Starting a Farmers’ Market
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook San Francisco to its core and put the city into a funk. Tourism, our number one industry, collapsed. The Civic Center, the nexus of government and the arts, shut down as one building after another closed for retro-fitting. Transportation was a mess. Though the Bay Bridge reopened a month [...]
Read More →Hi Lo Northern California BBQ
BBQ eludes me. Even as a committed omnivore, BBQ never took hold of my culinary longings until I went to Hi Lo, the sleek, airy, unabashedly San Francisco style barbecue place across the street from sister restaurant Hog and Rocks. There, I fell in love. I think Hi Lo is the best restaurant to open [...]
Read More →Food and Farm Film Fest
Food, Justice & Art: Shorts Program Saturday, March 30, 4 p.m. Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco For someone who thinks she’s seen it all, especially when it comes to food, this program of ten short documentaries opened my eyes. The film makers took me to places I’ve never been: a cooperative farm in [...]
Read More →b. Patisserie
I am obsessed with b. Patisserie, a new bakery/cafe in my lower Pacific Heights neighborhood. I sit at the computer inventing excuses to walk over. When I’m out, and pass within two blocks of its pearly white facade and big front windows, I start talking to myself. If I dropped in every time, I’d be [...]
Read More →Ramen Shop
Leave it to Chez Panisse alums to turn a ramen shop into a farm to table experience. The noodles, made daily on site, possess provocative chewiness. Ramen Shop broths, cooked entirely from scratch, conjoin clarity and depth. The pristine garnishes–pork, egg, greens–are radiant with color and flavor. This is ramen at its purest yet most [...]
Read More →West Maui
Kaanapali, with its perfect year round beach weather and gentle ocean, always strikes me as a big parking lot in paradise. Annually, for 18 years, we stayed in a low rise condo at the Maui-Kaanapali Villas in a unit much enhanced by a long, uninhabited beach on one side–and grandpa next door. Now, ten years [...]
Read More →Hakkasan
Cecilia Chiang, who in 1968 mounted the first upscale, northern Chinese restaurant in America called The Mandarin, and ran it for 23 years, perpetually complains about the dearth of Chinese restaurants in San Francisco that have gracious service, appointments and decor. So when Hakkasan, the new, high-end Chinese restaurant from London opened, we went right [...]
Read More →Chez Panisse Downstairs
A revolution of sorts swept though the bastion of California cooking when long time chefs Jean-Pierre Moulle and David Tanis left their alternating bi-annual posts of downstairs dining room chef at Chez Panisse. Many of the restaurant’s loyal patrons–the Chez Panisse family–were concerned. Jean-Pierre Moulle, a 37 year veteran, represented the institutional memory of the [...]
Read More →The Corner Store
The Corner Store, an ebullient new pub and restaurant located on the partially hidden southwest corner of Masonic and Geary, has deep local roots. One of the two owners, the chef and a multitude of investors grew up in San Francisco and hung out together since they were in kindergarten. The eventual crew worked around [...]
Read More →California Olive Ranch Olive Oil
For the first time, in my opinion, a California grower is producing extra virgin olive oil that is comparable in price, quality and availability to the extra virgin oils produced in Greece, Spain and Italy. Less than ten years ago California Olive Ranch started planting high density olive trees that look and act like grapevines. [...]
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