The Wine Critic In Me Speaks

This morning a very comfortable breakfast meeting with Barry and Roni Saslove. In addition to discussing various developments at the winery (including the move to go to kashrut as discussed on another thread), one of my goals was to taste the ice wine made by Roni. Available only at the winery and made in a very limited quantity (about 200 500 cl bottles were made), the wine was sampled in Roni's case with pancakes, in my own with a croquet madame. Tasted not at all blind as we sat out-of-doors, the wine and the company provided great pleasures.

Saslove, Gewurztraminer Icewine, 2009: Made by selecting late harvest grapes and exposing them in a special container to alternating temperatures of well below zero degrees Celsius and very close to zero, much as would be the case in nature and then pressing the grapes gently, this allowing the sugar to become extremely concentrated. On the nose and palate tropical fruits, mandarin oranges, apricots and spices. Generously sweet but with fine balancing acidity. Straightforward but full of flavor and very appealing with a fresh, long finish. A fine first effort. Drink now-2015. Score 89. (Tasted but not blind 6 Jul 2010)

And Now It's Time For The Restaurant Critic In Me To Have His Say

As to the croque madame taken at Tel Aviv's Brasserie, what can I say. The traditional croquet madame one of the favorite street and café foods of France and French-speaking Switzxerland, is made by placing one slice each of ham and cheese (Emmenthal or Gruyere being the French choices), those topped with a fried or poached egg between two slices of bread, sprinkling the top over generously with a mixture of milk and shredded cheese and then toasting the whole between the plates of a hot griddle. In this case the sandwich was of the ham and cheese between bread and two fried eggs sat on the top.

The restaurant critic in me lives on even when not "on duty" so I must comment that in addition to being impossible to pick it up in the hands as is my wont when in the Latin Quarter or the Vieille Ville of Geneva, the sandwich was too dry, the cheese had too little flavor and the ham slice was so thin that it went largely unnoticed. I continue to marvel at how I am invariably pleased when dining at Coffee Bar and equally invariably not pleased at Brasserie even though the owners and much of the staffing is the same at the two restaurants. Despite the headline about me on one of the Hebrew internet sites this evening, I shall return but only if I hear things have gotten a great deal better.