“The Penniless Pensioner: Misaligned, Maligned but Marvellous” : Chapter 22: My Stint in New York Begins with a John Lennon Friendship

I arrived in New York off my Greyhound bus from Toronto. US immigration tossed off at least half of the Amish on the bus sending them back to Canada. I proceeded to the United Mutations headquarters near the corner of 43rd and Third very close to the United Nations where I met United Mutations representative Melanie Stumps. Stumps was kind enough to put me up at the International Hostel for Mutants way up in the 90’s in Harlem. Stumps said to me you have two weeks to find an apartment before you start your assignment. I would have preferred the Ritz-Carlton Central Park South but wanting to appear “part of the team” I took the bus up to Harlem. Being a bit sick of lodging in luxury hotels I bought a two-bedroom condo in a charming Gothic building called “The Dakota” very close to Central Park. I was having some trouble with my keys entering my condo and a long-haired fellow with glasses helped me. Being a neighbourly fellow, he invited the newby to tea at his “pad”.

What a jolly fellow with a British accent. I felt like I was back home in Bombay. Upon entering his pad he introduced me to his “old lady” Poko Tonyroma I believe her name was. His name was John Lennon. It had a familiar ring to it. We had a lovely pot of tea and some pot brownies and chatted for an hour or so.

I asked Mr. Lennon about all the guitars he had all over his “pad” and he explained he was a musician. I explained I was half Welsh and half Indian. My late mom was Juanita Wallabong a well-known singer of Bombay Blues and my dad was Paneer Gupta an entrepreneur. Well to my surprise Mr. Lennon was a fan of my mom and knew my father! How could that be! Well Mr. Lennon was John Lennon of that British group “The Beatles”! Damn it I knew that band. He told me he had just recorded one of my mom’s songs “Give Peace a Chance”! And when the Beatles were in India my dad had supplied them with lots of ganja! What a small world!

Poko Tonyrama sat by herself writing poetry and said nary a word. Mr. Lennon insisted I call him John. John invited me to take a long walk with him in Central Park the next day.

RKS Poetry: “Galen Weston Jr. Did You Forget About Kraft Dinner?”

Galen Weston Jr. Did You Forget About Kraft Dinner?

With family wealth estimated at close to 9 billion what wealth!
So many heartfelt thanks for freezing prices on Loblaws house brands showing concern for Canadian’s financial health!
But please at $2.99 at Shoppers Drug Mart for a box of Kraft Dinner
and 4 for $3.99 at competitor Metro that kind of makes you like a sinner
I’m shopping at Metro instead of Shoppers just to show you I am a winner

Robert K. Stephen

RKS 2023 Wine: More Carmenère from Chile

Is Carmenère Chile’s signature grape? Well if it meets Miguel Torres one of Spain’s signature winemakers surely the result will be a stellar wine?

We try a Cordillera Reserva Especial 2019 from Valle del Cachapoal.

Aromatics: Black plum, blueberry, black cherry, charcoal, leather, black earth and pomegranate.

Palate: Smooth as butter and full of black fruit and a bit brackish on the back palate. The acids are restrained. The brackishness gives it a short if not abrupt finish.

Food match: Grilled flank steak with baked potatoes and honeyed carrots. Vegetarian lasagna.

Personality: Easygoing but not a push over.

Cellaring: It will hold until 2025 but not improve.

Price: $24.95 (Ontario, Canada)

Rating: 91/100

In a nutshell: I am easygoing initially but deserve to be taken seriously.

