Author Archives: foodgal

A Once-A-Week Restaurant Named Saison

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Saison's slow-cooked egg with caviar.

The definition of “restaurant” is changing in these challenging times.

You’ll find more and more chefs branching out to cook one or two nights a week at tucked-away, re-purposed, rented venues — a more economical, and less risky move these days than contemplating the debut of a full-scale establishment all on their own.

That’s just what Executive Chef Joshua Skenes is doing at his Saison restaurant in San Francisco. The tiny, 25-seat space is open only on Sundays for two dinner seatings, but is expected to add Saturday dinner service in another month or so.

Chef Joshua Skenes.

It opened in July in a historic stable next to the Stable Cafe. The cafe is not open on Sundays, but rents out its rear dining room for special events. Skenes had already been renting the cafe’s kitchen to prep his gourmet sandwich cart, Carte415, which he operates 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays inside the lobby of 101 Second St. in San Francisco. The cart features a different sandwich, salad, soup, Greek yogurt parfait, and housemade beverage daily. It’s Skenes’ answer to a fresh, healthful, good-tasting lunch on the go.

Since he was borrowing the cafe’s kitchen regularly, it wasn’t long before he got the idea of operating a restaurant there on weekends. He opened Saison with friend, Mark Bright, a notable wine consultant who at age 21 joined the sommelier team at Bellagio in Las Vegas and began working the floor at Aqua restaurant there.

I first met Skenes seven years ago. The then 23-year-old was chef of Chez TJ in downtown Mountain View, where he was turning out spectacularly elegant, big-city dishes in a charming, yet far from cosmopolitan, setting just doors away from a brew pub. I still remember being astounded by a prix-fixe course of sashimi, cut like tiny jewels, and served with aged Japanese soy sauce. To say I was blown away by that meal is an understatement.

So I was not the least surprised to hear shortly thereafter that celebrated Chef Michael Mina had made the trip all the way from San Francisco to dine at Chez TJ. He was so floored by his meal that he whisked Skenes away to open Mina’s Stonehill Tavern at the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Bay in 2005.

Hearing that Skenes was back in the Bay Area, my husband and I decided to splurge on dinner at Saison a few weeks ago. Reservations are taken one month in advance to the day. You pay in advance through PayPal. The four-course dinner is $70 per person, and $40 more for wine pairings. An automatic 18 percent gratuity is added. Bright is very generous with the wine, too, coming back to refill glasses that are emptied.

Glasses of bubbly await your arrival at Saison.

You enter the restaurant through two massive stable doors that take you down a long driveway.

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Remembering Julia Child

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Juicy, sweet, and jammy.

With long-awaited arrival of “Julie & Julia” in theaters this month, foodies can’t help but remember the one and only Julia Child, who inspired legions to cook with confidence and daring-do in their own kitchens.

I haven’t had the pleasure yet of seeing the movie, though I was fortunate to get a quick peek at a preview clip at this year’s James Beard Awards Gala in New York. Of course, it only left me hungry for more. As a long-time food writer, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julia a number of times. She was always gracious and charming. It was a true pleasure to interact with her in any shape or form. That familiar lilting, bird-like voice never ceased to make me smile every time I heard it.

I still have a couple of menus, souvenirs from lunches and dinners hosted in her honor. There’s the one from her 90th birthday party at the Fifth Floor in San Francisco, when illustrious chefs Laurent Gras and Ron Siegel cooked dishes such as “Corn Vichyssoise with Caviar” and “Duck A La Julia Child” to commemorate the grand occasion.

Remembering a lunch from years ago that honored Julia.

There’s another menu from a lunch in 2000 to debut her cookbook with Jacques Pepin, “Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home” (Alfred A. Knopf). The three-course lunch was made up of dishes from the book, including “Avocado and Grapefruit Salad with Belgian Endive, Frisee, Toasted Hazelnuts, and Champagne Vinaigrette.”

