Category Archives: Thomas Keller/French Laundry/Et Al

SusieCakes Opens First Peninsula Location, Porchetta Time & More

Get ready for cupcakes galore at SusieCakes in Menlo Park. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

SusieCakes Comes to Menlo Park

SusieCakes, which started in Southern California but has spread to these northern parts, is opening its newest location at 642 Santa Cruz Ave. in downtown Menlo Park.

The bakery, know in particular for its old-fashioned cakes and cupcakes, already has two other Bay Area locations: San Francisco and Marin County.

Join in the grand opening ceremony at the Menlo Park bakery, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. March 24. Dust off your favorite poodle skirt for an old-fashioned sock hop with 50’s tunes. Best costume wins a prize. There will be plenty of cupcakes, cookies and bars to sample, too.

Get a gander at this porchetta at Brassica. (Photo by Sean Knight)

Porchetta Sundays at Brassica in the Napa Valley

After a weekend of wine tasting, there’s nothing better than a big hunk of  juicy, slow-cooked pork to go along with it.

Every Sunday night now at Chef Cindy Pawlcyn’s Brassica in St. Helena, they’re serving up porchetta — a whole loin of pork stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel fronds and fennel pollen, then roasted in a Caja China charcoal oven for 3 1/2 hours.

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Randall Grahm Chinese New Year Banquet & More in the New Year

Randall Grahm will host an unforgettable Chinese New Year's banquet. (Photo courtesy of Grahm)

Chinese New Year Banquet at the Cellar Door in Santa Cruz

Winemaker provocateur and bon vivant Randall Grahm, founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is joining forces with Alexander Ong, executive chef of San Francisco’s Betelnut, for what promises to be one memorable Chinese New Year banquet, 5 p.m. Jan. 29.

The feast, in honor of the “Year of the Dragon,” will be held at Grahm’s Cellar Door Cafe in Santa Cruz.

The multi-course dinner with paired wines will feature pork and chive dumplings with crispy shallots; whole California black cod in miso, ginger and scallions, Betelnut’s famous “Beggar’s chicken” that’s baked in clay, and of course, long-life noodles with Dungeness crab sauce.

A whole chicken that's been marinated...(Photo by Carolyn Jung)

...is baked in clay until the meat is oh-so tender. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

Price is $88 per person. For reservations, call (831) 425-6771. The Food Gal will be there, so stop by and say “hello” between bites.

Chef Joseph Humphrey Plans Pop-Up Dinners in Oakland in January

Joseph Humphrey, the noted chef who has helmed the likes of the Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena and Cavallo Point in Marin, has been working hard on his newest project: Dixie, a Southern-inspired contemporary Bay Area cuisine restaurant planned for the old Pres a Vi spot in San Francisco’s Presidio.

While that’s still under construction, he’s eager to get back in the kitchen. So, in January, you can find him serving up a sneak taste of his Dixie fare at Guest Chef in Oakland, a unique, full-service restaurant that allows established chefs to do pop-up stints.

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A Visit to the New Ad Hoc Addendum

Ad Hoc's fabulous fried chicken -- now available to-go three days a week.

If you’ve lamented never being able to make it to Ad Hoc in Yountville for one of its famous fried chicken nights, you’re now in luck.

The newest addition to Chef Thomas Keller’s gourmet empire is Ad Hoc Addendum, a take-out operation, where you can enjoy the fried chicken, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays.

You’ll find the Addendum kiosk by walking behind Ad Hoc restaurant, past a small parking lot to a pretty picnic area complete with tables and chairs, plus lush trees for plenty of shade, and a small vegetable garden that grows provisions for the restaurant.

The sign marks the spot.

Order here.

Enjoy your fried chicken at one of the picnic tables. Or take it home to enjoy.

Addendum, which opened opened two months ago, offers a choice of the superb buttermilk fried chicken or a barbecue entree, such as tender, spicy baby back ribs with pulled pork when I was there last Friday. Of course, I had to buy one of each.

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The Brilliance of Benu

Caviar atop "brioche.'' One of the many astounding morsels at Benu.

When a former chef de cuisine of the French Laundry leaves to open his own restaurant, it’s a big deal.

When his former mentor, Thomas Keller, thinks so highly of him as to invest in that new restaurant — the only one Keller has ever poured funds into that wasn’t one of his own — it’s a huge deal.

And when that not even year-old San Francisco restaurant is up for an award on Monday for “Best New Restaurant” in the country by the James Beard Foundation, it’s beyond the realm of  impressiveness.

Or maybe it’s just all according to plan in Chef-Owner Corey Lee’s world.

With Benu restaurant, Lee, who won his own James Beard award for “Rising Star Chef” during his nearly nine years at the French Laundry, set out to create an elegant, serene restaurant in a historic 1912 building that was once home to Hawthorne Lane restaurant, then Two restaurant.

