The Newly Opened Pizzeria Mozza in Newport Beach, California

Without any fanfare, but just from the tweeted messages of the principals of this place, people flocked to the opening of Pizzeria Mozza, on West Coast Highway in Newport Beach, in So. California. That was two weeks ago. This new place - the hottest place for food and wine enthusiasts among the Newport Beach crowd and Orange County residents, is the brainchild of three renowned personalities: Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery and former co-owner of Campanille, Mario Batali  - the New York chef who brings us "simplicity and freshness" in his Italian cuisine on the food channel; and Joe Bastianich, a restauranteur.

With their flagship location in Los Angeles born in 2006, there was much excitement for a branch to be opened in Orange County. On a Wednesday early evening, we took our chance and dared to join the line at Pizzeria Mozza. It was 6:45 p.m., and we got as far as being  listed down and given a notice of a two-hour wait. We decided to go somewhere else for an appetizer, with the intention of going back.

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We did go back after an hour and were delighted that we were seated quite fast, way less than the other hour we were supposed to wait.

This venue has a very simple architectural design and the wow factor was this wall, herb garden. This is a certified green restaurant.

We easily identified the rosemary, coriander, the variegated sage, and the squash plant.

This was the first noticeable scene as we entered the restaurant, where the people were standing, seating and socializing while watching the kitchen activities.

A chef prepares multiple pizza orders. 

After stretching the dough to make a thin crust, oil is dabbed in random parts before anything else is added. Then the creativity begins ... like adding the petals of the squash flower, and so on. 

A chef checks on his pizzas cooking in the stone oven

These were not your typical pizza varieties. With very little mozzarella cheese, and sometimes even without the use of tomato sauce, the pizzas had very distinct flavors.

Chilled wine sitting on the kitchen-bar counter

 

Once we were seated, we discussed our tasty interests for the evening, as we perused the menu. Here are the food concepts that whet our appetites.

Fried Squash Blossoms with Ricotta

A delicate flower to hold the filling, then battered for deep frying, tempura style.

Bone Marrow al forno

Something Different! On a buttered or oiled toast, spread the garlic, some grilled bone marrow, and sprinkle some coriander leaves ... so rich and flavorful!

 Piatti del Giorno Mercoledi: Bacalá al forno with tomato, chick peas, and fried rosemary (salted cod-fish)
This was the specialty of the day, for Wednesday.

For our puffy, thin-crust pizza selections:

Pizette: Ipswich clams, garlic, chiles, oregano, Parmigiano and Pecorino

Bacon, Finnochiona, fennel sausage (freshly made) guancile, tomato, mozzarella,  and Shiitake mushrooms were added upon our request

Squash blossoms, tomato and burrata (cheese)

Mama mia! These were all so tasty and delicious.

For the finale, we had to have our dolci.

(Left) Sorbetti/Gelati: Tahitian Vanilla, Olive Oil, Melon

(Right) Butterscotch Budino with Maldon sea salt and rosemary pine-nut cookies

The unique ice cream and sherbet flavors turned out to be most pleasing,  complemented by the butterscotch pudding, topped with salted caramel and those mini cookies.

We ended up eating family style, sharing everything. For five people, this turned out to be a lot of food. Era tutto molto buono! 

While my friends and I came here to eat, some come to have a drink or two, with good company.

With their remarkable talents, Mario Batali, Nancy Silverton, and Joe Bastianich have teamed up with a passionate commitment  to "product, environment and hospitality." We gave them excellent marks for all three and were more than satisfied with their food concepts, the ambiance, and the service.

Be it in Los Angeles at 641 North Highland, or in Orange County, going to Mozza is a food trip extraordinaire. Buon appetito!

Pizzeria Mozza

800 West Coast Highway, Newport Beach

Tel. (949) 945 1126

Open daily except on Mondays, 12:00 noon to 11:00 p.m.

Claude Monet's Murals at the Musée L'Orangerie, Paris, France

After visiting Monet's house and garden in Giverny, where we have gotten an idea of Monet's surroundings, a visit to the Musée L'Orangerie  is the next thing to do. This is where his last series of paintings are displayed, the ones that were inspired by the scenic water-lily pond.

Originally designed as a winter greenhouse for the orange trees at the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden) by Firmin Bourgeois and completed by Ludovico Visconti in 1852, the Musée L'Orangerie was renovated by architect Camille Lefevre - in consultation with Monet, as to how to present his paintings. It opened it's doors as a museum in May, 1927, about five months after the death of Monet. It closed in 1999 to undergo some redesigning and restructuring.

