I had the privilege of having an advance walk around the newly renovated Robert Mondavi Winery, the epicenter of wine activity in Napa Valley.

Robert Mondavi, whom I called a friend, opened his winery in Oakville, Napa Valley, in 1966; people compare it to his having tossed a pebble into a lake, causing great concentric ripples. The ripples in this case were wineries and an industry that ballooned outward and then upward.

There were a handful of wineries here in 1966 when Bob tossed that pebble. Today, there are more than 1,000. My friend Bob lifted all boats.

In 2004, Constellation came along and bought the winery.

In 2016, I had the good fortune to be one of very few journalists invited to attend the 3-day, 50th anniversary of the Mondavi winery. If you missed my review of that epic event, you will find it immediately below. That Mondavi weekend constitutes one of the most cherished wine experiences that I have ever had.

https://www.napaman.com/p/napa-valleys-most-memorable-wine-event-of-the-year-robert-mondavi-winery-turns-50

But That Was Then, and This is Now

Yesterday, I visited the new winery, which has just undergone a 3-year renovation, costing, according to insiders, who spoke to me when the reno began, more than $175 million.

I had a personal tour of the renovation from Zarmeena Khan, a delightful, knowledgable, breath of fresh air here. She is Sr. Manager of Hospitality and Events.

Zarmeena (above) showed me the new fermenting room with stainless steel and concrete fermenters. Gone are the large oak fermenters that were cherished for such a long time. The wood from those mammoth oak barrels has been used to make the ceiling of the new fermenting room (immediately below)….

And we talked about the famous To Kalon Vineyard, which anchors the winery’s fame as it is the oldest vineyard in Napa Valley.

Vines stretching out to the To Kalon Vineyard….

The new barrel-aging room…

I tasted four different recently released Mondavi wines; I thought the 2021 entry level Cabernet, which is a blend of different vineyards and which includes all five Bordeaux varietals, was filled with lush, ripe plum and ripe cherry notes. It retails for $50 and is worthy of this price.

There are numerous tours, tastings, and pairings with food — too many options to regurgitate here. Go to the website to learn more. robertmondaviwinery.com

Today is the official opening of the winery. It’s great to have the winery back, open, and to be able to communicate so closely with Bob’s spirit again.

I took a moment of reflection and got misty eyed looking at a wall of Bob & Margrit photos… they introduced me to Napa Valley in 1980 and I moved here largely because of them and their contagious love of great food and great wine.

One day, in the remote town of Maradi, I captured the black/white goat below with a 16 mm Minox spy camera, which my dad had loaned me for my trip so that I would “never be without a camera,” which eventually became my professional mantra.

I submitted the shot to LIFE and when the magazine published my image, on April 5, 1968, I used the $600 payment to buy my first premium camera, a 35 mm Nikkormat, an entry-level Nikon.

The rest, as they say, is history… I wound up having a career as a professional photographer (well, at least one of them was as a photographer…). I owe it all to the bifurcated goat.

As such, I commemorate April 5th each year as the date of my personal Rubicon — when I crossed into the land of “professionally published.” The date I sold my first photo to America’s leading, legendary, top news/photo magazine.

Today, to me, the image looks flat and grainy, and as it turns out, it truly was … but it was shot on a negative that was smaller than the nail of your pinky finger…. and blown up to the size of a full LIFE page…. which, at the time, was an impressive feat.

The photo may be of a GOAT, but for sure it isn’t a GOAT — Greatest Of All Time — image.

12 million….. The number of orange boxes expected to be produced by Florida this season, the lowest output since 1930.

The state has been removing its historical groves after years of disease.

This brought to mind my own experience with the sunny orchards of Florida... back in the mid-1980s, when we created premium-quality, President’s Choice Orange Juice.

At the time, I was vice-president at Loblaws supermarkets in Canada, responsible for product development and editorial services.

I had just named and created North America’s first premium private label program, President’s Choice, and was defining what would be the first 2,500 products for the brand.

One of them was to be a not-from-concentrate, preservative-free, orange juice from Florida… not concentrated pulp from Brazil, which the national brands were packing.

We had no trouble sourcing the fruit or contracting a juicer to produce our product. But we sure had a tough time finding a suitable translator.

As Canada is officially a bilingual country, all packaging then required (and still does) full translations in English and French in equal-sized print.

We hired an outside firm to translate the English for our labels but the translator was not as meticulous as our team of product developers.

We only caught the translator’s mistake after ALL our stores across the country were stocked with President’s Choice Orange Juice.

In English, the label read:

Freshly squeezed orange juice from the sunny orchards of Florida

The French translation should have been:

Jus d’orange fraîchement pressé provenant des vergers ensoleillés de Floride.

But our translators misspelled orchards, and so this was printed on a million cartons:

Jus d’orange fraîchement pressé provenant des verges ensoleillées de Floride.

In French, orchard is verger.

What the translator had typed was la verge, which, in French, means penis.

If you were a French-speaking Canadian and walked into the orange juice section of one of our stores, you would find quarts of President’s Choice Orange Juice, “Fresh from the sunny penises of Florida.”

I suspect we sold a disproportionately large number of orange juice cartons to French-speaking shoppers who wanted to have a good laugh with their family at home.

Jim

Bartender Zack Kusch

But now, having dined ten times at A16, and having been thrilled each time by the food and service, I have a new take on “5 Boroughs.”

It’s the name of a cocktail on the spirits menu at A16 and just happens to be the best cocktail made in Napa Valley. Maybe anywhere.

“5 Boroughs,” a riff on a conventional Manhattan cocktail, is the creation of bartender Zack Kusch.

