What I’m Eating Now, December ’13
Organic Valley Grassmilk and Organic Valley Pasture Butter Those of you who have tasted raw milk know that it is one of the great pleasures of the table. Alive and full of nuance, raw milk is palpably creamier and sweeter than typical pasteurized and homogenized milk. Tasted side by side with raw milk, pasteurized milk [...]
Read More →Shanghai House, Revisited
We are blessed with so many excellent restaurants in San Francisco that sometimes we don’t get back even to our favorites. I was reminded of this after a recent visit to tiny Shanghai House, across the street from the Balboa Theater. When I walked in I saw my last review, written in 2007, facing me [...]
Read More →Hong Kong Lounge II
Nobody handles fish and shellfish with the sensitivity, the timing and the nuanced technique of the Cantonese. Give Italians their miraculously juicy branzino baked in sea salt, and the Japanese their thrilling, animistic presentation of the raw. The Cantonese prepare the whole underwater menagerie in ways that reveal wondrous flavors and textures. No chefs do [...]
Read More →Comal
There is always room in a community for an ingredient-driven restaurant like Comal. But this Mexican cantina is particularly valuable in Berkeley because of its downtown location–a block from BART, less than a block from the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and a 15 minute walk to Zellerbach Hall. Eating pre-performance turns out to be your best [...]
Read More →What I’m Eating Now
Warm Crumb Doughnut from Bob’s On a whim, I popped into Bob’s Donuts at the absurdly early hour of 7 p.m., on the off chance of finding some freshly made, warm doughnuts. I was in luck. The cake doughnuts had just come out of the fryer and were cooling–plain, maple, cinnamon- sugar and crumb. But [...]
Read More →20th Century Cafe
After a lifetime mastering the art of Viennese and Eastern European pastry, Michelle Polzine, the talented, whimsical former pastry chef at Range and many other delectable places, has just opened her own charming little cafe in Hayes Valley, across the street from Rich Table. She raised the money to build it through a Kickstarter campaign, [...]
Read More →Hopscotch
Of the plethora of new places that have opened in Oakland, Hopscotch, a small personal restaurant in Uptown, is one of the best. In a former barbecue joint gently converted in a retro-stylish way to feel welcoming and homey, chef/owner Kyle Itani prepares a compact menu of dishes that conflate comfort and adventure. He worked [...]
Read More →Ferry Plaza Farmers Market: 20 Years of Good Taste
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake shook San Francisco to its roots and sent the city into a funk. Tourism, our number one industry, collapsed; no one would set foot in the city. The Civic Center, the nexus of government and the arts, shut down as one building after another closed for retro-fitting. Transportation was a [...]
Read More →Venice: A Tale of Two Restaurants
Every two years, Venice produces the biggest contemporary art extravaganza on the planet. La Biennale, as it is called, places hundreds of art installations from different countries at venues all over the city–in private museums, houses, churches, public buildings. The epicenter is the Arsenale, a complex of empty military buildings. Though one could easily spend [...]
Read More →Hanalei on Kauai
The town of Hanalei, on the rainy fecund north shore of Kauai, embodies the old cinematic Hawaii of our fantasies. Well, my fantasies at least, which is why, for several years now, I have been renting a small artist’s cottage found through Vacation Rentals By Owner (vrbo.com). Located on Powerhouse Road in Wainha, five miles [...]
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