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Operation Embrace San Francisco got off to a swinging start on Friday with a visit to Joe's Cable Car with Jessica and Sarah.
This little diner has tremendous wattage, and it looked like a great, neon beacon down at the southern end of Mission St. on a foggy night. A large yellow sign on the roof announced, "Joe grinds his own fresh chuck daily," which is impressive, since fresh-ground beef is generally considered the key to a good burger (also impressive because the only thing I grind daily is my teeth). And the menu promises equal satisfaction. "We ask a lot of questions that help us to fully satisfy your stay at Joe’s. Please order your ground steak burger the way you would like your steak cooked. Your patience is appreciated and well worth the wait. Don’t worry - same day service! All of our fresh ground steak beef burgers are served open faced for your inspection...Following food critics’ testing method, slice off a small piece of the patty without bread, taste it and come to your own conclusion."
So I was already in love with Joe's before the food arrived. We split a 6 oz. Fresh Ground Beef Steak with grilled onions on a sesame seed bun, and it was tasty and cooked right to order. With all that fresh grinding, it wasn't as densely packed as commercial burgers are. Instead, it was tender and moist. Sadly, sides (fries and onion rings) were merely average, but milkshakes were superlative. They're made with Bud's Ice Cream, a SF classic which is now produced in Thailand? Anyway, we'll be back. It's hard to imagine a more cheerful spot, with all the neon and Christmas lights and a little animatronic stuffed ape that makes kissy noises at you when you walk in the door.
One of my oldest friends go married last weekend in Vermont, so we flew back home for a whirlwind tour of the North Country and Boston. Home, home...yes, that still feels like home.
A few of the friends we saw mentioned this blog. Specifically, that I'm making my life sound like a blur of wine tastings and restaurants and la-la-sweetness. I have two things to say about that. One: Yes, it's true that the blog's a bit uh, sunny. I still can't figure out whether I'm trying to worm my way into the Food Blog Club--all food and nothing but the food, with the occasional food-related travelogue or childhood memory thrown in--or whether I'm creating an online journal of my California life. And if it's the former, I don't want to get too personal. If it's the latter, then I should password-protect this thing. I need some more time to figure out what I want it to be.
Oh, and second: It's actually really nice when people trust you enough to tell you the truth. Yes, kindly, of course.
So in the interest of honesty, I'll say that life has not, in fact, been a bowl of (local, seasonal, organic) cherries. I'll spare you the details, which may or may not involve crying into my steamed dumplings at Taipei on Clement St., but I haven't been this homesick since Camp Timber Trails. We didn't leave Boston because we were unhappy...we left because we were so happy that it made us ballsy. There are far worse places to be homesick than San Francisco. But there was also a lot to leave behind, a home and a community, and I have been feeling decidedly unballsy of late.
I went for a midnight swim in Caspian Lake on Friday night. My friend B, the bride, wanted to do a little mikveh-style ritual with her close friends, so we sat around her on the dock and gave her our blessings for a happy marriage. Then we all got in the water. A cold breeze was blowing and the lake was about as warm as a lake in Northern Vermont can ever be at midnight. I was halfway in, shivering and wet, trying to go under slowly, when I realized that the dock was too far away to go back without getting even more chilled. "It's warmer once you're in the water," B called out hopefully. So I dove in and after a minute of agony, it did get better.
And that, metaphorically, is just about where I am right now: In water up to my waist, too far in to go back, holding on to the idea of the warm shore. And the only way it's going to get better is if I dive in and start swimming.
Yesterday, I talked with a woman at work who had just returned from a vacation in upstate New York. She said that the weather was oppressively hot and humid, but it was nice to go out at night without a sweater on. I said I missed that too, along with the lush green you get in a place where the growing season is so short. So much life happens there in just six months. And fireflies. You don't get fireflies here.
When I got home, I ran into my neighbor, Meredith, a chef who, coincidentally, moved here from Boston about 10 years ago. She and her partner are the kind of neighbors who show up when your moving truck arrives and say, "How can we help?" At first, we didn't even know what to do with that. Do we pay them? Send them flowers? We had incredible neighbors in Boston, but moving help? C'mon. Then we figured out that in some parts of the world, this is considered normal. We're starting to get the hang of it.