The joy of Zack’s 5 Boroughs cocktail cannot be overstated.

Your first sip does to your palate what the opening of Kubrick’s “2001 Space Odyssey” does to your ears. You know, that star-reaching, crescendo, originally composed by Richard Strauss, recorded for the film by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The film’s opening music… that’s exactly what Zack’s 5 Boroughs cocktail does to me. I get that same goosebump-making, connection to our universal ethereal plasma… the drink brings me ecstatic J-O-Y!

Zack, above, 40, says that the idea for this cocktail started while he was bartending at Rustic Canyon, in Los Angeles.

He and his wife moved to Napa Valley during the covid pandemic, and he has bartended in many places since, including Goose & Gander, in St. Helena, as well as Torc and Slanted Door in Napa. He says that in all this time, he never gave up on the cocktail that he’d created way back when.

“5 Boroughs developed organically. We had a bottle of St. Agrestis, an amaro from Brooklyn, and I wanted to make a whisky cocktail that was inspired by Manhattans — but using this amaro.”

Zack continues: “I also wanted to make an improved Manhattan, at least for me. I wanted to create a cocktail with better balance, and smoother finish. No disrespect to the Manhattan cocktail, it’s timeless and iconic, but the luxury of bartending is taking a cocktail and shaping it into something you enjoy more.”

Zack says that his 5 Boroughs is an homage to every borough in New York, each of which has its own variation of Manhattan. There’s a cocktail called The Brooklyn, there’s one called Carrol Garden, one called the Bronx, each based on the Manhattan with different liqueurs and bitters used.

“To be honest, I also had just listened to the album “Through the Five Boroughs,” by the Beastie Boys, and the name stuck!”

The A16 5 Boroughs cocktail

1 oz Rittenhouse rye whisky (100 proof)

¾ oz Averna amaro

½ oz Cocchi vermouth di Torino

Barspoon of Luxardo maraschino liqueur

5 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass, stir 15 to 20 seconds, strain into a Martini coupe, or over ice in an old-fashioned whisky glass. Garnish with an expressed orange peel.

The ingredients to make 5 Boroughs…

I agree with Zack, who says that he prefers to use rye in his whisky cocktails, rather than Bourbon, which he finds too sweet for this concoction.

“I like Rittenhouse rye, in particular, says Zack, “because it’s less sweet and spicier than Bourbon. Also, it’s 100-proof and the extra proof — many ryes are bottled at 80-proof — makes the beverage taste bold and alive.”

Zack’s 5 Boroughs, made two ways — straight up or on the rocks….

History of the Manhattan

As 5 Boroughs is a riff on the Manhattan, let’s look at the origin of the cocktail.

A popular story, but one that has been debunked, says that the cocktail originated at the Manhattan Club, in New York, in the mid-1870s, reputedly invented by a bartender at a banquet hosted by Jennie Jerome (a.k.a Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston) in honor of presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden.

It’s argued that the success of the banquet made the drink fashionable, prompting people to request the drink by referring to the name of the club where it originated—”the Manhattan cocktail.”

But fact-checking cancels this version of the Manhattan Origin Story as Lady Randolph was in France at the time and, oh, by the way, was pregnant, so the story is totally fictive.

It tuns out that there are numerous earlier references to the Manhattan, most of them anchoring the cocktail to one of several bars in the late 1800s — where else? — in Manhattan.

First we take Manhattan, Then we take Berlin

If you are old enough to drink a Manhattan publicly, then you may be old enough to remember the lauded Canadian writer, poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, who thrilled a generation with his talents.

He wrote the song, “First we take Manhattan and then we take Berlin,” which Jennifer Warnes recorded and brought to fame.

Asked about the lyrics and storyline of his burning, sultry, gospel-ish song, Cohen said that it was to honor ‘terrorists,’ by whom he meant people who shook up society with their brains, not their guns. Cohen said he was talking about ‘terrorists like Jesus, Freud, Marx and Einstein.’ He noted that “from these ‘terrorists,’ the whole world is still quaking.”

What’s this got to do with Zack’s Manhattan-inspired 5 Boroughs?

Only this: For years, whenever I heard the Jennifer Warnes’ version, or Cohen’s version, of the song on the radio, I would sing along, substituting my words for the beguiling lyrics that Cohen penned:

“First we have Manhattans, that’s where it all Begins!”

Next time you hear the song, sing-along with the bouncing ball…. and insert my lyrics!

This (below) is the bright interior of A16 Napa … but you will NEVER see it empty like this. I just happened to interview Zack mid-afternoon on a day when there was no lunch service. At dinner, there are NO empty seats and no empty bar stools

While we’re at it, let’s talk about A16’s food.

The trick to experience their best pizza is to order their white-sauced, sausage pizza, which is listed on the menu, and tell your server you want the napaman version, substituting red sauce for the white topping. They charge $2 more for the red version, but it’s worth the upcharge.

The acid and draw from the red sauce make all the ingredients in the sausage pizza — fennel sausage, Jimmy Nardello peppers, caciocavallo and Grana Padano cheese — sing out loud, and in harmony. Much better than the conventional, menu’d, white-topped, sausage pizza.

The pizza dough here, on occasion, has been under-proofed, making the dough a bit chewy, but when it is proofed properly and baked to perfection, THIS is a sensational pizza.

Of the pastas, we love the Cavatelli, tossed with braised oxtail, which is umami-fied with Grana Padana and oregano.

We’ve also been thrilled by the Maccaronara pasta, noddles tossed with a hearty Neapolitan ragu, accented with ricotta salata, tweaked with basil.

