Thirty years ago, when most of the Napa Valley was still mostly farms and Michelin-worthy restaurants were practically non-existent, two men had the foresight to build a French-style, fine-dining restaurant on a magnificent hillside in Rutherford.

Robert Harmon, who had developed condo resorts in Hawaii and Lake Tahoe, teamed with legendary French restaurateur Claude Rouas, who owned L’Etoile in San Francisco, to create the restaurant at Auberge du Soleil. Four years later, the intimate 50-room inn was constructed. Now, the company, Auberge Resorts, operates a total of eight luxurious properties throughout the United States and Mexico.

The restaurant now boasts a Michelin star and quite the stellar list of chefs who have worked there, including the-late Masataka Kobayashi (founder of Masa’s in San Francisco), Albert Tordjman (owner of the quirky Flying Saucer in San Francisco), Richard Reddington (now owner-chef of Redd in Yountville), and Joseph Humphries (most recently, the head chef of Cavallo Point in Sausalito).

Chef Robert Curry, formerly executive chef of the restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, has headed the kitchen for six years now.

Last week, he created a special dinner to celebrate the restaurant’s monumental anniversary. The four-course meal, which featured dishes influenced by each of the past three decades, was a private affair, enjoyed by Robert Harmon, his son Mark (CEO of Auberge Resorts), and a small group of local food writers, including yours truly.

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16th Annual Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Fest

Celebrate all things wonderfully chocolate at the Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Festival in San Francisco, noon to 5 p.m. Sept. 10-11.

Enjoy chef demos, live entertainment, ice cream sundae eating contests, and plenty of chocolate to swoon over.

The event benefits Project Open Hand, a San Francisco-based organization that provides meals for people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as seniors.

Tickets are $20 each, which entitles you to taste 15 samples.

VIP “Sweet Sixteen” Affair tickets also are available for $50 each for a noon-4 p.m. special event on Sept. 10. You’ll forgo the lines to enjoy exclusive sweets, wine and music, along with your standard 15 sample tastes and full access to the rest of the festival.

Live Out the Fantasy of Being a Chef for a Day

You can do just that at Puccini & Pinetti Restaurant in San Francisco.

Under the tutelage of Executive Chef Richard Hodge, you will don chef whites, and get behind the line at this bustling Union Square restaurant. You’ll learn about food safety, shadow various cooks throughout the day, chop herbs, wash veggies and make pasta. Dress requirements include comfortable clothing and closed-toed, slip-resistant shoes. Participants also must be at least 18 years old, germ-free from colds or the flu, and willing to sign a release form.

The “Chef for a Day” experience is $125 for a five-hour shift and includes dinner afterward prepared by Hodge at the chef’s counter. Proceeds benefit the Larkin Street Youth Program, which helps provide services for homeless and at-risk youths.

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Not long after graduating from the French Culinary Institute in New York, Lauren Shockey set about plying her skills in four top restaurant kitchens around the globe at the tender age of 24.

Her journey through these four stages or unpaid apprenticeships started at famed molecular gastronomy temple, wd~50 in New York; followed by La Verticale in Vietnam; then Carmella Bistro in Israel; and finally, Michelin two-star Senderens in Paris.

Along the way, she discovered new dishes, flavors and techniques, of course. But more so, she came to realize where her heart truly lies when it comes to cooking.

Now, 27, and a restaurant critic for New York’s Village Voice, Shockey recounts her experience vividly, with plenty of humor and provocative insight, in her debut book, “Four Kitchens: My Life Behind the Burner in New York, Hanoi, Tel Aviv, and Paris’’ (Grand Central).

The book, which also includes recipes for dishes inspired by her time in these kitchens, is a delight to read for anyone who’s ever contemplated cooking on the line or only fantasized about it. And I’m not just saying that because I had the chance to meet Shockey last year when we both found ourselves as part of a group of food writers invited to tour Quebec.