(Cordillera Reserva Especial 2019, Carmenère, Cachapoal Valley, D.O. Puemo, S.V. Miguel Torres S.A. Curicó, Chile, 750 mL, 14.5%)

RKS Poetry: “48 Hangers”

48 Hangers

He sits in his house reflecting on a failed romantic relationship
on a couch the locale of some warm cuddles
his mind muddles
she has moved out leaving his heart encircled by acidic puddles
her betrayal rouses so many angers
all she has left behind are 48 hangers

Robert K. Stephen

“The Penniless Pensioner: Misaligned, Maligned but Marvellous” : Chapter 21 Hot Shot Lawyer with The United Mutations in New York City

One night at a favourite bar of mine called Marwin’s on Stanley Street in Montreal I met a couple of lively personalities Squid and Willie Montenez. They claimed to have been from other planets and even other dimensions. Initially I thought they were tripping on too much vodka and mescaline but I recalled that Jesus often spoke in parables and this must be the case with Squid and Willie Montenez. They were brilliant and passionate minds at work.

I had heard of their activities in Montreal before I had arrived there. Their enemy Eno Ergot from some far away planet had apparently landed at the campus of McGill University a few years back. They had battled Montreal mayor Jean Droolpoop during Expo 67 and had lead mutant revolts at the Queen Fairy Veterans Hospital and Douglas Psychiatric Institute. You might say they were the grandfathers of mutantism.  Robert K. Stephen, my collaborator on this book, has written a brilliant history of mutantism in his seminal “Mutantism on the March” so I encourage you to read that serialized masterpiece for a complete historical treatise on mutantism.

What I will say is that mutantism involves advocates for the rights of mutants on a global scale. And who are mutants you ask. They are the limbless, the lepers, the deformed, the mentally challenged, some criminals, disadvantaged and exploited populations etc. Luminaries such as Santa Claus and Tarzan had been involved with mutantism so it was no far out pie in the sky irrelevant social and political movement.

I had worked with the United Mutations as a volunteer while a student at McGill University so I developed an excellent working relationship with Squid. Squid had contacted me in Toronto to congratulate me upon being called to the Ontario Bar and offered me a job in New York to help draft the Charter of Mutant Rights. I had written an article on the Canadian Bill of Rights so he thought this and my legal training qualified me for the job. It sure beat an offer for a full-time legal position with Mr. Donut. So here I was on the midnight Greyhound bus full of Amish from Toronto to New York.

RKS 2023 Film: “Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter”

The documentary “Love, Charlie” can be seen as a study of brilliance, passion, perfection and self destruction.

The late Chef Charlie Trotter was in the vanguard of new cuisine in the United States for those that could afford it. His story is told by himself, fellow chefs, his first wife, former employees, fellow family members, customers and through archival footage. It is not a study in glorification but a balanced picture of Trotter.

Raised in a meat and potato family he caught the culinary bug after working as a student in certain less than gastronomically noted restaurants. His ex-wife describes meeting him in university and noted his eccentricity. I couldn’t think but Trotter had ADHD very early on in the documentary.

We see and hear Trotter at the beginning of the documentary stating that if it wasn’t for employees and customers the restaurant business would be the greatest business in the world. While there may be grain of truth in that to publicly state that shows arrogance and disdain for those who propelled him to celebrity status.

One is never quite sure if Trotter was a tyrant and toxic. One can’t doubt his creativity, brilliance and obsession but did those qualities lead to his demise? One might conclude that as his fame grew in the mid 1980’s onwards and his empire grew to include foodie videos, books and more restaurants whether these character traits were magnified into a self-destructive fireball.

Think what you may but there is no doubt Trotter revolutionized food for upper class patrons that could afford fine dining. But the man was also a philanthropist and concerned with the development of young chefs. As Trotter and his rock star chef colleagues revolutionized cuisine and displaced the old French restaurant restaurants that were the pinnacle of American fine dining so was Trotter displaced by the new cadre of chefs experimenting with molecular gastronomy. What he “dished out” to the old guard eventually he was on the road of being displaced which happens to many great chefs.

Foodies will enjoy the film but even non foodies can witness the fleeting nature of high reputation, fame and success whether in the kitchen or in life.

Trotter died of a stroke in 2013 at the age of 54.

You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9dYyg5VcvA

The film will have a theatrical release on January 2,2023.

RKS 2023 Film Rating 87/100.

