Monthly Archives: February 2011

Food Gal Ticket Giveaway and Foodie Happenings

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(Image courtesy of Paso Robles Wine Country)

Win tickets to the Los Angeles Grand Tasting Tour

Taste wines from more than 40 Paso Robles wineries and nosh on gourmet bites at the glam 2011 Los Angeles Grand Tasting Tour, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 2 at the Virbiana.

Tickets are $60 each. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Alzheimer’s Association of Southern California.

Because the Food Gal has so many loyal readers who live in or travel regularly to the Los Angeles area, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be giving away three pairs of tickets to the event.

Contest: Entries should be limited to those who will be in Los Angeles on the day of the event, March 2. Contest runs through midnight PST Feb. 26. Winners will be announced Feb. 28.

How to win?

Tell me one of your favorite eats in Los Angeles and why I should try it the next time I’m there.

Here’s my own answer to that question:

“Do you love Chinese dumplings? And specifically, do you love xiao long bao, otherwise known as “soup dumplings”? Then, make a beeline pronto for Din Tai Fung in Arcadia for the very best dumplings you will ever have. I have Pulitzer Prize-winning, Los Angeles food writer Jonathan Gold to thank for telling me about this place. Here, the wrappers are the thinnest ever and so fragile you have to be careful picking them up with your chopsticks, lest you puncture them accidentally. They are tender, juicy, brothy and plain amazing. How good are they? So good that my husband and I ate there twice in three days last year. Until recently, its two Arcadia branches were the only ones outside of Asia. But Pacific Northwest foodies are sure to be rejoicing now that one just opened in Seattle.”

Winner of the Last Contest: In the most recent Food Gal contest, I asked you to tell me your favorite thing to eat back in school. The top three answers will win an annual membership to Blackboard Eats.

Congrats to the winners:

1) Single Guy Ben, who wrote: “I felt like we had the best school lunches growing up in Honolulu. Every day was a different entree always served with a carton of milk, a side salad (which I always ate) and dessert. And I don’t want to date myself but we got all this for a quarter! (Yeah, back when we actually did walk a mile to get to school.)

One of my favorites is the good ole’ Sloppy Joe. It’s ironic that it’s my favorite because growing up (and still today as an adult) I’m a bit of a neat freak. I used to eat my lunch in sections, eating the salad, then the entree, then dessert. Never mixing bites here and there. So sloppy isn’t really in my vocabulary. But something about the Sloppy Joe, whether it’s the flavor or the fact that the sauce soaked into the bun and made everything soft and juicy, just brings a smile to my face. An oddly enough, the Sloppy Joe’s weren’t necessarily super slopppy. Sure, a few clumps of ground beef would fall out as I slowly ate the bun in a systemized concentric pattern, but it still held together.

It’s funny how a lot of school lunch favorites aren’t a part of our regular diet when we grow up. It may be my adversity to eating too much red meat, so I haven’t had a Sloppy Joe in many many years. Or maybe it’s because I don’t use those ready-mix packets any more so don’t have the perfect recipe for Sloppy Joe’s made from scratch. But when I look back, I think now that a perfect, juicy, Sloppy Joe may be just the item I’d like as my last meal on Earth.”

2) Sadie, who wrote, “We had different exchange students every year when I was growing up. Nothing was more wonderful than discovering that a stroopwafel from Barbara or a pulparindo (tamarind candy) from Claudia had snuck into my otherwise very Wisconsin-Midwestern lunchbox.”

3) Jennie Schact, who wrote: “We carried lunch to school. Mom would sandwich thick slabs of roasted turkey between slices of challah slathered with Russian dressing (which is to say, mayo and ketchup stirred together), wrap ‘em up, stack ‘em in the freezer, and throw one into the lunch bag in the morning. You were lucky if it was defrosted enough to eat around the edges at lunch time. Frozen turkey = not pleasant. She was also the innovator of leftover cold hamburger on a bagel. I preferred Ring Dings from the vending machine.”

Dungeness crab salad at One Market Restaurant. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Fabulous Restaurant Events

There’s still time to indulge in the annual Lark Creek Restaurant Group’s “Crab Festival.”

Through the end of the month, you’ll find special dishes at each restaurant that spotlight fresh, sustainable Dungeness crab.

Look for such lip-smacking fare as crab salad with grapefruit at One Market Restaurant in San Francisco; Dungeness crab raviolis with chanterelles and brown butter at Yankee Pier at Santana Row in San Jose; and chili roasted Dungeness crab with garlic and smoked paprika at Fish Story in Napa.

There’s also still time to try the the special prix fixe Black History Month menu with wine pairings from African-American wineries at 1300 on Fillmore in San Francisco.

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Terrific Tuna

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A silky lemony sauce coats every strand of these heavenly noodles.

