The Courier-News from Bridgewater, New Jersey • Page 61

SUNDAY, NOV. 27, 1994 E-7 RESTAURANTS New York's Russian jewel By FRANK CURCIO Courier-News Writer THE COURIER-NEWS 1 I rt. I Above, The Russian Tea Room, the 67-year-old landmark on Manhattan's 57th Street, is a magical destination for the holidays. The jewel-box restaurant has hints of Christmas in its decor all year long. Left, Dennis Foy, pictured in the kitchen of his Townsquare restaurant in Chatham, is one of New Jersey's true culinary innovators.

Above left, Dennis Foy's Townsquare dining room is a gracious setting for the master's changing menu. During holiday time, many residents of Central Jersey make an annual trip to "The City," as the Manhattan portion of New York City is called. Whether the day includes shopping, gawking at the wonderful decorations that make the season so festive, attending a show or visiting a museum, sooner or later, visitors want a place to eat. Among the many famous eateries in the city, none carries a more highly regarded reputation than The Russian Tea Room, a 67-year landmark on Manhattan's West 57th Street. The Russian Tea Room is a glittering jewel box to behold, with hints of Christmastime all year long.

This time of year, the hints become a festive chorus. Although The Russian Tea Room has a very traditional orientation, it does make changes, and this fall, it added a weekend brunch to its menu of offerings, just in time for holiday visitors. The weekend brunch, served between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., offers an attractive array of prix fixe menus, as well as a complete a la carte selection of traditional Russian and light contemporary fare, which embraces contemporary American cuisine without diminishing the restaurant's distinctive Russian heritage. Prix fixe pricing is based on the entree selected and includes choice of appetizer and dessert.

Beet and celery root salad, red caviar and buckwheat blini gateau are appetizer highlights. Marzipan cake with Frangelico sabayon and chocolate sauce, and fresh fruit with champagne sorbet are dessert highlights. The a la carte menus offer a vast temptation of selections. French toast made with raisin challah and warm rum walnut syrup, soft scrambled eggs with brioche and wild mushroom hash, wholewheat poppy-seed fettuccini with roasted root vegetable broth, cotelette a la Kiev, kasha roasted salmon, and Karsky shashlik supreme are just samples. Prix fixe entrees range from $20 to $27.

A la carte range is 16 to $58.50 (for the Russian Tea Room caviar supreme, an abundance of Osetra and Sevruga caviars). For reservations from Central Jersey, call 1-800-262-4RTR. The Russian Tea Room is again offering its three-course, prix fixe Christmas menu on Christmas Day. For those who need a gift idea, The Russian Tea Room offers a short catalog of elegant and keepsake items, as well as gift certificates to the restaurant. For Christmas Day reservations or gift orders, call the 800 number from Central Jersey.

CULINARY MASTER: Dennis Foy Townsquare boasts a warm, inviting atmosphere that perfectly complements Foy's award-winning cuisine. Situated on Roosevelt Avenue, a tree-lined street in the heart of Chatham, the restaurant is distinguished by a cozy bar and two blazing fireplaces. Its arched windows provide a perfect view of the changing seasons, so it is natural that the culinary master provides a seasonally changing menu inside. V- Four Sisters are available by the bottle and by the case at the mall outlet shop. In addition, a wine tasting setup is available, as are wine-related gifts, such as gift baskets, cork pulls, T-shirts and wine glasses.

Four Sisters Winery is particularly noted for its fruit wines. Robin's Raspberry, Cherry Melissa, and Sadie's Apple are three popular staples. The Winery's Beaver Creek Red, a sweet, Concord-based wine, is also popular. The annual wine production includes dinner and table reds and whites as well as the fruit wines. The Winery, a former apple orchard, uncorked its first bottle on Nov.

19, 1984, making this its 10th anniversary. To commemorate the milestone, the winery has bottled its '93 Chardonel, an exceptional vintage, under a Tenth Anniversary Chardonel label. While at the outlet, be sure to pickup the latest edition of the winery's newsletter, Matarazzo Times. Matar-azzo Farms, the largest fruit and vegetable farm in Warren County, is the parent of Four Sisters Winery as owneroperator Robert Matarazzo is the father of the four sisters Melissa, Serena, Robin, and Sadie who lent their name to the Winery. The newsletter contains the 1995 schedule of events for which the farmwinery is justifiable famous.

