Category Archives: General

Braving the Line at Flour + Water, Plus a Sneak Peek of What’s to Come

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A parfait of quince, crema and crunchy walnut crumbles at Flour + Water.

Practically from the first day it opened nearly three years ago, San Francisco’s Flour + Water restaurant has had droves of people lining up nightly to get inside.

Who can resist blistered Margherita pizzas and hand-made pork raviolini with chanterelles and thyme?

Not me, as I joined the throngs in line on this Mission District corner on a recent blustery evening to snag a seat at the bar on my own dime.

After all, it sure beat trying to drive home to the South Bay at the height of the rush-hour commute on a Friday night.

Instead of fighting highway traffic, I parked myself on a bar stool right next to the kitchen. It afforded a bird’s eye view of the cooks stretching pizza dough and assembling pasta dishes all under the scrutiny of a very judicious expediter, who took tweezers to plates to arrange microgreens just so before they were delivered to the dining room with his approval.

The view of the kitchen from my bar stool.

As I perused the menu, I knew I was going to order pasta. After all, I can’t pass up supple noodles of any sort, but especially ones made every day by hand in the restaurant’s famous upstairs “dough room,” which I got to see on an earlier visit.

In the "dough room'' with Chef Thomas McNaughton (right).

Just-made filled pasta dumplings.

Bow ties with bursts of bright color.

I started with a salad of cured steelhead trout ($12) that was a definite spot of brightness on that chilly, dark night. Roasted beets added sweetness, fresh horseradish a hit of fire and paper-thin slices of Persian lime bursts of citrusy refreshment.

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A Pasta Ragu with An Unusual Ingredient

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"Top Chef'' Stephanie Izard's pasta with pork, bacon and apples.

Could this meaty ragu dish prove to be the apple of your eye?

It just might — because besides the expected pork, tomatoes, bacon, garlic and basil, it also contains slices of fresh, juicy apples.

This unusual pasta dish is from “Top Chef” victor Stephanie Izard, the only woman who has thus claimed the title in that Bravo TV show, now in its ninth season. After winning, she went on to open the wildly popular, Girl & the Goat restaurant in Chicago, which was nominated last year for “Best New Restaurant” by the James Beard Foundation.

This recipe is from her new cookbook, “Girl in the Kitchen” (Chronicle Books), of which I received a review copy late last year. The book spotlights her signature rustic cuisine with Mediterranean and Asian influences.

Unlike some ragus, which take hours to cook, “Apple-Pork Ragu with Pappardelle” is quite quick to make. It’s a powerhouse, too, with the sweetness of apples playing off the richness of pork and bacon, and the saltiness of capers. Ladle over homemade fresh paparadelle or most any store-bought dried pasta. (I used orechiette.)

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Chef Richard Reddington’s New Glam Pizza Joint, Celebrating Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup & More

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Not your typical pizza parlor. Redd Wood is glam and whimsical. (Photo by Nick Vasilopoulos)

Redd Wood Opens in Yountville

Acclaimed Chef Richard Reddington of Redd in Yountville has opened his latest venture — Redd Wood, a casual Wine Country pizzeria, located just up the block from his other restaurant.

The chic looking space was created by St. Helena interior designer, Erin Martin of Erin Martin Design. In her first restaurant project ever, she’s created a look that’s rustic yet chic with unfinished stone, steel, glass, wood, mismatched chairs and intriguing salvaged objects.

“So much of the Yountville area is about serious food and wine experiences,” Reddington said in a statement. “With Redd Wood, I want to create an entirely different ambiance.”

A wood-fired pizza from Redd Wood. (Photo by Nick Vasilopoulos)

Take a seat inside or out to enjoy wood-fired pizzas such as prosciutto cotto, Brussels sprouts, tellagio and red onion ($14), and pastas such as lamb bolognese, arancini and tapenade ($18). A dedicated charcuterie room turns out house-cured prosciutto and salumi.

