Category Archives: Chefs

San Francisco Film Society Culinary Luminaries Banquet, New Anthony Bourdain Show & More

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Alice Waters and Cecilia Chiang in a scene from "Soul of a Banquet.'' (Still courtesy of the San Francisco Film Festival)

Alice Waters and Cecilia Chiang in a scene from “Soul of a Banquet.” (Still courtesy of the San Francisco Film Festival)

Mega-Benefit Banquet by the San Francisco Film Society

If you’re an aficionado of Chinese banquet galas, you will not want to miss this stellar one by the San Francisco Film Society at Yank Sing in San Francisco, 6 p.m. April 10.

Among the noted guests who will be in attendance: Bay Area culinary legends, Alice Waters and Cecilia Chiang; acclaimed food writer Ruth Reichl; and noted film director, Wayne Wang, who will be showing a sneak preview of his newest film, “Soul of a Banquet,” his tribute to Chiang, who changed the face of Chinese food in America when she opened The Mandarin in San Francisco in 1961.

The event benefits Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Project.

Tickets, which include the reception, film screening and dinner, are $288 per person. A table for 10 is $2,500.

Avant Garden Food & Art Fundraiser in San Jose

Celebrate all things local in the South Bay at the third annual “Avant Garden” event, 7 p.m. April 19 at The Armory, 240 N. 2nd St. in San Jose.

Enjoy live music, crafts, artwork and plenty of food and drink by vendors such as Little Bee Pops, Good Karma Vegan Cafe and Cafe Stritch.

Event tickets are $10 online or $12 at the door. Food and drink tickets are $3 each and available at the event site.

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A Taste of New Orleans at CreoLa

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Crawfish is flown in weekly from Mardi Gras time through the summer at CreoLa.

Crawfish is flown in weekly from Mardi Gras time through the summer at CreoLa.

Edwin Caba may be of Dominican heritage.

But he sure knows his Big Easy cuisine.

Indeed, he’s been cooking up New Orleans-style dishes at CreoLa in San Carlos for more than 16 years.

He was hired at the restaurant as its sous chef, having trained at the owners’ other New Orleans-inflected establishment in San Diego. When they were ready to retire, Caba bought the place.

Creole-Cajun cooking is so distinctive that it often gets lost in translation when it’s transplanted elsewhere, with chefs mistakenly substituting fiery heat for complexity.

Not so here, as I found out recently, when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant.

Caba goes the extra mile, as is evident from one taste of the seafood gumbo. There is a rich, depth of flavor you can’t miss. It’s the result of the TLC put into the roux. In fact, the gumbo roux is going on three years old, Caba says. Similar to a sourdough starter for bread, a portion of the roux is saved each time it’s made, and added to the next batch. A bowl ($8) of it is deep and dark with a few bay shrimp, chunks of crab, slivers of andouille sausage and rice at its center.

You might drive by CreoLa easily on El Camino Real. The low-slung A-frame building looks like an old time-y coffee shop or motel restaurant. Inside, it’s cozy with ceiling fans in the main dining room and friendly waiters who chat easily with regulars and newcomers.

You gotta get your hands dirty. But it's worth it.

You gotta get your hands dirty. But it’s worth it.

From March through summer, Caba flies in about 75 pounds of crawfish weekly from Louisiana. When they arrive, he sends out an email blast to regulars, who crowd in, primped to get their hands messy.

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The Big, Bold Flavors of Namu Gaji

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Pickled, seared beef tongue at Namu Gaji.

Pickled, seared beef tongue at Namu Gaji.

 

As my friend Mark and I sat down at the slender bar at the equally shoebox-like Namu Gaji in San Francisco, he started to look nervous.

When I heard that beef tongue was a special that night, I asked if he was game to try the restaurant’s rather unique preparation of it. Mark hemmed and hawed, squirmed a bit, and recounted the times he had tongue at other restaurants, only to find the rather toothsome, pebbly texture thoroughly unappealing.

Then, he looked me straight in the eyes, and said, “But if you really want to order it….”

So, we did. And when Mark speared a chunk, and took his first bite, I watched his trepidation turn to surprise and awe. It was the first tongue dish he’d ever relished.

Namu Gaji’s food will do that to you. It’s familiar yet not. It’s full of big, bold, sometimes fiery flavors — the kind you find yourself craving again and again after just one encounter, as I found after being invited in a as a guest of the restaurant a few weeks ago.

The restaurant also operates a food stand at the farmers market on Thursdays and Saturdays at the San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace, as well as at the market at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur on Saturdays. Later this year, it also plans to start selling its own line of kimchee at the restaurant and Bi-Rite Market.

The award on the bar.

The award on the bar.

The chef's counter/bar may be bare bones, but it has the best seats in the house.

The chef’s counter/bar may be bare bones, but it has the best seats in the house.

Founded by three Korean-American brothers, Dennis Lee (the chef), Daniel Lee and David Lee, the restaurant (Korean for “tree branch”) serves Korean fare. But also, Japanese-inspired ones and pan-Asian ones all their own like the beef tongue dish that is not Korean at all. Dennis Lee just decided to try pickling the meat for a week, then searing it to order. The pickling breaks down the tough cut, making it as tender as short ribs. It also adds an unexpected tang to the rich meat. The composed dish is beautiful to behold, looking like a zen garden of sorts.

