Monthly Archives: August 2009

“SF Chefs Food Wine” Opening Reception

Posted on by 14 comments

A sculpture in bread.

Last night, underneath a billowing white tent in San Francisco’s Union Square, hundreds of foodies gathered for the start of the four-day SF Chefs Food Wine extravaganza.

The event, more than two years in the making, is an attempt to proudly celebrate in proper fashion this region’s extraordinary culinary mecca. Wine tastings, cooking demonstrations, ingredient-focused seminars, and gala dinners are on the agenda. But first, of course, there was the matter of the official ribbon-cutting.

Tyler Florence

Master of Ceremony, Tyler Florence, the Food Network star who plans to open a restaurant in San Francisco later this year in the former Rubicon space, introduced San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to do the honors.

As the mayor greeted the gathered throngs, he yelled out, “Take that, Aspen!” in a jibe to the flashy, much more established food and wine festival there that he’s hoping San Francisco’s will usurp.

Mayor Newsom.

Thursday night’s opening reception featured tasty morsels prepared by a number of former ” San Francisco Chronicle Rising Star Chefs.”

Among those in attendance was Corey Lee, former chef de cuisine of the French Laundry, who left the world-renowned restaurant this month to venture out on his own.

Lee said he hopes to open his own restaurant in San Francisco next year. It will feature a range of tasting menus focusing on seasonal ingredients, so that if diners don’t have the time or inclination for a massive three-hour meal, they can opt for a less extensive option.

Chef Corey Lee.

Let’s hope he puts the potato soup with uni foam that he served last night on the menu of his new establishment, because it was truly decadent.

Corey Lee's potato soup with sea urchin foam.

Chef Melissa Perello, who has been traveling since she left the Fifth Floor two years ago, hopes to open her restaurant, Frances, by the second week of October.

Read more

Sweet Passions Cupcakes New to Valley Fair Mall

Posted on by 15 comments

Chocolate cupcake with mocha cream from Sweet Passions cupcake kiosk.

I have loyal FoodGal reader, Ann, to thank for this.

Seems she got wind of a new cupcake stand, Sweet Passions, that opened at Westfield Valley Fair Shopping Center in San Jose three weeks ago.  Of course, she wanted me to try it first before she made the trek.

So, Ann, your wish is my sweet command.

Sweet Passions Bakery actually is a full-fledged bakery that’s existed in San Jose’s Alum Rock neighborhood for about 22 years. It makes only cakes — for weddings, quinceaneras, birthdays, or everyday occasions. It was started by Dilanthi Perera, who used to impress her friends with her homemade cakes, before she started her bakery.

At Valley Fair mall, you’ll find the Sweet Passions kiosk in the middle of the mall between J. Crew and the Body Shop. No baking is done on site. Instead the cupcakes are trucked in directly each day from the Alum Rock bakery.

Unlike cupcakes at other shops, the ones here are refrigerated. That’s because the cupcakes are not only cream-filled, but heavy cream also figures prominently in the frostings.

There are 44 flavors (take that, Baskin-Robbins), but only about six are available each day.

The cupcakes come in two sizes: mini ones for $1 each; and huge, jumbo muffin-tin-sized ones for $3.50 each that come already packed in individual, plastic clam-shell containers.

Carrot cake cupcake.

I decided to buy a Chocolate with Mocha Cream, a Carrot Cake with Whipped Cream Cheese, and a Banana with Vanilla Cream. I had high hopes for the cupcakes since they were from a bakery that specializes in nothing but cakes.

Read more

A Sunny Shade of Pasta

Posted on by 26 comments

A dazzling pasta that's as simple as it gets.

Whenever someone asks me what my favorite cookbooks are, they’re invariably taken aback when I answer.

Among my most adored cookbooks are the ones by Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Yes, the chic four-star, classically trained Alsatian chef with a fondness for cooking in Prada loafers, who boasts a mega empire of restaurants around the world, including the swank Jean Georges in New York.

Yes, him.

I know you’re thinking precious dishes that take four pages to explain, days to complete, special equipment, and untold trips to many markets for esoteric ingredients.

But his recipes aren’t that at all.

Indeed, I’ve probably cooked more than a dozen recipes from his “Jean-Georges Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef” (Broadway) and his “Simple to Spectacular” (Broadway) books, and been won over by all of them. Surprisingly, from a chef of this caliber, the recipes are not overly complex. In fact, many of them are downright simple and thoroughly straightforward. Often, there also are inspiring flavor taste combinations, too, from this man who was nicknamed “the palate” at a young age for his uncanny ability to discern flavors.

