Category Archives: Seafood

New Seafood Online Retail Store and A Food Gal Giveaway

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Fresh Loch Duart salmon delivered to my door that I cooked up on a grill pan.

Family-owned Anderson Seafoods, Inc. of Orange, Calif., which has supplied premium seafood to retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, has launched an online retail store for consumers.

Imagine both fresh and frozen fish sent to your door via overnight delivery.

Now, you’re probably thinking that shipping fish in doesn’t sound very PC, but Anderson Seafoods has teamed up with UPS to offer carbon neutral shipping to help mitigate that. You can purchase carbon neutral offsets that UPS will match at a very affordable 20 cents per package delivered.

In this day and age of heightened concerns about where our seafood comes from, though, I only wish the Anderson Web site had more detailed information on where some of the types of seafood come from. For instance, it sells “fresh Atlantic salmon,” but doesn’t mention that it’s farm-raised. It also sells Chilean Seabass, even though this species remains on the “avoid list” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Guide because it is still considered overfished.

Recently, I did have a chance to sample some of the seafood products, including fresh Loch Duart salmon ($22.01 for 12 ounces), billed as a sustainable farm-raised salmon from Scotland; fresh ahi ($28.50 for 12 ounces); and frozen mahi mahi ($24.11 for 12 ounces). The fish comes vacuum-sealed in insulated containers.

The fish is vacuum-packed for delivery.

The quality is definitely high. For instance, the beautiful piece of salmon was fresh and rich tasting, and arrived sans any pesky pin bones at all, which was quite impressive. I also tried one of Anderson’s frozen entrees — salmon potstickers ($12.38 for 14 ounces), which were very plump with a substantial filling of salmon, water chestnuts and panko bread crumbs.

Salmon potstickers crisped up in a pan till golden.

Contest: If you’d like to try some of the seafood, I’m happy to be able to give away a $125 gift card to Anderson Seafoods. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight May 28. The winner will be announced May 30.

How to win?

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A Return Visit to Nombe in San Francisco

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Chicken skin skewers at Nombe.

It’s never easy replacing a chef who has been with a restaurant since inception, especially one as talented as Nick Balla.

Balla opened the Japanese izakaya-style restaurant, Nombe in San Francisco, but departed at the end of last year. But not before creating quite the impression. Balla, who visits Japan regularly, is such an astute study of traditional Japanese cuisine that his techniques even impressed a group of visiting Japanese chefs at a conference in St. Helena last year.

Balla, who also lived in Budapest for three years,  is now at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, where’s he’s doing his take on Eastern European food.

Replacing him at Nombe is Vince Scofield, who was most recently at Ebb & Flow in San Francisco. He also was the opening executive chef at Kabuki Kitchen in San Francisco. In addition to Nombe, he’s also involved with Darwin Cafe and Taco Libre, both in San Francisco.

Whew, talk about a lot on his plate. But Scofield is giving it a valiant try at Nombe in the Mission District, a short drive from the Holiday Inn Civic Center San Francisco.

Recently, I was invited to be a guest at the restaurant to try his new dishes. The menu still has a wide array of small plates. Although you’ll find everything from grilled beef tongue to fried chicken livers to spicy grilled tripe, the menu is a little less progressive than it used to be.

The restaurant, a former taqueria and diner, is divided into two eclectic rooms. The back one is nightclub-dim, so definitely sit in the first room if you really want to see your food.

Taro chips with chunky edamame hummus.

Definitely have some sake, too, as the restaurant boasts more than 75 premium varieties to enjoy by the glass, flight or bottle.

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Dorie Greenspan’s Sensational Scallops

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A scallop dish that will make any day a whole lot better.

“Scallops with Caramel-Orange Sauce” should have to be registered as a mind-altering, mood-enhancing dish.

That’s because this dish from Dorie Greenspan’s “Around My French Table” (Houghton Mifflin) is guaranteed to lift your spirits, put a delirious grin on your face and give you happy feet.

That’s how incredibly delicious it is.

Stressed over your job?

Eat this dish.

Stressed about not having a job?

Eat this.

There’s magic in this dish. It’s really just seared scallops, but it’s the thick, syrupy, buttery citrus glaze that gets spooned over that makes it extraordinary. Seriously, one taste and you’ll want to pour it over everything — grilled halibut, broiled shrimp, chicken tenders, pork loin and even French toast.

