That’s the title of Eric Asimov’s column “The Pour,” in The New York Times this morning (here) and repeated on Asimov’s blog on the Times’ website (here). Asimov is probably the most visible commentator in the country about wine, spirits and beer and the industries and cultures that surround them. I have been following “The Pour” online for several years, and I have never seen a post stir up so much controversy and response — at 2:45 this afternoon more than 260 responses.

The question is whether exposing teenagers gradually to alcoholic beverages, beginning with occasional sips of wine or beer at home and proceeding with perhaps a half glass of wine with dinner will teach them moderation and prevent the binge drinking in which too many college students indulge. American collegiate life tends to promote the orgiastic consumption of immense quantities of alcoholic beverages for the sake of drunkenness. Asimov and many of the responders to his post assert that the sensible introduction of alcoholic beverages will encourage young people to be sensible about their choices of when, where and how much they drink. It’s the principle that a forbidden object becomes a focus of fascination, while knowledge brings a sense of familiarity and comfort.

Quite vehement, however, are the posters who disagree and say that the only way to prevent binge drinking is never to allow teenagers exposure to alcohol at all, that only complete abstinence will avert binge drinking in college and an inevitable life of degredation bound for the gutter.

I’m inclined to think that the issues are more complicated than are stated here and that all sorts of familial, generic and personal influences, as well as the circumstances of time, place and peer pressure, dictate how teenagers and college students react to alcoholic beverages and their consumption. Whatever the case, Asimov touched a cord that resonates in American culture, a cord that begins in our Puritan heritage, flows through our whole history of ideological, individual and religious conflict and washes up in our present evangelical and political climate that uneasily confronts the influence of an increasingly permissive media.

As many of you readers know, the wine for next week’s online tasting, which I will conduct, is the Gascon Malbec 2006, from Argentina’s Mendoza region. I bought it at Buster’s for $13.

I’m going to be cooking a terrific recipe for pork chops. This originally appeared in the January 2004 issue of Food & Wine (in case you obsessively hang on to old magazines) and also in one of that magazine’s occasional publications, “Fast,” and I would tell you what year that appeared except that we’ve used it so much that pages are falling out, including the title and copyright page. None of which matters because I’m going to provide the recipe here. LL and I have cooked this dish a thousand times, and the pork chops always come out moist and tender and flavorful. The whole process is simple and fast.

Chili-Dusted Pork Chops

1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. ground pepper
4 1/2-pound boneless pork loin chops
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Finely grated zest of one lime and its juice
3 tbsp. finely chopped cilantro
1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, mix the chili powder with the cumin, salt and pepper. Rub the mixture all over the pork chops.
2. In a large overproof skillet, heat the oil. Add the chops and cook over high heat until browned, 1 minute per side. Add the garlic, lime zest, lime juice and cilantro and roast the chops in the center of the oven for 10 minutes. Transfer to plate and serve.

Note: This is supposed to serve four people, but LL and I use the same amount of rub and other ingredients for two pork chops. If you’re actually cooking four chops. I would double the amount of the others elements. And you don’t have to use boneless chops; we usually buy bone-in chops and they’re great. The chops need to be about an inch and a quarter thick.

So there it is. What could be easier?

I’m looking forward to the wine-tasting next Thursday.

My first official review of a restaurant appeared in The Commercial Appeal’s Playbook section in February 1988. It was about the short-lived Luau restaurant at the airport.

My last review, of Currents, appears today, a bit more than 20 years — and many great and not so great meals — later.

That’s a long time to write about and review restaurants in the same city, but it’s also a length of time that provides perspective on the region and its dining out habits and the cycles of growth and development in the restaurant community.

Twenty years ago, Memphis was largely a meat and potatoes town. While La Tourelle and Chez Philippe provided classic French cuisine, most Memphians in a celebratory mood dined on steak and lobster or Italian-American fare or variations on Creole food. Ethnic cuisine meant chop suey and egg foo young or enchiladas at Panchos. I used to write that the city could support eight fine-dining restaurants, and if a new one opened, an old one would close.

