Category Archives: Chefs

Light A Fire For Chicken Al Carbon

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A family-style feast of chile-marinated chicken, grilled veggies and warm corn tortillas.
A family-style feast of chile-marinated chicken, grilled veggies and warm corn tortillas.

With backyard grills sure to be blazing this long holiday weekend, there’s no time like now to get your chicken al carbon going on.

This smoky spatchcock chicken with a spicy brick-red marinade gets plenty charred, so don’t be alarmed at the blackened edges. It’s the sugar in the orange juice that gives it a sweet citrus taste and makes it singe easily.

“Chicken Al Carbon” is from the new cookbook, “Tex-Mex Cookbook: Traditions, Innovations, and Comfort Foods from Both Sides of the Border” (Clarkson Potter), of which I received a review copy. Loaded with recipes that fuse Texan and Mexican sensibilities, it’s by Chef Ford Fry, a native Texan with a slew of restaurants in Atlanta, including the El Felix and Superica; and food writer and native Texan Jessica Dupuy.

As the book’s intro states, “Tex” and “Mex” were at one time one and the same, with Texas and Mexico both part of the same Spanish colony known as New Spain in the 16th century. It’s no wonder that Texas’ food traditions borrow heavily from Mexican ones. In fact, many of the Tex-Mex specialties in this book will be quite familiar if you’ve dined regularly at Mexican restaurants in California and Texas.

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When It Comes To Pizza, It’s Hip to Be Square

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Sausage and mushroom pizza take a fun square turn at Square Pie Guys in San Francisco.
Sausage and mushroom pizza take a fun square turn at Square Pie Guys in San Francisco.

First-time restaurateurs Marc Schechter and Danny Stoller may call themselves and their new San Francisco establishment, the Square Pie Guys.

Even if the pizza is actually rectangular. And even if the other items on the menu deserve top-billing, too, including Asian-style fried chicken wings that nearly steal the show.

Semantics aside, this Detroit-style pizza joint is already winning over fans and making repeat customers, even after being open just a month. On a recent Wednesday night, when I was invited in as a guest, the place was packed.

Detroit-style pizza was born in — where else — the Motor City. Originally, the thick-crust pizza was baked in industrial car parts trays. At Square Pie Guys, the pizzas are baked in deep rectangular pans.

Danny Stoller (left) and Marc Schechter (right) in the kitchen of the first restaurant to call their own.
Danny Stoller (left) and Marc Schechter (right) in the kitchen of the first restaurant to call their own.

Stoller hails from Seattle, where he cooked at such institutions as Tilth and Revel. Schechter worked his way though some of San Francisco’s finest pizza places, including Pizzahacker, Del Popolo, Casey’s, and Pizzeria Delfina.

“I’m a pizza nerd,” Schechter says proudly.

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Churn a Batch of Salt & Straw’s Imperial Stout Milk Sorbet with Blackberry-Fig Jam

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This sorbet is made with stout, as well as jam loaded with dried Mission figs and fresh blackberries.
This sorbet is made with stout, as well as jam loaded with dried Mission figs and fresh blackberries.

It’s not that I set out to confound my husband.

But when it comes to ice cream, I often can’t help it.

You see, I am married to someone who wants to eat vanilla ice cream — and only vanilla ice cream.

But who wants to live in a world of only vanilla?

Not I, for one.

So when a review copy of the new “Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter) arrived in the mail, I couldn’t wait to tear into to make something especially fun and inventive.

After all, the ice cream company founded in 2011 in Portland, OR by cousins Tyler and Malek with locations in the Bay Area now, is famed for its zany flavors. Salt & Straw unabashedly does its best to “Keep Portland Weird.”

But that’s not to say that this ice cream maker gives precedence to wacky over excellence. Not at all. Its innovative flavors may have you scratching your head at first, but once you try them, you will marvel at their execution. Don’t just take my word for it. All it takes is to stop by a Salt & Straw ice cream shop to see the lines at all hours of legions of fans who can’t get enough of ice cream flavors you won’t find anywhere else. Best of all, Salt & Straw often incorporates specialty ingredients local to each of its stores.

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The Alluring Nari

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Cornish game hen curry with the best roti you’ll ever have — at the new Nari in San Francisco.

The newest restaurant sensation in San Francisco to open its doors just last week is named for the Thai word for “woman.”

It’s an apt moniker because it was opened by a woman as formidable as they get.

The captivating Nari, which opened in the Hotel Kabuki in Japantown, is the latest endeavor by Pim Techamuanvivit, who holds two Michelin stars, one each at Kin Khao in San Francisco’s Parc 55 hotel, and Nahm in Bangkok. Additionally, she operates Kamin, a fast-casual cafe in the International Terminal at San Francisco International Airport.

Born and raised in Bangkok, Techamuanvivit worked in tech in the Bay Area, before becoming one of the earliest breakout blogging stars with her site Chez Pim. Along the way, she wrote a cookbook, then became an artisan jam maker before reinventing herself again as a chef-restaurateur.

In every case, she’s done so with aplomb.

Restaurateur Pim Techamuanvivit in the dining room of her newest restaurant, Nari.
Restaurateur Pim Techamuanvivit in the dining room of her newest restaurant, Nari.

So it comes as no surprise that a day before the official opening at a “friends and family” preview dinner, to which I was invited as a guest, her newest restaurant was already hitting it out of the park.

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A Prodigal Son Returns — To Boonville

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Grass-fed beef tartare with tomatoes and fiddlehead ferns at the Boonville Hotel restaurant.

Grass-fed beef tartare with tomatoes and fiddlehead ferns at the Boonville Hotel restaurant.

BOONVILLE, CA — If there ever was Wine Country royalty, Chef Perry Hoffman and his family are it.

His grandparents, Don and Sally Schmitt bought an old stone building in Yountville in 1978, and transformed it into a charming destination restaurant, before weighing several offers to sell it in 1993. They famously chose Thomas Keller, who went on to turn the French Laundry into a Michelin three-star establishment revered the world over.

Hoffman’s mother founded a Napa Valley florist company that has supplied blooms to the French Laundry for decades. His grandparents went on to restore the Philo Apple Farm that’s now run by Hoffman’s aunt, who also manages the lovely Farmhouse Mercantile store in Boonville.

Across from that store on sleepy main street, Hoffman’s Uncle Johnny has operated the Boonville Hotel for 31 years. It’s where Hoffman got one of his first jobs in the kitchen after high school. It’s where he fondly remembers tasting for the first time both Caesar salad and aioli.

Chef Perry Hoffman's return to the place it all started for him.

Chef Perry Hoffman’s return to the place it all started for him.

So in January, when Hoffman — once the youngest chef in the country to win a Michelin star when he headed Étoile at Domain Chandon in Yountville in 2009 — returned to become chef-partner at the quaint roadhouse built in 1860, it marked more than just a new job. It poetically signified a life coming full circle.

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