Canapes of Wagyu tartare topped with Wagyu “caviar” at Gozu.
Nowadays, there are many restaurants where you can enjoy a Wagyu steak. But at Gozu in San Francisco, you can sink your teeth into smoky skewers that spotlight both familiar and unusual specific cuts of the prized Japanese beef.
When Chef-Owner Marc Zimmerman opened his hearth-centered restaurant in 2019, it was thought to be the only restaurant in the United States to directly import from Japan full cuts of top-grade A5 Wagyu. That amounts to a whopping 750 pounds in one shot.
That gives him the ability to use nearly every part of the outrageously marbled beef, often in audacious ways, including burning the bones as charcoal and fermenting lean cuts to make shoyu.
Japanese A5 Wagyu being aged at Gozu.
You can experience it for yourself with a $125 four-course menu or a $225 tasting menu. Or opt for the a la carte Stickbar menu that allows you to try individual skewers, priced from $14 to $55, depending on the cut.
Olive oil-poached steelhead trout at The Elderberry House.
When Ethan de Graaff was just 13 years old, he knew there was no other choice but to become a chef.
Now, the head chef of The Elderberry House in Oakhurst, he explains with a chuckle, “Once my dad started using mayo as a sauce on everything, I knew what I had to do.”
Today, he oversees the menu at the fine-dining restaurant at the Old World Chateau du Sureau, a 9-acre oasis in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not far from Yosemite National Park. He works in conjunction with Culinary Director Chris Flint, the former chef de cuisine at New York’s storied Eleven Madison Park and former executive chef of Michelin-starred Maude in Los Angeles.
Also tasked with overseeing sister property First & Oak in Solvang, Flint was hired in late 2022. Since his arrival, he’s brought back the restaurant’s tasting menu and leaned into sourcing locally even more.
Last week, when I was invited in as an overnight guest of the Relais & Chateau property, I had a chance to experience the roll-out of his first full new menu.
Chateau du Sureau.Keys to your guest room.
You might say my visit was more than two decades in the making. Way back when, while staying at another property near Yosemite, my husband and I had made dinner reservations at The Elderberry House. Unfortunately, it happened to be one of those precarious winters with such a deluge of snow that we were alarmed to see a snow plow had gone off the side of the road. Because the onslaught kept forcing the closure of the roads, we ended up canceling our reservations, fearing that even if we made it to the restaurant, we might never be able to get out again.
Finally making it here was definitely worth the wait. Imagine pulling up to a turreted estate in the European countryside, and you get an idea of what Chateau du Sureau is like.
Dining on beef tenderloin tips and gnocchi overlooking the river.
Idleyld Park, OR — It’s here that you’ll find the proverbial secluded cabin in the woods.
Albeit one with history, famous guests, a fabulous wine list, and homemade pies that truly tempt.
The Steamboat Inn sits perched on a bluff above the North Umpqua River in the middle of the Umpqua National Forest. It is a true mecca for fly-fishing, especially for steelhead.
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn stayed here to do just that, as did Jack Hemingway. Just look for the framed black and white photos of them hanging in the lobby.
Step inside the bar-lounge-library to find a map of the world with pins affixed to indicate where guests have hailed from. Indeed, they’ve come from every state in the United States, as well as every continent, even Antarctica, when a group of scientists stayed here seeking some R&R.
The Steamboat Inn.The view from the deck of a cabin.
From Roseberg, it’s a 38-mile drive to get here, a road flanked by majestic towering trees that take your breath away.
Toad-in-a-hole — one of the many, many offerings at Sunday brunch at Be.Steak.A.
Our strategy?
To divide and conquer — and not end up looking and feeling like a beached whale and her mate at the end of it.
Our mission?
To spend last Sunday morning indulging in the upscale buffet brunch at Campbell’s Be.Steak.A.
Yes, it was an assignment that my husband and I accepted eagerly after Chef-Owner Jeffrey Stout invited us in as his guests.
The brunch, which the restaurant started offering about a year ago, is available Sundays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at $115 per person. Seatings are available both in the dining room and outside on the patio.
The dining room just before opening on Sunday morning.The buffet’s cold dishes.Four types of roe to top blini.
When it comes to buffets, everyone has a game plan. Some people like to try a little bit of every single thing. Some key in on the most expensive dishes first and foremost. Many keep piling their plates over and over until deep remorse sets in as the waistband digs in mercilessly.
Poached otoro or medium fatty tuna belly and foie gras blanketed by slices of raw porcini at Mas.
Ashland, OR. — Tucked away in a secluded alley off the main downtown drag, Mas is not a place that one just happens to stumble upon.
But seek it out, you definitely should.
Named one of the New York Times’ “favorite 50 restaurants” in 2022 and a semi-finalist for “Best Chef Northwest and Pacific” in 2023, this $195 per person, tasting menu-only restaurant is all of 16 seats.
The best seats, of course, are at the chef’s counter, where I dined earlier this month as a guest of Travel Oregon. It’s where you can watch Chef Josh Dorcak and his small staff prepare each course with precision.
Chef Josh Dorcak putting the finishing touches on dishes at the chef’s counter.
It’s rather astonishing to realize that the galley kitchen behind the counter, about the size of one in a modest home, is all they use, too. There’s all of one or two induction burners, a combi oven that can cook with steam or hot air, and a fish aging refrigerator off to the side. That’s pretty much it.