From the start, he wanted to create something extraordinary. Award-winning New York architect Richard Bloch, who created the look of Masa in New York, was brought in to transform the space. And kitchen designer to the star chefs, Tim Harrison of Harrison, Koellner, LLC in Mill Valley, took charge of creating a brand new kitchen here from scratch, one that boasts a rare feature — a wall of windows to let natural light in. Lee was already familiar with Harrison’s work, as he also created the kitchens for both the French Laundry and Per Se.

Even the filted water carafe is tres stylish here.

Crunchy, thin, buckwheat lavash with nori and sesame seeds.

Korean porcelain makers created special pieces to showcase Lee’s progressive American cuisine tinged with Asian influences. Tabletops of steel, metal and synthetic rubber were custom-made and are intentionally left bare. And a plush, gray-blue carpet was hand-loomed in Thailand for the main dining room.

Recently, I treated my husband to dinner at Benu for his birthday. Choose either the tasting menu or a la carte options. Although I paid for the $160 per person tasting menu we each had, Lee, whom I interviewed extensively last year for a profile story in Food Arts magazine, was kind enough as to give us the wine pairings on the house, about $110 per person.

After visiting the site last spring, when it was a mere construction zone, it was amazing to see what it had become. On a rainy night, we drove past the large iron gates and into the Japanese-inspired garden courtyard with maple trees and flowering vines. As I got out of the car, a valet immediately approached with an open umbrella, which he handed to me. Then, he escorted my husband and me down the short path to the restaurant’s front door, where he let us in and retrieved the umbrella from me.  Talk about being taken care of right from the start.

The interior is all soothing grays and earth tones. A dramatic light well gives the main dining room a sense of airiness.

The tasting menu is composed of about 16 courses. That may seem like a lot, but they progress from precious, jewel-like, one-bite morsels to more substantial ones as the courses go on. Lee, who is Korean-American, may use a lot of molecular gastronomy and classic French techniques, but he also draws on his Asian roots, so that the dishes don’t rely on lots of butter or cream for flavor. Indeed, even after about 16 courses, you will leave very satiated, but quite comfortable.

Instead of the usual baguette or other artisan bread, dinner here starts with buckwheat lavash imbued with nori and sesame seeds. Paper-thin, they have the flavor of brown bread and the aroma of an umami bomb.

A "thousand-year'' quail egg.

If you’ve ever eaten a Chinese thousand-year-old egg, you know it’s one of the funkiest things you’ll ever taste. Lee’s refined take on it comes in the form of a thousand-year-old quail egg. Draped with a little ginger and scallion, and nestled on a spoon, it’s far daintier and with a much more mild taste.

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Etoile’s Perry Hoffman — A Chef To Watch in the Future

Chef Perry Hoffman in the kitchen at Etoile.

Perry Hoffman, executive chef of Etoile at Domaine Chandon in Yountville, has quite the pedigree.

His grandparents, Sally and Don Schmitt, were the original owners of the French Laundry in Yountville, who turned a dilapidated building into a destination restaurant in 1978, before selling it in 1993 to a then down-on-his-luck chef named Thomas Keller.

At age 4, Hoffman played in the kitchen of the French Laundry, while his grandma cooked in the kitchen, his grandfather seated guests in the dining room, and his mom (Sally and Don’s daughter) arranged flowers and worked as a waitress in the dining room.

His Mom later started her own florist business, which still supplies the blooms to the French Laundry, as well as a host of Wine Country restaurants. His grandparents went on to buy the Philo Apple Farm in Mendocino County, once again turning a rundown property into a showcase. Today, it is an organic, biodynamic farm that grows 80 varieties of heirloom apples in a setting so picturesque that Pottery Barn does catalog shoots there.

Hoffman, 27, followed in his grandmother’s footsteps, working in restaurants since he was 15. His food is already quite refined and mature for his young age. In fact, two years ago, he became the youngest chef in the country to garner a Michelin star — an achievement that prompted Keller to send him a hand-written note and a bottle of Dom Perignon.

For the past three years, he’s overseen the kitchen at the elegant Etoile, the Napa Valley’s only fine-dining restaurant housed inside a winery.

Etoile, the only fine-dining restaurant inside a winery in the Napa Valley.

The serene dining room.

Starting the evening off with a rose from Domaine Chandon.

During fall and winter, too, there are apples aplenty on his menu, which, of course, come from the Philo Apple Farm. My husband and I couldn’t resist honing in on those particular dishes when we treated ourselves to dinner at Etoile in December. Choose either a seven-course chef’s tasting menu for $110 or a four-course tasting menu with options for $85. The latter is what we went with, though we added one additional dish.

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