FOOD BIZ | Rhinebeck, Gigi Trattoria (Update June 20, 2016)

The GG-7, in Rhinebeck, N.Y. L to R: Alice Tepper Marlin, Jon Jacoby, Amy Lehr, Bennett
Freeman, Paula Luff, Patricia Jurewicz, John Tepper Marlin. Photo by Gigi Trattoria waitstaff.

What a nice evening again with other people attending the program on labor issues in company supply chains, convened by a young company called Skytop Strategies. 

The conference program was well planned and useful; I expect we will hear more from and about Skytop.

We were staying in rooms in the Delamater House complex connected with the Beekman Arms Inn, which claims to be America's oldest continuously operated inn. Maybe so.

There is no dispute over the Beekman Arms being the location of an argument that Alexander Hamilton had with Aaron Burr that led to a duel in which – SPOILER ALERT! – Burr killed Hamilton. 

This is a list of providers of ingredients to Gigi Trattoria food that ought to be imitated by
every restaurant. We consumers want to know!

More cheerfully, that inn is also where FDR–resident of Hyde Park, south of Rhinebeck on the road to Poughkeepsie–formally launched his successful 1932 campaign to be President of the United States.

So we ate out in Rhinebeck and were taken in vans to the conference in the well-designed music center at Bard College.  

The first evening we were at The Local, the second at Gigi Trattoria, on Montgomery St. (phone 845-876-1007).

Laura Pensioro founded and owns Gigi and deserves huge credit for bringing a locavore philosophy and organic food to Rhinebeck. 

(See bottom of the menu, showing the local farms that Gigi buys from, under the heading "DELICIOUSLY LOCAL SINCE 2001".)

Salmon from the Faroe Islands with
"Mediterranean"couscous and fava beans.
Not all so local, but good.

Her example, her writing about the topic of organic and locavore food, and her active interface with the farming community for the last 15 years have inspired other restaurants... not just in Rhinebeck but in the Hudson Valley.

Swimming against the tide, as it were, I selected the salmon. It came all the way from the Faroe Islands, betwixt Norway and Iceland, and at the end of the trip was deposited by the chef on a bed of "Mediterranean" (North African) couscous.

Alas, I forgot to ask for it rare, so I can't complain that to my taste the salmon was a bit overcooked.

I have provided a photo of the salmon dish.

We ate outside in the fresh air, which was a treat because the weather was perfect.

Gnocchi.

If Alice and I had brought along  our dog Hachikō to Rhinebeck with us, we could have brought our Wookiee with us to dinner.

Apparently dogs are permitted to dine with their owners in any outside dining area in New York State, according to the notice posted by Gigi.

I got a taste of another dish, the gnocchi, and I hereby provide a photo and endorsement of same.

Other FOOD BIZ posts: The Local Restaurant, Rhinebeck

FOOD BIZ | Rhinebeck, The Local Restaurant (Update June 16, 2016)

Seven locavori at The Local Restaurant in Rhinebeck, N.Y. Clockwise from left: Maureen
Kline, Amy Lehr, Brent Wilton, Ariel Meyerstein, Alice Tepper Marlin, Robert Stumberg,
John Tepper Marlin. Photo by waitstaff of The Local.

June 15, 2016–I am attending a conference at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Last night I was part of a fun evening of conference participants at dinner in Rhinebeck (pop. 2,657 in 2010) at The Local Restaurant on Market Street (phone 845-876-2214).

The Local is rated 4-4.2 out of 5 on Yelp and Google, and has a $$$ out of $$$$ designation on Google, although the price range in food options is wide. (Higher prices, however, dominate the wine list.)

The restaurant is a big winner in both the food and wine categories:

• Winner in 2015 of Best Chef America.
• Winner of Vogue Magazine's Virginia Smith's Best Chef, putting Chef Dier among the top 1 percent in America. Luckily, Occupy America has not yet taken over this particular 1 percent–after a brief wait we had a comfortable space for seven people on the second floor.
• Winner of 2015 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for having one of the most outstanding restaurant wine lists in the world.

Vino Panache

This locally provenanced and ambitious restaurant offers some hallucinogenic wine pairings.

