The Sake Lounge at Ozumo restaurant in San Francisco is transformed into a ramen-ya at weekday lunch time, 11:30 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Choose from such favorite bowlfuls as the “Ozumo” ($13) with braised pork jowl, poached egg and snow crab in shoyu stock; and “Spicy Miso” ($12) with shredded chicken, poached egg and cabbage in a rich, spicy miso broth.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “These sure look like cinnamon rolls.”
But don’t let your eyes fool you.
They may look like pillowy, yeasty cinnamon rolls, but they actually have the flakiness of biscuits.
These “Apple-Stuffed Biscuit Buns” are true butter bombs, too.
For nine rolls, you use 17 tablespoons of butter. (Cough, cough) But let’s not hone in on that, shall we? After all, without the butter, these wouldn’t be so wonderfully fall-apart flaky. And that’s what you want in a great biscuit or else why bother, right?
The recipe is from the new “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook”(W.W. Norton & Company) by Amy Traverso, senior food and home editor of Yankee magazine. The book, which I recently received a review copy of, is full of 150 recipes, both sweet and savory, that make use of fresh apples, apple cider and applesauce. There’s a handy primer, too, on varieties of apples that includes tasting notes, texture descriptions, best uses and origins.
These biscuit buns get their name from the fact that the dough is rolled up around a filling of cinnamon-sugar and one diced apple to create a pretty spiral effect when cut into slices.
Yes, your favorite Food Gal has joined the app world.
I’m proud to be part of the new venture, “Know What,” an app that takes the guess-work out of figuring out the food and cultural hot spots most worth visiting in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles region. The recommendations come already vetted by experts in those areas, including yours truly.
Here’s how it works: Purchase the “Know What Essentials” app for $2.99 to get 250 top picks for food, hikes, museums and bars in both Northern and Southern California. Then, you can add on more specific modules for an additional nominal fee, including my “Ultimate Guide to Bay Area Dining” ($3.99), which includes my spotlights on 72 delicious places around the Bay Area not to be missed. My guide will be updated regularly, too, at no future charge to you.
Since it’s map-based, it couldn’t be easier to use. Just click on the map to see the places near you worth checking out. So, for folks who regularly email me questions such as, “Where should I go eat after the game today at AT&T Park in San Francisco?” or “What’s a new place to try in downtown Palo Alto?” — and you know who you are — having my guide at your fingertips is the next best thing to me being right there with you to lead the way.
Other Bay Area guides available by local writers include: “The City’s Best Cocktail Spots” by Camper English; “Things in San Jose that Don’t Suck” by Gary Singh; and “San Francisco’s Top 30 Taquerias” by Burritoeater.
“Know What” and my “Ultimate Guide to Bay Area Dining” are available for iPhones via the iTunes store. Look for an Android version possibly toward the end of the year.
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a free copy of the “Know What Essentials” app, along with my “Ultimate Guide to Bay Area Dining.” Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST Feb. 25. Winner will be announced Feb. 27.
How to win?
If ever food on a stick could be drop-dead glam, this would be it.
I practically felt like lighting candles and artfully arranging silk pillows all over the floor to set the proper mood to enjoy them with.
“Prawn-Kumquat Skewers” will do that to you.
The irony is they couldn’t be easier to make, yet they look as if some fancy restaurant made them for a fortune.
The recipe is from the new cookbook, “Mourad: New Moroccan” Artisan) by Mourad Lahlou, chef-proprietor of the magical Aziza in San Francisco, the only Moroccan restaurant in North America to boast a Michelin star.
Born in Marrakesh, Lahlou left his native land at age 17 to study economics at my old alma mater, San Francisco State University. But the flavors of his homeland beckoned him into the kitchen and it wasn’t long before he was running his own restaurant, Aziza.
Over the years, the food there has morphed from traditional to astoundingly progressive, with flavors that are hauntingly true and clear.
It’s a restaurant named for the original lot number for the Bartlett pear orchard that once thrived there.
It’s only open weekdays for lunch and dinner, not weekends, owing to the fact that it’s in a hotel that caters to the business crowd.
And that crowd is often prominently male, given all the tech companies nearby.
Parcel 104 in the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara has always been one of my favorite places in the South Bay for its farm-to-table fare served in a warm, inviting, contemporary environment. As a journalist, I’ve also been partial to it as an ideal place to conduct lunch interviews, because you can actually hold a clear conversation with someone without the usual din found at so many of today’s trendoid spots.
I’ve dined at the restaurant many times over the years. On my most recent visit a couple of weeks ago, in which I was invited to dine as a guest, I was happy to find that the restaurant is still going strong after marking a decade last year.
A number of the staff have been at the restaurant since Day One, always a good sign that it’s not only a good place to work, but one that knows what it’s doing.