Enjoy Prize-Winning Taipei Beef Noodle Soup

How popular is beef noodle soup in Taiwan?

Consider that more than 168 contestants battled over burners last year in the Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival cook-off.

But you don’t have to get on a plane to try this street food favorite.Chef Hou Chung-sheng with his prize-winning beef noodle soup. (Photo courtesy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office)

Chef Hou Chun-sheng, the 2011 winner of the spicy beef noodle soup category, will be serving up samples of his specialty at two upcoming events in San Francisco.

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The Cellar Door in Santa Cruz Ushers in the Lunar New Year

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Chef Alex Ong plates a dish of fresh bamboo shoots at the Cellar Door.

This past Sunday, the Cellar Door restaurant at Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz welcomed the “Year of the Dragon” with a bang, thanks to Chef Alexander Ong of San Francisco’s Belenut, who prepared a masterful banquet fit for celebrating.

Indeed, my Santa Cruz cohorts half-joked that it was the first — and most likely only — time they could indulge in stellar Chinese food in their city, which unfortunately lacks some of the cultural and epicurean diversity of its larger neighboring cities to the north.

I was lucky to be invited as a guest at the 134-person dinner, which sold out in only a few days. It was the first guest chef dinner held there. But Proprietor Randall Grahm hopes to make it a monthly event at this quirky tasting room-restaurant that completely reflects his irreverent personality.

The "host'' (or shall I say "toast'') at the door.

An occasion for celebrating.

A New Year's dragon vies for space with a spaceship.

The tables are set for a festive time.

Festive red tablecloths covered long tables that were arranged in a serpentine in the front and rear of the space. The dinner was made up of (lucky) eight courses and served family-style.

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“The Sorcerer’s Apprentices” and a Food Gal Giveaway

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My favorite read of 2011.

These hectic days, I don’t get much time to just sit down for hours with a book.

So, when I do, it better be a darn good read. Or else.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentices” (Free Press) is just that.

It’s a riveting read — and the best non-fiction book I came across last year.

Author Lisa Abend, Time magazine’s correspondent in Spain, received unprecedented access to the fabled El Bulli restaurant in Roses, Spain before its Chef-Proprietor Ferran Adria closed it to much fanfare last year. The result is a book that immerses you in the behind-the-scenes awe, tension, strain and exhilaration experienced by the stagiares or apprentices who worked in the kitchen there.

Unlike other restaurants, where kitchen apprentices usually are culinary school students or recent graduates, the stagiares at El Bulli were the experienced cream of the crop, having already worked their way up at such stellar establishments as the French Laundry in Yountville, Per Se in New York, Alinea in Chicago and the Fat Duck in the United Kingdom.

If you thought trying to snag a reservation at El Bulli was impossible, the odds of attaining an apprenticeship there were even more astronomical. In the last years it was open, the restaurant would routinely field 3,000 applications annually for just 32 available intern positions.

And those that garnered the golden ticket that allowed them to work in what was generally regarded as the best restaurant in the world? They paid their own way to Spain to spend six months toiling 14 hours a day on their feet — for no pay.

With beautifully detailed prose, Abend really gets inside the heads of these chosen few to show exactly what it’s like to be an apprentice in this highly demanding, pioneering kitchen. Some of the revelations will definitely surprise — such as the fact that the interns, who labored day after day to create painstakingly complex components, never get to taste any of the completed dishes they work on. Or the fact that one of the first tasks these skilled and talented chefs are assigned is to clean, one by one, all the rocks that make up the pathway to the restaurant.

For anyone who has ever wanted to dine at El Bulli or wondered what it takes to work at a restaurant of that caliber, this book is a must-read that you won’t be able to put down.

Contest: The paperback version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentices” goes on sale Feb. 7. But one Food Gal reader will get a chance to win a free copy of the book. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight Feb. 4. Winner will be announced Feb. 6.

How to win?

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