Getting That Elusive Reservation
2007-04-28 05:02:00
Tired of hitting redial and waiting on hold to get a coveted dinner reservation at that hot spot in town? The Wall Street Journal recently published a list of tips and tricks. Now there might be an easier way. I recently came across the new online booking website: Tablestalker.Billing itself as an "online concierge" service, Tablestalker is a mashup of OpenTable.com, the online reservation system, and Dapper, a new web service that "allows anyone to extract and reuse content from any website". To use Tablestalker, you simply enter the restaurant where you want to dine along with your selected reservation date and time, the size of your party, and your contact information. The information is submitted to Dapper, which then crawls the openings in OpenTable. If and when a table opens up, the Dapper service sends an email informing you of the available seats. Of course, you will still have to act quickly to reserve the table, but at least you won't be sitting around guessing when a
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Dining Out For Life
2007-04-27 07:41:00
I didn't get a chance to blog about this earlier, but I hope that some of you were able to visit a local restaurant tonight in support of Dining
Out For Life, a national project seeking to raise funds in the fight against AIDS. Participating restaurants are donating 25% of the food bill tonight to benefit HIV prevention programs of the STOP AIDS project.Karen and I chose to dine out at Moose's, a restaurant located in North Beach featuring American cuisine with an emphasis on local ingredients. We started out our dinner with the tuna tartare, which was accompanied by toasted quinoa. The quinoa had a hint of citrus that added a nice layer of complexity to the dish - a very fine appetizer. For our main courses, we had the carnitas risotto, which was an odd-sounding, but tasty blend of Mexican and Italian cuisine, and the porterhouse pork chop, which was flavorful, tender, and cooked to a nice medium doneness. We had a nice dinner which was made even better by the fact that we help
Beetcause of You
2007-04-23 07:07:00
In response to the email that Karen sent out last week, her dad penned the following story: A certain elderly person eventually passed from this life and found himself at the so-called Pearly Gates. There he was confronted by St. Peter, who asked him to account for himself. “Well, I guess I’ve led a reasonably decent life,” the balding, salt-and-pepper- haired late departed said. “I’ve been a faithful husband, a good provider, a tolerant and loving father, a—” “Say again,” St. Peter interrupted abruptly. “A what father?” “What do you mean?” “Your documentation” (and he paged through his celestial laptop) “indicates that you were an abusive father.” “I may have yelled at the kids more than I should. Spanked, perhaps, on occasion….” His voice trailed off in embarrassment.
Dr. Strangeroot or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Beets
2007-04-21 01:03:00
As I implied in a previous post, Karen is not someone you would call the biggest fan of beets. Her virulent dislike of this root vegetable stems from an incident in her youth when she and her brothers were involved in a dinner-time Mexican standoff with her parents over a plate of beets.Ah, but how times change! Today, I received the following email:From: KarenTo: Karen's familySubject: My horrible yet true confessionI have a confession to make. Last Friday, I went to the Old Oakland Farmers' Market and (of my own free will and volition) bought a bunch of yellow beets. I am not entirely sure what came over me. Years of refusal to eat the vile root vegetable suddenly melted away. Perhaps it was a recent yellow beet recipe I saw that looked delicious. For the first time, I began to think of beets as an edible possibility worth seeking out and buying. It didn't hurt that not only did I not gag, but even enjoyed the small bit of beets I had at a recent dinner at Manresa. One of
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Say Cheese!