For example, the strawberries harvested from local farms during the past few days are presented as an interesting $10 "Local Strawberry Trio" along with a suggested wine pairing: a 1908 D'Oliveira Boal Madeira for $75.

That 7.5 to 1 wine-to-food-cost ratio jumped up off the page and glommed on to the fur on my eyeballs. 

But why stop at 7.5? How about some out-of-the-ratio-box thinking here?

Let's take a 2005 Château Pétrus from Pomerol, which could reasonably be priced at $3,950 per bottle; after all, in some years Château Pétrus bottles have sold for $30,000. What entrée could Chef Dier pair with such a bottle, which he could procure on auction for a little over $2,000 for a decent profit?

An up-market Merlot from the legendary Bordeaux vineyard, the Pétrus could be paired with duck or other fowl, or a beef dish–but not a fish or a vegetarian meal.

How about pairing the $4K wine with an appropriately garnished $20 hamburger? That would get the wine-to-food ratio up to 200 and perhaps merit a Guinness Book of Records listing. Or if the competition turns out to be stronger than I think, cut the burger price to $1, offering the burger only in combination with the wine, for a 4,000-to-one ratio and true vino panache.

Update June 16, 2016: The second evening we went with a different group, the GG-7, to Gigi Trattoria.

FINANCIAL CRISIS | Missing Minsky

Dec. 27, 2008–Martin Wolf, at FT.com, wrote on December 24 that Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis:

We are all Keynesians now. When Barack Obama takes office he will propose a gigantic fiscal stimulus package. Such packages are being offered by many other governments. Even Germany is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this race. The ghost of John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics, has returned [and] that of his most interesting disciple, Hyman Minsky.

Hyman Minsky

I first heard Hy Minsky talk in the 1960s. His main message was:

1. Financial systems have a built-in tendency to euphoria. The financial market does not tend toward stability. The opposite is true. Bankers and other financial actors borrow more and more heavily, making the system increasingly vulnerable to panic. Lenders start after a scare by being conservative, hedging their bets. But eventually confidence returns and speculation takes hold again. Then investors get to the Ponzi phase – manic use of credit, a euphoria or bubble.

2. The credit cycle tends to manic, but ends with panic. The Ponzi phase continues until some investors exit with their profits, or the central bank raises interest rates to reduce investor euphoria, and then a financial institution runs into difficulty. The failure causes a bankers' panic. Turning points in the five stages of the cycle are called “Minsky moments”.

3. The system tends to instability and must be regulated. Fashions in monetary theory have moved from a belief that Keynesian sophisticates could “fine-tune” the economy, to fear that the Fed had lost control of the ability to contain inflation, to a belief that markets work best with minimal interference. Hy rejected all these ideas, preaching consistently about the need for regulation and the importance of leaning against the excesses of what Keynes called the animal spirits of investors.

Born in Chicago, Hy taught at Brown, Berkeley and Washington University (St. Louis). He died 12 years ago in Rhinebeck, 77 years old, near Bard College’s Levy Institute, which has a special interest in business cycles and treated Hy as a star in his last six years. Hy didn’t live to see how closely this year’s meltdowns would follow his predicted scenario, with the Lehman failure being one of several clear Minsky moments.

Former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, who spoke in New York City last week, has said of Minsky: “few have influenced my thinking about economics more than Hy.” If Hy had been listened to, we would have seen less permissiveness, fewer NINJA (No Income, No Job nor Assets) mortgage loans and more aggressive Federal Reserve and SEC oversight over highly leveraged instruments and institutions.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and then-Governor Ben Bernanke were anxious not to “pop the bubble” because (citing the Milton Friedman-Anna Schwartz history) that’s the mistake the Fed made in 1928 - after the guy who knew what he was doing, FRBNY chief Benjamin Strong, died of TB. The Fed was concerned not to stifle financial innovation, arguing that it is ready with new weapons in the event of an asset-destroying credit freeze.

This last theory is now being tested. The stakes are high, beyond an academic debate. Whatever side one takes, any sensible person should be rooting for the outgoing and incoming Fed-Treasury teams to succeed in restoring confidence and the flow of credit.