Category: food commentary

FALLFEST 2006!

Rosy and I got there a little late. First, the train was super-crowded with people going to Fleet Week and Stanford freshman going to do some scavenger hunt thing, so it arrived in San Francisco sixteen minutes late. Then there were no cabs (and a long line of people waiting from them). When we finally got a cab, the traffic on the Embarcadero was ridiculous because of (again) Fleet Week.

But we did make it, albeit a half hour after it started. Thankfully, no one had run out of food yet. YET. I think the exhibitors hadn’t really planned how much the event had grown, because they were running out of food and wine much earlier than last year.

What were my favorite things?

Pickled grapes with home-cured boar salumi. (from… ?)
Roasted peaches with chevre on crostini. (from Solstice)

Both of these things were AWESOME and are totally recreatable! Eddie, are you listening? (Well, no, he’s in Italy right now, but hopefully he’ll read this when he gets back.) The pickled grape/salumi thing was… wow, just incredible. Wish I could remember where it was from!

Another good appetizer-recreation was a fig and (I think) brie on nut bread. Really tasty, but I can’t remember the specifics of the dish. ): This is why I should have taken notes at the event.

A dessert/wine combination that I very much enjoyed was a brandy winecake with a delicious orange moscato.

My favorite from last year, Wili’s Wine Bar, came back with risotto? topped with oxtail. It wasn’t actually risotto, but it was some sort of goopy rice thing. I happen to like oxtail, but one of my friends found the texture bizarre. It was a little disappointing after last year’s triumph, in my opinion.

What was the big trend this year? Gazpacho. And you know what? I didn’t think any of them were great. Last year, I remember one restaurant offering four different gazpachos, each with a different heirloom tomato as its centerpiece. Those were simple, clean, and wonderful. This year, the gazpachos offered were just… trying too hard.

The weirdest thing I tried was from the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay. It was a cylinder of Dungeness crab salad, topped with a spoonful of CELERY ICE CREAM and a potato chip fried in olive oil. It was bizarre. From there, Rosy and I went to One Market and got Dungeness crab cakes with saffron aioli. Rosy’s comment was, “This tastes more like food and less like an experiment.”

I didn’t try many wines this year. A Sauvignon-Blanc from somewhere fairly forgettable, the orange moscato, a merlot fom Irony Vineyards, and champagne from Gloria Ferrer. POM was serving “POM-tinis” which had a ton of vodka in them. I got one even though I hate the “-tini” naming convention. I did not finish it.

The cheddar from the Spring Hill Jersey Cheese Company was WONDERFUL. I also enjoyed all the very feet-y cheese from the Marin French Cheese Company. My favorite (if I recall correctly) was the Schloss, which the website describes as “replete with delicate naughtiness.”

Will I go again next year? Hell yes.

I was really hoping I’d find some fallout from the newly released Michelin ratings for the San Francisco Bay Area. People are getting pretty het up about the whole thing.

The San Francisco Chronicle says, “OMG they just don’t get us. We’re better than New York!”

“I’m disappointed by not getting two stars,” said La Folie’s Roland Passot, who has a four-star rating from The Chronicle but got just one from Michelin. “I was not expecting to get three stars, but I was hoping to get two. I don’t know how they judged.

“Some of the one-stars have no tablecloths and people waiting in line outside. I know we’re better than those restaurants,” Passot said.

The Chronicle’s restaurant reviewer says, “The French Laundry is TOO GOOD.”

Maybe we should blame it on the French Laundry. I wonder if our restaurants are being handicapped because it’s much better than any of the other restaurants here and the three stars in New York, including Per Se.

eGulleteers weigh in with mixed reactions.

I’ll bite. After living in San Francisco for a number of years, I was eagerly awaiting the announcement, and to be honest, it left me extremely apathetic to the whole thing. I don’t mean to discredit those who have earned their stars (and congrats go out to you!) but the whole Michelin Guide seems to me at least, to be a bit lost here in America.

But for the ultimate explosion, we turn to Joy at Confessions of a Restaurant Whore.

All I can say is: What the fuck?

I have been waiting for this announcement with the anticipation of a virgin on prom night. Sadly, like the aforementioned, I have ended up with nothing but the disappointing knowledge that the real thing can never live up to the fantasy.

Range, an excellent restaurant, is totally worthy of it’s one star, but why then why no Delfina? Why no Zuni? And how do you put Range and The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton in the same category? The Ritz should have two at least, in my opinion. They are making some bad ass yums over there. And Bushi-tei? Really? Because I just don’t see it, folks.

Don’t even get me started on Michael Mina’s two stars. I just about puked on my keyboard reading that shit.

Fabulously over-the-top. I love it.

ETA: I forgot to check Yelp. They’ve got a big thread about it. It basically comes down to, “Michelin sucks, and our reviews here at Yelp are much better!”

I spent this last weekend at Ani-Magic in Lancaster (warning: exceptionally ugly website). The con was pretty lame, but hanging out with my friends and being costumed dorks was plenty fun. Lancaster is… well, calling it a pit is being pretty generous. One of my roommates brought a rice cooker and made onigiri each morning. We were well-fed, which was awesome, because the only things within walking distance of the hotel were a 7-11 and a Carl’s Jr.

Next weekend is FallFest! I’m really looking forward to this- last year was a blast. Food and wine and food and food and wine and chocolate and (hopefully) that lotion I really like but is way too expensive and Gray Goose and even more food. Oh, and another Riedel wine glass. (:

Avast, me hearties! Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, if ye haven’t already been accosted by an ARRRRRRRR.

