​Though proprietor Justin Vann declaimed to me in the past that Public Services isn’t a cocktail bar, they have served terrific cocktails since they’ve opened doors, usually smartly updated and refined takes on classics.  One of these that I rediscovered at Public Services is the Tom Collins, which has been around for maybe 150 years.
 
Refreshing, maybe too much so, Public Services makes it with old style Old Tom Gin – the sweeter gin that predates the London dry gins and that was popular in the 19th century – lemon juice, raw sugar and the sparkling Top Chico all in expert proportions and attractively garnished with a lemon wedge and an unctuous Maraschino cherry from Luxardo.  And, served on ice in a tall Collins glass, of course.  Both slightly sweet and slightly tart, it’s balanced, cooling and lightly delicious.  I haven’t really tasted any of the two ounces of gin in it when, which is a very good sign to me.  As quickly as I have consumed them on balmy evenings, I’ve thought it best to limit myself to just one before moving to something more contemplative, i.e. more slowly drinking.
 
The Tom Collins is $10 regularly and just $6 during happy hour, which agreeably runs from 4:00 to 6:30 Monday through Saturday.
 
Public Services
202 Travis (at Franklin), (713) 516-8897
publicservicesbar.com

​When I was younger, thirstier, and certainly much cheaper – thinner, too, to be honest – I relished finding a bar here that served its beers in the traditional British imperial pint glasses.  At 568 ml versus 473 ml for the far, far more common American pint glasses, which were actually created to shake cocktails, I also was very happy to receive an additional 20% more malted and fermented goodness for a price that usually erred on the side of the imbiber.  The larger imperial pint glasses are what are used in the pubs in the U.K. and Ireland.  The domestic bars aiming to create a more traditional British or Irish pub atmosphere often opted for these, almost always to my enjoyment.  My old regular haunt, The Brewery Tap downtown, with a succession of owners from Ireland and England cheerfully carried on the welcome tradition until its Harvey-induced demise a year-and-a-half ago.
 
Now, the number of establishments in Houston using these bigger beer glasses has dwindled to just a trio.  While many places do use the imperial pint glasses for pours of Guinness – only for Guinness in only Guinness glasses, of course – the three bars that serve the vast majority of their beers in imperial pint glasses have a certifiable British or Irish heritage: The Richmond Arms, McGonigel’s Mucky Duck and The Red Lion.  I certainly do enjoy imbibing at these places, as I have over the years, but I cannot begrudge other establishments for not following their lead.
 
It really makes sense not use imperial pint glasses here.  This country does not have the tradition of the larger imperial pint glasses; there is absolutely no demand for them outside of British- and Irish-themed bars that have been using them for years.  There are financial factors, too: larger imperial glasses are more expensive than the American pint glasses and more difficult to replace; and the extra size that should necessitate an additional cost might be tough to fully pass off to customers, as pint prices could approach the $10 mark.  With mad growth in the number of breweries around the country in the past decade, many beer bars have been turning away from even the 16-ounce shaker glasses, as many of the small brewery beers are highly alcoholic – even 16-ounces can easily be seen as too much for a single serving – and the beers that they brew taste better in other, smaller glasses.
 
Though I really do believe that these are good trends, my inner cheapskate – I mean, as an intermittent Anglophile and certifiably longtime CAMRA-sympathizer – does miss the more frequent imperial pint sightings. 

​I had made the trek out to Maine-ly Sandwiches on I-10 that’s in the same shopping center as the Edwards Marq’E 23 movie theater for a late lunch with a lobster roll in mind.  As $28 for the Whole Lobster Roll seemed excessive for a midday meal during the work week, I ordered a ½ lobster roll and felt that I would likely need some more sustenance.  A half Italian Sandwich, available in a variety of choices, is just $4.50, so I ordered one after asking the cashier which one she thought was the best.  Chicken Salad, maybe seeming unusual under the banner of “Italian Sandwiches,” but that proved to be a very enjoyable recommendation.
 
