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Well, Sicily’s a small part of Italy, but its cuisine is certainly big enough to accommodate two restaurants’ very different takes. Where Next set out to reproduce the high points of the island’s traditional cuisine, Telegraph’s menu (which is in addition to its regular menu) is more like jazzy improvisations on rustic Sicilian flavors. I’m not sure I believe that you would ever have a briny flavor of anchovy in a cauliflower puree, as the lamb dish on this menu claims, but I can believe in both of them as Sicilian, so why not put them together? (I don’t know what to think about the slices of plum.)
Telegraph’s wine list is focused on small producers that take a no-chemical, noninterventionist approach, often biodynamic and using natural yeasts. To develop each menu, Quinn first picks out nine to 12 wines and does a tasting with the kitchen staff; they narrow it down to “the wines that speak to them the most. We talk about what flavors they pick up on, and they start thinking about what proteins they think will go with them and we start looking in books for ideas of what to make.”
The wine that’s paired with it is equally extreme—”I was kind of shocked that they picked it,” Quinn said. It’s a rosé from an “extremely noninterventionist” winemaker named Frank Cornellisen who grows his grapes in the volcanic soil near Mount Etna. Quinn calls the wine “a little savage, a little raw, almost like unfermented grape juice.” Weirdly, the fruit-juicy taste immediately put me in mind of the nonalcoholic pairings at Next, but it’s a fascinating half a glass, like tasting the moment when juice evolves into wine.
