, not don't eat meat as much, eat more plants. But it's interesting to see that it's becoming a kind of mass phenomenon, at least from the perspective that I have. - Well, this has been fascinating. What a wonderful life you have, and we'll have. Sam Sifton, thank you so much for joining me. - Thanks so much. Let's go get something to eat. - I'm with you. - Joining me now is wine and food writer, Sonny Fraser. Welcome, Sonny. - Hey, Linda, how are you? - I'm fine. You've mentioned to the wines Mendoza region to me that's Mendoza and Argentina. So what's your news here? - Well, today we're gonna be talking and drinking Malbec and Cab Franc with the founder and winemaker, Marcelo Pélaredi and co-founder Miguel Priore. Pélaredi Priore, timeless selections. They're in Mendoza, the Mendoza region of Argentina, and they just launched their global rebrand this year. So, hello, Marcelo, hello, Miguel. - Hello, how are you? Thank you. - Welcome to the show. - Thank you, thank you so much for this moment to share with the experience and the wine we produce in Argentina. - Absolutely, so I'm gonna get right to it. People really love a great success story. Marcelo, you achieved something very rare for a winemaker. You received a perfect 100 points. Robert Parker, one of the most renowned wine critics of the world on your 2010 Chateau La Villettes. - Yeah. - Do you remember how you felt when you heard the news? Was that life-changing as a winemaker? - Well, when I received this score, a hundred point, I couldn't believe it, because it felt surreal. It's like, you know, it is one of the most expensive, expensive there are in the world. - Mm-hmm. - A guy like me from Mendoza who produced wine in France received 100 points, was amazing. Changed today. Today, I can't believe it, but received 100 points, obviously helped us, helped to open the door. Everybody started trying to taste your wine, and the other kind outside, the other side, everybody waiting something more, something better. And it is our commitment. We want to have 100 points from our wine from Argentina, our validity point from Argentina. And I believe one day we can do it. But what's amazing, what's amazing and it is a dream. Right now, right now it is a dream. It's one of my best moments, or maybe my best moment in my career. - Well, I had to mention it because it's like a unicorn, it's not something that really happens often, so it's a very rare thing, and I thought it was important for the listeners to know that you were able to achieve something so impressive. So I love collaboration. And when you put the right people and the right brands together, there seems to be a synergistic effect. What made you decide to combine forces to become a dynamic duo? And I'm gonna start with Miguel on this one. - At the end, we think when we are committed with the Mercedes, because we met in 2009, because we started working in the same company, and we have the same dream to create a company, to produce wine. And we have the commitment in long-term condition to build a very good brand, to produce exceptional wine from Argentina, Mendoza. We need to develop the terra, to realm about the terra, to have the experience. We have in the world, they bring the experience of Marcello, producing wine in Pomeron, especially with Cabernet Frank. And also with Malbec, because it's the place we race, and we born and race in Mendoza. Today, we are selling 15 years later, we are selling in foreign countries, we are selling near to 50, 60,000 cases per year. For us, it's amazing when we talk with the people, we taste the wine, we see the expression in the face, when they say, wow, this wine and this price point, this quality, it's amazing for us. Really, it's amazing when the people, we have the feedback with the people. For us, it's the incredible moment we live, when we talk, we explain what we are doing, the technique we use, the feedback we have from the people. And we are very happy with this, we think we are building a beautiful company, we think we have amazing wine, we have seven wine in the portfolio, we have an incredible Malbec, an incredible Corona friend, amazing Red Blends. And we are focusing the quality, focusing in the real expression of Argentina mangoes. For us, we are very happy with this, and we were very well with Marcello, we know very well, we talk every day, we talk at any moment, we are working in the company all the time, and joining a train to build a beautiful company, and to be proud for this. Or normal, what do you think? - That's incredible, and so we have to get a, yeah, so Marcello, for you, the partnership, tell me about why you guys decided to collaborate together. - It's important because, sure, I know how I can produce wine, because I started with my grandfather, and I was five years old, I mean, it is my life. - Wow, and it is my life. But when we start to work, when we start work with Miguel, it's great because first he's a great partner, partnership, then he's a smart guy, in figure out, in fitness finances, you know. And then little by little, he discover something in the great, and something necessary, because I can produce with wine. But if you don't sell wines, it's not everybody, not everybody know. And Miguel, he discover, and he himself a huge potential to sell wine. He discover a kind of beautiful seduction. He