That’s no longer the case. However we define fine dining or white-tablecloth restaurants, by food or atmosphere or price, such establishments proliferate from Downtown Memphis out to Collierville. And ethnic cuisine? There’s the area where the real change has occurred. An influx of immigrants from Southeast Asia and the sub-continent brought our town and region Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian and Indian restaurants, while Chinese restaurants have greatly improved. The succeeding influx of Hispanic transplants brought family-owned places, especially in northeast and southeast Memphis, where the authentic food resembles what a real family would have on the table at dinner.

It’s been gratifying to witness these changes in the local dining scene and to participate and write about them. I couldn’t begin to count or even remember the numerous times I’ve taken a bite of some new dish or been introduced to a new concept, whether humble or refined, from the Pie Lady all the way to Erling Jensen, and thought, “Wow, yes, this is what good eating is all about.”

It’s been good, it’s been bad, and it’s been ugly. In 20 years I’ve had a death threat from a restaurant owner — serious enough that the CA provided security for me for a short while (the budget was better then); a letter from an attorney barring me from entering his client’s establishment; a waiter who illustrated what a lamb shank is by raising one foot, pulling up his trouser leg and pointing to his shin. I’ve had waiters sing to me, kneel by the table, and even pull up a chair, sit down and tell me their life story. I’ve had waiters argue that I pronounced the names of ingredients wrong, that I didn’t know how wine needed to be served, that I didn’t understand the relative doneness of steaks, that I was ordering the wrong dish. I’ve written reviews so glowing that the restaurant couldn’t deal with the increase in customers and had to close, and I’ve written — very rarely — reviews so negative that the result was the same.

And, inevitably, I’ve come to some conclusions about dining out and the restaurant business.

1. Most restaurants are woefully undercapitalized when they open. Chances are you won’t make a profit for three or even five years; be prepared for hard times.

2. Most problems with service are the result of improper training. When waiters flub the basic or finer points of taking orders, serving food and wine and clearing the table, it’s usually because they haven’t been told how to act. It’s management’s responsibility. On the other hand, when your waiter says, “Hi, guys, my name is Steve,” he has been told to do that.

3. The spirit that prevails in the kitchen influences the dining room. Chefs, owners and managers who concentrate on their jobs, watch the details, handle their staffs respectfully and enjoy what they’re doing help create an amenable atmosphere that spreads through the restaurant. I’ve seen restaurants ruined by chefs who wanted to spend more time in the dining room shmoozing with patrons than in the kitchen taking care of business.

4. Restaurants are growing more expensive, yet so many of these fine dining or white tablecloth establishments offer variations of the same menus and similar dishes. What’s in it for the diner plunking down $35 for an entree?

5. As awareness of wine has grown in the region, restaurant wine lists have expanded beyond the roster of usual suspects. Excellent examples are the all-Italian list at Bari and the eclectic, helpful list at Circa.

I love eating in restaurants — current favorites are Cafe 1912, Bari, Saigon Le, Umai, and the bar at Interim — but I’ll admit that I — and that means “we” — won’t mind staying at home for awhile. In our house, the ambience, the service and the food are always terrific. Plus there are dogs and cats.

I’ll conclude this look back at 20 years with a retrospective on some restaurants I reviewed (a few several times) that meant a lot to me but that closed during my tenure as restaurant reviewer at The CA. I will always miss these places:

La Tourelle; Wally Joe; KoTo; Restaurant Raji; Mick’s (no kidding); Aubergine; Bistro 122; Puck’s; Midtown; Hemmings; 25 Belvedere; Ben’s.

I received this email message from a reader recently:

“I have a restaurant ethics question. Last night my husband and I dined at The Beauty Shop. We used a $75 gift certificate given by my parents. Our tab came to about $63. The very nice waiter informed us that, although he doesn’t agree with the owner’s policy, he can’t give us cash back or a gift certificate for the remainder. He said that he won’t receive the remainder either. We had planned to put it towards his tip. We decided to enjoy some coffee and cake and it all came out even, but we think it is a terrible policy and are not inclined to hurry back to any of (Karen Carrier’s) restaurants. Is this legal?”

I don’t think this is an issue of legality or even ethics but of policy. I called Kevin Keough, general manager of Beauty Shop, and asked him about the situation.