In this age of promotional shenanigans — people taking inside money for product placement — I need to be clear about my relationship with Shelley Lindgren, owner of several A16 restaurants in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

In 2006, as then co-owner of Charter Oak Winery, in St. Helena, (I partnered with my friend, Rob Fanucci, whose grandparents had started the winery) I drove to San Francisco to present Shelley with our voluptuous Charter Oak Zinfandel. Even though she specialized in exotic, unusual wines mostly from southern Italy, she was so kind to us, and put our Zin on her menu to complement her sensual food. Shelley even followed up, ordering more after she sold through her first order.

So, thank you Shelley, for your wine orders 20 years ago (!) and more recently, for joining with Napa resident, Kitty Oestlien, to bring A16 to Napa.

And thank you Zack, for bringing the best cocktail to Napa Valley!

A16, 821 Coombs Street, Napa, CA 94559
707-883-3696

May I suggest India?

I can’t think of anyone better to lead an Indian expedition than Paul Saltzman, whom I have known 50 years.

I hired Paul in the mid-1970s to be the cinematographer on a film, which I directed for the National Film Board of Canada, about Canada‘s role in international development.

I hired Paul to travel with me to Lesotho, a mountainous, southern African kingdom, where we spent weeks making our film.

We struck up a friendship that has lasted 50 years.

Paul went on to become a an acclaimed independent filmmaker, responsible for two major documentaries.

I can vouch for Paul’s colorful life stories… They are all true. Including the one he tells about his daughter finding a box of color negatives on a closet shelf in their home… It turns out that Paul had been with the Beatles in India when they were hanging out with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in Rishikesh, India, and his daughter found the long-forgotten negatives.

Paul turned his trove of Beatles photos into a magnificent leather-bound book, which he sold.

Paul’s next challenge?

He’s leading a 16-day excursion to India and asked if I would please share his pitch with my Substack readers… because if you’ve been crazy enough to read my stories, perhaps you’re crazy enough to join Paul to take one of his expeditions.

Paul cut his teeth on adventure when he was 17… aboard a Canadian medical ship, The C.D. Howe, bound for the Arctic. Paul was the darkroom specialist, developing X-rays of Innuit in need of medical attention for tuberculosis. Ever since, he’s had Wanderlust.

You can find details about his Safari to India and Bhutan here… (remember that you can enlarge ANY image you see in my Substack emails, including this one, to make it easier to read).

Here’s a shot of the Beatles, which Paul took, just in case you thought I was making this up.

If you’d like to reach Paul with questions about this trip, please email him directly at

paul@sfl-films.com

That includes this unpaid public service announcement… And also ends my series from Norway.

I have no travel plans as of now for my next adventure… But you are subscribed via Substack to receive whatever I write.

Thanks for accompanying me as I floated along the coast of Norway these past 16 days. Hope you enjoyed the journey.

More when it happens again…

Jim

Morning dawns over Stavanger (above), the last port of call on our 16-day cruise around the coast of Norway.

There are enough shops, pubs and restaurants in this tony, fjord town that I could (presumably) live here.

Well, on both days of summer, anyway.

Stavanger (hidden beneath those morning clouds) has a population of 150,000 and our tour guide this morning pointed out the most salient statistic about Stavanger’s place in culinary history:

This town has, according to our guide, the highest consumption of frozen pizza per capita of any other place in the world.

I can’t substantiate this, but there are an unusual number of pizza restaurants here, giving credibility to the possibility…

Herewith, some visual images of beautiful downtown Stavanger….

Even the graffiti has a sense of humor in Stavanger… maybe they should call the town Scavenger, because it looks like artists have been on a treasure hunt to apply fun names to stores. The public execution of graffiti is playful….

How’s this for a street sign….?

The waterfront of Stavanger…

What better way to end our time in Stavanger than to stumble upon some dog-loving locals at the coffee bar.….note the pattern on the Norwegian tops, which the young couple are wearing… they’re everywhere in Norway…

Tomorrow we are at sea all day, landing in Copenhagen Wednesday morning at 6 am. There may/may not be travel stories and pix from Copenhagen…. we’ll have to see….

But more if it happens…..

Jim

Welcome to the sleepy fjord town of Eidfjord, population 950, which makes it TWICE the size of our sleepy village of Rutherford, in Napa Valley.

Here’s what I think of fjords now that we’ve been to ten of them on our cruise:

1. The word FJORD would make a killer word for the NYT Wordle puzzle, because, really, who ever thinks of a word containing the letter J, especially when it’s not the first letter?

2. Fjords can be quite long. The longest one in Norway is 127 miles long, and, in total, there are more than 1,000 fjords in the country.

3. Fjords are long inlets off the ocean, often with mountainous slopes on either side of a narrow inlet which leads, eventually, to a small (or larger) town.

Our ship docked at Eidfjord today and we strolled around the itsy-bitsy, bucolic town. The air smelled of pine and fresh herbs — intoxicating!

As almost no one uses telephone land lines any longer, the Norwegians got smart with unused public phone booths. At least the residents of Eidfjord got smart; they converted freestanding phone booths into small, free, take-what-you-like, mini-libraries….

One enterprising young man has started a baked potato business, serving hot, just-baked, spuds out of a mobile trailer…. he’s obviously been influenced by American propaganda….

As we walked the hilly streets of greater Eidfjord, it started to sprinkle, so Carol sought refuge under the portico of an old wooden house….

We have one more fjord port-of-call, tomorrow at Stavanger. Assuming there are colorful images to capture and that we are not caught in a seasonal, torrential storm, you will receive one more travel story. And maybe something from Copenhagen, where we disembark Wednesday.

But if/when there is more to share…. you will receive it.