Though I ate chicken salad sandwiches often during my second year of business school – cheap, convenient and something that the cafeteria didn’t screw up – that was a number of years ago.  I’ve rarely eaten them since, so this order would be a nice change of pace, at least.  Served on a buttered and toasted split-top roll, a soft, industrially produced hot dog roll, I got the sandwich with everything: the chicken salad, slivers of apples, bits of walnuts, chopped onions, iceberg lettuce, slices of tomato, pieces of bell pepper, pickles, black olives, pickled and jalapeños along with salt and pepper.  It was a rather odd and unsightly concoction, but it was quite tasty, mayonnaise-heavy, with a lot more going on than the typical chicken salad sandwich.  The laundry list of sandwich toppings all played well together for me, even the black olives, and there was welcome textural diversity with the walnuts and pickles.  I’m glad that I took the cashier’s suggestion.  I’ll likely do so again in the future.
 
Also, the lobster roll, properly buttery and fairly rich, was quite good, too.  The drive was worth it.
 
Maine-ly Sandwiches
7620 Katy Freeway (just east of Silber, near the Edwards Marq’E 23), 77024, (713) 677-0771
mainelysandwiches.com

​I just read something in the New York Times about the opening of new restaurant in Midtown Manhattan that was described as a “traditional Northern Italian restaurant, which serves dishes like linguine with white clams and chicken scarpariello.”  The former is a classic Neapolitan dish and chicken scapariello is an Italian-American dish, also with roots in Naples.  The writer, Florence Fabricant, is quite experienced and quite a good food writer so I assume that the above reference was done tongue-in-cheek.  And that phrase “Northern Italian” still gets bandied about on restaurant signage and websites, if less so these days. 
 
This piece is adapted from my eBook, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione: The Story of Italian Restaurants in America.  I care more about the semantics of this than most.
 
“Northern Italian” became a buzz-phrase.  It got diners excited.  Immensely enjoyable, distinctive regional cuisines have long existed in northern Italy.  As an amalgamation, it started being promoted, if not delivered, by at least 1970 in New York.  “Where is the grand tradition of the North? I have two years searching for it and my exploration weaves a trail of mournful disillusion,” a lament at the top of Greene’s lengthy article.   Some of the first press about the food of northern Italy came from Craig Claiborne, who introduced and championed Marcella Hazan in his space in the New York Times in 1970.   A native of Emilia-Romagna, she was conducting cooking classes in her tiny Manhattan apartment at the time.  The big boost came with the success of Hazan's first cookbook Classic Italian Cooking in 1973.  “Hazan's effort to convey authenticity elbowed aside the older efforts,” concerning Italian food, according to Nach Waxman, the owner of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a Manhattan bookstore dedicated to culinary matters.   That and subsequent volumes were influential both for cooks and diners.  “Northern Italian” was not only something fresh, but something that was more seemingly more genuine.  Soft pastas made with egg by hand, something Hazan championed, certainly appeared to be more authentic than spaghetti from a box that had been the pasta staple for decades. 
 
A few years after Hazan’s success, in 1977 Giuliano Bugialli’s, The Fine Art of Italian Cooking was published and sold well, helping establish Bugialli as respected instructor and popular author.  It focused on the cooking of Florence and Tuscany under the heading of “Italian.”   A contributing subtext in these books – seemingly somewhat intentional based on the title – was the belief that northern Italian food was more advanced and sophisticated.  Those northern regions were more prosperous and were home to the highlights of the Renaissance, after all.  And, its cooks were not quite the swarthy immigrants of yesteryear, towards whom there might have still been a bias in some quarters.
 
