Concord grapes, in season right now, are quite possibly the fruit that tastes most like its artificially-flavored candy counterpart. Raspberry candy rarely tastes like actual raspberries and banana-flavored candy never tastes anything like the real thing, but Concord grapes taste exactly like grape candy. Or should I say grape candy tastes exactly like concord grapes? Their bothersome seeds and thick chewy skin make Concord grapes hard to eat out of hand but they make excellent juice (particularly good in cocktails with a floral gin like Hendrick's ), jam (best in a classic PB&J) and even pie or tart filling (seeds removed). 

In New York City, Murray’s Cheese owner, Rob Kaufelt, has come up with an ingenious idea for keeping his costs low while minimizing his carbon footprint. In the past, Murray’s shipped its fabulous artisanal cheeses across the country multiple times a week to individual Bay Area restaurants. Now Kaufelt sends just one weekly shipment of hundreds of pounds of cheese to Connie Green, the in-demand forager at Wine Forest Wild Mushrooms. When Green makes her mushroom deliveries to restaurants like the French Laundry, Bouchon, Michael Mina and Quince she also drops off Murray’s non-California cheeses (Kaufelt won’t ship California cheeses back to California).  Simple and smart.

With the manic-depressive economy, it might seem inappropriate to write about buying wine at auction. But if you’re a serious wine lover, auctions often offer some of the best deals—at least on rare and older wines. For bargain hunters with a big budget, Christie's will auction off the ultimate mixed lot this Saturday—168 bottles of 1997 Brunello di Montalcino (a vintage that’s been considered a benchmark for the Tuscan wine). The estimated cost of the lot is $5,000 to $7,000—way out of my price range. But that’s just $30 to $40 per bottle for wines that cost well over $100 each at retail.

Earlier this week, I was lucky enough to taste through 12 of the Brunellos for sale and eat a fabulous six-course pizza menu prepared by pizza fanatic Mark Bello. The tasting included 6 riserva bottlings, which are aged longer and cost more. There’s been some controversy lately over the vintage, with collectors and critics saying the wines aren’t as great as they were once predicted to be. The verdict: If you have a ton of cash, the lot is a pretty incredible deal. Even though the tasting had a dud or two, there were plenty of wines to keep a Brunello lover happy for years...and me, a pizza lover, ecstatic (if only those pizzas would keep in a cellar). 

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I recently chatted with Master Sommelier Alpana Singh, director of wine and spirits for the Chicago-based restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. She's just revamped the wine list for one of L.E.Y.E.'s concepts, Big Bowl, with biodynamic and organic wines to pair with its Asian-inspired food. (Full disclosure: I used to work at a Big Bowl restaurant in my teens.) Here, she recommends a rule of thumb for pairing wine with Chinese and Thai flavors and offers three great biodynamic and organic selections. The best part? They all retail for under $20.

What do you look for in wines to go with Asian food?
"I look for wines that offer a good amount of fruitiness since [with Thai and Chinese cooking] you're using ingredients like hoisin, chiles, garlic and ginger that have strong flavors. You need wines that could trump those assertive flavors."

What are three great recommendations?
2006 Santa Julia Vida Organica Malbec "This wine has gobs of berry, plummy flavor with a sweet, round finish. It's great with dishes that are hoisin- or black-bean- sauce-based."

2006 Bonny Doon Ca' Del Solo Sangiovese "This new biodynamic Bonny Doon has a ripe cherry fruit profile. Sangioveses are typically paired with tomato sauce but I think this would be great with pad thai which is limey and has a little bit of sweetness."

2007 Alois Lageder Pinot Grigio "This is a nice crisp, clean white that would go with simple stir-fries with a ginger-based sauce or deep-fried calamari. The winery is completely sustainable—it and even generates electricity for the village it's in."

I love going to Cape Ann, Massachusetts in the off-season. Recently, on a glorious fall day, a group of us—including my sister, Susie, and her husband, Jeffrey—found ourselves in the town of Gloucester on the hunt for breakfast.  As soon as we walked into Two Sisters Coffee Shop on Washington St., I could tell this was exactly the kind of place I was looking for. From the homey decor to the unmistakable accents ("Do we have maahmalade?" "Shoowa"),  this was clearly authentic working-class Gloucester. I was thrilled to see fish cakes on the breakfast menu. I tried one, and it was fabulous: nicely fried and seasoned, with plenty of haddock.  Jeffrey got the corned-beef hash, with substantial hunks of excellent beef tucked inside two very crisp layers of hash browns.  

Not far from Gloucester, in Essex, Tom Shea’s on Main Street is a very pretty place for lunch, with huge windows looking out onto acres of beautiful marshes. It seems that every restaurant  in the area has “award-winning chowder” and Tom Shea’s is no exception.  The soup was very good, though a bit thick. The fried clams were excellent: small, sweet and perfectly cooked. Hand-cut, skin-on fries and a lobster roll were first-rate.

