Anyone friends with me knows that Black Bottle is my go to restaurant/wine bar for just about any night of the week. Being three block from my house makes it attractive place to down a bottle of wine with clams, mussels, flatbread pizzas or a vegetable dish, just before stumbling home. For many years I have been coming here trying to figure out what my favorite dish is. Finally, two weeks ago, I went with my friend Jennifer to enjoy a bottle of Rioja coupled with some delicatessens. She suggested the malbec demi-glazed oxtail, an item I must have "glazed" over every other time. The waitress was excited when we ordered this dish, exclaiming it was her favorite dish. We waited patiently, indulging in conversation over a 2007 bottle of Rioja, taking me back to my Barcelona youth.When the oxtail arrived, I was dumbstruck. There sat three large pieces of bony gelatinous meat, slow cooked with a delicious Malbec. At first I began eating with a fork and knife, lightly carving the fatty meat from the bones then dipping it back into the sauce. The meat fell off so easily from the bone that a knife was no longer necessary. Next came the bone marrow. Within each of the three bones was a succulent, sweet bone marrow, waiting to be sucked out. Growing up, we frequented on bone marrow from turkey necks in soup, but nothing compared to this. The marrow was perhaps the best part of the whole meal. My friend from Shanghai further encouraged me to suck all the marrow out of the bones, an experience best left unwritten. All I can say is that I can't wait to make it back to Black Bottle for another oxtail throwdown.
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