I started leafing through that book, only to realize I had forgotten that both Julia and Jacques had signed the inside page. Her signature was clear and straightforward, much like the woman, herself.

The book, signed by Jacques and Julia.

I turned on my oven, and set about making her “Provencal Tomatoes,” the traditional French accompaniment of roasted tomatoes stuffed with herbs and bread crumbs — a true classic just like Julia was.

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Take Five With Timothy Hollingsworth, the New Chef De Cuisine at the French Laundry

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The French Laundry's new chef de cuisine. (Photo courtesy of the French Laundry)

Placerville, Calif.-native Timothy Hollingsworth may have grown up surfing the waves at Bolinas and Ocean beaches. But now, the self-taught chef is in for the ride of his life on a veritable culinary tsunami as the new chef de cuisine of the one and only French Laundry in Yountville.

The esteemed restaurant, which has won every accolade imaginable, just celebrated its 15h anniversary last month, too. Hollingsworth, who has been with the French Laundry for seven years, stepped into the top toque role this month with the departure of predecessor Corey Lee, who left to open his own restaurant.

If the 29-year-old Hollingsworth is feeling the weight of that responsibility pressing on his young shoulders, he’s not letting on. Hollingsworth, who learned his craft apprenticing in celebrated European kitchens, including one manned by bad-boy chef, Gordon Ramsay, is used to being under pressure. Earlier this year, he competed in the prestigious Bocuse d’Or, the Olympics of cooking, where he placed sixth out of 24 chef teams from around the globe.

The esteemed French Laundry in Yountville. (Photo courtesy of Deborah Jones)

During a recent hiatus before resuming work at the French Laundry, Hollingsworth was kind enough to do an interview via email.

Normally, I prefer conducting interviews in person or over the phone, because it’s more difficult for someone to sidestep questions once you have them engaged in conversation. What kind of questions, you wonder? Oh, ones such as “Timothy, did Gordon Ramsay ever call you a ‘stupid donkey’ when you worked for him?’ ” (No comment.) And “Will you be in charge of cooking the dinner for the wedding of Thomas Keller and Laura Cunningham?” (No comment.)

Oh well, you have to give a Food Gal credit for trying, right?

Here’s what he did answer:

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Organics on the Menu at Stanford Hospital

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Roasted red pepper soup with goat cheese.

Soup sure does a body good.

Stanford Hospital knows that. And if you’re a foodie ever in need of medical care, you might just want to make sure you end up there, because the renowned hospital has just launched a new all-organic, local, sustainable “Farm Fresh” menu option for inpatients. It’s centered around gourmet soups created in collaboration with Peninsula restaurateur and long-time champion of organics, Jesse Cool.

Right now, the organic option, which started a few weeks ago, is offered only at dinner time to patients on unrestricted diets. But plans are to eventually expand it to patients’ lunches, and to the cafeteria offerings.

The organic dinner tray for patients comes complete with your choice of soup with grass-fed meatballs.

If you opt for the organic menu, you get your choice of made-from-scratch chicken noodle soup or that day’s local vegetable soup. The latter might be cauliflower soup with rosemary, roasted sweet pepper with goat cheese, roasted tomato with herbs, potato leek, carrot ginger with curry, cream of spinach, or corn with basil and smoked cheddar.

Your tray also arrives with a small organic salad, organic whole grain bread, a dessert of either stuffed baked apple or seasonal fruit with honey yogurt sauce, and a beverage such as organic lemonade, green tea, organic ginger ale, or Starbucks organic free-trade coffee.

Your soup bowl contains your choice of protein — grass-fed meatballs, poached organic chicken, or smoked tofu. Your soup comes separately in a thermos carafe to keep it nice and warm. It gets poured table-side — or in this case, bed-side.

Hospital food never looked so appealing.

So in this dreary economy, in which cash-strapped consumers are buying less organic food, why is Stanford Hospital taking on the potentially added cost of providing an organic menu for patients?

With 450 patients in its hospital at any one time, administrators believe they will be able to negotiate purchasing agreements with local farmers, many within a 200-mile radius of Stanford, so that the organics menu will be cost-effective.