Jim

Trondheim is the third largest city in Norway (after Oslo and Bergen — I just knew you were going to ask).

Population is 216,000. But when our ship pulled in, it swelled to 216,690.

There’s a downtown pedestrian street, filled with cafes, bakeries, and one-off shops….

The biggest Trondheim attraction is the Gothic Nidaros Cathedral, which will celebrate its 1,000th birthday in 2030. They’re going to need one extremely large birthday cake to hold all those candles….

The Cathedral (below) is the largest structure from the Middle Ages still standing in Norway. The church was built on the site of a former shrine recognizing the first King of Norway, Olav Haroldsson, who converted the entire state to Christianity.

The interior of the Cathedral…

A close-up of details in the cement ceiling…

I couldn’t figure out the symbolism of this mermaid (below), checking herself out in a mirror.

It is a marble inlay on the floor of the Cathedral, half-way down the length of the church. Sort of like an early Christian cheerleader on the church’s 50-yard line.

We only had a few hours off the ship to explore Trondheim as we push off early this evening to head to our next port of destination.

For what it’s worth, in case you get asked this in a game of trivia…. the fjord leading to Trondheim is the third largest fjord in all of Norway — 78 miles long!

More when it happens….

Jim

Okay, so the locals spell it HARSTAD, but they pronounce it so swiftly in Norwegian that it sounds like they’re saying “Hashtag.”

So a reasonable short-hand version would be to call it….#.

A funny thin happened on the way to #…. the sun tried to set in the west last night.. but it barely went down and, for sure, it never stayed down.

At 10.15 pm last night… THIS is how the sky appeared from our ship:

Speaking of ship, some readers have inquired about our ship.. the food … and the background of how Carol and I came to take a cruise, because we don’t seem like typical “cruise people.”

Six years ago in our travels, we met a Norwegian couple, Helge and Nina, and struck an instant, immediate, and lasting friendship. We try to get together once every year, or two.

On a get-together two years ago, Helge said that one of the best cruises they’d ever taken (of 46 cruises they have taken to date!), was one that visited the fjords of western Norway.

Helge and Nina….

At the time, Helge said that if we would join them, they would take the Norwegian cruise again, mostly just to be able to hang out with us for 16 days.

So that night, two years ago, and after too many bottles of wine at dinner, we pulled out our respective phones… and actually booked the cruise we’re on today. That was before dinner was even over! (This is a strong indication of just how much wine we must have consumed early in the meal!)

And now, here we are traveling with Helge and Nina, who are interpreting for us, sharing stories, and generally acting like sherpas for us on our Norwegian cruise.

We are on the Azamara line. The ship is Journey (above). There are 650 passengers and nearly as many crew members, one per guest.

There are numerous dining rooms on the ship and I have grown particularly partial to the curry, which changes daily, served in one of the daytime restaurants.

Some of you have asked about food on this trip. There is only a minimum of what might be considered “Norwegian fare,” and unlike our recent month in Japan, where we dined two, three, and even FOUR times a day to experience the local cuisine, our cruise is not meant to be a gastronomic tour of Norway, but rather one of geographic interest.

Norway is considered one of the most beautiful countries in the world and we’re here to see it, not eat reindeer!

’Nuf said?

A few curious things about the town I’m calling #…..

The town has 25,160 residents.

OOPS! This is an All Points Bulletin! Be on the lookout for five mannequins, recently escaped from a major downtown # store window.

Last seen wearing no clothing and sporting a dark, Mediterranean bronzed tan….

Another curious thing about #….

If you’re short of cash, you don’t go to the bank, here… you go to the….

Finally, I’m drawn to the parking lot that is adjacent to Hashtag’s (#’s) downtown shopping mall… kind of makes you yearn for the old days…

That’s it for now. More when it happens.

Jim

Here Comes The Sun.

Because there are 22 hours a day of bright sunlight. And NO hours of total darkness.

Last night, as we cruised the Arctic Ocean, the sun settled below the horizon at 11.35 pm (photo below)… and rose again within two hours.

And all the while it was hidden, the sky was lit as though it were 7 pm in Napa at the height of summer.

11.35 pm.. the sun officially sets over the Arctic Ocean….

At midnight, wisps of cloud came alive with colors associated with milkshakes and wool socks…. and it never got darker than this….

… and sometimes, the clouds resembled fireworks.

Our cruise ship chugged through the disorienting, night twilight and we reached Alta, Norway, this morning at 9 am.

Alta is known for its winter activities — sledding, skiing, snowmobiling — and for its summer activities, which are pretty much just getting ready for winter.

But the Alta Museum is NOT TO BE MISSED IF YOU ARE EVER WITHIN DRIVING DISTANCE OF ALTA.

It is a sweet, compact, jewel box of a museum that celebrates pre-historic inhabitants who roamed the Scandinavian land mass 7,000 years ago.

Alta has northern Europe’s largest concentration of rock art made by these hunter-gatherers.

Adjacent to the museum are two “rock parks,” where you can admire the art of these people who hand-chiseled depictions of their daily life into their settlement rocks. This rock park is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Usually pre-historic artwork depicted large game like reindeer, elk, or bear, but occasionally, smaller animals were included.

At one rock site adjacent to the Alta Museum, they uncovered two carvings of hares, which have been dated 6000- to 7000-years-old.

Here’s something else that I learned at the Alta Museum:

You know that universal cheese slicer — the one you have in your kitchen drawer? It was invented in 1925 by a Norwegian, Thor Bjorklund, who lived in Lillehammer, Norway. So who knew?

More when it happens….