Anyway, Meredith and I were both spouseless for dinner, so we decided to go out. I let her pick, since she's always coming up with something new and interesting. "We'll go to Firefly," she said.
I had heard of Firefly. It made the Chronicle's "Top 100 Restaurants" list, and it's not too far from where we live. It's a neighborhoody kind of place set at the end of the 24th St. commercial district in Noe Valley. A comfortable, cottagey room with a fanciful canopy ceiling, soft lighting, and (relatively) affordable prices. The waitstaff know many of the customers by name, and the room has an easy, affable feel.
Firefly's menu takes American comfort favorites, like fried chicken, and polishes them up, working in Asian flavors here and there. Nothing fancy, but carefully crafted, with excellent ingredients... the kind of place where everything on the menu looks irresistible. We split the potstickers, which were filled with sweet shrimp, scallops, and big chunks of crispy water chestnuts, along with an order of romano beans topped with candied lemon peel and a few drops of truffle oil (restraint gratefully aknowledged). For the main course, Meredith had the fried chicken and I tried the tender ribs which were thickly glazed and served with slaw, spoonbread, and beans. It was too rich to eat all at once, but delicious.
Too full for dessert, we strolled down 24th St. and looked in all the brightly lit shop windows. It got me thinking again of summer nights back home. I grew up near the Connecticut River and on June nights the damp fields along the river were lit up with those fireflies. You could go for a walk in the woods at midnight and find your way by their light, just like something out of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here there are no actual, live fireflies. But something about the fog and the pretty displays gave me a very happy, almost wonderous feeling. Turns out this city can seem magical, too, in its own way.
It's been a while since I last posted. This was a heavy travel month with some freelancing thrown in, so I've been short on free time. I took two trips to Phoenix during the record heat wave, and I can now confirm that Pizzeria Bianco is so popular that people still queue up 40 minutes before the doors open even when it's 114 degrees outside (the temperature at which it begins to hurt to breathe). Was it worth the wait? As much as it was worth waiting in the snow for an hour to get into Sally's Apizza in New Haven last December. Poor Scott was sick for two weeks after that stunt. But it was good pizza!
Yesterday, I judged the cooking competition at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. And I want to go on record to say that there's nothing so terribly weird about garlic ice cream. Think of caramelized onions. Sweet and oniony. We like them. Garlic ice cream is sweet and oniny, too. Sure, it's no Ciao Bella apricot sorbet (new obsession), but you gotta give credit to the person who actually developed that recipe. It took courage. And stamina, probably.
The King of Thai Noodle House at 639 Clement St. in San Francisco is as good as everyone said it was. Go figure. They're famous for their duck noodle soup, and true to form, the broth was rich and meaty and just slightly sweet.
We slurped up the fat rice noodles stir-fried with beef and ginger...all the addictive appeal of ramen, but real food. Plus, each table had a Lazy Susan loaded with condiments, and there's nothing more fun than playing with condiments. And setting aside the condiments for a moment, why did the Lazy Susan go out of fashion, anyway?
For dessert: coconut sticky rice served with perfect, ripe mango slices, which caused us to joust with our chopsticks for the last bite.
We finally made it to Big Sur last weekend, back to Deetjen's Big Sur Inn. If there's a more beautiful place in this country, I have yet to find it.
Deetjen's, for those who haven't heard of it (and I like to pretend that I have readers who are not immediate family or friends), is a rustic little inn with a cult following. It was founded in the 1930s by "Grandpa" Deetjen, a Norweigan immigrant who settled in the area right around the time they built Highway 1. Apparently, Grampy was on the run from the Norweigan authorities, and I'm personally grateful that he decided to hi
de out here. He built little cabins in the redwoods all over the property, added on through the 40s and 50s, and the place has changed very little since then. Rooms still lack televisions or phones or even locks on the doors, walls are paper-thin, and most rooms share bathrooms. It's a very wabi-sabi kind of place, and while all this going-without might bother me in another context, here it just makes you feel all the more unplugged and transported. We first came here in 1999, and it has that camp-like appeal of being the one place where the world seems consistent and peaceful and safe.