Recently, I had a chance to talk with her by phone about how the book came about, some of her more outrageous moments abroad, her famous mentor and what lies ahead in the future.

You also can meet Shockey, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 21, at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, when she will be doing a reading from her book, and signing copies.

Q: What was your favorite of the four kitchens you worked in, and why?

A: They were all so different. Wd~50 was a great first restaurant experience. They taught me the right way to do things – how to chop vegetables, hold a knife properly, be methodical and don’t rush, and to clean your station well.

I cleaned crab every day at Senderens. Every day. But a friend of mine who staged at L’Arpege (Alain Passard’s Michelin three-star in Paris) only cleaned the stairs. They never let her touch the food. She said that at least I got to clean crab.

Hanoi was one of my favorites. The chef was very understanding about this being my first experience in Vietnam. He said that Vietnam isn’t just about what happens in his kitchen. He said that I should eat at food stalls and shop in the markets to really get to know Vietnam.

Of all of them, I would go back to the Vietnam kitchen first. I really loved working there and it’s the type of food that I love to eat. I got along really well with the staff there. In New York and Paris, it was very hierarchical, whereas in Vietnam, they were excited to have a Westerner in the kitchen with them.

Q: What was the hardest or most stressful kitchen?

A: New York. I was constantly afraid I was messing up and that I was the world’s worst stage. I thought Wylie (Dufresne) hated me. I couldn’t even look him in the eye the first month. And he’s nice; he’s not a yeller. Being on my feet 12 hours a day was exhausting. It really takes a toll.

Q: Girl, you had some crazy adventures. You ate dog in Vietnam. You know, when I interviewed Anthony Bourdain years ago, he said the one thing he probably never would eat is dog. How hard was it for you to do this?

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You gotta love a chef who opens a restaurant in the exact same spot in Oakland that his mother once dished up Thai specialties when it was her own establishment.

And you have to smile at a chef who wants to uphold the tradition of his mother’s casual cooking, but update it with modern techniques and flair while keeping the prices wallet-friendly.

That’s just what Chef-Proprietor James Syhabout has done at Hawker Fare, which opened earlier this summer in the Uptown district.

Syhabout, who also owns the more refined, Michelin-starred Commis in Oakland, has put in charge here none other than Justin Yu, who knows a thing or two about elevating Asian street food from his days at Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York.

Recently, my husband and I enjoyed a weekday lunch here on our own dime.

Lines out the door to get inside are the norm here. But we lucked out on a Monday, timing it so that we got a table without a wait.

If Hawker Fare were an ensemble, it would be faded jeans with holes in the knees, paired with Vans skateboard shoes and a screaming, neon-green hoodie. It’s casual with street attitude. Just take a look at the wall emblazoned with in-your-face graffiti letters, as well as old posters of Bruce Lee and the Grateful Dead.

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When I spy the words, “best homemade pizza dough we’ve ever tried,” well, you know I’ve got to try it.

Especially since those lofty words come from none other than Sunset magazine’s exacting editors.

That’s just what they proclaimed  this recipe for “Delfina’s Pizza Dough”  from the acclaimed San Francisco restaurant, Pizzeria Delfina.

The recipe can be found in “The Sunset Cookbook” (Oxmoor House), of which I received a review copy last year and have been happily cooking from ever since.

Just as they promised, the soft, supple dough is easy to work with. And it bakes up crisp with a slightly puffy edge.

The recipe calls for 1 generous teaspoon of fresh yeast, which can be found in refrigerator cases of certain supermarkets. I didn’t want to make an extra trip to the store, so I searched online until I found the proper conversion for using active dry yeast instead. Turns out it’s about 1 1/4 teaspoons, so that’s what I used.

You can bake this pizza in the oven. But we did it on the grill, using a new Emile Henry round pizza stone ($49.95) that I got a sample of from the kind folks at Williams-Sonoma. Glazed in black, it’s beautiful to behold, so much so that you could easily serve guests right from it. Sur La Table also carries the pan at the same price, but in flame red.

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