After some delay, it was in 2006 that the Musée L'Orangerie was reopened after six years of renovation work, which was estimated at a budget of twenty five million euros. With a reconfiguration of the exhibition rooms, Monet's eight masterpieces were now the focal point in two elliptical rooms on the upper floor, solely dedicated to his series of water-lily paintings, Les Nymphéas, measuring two meters high and 100 meters long, in total. 

The rooms were especially designed to bring in the light, to enhance the light elements - the different hours of the day as captured by Monet in his paintings. This was achieved by painting the rooms in ivory-white and with the installation of a circular skylight. 

When you come to see Monet's masterpieces, there are cushioned, long, curved benches where you could sit to study the master's works - looking at the different sections and taking note of certain elements, or you may prefer to get up close as you walk around. The students who come in groups, sit on the floor to listen to a lecture. There are also audio guides for rent, if you prefer to have your own guided tour.

A silent atmosphere is maintained, and this helps one to meditate and find himself in the artist's place, perhaps, as the scene was being painted. 

Clear tree and plant reflections, the blue sky on the water, on a sunny day, with light and shadow casts.

Monet was an outdoor painter, for the most part. Here are a few of the murals he made in the last twenty plus years of his life.

"Morning"

"The Morning Light the Willows"

"Cloud Reflections on the Water Lily Pond"

 "Green Highlights"

Details of the water lilies on the right-side corner of the mural

"Sunset"

Close up of the water lilies...the buds are closed. 

A mural from two angles:

"The Two Willows"

In the late 1950s, the museum was gifted with the art collections of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume. Now a part of the permanent exhibition, the works of famous artists - impressionist and post-impressionist - like Cézanne, Matisse, Utrillo, Picasso, Renoir and others can be viewed on the lower level .

"Arbes et Maison"  (1885-1886)

Paul CÉZANNE 1839-1906

 "Paysage"(1901)

Paul GAUGUIN 1848 - 1903

 "Gabrielle et Jean" (1895-1896)

Pierre-Auguste RENOIR 1814 - 1919

Special exhibitions are scheduled at different times of the year.

A past exhibition was about Gino Severini, Futuriste et Neoclassique. This was the first retrospective presentation of Severini's works since they were last exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, in 1967. The major stages of Severini's career from 1905 to towards the end of the 1930s were showcased.


When you visit Paris in the spring and summer, or in the early fall, don't miss coming to this place if you are a Monet fan.

Musée de l'Orangerie

Jardin des Tuileries (facing Place de la Concorde)

1st arrondisement

Metro: Lines 1, 8, 12 Exit - Concorde

Bus Lines: 24, 42, 52, 72, 73, 84, 94 Stop - Concorde 

Open daily, except on Tuesdays: May 1 to December 25, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Admissions: 7.50 euros for adults; 5.50 euros for students under 26 years of age

FREE admission on the first Sunday of the month

Claude Monet's Garden Paradise - Giverny

One of the much visited out-of-town tourist places in France is Claude Monet's house and garden in Giverny. Just 75 kilometers west of Paris, in Normandy, it is a pleasant drive or a less-than-an-hour train ride to Vernon, and another 4 kilometers to Giverny. Figure out how to get there, and make it a point to go and understand how Monet loved being here in the latter part of his life. 

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the most prolific impressionist painters. It was in the 1870s when he developed his modernistic style, after paying attention to the effects of light in the environment he painted in. It was with his short brush strokes that he came to capture the changing light elements on his canvass., in different hues from dawn to dusk, and from perfect to stormy weather. 

His financial success came from his series painting , when he painted the same scenery at different times of the day or seasons. in reviewing his work, it may seem that the subject matter became secondary to the focus he gave to the effects of light, painting as he saw things were, categorized him as a renaissance illusionist.

Giverny was restored through the efforts of  Monet's son, Michel Monet, when he willed his  inherited property to the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Ten years in the making, after much of it had fallen into disrepair during World War II, the property was restored to its old glory when Gérald van der Kemp - the appointed curator of Giverny in 1977, with André Devillers, and Georges Truffaut - a distinguished gardener who was a constant, invited guest to the Monet residence - embarked on reconstructing the property. In 1980, Giverny was opened to the public. Funding for this project came, mostly, from American benefactors.

Monet's house in Giverny

It was in 1883 that Monet moved to Giverny and transformed it to become his world.He and his family lived in this house for forty-three years.  He had designed the layout of his house according to his artistic needs and the needs of his family, adding rooms or wings whenever he felt the need to. He made the left side of the house his wing. A tour of Monet's house will give you more interesting insights as to his lifestyle, his taste, and the influences he got from others.