2007-04-20 05:36:00
It only took me three weeks, but I finally realized that April is National Grilled Cheese
Sandwich Month. I guess that's the reason why I've been seeing a number of stories about these sandwiches in the New York Times, Slashfood, and other various sites on the web over the past few weeks.In honor of this month, I decided to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. My bread of choice tonight was Wonder Bread, my favorite bread with which to make grilled cheese. I normally use some sort of cheddar cheese or Kraft singles (yeah, yeah, I know it's American 'cheese'); tonight, I went with two slices of sharp Tillamook cheddar that I had on hand. As an added twist, I cut up a Campari tomato and inserted the thin slices between the layers of cheese. I set the sandwich down on a non-stick pan coated with sweet butter on low heat. Fifteen minutes later, my patience was rewarded:
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Manresa: A Culinary Experience (with pictures, of course)
2007-04-15 23:40:00
Last week, as I was wandering from John Wayne Airport to the office, Karen called me and asked if I would have any interest in going to Manresa this weekend. She had just taken a quick look on OpenTable and saw a couple of available seatings. We had talked with Tesha and Jeremiah about going to Manresa, which they had never visited and which we had visited previously for our one year anniversary. Unfortunately, our friends were unable to join us, but we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to pay another visit to the two-star Michelin destination.Yesterday afternoon, we made the hour-long trek from the City down to little town of Los Gatos, nestled near the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Though we arrived a bit early for our reservation, we were warmly greeted at the door and promptly seated at a window-side table. We didn't even really need to look at the menu, as we both assumed that we were going with the chef's tasting menu. Once again, we would leave our di
Read more: Culinary
, course
The Angus Third Pounder
2007-04-13 09:08:00
Yesterday was a bit of an unusual work day for me. I started the day at home, flew down to Irvine for an afternoon meeting, and then returned to the Bay Area on an evening flight. Unfortunately, the hour-long segments were not long enough for me to sample the airborne cuisine offered by American Airlines and compare it with the fare from United and Lufthansa. However, as I was waiting for my return flight, I took the opportunity to try out an Angus
Third Pounder, a new sandwich being test-marketed in Southern California by McDonald's. The burger, a premium offering rolled-out to compete with other high-end fast-food sandwiches like the "Six Dollar Burger" marketed by Carl's Jr., comes in three variations: the Angus Deluxe, the Angus Mushroom & Swiss, and the Angus Bacon & Cheese. I opted for the bacon version.It was okay - par for the course for a fast food burger. Honestly, it wasn't all that different from the other burgers that I've had at Mickey D's, though the burger pat
The Perfect Bacon Sandwich
2007-04-13 07:10:00
Today, my ever-vigilant girlfriend pointed out an article describing the secrets to a perfect bacon sandwich. Apparently, a few British scientists are leaving other important academic research on topics such as quantum chromodynamics, cancer research, and the Riemann hypothesis to other luminaries while they focus on unsolved problems more important to the common man.The Leeds University researchers were kind enough to share their secret formula on the Grand Unified Theory of Bacon
(GUToB) with the rest of the world:N = C + {fb(cm) · fb(tc)} + fb(Ts) + fc · ta,where N is force in newtons, fb is a function of the bacon type, fc is a function of the condiments, Ts is the serving temperature, tc is the cooking time, ta is the time to insert the condiments, cm is the cooking method, and C is the breaking strain of the uncooked bacon (in newtons).I do, however, have a few questions about the function fb: What is its domain? Is it time, as the expression fb(tc) would suggest, or is it te
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, Sandwich
2007 F&W Best New Chefs Announced
2007-04-10 08:54:00
My sweetie pointed out that Food & Wine Magazine recently announced the selections for their annual list of Best New Chefs
. The ten winners will be profiled in the July issue. One of the winners is Sean O'Brien, who heads the kitchen at Myth (470 Pacific Avenue; 415-677-8986), the eclectic French/Californian restaurant located in San Francisco's Financial District.
An Entree and Dessert in One
2007-04-06 03:06:00
I'm not sure why I haven't come across this culinary creation before, but it combines an entree and 'dessert' into one wonderful, savory, mouthwatering package: Meat Cake!
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, Dessert
Good Eats Wins a Peabody Award
2007-04-05 06:13:00
Earlier today, Good Eats, the Food Network show hosted by Alton Brown, was named a winner of a George Foster Peabody Award
. The Peabody Awards, administered by the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia, recognize distinguished achievement in radio and television broadcasting and are generally recognized as one of the most prestigious honors in the field of broadcast journalism and educational programming. With regards to Good Eats, the award press release cites:Rarely has science been taught on TV in such an entertaining – and appetizing – manner as it is in Alton Brown`s goofy, tirelessly inventive series.Kudos to Alton, the Good Eats crew, and all of the folks at Be Square Productions that make it all happen week after week!
29 out of 100
2007-04-05 04:52:00
This past Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle published its annual list of the Top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area, as selected by its resident critic, Michael Bauer.Inspired by a post on Becks & Posh, I decided to go through the list to see how many restaurants at which Karen and I have eaten together in the past two and a half years.A16Ad HocAmber IndiaBouchonBoulevardCanteenCetrella Bistro and CafeCyrusDelfinaFireflyForeign CinemaGary DankoGreensHog Island Oyster CompanyJunnoonKoi PalaceKokkari EstiatorioLa TaqueriaManresaNopaOlivetoPark ChowPizzaioloQuinceRangeSushi RanSwan Oyster DepotTon KiangYank SingNot nearly as many places as Sam from Becks & Posh has been, but I suspect that the list will continue to grow.