If the morning is warm and sunny, you can eat breakfast on a stone patio off the main building and look up at the steep hillside planted with roses (Deetjen's is big on little paths that lead to hidden gardens). I ordered the Huevos Rancheros that Ate Manhattan (actually, there were just called "Huevos Rancheros"). But you can see that they were impressive. That's my arm in the photo, for scale. The pancakes are also great. My other grea
t food find was a little tray of fresh dates sold at an organic farm stand along the highway. The farmer told me that they're grown up near Santa Cruz (another win for Santa Cruz!), and that she can't get her kids to stop eating them. The flavor and texture remind me of dulce de leche crossed with cooked sweet potatoes, and I'm with those kids: I'll take them over candy just about any day. Here's a photo of Scott holding two dates with a view of the Point Sur Lighthouse in back.
Note: If you do visit Deetjen's, check out the journals in the rooms. People tend to get very personal, and it makes for great reading.
Today, my Yahoo account received spam with this subject line:
"We sell all things cervix"
Imagining the offer: "Cervix watches! Cervix snoglobes! Buy now, low price for you!"
I have a backlog of food stuff to write about, including a recent trip to Big Sur. Just too much work this week. Will return (with photos) shortly...
I've found a grown-up alternative to the toasted-Wonder-bread-with-ricotta-and-grape-jelly breakfast that I loved to love as a child.1 slice rustic walnut bread, toastedtopped with:2 tablespoons fromage blanc2 teaspoons honeyFast, easy, yum.
I have often thought, since we moved to San Francisco, that the city looks like a place out of a child's drawing, with its exaggerated landscape and ornate houses and bright flowers. Even the people look like the cast of Free to Be You and Me.
And then there's Santa Cruz, where we spent the day on Saturday. If ever a town was not merely drawn, but designed by a child, this is it. Who else would line the town beach with an arcade and a boardwalk/amusement park?
"It's like all the best of California condensed into one place," Scott marveled. It should have been named Happyville, and I can't believe the grownups let this one through.
Our personal source of childlike delight came in the form of a deep-fried Twinkie that we bought on the boardwalk. This 
was a first for us (surprising, given our love of carnival food) and I’m happy to say it was better than I had expected. I thought the Twinkies would break down into something oozy and chemical in the cooking, but the result was rich and almost buttery. Mmmm...twinkies. Score one for deep-fried everything.
After a ride on the Hurricane, a really violent rollercoaster which left us feeling dizzy and old, we drove up to Bonny Doon's tasting room, 8 miles north of town. I love this place. Whereas Roshambo's anti-wine-snob posturing left me cold, I find Bonny Doon's quirky approach totally charming. And the wines are delicous. I took home some bottles of the Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc—a light, aromatic white—and their signature Rhone blend, Le Cigare Volant, along with a bottle of the Cardinal Zin. After tasting 6 or 7 wines, we still felt a little dizzy, but old no more.
Our last food stop was at Fambrini's Farm Fresh Produce for some $.99/lb apricots. I've had apricot jam on the brain lately, as I miss the apricot-lime preserves from Hi Rise Bakery in Cambridge. I'm going to try to recreate the recipe sometime this week; I'll let you know how it goes. Starting with discount apricots might not have been the best idea. Blame it on the rollercoaster.
Oink pretty much sums up my work life of late. Sunset received thousands of submissions to its Thanksgiving recipe contest (prize: a $50,000 kitchen redo). A panel of screeners, all former editors, narrowed that batch down, and then we're choosing which recipes make it to testing. That's a lot of recipes to taste. We have a team of recipe testers to do the cooking--if we didn't, the magazine would never get done--but there's still the matter of eating.
The testers are a jolly bunch--home cooks who we normally employ on a freelance basis to come in and test drive the recipes that we develop. They're stand-ins for our readers, and the questions and problems that they identify help us insure that the recipes work. Now, with the contest, they're in the kitchen cooking up a storm all day, every day. It reminds me of holiday mornings when my grandmother and aunts would be in the kitchen chopping and chatting by the time I woke up. Only this is a Groundhog Day-style repeat loop, where every morning is the holiday morning. For the first couple of days, I sat down at the tasting table singing, "It's the most wonderful time of the year, la-la-la...," and Linda said, "Just you wait."
She was right.
Anyway, speaking of Oink, I took Scott to Memphis Millie's on Haight St. on Wednesday night for his birthday. He loves his barbecue, and Minnie's has received high praise from lots of magazines, including Gourmet and Sunset.