“Generally we don’t refund a small amount like that or write out a small gift certificate,” Keough said, “because it just creates an accounting trail that becomes endless. When people buy gift certificates, I encourage them to do it for smaller amounts or for, say, three $25 certificates, so that makes it more flexible. If someone comes in with a large gift certificate and spends only half of it or something, then I can write out a $30 certificate or whatever, but not a small amount. The latest version of a gift certificate is a card, like a phone card, and you just spend it out until it’s used up, but we don’t have that technology yet.”

So, readers, how do you feel about gift certificates and the way they’re handled (or mishandled from your perspective) in restaurants? Seems to me that since the restaurant has already been paid for that certificate, if the restaurant keeps that leftover five bucks or so, then it’s making undeserved profit. I want to hear from restaurant owners and managers on this subject too, so we get coverage of the issue from both sides.

A friend and I had a very nice lunch at Circa today. You’ll remember that John Bragg’s restaurant closed for lunch back in the fall (dinner was not affected) and recently reopened. That’s a boon for downtowners.

We started with the appetizer of crawfish beignets, lightly breaded and very crisp on the outside yet almost creamy inside with a sort of deviled crawfish mixture; these came with a sprightly remoulade sauce ($7). They would make a great bar snack with an ice-cold martini.

I ordered the fish of the day, a perfectly grilled talapia filet served with a light and mild-mannered lemon-butter sauce. Also on the plate were a scoop of dense mashed potatoes and a couple of asparagus spears and baby carrots ($14); simple fare but delicious. My friend’s crab-cake sandwich featured two or three smallish and full-flavored crabcakes; the plate was dominated by the restaurant’s excellent house-made potato chips ($10).

A glass of the refreshing Loimer “Lois” Gruner Veltliner 2006 from Austria ($9) and an espresso ($3) rounded out a satisfying lunch.

Circa, 119 S. Main at Gayoso, opens for lunch at 11 a.m. Monday through Friday. Call 522-1488 or visit circamemphis.com.

Rack of lamb is a staple in fine-dining (or even not so fine-dining) restaurants throughout the land, and Memphis and the surrounding region are no different. It’s a tempting dish. Tender, earthy, slightly gamy-tasting medium-rare lamb, often roasted with an herb or nut crust, artfully arranged on the plate makes for a great presentation and a great flavor experience — for meat-eaters, of course. I am a devotee of rack of lamb and have consumed the dish many times in my 20-year career reviewing restaurants for The Commercial Appeal. (That’s correct, 20 years last month!)

Noticing, when dining at Currents last week. that rack of lamb was listed on that menu for $39, I started to wonder how that price compares with prices for other versions of the dish in local restaurants. Online research revealed a surprising range of prices, though we have to remember that some restaurants serve three chops from the rack and some serve four, that some restaurants serve “double” portions, that is with two bones instead of one, and that some restaurants opt for smaller racks to keep prices down. So remember, when you contemplate this roster, that many variations affect the prices.

Marciano Restaurant …….. $22
Grove Grill …….. $22.95
Ciao Bella Italian Grill …….. $27.95
Circa by John Bragg …….. $29
Napa Cafe …….. $29
Jarrett’s …….. $29.95
Erling Jensen …….. $32
Mesquite Chop House …….. $34
The Tower Room …….. $34.95
River Oaks …….. $35
Madidi (in Clarksdale, Miss.) …….. $35
Folk’s Folly …….. $35.95
Currents …….. $39
Stella …….. $42

Most kitchens try to dress up rack of lamb in ways that amount to signature trappings. Marciano offers the most straightforward: roasted potatoes and grilled vegetables in a Marsala sauce. At Madidi, it’s roasted red pepper corn cakes and nicoise olives in herbed olive oil. River Oaks accompanies its rack of lamb with truffle spoon bread, “herb-shocked” — my quotation marks — roasted mirepoix and sauce bordelaise. The double rack of lamb at Currents comes with marinated eggplant carpaccio — doesn’t that just mean thinly sliced eggplant? — chanterelle mushrooms, baby carrots, fondant potatoes and elderberry sauce. And at Circa, the rack of lamb is sorghum-cured and served with a sweet potato-shiitake flan and a cranberry-rosemary jus.

On the other hand, at Folk’s Folly, the Grand Central of A La Carte, you get mint sauce.

So, readers, as in all things in life, for good or ill, for richer or poorer — you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

Image of rack of lamb from bordbia.ie.