“The Penniless Pensioner: Misaligned, Maligned but Marvellous”; Chapter 20 Slavery of the Young Lawyer! Donuts and Orangemen in Toronto

Not being lily white in the province of Ontario, home of Orangemen, a sort of Canadian Ku-Klux-Klan and in the City of Toronto well known for its anti-Greek riots in 1918 I was bypassed by the big Bay Street law firms who failed to realize my wealth and corporate structures I presided over! Their loss. This was before law firms and corporations jumped on the “global inclusion” bandwagon like the latest fad where lily white became somewhat of an evil (too late to benefit me) of course not including in senior management and in the boardrooms. So I articled with Mr. Donut in the east end of Toronto. You have to article for a year as a “lawyer in training” before you took Law Society of Upper Canada courses you had to pass to obtain your license to practice.

In Montreal often with a café au lait one ate a croissant. Here in Toronto it was a fattening sugar coated donut Torontonians were obsessed with. Premium coffees were unheard of as were croissants! Mr. Donut had some 155 franchised stores in Ontario most of which were in seedy neighbourhoods. I became an expert in negotiating franchise agreements. I represented the corporation in shoplifting matters, trespassing actions and all types of small claims litigation. Occasionally I would defend Mr. Donut delivery drivers for traffic infractions. It was all very exciting at a drastically pathetic salary and a box of 24 donuts each week which I fed the pigeons and gave to the homeless sleeping in the alleyways of our cockroach infested corporate office on Coxwell Avenue. Exploitation wages. I had to plod away at this for a year then it was a year of courses at the Law Society of Upper Canada with exams held mostly at decrepit bingo halls. I was called to the Bar as they say and ready to be a “real lawyer” 6 years after I started the process. Then the frenzy of applying for a job and again being part Indian the curry in my blood did not sit well with the roast beef brains of the Anglo-Saxon legal elite. I accepted a job back in New York working for an organization The United Mutations advocating for the rights of mutants throughout the world. I was working on drafting a very historic Charter of Rights for mutants. Being half Indian in Toronto I was a mutant anyways. So it was off to New York! I was no ambulance chaser! I was changing the world!

RKS Wine: What to Have with Your New Year’s Eve Repast

Our New Year’s Eve dinner is seafood focused which means white wine is called for given the suggested dishes.

Appetizer: Malpeque oysters

Your white wine selection:

I would go with a Brut or Extra Brut sparkler. Loaded with a good bead of bubbles the aromas are apple, pear, caramel, guava, honey and Brioche. On the palate a good crisp bite of acidity with Flemish pear, sweet white grapefruit with a little wave of applesauce. So the wine is far from one of those non-descript sparkling wines that lets its acids speak more than the fruit.

The wine is organic.

I’ll be looking for more sparkling Ontario Riesling in 2023.

(Tawse 2019 Spark Limestone Ridge Riesling Brut, VQA Twenty Mile Bench, Tawse Winery Inc., Vineland, Ontario, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 370361, 750 mL, 12%, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).

Of course, if you want to go real classic Chablis is a tried-and-true accompaniment to raw oysters so you can try a Charton et Trébuchet Chablis 1ER Cru 2020 which you can pick up at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario for $36.95.

Hyper chilled vodka works very well too and I would go with a Tito’s from Texas.

Second appetizer: Moules Mariniere

Chop up garlic (as much as you want) and scallions and Sautee for a minute throw in a half bottle of dry white and a handful of parsley. Let it cook for a few minutes throw in mussels and cover cooking on medium heat for about 7 minutes until all mussels are open. Serve in a large bowl. Sop up the broth with chunks of baguette.

Your white wine selection:

Muscadet from the Loire region in France is a reliable wine to enhance the flavour of the dish but it is not always that easy to find so I suggest a Mâcon-Lugny made by Cave de Lugny from Burgundy. It is unoaked. Aromatics of pear, apple and quince. On the palate it is definitely a dry wine but not one of those leaving an acidic and meagre profile. The wine has character to it and for an unoaked Chardonnay it has some richness to it in a minimalist way.