I want to go back there one more time to get a better take, but on first impression, I'd say that if you really like smoke, this is your place. The meat is intensely flavored. Me, I like a little more sweetness in the crust, and Millie's flavors are all base notes. Unless, of course, you add the sauces, which are all terrific. So we're going to go back to try their pulled pork, which will probably ring my bell more than the ribs and brisket did.
My husband's birthday falls one day after my father's. Not sure if that's evidence of some unresolved Electra Complex on my part, or if it just means that good men tend to be born around the longest day of the year. But in practical terms, it means I have birthdays on the brain and lots of presents to buy. And cakes to bake.Scott is a respectably adventurous eater, but he's not a chowhound or a foodie. Instead, he's what I'd call a good sport. And that's just fine with me. He reminds me that other hobbies can be interesting, too. Like art, or drive-in movies.And when he says he just wants a simple, old-fashioned yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting, I say, "Where's my butter, sugar?" No, I don't say that. But I do make the cake.This is, hands-down, the most delicious cake recipe I have yet to bake. It's from Shirley Corriher's Cookwise (only slightly modified).
If Dante had invented nine circles of heaven, this recipe would be her FastPass to the top. If I was a movie producer, I'd buy the rights and make it into a movie. On top of that, Shirley an awfully nice lady who spends a lot of time answering phone calls from stymied cooks all over the country.Double this recipe if you want two layers.Basic Moist Sweet CakeYield: 1 layerIngredients:1-1/2 cups cake flour1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder1 stick cold unsalted butter1-1/3 cup sugar, placed in the freezer to chill1/3 cup vegetable oil2 large eggs at room temperature3 large egg yolks at room temperature1/2 cup buttermilk at room temperature1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extractPreparation:Preheat oven to 350°. Line a cake pan with parchment paper, grease the bottom and sides with butter, and sprinkle with flour. Toss out the excess and set aside. Sift together dry ingredients so that the baking powder is evenly dispersed. Chill your bowl and beaters. Beat the hard butter in the chilled bowl for three to four minutes, then gradually pour in chilled sugar. Beat for another three to four minutes until well-blended and very fluffy (a total of eight minutes).Add oil to butter and sugar mixture, then blend. Add eggs and yolks and beat very lightly on a low speed. Too much beating after adding the eggs will produce a tough crust. Add the buttermilk and vanilla and blend lightly. Fold in sifted dry ingredients.Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, then bake for 35 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
He makes a mean batch of roasted chestnuts.
I had lunch last week at Cafe Niebaum-Coppola in Palo Alto. I wanted to try the pizza, since the cafe is one of just 12 U.S. restaurants named to the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana. Seemed prestigious, but...eh. It was about as good as any pizza I've had so far. Which is to say, not as good as I had expected. We have had pizza from Pauline's and Pizza Express and so far, nothing to write home about. Haven't yet made it to A-16. Suggestions are welcome.
After lunch, I went back to the office to face 12 Thanksgiving desserts, 2 salads, and some beef tacos, all of which needed tasting and rating for a recipe contest and a wine club premium, respectively. This part of the job? It's tough. Just a bite or two each, and I'll skip dinner tonight, but on days like this it's impossible to not feel like a fatted calf, sacrificed to the glory of food writing.
Which brings me to Colorado. Bad transition.
We had incredible food on our Colorado wine tour. Delicous, abundant food. Tell a chef that 10 wine and food writers are coming to the restaurant and s/he's going to aim for the bleachers, so we had exactly one meal with fewer than 6 courses. Follow the just-two-bites rule all you want, but you won't be getting up from that table for at least 2 hours. It can, at times, feel like an endurance test.
My trip was sponsored by the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board to introduce food and wine writers to their growing wine trade. At the moment, there are about 60 wineries around the state, concentrated within the two AVAs (American Viticultural Areas): Grand Valley and West Elks. Boosters point to the region's warm days, cool nights, abundant sunshine, and well-drained soil. New Mexico has had some success with sparkling wines, so why not Colorado? In fact, grapes were grown all over the Western Slope more than 100 years ago, but the vines were torn out during Prohibition and replaced with peach trees, which thrived and became quite famous. Western Slope peaches are even served on Air Force One. What a waste of a good peach.