Canned tuna doesn’t normally elicit a whole lot of excitement. Mostly, you grab it mindlessly out of the cupboard because it’s convenient for making a quick salad, sandwich or casserole that you’ve made a hundred times before.

But imagine a canned tuna that actually makes you sit up and take notice not only because it has really deep seafood flavor, but also because it is low in mercury and is caught in a sustainable way.

That’s what Raincoast Trading canned tuna is all about.

Indeed, Greenpeace Canada just released its first sustainability ranking of 14 major canned tuna brands. Only two garnered a passing grade: Wild Planet Foods and Raincoast Trading.

A canned tuna to feel good about eating.

The Vancouver, Canada company is run by a fourth-generation fishing family that catches wild-caught tuna and salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Each batch of tuna is tested for mercury, a heavy metal present in almost all seafood that can be harmful in large doses for pregnant women, nursing mothers and young children. The amount of mercury in Raincoast Trading’s tuna registers well below the allowable levels in the United States and Canada, according to a company spokesperson.

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A Visit to Ike’s on the Stanford University Campus

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The "Spiffy Tiffy'' on French bread at Ike's Place in Palo Alto.

I dunno about you, but when I was in college, I felt lucky to snag a plain green salad or limp slice of pizza for lunch on campus.

How times have changed.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, students and faculty can indulge in a branch of Ike’s Place — yes, the famous San Francisco sandwich shop that’s been vilified and venerated of late.

Why such buzz over a sandwich shop?

You see, Owner Ike Shehadeh’s monster-size sandwiches smeared generously with his addicting Secret Dirty Sauce (a creamy concoction loaded with garlic) grew so popular that never-ending lines formed day and night on the sidewalk at his original location in San Francisco’s Castro district — much to the dismay of residents. Customers rallied for their sammies. Neighbors fought for peace and quiet. In the end, Shehadeh was forced to move to a new location in San Francisco — right around the corner from the original one.

But all is good in the world of Ike. He’s become a darling of Yelp and was even featured on the Travel Channel. He also just opened a branch in Redwood Shores, and plans to open soon in Santa Rosa and in San Jose, near San Jose State University.

The new engineering building that houses Ike's Place.

Place your order here.

Since it opened last year in the new, light-filled Jen-Hsuan Huang School of Engineering, Ike’s Place hasn’t drawn any similar trials and tribulations in Palo Alto, just long lines of hungry students and faculty, including star Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck, whose hand I got to shake last Friday afternoon when he was picking up a sandwich and I was there eating with two friends.

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Sweet Limes

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Meet sweet limes that look like lemons and taste like candy.

Believe it.

I found these at the Santa Clara farmers market last weekend, selling for $2 a pound. I had to do a double-take when I spied the sign that stated that these bright yellow fruit were limes.

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The Art of Ubuntu

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Ubuntu's gorgeous and delicious potatoes with sauerkraut mousse.

Are you sitting down?

Meat Boy went vegetarian.

OK, it was only for one evening, but yes, my ultra-carnivorous husband actually ate an unprecedented meatless meal recently.

He figured if he was going to take that bold step, he might as well do it at Ubuntu in Napa, the veggie-centric restaurant that has garnered critical acclaim far and wide, including a Michelin star.

Ubuntu “is an ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other emphasizing community, sharing and generosity,” according to its Web site. It’s also unique in that it boasts a yoga studio on its mezzanine level that’s fronted by frosted glass. Indeed, if you peer toward the back staircase, you can often spot mat-carrying students on their way to and from class.

If that all sounds a little too touchy-feely, granola-loving, Birkenstock-ish, you’re in for a surprise. The food, with much of the ingredients sourced from its own biodynamic garden, is a revelation.

If you’re expecting fresh, but rather tame and uninspired food, you couldn’t be more wrong. The dishes here are like a Versace fashion show on a plate — a riot of vivid colors and forms that make you sit up and take notice each time one is set down on the table. The flavors are shockingly bold, developed and complex. This is not timid tasting food in the least, despite the fact that there is no meat, poultry or seafood present whatsoever. There’s also no tofu or seitan — mainstays of most other vegetarian restaurants — at least not on the current menu. Instead, it’s all about the stellar vegetables and great technique.

Yes, there is butter and plenty of cheese used here. But you can opt to get many dishes vegan-style.

I was invited to dine as a guest of the restaurant a week ago. It was my first time to this four-year-old restaurant. I wish I had tried it when opening Chef Jeremy Fox (who went on to become creative director for the Tyler Florence Group for five months) was still on board, just for comparison’s sake. But Executive Chef Aaron London, seems to be carrying on splendidly. He cooked for awhile with Fox at Ubuntu, before leaving for a spell to work at Bottega in Yountville. London also has worked at such acclaimed establishments as Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. Ironically enough, like Fox, who was known for his meat and charcuterie skills when he worked at Manresa in Los Gatos, London also helped open the meat- and foie gras-centric Au Pied du Cochon in Montreal.

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