As an artist, he kept tabs with how his career was progressing. Some of his original paintings can be seen at the Musée Marmottan-Monet, in Paris, at l'Orangerie, a few at the Musée d'Orsay. A good number of his works have found their way to different parts of the world, some of which were brought back to Paris, last fall, for a retrospective exhibition that was put together at the Galeries Nationales, Grand Palais. He became famous during his life time and was recognized as a master by the age of fifty.

Visitors are welcome to take a tour of the house, but there is a No-Photo/No-Video policy. From the art pieces hanging on the walls, it is obvious that Monet had a great love for Japanese art.

The exterior of the house is a pink shade with green shutters - a color combination that was thought of by Monet, himself. These colors are now typical of the Mediterranean landscape. To the front of the house, he positioned plants next to the house by setting up a pergola for climbing roses to cover and other creeping vines, to make the house blend with the garden.

The house has three entrances: one leading to Monet's apartment, the main one leading to the rest of the house, and the right one for domestic use, leading to the kitchen. The visitors enter through the main entrance and follow the arrows to get to visit the whole house.

There are two parts in the garden: Clos Normand - the garden in front of the house; and the Japanese-inspired garden on the other side of the road. In Clos Normand, Monet fashioned a one hectare area "full of perspectives, symmetries and colours."

Monet's view of the garden from his bedroom

One of  iron arches on which climbing roses grow in the central alley

The garden area is divided into several plots of flowers, fruit trees, blooming vines, and annuals. The garden has been replanted with plant species, as close to how Monet had planted them, originally.

Immediately, one will notice the color combinations from the random planting of flowering and ornamental plants. As Monet's interest in botany grew,  he exchanged plants with his friends - mainly, with Caillebotte and Clemençeau. He had also invested much in procuring rare varieties

In the Japanese inspired garden

The Japanese bridge in his pond

Monet painted outside. He designed his garden with specific elements. As his garden evolved, with the plants and trees growing to become visually appealing, he began to capture the beauty around him in his paintings. Giverny became the subject of his paintings in the latter years of his life, when he travelled less and settled down in one place.

There is continued admiration from the Japanese towards Monet. Thanks to another project of Gérald van der Kemp, there is a Jardin de Monet Marmottan au Village de Kitagawa (Garden of Monet Marmottan in the village of Kitagawa), that replicates much of  Monet's garden in Giverny, in the little Japanese town of Kitagawa-mura, in an island south of Hiroshima and southwest of Osaka. And, the Japanese visitors love it, describing it as a "stunning French garden."

The water lily pond with the weeping willow trees 

Maple trees abound in the Garden. Fall colors come as early as September or October, depending on the weather conditions.

More of the garden pond...

A pathway to walk around the pond 

Monet was mystified by the lighting effects on the water lily plants in his pond. After the armistice on November 11, 1918, he confided to his friend - Clemençeau, his desire to celebrate the victorious war and the peace it brought about by making a donation of a series of panels - paintings of a group of flowers - to France. His eyesight was afflicted by then but he persevered to finish the work. After almost ten years, it was after his death that his paintings were displayed in 1927 at the Musée de l'Orangerie, located at the Jardin des Tuileres. Renovated a couple of years ago, visitors can now sit, meditate, and be in awe of the master's works entitled  Les Nympheas (The Water Lilies), in a panoramic setting at L'Orangerie. 

A close up of different blooms and plants in the garden

Daisies below the Japanese bridge partly covered by wisteria vines

A cornflower variety

Sunflowers, featured in several of Monet's paintings

Flowering tubers randomly blooming in the grassy area

A plot planted with a variety of flowering plants in shades of red, fuschia, and orange...

including dahlias.

A plot of pink, purple, and white flowers in different heights

One of the fruit bearing plants - a crab apple tree

Apple trees are kept low and trained to grow sidewards as a fence in one area of the garden.

As the visit comes to an end, the exit is through the gift store where you can leave with a souvenir on hand - from a tote bag to prints of Monet's paintings, and other functional and decorative items to choose from.

If you are a flower enthusiast, there is a flowering calendar, with details of what are in bloom from month to month. It is open daily from April 1st to November 1st. For tour and other information, please click on the link.

Perhaps you have been inspired by Monet's works. Get your painting supplies and give it a try. I did. And to my surprise, I came up with my own style of painting flowers. It's not quite how I see them, but it's how my hand strokes translate them from my imagination. I think that makes me an abstract illusionist. 

Make a date with Monet. It can be nourishing for the soul.