We visited 8 wineries and tasted wines from about 15-20 more (my notes get a little slurry). A lot of wine for three days. The verdict? Well, there's tremendous momentum here, and I felt lucky to be on the first-ever CO wine tour. I can't wait to see what the landscape will look like 5 and 10 years from now. The wines were mixed, but there were some real stand-outs and some terrific bargains. The vines are relatively young, growers are still figuring out which grapes thrive in each zone, and vinification methods vary. But the winemakers are a passionate, committed bunch, carving a wine industry out of high desert orchard land, despite the perils. Everyone had a bad frost story to tell. And they're seeing some success with Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, and fruit wines.
Some of my favorites, in no particular order:
1) Two Rivers Cabernet Sauvignon
2) Graystone Winery Port
3) Boulder Creek Riesling
4) Canyon Wind Rosé
5) The Winery at Holy Cross Abbey Merlot Reserve
6) Spero Cherry Wine (like bottled cherry pie)
7) Carlson Vineyard Gewurtztraminer
8) Garfield Estates S2
9) Stoney Mesa's Ptarmigan Vineyards line
10) Trail Ridge Lemberger (yes, Lemberger)
I also fell in love with the cheeses from Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy. Check 'em out!
One of my favorite things about the California food scene is the healthy sense of entitlement people have about their access to organic, local, seasonal food. As a New England food editor, I tried to beat the "eat locally" drum as much as possible, but that's a lot harder to do when the growing season is five months long. Here, you can take year-round farmer's markets for granted.Last weekend, we went to see a screening of Cinema Paradiso in Washington Square Park (dinner: sandwiches from Mario's, weather: frigid). They opened with a short called Grocery Store Wars, a 5-minute Star Wars spoof in which a band of organic vegetables battles the evil forces of agribusiness and genetic modification. Cuke Skywalker, Chewbroccoli, Tofu D2, and Obi Wan Cannoli (never mind a cannoli carrying the organics torch) battle Darth Tater, emboldened by The Farm, a benevolent force for all things good and compostable.
When Cuke rescued Princess Lettuce and blew up the Death Melon, the crowd roared its approval. Those film series planners sure know their audience...
I spent most of last week on a wine tour of Colorado. Yes, Colorado. More to come on that as soon as I catch my breath.
I haven't written anything about cooking here, mostly because the recipes I develop at work are the rightful property of the Time-Warner empire. Not that this blog is of any significance in the grand scheme of media consolidation, but it's a matter of principle: I don't want to get fired. So any really good ideas go straight to the magazine. But last night I made some classics: grilled pizzas, salad (spinach, jicama, avocado, chervil, mint, and oranges), roasted corn, and fruit for dessert. Our friends Jessica, Sarah, and Eloise came over...all former Bostonians themselves. When we're feeling cranky, we gripe about California drivers. Boston drivers may be nasty and rude, but we think they're more competent. Aha, but a story in today's news seems to prove me wrong. Still, the highways here are clogged with accidents every time it rains...why? But enough about that. Jessica, a food writer and wonderful cook, brought wild mushroom crostini. I got to work on the pizzas. I had made the dough earlier in the day, adapting Mark Bittman's recipe:1 package rapid-rise yeast5 cups all-purpose flour2 to 2 1/2 cups water3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil1 tablespoon sea saltI mixed the yeast with a little warm water, then poured it over the flour in the bowl of my standing mixer. I turned the machine on and poured in enough water so that the mixture was almost loose. I like a wet dough. Then I added the oil and let the dough hook do the work for about 4 minutes. I oiled the ball of dough in the bowl and let it sit, covered, on the counter for an hour. Then, back to the mixer: I added the salt, let the hook knead everything together for a minute more, then covered the dough and let it rise slowly in the refrigerator for about 5 hours while Scott and I went out for a walk. There's something so satisfying about knowing that the dough is rising, your ducks all in a row, while you're off having fun.I divided the dough into 3 disks, froze one, and let the other two rest, covered, on the counter for 20 minutes. Then I rolled each one out into an oval, about 1/3-inch thick, and cooked them over medium heat on our grill. It feels like a game, catching the charcoals at the right moment, watching the dough bubble up, flipping the breads and then working quickly to get the toppings on before the bottom burns. But they came out pretty well, with a couple of charred spots that Jessica and Sarah liked (photos to come). I rubbed both of the pizzas with garlic and olive oil, then topped one with figs, prosciutto, goat cheese, arugula, and a little syrupy balsamic vinegar (actually, Jessica did this while I was grilling the other pizza). For the second, I slow-roasted some plum tomatoes with olive oil and herbs and made a classic tomato-basil-mozzarella pie. The market had some custardy buffalo mozzarella and it melted beautifully. Scott said these were his favorite pizzas yet, and I think the slow rising time did the trick.We ate dinner in front of the TV because Jessica went to high school with Harmony, one of the contestants on "The Next Food Network Star." I can assure you that all of our armchair commentary was above-board and respectful.