Jim

PS: Don’t forget that if you see an image you like in one of my Substack-distributed emails, when you double-click on that image, it will open in a new browser tab in an enlarged format, enabling you to really enjoy the splendor of the photo.

Try it with this shot from my last email… one of my personal favorite photos on the trip so far.

Double click on it…but don’t forget to return to THIS page for a new story below!

Here’s another shot from the Trollfjord passage, which I didn’t have room to run yesterday.

Try enlarging it, too. It’s dramatic.

Tromsø

Overnight, we made it to Tromsø, the world's northernmost city with a population over 50,000.

Actually it’s 80,000, if you include nearby bedroom communities from which residents drive their reindeer sleighs to work.

I'm joking about the sleighs, but not about the reindeer.

In the Arctic Circle, reindeer are so part of every day everything that I’m starting a petition to spell them reigndeer because the animal reigns supreme.

At the entrance to a gift shop:

In a snack store:

Were you looking for some reindeer salami?

Even the manhole covers in this town glorify reindeer…

One of the highlights of our day ashore in Tromsø was a visit to Polaria, a museum / aquarium dedicated to species of the Arctic Circle.

I loved feeding time in the seal pod:

And saw two films in the panoramic cinema, including one about the Northern Lights:

If you ever make it to Tromsø, be sure to visit Polaria (polaria.no/en).

Another highlight of the day was dropping by the Mack Pub, adjacent to the site of the original Mack brewery, which, for a long time, was the most northern brewery in Norway (it is no longer).

I ordered a half-pint of Polar Pale Ale… and while it was delicious… it was NOT worth $14.

Food, wine, and beer are expensive in Scandinavia … you just about have to refinance your house to buy a pint of beer in Tromsø!

That’s it… the ship’s leaving port…..

More when it happens….

Jim

In the Arctic Circle, just north of 68 degrees latitude, off the mainland of Norway, hundreds of rocky protuberances vault out of the Arctic Ocean; if your ship’s captain is good at Nintendo Switch 2… maybe, just maybe, he can thread his monstrous ship through this archipelago of peaks.

Which is what happened to us. Our very adept captain piloted our cruise ship (690 passengers) into a devilishly narrow, dauntingly shallow, channel, called the Trollfjord, then at the dead end head of the channel, spun a tight 360 degrees and exited the channel as though the ship were a salmon ready to return to its spawning grounds.

The visuals from this endeavor left me breathless. This may become the visual highlight of our 16-day cruise along the western coast of Norway.

For sure, it was a Stendhal Moment — the visuals were so intense, so breathtaking, that one might faint from the sheer beauty of it all.

The other thing that made today so special — was how long it stayed light.

The shot bellow was taken at 11 pm… the sun was just beginning to set. It stayed dusky light until 2.30 am. And then, an hour later, the sky started to brighten again.

More when it happens…..

Jim

Norway is a colossal collection of more than 50,000 islands.

Today we visited one of them — Lofoten, which is at the 68th degree of latitude.

This puts us within the Arctic Circle. You know, home to polar bears and Santa.

But we didn’t see either of them today. It was a bit too warm for that.

But I did see gorgeous land formations as the sun rose, although, to be accurate, it never really sets at this time of year.

We visited the virtual “capital” of Lofoten island, Svolvaer, today where I spotted a bank confirming the geographic latitude of the island::

Then we hopped a local bus and rode to Henningsvaer, an even smaller town. More like a village on Prince Edward Island.

In America, we had Woodstock… here, in the fishing village of Henningsvaer this past June, they had….

All over Lofoten you see wooden pyramid-shaped structures and wonder what are they for?

Speaking with a fisherman, I learned they are drying racks where fisherman splay and hang their just caught cod — to make salted cod.

If you want to fit in like a local, you have to get used to eating animals that you hadn’t thought edible.

Where we have roadside stands selling strawberries in rural America, the Svolvaerians (sounds like an exotic race of people from a Star Trek episode, doesn’t it?) dine on whale, musk, and bear sausage….

While fish are on the lines of fishermen here, they’re also on the labels of aquavit, the national spirit, and on restaurant menus.

One of the local aquavit brands is Lutefisk, which translates “lute fish,” a locally caught fish.

Can you imagine calling your vodka Walrus, or Otter Juice? But that’s the equivalent here… and the orange ribbon on the label says, “Love it now!”

Most restaurants on Lofoten try to lure patrons in with shtick — or should I say with fish shticks like this….

More when it happens.

Jim

To those who received my 21 stories from Japan in May — let me just say that my dispatches from Norway, which begin now, are NOT going to be similar.

For one thing, I am cruising aboard the Azamara ship Journey, and while I will visit nearly a dozen small fjord towns, I intend to spend more time relaxing than worrying where my next slice of pizza is coming from.

So don’t expect volumes about where to dine, or find espresso, in Norway; this series will be more of a rich visual collection of what I see than of what I consume.

This is our ship, Azamara Journey, home to 690 souls….

Norway, I have been told by well traveled friends, is “the most beautiful country in the world.” For sure, it is one of the richest. The discovery of off-shore oil in 1969 has turned Norway, and its 5.6 million inhabitants, into one of the world’s richest countries.

Its Sovereign Wealth Fund, established to invest the oil money, now manages more than $2 trillion.

Our first port of call was Olden. Here’s what the fjord leading into Olden looks like from the vantage point of a ski lift…

The big attraction in the vicinity of Olden is a massive glacier that is melting, sending fresh glacial water down sluices carved into mountains at the rate of — ready for this? — 10,000 liters per second!

After a mile-and-a-half-climb to the glacier itself, one reaches a basin that is filled with millennia-aged ice that will collect and be flushed via a water fall to the valley below.