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An Evening at La Mar with Freeman Winery

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At La Mar Cebicheria in San Francisco, even dessert comes with a little pisco.

The quenching, tart Pisco Sour may be the usual drink of choice at La Mar Cebicheria in San Francisco, but about once a month, the restaurant also hosts winemaker dinners.  And you know these events are guaranteed to be stellar when they’re presided over by the restaurant’s consulting wine director, Emmanuel Kemiji, a certified Master Sommelier who not only makes his own wine, but has worked with some of the best chefs in the Bay Area.

In fact, Kemiji was responsible for introducing me to one of my new favorite Pinot Noir producers — Freeman Vineyards and Winery of Sebastopol.

Freeman wines.

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for Oregon Pinot Noirs, with their more earthy profiles, rather than the jammy fruit-forwardness of so many California-style Pinots. Freeman Winery — owned by Ken and Akiko Freeman — make Pinots in that elegant style with notes of dark cherry, loamy mushroom and gravel. They are pure silky pleasure to drink.

Recently, I was invited to be a guest of the restaurant at a special dinner spotlighting Freeman wines. When the San Francisco fog gives way to warmer evenings, the wine dinners are held in the spacious back patio with its spectacular view of the Bay. But on a chilly night like this one, it took place at a long chef’s table beside the bustling kitchen.

The chef's table at La Mar is next to, but separated from, the exhibition kitchen.

La Mar is famous for its cebiches — raw seafood that’s “cooked” with citrus. But Pinots and Chardonnays typically clash with such acidic fish preparations, so there was no cebiche on our tasting menu that night. Instead, there was an amuse that paid homage — a shot glass filled with spicy, tangy, prickly cebiche-like marinade transformed into almost aperitif.

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Take Five with Chef Gaston Acurio of La Mar in San Francisco, Who Dropped Out of Law School to Cook

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Chef-Owner Gaston Acurio of La Mar. (Photo courtesy of the chef)

Chef Gaston Acurio is probably more recognized in other parts of the world than he is in the United States. But no doubt that will change in the coming years as the 43-year-old chef expands his already impressive culinary empire further in this country with his bold take on contemporary Peruvian cuisine.

Acurio, who has 32 restaurants in 14 cities around the globe from Lima to Sao Paulo to Santiago, staked his first foothold in the United States two and a half years ago when he opened the lively La Mar Cebicheria on San Francisco’s Embarcadero with its striking turquoise sea-blue decor. In August, he will open his second La Mar in the United States — this one in New York’s Madison Square Park in the former Tabla restaurant site.

Last week, when Acurio was in town to work on new dishes at La Mar San Francisco, I had a chance to sit down and talk with him about his new partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, his future plans in San Francisco, and how his politician father came to terms with the fact that his only son was not going to follow in his footsteps.

Q: Is it more challenging to open restaurants in the United States than elsewhere?

A: No, our experience with San Francisco was great. The people in San Francisco love to eat and they recognize good food. In a lot of cities, you might go out to eat before you do something else. Here, you go out to eat just to go out to eat.

People here are also very open to trying new things. It’s not like trying to start a restaurant in Italy or Paris. Nobu closed his restaurant in Paris after only one year. Parisians just don’t want to spend $150 on ethnic food because they are proud of their own food. The same is true in Italy. Those are challenging places to open restaurants.

Q: Will you open more restaurants in the United States after the New York one is up and running?

A: Of course. We are looking right now in Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami.

The presence of Peruvian food in the United States is just getting started. We have a big responsibility to do it well or else we will close the door to those who come after us.

Q: Are most Americans confused about what Peruvian food is?

A: Most are. Peruvian food has five big influences: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, African and Inca/South American. Cebiches are our flagship like sushi for the Japanese. Our stews are European-like. Our sauces are like African ones. And herbs and chilies are very important in our cuisine.

La Mar cebiche clasico made with halibut, habanero, and Peruvian corn and yam. (Photo courtesy of La Mar)

Q: With your partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you will have ‘Seafood Watch Guides’ available for the public at your restaurants and you will serve only sustainable seafood at all of your restaurants? How challenging will that be?

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