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Tasting Lebanese Wine at Open Sesame

If you're eating Lebanese food, it makes sense to drink Lebanese wine. And you can do that at Open Sesame in Los Angeles. 

Winemaking goes back thousands of years in Lebanon and has survived despite the hostilities that have troubled the area. Drinking these wines supports an industry that has had to face severe challenges.

To show them off, Open Sesame's owner Ali Kobeissi paired them with several of the restaurant's specialties. 

This made it possible to see how an Altitudes Ixsir white blend of Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon was soft and gentle compared to a more acidic Chateau Musar Jeune composed of Viognier, Chardonnay and Vermentino.

The Chateau Musar is unoaked, meant for early consumption, and good with lively dishes such as shrimp in a red and green bell pepper sauce with tomato, garlic, cilantro and a bit of hot chile (above). 

Both wines are from 2012. The softer Ixsir was in good company with appetizers such as fried potatoes with a smooth garlic sauce, fried cauliflower with tahini sauce (above), hummus and tabouleh.

It also went well with a thin-cut lamb chop (above) that had been marinated with garlic and lemon for 12 hours, making it so tasty you wanted to gnaw every scrap of meat off the bone.

Then on to reds, starting with Altitudes Ixsir Rouge 2010, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Caladoc, Syrah and Tempranillo (above).

This red was soft and easy enough to pair with fish--branzino in tahini sauce with lemon, capers and pickles (above).

The Ixsir Grande Reserve red 2010 (at the top) blends 69% Syrah and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon from five terroirs. This is your wine for heartily seasoned beef shawarma on a bed of parsley and onion with a roasted tomato at the side (above). 

It also matched well with chicken tawook, marinated with lemon, orange juice, yogurt and garlic and served with garlic sauce and pickles (above).

Then came another big red, the Chateau Musar 2003 blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignane and Cinsault from old vines growing in the Bekaa Valley. Each grape was vinified separately and aged for two years, then blended and aged in cask one year, followed by four years in the bottle before release. 

Some of that wine lingered as dessert appeared--walnut and pistachio baklava (above).

To finish, there was a choice of Turkish coffee or blossom tea--mint leaves floating in a cup of hot water scented with orange flower water, the perfect restorative after a rich assortment of food and wine.  

Open Sesame, 7458 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 525-1698.

Sydney's Star Chef Visits L.A.

Australia's celebrity chef Neil Perry was in town last week, for a couple of reasons.

One was to check a site for a restaurant in Beverly Hills, but that's a long way off.

The other was to cook for a lunch promoting Qantas Airways' new, lower fare from Los Angeles to Sydney and tourism in New South Wales. Perry had two reasons to do that. First, he's in charge of the food served on Qantas. Secondly, three of his four restaurants, including the flagship Rockpool, are in Sydney, so bringing more travelers there is good for business.

Lunch, at the home of the Australian consul general, went from appetizers (goat cheese tortellini) to three courses paired with Australian wines and bread provided by one of Perry's chef chums, Thomas Keller. 

The first course was a zucchini and Parmesan tart, a  round of rich pastry topped with thin circles of zucchini. An arrangement of "summer vegetables" on the plate made sense because it's summer in Australia now. There was also black olive oil, which Perry makes by blending salty black olives with olive oil. The wine was 2008 Brokenwood Semillon.

New Zealand John Dory may have come from the wrong country, but in Australian hands, it came off very well. Perry poached it in water from tomatoes hung to drain. Scattered around it were cut-up fingerling potatoes and tomato confit and on top was a cluster of chervil, tarragon and micro parsley.

The two wines were 2007 Robert Oatley Chardonnay from Mudgee, New South Wales, and Oatley's 2008 Sangiovese Rose.

Perry's food is driven by multiculturalism and heavily influenced by Asia. (The best Thai restaurants outside of Thailand are in Australia, he told lunch guests.) His Sydney restaurant Spice Temple is devoted to Chinese regional cuisines, and his cookbook "Rockpool" (New Holland Publishers, Australia) has a large section of Asian-inflected recipes.

But this lunch was Mediterranean. It ended with  strawberry mascarpone cake, a creamy strawberry mixture between two layers of dacquoise, and a luscious dessert wine, the 2006 De Bortoli Noble One, a botrytis Semillon from Riverina, New South Wales.

The Sydney Morning Herald's "Good Food Guide 2010" describes Perry as "the king of modern Sydney dining." Here are the addresses of his three restaurants in that city. 

Rockpool, 107-109 George St., The Rocks, Sydney, Australia. Tel: 9252 1888.
Rockpool Bar and Grill, 66 Hunter St., Sydney, Australia. Tel: 8078-1900.
Spice Temple, 10 Bligh St., Sydney, Australia. Tel: 8078-1888.

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