Monthly Archives: March 2009

Deals

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Waterbar in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of Val Atkinson)

Save a few pennies when you dine out. Here’s where:

Waterbar in San Francisco: An oyster of the day is $1 all day. Happy Hour, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, features a $5 “A Spa in Cabo” specialty drink (José Cuervo Reserva De La Familia Platino Tequila, cucumber).

Quattro Restaurant and Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley in East Palo Alto: Every Friday except holiday weekends, enjoy free corkage when you bring in your own bottle of wine. Sundays, indulge in a family-style dinner. Price is $25 per person for adults; kids under 18 pay the equivalent of their age. And available nightly, a new five-course $55 pre-fixe seasonal, tasting menu.

Morocco’s in San Jose: Tuesday nights are Ladies’ Nights. Every table that has four female diners will get a free bottle of wine.

Bocadillos Tapas and Wine Bar in San Francisco: To celebrate its fifth anniversary, the restaurant is offering a Happy Hour menu of $2 bite-sized tapas or pintxos. It’s available weekdays, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Items include organic kiwi and marinated beets on chevre; tortilla Espanola with Manchego cheese on toast; lambs tongue on pear chutney; and chicken with spicy pickled vegetables. The restaurant also has restructured its wine list into three price tiers: $25, $35, and $45. Wine flights also are available for $12.

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Marvelous Mac ‘n’ Cheese

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 The ultimate comfort food.

In the parlance of journalism, Clark Wolf is what we reporters gleefully call a “quote machine.”

If we need a pithy, memorable quote about food, chefs, restaurants, or eating trends, who we gonna call?

Invariably, Clark Wolf.

The restaurant consultant, who lives in Sonoma County, has a gift for gab, a way with words, a wondrous wit, and is not shy in the least about giving voice to the downright outrageous. Plus, as a former manager for the San Francisco Oakville Grocery and a foodie who’s rubbed shoulders with everyone who’s anyone in the culinary world, he definitely knows his stuff.

Former New York Times food writer Marian Burros and I once joked to each other that the day was coming when our respective publications would issue a moratorium on Clark Wolf quotes because they were just so prevalent.

Fortunately, that day never came.

You’ll still find him being quoted in many a food story. And now, you’ll also find him on the book shelves with his new “American Cheeses” (Simon  & Schuster) tome.

Wolf, who ran a cheese shop in San Francisco in 1976, profiles the men and women whose work created the incredible artisan cheese industry in this country. He also includes recipes for everything from A Perfect Pimento Cheese to Escargots with Roasted Garlic and Gorgonzola. And it’s all told in a way only he can tell it.

“The way a cheese, or any food, looks has a lot to do with my decision about whether or not to toss it into the shopping basket,” he writes in the book. “Some of it is learned. A lot of us have gotten over the need to pick what looks like picture-perfect fruits and vegetables, realizing that sometimes, say, an apple bred for visual perfection can taste a lot like packing material. We’ve come to know that a bruise here, a funny stripe there, an odd shape, or a varied coloration, can, for the right variety, mean peak seasonal bliss.

“So, too, with cheese. Sometimes the moldy, aged, smelly slime on the outside suggests creamy within.

“But mostly, it is good if it looks good. And if it looks like fermented roadkill, it might be best to ask a few questions and inquire about trying a little taste.”

Aged white cheddar macaroni and cheese.

You have to smile at that. And at this sublime macaroni and cheese recipe from the book. This one was created for a restaurant Wolf was a partner of in 1990s. The dish was then redeveloped for the SoHo Grand Hotel in Manhattan. Finally, Burros adapted it into a more home-kichen-friendly version in her book, “Cooking for Comfort” (Simon & Schuster).

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Bolognese With Bite

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A meaty bolognese cooks up with some surprising ingredients.

Alas, I don’t think I’ll be boarding a plane to the UK anytime soon. Not with my pitiful bank account.

And alas, that means I won’t be dining anytime in the near future, either, at the acclaimed Fat Duck restaurant.

So I did the next best thing.

I made “New Style” Ragu alla Blogonese, a recipe published a year or so ago in Saveur magazine that was inspired by one in “In Search of Perfection” (Bloomsbury), the book by the Fat Duck’s award-winning chef, Heston Blumenthal.

A Brit cooking an old-school Italian dish?

You bet.

A Brit adding ketchup, fish sauce, and star anise to ragu?

Heck, yes.

Along with Worcestershire sauce, those ingredients heighten the meaty or umami taste of the dish. In fact, I even added a tad more fish sauce to up the ante.

I can’t say that this particular bolognese edged out my favorite one, Perbacco’s 5-Hour Pork Sugo. But it’s a definite contender. Unlike the Perbacco version that calls for ground pork, the Blementhal one uses boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1/4-inch dice. Whereas the Perbacco version cooks up into a cohesive, thick, rich sauce, the Blumenthal one has a texture more like chili, with distinct chunks of meat.

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