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New Chef Lights Up Parallel 37 in San Francisco

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A steamed bun like no other.

A steamed bun like no other.

When you’re the former executive chef of renowned Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, you don’t make a steamed bun with pork belly like everyone else.

No, the fluffy clam-shell bun that Chef Michael Rotondo now does at Parallel 37 in San Francisco’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel comes stuffed with a crispy chicken foot instead.

One that is impossibly, improbably but absolutely devoid of all bone and cartilage.

If you’ve ever gnawed on a chicken foot at a dim sum restaurant, you know just how many bones that small appendage contains. So, it’s quite an astonishing, er, feat to remove them all, while still retaining the shape of the feet.

The dining room.

The dining room.

But at Parallel 37, Rotondo does just that, assigning a team of two chefs to create this playful dish that requires steaming the chicken feet, then carefully taking tweezers to them.

All for one dish that can be eaten in two bites.

The Fort Orange cocktail.

The Fort Orange cocktail.

Since taking over as chef de cuisine from Ron Siegel who departed to head the kitchen at Michael Mina in San Francisco, Rotondo has put his own spin on the menu, creating dishes that seem familiar in name or taste, but are actually reborn anew.

Not surprising from a chef who received the “Most Promising Chef” award from icons Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller after Rotondo competed in the U.S. Bocuse d’Or competition in 2008.

Written in the style that’s all the rage now, the menu ($14 to $32) at Parallel 37 is divided into “Vegetable,” “Fish” and “Meat,” with a few ingredients listed for each dish, but no clues as to how it’s prepared. For instance, there’s a dish of “octopus — smoked sunchoke, breakfast radish ($21).”

There’s also a chef’s tasting menu option of eight market-inspired courses for $135 per person.

This style of dining invites you to sit back, be adventurous and put your trust in Rotondo’s hands. Which is exactly what I did earlier this month, when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant.

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Take Five with Chef Sarah Burchard on Breaking Down Pigs, Working at Top SF Restaurants and Starting Her Own BBQ Sauce Business

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Chefs Sarah Burchart and Spencer O'Meara. (Photo by Iann Ivy)

Chefs Sarah Burchart and Spencer O’Meara. (Photo by Iann Ivy)

Sporting a girly ponytail, a sailor’s mouth, a wicked sense of humor, and a brand new tattoo of a large rooster on her left bicep, Sarah Burchard looks every bit the tough-girl chef.

She also knows her stuff. The 31-year-old former head chef of Barbacco in San Francisco, has cooked at some of the top restaurants in the Bay Area, holding her own even when she was the only woman in the kitchen. Cooking professionally has been something she’s wanted to do ever since she was a little girl, growing up in San Diego and then on the Peninsula, baking cookies with her Mom.

But two years ago, she decided to step away from that routine to start a company with her boyfriend, Spencer O’Meara, former chef of Paragon in San Francisco. S&S Brand (named for their first initials) makes small-batch gourmet barbecue rubs and sauces. They’re sold on their company Web site, as well as at 23 retail locations, including Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco, Willows Market in Menlo Park, the Pasta Shop in Oakland, and Robert’s Market in both Woodside and Portola Valley.

Enjoy a taste at the S&S Shack pop-up event, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 16 at Mission Rock Resort in San Francisco. Burchard and O’Meara will be serving up rye soft pretzels with beer cheese sauce, bloody Mary shrimp “cocktails,” mini brisket bacon cheddar sliders, jerk chicken, hot links, “burnt ends” baked beans, corn bread with apricot jam and honey butter, Carolina vinegar slaw, PB&J donuts, and Jaegermeister ice cream shakes. Tickets are $40 each.

Recently, I had a chance to chat with Burchard about her first job (think ice cream), why she’s consumed by barbecue, and the nickname that Chef Staffan Terje of Perbacco bestowed upon her.

Q: You really knew since you were a kid that you wanted to be a chef?

A: I figured it out pretty quick. I loved to cook as a kid. My Mom taught me how to make the perfect grilled cheese. My Dad used to work at a fish market, so he taught me the appreciation of good seafood.

My first job was at Baskin-Robbins in Foster City. I was 15. A bunch of my friends from high school were working there, so it was like we ran the joint. It taught me a lot of responsibility. We closed down the shop at 10 p.m. every night. We did inventory. We counted the cash drawer. And I was making $4 an hour. It was good experience. We used to eat ice cream like it was going out of style. The owner let us eat however much we wanted, probably thinking we’d get sick of it. But we never did. Mint chip was my favorite.

After that, I worked at a deli in Foster City for four years. I loved it. I was in junior college for about a year, completely uninspired. It was around then that I decided to screw junior college and go to culinary school. I told my Mom, and she was like, ‘˜What?!’ She said she saved her entire life to send me to college, that I was going to only one college, so I better pick wisely.

Pork loin with S&S BBQ rub and Tennessee-style sauce. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

Pork loin with S&S BBQ rub and Tennessee-style sauce. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

Q: You chose the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, which led to your stint at Viognier in San Mateo?

A: I did my internship there, and they kept me on after I graduated. That was also when ‘Kitchen Confidential’ came out. I read it and that sealed it. That was what I wanted to do for a living. I just love to cook. When I’m not cooking professionally, I’m at home, cooking. I love reading about it, learning about nutrition, everything about it. I love the camaraderie in the kitchen.

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