His “Pasta with Saffron Oil” is emblematic of all of that. The recipe from “Simple to Spectacular” is indeed simple and spectacular.

It’s literally just pasta tossed with olive oil that’s been infused with saffron. But how beautifully they go together. The saffron turns the noodles a sunny shade of warm, orange-tinged gold, and lends a distinctive earthy, exotic flair.

I first served this pasta as a side dish, adding slices of piquillo peppers to give it a little more heft.

Pricey, imported tuna in olive oil.

The next time I made it, I not only added the piquillo peppers, but also some Spanish Italian tuna packed in oil to make the dish substantial enough for a main course.

I had picked up a jar of Consorcio Bonito del Norte, considered the “Caviar of Tuna,” at Corti Brothers Market in Sacramento while visiting my in-laws. According to Corti Brothers, this brand was founded in 1950 and is considered the premier tuna in a tin.

Read more

A Secret Garden At Quattro in the Four Seasons Silicon Valley

Posted on by 9 comments

Flowering oregano in the secret garden.

It may not exactly possess storybook charm. Indeed, you might walk or drive past it without even knowing it’s there.

But if you look closely on the grounds of the swank Four Seasons Silicon Valley in East Palo Alto, you might just spot the secret garden that’s brimming with Meyer lemon trees, a Kaffir lime tree, lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon thyme, orange mint, pineapple basil, rosemary, and bronze fennel.

The Herb Garden at Quattro, as it has been so dubbed, serves an important purpose: It provides culinary inspiration for the chefs at the hotel’s Quattro restaurant, with its fresh, aromatic bounty just steps outside their door. It saves money, too. The garden now yields enough mint for the restaurant and bar that none ever has to be purchased. And when Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini needs a few Kaffir lime leaves to roast fish, he just goes outside to pick some, rather than being forced to order a larger quantity than necessary from a supplier.

Cartumini planted the garden a year ago just around the corner from the restaurant, in a 100-square-foot, concrete-walled berm that’s part of the hotel’s landscaping. Like an Italian Johnny Appleseed, he’d like to sprinkle a few more seeds here and there on the hotel grounds, but he laughs that the landscaping crew might not go for that.

Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini (left) and Sous Chef Edward Higgins (right) inspect the garden's citrus trees.

The fresh herbs are used in many dishes, most noticeably in the chef’s special tasting menu, where every course gets a flourish of them.

“It really gets cooks more in touch and makes them have more respect for the food,” Cartumini says of the on-site garden.

Adds sous chef Edward Higgins, “You can cut what you need five minutes before. It really preserves the flavor that way.”

If you haven’t visited the contemporary Italian restaurant since it opened three and a half years ago, many changes have occurred.

Higgins joined the team late last year. The Boston native, who worked at Craft Restaurant in New York, Insieme restaurant in New York, and Ekki Bar & Grill at the Four Seasons Hotel  Tokyo, has brought an international flair and modern sensibility.

House-made ricotta for the house-made bread.

The food, once a bit rustic, is decidedly more refined now, positioning the restaurant as more a destination dining spot, Cartumini explains. The restaurant also has a new-found emphasis on local and house-made. It shows in the creamy ricotta that’s made daily to serve in place of butter with the freshly baked focaccia brought to the table.  All the pastas are made in-house now, too, with the Ferrari of pasta machines, which set the restaurant back a cool $13,000.

The pricey pasta machine at work.

Filling Lombardian ravioli.

Gnocchetti.

When I asked Piemonte-native, Cartumini, why the pasta machine, with its 1.5-horsepower engine, is so pricey, he deadpanned:

Read more

Food Gal Contest: Winner of the Morton’s Steakhouse Dinner, Plus A New Dinner Prize Up For Grabs

Posted on by 12 comments

Beets with pickled egg salad at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

Talk about fierce competition for the prize of dinner for two at any Morton’s The Steakhouse in the world. I sure am glad my husband, Meat Boy, had the responsibility of choosing the winner this time around, because I would have been hard pressed to pick just one from all the incredible entries submitted.

The winner of this ultimate carnivore contest will be revealed at the end of this post. But before you scroll down like mad, you’ll first want to know about the delicious new contest that starts today.

The Tavern at Lark Creek in Larkspur is kindly offering a prize of dinner for two (a total value of $75, which can include beverages, too). The contest for this prize is open to anyone in the world, as long as you can find your way to the restaurant in Marin County, Calif. within the next year. That’s because the dining certificate is good — you guessed it — for one full year.

A muffaletta mouthful at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

So what do you have to do to win? Read on.

Read more

Recent Entries »