A few nights ago, we ate at Currents, the fine dining restaurant at the River Inn of Harbor Town. I reviewed Tug’s, the casual restaurant there, on January 25.

Currents is quiet and sedate. White tablecloths gleam; tall chairs are covered with red velvet; dim lighting comes from traditional shaded sconces; service is formal. In fact, the place is so decorous that people, even waiters, tend to whisper.

Let’s get one issue out of the way right now: Currents can be expensive. Appetizers ($7 to $15), steaks ($29 and $30) and desserts ($6 to $10) aren’t so bad, considering the market and the competition, but entrees cost $25 to $39. The wine list, which offers some wonderful choices, is commensurate with those prices; we enjoyed immensely the Hendry Cellars Pinot Noir 2005, Napa Valley ($78).

We started dinner with escargots, snails in shells, stuffed with a wild mushroom-bacon duxelle (finely chopped mushrooms cooked in butter with shallots and wine), caramelized shallots and garlic butter; those were some rich little gastropods. Duck confit risotto with butternut squash, a sage and roasted pumpkin seed vinaigrette and balsamic vinegar syrup was delicious though the rice was rather underdone.

A trio of pork preparations made a spectacular-looking presentation. The least interesting of the three was the lightly smoked pork loin with French beans and natural jus, cooking juice. Richer and more bracing were the cheek, so darkly glazed that it looked lacquered, served atop mustard greens with a curry-honey vinaigrette, and the pork belly drizzled with 30-year-old basalmic vinegar.

Grilled filet of beef served with horseradish-potato puree, chanterelle mushrooms, wilted greens and a whole-grain mustard-veal reduction was good, but most fine dining restaurants offer beef filet, and this example did not stand out from the stampede. At $37, one wants a bit of perfection.

By this time we were reeling from carnivore’s overload, so we settled for one dessert, the enticing chocolate chunk pecan tart with sweet potato bourbon ice cream; you can’t beat that for touching on all the food groups.

Currents is at 50 Harbor Town Square. The restaurant is open for breakfast from 7 to 10 a.m., daily; for dinner from 5 to 10 every night, and for brunch on Sunday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call 260-3333.

Marie, one of the responders to last week’s Whining & Dining online wine tasting, asked” How do you get a white wine and a red wine from the same grape?” The question followed a post about white zinfandel and red zinfandel.

Here’s the story.

With the rare exception of one obscure grape grown in a country far away, all grape juice is pale in color. Whether the grape is the dark purple cabernet sauvignon and merlot or the greenish-yellow chardonnay, the juice will be close to clear. The color in red wine — and red is a euphemism for ruby or purple or magenta or all the other dark hues a “red” wine can have — comes from contact with the grape skins during fermentation. The heat that develops during fermentation, when grape sugars are transformed into alcohol and carbon dioxide (the latter blows off), as well as the action of “punching down” the mass of skins that rests on top of the fermenting juice, extracts the color compounds from the skins, lending color to the wine.

The longer the fermentation and extraction, the darker the wine will be.

It’s possible to make a light-colored or pale wine from red grapes, like “blush” wines or classic roses, by giving the juice minimal contact with the grape skins. Depending on how long that contact is, the color of a rose wine can vary from the palest copper or melon hue to pink bubble gum or strawberry.

Long fermentation and deep extraction are relatively new phenomenon in winemaking. In the past, most red wines, even great wines intending for aging, like Bordeaux and Burgundy, were much lighter in color. That’s why the British, for centuries, have called Bordeaux red wines “claret,” the French word for “clear,” even though the wines are darker today. It’s a mistake to believe that because a wine is dark in color and heavily extracted that it’s better than a lighter, more delicate wine; the important principle is balance among all elements.

Red wines, by the way, gently fade as they age, taking on a ruddy brick-garnet color and finally fading to paleness. White wines get darker as they mature.

I was clearing off some shelves at The CA yesterday, going through loads of books that have been sitting there for years, and I came upon a large-format paperback volume called “Memphis Menus,” second edition, published by Sunbelt Inc. of Memphis in 1983. Think about that: What were the important or popular restaurants in the Bluff City 25 years ago? The page or pages devoted to each restaurant include a menu, and looking at the dishes available then and the prices charged for them is a hoot.

Here’s are the restaurants listed in the second edition of “Memphis Menus.” Are you ready to drop a tear for some of these names? Others, truly, we’ve been happy to live without.