The schedule includes The Return to Beaver Creek Powwow, listed as one of the top 100 events to attend in North America in 1995. For more information about Four Sisters Winery, telephone: (908) 475-3671. A SPOT OF TEA: A special Tea-Time for youngsters is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 10, at the award-winning, The Terrace Restaurant in The Hilton at Short Hills from 1 to 3 p.m. A storyteller disguised as a snowman will read snowy-day favorite children's stories.

Food and Beverage Director, Todd Roesler, says, "We Sv icicles, gumdrops, candy canes, peppermints, lollipops and marzipan figures. It is on display to delight and stimulate the holiday fantasies of children and adults won't be im-, mune to its effect. Chef Nowak and his staff will guide the children in decorating their own gingerbread figures, using each child's imagination, and royal glaze icing, jimmies and candies from the chef's kitchen. Tea time is a dining time and the Storytime Tea is no exception. Adults can enjoy traditional tea sandwiches, freshly baked scones with Devonshire cream, tea cakes and an assorted blend of teas.

The chef and his staff will make sure the adults stay on their side of the serving table, for the treats on the children's side will tempt the most and eat oats at the same time. Unfortunately, once you get the hang of it, you tend to do it whenever you taste a wine, no matter who is within earshot. Wine tasters divide neatly into two groups known in the trade as "dry-bucket" and "wet-bucket." At professional events, you have before you genuine plastic spittoon buckets with about two inches of lentil-sized rocks in the bottom to prevent splashing. Dry-bucket tasters swallow their wine. Us wet-bucket tasters take larger mouthfuls, but spit out all but a trickle of the best ones to get their "aftertastes," which you can only get by swallowing.

To evaluate the norm of a dozen wines per hour, you need to be a wet-bucket taster. It is the only way you can complete WINE SCENE Foy, known for his highly respected "personal cuisine" and artistic presentations, first gained attention as the chefowner of The Tarragon Tree, also in Chatham. He earned national attention while at the helm of Manhattan's Mondrian, which he left in 1990 to return home to Chatham to open his eponymous eatery. Like many people tied to the earth and its bounty, chefs recognize at least six seasons. With the shortening of the days and cooling of the air, heartier fare is demanded and the chef complies.

For the late fall and early winter season, Foy has planned a menu of savory dishes that capitalizes on the finest and freshest ingredients. Butternut squash soup with peppermint and thyme; grilled barbecue foie gras, red lentils and cumin; grilled curried crusted salmon, ginger water, and curried vegetables; roasted loin of pork, melted leeks, and potato apple gateau; and apple tart with black currant vanilla ice cream hint at the delicacies Foy has in store for his guests this season. Reservations for dinner at Dennis Foy's Townsquare are strongly recommended. Telephone: (201) 701-0303. WINE OUTLET: Over the past two years, New Jersey wineries have made outstanding efforts to inform the public, first of their very existence in New Jersey, and, second, of the fine quality of their products.

Since most of the state's wineries sell their products right at the winery, many potential customers miss out on a good thing. Four Sisters Winery, in nearby Belvidere, has decided to go to the customers. For the holiday season, the winery has opened a temporary outlet in The Phillipsburg Mall, a popular shopping spot for Central Jersey residents. "This is a giant step for the winery and we are all excited about the opportunity to bring our wines to our customers," says Valerie Tishuk, a winery manager. Wines produced by good lighting, you follow the classic wine-tasting progression: Swirl, sniff, sip and spit.

Swirling the wine causes its "legs" to stream down the inside of the glass, revealing its weight or "body." (This is all so personal.) Swirling also causes aeration of the wine, releasing its volatile esters and other elements into the air in what is called "breathing." Speeding up aeration of wine allows tasters to judge its aroma and bouquet, known in wine jargon as "getting the nose." Authorities differ on how you best get a nose. Famed wine auctioneer Michael Broadbent recommends "a vigorous 156 Main Street (Flemington Cut Glass Complex) Flemington, NJ 908 782-1574 Onpfi 7 f)av American Express, VISA, Mastercard JL B1-. 5 Practice the four S's of wine tasting: Swirl, sniff, sip and spit 1 1 1 1 i r. wanted to do something special for the children during the holiday season." The hotel dining complex is across from the Short Hills Mall and the event affords the opportunity to relax with small shoppers after the morning's excursion in the Mall. The fanciful inventions of executive pastry chef David Nowak are the featured treats for the Storytime Tea.

