Category Archives: Seafood

Good Eats in Australia

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VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA — Traveling opens your eyes, as well as your taste buds.

My recent week-long trip to Australia, sponsored by Boundary Bend Ltd., was no exception.

Both in Melbourne and throughout the outlying countryside of the state of Victoria, there were so many wonderful new ingredients and dishes to revel in. Here are some of the highlights:

Prahran Market:

I could have stayed for hours meandering through the stalls at the famous Prahran Market, Australia’s oldest continuously running central marketplace. The covered marketplace, teeming with produce, seafood, fresh pasta, flower, soap and olive oil vendors, originated in 1864 at a smaller locale in Melbourne, and moved to its present location in 1881.

If there weren’t those pesky agriculture and customs laws (for good reason, of course), I would have brought back to the Bay Area armloads of the mesmerizing finger limes (above and below photos). The fragrance alone is intoxicating — beautiful enough to be a perfume that you’d want to dab on all the time. It smells of kaffir lime, with a bright floral, refreshing and very complex nose.

What’s really fascinating, though, is that this lime doesn’t have much juice at all. Instead, give one a squeeze and out will come these little globules that look for all the world like caviar. Damian Pike, a wild mushroom specialist, whose stand was selling these, explained that the fruit can be used in marmalade and all manner of dishes. One taste of the chewy globules that burst with tangy delight and I was dreaming of them atop sashimi.

Pike’s stand also sold fresh pepper berries, which I had never seen before, having only been used to the dried variety that fills my pepper grinder at home.

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Fish Tacos Still Rule

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With all the hub-bub lately about the spicy Korean short rib taco craze, you might think fish tacos have gone passé.

Not so.

In fact, two San Francisco Bay Area spots have rolled out new, inventive versions just in time for summer.

First up, Gott’s Roadside (the restaurant formerly known as Taylor’s Automatic Refresher) is serving up fish tacos — poke-style. Yes, three crispy tacos ($13.99) are filled with Hawaiian-style raw, marinated ahi tuna cubes, avocado, green cabbage, cilantro and spicy mayo.

Gott’s also features a new “B-Side” menu — sly, you-have-to-ask-for-it selections on a special list that you have to specifically request at the counter or follow @gottsroadside on Twitter for updates on that particular menu.

A few of the recent secret menu items have included the “Big Tasty” (buttermilk fried chicken with house-made ranch dressing, aioli, melted Swiss cheese and bacon on a butter-toasted egg bun) and the “Fish Royale Sandwich” (fresh mahi-mahi, tartar sauce, Romaine, and American cheese on a toasted bun).

The “B-Side” items are meant to showcase fresh-picked ingredients from Gott’s new garden in St. Helena, which will be used at all Gott’s locations. Those include heirloom tomatoes, herbs, shallots, squashes, potatoes and peppers.

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New Happy Hour, Good-For-You Granola, Seafood Fund-Raiser & More

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On the Peninsula:

If you haven’t yet checked out Junnoon’s swank revamped cocktail lounge, now’s the time to do so at the downtown Palo Alto restaurant’s new extended “Happy Hour,” every Thursday, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Starting June 17, the 15-seat lounge rolls out its new “Street Food Meets Bollywood Beats”, which will feature DJ tunes, two-for-one cocktails and Indian street food-inspired bites. Sip a Mumbai Mojito while nibbling on “Darjeeling Steamed Wontons” ($9) or “Tangy Semolina Shells” ($8).

June 25-26, Marché in Menlo Park will spotlight Pacific seafood on its menu with proceeds to benefit the Gulf Coast cleanup.

The four-course menu will include the likes of “Confit of Half Moon Bay Albacore with Olive Oil Pudding and Kalamata Granité” and “Hawaiian Mero Bass and Local Abalone with Porcinis.”

Price is $80 per person with an additional $59 for wine pairings. Ten dollars from each dinner sold will be donated to the Louisiana Bayoukeepers, members of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which have been the first line of defense against this oil leak disaster. Donations will help pay for clean-up supplies, protective gear, emergency office space and food for volunteers.

