terrible”) and testy about others,
like that bromide for the uncertain,
“Drink what you like.” In a Wine in
Words essay titled, “The Biggest Wine
Myth,” she counters, “While wine
drinking should always be pleasur-
able, it shouldn’t be the same pleasure
experienced the same way over and
over again.” Her advice: “Drink what
you don’t know.…The more you experi-
ment, the greater your credibility as
a drinker when you declare, ‘I know
what I like.’”
Teague’s prose, like a memorable
wine, is brisk, concentrated, juicy and
refreshing. She labels terroir “the most
overused word in wine,” and declares
that less than 5 percent of all wines
improve with time: “In fact, the ‘drink-
ing window’ for almost all the wine
produced in the world is the same as
the one for beer: right away.”
Wide-ranging and iconoclastic,
Teague bemoans the wine world’s
fixation on 100-point scores and cheers
the humble screw cap, thanking New
Zealand for championing this simple
device that eliminates spoilage by bad
corks and helps half-empty bottles stay
fresh longer. Nowadays, she writes,
“some of the best wines in [Germany,
Austria, Australia and the United
States] are bottled under screw caps.”
Defending Chilean wines against
their usual faint-praise dismissal as
“cheerful and cheap,” she notes that
many are “ambitious and sound…
[displaying] remarkable character
and historical significance and—yes—
value, too.” The problem for Chile, she
proposes, is that, compared to iconic
words like “Napa” and “Burgundy,”
the names of its important regions
“are harder to pronounce and have
too many vowels.”
Funny is a quality rarely associated
with wine criticism, but Teague can
make you smile. Moreover, she wields
her wit with purpose. The pithy essays
in Wine in Words, her third book, in-
clude one called, “Lost in Translation.”
In it, she returns to consumers’ appar-
ent need for readability over drinkabil-
ity. “German Riesling,” she writes, “is
one of the most profound wines in the
world—sommeliers everywhere sing
(Continued on page 238)
TALDE
JERSEY CITY
JERSEY CITY
FOOD: Asian-American
AMBIENCE: Thumping, industrial-chic
nightclub
SERVICE: Helpful and hardworking
WINE LIST: Better value than the
cocktails
PRICES: Appetizers, salads, dim sum,
$8-$15; noodles, $15-$18; entrées, $21-
$31; sides, $10-$17; desserts, $10-$12
HOURS: Dinner: Sunday through
Wednesday, 5 to 11 PM; Thursday through
Saturday, 5 PM to midnight. Brunch: Saturday and Sunday, 11 AM to 3 PM
AX, MC, V X
8 Erie Street, Jersey City
(201-630-0077; taldejerseycity.com)
Talde Jersey City has been rock- ing and roaring, especially on weekends, since it opened
in February in a renovated space in
downtown Jersey City, epicenter of
the city’s restaurant renaissance. Talde
JC, a few blocks from the Grove Street
PATH station, has a split personality. It
is both a crazy-loud, see-and-be-seen
nightspot where the pan-Asian food
can seem an afterthought and a some-
times serious restaurant with lounge-
lizard trappings.
Chef/co-owner Dale Talde, 36, a
first-generation Filipino-American
from Chicago, has been visibly on the
rise since competing on Top Chef in
2008 and Top Chef Masters in 2010. A
CIA grad, he had previously cooked at
Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Vong in
Chicago and Stephen Starr’s Buddakan
in New York, both restaurants practicing
various forms of Asian fusion. In 2012,
he opened Talde—his own take on Asian
eclecticism—in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It
quickly became a sensation.
Talde’s Jersey City partners, David
Massoni, John Bush, John Colaneri,
Talde JC’s menu includes many
items from Brooklyn and adds some
Jersey exclusives, mainly dim sum-
style appetizers such as bao buns filled
with spicy chicken or char sui boneless
ribs and pickles. The latter is called
the McBao. In a phone call after my
visits, Talde said, “The McBao is my
riff on a McDonald’s burger. My mom
didn’t allow us to eat fast food. So
when I was finally living on my own,
that was all I wanted to eat.” The rolls
were dull and doughy and the fillings
scant, so in that sense, the McBao did
resemble fast food.
Other dishes, like wonton ramen, are
classics (a bowl of Japanese ramen with
sliced pork) that add a trendy twist
Novo’s very good, 21-day, dry-aged
prime beef loin was seared in the taboon
and served with an atavistic, halved
marrow bone. The Colorado lamb chops
were the best I’ve had in a long time. The
lamb was playfully served with lamb ba-
con (a variation on a preparation picked
up from Gordon Ramsay), a tangy-sweet
eggplant-date purée, and an exotic jus of
cardamom and Persian lime juice.
Desserts by Choya Hodge are tasty, if
overcomplicated. The tahini parfait, for
example, is composed of a white tahini
pudding topped with shards of halvah,
with crumbled sesame sablé cookies, pistachio gelato and crumbled pistachios,
all resting on a smear of caramel sauce.
It’s good, but would stand little chance in
a smackdown against a simple chunk of
great imported halvah.
—KAREN TINA HARRISON