Getting the Reservation
2007-04-04 08:01:00
The other day, my friend Terence, the renown expert on Midwestern cuisine, pointed out a Wall Street Journal article about how to land a reservation at the culinary hotspot.Perhaps I will try some of the techniques mentioned in the article the next time that I attempt to land a reservation at the French Laundry or at El Bulli...
Read more: Reservation
A Foodie Friday
2007-04-04 07:04:00
Last weekend, my sweetie and I headed up north to Mendocino to enjoy another long and relaxing weekend, one during which we were able to unplug from the outside world. Yep, no cell phone coverage and no internet access. It was a much needed break from the Bay Area hustle and bustle.On the drive up, we decided to check out a couple of Marin County's many foodie destinations. Our first stop was in Point Reyes Station, where we paid a visit to the Cowgirl Creamery at Tomalas Bay Foods (80 4th Street; 415-663-9335). Founded by Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, the Cowgirl Creamery is known throughout Northern California for their handmade, artisanal cheeses. Every Friday
morning, the creamery hosts a tour in the refurbished barn that houses Tomalas Bay Foods. Having gotten a late start to our morning, we arrived just in time for the tour, which led by ex-park ranger Nan Haynes.The word 'tour' is a bit of a misnomer; the 'tour' consists of a presentation giving a brief overview of the
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Jeremy Iggers bids adieu
2007-03-29 05:41:00
Jeremy Iggers, food critic for my hometown newspaper, the Star Tribune, and fellow college alumnus, writes his final restaurant column today.
Read more: adieu
A Stop at the Depot
2007-03-27 06:10:00
Today, Karen and I enjoyed an extended weekend as we took our first days off from work in quite a few months, going back to our vacation to Hawaii. We decided to take advantage of the off-day by paying a lunch visit to Swan Oyster Depot
(1517 Polk Street; 415-673-1101), the venerable San Francisco dining establishment located in Polk Gulch. We have been talking about going there for quite a while, as we are both fans of oysters and seafood in general. However, they are only open until 5:30pm on weekdays. During the weekends, they are closed on Sundays and usually have a line out the door and down the block all day Saturday. Fortunately for us, with the cold and rainy weather today, the line was very short. While we waited outside the door for the noontime crowd to empty out, we admired today's assortment of seafood through the front window.While we stood in line, we saw a number of people coming by to pick up some fresh seafood to go, choosing from a wide assortment of fish and s
The Newest Health Food
2007-03-27 06:04:00
Pizza! Read about the health benefits of America's favorite fast food.
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Karen's Herb-Roasted Chicken
2007-03-26 07:48:00
Tonight, my sweetie gave me a night off from cooking by taking over the kitchen and making her herb-roasted chicken. Adapted from an NPR recipe, her chicken dish involves taking a whole roaster, stuffing a compound butter underneath the skin, and roasting it on a bed of potatoes. Earlier in the day, we picked up a Rocky Jr. chicken from the local Whole Foods Market (on sale for nearly half-off!). We were actually looking for a 3 lbs bird and were surprised that we couldn't find anything smaller than the 5 lbs one that we picked up.After washing out the chicken and patting it dry, Karen
loosened the skin and stuffed an herb butter made with fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme between the skin and the meat. She reserved some of the butter to rub over the skin of the chicken and stuffed a cut lemon into the cavity. We put the chicken breast-side down into a roasting pan on top of a bed of halved new potatoes and threw it into a 475º F oven. We roasted the chicken for an hour, dropping
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, Chicken
Coming to the Bay Area... Tyler Florence
2007-03-25 19:14:00
My sweetie pointed out an article about Tyler
Florence's upcoming move to the Bay Area. A national pitchman for Applebee's and the host of several shows on the Food Network, Florence is in discussions with the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group about managing one of the company's many restaurants in the Bay Area. The list of local Kimpton restaurants include Fifth Floor, Kuleto's Trattoria (where I dined last Friday), Ponzu, Scala's Bistro, and Grand Cafe, the latter two both lacking an executive chef at this moment. According to the article, Florence also has potential opportunities at some of the major hotels in the area that are revamping their restaurants, including the Hilton, Marriott, and the Westin.
