Category Archives: Going Green and Sustainable

New Columbus Farm to Fork Naturals Salumi

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New Columbus Farm to Fork Naturals Uncured Genoa Salame (foreground), Honey Roasted Turkey (center), and Uncured Fennel Salame.

With so much artisan-made, specialty salumi to be found these days, it’s easy to find yourself turning up your nose at the standard selection in the local supermarket.

San Francisco’s Columbus salumeria wants to change that mindset with its new Farm to Fork Naturals.

Founded in 1917, the company has launched a new line of products made with sustainable practices. The animals used are hormone-free. The meats are also nitrate-free, except for those that occur naturally during the curing process.

Recently, I had a chance to try samples of the new products, which are available in Sprouts grocery stores. More supermarkets are expected to carry them soon. They come pre-sliced, so they’re ready to use in a jiffy.

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Magnus Nilsson — The Chef of the Moment

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Oysters brought to the table on smoldering redwood branches at Coi in San Francisco, similar to the signature dish of scallops on smoky juniper branches at Faviken in Sweden.

The latest culinary rock star appropriately enough sports a mane of long blond hair, a scruffy beard, a too-cool aura and a laid-back cerebral nature.

If Rene Redzepi put Danish cooking on the map when his Noma restaurant in Copenhagen was named San Pelligrino’s “Best Restaurant” in the world for three years running, then Swedish sensation Magnus Nilsson of Fäviken Magasinet has only solidified the fact that Nordic cuisine’s moment has arrived with a wallop.

Nilsson, who previously cooked at three-Michelin starred L’Astrance in Paris and is a trained sommelier, took over Fäviken Magasinet in a remote, rural part of Sweden four years ago. The rather improbable restaurant is located in an isolated 24,000-acre hunting estate. Like Redzepi, Nilsson is all about cooking only with local ingredients. That may be fine in temperate California. It’s a whole ‘nother thing in the wilderness of northwestern Sweden, where the winters are beyond brutal.

Even so, Nilsson, who’s not yet 30 years old, has managed to turn this tiny, isolated 12-seat restaurant into not only one of the Top 50 in the world, but the most talked-about sensation these days in the culinary stratosphere.

Swedish sensation Magnus Nilsson cooks with Daniel Patterson of Coi.

With the launch of his first cookbook, “Fäviken” (Phaidon), he’s been bringing a taste of his innovative cuisine to the United States, including to Coi in San Francisco, where he cooked an extraordinary dinner with Chef-Proprietor Daniel Patterson on Saturday, to which I was fortunate to be invited as a guest.

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At Bushido in Mountain View, There’s More than Meets the Eye

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Bushido's very clever sushi. Can you guess what it is?

Executive Chef Isamu Kanai is a very, very clever man.

When he impishly set a small plate of nigiri sushi before my husband and I one night when we were invited to dine as guests at his downtown Mountain View restaurant, Bushido, he asked us to guess what type of fish it was.

We scrutinized the fleshy white pieces that had been crosshatched, then brushed with a sweet soy sauce and placed atop mounds of rice. We took a bite. The texture was ever so chewy, much like raw cuttlefish which it resembled. But the taste was slightly sweet.

Could it be some other type of cuttlefish we’d never had before?

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

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A Visit to the California Vineyard Nearest to the Pacific Ocean

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Mediterranean summer flatbreads to enjoy with wines at Fort Ross Vineyward's new tasting room.

Last month after three years in the making, Fort Ross Vineyard opened the doors to its brand-new tasting room in Jenner — less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean.

That also makes it the only tasting room in the newly established Fort Ross-Seaview AVA on the Sonoma Coast that was approved late last year.

It’s an appropriate location for it, given that Fort Ross, a historic Russian settlement, was where the first grapes were planted in Northern California in 1817.

Husband-and-wife, Lester and Linda Schwartz, who met as students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, started their Fort Ross Vineyard 12 years ago. The winery produces Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and the signature varietal from the Schwartz’s native land of South Africa, Pinotage. Indeed, it’s one of the few producers of Pinotage in the United States.

All in all, they produce 5,000 cases in total annually. Their winemaker is the acclaimed Jeff Pisoni. The first vintage by Pisoni, the 2009 Fort Ross Vineyard Chardonnay was chosen as one of the top 100 wines of 2011 by Wine Enthusiast.

The exterior of the tasting room.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the Schwartzs in the new tasting room, set amid redwood forests and boasting views of the ocean.

Owners Lester and Linda Schwartz, originally from South Africa.

Their personal story is as intriguing as their wines. The couple fled South Africa 40 years ago because of the political unrest during the apartheid era. They settled in the Bay Area. Linda was a pianist and classical music composer. Lester became the first South African licensed to practice law in California.

He happened to be driving up this hilly area one day when he spotted the property and just fell in love with it.

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