Category Archives: General

Parcel 104 Marks a Decade of Deliciousness

California white sea bass shines at Parcel 104, known for its use of local, sustainable ingredients.

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.

The golden glow of the dining room.

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.

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New Pizza Joint in the South Bay, Dungeness Crab Galore & More

Caprese salad at Blue Line Pizza. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

San Francisco’s Little Star Pizza Opens a Locale in Campbell

Pizza lovers will rejoice that San Francisco’s Little Star Pizza — famed for its deep-dish, cornmeal-crust pizzas — opened an offshoot last week in downtown Campbell.

Blue Line Pizza, named for the train that runs between O’Hare International Airport and Chicago, features organic salads, paninis, and both deep-dish and thin-crust pizzas.

The original Little Star has been a sensation ever since it opened its original Divisadero Street location in San Francisco in 2004 in San Francisco. There’s now a second branch in San Francisco, as well as one in Albany.

Sidle up to the bar at Blue Line Pizza. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

One taste of its deep-dish pie will tell you why it’s so popular.

I’m partial to the Blue Line (Little Star) with spinach, ricotta, feta, mushrooms, onions and garlic, as well as the Mediterranean Chicken with roasted chicken, red bell peppers, olives, onions, feta and plenty of marinated artichoke hearts. It’s a mouthful; it’s a meal.

Blue Line Pizza is open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.

A Crabby Time at Lark Creek Restaurants

Through the end of February, the Lark Creek Restaurant Group celebrates the bounty of fresh, seasonal Dungeness crab.

Its 23rd annual “Crab Festival” will feature a range of crab dishes at its various restaurants.

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Sweet Potato Soup for Your Sweetie

Dig in. You know you want to.

This soup is comfort in a bowl, yet elegant enough for company.

It’s velvety smooth, yet has surprising hits of added texture from feta cheese crumbles and chopped sun-dried tomatoes.

“Sweet Potato and Cumin Soup with Feta Yogurt” is from the new cookbook, “Soup, Glorious Soup” (Kyle Books” by food writer Annie Bell, of which I recently received a review copy.

It’s filled with more than 100 soup recipes — from rustic to refined.

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Who Put Coffee and Chocolate In My Tequila?

Not your usual chocolates -- but cocoa tequila.

Someone very, very smart, that’s who.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Patrón Spirits has introduced a new tequila sure to make anyone swoon.

Patrón XO Cafe Dark Cocoa is Patrón Silver tequila combined with coffee from Vercruz and Chiapas, and chocolate from criollo cocoa beans, the rarest and most expensive grown.

The result is a 60-proof tequila that’s the color of hot fudge sauce.

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Two Cool Culinary Stores to Check Out in San Francisco

The folks behind Bernal Cutlery conjure up a surreal Dutch Masters still life for this knife display. (Photo by Eric Zepeda)

Knives Galore at Bernal Cutlery

You know the proprietors behind Bernal Cutlery in San Francisco have to have a rather macabre sense of humor to come up with a knife display like this one above.

They also know their stuff. Their shop, opened in 2005, boasts the largest selection of knives in San Francisco, including Japanese, French and vintage ones.

It also offers precision sharpening using Japanese whetstone grinding techniques, as well as classes to teach you how to care for — and best use — your knives at home.

Owner Josh Donald calls himself a knife geek. He even worked with stone while studying sculpture and poured metal in a foundry in order to refine his knife-sharpening skills even more. His team also includes two sushi chefs.

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