Category Archives: Bakeries

Sprinkles Cupcakes To Open Its Doors on Tuesday

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A tower of frosted delights. (Photo courtesy of Sprinkles Bakery)

Get ready for red velvet, chai latte, ginger lemon, banana dark chocolate, and more cute-as-can-be, freshly baked, no-need-to-share treats when Sprinkles Cupcakes opens on Sept. 23 at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.

Yes, the cupcake bakery that’s all the rage with Tyra Banks, Oprah, Katie Holmes (Mrs.Tom Cruise), and other celebs is finally putting down sugary roots in the Bay Area. Other Sprinkles bakeries can be found in Beverly Hills, Newport Beach, Dallas, and Scottsdale. You can spot them easily by the lines outside the doors.

It’s only fitting that Pastry Chef-Proprietor Candace Nelson and her co-owner/husband Charles Nelson open a shop here. After all, Candace’s French-American great grandmother, Margaret Craig, owned three successful restaurants in the Bay Area for more than 20 years. Candace and Charles also are two former Silicon Valley tech investment bankers who spent long hours crunching numbers for others while they longingly dreamed of baking cupcakes. (Hey, I would, too!)

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Better Than The Gold Standard In Cookies

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Chocolate gingersnaps -- Yum! (Photo courtesy of Platine)

Munch, munch, munch…

Oh, sorry, I had my mouth full. Chomp, chomp…I can’t stop eating these cookies that arrived in the mail; that’s how good they are.

Platine, the French word for “platinum,” is tres magnifique. These handmade, mail-order cookies from Southern California are the creation of Jamie Cantor, who graduated from the Culinary Institute of America campuses in Hyde Park, NY and St. Helena, CA. She then went on to work for several years at the French Laundry in Yountville, before moving to Los Angeles to start her own bakery.

Decisions, decisions. It's hard to choose only one. (Photo courtesy of Platine)

You can taste the premium ingredients from the first bite. Every cookie is baked to order, so when they arrive on your doorsteps, they still taste very fresh. Choose from rich brownies to chewy cookies such as oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, and my fave — chocolate gingersnap. In fact, pardon me, while I sneak another one…crunch, crunch…

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Fried To A Crisp Until I Can’t Resist

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The best donut -- period.

For a long time, I tried my hardest to avoid fried foods. It’s not that I don’t like fried foods. It’s just that fried foods have a way of sticking around.

On the hips. On the waist. On every inch of my body.

But then, I married Meat Boy. Yes, with a nickname like that, he made me realize just how many big hunks of meat are naturally accompanied by something crisp, golden, and irresistibly fried. And well, faced with that onslaught, you succumb. You can’t help it.

So I do indulge now and then. But I make sure it’s worth it. In no particular order, here’s my personal list of Top 10 fried foods worth every dang calorie. If there are any other fried temptresses out there that can’t be denied, do let me know.

1. Glazed donut at Stan’s Donut Shop in Santa Clara. The puffiest, yeastiest, most pillowy donuts ever. Even people who have sworn off donuts make an exception for a glazed one here. Because the shop sells so many of them that the supply constantly needs to be replenished, the donuts almost always can be snagged warm, just out of the fryer. These donuts have been an institution since the shop opened in 1959. Seventy cents will buy you one donut and a whole lotta happiness.

2. Calamari with romesco sauce ($11) at Bocadillos in San Francisco. There is fried calamari. And then there is fried calamari. It’s the latter you’ll find at this lively, small-plates, Basque restaurant by renowned Chef Gerald Hirigoyen. With the lightest, crispest coating imaginable, the bite-size tentacles and ring pieces arrive at the table at once tender, crunchy, and ethereal. It will spoil you for any other fried calamari ever again.

3. Sweet potato fries at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher in St. Helena, Napa, and San Francisco ($3.99). Thin and crispy, it’s everything you want in a fry, and then some. The dusting of chili powder adds a nice contrast to the subtle sweetness of the fries. I order these every time I go to Taylor’s. You can’t eat just one. And you simply can’t not order them.

Korean fried chicken

4. Regular or “spicy sauce” fried chicken at 99 Chicken in Santa Clara. This is fried chicken, Korean-style, served in a barest of bare-bones establishments in a strip mall off bustling El Camino Real. It’s fried to order, and arrives almost too hot to handle, in a gossamer breading. Purists will go for the traditional, unadorned chicken. Those who like heat can opt for the spicy sauce version _ the same fried chicken, but coated with a neon-red spicy-sweet, sticky sauce that is unabashedly finger-licking-good. Waitresses provide you with pop-up sponges to clean your hands afterwards. Help yourself to all the pickled daikon, and iceberg-lettuce salad fixings you want. Five pieces of chicken are $6.99 for the regular; $7.99 for the spicy.

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Thomas Keller To Open Restaurant In Los Angeles

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Southern California, which no doubt has been starved for a stellar Thomas Keller restaurant, will finally get one in late 2009 when a new Beverly Hills outpost of Bouchon will open.

The French bistro will be on North Canon Drive in the Beverly Hills Gardens building. It will be adjacent to the Montage Hotel, which will open later this year.

“This project is a homecoming of sorts for me as I worked for many years in the Los Angeles area,” said Keller in a statement, referring to his time overseeing Checkers restaurant before he was fired for insubordination. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, as not long after that in 1992, Keller ended up buying the French Laundry in Yountville; and the rest, of course, is four-star culinary history.

World-class restaurant designer Adam D. Tihany, who created the look for Bouchon in Yountville, as well as Per Se and Bouchon Bakery in New York, will once again turn his magic on creating this Keller restaurant that will seat 225. The two-story structure will house the restaurant on the second floor and a Bouchon Bakery on the first level.

Rory Herrmann will be the chef de cuisine. He is the former private dining kitchen chef at Per Se.

Bouchon Beverly Hills will join the Bouchon family, which also includes a Bouchon Bistro and a Bouchon Bakery in Las Vegas.

Not to be left out, Laura Cunningham, Keller’s former long-time girlfriend who ran the front-of-the-house operations at French Laundry and turned service into a true art there, will be opening up a restaurant of her own in Yountville.

Cunningham, who has been a restaurant and hotel consultant all over the world since leaving the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group about two years ago, will take over the former Pere Jeanty restaurant site on Washington Street. She plans to rename the restaurant, Vita, which means “life” in Italian. It also was the first name of Cunningham’s late grandmother. The restaurant will be contemporary Italian with an emphasis on her family’s Sicilian and southern Italian heritage.

The concept, image and design will be overseen by Cunningham. The daily operations of the 120-seat restaurant will be managed by Culinary Director Jeffrey Cerciello of Bouchon and Ad Hoc restaurants, along with the team from the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.

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