There was, and even still remains, a lot of confusion among the food writers and dining public as to what “Northern Italian” means.  Geographically, it meant the areas north of Rome, excluding Abruzzo to its northeast (that region had been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies whose capital was Naples).  Florence Fabricant of the New York Times gave the widespread understanding in 1977 as, “by local definition, ‘northern Italian’ signifies restaurants of some elegance that go lightly on the marinara, serve fettuccine, tortellini and scampi and do not feature meatball or pizza.”   This is what these restaurants portrayed, and what the public was to believe, but it was not really northern Italian.  In the 1990s this still meant in practice, “very little more than fresh pasta made with eggs, appearing in place of…commercial pasta, and cream and butter substituting for olive oil and tomato in the sauces.”   A few dishes were usually done in this heavier fashion, but the biggest effort for a restaurant in transforming itself a “Northern Italian” one was the cost for new signage and menus advertising the billing. 
Mimi Sheraton, the New York Times restaurant critic in 1981, reviewed Salta in Bocca, a “pleasant north Italian restaurant” that nearly garnered three stars in which the “recommended dishes” are almost a greatest hits collection of the southern Italian-American restaurant kitchen:
 
“Baked clams, mussels Riviera, roast peppers with mozzarella cheese, minestrone, pasta e fagioli, fettuccine casalinga, spaghetti carbonara, spaghetti al sugo, capelli d'angelo with seafood, linguine with white clam sauce, tortellini gratinati, fettuccine all'Amatriciana, fried squid, red snapper Livornese, scampi fra diavolo, chicken piccata, chicken scarpara, veal Genovese, veal paillard, osso buco, veal cutlet Milanese, veal cutlet Fiorentina, grilled veal chop, fried zucchini, sauteed escarole, zucchini with tomatoes, rugola salad, cheesecake, zabaglione, cheese and fruit platter.”
 
Though the veal cutlet sported the “Milanese” and “Fiorentina” modifiers, the tortellini and osso buco were probably the only preparations to be found anywhere north of Rome.  This lack of understanding was typical, and continued for a couple decades even among avid diners in the biggest markets.  But, patrons and reviewers, too, liked the new dishes.  These were something different and even novel, though “Northern Italian” also seemed to mean “more expensive,” that was good for the restaurateur.
Authentic northern Italian food was actually to be found in New York by the 1960s, at the reinvigorated Barbetta featuring a refined version of the robust cooking of Piedmont.  This was a singular and upscale anomaly.  Located in the theater district in Manhattan, it was founded in 1906 and given a makeover by the daughter of the founder.  In “1962, she was determined to make Barbetta more Piemontese than ever, adding such typical dishes as fonduta, carne cruda, bagna cauda, bue al Barolo, and introducing white truffles and Piemonte's traditional white truffle dishes,” according to the century-old restaurant’s website.   Other, and truly northern Italian restaurants, were to join Barbetta in Manhattan in the 1980s. 
Though much of it was marketing or misinformation, there was some truth to this “Northern Italian” fare advertised beyond Barbetta.  Fior d’Italia in San Francisco had been serving it even two decades longer than Barbetta.  As mentioned above, some of these Manhattan-based restaurateurs were from northern Italy, some, like Giambelli had actually worked in restaurants in the north of Italy.  They did serve some dishes from their home areas, if often in a richer fashion than at home.  The majority of the menu – and certainly the overall style – was still better described as Italian-American, albeit sometimes immensely enjoyable Italian-American.

Guinea hen at La Subida in Cormons, Italy, one of the best restaurants in northern Italy.  This dish was terrific.

​Barbera is not the wine that I grew to really enjoy some years ago with food, mostly Italian-themed food.  The wine now is different: it’s bigger, bolder, and more alcoholic.  The food that pairs well with it with more than a little different, too.
 
Years ago, Barbera wines – made entirely from the Barbera grape and mostly all in the region of Piedmont northwestern Italy – were made in very high quantities and drank in copious amounts in northern Italy.  It was a fairly light-bodied wine with a bit of cherry fruit, very low tannins, a bit of Italian earthiness, and a plentiful amount of acidity, its more noticeable characteristic.  Barbera was a wine that screamed out for food.  In fact, I rarely enjoyed the wines without something to eat.
 