Nowak is a Dr. Seuss of a pastry chef whose imaginative creations surprise and delight the most sophisticated of adults. His delicate yet elaborate dessert presentations are so artful they seem a shame to consume but adults hesitate only briefly before diving in. For the children, the chef has constructed a 3-foot-tall gingerbread house which is a wonderland of snow, You hold a small mouthful of wine, then inhale vigorously over your tongue, creating a sort of mist of wine in your mouth. You then close your mouth and breathe out quickly through your nose without swallowing.

This causes the mist to go up the back of your nasal passages, where your most accurate olfactory nerve endings are. The taste of wine being roughly 75 percent smell (you can't "taste" much when you have a cold or if you hold your nostrils shut), this exercise is the most important part of any tasting. The downside of this important practice is the noise it makes, which my wife describes as "gurgling." My daughters used to love it when they were little, and called it "making the wine noise." Less charitable friends, at whose tables I have demonstrated it, liken it to a horse trying to drink Open 7 Days a Week except holidays SPECIAL ORDERS M-Thu 20-6 Fri 10-9 Sat 10-6 Sun 12-5 1031 Route 202 Branchburg, NJ 0887 (908) 707-8039 1 jaded of adults. For the youngsters, there are hot chocolate, peanut butter and jelly, cookies, brownies and tarts, and, best of all, a goody bag to take home. The event is for children ages 3 to 9 accompanied by at least one adult.

The reservations-only tea is $9.95 for the youngsters, $13.95 for adults. Telephone: (201) 379-0100, ask for The Terrace Restaurant. The restaurant column appears every Thursday and Sunday. 1 you know of any restaurant openings or restaurant changes, we'd like to hear about it. Write to Restaurants, The Courier-News, Box 6600, 1201 Route 22, Bridgewater, N.J.

08807. Or fax us at (908) 707-3113. such a tasting without bursting into song. The main negative after-effect of a serious wine-tasting is the next morning, when your tongue may be red and swelled up from being doused in acidic young wines and all you want is some cool milk to soak it in. Wine tip of the week With the holidays upon us, everyone is looking for good, inexpensive bubbly.

My pick of the latest crop is Scharf-fenberger Brut from California. At $15, this stuff is better than most $25 champagne. This wine column appears on Sundays. Readers with comments and questions should write to Mailman at GNS Wine Column, 810 Lincoln Oxford, Miss. 38655.

Weak Basic Skills Frustration with School Lack of Confidence No Motivation sniffing." Heavyweight oenologist Maynard Amerine of Cal-Davis, the Oxford of wine-making schools, prefers a "light inhale." That way you don't suffer "olfactory fatigue" (tired nostrils). Old hands sniff vigorously only those bouquets they really like at first whiff. Next you check the wine's appearance. Does it have a nice, clean fresh shine to it? Is a red too pale? Is it turning orange at the edges from age? Are the whites darkening? These symptoms are very helpful to anyone buying wine. Both are signs that wines are going over the hill.

From too many years of living in France, I cannot stop making that gargling sound French tasters make. It is wonderfully revealing of the wine, though, and only moderately hard to learn without choking. SUNDAY. By JOHN R. HAILMAN Gannett News Service Several readers have written for tips on how to "taste" wine without getting too much.

It takes practice, but one can hardly complain credibly that the practice is hard work. A veteran wine-taster once observed that in judging wines "one peek at the label is worth years of experience." Barring such help, how do you go about evaluating a wine? Professionals generally do it as follows: Seated at a white tablecloth under Select from an array of Wilton Armetale Brand Products to brighten your Mugs Candlesticks Trays Charger Plates Frames P.1,U- J. lOOVJ Df I Trapped on Route 22? Tied up in Central Jersey road work? Watch for our weekly previews and leave the others behind. R0ADWATCH Every Sunday in The Courier-News CRAFTS CRAFTS CRAFTS Why do smart kids fail? "A Craft Show Every Day" Come and Visit! Browse through our aisles of treasures handcrafted by skilled artisians. Shop for Crafts at your convenience FLEMMGTON Your child may be smarter than his or her grades show.

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