When I haven't been rambling about/babbling about Sonoma, I have been eating in the city. And I know that you, my readers (i.e. Mom), are anxious to hear some reports from the troughs trenches.
And so, a quick tour of some favorite meals to-date:
Frisson: A swank restaurant/lounge concept in Jackson Square. Cool Jetsons-inspired interior and luscious cocktails, plus playful desserts ("cereal"-flavored ice cream: Yum!). The food was good, but drinks and sweets were better, so I'd call this an after-theater spot (are there any theaters nearby?), especially with a large group of young, unnaturally attractive friends.
Tallula: Sensual Indian-fusion food that combines Indian spices, French technique, and California ingredients. I usually blanch at food labled "something-fusion," but their lobster and pea dhosa persuades me to keep an open mind. Plus, the interior has its own form of fusion: Bombay-meets New Orleans bordello-meets Design Within Reach. It's fun and engaging. Especially eating on the 2nd-floor porch, looking down at the carnival of the Castro at night.
Zuni Cafe: My favorite meal(s) to date. Judy Rodgers is a master of pure Mediterranean sensibility, keeping things close to the ground and expressing each ingredient to its fullest. No other restaurant gives me such a feeling of well-being. On the snarky foodie chatboards, I see a lot of talk about Zuni being overrated, but I love this place.
Incanto: They call their food Californian-Italian, but I feel a true Italian spirit at work. Most of the pastas are home-made, they use Ligurian basil in the pesto, and they're not afraid of offal (that Chocolate Blood Pudding ain't made with blood oranges). They even have tripe, Dad! My only gripe is the decor, which could have been ordered from an Expo showroom. But that's a grumpy quibble. The food was wonderful and we were treated well.
I've talked enough about The Slanted Door, so I'll leave it at that.
Went back up to Sonoma this weekend. I can't help it. I never knew love like this before. My mother-in-law sat obediently in the back seat while we carted her to Iron Horse and Roshambo wineries. Sometimes it's hard to remember that other people don't live for this kind of stuff. But she was a good sport, and we all got a kick out of the contrast between Iron Horses's backyard shed tastings and Roshambo's fabulous, fabulous, la-la high-concept wine salon. Can you tell I didn't fall in love? In an effort to wrest wine from the stodgy elite, they've gone the way of self-conscious hipsterism, with their Rock-Paper-Scissors contests and their t-shirts. But I really did like the 2002 Chardonnay (need to double-check the vintage), and I'm not a big Chardonnay person. I also picked up a few bottles of the 2004 Iron Horse Rosato di Sangiovese, which struck me as a perfect summer wine. I'm impaired, though, by my reluctance to pay more than $30 a bottle. Do I need to overcome this? Everyone else seemed to be doing it.
We had lunch at Willi's Seafood in Healdsburg. Very tasty small plates, but so ladled in butter that I felt like an overdressed piece of lettuce. Perhaps a better metaphor would be "like a live trout thrown in a tank of melted butter." Either way, too oily. Just down the street in the town center, we walked off lunch by browsing the best flea market/antique fair ever in the world. Would that magazines paid better! But you're not here to read about shopping...
We took my mother-in-law to dinner at The Slanted Door tonight. She's here from Miami, so we did the whole showing-off-the-Ferry Building thing, like we've been living here for more than 5 weeks. But I have to say, it's so nice to be able to take someone to a place with a view and great food. We took the long way home and drove by the Cliff House to see if we could oogle some seals, but I guess they don't hang out there much anymore. There was a man sitting out in front, panhandling for change, and when I gave him some money he said, "Enjoy your dinner! The lamb is very good.""Really?" I asked. "Yeah, and so's the strip steak. They give me food sometimes at the end of the night. The mahi-mahi's good, but I don't recommend the fish and chips. The breading is too oily, and you can tell they use frozen fish."