Travelocity's Top 10 Destinations for Foodies in 2007
2007-03-23 08:05:00
Travelocity recently listed its top 10 favorite destinations for food lovers in 2007. The cities on the list are (in alphabetical order): Barcelona, SpainBoulder, ColoradoCharlestown, South CarolinaLas Vegas, NevadaLondon, EnglandMontreal, QuebecNew Orleans, LouisianaNew York City, New YorkRome, ItalySan Francisco, CaliforniaI've had the good fortune to live in two of the destinations on the list and can attest to the wonderful food scenes in both cities. In addition to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I currently reside, I spent a number of years in Boulder trying to become a mathematician. Regarding these two cities, Travelocity says:Boulder:It's no secret that Boulder is about as eco-friendly and earthy as it gets, but what may come as a surprise is how the recent addition of urban dwellers has led to a more sophisticated and trend-setting approach to organic dining. Take The Kitchen Cafe for example, which offers an eclectic menu with superior organic ingredients, but moreove
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Staying Sharp
2007-03-23 05:28:00
A couple of weekends ago, I took my two favorite kitchen knives (an 8" Wüsthof Classic Cook's Knife and a 6.5" Kershaw Shun Classic Santoku) for a long-overdue sharpening. On the recommendation of several people on the Good Eats Message Board, I brought my blades to Perfect Edge Cutlery in San Mateo, located about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose.The store is well-known in some Bay Area culinary circles as the place to go for knife sharpening. I had to drop off the knives and pick them up later in the week, as they only do the sharpening work in the morning before the store opens. When I came back to pick up the knives a few days later, I took the opportunity to test drive a few of the many blades they have in their vast inventory. The salesman to whom I spoke was very knowledgeable (at the very least, he knew that my German and Japanese knives have different sharpening requirements, which is more than I can say about the folks at the high-end culinary shops that also p
And the winner is...
2007-03-22 04:40:00
...a Bay Area chef! The nominees for the 2007 James Beard Foundation Awards were announced earlier this week. All five nominees for Best Chef of the Year in the Pacific Region, which encompasses California and Hawaii, are from the Bay Area. Four of the chefs, Traci Des Jardins of Jardiniere, Roland Passot of La Folie, Craig Stoll of Delfina, and Michael Tusk of Quince are from San Francisco. The fifth nominee is Douglas Keane of Cyrus, which is located in Healdsburg, which is just a pleasant afternoon drive north of the City in Sonoma County.Also, Nate Appleman of A16 was nominated for Rising Star Chef of the Year. Nancy Oakes' Boulevard is up for Restaurant of the Year and Thomas Keller of The French Laundry (and Per Se, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc) is a finalist for the Outstanding Restaurateur award.My sweetie and I have had the good fortune to be able to visit many of the restaurants listed above (Quince, Cyrus, Delfina, A16, Boulevard, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc) and look forward to visiti
Read more: winner
For those of your with some cash to burn...
2007-03-20 06:39:00
Introducing... the Caviar Pizza. Perhaps I should order one for delivery, using my Gold Vish "Le Million" cell phone, of course. I imagine that it would pair nicely with a Martini on the Rock. I just want to have something simple, like pizza, after that dinner the other night in Bangkok.
Food Fight: United v. Lufthansa
2007-02-05 23:06:00
Well, I flew back to Germany again this morning, the fourth time since I started my current project at work. However, unlike the previous trips, I decided to fly United
instead of Lufthansa. For the last several years, I had been choosing to fly Lufthansa whenever I needed to come to Europe, partially because I had grown tired of the service on United (at least, on their US flights) and partially because of the mediocre food (or lack thereof in many cases) that we've come to expect from our domestic airlines.However, on my last Lufthansa flight, I was quite underwhelmed with the level of service that I received, even though I was in business class. While served on real plates with real (i.e. metal) flatware, the Lufthansa food was quite unappetizing to say the least (a plate of greasy roast goose, anyone?). So, after chatting with a couple of friends who have had a lot of recent experience on both United and Lufthansa, I decided to give United another shot, figuring that it couldn
Top Chef Scraping Bottom?
