Notes from Mexico City
Dinner Most of my favorite Mexico City restaurants serve late lunch, the main meal of the day, and not dinner but Maximo in Colonia Roma, within walking distance of The Red Tree House, is the exception for a blow out meal in a bistrot that has been called the Chez Panisse of Mexico City. It’s [...]
Read More →Marla Bakery
How can a $6 plate of toast in a bakery/cafe in the depths of the Outer Richmond arouse such universal love? I guess because it is perfect. At the new brick-and-mortar Marla Bakery, across the street from the Balboa Theater, extravagantly thick slices of ciabatta, sourdough batard and levain are lightly toasted in the wood [...]
Read More →French Roots–an introduction to the cookbook by Jean-Pierre Moulle and Denise Lurton Moulle
“Alors, we are having our picnic now,” announced Denise. She unfurled a table cloth over some wet logs in the middle of a meadow in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. Jean-Pierre pulled bread, charcuterie, cheese and fruit from a wicker basket. The Americans, kids and adults in sweat shirts and jackets, actually thought it [...]
Read More →The Slanted Door–an Introduction to Charles Phan’s new cookbook
On my first visit to the Slanted Door sixteen years ago, then on a fairly scruffy block of Valencia in the Mission by now closed Bombay Bazaar, I fell hard for the Charles Phan experience. I had slurped noodles at hole in the wall pho joints and wolfed down the best sandwiches in the world [...]
Read More →The Lunch Box–a film
In the opening minute of The Lunch Box, we see a Bombay housewife hurriedly send her young daughter off to school in a tuk tuk, then rush to the stove where she pulls off the regulator of a pressure cooker, twists off the top, dabs her palm with the creamy orange curry inside, and licks. [...]
Read More →A visit to the US Open
The US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York, is one of the biggest, richest, brashest tennis tournaments in the world. Players, especially lesser known ones, who advance into the later rounds gleefully find themselves on the tennis world map. Kei Nishikori? Marin Cilic? Local teenager CiCi Bellis? Up and comer Madison Keyes? Now I’ll pay [...]
Read More →Maruya
When Alice Waters, whom I consider one of the world’s great eaters, is asked about her favorite restaurants (other than Chez Panisse, of course), she always gives the same answer: “I go to restaurants where I am known.” By this she doesn’t mean getting a good table. She wants something deeper, both a kitchen and [...]
Read More →Kin Khao
A remarkable new Thai restaurant, Kin Khao, has opened in a hotel on the border of Union Square and the Tenderloin. Yes, readers, once again, I’m in love. Of course we fall the hardest when we don’t expect it to happen, and I had my doubts about Kin Khao’s much-heralded opening. First of all, Kin [...]
Read More →Great China
The Peking duck pilgrimage to Berkeley begins again with the re-opening of Great China, the beloved, 28-year-old northern Chinese restaurant that closed after a fire in 2012. Finally the restaurant has started serving again in new quarters, a sleek, architect-designed space on the corner of Bancroft and Oxford, a block from the old place. Everything [...]
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