We had the best chowder of our trip, however, at Periwinkles, also on Main Street in Essex. It had a good clammy flavor, just enough potatoes and the perfect thickness. Our very lovely waitress brought us a complimentary cup when she overheard me trying to decide whether to order some. Although the menu describes the chowder as award-winning, our waitress confessed that Periwinkles had not won first prize at the most recent competition (that honor had gone, oddly, to some liquor store). I’m a sucker for creamy clam chowder and, honestly, I’ve been happy with just about all the chowders I’ve tried in Cape Ann.  But there are still more to sample. Perhaps next time we’ll go back in the dead of winter.

I'm thoroughly charmed by the new graphic novel French Milk (Touchstone), in which 23-year-old New Yorker Lucy Knisley documents a six-week trip to Paris with her mom through drawings, photographs and musings written in speech balloons. Her take on the city is a food-filled one—besides full-fat French milk, she adores Ladurée pastries (over Pierre Hermé's), ice cream from Berthillon in flavors like cerise (cherry) and pain d’épice (gingerbread) , and Christine Ferber jams. I also love that Knisley drops in honest worries about her future—she diagrams a panic attack at one point—and offers a moving, creative look at those shaky first steps toward adulthood.

© Photo by The General Design Co.
CommonWealth tees

While fashionable restaurants tap noted clothing designers to create staff uniforms (Narciso Rodriguez for Del Posto, Maria Cornejo for Buddakan and Morimoto), the owners and seriously talented chefs at supercasual restaurants and bakeries (Momofuku; Resto; Sullivan Street Bakery; Portland, Oregon’s Pearl Bakery) have their staff sporting comfy T-shirts with hip designs and witty sayings. The ever-growing trend inspired a post on the food blog Serious Eats last month declaring the restaurant shirt the new concert tee.

Lately, the restaurant shirt has become my souvenir of choice to bring back to food-obsessed friends. A few weekends ago I was in Washington DC and had brunch at chef Jamie Leeds’s awesome new gastropub CommonWealth. The hearty, Brit-inspired food—Scotch eggs, bangers and mash, bubble and squeak—and impressive U.K.-focused beer list are complemented by the staff’s clever T-shirts. My favorite was an organic-cotton tee depicting a beer butcher chart. Leeds originally wanted a pig motif but realized she needed to incorporate the pub side of CommonWealth into the shirt. She approached the General Design Co., the same designers who created the restaurant’s logo, to brainstorm the perfect marriage of the two. The parts of the bottle are loosely based on parts of livestock and bottles, and all of the phrases (“Thanks mate” and “Oh, you little tart”) are based on “Britishisms.” If you read the chart closely, you can follow how the course of events/dialogue might take place as you get through a beer.

© Photo by The General Design Co.
CommonWealth beer butcher chart

If you’ve tuned out of New York City’s dining scene recently (i.e., been on vacation in the Cayman Islands, or watching CNBC 24/7), you might have forgotten just how pork-obsessed this city has become. There have to be more pig products per square foot here than in any other part of the world, with the possible exception of the Tennessee farm of country-ham guru Alan Benton. Or maybe I feel that way because I just ate at Irving Mill, where chef Ryan Skeen has installed his very appealing pigaholic menu. Skeen was certainly pork-happy when he cooked at Resto, but because it’s a Belgian restaurant, attention had to be paid to other things, like mussels. At Irving Mill, he has no such restrictions. Four of the six Bites on his new menu feature pork, including a yummy Peruvian pulled pork sandwich—which is spiked with the not especially South American hot sauce harissa—and salt-and-pepper ribs. Likewise, three of the five small plates boast a pig part (like a yummy lobster salad with hefty chunks of grilled bacon); I won’t bother with the numbers on the sausage and pate section. Skeen goes for the gold, though, with the Charcroute platter: crispy pig’s foot, mini boudin blanc, mini boudin noir, terrine tete de cochon (the head), glazed shoulder, pork ribs, plus fried fingerling potatoes with creme fraiche and a bunch of mustards. And for those keeping score at home, the platter is even porkier than it appears—the crispy pig’s foot includes the tail, and it’s wrapped in the ear and then fried in tempura batter. It’s very delicious and even has a clever nickname—A Kick in the Head.

Dinosaur Designs Delicate

I love Australia-based Dinosaur Designs' well-curated little shop on Mott Street in New York City, which sells jewelry and homewares. Its new Delicate collection—with glass decanters for wine or water and tiny resin salt cellars—reminds me of sea glass and the smooth rocks you find on the beach.

The NFL has Mike Ditka and his Kick Ass Red (a blend of Zin, Syrah and Petite Sirah) and Joe Montana’s Montagia Cabernet Sauvignon. NASCAR fans can buy a bottle under race car driver Jeff Gordon’s eponymous label. And Greg Norman is nearly as well known for wine as he is his legendary golf game. But why aren't there any female sports stars making wine? This is the question golf great Annika Sorenstam posed when she sat down with me yesterday to talk about her latest passion project, ANNIKA wine.

Sorenstam said she’s been working on the idea for nearly two years and is partnering with Wente Vineyards to produce 635 cases of Syrah for the first release, which will be available next May. Sorenstam, who loves to cook and entertain, has been hands-on throughout the project and is currently putting the finishing touches on the label. If all goes well, she hopes to follow up with a Chardonnay and  a red blend.