Check out this wedding cake. I imagine Lydia wants one.

Finally, here’s some news from Britain: Jamie Oliver tries to instate healthy food in school cafeterias. Mothers oppose this and bring fast-food to the schools, because they fear getting healthy food once a day will make the children “picky.” Jamie gets mad.

Damn, I started writing a new post yesterday, and then my laptop switched off unexpectedly. And of course, since the Blogger auto-save function is a POS, I lost the post. Crapola.

I made guacamole again last night. Zed had a bunch of avocados that were heading into overripe territory. I think I may need to edit the recipe to specify white onions. I don’t really know if there’s much of a difference between white and yellow onions, but I use yellow (because they’re cheaper), and my guac is very very onion-y. J uses white and his is less onion-tastic. Not sure if there’s a correlation there, but maybe. Who knows.

I’m going over to J and Barbara May’s tonight to visit the li’l one. Last time I saw him (not that long ago, I swear), he was just starting to crawl. Now, after a trip to Michigan, he’s pulling himself up onto things! Amazing! Must be something in the air up there. I need to sit Kiddo down and have a talk with him about how he needs to keep crawling for a while and not immediately start walking. He doesn’t want to end up like his Aunt Sarah who has no concept of left and right.

Yes, yes, neglecting the blog. Nope, haven’t made anything new (or at all, I think) since the guac two weeks ago.

R☆ moved the What’s Open Now sites over to India so he could have these awesome URLs:
http://whatsopen.in/cupertino/
http://whatsopen.in/mountain_view/
I have a bunch of hours for the business district in Palo Alto, but I haven’t typed them up yet.

Chicken feet are not for me. Or at least, not the way they prepare them at Canton Delights, the local dim sum place. I went there with R☆ last weekend. We didn’t order a ton, so it was pretty cheap. We spent $15 on five dishes. The sesame balls (really, what I wanted to go for) were tasty. The fried taro dumplings were very good. The vegetable dumplings were pretty mediocre (when I order something marked “vegetable,” I expect more than mushrooms and tofu). The pork buns were satisfying. They had very good tea. I would go back there.

Let’s see… the weekend before that, my friends TeapotGirl and Barbequed (her little sister) came to visit. We went over to Cupertino Village (aka that big Asian shopping center with the 99 Ranch) and ate at the Korean Tofu House. It was a bit pricey, but good. Kind of 50/50 on whether I’d go back- I think I could find the same quality for cheaper nearby. I hear there are some really good places in Sunnyvale. I should eat more Korean food. I don’t get it often, but every time I do, I’m happy.

I made lentil soup last night. It was super-tasty. Food disappears a lot faster when there are three other people around. It cost me $11 to make a ton of soup, but I’ll probably only get two or three meals out of it instead of six. Things to think about, I guess.

Last night I finally started setting up the kitchen a little bit. I unpacked my dishes, glasses, and favorite pots and pans (my awesome crepe/omelette pan, cast iron skillet and French oven, and a medium sized pot good for boiling one to two servings of pasta). I’m trying to go light on the pots and pans, because even though our kitchen is nice, we still don’t have a ton of space.

Which means that for the moment, the pantry is in the garage. I filled up a shelving unit with cans and the like. If there’s enough room in the kitchen once everything’s in place, I’ll move it indoors, but for now, well, at least it’s out of boxes.

My microwave is way too big for this house. That’s kind of okay, since I did get it for free. Zed’s is small, but it’s also old (ie. a rotary dial).

I haven’t found all my favorite cookbooks yet (so many, many boxes). I’m trying to cut down on the mount of space I’ll be monopolizing on the bookcases downstairs. It’s hard! I unpacked a bunch of books about food/cooking last night and am debating whether to bring them in or not.

Last night R☆ and I went out to collect restaurant hours for the new website. R☆ runs mv-hours (server currently down because of the move), which is a big listing of all the places in downtown Mountain View that have food. Now that we’ve moved to Cupertino, he’s started up cu-hours. There’s not much there yet. We still have a lot of data to collect. We haven’t found many non-chain restaurants yet, which is kind of sad.

Tomorrow, I’m going up to the city. There’s a nerd convention (otherwise known as Anime Overdose) and then dinner at Trader Vic’s with a bunch of friends.

Ysabel‘s in Wyoming. She’s got two or three days left. I’m super-glad my move only consisted of fifteen miles, not across the entire damn country.

Last night, for the first time ever, I ordered a pizza for dinner. Well, that’s not entirely true. I made the call once when we were at D&D. But I have never had a pizza delivered to just me. It’s a new world of laziness.

I ate two pieces and the free salad (Greek) that came with it. The rest is in my fridge. It’s pretty awesome. Although if I do this again, I will have to specify that when I say I want a pesto pizza, that means I want pesto only and no tomato sauce on my crust.

I think I should have time next week to whip up some goodies for Fanime. I’m just thinking basics like cookies (chocolate chip and oatmeal cherry [I have cherries, I don’t have raisins]) and maybe that multigrain bread that I liked so much.

For some reason, searching “braisin whatever” on Google no longer works. I used to use that search all the time to find my recipes. Like “braisin tiramisu” doesn’t give me hits on this site anymore. Argh.

In other news, I continue to suck mightily at omelettes. I don’t know why I keep trying. I don’t even like them that much. Scrambles for the win!