(Mâcon-Lugny 2020 Grande Reserve, AC Mâcon-Lugny, Cave de Lugny, Lugny, France, $20.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 26444, 750 mL, 13%, RKS Wine Rating 89/100).

Main: Butter garlic shrimp

Your white wine selection:

I would select a Cave Spring Estate 2019 Chardonnay which is moderately gold in colour. On the nose pineapple, mango, South African tangerine, marzipan and peach with moderate oak notes. On the palate Greaves apricot jam, Sweet Israeli grapefruit, Niagara pear Galette, butterscotch and guava with a peppery finish. Beautifully integrated acids so important to sippable white wines. The oak influence in the wine is moderately high.

(Cave Spring Estate 2019 Chardonnay, Cave Spring Vineyard, VQA Beamsville Bench, Niagara Escarpment, Cave Spring Vineyard, Jordan, Ontario, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 25652, 13.5%, RKS Wine Rating 92/100).

Dessert: Gateaux Verlaine (raspberry mousse, raspberry lychee gelée, lychee crémeux, raspberry rose jam and almond sponge cake)

A good choice would be Southbrook Canadian Framboise. As for aromatics it is replete with just picked ripe raspberries tinged with a miniscule bit of milk chocolate. The palate is silky and smooth with just plain old ripe raspberries with a moderately long finish. Not complex but straightforward and delicious. There is enough acidity to keep this wine from being cloying or sickly sweet.

It is organic and vegan.

(Southbrook Canadian Framboise, Southbrook Vineyards, Niagara-on-the-Lake, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 341024, 750 mL, 13.5% RKS 2023 Wine Rating 94/100).

The bubbly conclusion

To ring in the new year assuming you have the stamina to remain awake I would think the last wine you want is a bone dry brut or extra brut. Given the exorbitant cost of Champagne there is the eminently reliable Pierre Sparr Crémant D’Alsace Brut Rosé. I won’t break the bank at $19.95. There is some very nice strawberry, raspberry and bright red cherry mousse to welcome the year. (Pierre Sparr Crémant D’Alsace Brut Rosé, LCBO # 39016, $19.95)

Happy upcoming 2023. Best of health, happiness and the discovery of a wine that you will not forget!

RKS 2023 Wine: Southbrook Canadian Framboise: This May be Your Chocolate Desserts’ Best Friend

Southbrook Vineyard’s Canadian Framboise would be more than happy to meet a chocolate-based dessert particularly cakes with some raspberry or cherry filling like a Black Forest Cake. I am sure there are some Canadians out there that will be having chocolatey desserts to end the year. Readers outside of Canada may try and find a raspberry fruit “wine” in their jurisdiction. Frambroise means “raspberry” in French. It is also just fine poured over vanilla or chocolate ice cream with a few fresh raspberries tossed in.

As for aromatics it is replete with just picked ripe raspberries tinged with a miniscule bit of milk chocolate. The palate is silky and smooth with just plain old ripe raspberries with a moderately long finish. Not complex but straightforward and delicious. There is enough acidity to keep this wine from being cloying or sickly sweet.

It is organic and vegan.

(Southbrook Canadian Framboise, Southbrook Vineyards, Niagara-on-the-Lake, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 341024, 750 mL, 13.5% RKS 2023 Wine Rating 94/100).

RKS Literature: Passage of the Day: Judas and Jesus

“The redbeard (Judas) growled and bared his teeth like a sheepdog that hears his master’s voice. Head bowed, he turned around and marched heavily over the bridge, talking to himself. He remembered when he roamed the mountains with Barabbas-God bless him-and the other rebels. What an atmosphere of ferocity and freedom. What a splendid leader of cut-throats was the God of Israel. That was the kind of leader he needed. Why did he follow this clairvoyant (Jesus) who was scared of blood and shouted, ‘Love! Love!’ like a panting-teen-aged girl. But let’s, be patient Judas reflected, and see what he brings from the desert! “

Nikos Kazantzakis “The Last Temptation” 1961