Ai Fiori - Wine & Spirits Magazine

Ai Fiori


Michael White’s foray down the Riviera, from Liguria to Nice, may be his most exciting restaurant to date, a procession of dishes far sunnier than the hotel surroundings would intimate. Check out chewy Ligurian trofie bathed in a sea-scented crustacean ragout; wake the taste buds with rouget given a sunny Provençal jolt from basil and capers. Hristo Zisovski, former chief sommelier at Jean-Georges, proffers a list as deliciously challenging, piling the wines-by-the-glass thick with obscurities (Champagnes Doyard and Doquet; Poggio dei Gorleri’s pigato), devoting two pages to half-bottles and another to grower Champagnes, as well as whole sections to vibrant finds from Italy’s and France’s Riviera. This is the sort of hotel dining that sails far above the requirements of the usual business trip or meeting; this is food for everyone, tourists and jaded New Yorkers alike.

400 Fifth Ave. (btw. 36th & 37th Sts.), New York, NY

Italian

212-695-4005

is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.


This story appears in the print issue of April 2011.
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