We are traveling with two close friends, Helge and Nina, both Norwegians, who took this same cruise many years ago and who convinced us to join them to do it with them again.

That’s Carol on the left, Helge in the center, and Nina on the right.

I liked the zen-serenity of these rocks (below) and the rushing water behind…

Port #2, Alesund

Our second pit-stop along the fjords of Norway was a tiny town of 4,000 souls, called Alesund. Its primary industry is tourism — having ships like ours pull into port for 12 hours to disgorge passengers and let ‘em loose on town shops.

We wandered around town for much of a day. The harbor:

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The big attraction here is to walk up a 418-step stairway to a lookout on a mountain overlooking town….

I took the bait… and trekked up all 418 stairs….the views along the way were breathtaking…

Tomorrow is a full day at sea, so don’t expect another dispatch for a few days… unless I win the table tennis tournament onboard, in which case you’ll be among the first to know…

Jim

This may be the best restaurant in Japan

The restaurant is called DEN and it is probably the hardest table to book in Japan. But leave it to our son Jason to work the room and get us in.

DEN is a Japanese version of Eleven Madison Park, in New York, in that the service and food presentations are original, novel, humorous, and the food itself is some of the best on the planet.

DEN, which is Michelin-starred, is the brainchild of chef/owner Zaiyu Hasegawa, who introduces a modern spin to traditional kaiseki service.

For example: The amuse-bouche came wrapped in a paper envelope:

Inside was a house-made sandwich cookie with a crunchy exterior shell and inside, a mixture of foie gras that had been marinated ten days with miso, dried persimmon and pickled daikon. An outstanding presentation, an outstanding taste, and a novel way to begin dinner.

Another unforgettable course… DFC!

Our host, Noriko-chan, said that if Americans can have KFC… Japan should be able to get away with DFC… DEN Fried Chicken!

So boxes were brought to the table, one per guest, marked DFC….

… and inside was a sensational chicken wing that had been stuffed with a forcemeat of chicken, prawns, pickled plums and finely chopped shizo leaf. Radically delicious. Think “Umami on the bone!”

Dinner went on like this with delicious surprises for nine courses.

Total price with wine, highballs (THE drink of Japan), beer… $275 a person.

A meal like this at Eleven Madison Park, or at a fussy, 3-star restaurant in America would run $1,800 per person with wine, tax and tip. And for that, you would get attitude. At DEN, they make you feel as though you are family.

Observation: You can dine like a king in Japan for about 80 percent less than you would pay for a comparable meal in America.

DEN is at 150-0001 Tokyo, Shibuya, Jingumae, 2 Chome−3−18, Tokyo. Reservations required, though nearly impossible to get.

This is, without question, the best pizza restaurant in Japan, probably all of Asia, and quite possibly, the world.

The pizza restaurant on the 38th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, in Tokyo, presents the best pizza I have ever had in my life.

And that is a BIG statement because I secured certification as a professional pizzaiolo so that I could make pizza crusts at a commercial bakery I co-owned years ago.

Chef Daniele Cason, actually Italian, has been at the gas-fired oven here 12 years and in this period has made, by my calculation, 1 million pizzas here.

And they are world class. I have never had a more delicious, more ethereally light crust anywhere. Not in New York, not in Naples, not in Rome.

Daniele’s secrets include: he uses bottled San Pellegrino water to hydrate his dough — he claims the minerals in the water add a special flavor to his dough. And when he travels to do promotional tours, he is guaranteed the same flavor to his dough no matter where he bakes.

He personally blends six different Japanese flours to make his pizza flour.. and there is one recipe for pizza flour with a cheese-base, and one for pizzas with a tomato theme.

There are ONLY 8 seats at the Omakase bar… so Daniele makes eight different pizzas in the course of the sitting .. and every guest gets one slice of each pie.. and then there were none!

Dinner basically presents you with ONE complete pizza (eight slices of eight varieties) and you can choose the wine-pairing option, which I recommend, and the total for dinner is about $280 a person, which may sound high for a pizza… but in America, when we are charged $65 corkage to bring our own wine, and $25+ for mediocre pizza…. and you add tax, tip.. trust me, whatever the modest difference in dining here costs.. THIS IS WORTH IT!

Daniele has been named, at various times, the best pizza maker in Asia, in Japan, and in the world. You gonna argue “wit dat?”

Pizza on 38 is located in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Tokyo. Reservations are essential but be prepared to get them so far out that you’ll be sending your grandchildren to dinner here with your reserved seats.

I wish we could eat this well in Italy!

This Italian restaurant has a quirky French name — Mon Atelier. They switched from serving French food to presenting Italian fare.. but never changed the name of the restaurant!. The food here is better than 90 percent of the restaurants we send friends to in Italy!

The meal we had was omikase style — a set menu of five courses — chef’s choice. Italian traditions with novel, Japanese twists, and Asian ingredients.

The perfectly cooked spaghetti (above) was served with a topping of uni (sea urchin) and tomatoes… and as weird as the combo sounds.. it was THAT delicious.

Same for the fresh fish with seasonal vegetables (above)…. delicious.

Every course nailed the concept the chef was striving for, and hit the umami gong, which is not something you anticipate in an Italian restaurant. The bread, the olive oil, even the dessert was memorable.

For dessert, we were served the best tiramisu we’ve ever had…. and to make a statement, the slice of tiramisu was laid upon a thin base of house-made caramel gelato. This qualifies at the best original, and tastiest, dessert of our three weeks in Japan.

Mon Atelier is located at 150-0002 Tokyo, Shibuya, 1 Chome−10−12.

