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09/26/2000 Archived Entry: "Great Seafood Stews in Livorno, French Riviera"

“It’s time to go home and smell our own coffee,” said my dear friend Rozanne Gold, who, with her husband, Michael Whiteman, I’d met in Nice for the last two days of my trip. After two weeks away, I felt the same. When the great city of New York is your home, and gorgeous Park Slope your neighborhood, ending a trip, even to places as magnificent as Naples, Sorrento, and the Italian and French Rivieras, is not a hardship.

Our memories of Nice will be lasting, too, because with our friend Bob Harned, who had gone on the Radisson Diamond/WOR cruise with me, and our friend Francesco de’ Rogati, who lives in nearby Monaco for the summer, we had an incredibly glorious, wonderful time together. We ate one of the best bouillabaisses of our lives, sat, talked and napped on the beach together, sang together, reminisced (we’ve all been friends for 20 years or more) ... it was just such a pleasure to be together in such a beautiful place.

The only downside was the hotel that Bob and I stayed in – the famous Negresco, the grande dame of Nice’s hotels. I noted this morning that in my last diary entry before I left I said that we would be staying in luxury at the Negresco. I correct myself. It is very expensive (nearly $400 a night, even with a strong dollar) but the opposite of luxurious. The rooms are large, but shabby. Their only beauty is the view of the sea. The halls are also threadbare and laughably decorated in a kitchy blend of antique furniture, ugly Vaserlay Op-Art carpeting, and third-rate art. The toilet paper is scratchy. (I encountered softer tissue in the restrooms of cafes.) There were only two rough, worn towels in the bathroom, and they are what we would consider face towels, hardly big enough to dry my oversized body after a shower. We requested two beds and confirmed the request the day before, but got one bed. Worst of all, the greeting at the reception desk was nonexistent and all but one encounter with the staff (other than the charming maids) was disagreeable, if not downright rude. I intend to write and complain to the Leading Hotels of the World, the group to which the Negresco belongs

On much happier notes, following are the two best restaurant meals I had on the trip, coincidentally both featuring seafood stews.

In Livorno, I met up with Kyle Phillips, who is the “guide” on www.italianfood.about.com. Kyle lives in Florence with his Florentine wife and six-year-old son, and he did some research so we could eat what is supposed to be the best cacciucco in the city. Cacciucco is a seafood zuppa which is to say a “sop,” a stewy dish with enough liquid content to be served on dried bread. It’s not liquid enough to quality as soup, but it is served as a first course. This version (apparently there are several), at Trattoria L’Antica Venezia {Via Dei Bagnetti 1; tel: 0586-887353, closed Mondays), contained small red mullets and almost buttery tender squid and cuttlefish. The broth was well-spiced with red pepper, richly textured, and tomato based, but dark mahogany and heady fromcuttle fish ink. I swooned.

There was no written menu. Our chic, young and friendly waitress recited the dishes of the day, and the only other first courses offered were spaghetti with assorted shellfish, garlic and oil, and penne with shredded branzino (sea bass) in tomato sauce. Bob Harned ordered that, and it was so good that Kyle and I couldn’t keep our forks out of his plate.

For second courses, Kyle ordered fried hunks of salt cod that came with a side plate of the some of the best, large chick peas I have ever had, their deliciousness perhaps due to their dressing of fine Tuscan olive oil; I ordered whole, filleted and butterflied fresh anchovies, also dipped in egg and flour and fried, and Bob ordered a grilled fish (I forget which), dressed with lemon, parsley and olive oil. For dessert, there were simple, delicious crostate, cookie-type crusts topped with marmalade or preserves, or, as mine was, with a hefty layer of chopped almonds and sugar.

The trattoria is in the old part of town called Venezia, hence its name L’Antica Venezia, which is called Venice because it is within the canal-moats that the Medici built as part of Livorno’s original fortress-port in the 15th century. The single room of the trattoria has a high, brick, vaulted ceiling; square, white marble-topped tables on turned wooden legs and the simple atmosphere of a neighborhood restaurant. The lunchtime customers were almost all men who all seemed very familiar with the place and our waitress.

Near Nice, on the beach in Golfe-Juan, near Antibes, we went to a famous bouillabaisse restaurant, Restaurant Tétou (tel: 04 93 63 71 16, no credit cards). I call it a “bouillbaisse restaurant” because all they serve is bouillbaisse (with or without lobster), grilled fish, and grilled lobsters. There are sensational desserts, too, and a few salads. The two 30-something women who run Tétou (at least were running it the day we were there) are the fourth generation owners, their great-grandfather being the original, a fisherman named (of course) Tétou. His portrait was painted by the Impressionist master Francis Picabia and it is this colorful image of a rudy, salt-and-pepper bearded man that graces the restaurant’s business card.

I am imagining that the restaurant started with Tetou making bouillabaisse on the beach, but now the restaurant is terribly chic and expensive, a pristine white and Mediterranean blue building at the side of the road with a strip of beach and the sea before it. Across the street is a large parking lot filled with fancy cars. Next to it is a beach concession which, for a mere 55 francs a day (about $8), will provide you with a very comfortably padded lounge chair and umbrella. The concession also has a deck where one can lunch on salade Nicoise and other light fare.

We did it all – ate the bouillabaisse indoors at a table with a sea and beach view, then sat on the beach for a couple of hours.

The bouillabaisse is served in two courses, as is traditional, or should I say three courses because the bouillabaisse accompaniments, the croutons and rouille, the garlic-hot pepper mayonnaise, were put on the table as soon as we ordered and we nibbled on toasted bread spread with rouille while we waited for the rest. Next comes the tureens of rich fish soup. One ladles some of that in your bowl, then floats croutons spread with rouille. The comes, in stages, the various fish cooked in the soup, all filleted for you and arranged on platters that you place on top of the tureens to keep both soup and fish as warm as possible while you continue to eat. Add some fish to the soup, add more croutons spread with rouille. Do as you please. The bouillabaisse costs about $70 a person at the current exchange rate (including tax and service, as is customary in France), and it is worth every single penny.

When we saw the dessert menu we were shocked at the prices – from $10 to $14 – but when we got the desserts we thought they were practically a bargain. None of us – and we are five overfed, well-traveled, I must say jaded people of the world – had never had black currant (cassis) sorbet as intense, smooth, simply fabulous as at Tétou. Studded with fresh currants, with a side bowl of vanilla-spiked whipped cream, and a huge portion to boot, it was the perfect punctuation to our bouillabaisse feast. Then again, the puckery lemon tart, an individual one large enough for three or four to share, was pretty spectacular, too, and Bob Harned’s raspberry Melba (as opposed to peach Melba) was a knockout, too. Harned usually likes to keep his dessert to himself, but, in a sort of orgiastic gesture, he insisted we share the ecstasy of this extravaganza. It was, in a silver bowl, a heap of the largest, sweetest raspberries you can imagine topped with vanilla ice cream so rich and eggy it could have been frozen eggnog, all encased in a thick layer whipped cream. Oy vay!