Alfred’s.
Anthony’s.
The Baron.
The Blue Goose Cafe.
Bradford House.
Captain Bilbo’s.
The Carriage House.
The Country Squire.
Dearmont’s Banquet Resort.
Ducks & Company.
East End Grill.
Four Flames.
Gaslight Dinner Theatre.
Giovanni’s.
Grisanti’s.
Guale’s.
Hastings Place.
Huey’s.
Hungry Fisherman.
Jefferson Square.
Jimmy Tin’s Port Shanghai.
Jim’s Place East.
J.P. Seafield’s.
Justine’s.
La Tourelle.
The Loft.
Midway Cafe.
Molly’s La Casita.
Number One Beale Street.
Bombay Bicycle Club.
TGI Friday’s.
Public Eye.
Paulette’s.
Palm Court.
Wink Martindale’s.
Red Apple Restaurant.
River Terrace.
Spike & Rail.
Steak & Ale.
The Steakyard.
Swiss Manor.
Traditions.
Vieux Chalet.
Willie Moffatt’s.
Windows on the River.
Yesterday’s.

The signature barbecue oyster appetizer at Four Flames cost $2.50. At Bradford House, a truly fine and lamentably short-lived restaurant, the scallops mousseline cost $5, while “Sole Veronique” was $11. The “Pompano en papillote” at Justine’s was $12.95. “Oysters 2+2+2″ at Bombay Bicycle Club — the best bar in the history of Memphis, yes, but way past time to get over that — cost $4.75. “Osso Buco” at Palm Court: $11.75. Grisanti’s veal cutlets Bolognese: $12. And Vieux Chalet! What a great, crazy little bistro that was! And in a weird location in an old house off Summer Avenue.

So, anyway, perhaps this roster of old names — very few of these restaurants are still open — will tug at a heart-string or conjure memories of long-ago meals in what seems like a more innocent, and certainly less expensive, time.

This response from “Tina” showed up at the end of the post I did on oatmeal a few weeks ago:

“I don’t know where to post this since the ‘Feedback and Questions’ part gives me an error and ‘not found’ message when I click on it. But I need some help from area lovers of fine restaurants.

“A special celebration is coming up in May for me and I am looking for a nice restaurant where my husband and I can go for a really nice dinner. Someplace nice, without kids, great food and service, and (obviously)not a ‘chain’ place. I was thinking Italian maybe, with cannoli on the menu - hard to find. But I am open to anything. Someplace other than the typical steak and potato as I have done it too many times. Something with good wine/scotch and where we can get a nice meal with 3-5 courses. We haven’t been to any really fine dining places, and that is what we are looking for but it is so hard to know what is going to be worth the money. Basically, some place we can make reservations on a Saturday night a few weeks in advance to ensure not waiting forever.

“Sorry…don’t know where to post this but since F.K. started this string and he knows the fine dining establishments, I am going to the top.

“Thanks for any help, and feel free to move this post to the appropriate area.”

Tina doesn’t say how much she and her husband want to spend on this celebratory occasion, so let’s consider that matter open to debate or interpretation or of no account. The requirements are simple: a really nice three-to-five-course meal at a restaurant for grown-ups with a good wine list (and scotch) and great service. On Saturday.

My immediate reaction is to say Erling Jensen or Chez Philippe. Expensive? Yes. Superb in all the aspects of fine dining that Tina is looking for? Also yes. If a Friday night were manageable, Erling Jensen has its wine tasting dinner, four courses and five glasses of wine for $75. That’s $150 for two people plus tax and tip. Other than that, Erling Jensen is a la carte, with soups, salads and appetizers ranging from $8 to $19 and entrees from $29 to $42.

Chez Philippe is only prix fixe, three courses for $68 or five courses for $75; wine is additional.

Menus and wine lists are available at peabodymemphis.com and ejensen.com.

For Italian, I would recommend Bari, though cannoli do not appear among dessert options. It has the advantage of being less expensive than Erling Jensen and Chez Philippe and of fielding an excellent list of Italian wines. The menu is available at barimemphis.com.

Many other possibilities exist, of course, and I bet that readers and posters to the “Whining&Dining” blog will be more than willing to weigh in and give Tina their advice. So go ahead.