The Asian Chefs Association, which will be cooking up a storm at the James Beard House in New York on Oct. 4, will be preparing a preview dinner June 27 at Chef Chu’s restaurant in Los Altos.

The five-course dinner will give you a taste of what the chefs have up their toques even if you can’t make it to New York for the real deal. Dishes include crab Napoleon with Kobe beef and foie gras butter sauce by Jackson Yu of Live Sushi Bar in San Francisco; and kaffir lime broiled scallop with asparagus, gobo and corn pudding by Scott Whitman of Sushi Ran in Sausalito.

Price is $100 per person. Reservations must be made in advance by calling (510) 883-9386 or emailing chau@chilipepperevents.com.

Galaxy Granola of San Rafael, which touts its healthful granola as having about 70 percent less fat than its competitors, wants you to trade in your fatty foods for good-for-you ones.

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Million-Dollar Mac ‘n’ Cheese

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OK, not quite. But this is as far from a box of Kraft as it gets.

We’re talking mac ‘n’ cheese with lobster. Lots of lobster.

And it’s $59.

OK, did you pick yourself off the floor yet? Did you close your jaw back up? Pop your eyes back into their sockets?

This is the famous Port Clyde Lobster Mac & Cheese from the Hancock Gourmet Lobster Co. that’s already been touted in the pages of the New York Times; and O, the Oprah Magazine.

The company was founded in 2000 in Maine by Cal Hancock, whose grandmother founded a lobster restaurant in 1946 in Ogunquit, Maine, which still remains in the Hancock family. The company now offers a wide variety of gourmet lobster and seafood products.

I was fortunate enough to receive samples recently of the Lobster Mac & Cheese, an extremely decadent rendition of the classic comfort dish.

To say that it’s rich is like saying Lady Gaga is an eensy bit flashy. But then again, there is not only cheddar mixed into the shell pasta, but mascarpone. Plus, the topping of panko bread crumbs gets a good dose of herb butter, lemon zest and Parmesan.

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When Did Eating Get So Complex?

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It’s complicated.

Boy, is it.

When it comes to eating these days, it seems like it’s never been harder to try to do the right thing.

This past weekend at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a bevy of journalists, scientists, environmentalists, farmers, chefs, and yours truly gathered together for the annual “Cooking For Solutions” event that’s dedicated to promoting sustainability on land, sea and air.

Chef Suzanne Goin of Lucques in Los Angeles was honored as “Chef of the Year” by the aquarium. And Chef Rick Bayless of Chicago’s Topolobampo and Frontera Grill was named “Educator of the Year.”

They were joined at the event by a roster of big-name chefs, including Rick Moonen of RM Seafood in Las Vegas; Kevin Gillespie of Woodfire Grill in Atlanta and “Top Chef” fame; Gerald Hirigoyen of Piperade and Bocadillos, both in San Francisco; Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco; and Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery + Cafe in Boston.

The event was a festive affair with gourmet eats and drinks — all sustainable, organic or biodynamic, of course.  But it was also a sobering affair as experts weighed in on how our eating choices have affected the planet.

Food for thought:

Over the past 50 years, we’ve gone from consuming 10 kilos of fish per person annually to 17 kilos.

Half of our seafood consumption now comes from aquaculture, not wild species. Eighty percent of the fresh and frozen salmon consumed in the United States is farmed. Seventy-five percent of the shrimp consumed in the United States is farmed. A great majority of our farmed seafood is produced in Asia, where standards may be less stringent than in other parts of the world.

Most farmed fish are fed pellets made of fish meal. Although carp and tilapia can subsist on plant-based diets, about 50 percent of carp that’s farmed and more than 80 percent of tilapia that’s farmed end up being fed fish meal.

Fish farms in the ocean can lead to pollution, disease and escapement of these fish into the wild. But experts say that even on-land, enclosed fish farms have escapement issues with tiny fish making their way into drains.

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