Tel: +81-03-6427-4611.

Reservations at: mon-atelier.jp, ikyu.com, tablecheck.com

And so, my friends, we are heading back to Napa Valley this weekend…. but you are registered to receive future travel stories and photos when we next set out on a tasty adventure. Thanks for being in my side-car on our Japanese adventure.

Jim

Now replace the fish with…. ta da! BEEF!

THIS is what you find at Hikiniku to Come, Shibuya, a hamburger sushi bar (if you permit me to make the gross analogy).

You sit on a low stool.

$20 gets you three burgers, which are portioned out by hand, and grilled right in front of you over charcoal.

Choose from 20 different condiments to top your burgers.

You get unlimited bowls of delicious rice, and a bowl of sensational miso soup.

The Kirin beer is thirst-quenching and icy cold. The burgers are sublime.

I asked the burgermeister how many burgers they hand-make and grill daily. He said 900, which means 300 lucky patrons are served a day.

Reservations are essential and timed by the quarter-hour — so if you arrive outside your qualified time — either too early, or too late — there are consequences!

Hikiniku To Come, Shibuya, is located at 150-0043 Tokyo, Shibuya, Dogenzaka, 2 Chome−28−1 , and you need to walk up three flights of stairs to reach this hamburger heaven. Web site: https://hikinikutocome.com/en Tel: +81-03-6455-2959.

In the afternoon, we went for a walk in the Nakameguro neighborhood, visiting shops along the Meguro River. The banks of the river are lined with fully-in-bloom, cherry trees….

We came upon a chocolatier/coffee house that BEGS a visit.

It’s called Green Bean to Bar, and while there are several locations in town, you want the one beside the Meguro River. Do NOT pass Go, do NOT collect $200, until you stop here. They make their insanely delicious chocolate bars and confections in a kitchen lined with windows so you can peer in.

Without a doubt, the single best chocolate flavor hit that we have had in two weeks in Japan, where there is no shortage of fabulous chocolate, is the refrigerated, Esmeraldas chocolate confection, filled with a decadent, velveteen, chocolate mousse, enveloped in a shell of cosmic chocolate crunch.

The Esmeraldas mousse morsel you MUST try in Tokyo…. costs about $6.80… but you’d be happy to pay $15, it’s THAT good!

Some additional shots along the Meguro River as we walked back to our hotel….

Above, it’s not much of a shot… it’s the backside of Starbucks MASSIVE Roastery, a 4-story coffee house on which different elements of coffee-making are explained on each of the floors.

This is what the interior looks like…

Wait times to get in to the Roastery vary from 45 minutes (today) to as long as 1-½ hours … and some people DO wait to get in.. but we just kept walking down the Meguro river bank… where I met this fella….

More when it happens.. or tomorrow… whichever comes first.

Jim

… yet, anyway.

But we did have our second-best sushi dinner on the trip last night, at a not-expensive, omakase restaurant called Sushi Yuu.

Two sushi chefs alternated in preparing, and serving, 15+ courses of sensational seameats….

One of the highlights of dinner was a black throat sea perch, glazed with a tongue-clacking umami sauce, wrapped in nori (seaweed)…

This single, sublime, sushi morsel screamed “all aboard — next stop, umami town!”

Sushi Yuu broke my 45-year belief that you cannot have a good dinner in a windowless, basement.

I have reviewed restaurants professionally for 45 years and shudder whenever I dine in a basement restaurant. This always presages a bad meal. I’ve never had a great meal in a basement. Not ever.

And then, last night, the spell was broken!

I had one of my best-ever sushi dinners in a windowless basement!

The omakase dinner with 15+ courses — and an unlimited amount of wine, beer, sake, or whisky highballs — runs $135 per person. A bargain for the quantity and quality.

Put this on your “eat-inerary” if you visit Tokyo.

Sushi Yuu (there are other restaurants with this name, so be sure THIS is the one you book…

4-5-11 Roppiongi Minatao-ku, Tokyo. Tel: +81-03-3404-1134

But Wait, There’s More….!

Earlier in the day we had the best pizza on our Japanese jaunt.

We stopped at Pizza PST. They have two locations in Tokyo, each offering 20 different pizzas fired in a wood-fueled oven.

Most of the pies run $16 and are, hands down, better than anything you have tasted in your home town.

Tokyo pizzaiolos now make some of the best pizzas in the world.

My favorite of the three pizzas we ordered was the most unusual — Butter Chicken Curry Pizza! (below)

Made with fresh Mozzarella, homemade chicken sausage, a stunning butter chicken curry sauce, a dusting of Pecorino and a few leaves of fresh basil — this pie vaulted me into a state of Nirvana. (Or maybe it was the carb load of three pizzas and two beers before noon…?)

There are several Pizza PST locations in Tokyo. Be sure you visit THIS one.

1 Chome-24-6 Higashiazabu, Minato City, Tokyo 106-0044

Tel: +81-03-6277-8064.

After dinner at Sushi Yuu, we walked back to our hotel in the dark.

Unlike most American cities, it is perfectly safe to walk late in the night on even poorly lit back streets here.

The other thing that is strange is the scale of Tokyo — the architecture is not only original but EXCITING and HUGE, with buildings leaping 50 stories all around you.

A couple of shots from our walk… note the gorgeous cherry blossoms, lit up all over the city.

More tomorrow when it happens….

J.

In addition to seeing cherry trees in full bloom, the chief reason we visited Tokyo this month was to watch my son’s girlfriend, Maki, from Vancouver, compete in the World Olympics of Dog Grooming.