In the past quarter century or so, Barbera has seen a number of changes, driven by the desire to improve the quality, most notably for the Barberas in the Asti area.  Many of the growers began lowering yields to do that.  Clones from a university in nearby Turin during the 1980s added more ripeness, lower acidity, and more phenols (these include flavonoids that can affect the mouthfeel and color of the wine; tannins are one).  Malolactic fermentation began to be used that drove down the acidity.  Then oak aging grew, though much less new oak is used now than 10-15 years ago, much better to highlight the distinct character of Barbera, and welcome improvement in my mind.  In the field, locations for the vineyards got better.  This was much more the case in the Asti region, as for Barbera d’Alba, the best vineyards go to Nebbiolo, mostly for Barolo and Barberesco.
 
And, very significantly, “everyone has to worry about global warming and its effect on alcohol levels,” which was a common refrain I heard in my several days around Asti on a trip sponsored in part by consortium for the wines of Barbera dAsti a couple of months ago.  The impact of the increasingly hotter planet has especially been felt in the the past 15 to 20 years, and Barbera, seemingly more so than other varietals, is especially susceptible to the growing alcohol levels.  In fact, of the all the Barberas I sampled there and since returning home, the lowest alcohol level I’ve had has been 13.5% and that was just once or twice.  As much wine, I like to enjoy several glasses, and the difference between a wine that’s 12.5% and 15% can be felt a little too much for my taste.
 
Though the alcohol levels have risen appreciably, Barbera has made incredible strides in the last 10-15 years to paraphrase one of the speakers during my recent sojourn to Barbera-land.  The wines are more serious, richer and some can age quite nicely.  I still find that Barbera is more readily enjoyable in both of their major styles than Nebbiolo.  Barolos take time, Barberesco and even the Nebbiolo di Langhe, do, too.  The two different styles for Barbera d’Asti and for Barbera throughout is aging in stainless steel and aging in oak.  The former produces lighter wines with more fruit and more noticeable acidity; these are the wines reminiscent of the way the most Barbera used to be produced, just with higher quality – and more alcohol.  The oak-aged ones will often have a tannic bite and a bigger body.  These are wines that can age and might need four or five years to really enjoy.  Both can exhibit the ripe fruit of raspberry and blackberry, and plum in hot vintages, cooking spices, and underbrush, and also leather with oak-aging.
 
As for foods, is more than an easy pairing for pizza and simple pasta dishes, and the oak-aged ones, Barbera d’Asti Superiore, will be too big for my tastes for most pizzas.  Both styles wines go well with the classic agnolotti del plin, with or without shaved fresh white truffles, and the Superiore went better with their Piedmontese version of pot roast that was the main course for most of the meals.  Back home, there is more eating and drinking that I need to do.  While Barberas and the lighter versions still are not hefty enough to pair enjoyable with steak or lamb, the Superiores might do a good job.  These might even be a great pairing for the classic Texas beef brisket.  We’ll see.
 
But, in any case, Barberas remain very good values.  You can find a wine, which will be invariably well-made, usually for under $20 while the Superiores will run a few dollars more but rarely over $30.  These are definitely well worth picking up if you drink wine primarily as accompaniment to dinner, though Superiores, with a generally more rounded taste, can often be enjoyed solo, and so more appealing to non-Italians.  And, the USA is the biggest export market for the wines of Barbera d’Asti, so we are enjoying them in profusion. 

​For years my friend Jack had raved about the Friday lunch at Galatoire’s, the famed Creole restaurant that’s resided on Bourbon Street for over a hundred years, that he had visit often in the past when a case at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would bring him to the Crescent City.  He described it has “the best bar in New Orleans” when dining downstairs on a Friday afternoon.  Providing not only a very lively setting for an enjoyably boozy afternoon, Galatorie’s, most importantly, serves excellent, classic French-Creole fare with an emphasis on the fish and shellfish from the Gulf that they do an more-than-adept job in procuring and preparing, with no shyness in utilizing butter and cream.  I finally got to have a Friday lunch downstairs last week.  It lived up to expectations.
 