seduced the client, and he can sell a lot. It is a good, with both, we sell. But Miguel, concrete, the sales. - So, well, I'm gonna interrupt you, then, here, and tell you, say, that it sounds like you guys have a good, synergistic relationship, because you can be the artist and focus on great winemaking, and he can focus on the sales and distribution and marketing side, and that allows you to just focus on your artistry. I think that that's an awesome partnership, and I don't know that all wineries have that. - I'd like to jump in here, because I'm just amazed about this partnership. It's hard for two people to work together, and you're in different countries. I mean, Marcello, you're in Argentina, and Miguel, where are you going? - Now, I'm in Miami. I'm born and raised in Mendoza, and I moved to Miami in 2019, frequently go to Mendoza, and frequently Marcello visit the market, and Miami, one-hour place. We travel a lot, but at the moment today, Marcello is focusing the production in Argentina, and I am focusing the market. But all the time, we talk together, we work, we taste the wine together, we visit the customer together, because at the end, the idea is the customer is fit together, and the customer has the opportunity to talk with both. For us, it's very important, because we are both the owner, not only I, you know, when you visit Mendoza, it's not only Marcello. - Right, it's wonderful to hear that, because very often partners don't get along as well as you do, and make that connection, which is terrific. But what I want to ask you is, you've made me want to try these wines, and what do I look for at the retail level? What label do I look for? - At the level, we are focusing on premise, for sure, but also we have a lot of wine in, of premise in one store. Okay, the sweet one for us. - What would you say on premise? You mean, mostly in restaurants? - Mostly in restaurants, but also, but in fine one store also, because for us, it's very important that the people go with the wine to the house, they have the opportunity to buy it, to enjoy it in your house, and you will be part of the party you are, you have. For us, it's very important. You can find the wine in the fine wine store. We have the main online retailer in the United States, like B21, wine.com, wine exchange. We haven't, all of them, we are not in supermarket. - Well, what would they look for on the label? If we have the, we have the wine divided in two categories. - One category is flagship wine. Flax is when, is the idea is the flag from Argentina, from Mendoza, is Malbec. The name is Marcello Politi Cigna Tur Malbec. - Right. - And the another is Marcello Politi Cigna Tur Cabernet Franc. Both wines you can find for $20 with 95 points, exactly. And also, we have-- - Why did they try, actually? - Yes, it's amazing. - Amazing. - Yes, no, no, it's amazing. But we are very commitment. We have the, we are owner of the vineyard. We have the facility. We work with very well-integrated systems with imported and distributed. And the another brand we have is 1853 selected person. It's a single vineyard from La Consulta, Malbec, also with 95 points, exactly not $20. And also, we have poor wine, cool wine. This cool wine, we have, one is a single vineyard from La Consulta, it's 1853, heritage, and there is a hostage Altamira. And after we have Marcello Politi Blen of Turroir, and Marcello Politi Grancoo. - Wow, wow, we're just almost running out of time, Sunday. Thank you so much for bringing these two together with us. - Oh, absolutely. I thought that they had such special lines and priced so excessively for what they are. So I really felt like it was something to share with the listeners. - Absolutely, I love this $20 about them going right now. - I know, I'm telling you, and even their call lines are very affordable. - And award-winning wines as well. - Exactly, like run out and get them. - Okay, great advice is always, Sonny, you always bring interesting information to us. - Oh, we can learn, we learn more about what you're doing, how to contact you or contact the wines. - Yes, so you can reach me at sunny on scene on Instagram or sunny on scene, www.sunny, S-U-N-N-Y on scene, S-E-N-E dot com. - And where can we learn more about the wines online? - Yes, the wine we, you can find in B21. For sure, we have all wine we produce in B21. - B21 is the, B21 is the wine shop in Tampa, but they sell online. - Okay, I was going to say, we're online, can we learn more in that area? - Yes, in Miami, you have any place, you have a main restaurant, also we have a beautiful distribution in 27 states, okay? - You guys are all over Miami, and I also saw that you're also, you can be purchased on Vivino, that's V-I-D-N-O dot com, and also wine.com, I've seen your wines there too. - Yes, also, also, one exchange also, double disallowed out. - But you have great distribution, so it should be a pretty easy. - Yes, in some moment you can find Marcello Priti, Cigna Turmalbec in Costco, amazing primes. - Oh, wow, really, all right, all right. Well, thank you so much, all of you for this great information and congratulations on the success of your wines and especially on the success of your partnership. I'm Linda Gastonheimer, join me next week for more of food news and views. 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