It’s not really called this, but that’s basically what it is. Professional groomers come from all over the world to groom dogs in order to garner prestige and walk away with a tall statue.

Maki is a groomer specializing in rescue dogs. She has a fondness for them and is, IMHO, a Dog Whisperer. She can chill a dog out just with her soothing voice.

Maki decided to compete in this year’s Fido Grooming Olympics, held today in Tokyo. Her first competition.

There were 44 dogs in today’s rescue grooming competition; each groomer was given one dog.

What dog you get is the luck of the draw. You may get a highly nervous, or highly neurotic dog, making the act of grooming significantly more difficult.

Maki was given a shivering Toy Poodle.

I won’t tell you how Maki fared until later in this story…. so keep reading.

In addition to groomers competing in five different grooming classifications this weekend, 950 vendors filled several halls of the Tokyo Convention Center with dog-related products.

Things like toothpaste for dogs, toothbrushes for dogs, leashes, dresses, kilts, perfumes, boots, bathing suits… You name it, somebody was here to sell it.

Thousands of Tokyo residents filled the Hall, pushing their pets in baby buggies. In fact, there were so many buggies that there were traffic jams in many aisles.

Back to the competition…..

Competitors were given three hours in which to wash their rescue pet, dry it thoroughly, and then groom the squirming, whining, shivering pooch.

Jason, my son, and Maki have a Lagotto Romagnolo, the Italian, truffle-hunting breed. His name is Archer.

To give Maki moral support at the Tokyo grooming competition, we created Team Archer…

We all wore Team Archer regalia…

Meanwhile, back in Aisle 6… in the commercial stalls…

And after three hours, the winners were announced….

Maki did not secure Gold, Silver or Bronze … but she got something more valuable. A sense of accomplishment.

Maki has such a strong social sense that she says that she was happy to compete and to be able to make one small rescue dog, a Toy Poodle named Butter, feel wanted for three hours of his life.

More tomorrow when it happens.

Jim

At Acid Coffee (quite the name for a coffee shop!) this morning, we met barista Aki-san (above).

Aki-san personally tastes every coffee that he makes just before presenting the beverage to a customer — to make sure that the proportion of water to coffee was correct and that the temperature of his pour-over brew, hot or cold, is right.

I found this amazing: he serves his hot, pour-over coffees in Burgundy-shaped, Riedel stemware!

Acid Coffee offers more than 50 selections of beans from more than 15 countries. If you like pour-over coffee, Acid Coffee is Java Mecca in Japan.

Acid Coffee is at 151-0064 Tokyo, Shibuya, Uehara, 1 Chome−29−5. Go here to learn more: https://www.instagram.com/acidcoffeetokyo

Spent most of the day wandering in a sensational shopping area, Omotesando, capturing life, signs and people….

The architecture in Tokyo tops every other city I’ve seen, or lived in. There are new buildings that appear to be leaning over, ready to collapse.. there are buildings like the one below, in which a full-fledged botanical garden has been etched out of the entire roof corner of a building….

That’s it for today… more tomorrow, when we’re out on the town again…

Jim

The venue is Tofu Ukai, an extremely large restaurant about the size of a modest hotel, filled, on different levels, with private dining rooms for groups of four or more.

The setting is magical — the gardens surrounding the restaurant are breathtaking, even in the pouring rain.

The cuisine is Kaiseki-style — and at our set lunch, about half the dishes contained a form of tofu.

What makes the food here so memorable is that EVERY dish, EVERY ingredient, shmecks big time. Even a simple, pickled daikon radish carries an immense flavor hit that makes you smile.

Of all the meals we’ve had so far in nine days in Japan, THIS is the showstopper by default.

We started with a stunning amuse-bouche of seared wagyu beef, served with addictive, small new potatoes….

Next course on the tofu highway was the single best dish I have eaten so far in Japan — flat, square, deep-fried tofu cakes that are finished by being lightly grilled, then smeared with a miso paste that is set with the flame of a small blowtorch; the diner takes finely chopped onions, drops them on top of the tofu square, then the construction is folded in half and eaten as one might a taco.

The taste of this deep-fried construction is so addictive, you’d swear they must add fentanyl to the miso. How else to explain the immediacy of pleasure? I wrote WOW! WOW! WOW! so many times in the edges of my notebook next to this entry, that I’d have to award it MVP status even though there are still nine days left in our Japanese journey — Most Valuable Plate.

This was followed by Yakihassun, a course within a course as there were a number of dishes here; grilled trout served with gently simmered and seasoned bamboo shoot. A tempura of wild, seasonal vegetables, and a passel of pickled spring vegetables served with crunchy, deep-fried baby shrimp no bigger than a pencil eraser.

Next course — a velveteen square of silken tofu, floating in a bath of seasoned soy milk. And for extra pleasure, one adds a few snippets of kelp, which adds an urgency of umami to the pudding. It’s like eating the best panacotta you’ve ever had, but being surprised that it’s a savory pudding, not a sweet confection.

Then a course of bamboo shoots napping atop a portion of gently flavored steamed rice.

Finish your meal with a cup of green tea, then stroll in the gardens surrounding the restaurant. You'll feel like you’re in… well, Japan! Everything is so beautifully manicured and miniaturized.

Tofu Ukai is at 4 Chome-4-13 Shibakoen, Minato City, Tokyo 105-0011.

Tel: +81-3-3436-1028

Reservations required, available at ukai.co.jp, tablecheck.com, jpneazy.com, tabelog.com

Fixed menu of six courses for approximately $75 per person, seated in your own private salon.

After lunch, we strolled a few miles back to our hotel, and I snapped away…

More stories await…. Have Chopsticks, will travel!

Jim