“We believe that part of the healing process for patients involves eating food as fresh as possible, in which nutrients are preserved,” says Shelley Hebert, executive director of public affairs for the hospital. “We also want to educate patients about healthful eating and cooking when they leave the hospital.”

To that end, the soup recipes are being made available on the hospital’s Web site.

Stanford Hospital Executive Chef Beni Velazquez and Flea Street Cafe restaurateur Jesse Cool.

Cool, who owns Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park, worked on the soup recipes with the hospital’s Executive Chef Beni Velazquez, a certified instructor with the Culinary Institute of America and a former Ritz-Carlton Hotel chef.

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The Dish on Heirloom Veggies and Culinary Luminaries at SF Chefs Food Wine Extravaganza

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Rare gray shallots.

If you’ve ever needed proof of the value of saving and preserving heirloom seeds, just take a close look at the photo above.

That, my friend, is what a real, wild shallot looks like. It’s not big and purple, and encased in an easily removed papery shell like the commercially grown ones found at the supermarket here. No, this true shallot known as a gray shallot is much smaller and much more gnarly looking. You have to work to get at it, too, because its outer shell is quite hard to penetrate.

But your efforts are richly rewarded in the end with its beguiling fragrance and flavor that’s like that of a fine truffle.

Now, aren’t you just itching to get your hands on one? Unfortunately, it’s grown only in France now. Like so many varieties of heirloom produce (ones that have been propagated for at least 50 years and are not hybrids), they fell out of popularity after World War II, when our food became much more homogenized and industrialized. But nowadays, chefs and small-scale farmers are rediscovering these heritage fruits and vegetables, and finding inspiration in the stories and flavors they hold.

That was the theme of a Sunday cooking seminar at the SF Chefs Food Wine extravaganza in San Francisco, hosted by Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi in San Francisco, Laurence Jossel of Nopa in San Francisco, and Craig Lindquist, a Sonoma seed preservationist.

Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi snips edible wild flowers for his heirloom potato dish.

“These old varieties were woven into people’s lives,” Patterson says. “You used to save the seeds of the plants you liked. Over time, the plants adapted to where they were grown, so they took on the flavor characteristics of the place. We’ve lost a lot of that now.”

Chef Laurence Jossel of Nopa prepares pork chile with heirloom smoked peppers.

Flavor is front and center with these imperfect looking, finicky growing heirlooms. They may win no beauty contests, but they will win you over with their taste. One spoonful of Jossel’s bold pork chile, made with heirloom peppers that were dried and smoked, will make you a convert. One sip of Patterson’s onion soup with Parmigiana foam, will leave you wondering how it could taste so sweet from just onions and no added sugar.

Rose Finn fingerling potatoes.

This Rose Finn potato was grown in England in the 1700s. It was the favorite potato of organic gardening pioneer Alan Chadwick, who supposedly smuggled it back to Santa Cruz, where he grew them, Lindquist says. Nowadays, you can find them occasionally for sale at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, or served in season at the venerable Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

This fingerling potato fell out of favor because of its little bumps (secondary growth sites), Lindquist says. Consumers want uniform, pretty looking potatoes, not ones with little nubs all over them.

Patterson can’t get enough of potatoes like this, though. He loves their creamy, almost sweet flavor. He steams them, then serves them with salsa verde and edible blooms, or just a little drizzle of olive oil and sea salt.

Patterson's new potatoes with salsa verde and edible flowers.

“Maintaining diversity is very important,” Lindquist says. “These products have unique flavors. And heirlooms give us an experience we just don’t get elsewhere.”

Find out more about heirloom seeds at Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit dedicated to saving and sharing them.

Chefs Charles Phan (left), Thomas Keller (center), and Douglas Keane (right).

Big-name chefs were also on the marquee at another session of SF Chefs Food Wine on Sunday. Indeed, they don’t come much bigger than Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Yountville, Douglas Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg, and Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

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