The best way I can think to describe a Friday lunch at Galatoire’s is that it’s like the best reception that you’ll ever go to, albeit with a more nattily attired and boisterous group of fellow guests who all seem to be in a great mood eating far better food than you’ve ever had a reception served with much more attention and promptness; and those waiters bringing the alcoholic and caloric joy are the only ones who’ve consumed fewer than a half-dozen drinks.
 
We had reservations upstairs at 1:30 but upon arrival asked if we could be seated in the main dining room.  It wasn’t a problem if our large group didn’t mind waiting for an hour or so, and we could while away the time at their bar next door.  Several cocktails later our table was ready in the still-full, mostly rectangular room that is the main dining room.  Another cocktail then wine.  Galatoire’s has an excellent wine list and I was very happy to find a Semillon-heavy white Bordeaux from Petite Sirene that was wonderful for just $40 a bottle.  It more than aptly complemented the Crab Maison – subtly decadent jumbo lump crabmeat in a Creole aioli studded with capers – shrimp remoulade and fried oysters en brochette start along with their lighter version of turtle soup and then the terrific Lemon Fish (or cobia or ling) lightly dusted in flour and then sautéed in a surfeit of butter and topped with a fair amount of impeccably fresh crabmeat.  The meal was absolutely delicious, the highlight for me was the cobia from the Gulf, which was clean-tasting, mild yet flavorful, delicate and delightful, with the butter going very well with the fish.  A white Sancerre from Pascal Jolivet for just over $50 and a trio of American Cabernets did well for others, as did their dishes.  Everything was very much enjoyed.  The loud conversions were only interrupted by bites and sips.  I don’t believe that we left the restaurant before 5:30. 
 
Snaring a table in the main dining room on the first floor is not an easy thing to do, especially when traveling that day from out of town.  No reservations are taken.  You have to wait in line for a table.  Or, you can pay someone to wait in line for you, as many regulars seem to do.  When heading to New Orleans last year I made an early flight just so I could wait in line at Galatoire’s.  My Lyft driver got hit when heading to the airport, so I missed my flight and we had to fall back on the reservations I made for upstairs.  Lunch upstairs was great, if like a normal, if excellent upscale restaurant with a great pedigree.  But, when walking out at 4:00 past the still-full downstairs dining room, we could see the party that we were missing.  We were very happy that it worked out this time.
 
Galatoire’s
209 Bourbon Street (a block-and-a-half east of Canal), New Orleans, (504) 525-2021
galatoires.com

​I first enjoyed the Bavarian-style beers at the Crescent City Brewhouse not too long after it opened in 1991 in the French Quarter, and enjoyed them over the years when traveling to New Orleans.  I had a couple last year, my first trip back to the city in a number of years, and was pleasantly surprised that this brewpub on busy, touristy Decatur Street was still open.  I was even more surprised at the quality of the beers, which seemed even much better than I remembered.  The two beers that I had were terrific.  They were again last weekend.
 
The pilsner I ordered was properly crisp, clean-tasting and quite flavorful with a light, Germanic hop aroma.  It tasted better than the Munich pilsners that I remembered from there (I like the broadly similar Helles, style more in Munich; the Czechs do those delicately perfumed and nuanced pilsners much better in my opinion).  The pilsner was excellent, and perfect after traipsing around the Quarter for the previous hour.  After finishing the half-liter pour – the only size they serve it seems – I had their version of the Vienna-style lager, the Red Stallion.  Medium-bodied with its copper color denoting a good malt presence, lightly hopped, it was a very pleasant pint-plus.  I didn’t enjoy it as much as the pilsner, but still a nice beer that was obviously very well made. All of the beers are made in house utilizing the large, attractive copper vessel set behind the bar and according to the Reinheitsgebot, the German purity law of 1516.  Only malt, hops, yeast and water are used in the beers, helping ensure some level of clarity of flavors.
 
