David

Before he was a food and travel writer, David Lyon was a commercial fisherman, a line cook, a poet, and a sometimes teacher of writing and cooking.

Grigoletti makes superb wines a family affair

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Slender and willowy, Bruno Grigoletti reaches his big hands into the canopy of a grape pergola and starts ripping out the extra foliage. In his late 70s, he works at a pace that would exhaust a man a third his age. Bruno manages a dozen family vineyards. They total about 15 acres (6 ha) in and around the commune of Nomi on the west bank of the Adige river, 9 miles (15 km) south of Trento. Some of the heat-loving varieties grow at the edge of the village in the alluvial soils of the Adige. But the most striking wines come from steep vineyard plots on the limestone hills behind the village. Bruno prunes the white grapes—mostly pinot grigio, chardonnay, and sauvignon blanc—three times across...Read More

Hearty Trentino dishes complement the wines

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If you're going to spend all morning tasting 128 wines, you really need some hearty food to follow up. The Trento cuisine is a fascinating blend of Italian and Germanic foodways, and it's well suited to the regional wines. After we sampled our way through the wines, most of us had absorbed enough alcohol, even without swallowing, that we really needed a good meal. The Trentino wine consortium made sure we got it! We started with a glass of light white wine made from the Incrocio Manzoni Bianco grape. It's part of a group named for professor Luigi Manzoni (1888-1968), who experimented with crossing a number of grapes during the 1920s and 1930s at Italy's oldest school of oenology in Conegliano, north of Venice. The...Read More

Trentino shows off its superb wines at Mostra Vini

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The wine district of Trentino is one of Italy's best-kept secrets—at least from Americans. That translates into real bargains on some outstanding wines from unfamiliar producers. Trentino is the southern half of the region of Trentino-Alto Adige east of Lombardy and west of the Veneto. To help you place it, the wine district more or less corresponds to the Trento province in the map below. With high-altitude vineyards on a mix of dolomitic limestone and volcanic porphyry, the area produces startlingly good sparkling wines in the style of Champagne, highly aromatic white wines similar to the style of Alsace, and some fascinating local reds that many Americans have never heard of. Napoleon rolled through in the early 19th century, and many chardonnay, merlot, cabernet, and...Read More

Frescobaldi celebrates its Tuscan estates

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There's poetry in the Frescobaldi soul, and I don't just write that because I like so many of the family's wines. Back in the 13th century, poet Dino Frescobaldi helped his exiled friend Dante Alighieri recover the first seven books of the Divine Comedy, enabling him to complete one of the great masterpieces of world literature. About that same time, the Frescobaldi family also started to focus on making wine in the Tuscan countryside. A couple of years ago, Lamberto Frescobaldi took over the leadership of the family business, and since he has a son at college in Rhode Island, the chief often passes through Boston. When he was here in March, we had a chance to sit down and taste some current releases and...Read More

It’s smart to get Luckee in Toronto

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Susur Lee was always my favorite contestant on season two of Top Chef Masters, but it took a while until I got to eat his food instead of watching him make it on TV. This year I finally made it to his jewel box contemporary Chinese restaurant, Luckee, at the Soho Metropolitan Hotel (328 Wellington St. W; 416-935-0400, luckeerestaurant.com). This polished restaurant serves some of the best meals in an already food-obsessed city. Much more than a gastronomic shrine directed by a celebrity chef, it's flat-out good fun. I'm not the only one who thinks so. On my last visit Will Smith was in town shooting yet another movie where Toronto stands in as a generic North American city. He and his entourage took over...Read More

Grits with black truffle and poached eggs

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As Pat and I developed ways to use black truffles, we generally opted for the simplest and most straightforward combinations. Keeping in mind that truffles pair well with corn—and that northern Italians sometimes eat truffles on polenta—we decided to try truffles with some of the best grits we've been able to lay hands on. We'll be writing shortly about our food and drink visit to central Kentucky, where we had the good fortune to drive from Lexington out to Midway to visit Weisenberger Mill. This is a truly old-fashioned mill that has been stone-grinding grain for six generations, starting in 1865. Living in Yankeeville, we have a hard time finding good white grits, but now know we can order them online from Weisenberger at www.weisenberger.com....Read More

Even more decadent grilled cheese and truffle sandwich

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Some foodies love to play the “last supper” game: What would you want to eat for your last meal on earth? Pat and I are in accord on this one. It would probably be this elegantly simple grilled cheese sandwich with Comté, prosciutto, ripe tomato and truffle. Cooked just enough to brown the bread in butter (an omelet pan is perfect for the task), the Comté brings out all the high, resinous notes in the black truffle. You could die happy just biting into the sandwich, which gives you a strong whiff of truffle just before you actually taste it. In the interest of research, we tried this sandwich in the purist form—just Comté and truffle—before adding the prosciutto and tomato. The basic sandwich shown...Read More

Truffles, cheese, and honey for dessert

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One of our favorite breakfast dishes in Spain is a plate of sliced Manchego cheese drizzled with honey and served with a bit of membrillo (quince jelly). For dessert, the ewe's milk tang and saltiness of Manchego pairs exceptionally well with black truffle. MANCHEGO CHEESE, HONEY & BLACK TRUFFLES Serves 2 6 oz. wedge of Manchego semi-curado (aged at least 6 months) 2 tablespoons of chestnut or acacia honey 10 grams black truffle crackers for serving Remove rind from Manchego. Lay wedge on its side and slice into 7-8 triangles of cheese. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with honey. (The easy way is to dip a butter knife in the honey and “paint” it on the cheese.) Shave black truffle over the top. Add...Read More

Decadent hamburger with black truffles

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Several high-end restaurants (we're talking about you, Daniel Boulud) serve a magnificent wintertime hamburger with foie gras and shaved French black truffle on top. We can't top that. When we decided to take our Australian truffle bounty and see if we could build a summer burger, we were inspired by the great bacon burger we ate last year at Cured in San Antonio. (Here's the recipe.) We knew the truffle would respond well to a bit of fat and to acid, so we plumped up the ground beef with some fattier ground pork and added a thick slice of heirloom tomato on top. Not caring to heat up the house making brioche buns (and we're not that good at baking bread), we purchased some great...Read More

Lemon risotto and Caprese salad with truffles

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What a luxury to shave truffles over some of our favorite summer dishes! I was surprised when several chefs suggested black truffles on a Caprese salad, but if the tomatoes have enough acidic zing, it's a match made in heaven. Our own tomatoes aren't quite ripe yet, so I have to resort to hoop house or hot house varieties. One trick to restore the “fresh tomato” flavor to these typically bland fruits is to give them a tiny sprinkle of salt, sugar, and citric acid. Citric acid is sometimes sold as “sour salt,” and is readily available in Indian grocery stores. (I mix up the seasoning in a ratio of 20 parts salt to 5 parts sugar and 1 part citric acid and store it...Read More