This was a busy couple of days because Sunset held it's annual Celebration Weekend bonanza, with 25,000 people descending on the campus to tour the gardens, buy stuff, see cooking demos, walk through the Breeze House (which really is stunning, even standing as it is in a parking lot behind the administrative building), eat, dance, and marinate in the Sunset lifestyle.
I served as MC at the food stage on Sunday afternoon, which means that I introduced the speakers and then asked probing questions like, "So, if folks can't find shiso at their local market, can they substitute mint?"
Jamie Purviance's "Steak 101" class was the hit of the weekend, drawing big crowds and lots of spontaneous applause (a reminder of how much Americans still love their steak). The highlight came when he taught the old poke test trick from cooking school. For those unfamiliar, it's a way of telling how far cooked your meat is by poking it with your index finger. Once you know how a medium-rare steak feels, you'll no longer have to cut into it to check for doneness. And as a handy reference for knowing that medium-rare feel, Jamie held up his right hand. "Feel that fat pad under your thumb?" he says. "That's how rare meat feels. Now touch your index finger to your thumb and feel the fat pad. See how it tightens? That's how medium-rare feels. Touch your middle finger to your thumb; that's medium. Ring finger to thumb is medium-well, and pinkie to thumb is well-done." Choruses of "Ahhh!" and "Howsabout that!" Thunderous applause! Celebration weekend draws to a triumphant close.
Just got back from a trip through Western Sonoma. That place is Eden, Eden, Eden. Especially this time of year when the hills are still green and everything is in bloom. We focused on the western part of the region, hitting towns like Healdsburg and Sebastopol, following the Russian River, and taking in the landscape, which ranges from ocean to primeval forest to big sky rolling hills within just a few miles. Everywhere you turn, there's an apple orchard or a vineyard or a sheep farm, and the markets are bursting with local cheeses, breads, wines, organic strawberries and cherries. Foodie heaven. Plus, Sebastapol is a funky little leftie place with a "Nuclear Free Zone" sign at the town line and a mayor who won on the Green Party ticket.We had some memorable meals. In Sebastopol, Bistro Bella Vita (8050 Bodega) just opened a few months ago, and though they don't yet have a Web site, they're worth seeking out. Great Cal-Ital food cooked by Manuel Mena, a chef who grew up in the Yucutan. He works some of these flavors into the menu, so if you see any dishes with salsas or moles, try them. Madrona Manor in Healdsburg is housed in a gorgeous Victorian mansion (Bless those 1880s lumber barons). This is a place where I'd love to take my mom for lunch, which, for us, was served on a patio that looks out over the gardens (like many California restaurants, the folks at Madrona grow their own flowers, herbs, and vegetables). Californians are really into composed salads right now and we had a deconstructed Nicoise in which every element was allowed to shine: wild salmon, sweet green beans, creamy fingerlings. Oh, and candied walnuts thanks to our kind and generous sponsors. Finally, we had a terrific dinner at Underwood Bar and Bistro in Graton, which is a one-horse town, Sonoma-style. No traffic lights, but a gourmet shop and a bistro. And Underwood is all about the bistro experience, with a Spanish accent, which means you'll have the perfectly roasted chicken, but with olives and preserved lemon rubbed under the skin, not herbs and butter.Our tour guide for this chowfest was a wonderful guy named Clark Wolf, who has a home near the Russian River Valley. Clark is a restaurant consultant, pretty much the restaurant consultant in the country right now, and he divides his time between New York and Las Vegas, so he was doing double shots of espresso at every stop. But he's all heart, very generous, and he loves Sonoma. Back in the 70s, he stumbled across a job at one of the first-ever gourmet cheese shops in San Francisco, which means he landed right at the birth of the American food renaissance. And he met all the players, from James Beard to M.F.K. Fisher to Ruth Reichl. More recently, he helped found the Russian River Food and Wine Fest. The first festival took place last September, and this year's fest takes place on September 25. The New York Times has called the Russian River Valley "the new Normandy," and if the festival captures even a slice of the spirit that I saw on this trip, it'll be well worth the traffic on 101 to get there.
Operation Embrace San Francisco got off to a swinging start on Friday with a visit to Joe's Cable Car with Jessica and Sarah.