2007-01-29 08:27:00
Over the past year, I've been quite a fan of the Bravo reality TV series Top Chef
. Though I was a latecomer to the first season, I have tried to catch the latest season's episodes whenever possible. As I watched this season, my feelings for the contestents changed quite a bit. For example, at the beginning of the show, I was really not a very big fan of Mikey, but as the season went on, I started rooting for him. While it was pretty apparent he wasn't going to win against the likes of Sam and Cliff, I really wanted the guy to do well. (Maybe I'll even make a trip out to Lodi to check out his work in person.) Of course, some of my feelings stayed the same, such as those for that asshat Marcel.However, as much as I would love to see Ilan whomp that sniveling little Marcel's ass, I'm not sure that I will be tuning for the final episode. In my opinion, the best chefs in the contest were Sam, Ilan, Cliff, and Elia (more or less in that order, I'd reckon). While I felt that Cl
Read more: Bottom
Hometown Food Scene
2007-05-01 07:52:00
I just read a New York Times article about the emerging food scene in the Twin Cities. Several notable chefs, like Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, have recently opened their doors in the burgeoning downtown restaurant scene. I'm definitely looking forward to checking things out the next time I'm back home.
Coming soon... "The List"
2007-05-01 07:16:00
As you can probably tell from reading this blog, my girlfriend Karen and I enjoy eating out. We are truly fortunate to be in a situation where we are able to go out and enjoy so many of the culinary delights that the Bay Area has to offer.One evening a couple of summers ago, Karen and I were talking about the various restaurants that we had visited together, both in the San Francisco area and during our travels. At that time, we had been dating for about nine months and had checked out quite a few places around town. I asked her if she had any idea of how many places we had dined. She did not. I was a bit curious and started combing though my old credit card receipts (yes, I'm a bit of a pack rat) to jog my memory on the places that we had visited. I opened an Excel spreadsheet to help me organize this information. Thus, on that warm evening a couple of years back (July 6, 2005 to be more precise), "The List" was born.As you can imagine, "The List" has grown quite a bit since i
Mile High Class Dining
2007-05-04 10:35:00
Hawaiian Airlines recently announced that they will be serving the airline industry's first "tasting menu" for its First Class passengers. For lunch and dinner, those passengers will be allowed to create their own meal by selecting three dishes from a choice of five items; for breakfast, First Class passengers will pick two dishes from a selection of three to go along with a fresh fruit plate. The lunch and dinner selections will come from a list of twenty different entrees, designed and developed by Hawaiian chef Beverly Gannon. Gannon is the owner of Maui's famed Hali'imaile General Store, where we enjoyed a nice (though overpriced) lunch during our trip last year. The list of entrees includes Hawaiian Crab Cake Tantalizing "Taste of the Island" with a Zesty Pineapple Salsa, Rock Shrimp and Lemon Pepper Ravioli with Creamy Sun Dried Tomato-Basil Sauce and Tri-Pepper Garni, and Chicken Tandoori served with a tangy Makhani Sauce and Sultana Basmati Rice Pilaf. Passengers riding
Read more: Dining
People, Use Some Common Sense!
2007-05-04 06:22:00
As Karen mentioned in her comments to my previous post, we've had several unfortunate experiences, including two occurrences in the past few weeks, where we've sat next to a couple whose romantic dinner conversation flared into a heated argument. Michael Bauer recently wrote about some similar situations that he's experienced in his blog post about couples who break up over dinner.To be fair to the women out there, it often seems to be the guys who escalate these dinner-time conflicts. At least this appears to have been the case in these most recent two occurrences. Guys, listen up. Here's a tip to help you avoid a spat in public: use some common sense. For example, when your date is visibly upset because you disagree with her political point of view, it doesn't help matters to continue to press her on it. Nor does it help if you stop responding her questions and tell her that you won't answer her because you feel that she is twisting your words. Make sense? Another examp
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, Sense
, Common Sense
Offal Is Good!
2007-05-03 08:54:00
Did you know: Duck fries are to mallards as Rocky Mountain Oysters are to bulls?I found out this fascinating fact tonight during my dinner at Incanto (1550 Church Street; 415-641-4500), the Italian restaurant in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco known throughout the Bay Area for their house-cured meats. Food Network fans may recognize Incanto executive chef Chris Cosentino from his recent challenge against Mario Batali on Iron Chef America in "Battle Garlic". (During the next couple of months, Incanto will be featuring a special garlic dinner menu on Friday and Saturday evenings that serve up the same dishes as the ones created during that ICA battle.)Karen and I had talked about paying a visit to Incanto well before Cosentino's television appearance brought the restaurant into the spotlight, so we took advantage of the opportunity to check it out tonight. In addition to their cured meats, Incanto is well-regarded for their emphasis on using fresh, local ingredients and
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