In addition to the Pilsner and Red Stallion, the Crescent City Brewhouse always has a Weiss, a Bavarian-style hefe-weizen, and the Black Forest on tap, plus a seasonal beer in a range of styles.  I tasted my brother’s Weiss.  With prominent aromas of banana, it did not taste like one of the sweeter hefe-weizens that I expected, but was a bit drier and more balanced and an excellent version of the style and perfect for those many warm and humid months in New Orleans.  I didn’t sample the Black Forest, which is described as a beer that’s “rich…malty…sparsely hopped, in the traditional Munich style” which sounds a lot like the Dunkel style that’s a feature of all of the Munich breweries.
 
I find it amazing that a brewpub in the French Quarter, just a couple of blocks from Jackson Square, serves such top-quality beer.  The beers are a good deal better than they need to be.  As people seem to especially enjoy beers made on site, brewpubs can usually get by with mediocre or even awful beers, the buzz of the pub, and the alcoholic beers, helps to obscure the handiwork of less-than-skilled brewmasters.  And, that the Crescent City Brewhouse is doing it with lagers is even more impressive, as lagers, especially lighter-bodied and light-colored are very difficult to brew well on a consistent basis.  There are not too many small breweries in this country that are doing it well.  Few, are doing it as well as is done in the French Quarter.
 
The Crescent City Brewhouse is definitely worth a detour for fans of Bavarian-style lagers.  Easy to drop in and out, there is often a jazz band playing near the entrance and bar.  The quartet featuring an alto sax, bass, drums and, somewhat oddly, an electric guitar, was first-rate last weekend with a fresh, if mid-century sound well removed from Dixieland.  If you don’t have time to sit for pint, you can always get a cup to go dispensed at a counter facing the sidewalk.  And, you’ll likely be drinking something better – certainly more pure – than those other tourists with their plastic cups.
 
Crescent City Brewhouse
527 Decatur Street (two blocks southwest of Jackson Square in the French Quarter)
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130, (504) 522-0571
crescentcitybrewhouse.com

​A few hours before flying out from New Orleans last weekend, I did what I usually do before departing the Crescent City, I joined the queue of tourists in the old Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter to purchase a muffuletta (or muffaletta in the more common spelling) to take home for dinner that night and a meal the next day.  One of the two great Italian-American cold sandwiches along with the sub or hoagie, I’ve long enjoyed the muffuletta from where it was created over a century ago.  Still largely a local and somewhat regional treat, it might be the most enjoyable and significant contribution to New Orleans’s culinary legacy from its Sicilian immigrants. 
 
The sandwich takes its name from the distinctive, dense circular loaf about 9--inches in diameter also called a muffuletta. The loaf is sliced horizontally and filled with deli ham, mortadella, salami, slices of provolone and the olive salad that sets it apart that has pieces of Kalamata and green olives, bits of carrots and tiny tops of cauliflower soaked in olive oil.  The ingredients are nothing special, supermarket-quality at best, aside from the bread, but the muffuletta from the Central Grocery is more than the sum of its parts, especially after a few hours when the olive oil seeps well into the loaf and the diverse and complementary component flavors began to meld some and the sandwich warms.
 
The muffuletta is one of the minority of popular American preparations where the creator is clearly known.  It was created at the Central Grocery sometime after it opened in 1906 by owner Salvatore Lupo.  Located near the French Market and the wharves, it was a popular stop for the immigrant Sicilian dock workers and truck farmers to make their lunch.  His customers would purchase the meats, cheese, olive salad, which is traditional in much of Sicily, and bread.  They ate these separately, in the Italian style.  Without much in the way of space to eat in the small store, Lupo, seemingly taking a cue from the American habit, introduced these typically purchased group of items combined as a sandwich. Customers quickly took to the creation, which was named after its bread, which is originally from Piana degli Albanesi – or Piana degli Greci until 1941 – an ethnic Albanian community that is fifteen miles from Palermo, where this bread also popular, especially as a treat on the Day of the Dead on November 2.  Interestingly, the sandwich is always cut in quarters and since the loaf is fairly large, a normal order is two quarters. A full order is half a muffuletta, something in line with the welcome quirkiness of New Orleans, alcohol-fueled or otherwise.
 
Central Grocery
923 Decatur, New Orleans, Louisiana 70116
(504) 523-1620
centralgrocery.com