Category Archives: Chefs

Tomato Sale to End All Tomato Sales & More

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Grow your own tomatoes -- with the help of Love Apple Farm. (Photo courtesy of the farm)

Love Apple Farm’s Annual Tomato Seedling Sale

Yes, folks, this is the biggie — the tomato seedling sale that’s the largest in California, the one that attracts droves of home gardeners, including folks from Los Angeles, who have been known to drive up and back in one day just for it.

Why? Because Owner Cynthia Sandberg knows her tomatoes.

Sandberg runs the 20-acre Love Apple Farm in Santa Cruz, which supplies one — and only one — restaurant with an astounding variety of produce. That would be the Michelin-two-star Manresa in Los Gatos.

The seedling sale will kick off at 9 a.m. March 26 and run through June 26. An astounding 30,000 plants representing more than 100 varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes will be sold, including Black Oxheart, Gary O’ Sena, Hippy Zebra and Mountain Pride. Seedling prices range from $3.50 to $5.50 each.

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All Spice Is All Charm

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Ahi tuna atop pickled watermelon at All Spice.

In a seemingly incongruous locale tucked back from busy El Camino Real in San Mateo sits a quaint 1906 Victorian house, where dynamic, modern Indian fare is now being created.

All Spice, which opened in November, is the latest venture by Chef Sachin Chopra, formerly of Sakoon in Mountain View, Mantra in Palo Alto, Amber India in San Jose, and Daniel in New York. It’s also the first time Chopra has partnered with his wife, Shoshana Wolff, in a restaurant venture.

Recently, I was invited to be a guest of the restaurant, which is a warren of small rooms that lend a feeling of warmth and intimacy.

Wolff greets you at the door with a cheery welcome. With a masters in Viticulture and Enology from the University of California at Davis, Wolff also is a wine-maker, growing her own grapes at her family’s vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her Wolff & Father Wines, which she hopes to pour at the restaurant in the near future, will focus on Merlot and Zinfandel. At first thought, you might think those substantial reds jarring with Indian cuisine, but Wolff assures that they go exceedingly well with her husband’s style of cooking, which is boldly flavored but not at all searing in heat.

When I visited, the restaurant was still awaiting its wine and beer license, but offering a small, but well-crafted list of non-alcoholic beverages. I enjoyed a rosemary-infused pink grapefruit punch so much that I can’t wait to try making it at home.

Lentil-battered potato fritters show up as an amuse bouche.

After we were seated, our convivial server brought an amuse of lentil-battered potatoes with Indian-style aioli. The potato fritters were crisp on the outside, creamy within, and with bits of salty, porky bacon hidden inside.

Indian-style chicken wings with fall-off-the-bone tenderness.

My husband started with the star anise and fennel confit chicken wings ($9), a generous portion that is probably best shared. Fragrant with lemongrass and yuzu, as well as a red chili sauce, the wings weren’t crisp-fried like the Buffalo-version. Instead, the wings were braised until the meat was pull-away tender. It’s a messy dish, but one you’ll be happy to dig into.

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Healthful Pizza, Ruth Reichl Visit, Chef Demo & More

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The Mexican pizza at ZPizza in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Organic Wheat Flour Pizzas in San Francisco

Laguna Beach, Calif.-based ZPizza, which has more than 90 locations nationwide, now has a locale in San Francisco at 833 Mission St., Suite C (at Fourth Street).

The pizza dough is made from certified organic wheat flour, the sauces are prepared fresh daily, and the cheese is part-skim, rBGH-free mozzarella from grass-fed cows. Gluten-free crust and vegan cheese also are offered. Gourmet ingredients include cremini and shiitake mushrooms, as well as truffle oil and the African hot sauce known as pili pili. For delivery, the pizzas are ferried via bicycles to reduce carbon emissions. Gourmet salads, pastas and sandwiches round out the menu.

Pizza choices include the Thai, with peanut sauce, mozzarella, spicy chicken, cilantro, bean sprouts and serranos; the Mexican with housemade salsa, mozzarella, spicy lime chicken, green onions, avocado, sour cream and cilantro; and the Casablanca, with roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and parmesan. Pizzas are $10.95 for a small, $19.95 for a large, and $24.94 for an extra-large.

The one and only Ruth Reichl. (Photo by Fiona Aboud)

Ruth Reichl at Stanford University

Join former Gourmet magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl at a free event at the Cubberley Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus in Palo Alto at 6 p.m. March 29.

Reichl, now an editor and author at Random House, will be speaking on “The Intersection of Food, Culture and History.”

A Different Look at Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate

Sure, they taste good. But did you know all three of those ingredients are rife with politics?

Learn all about the intrigue in getting these three ingredients from harvest to plate at “Politics of the Plate — What’s Behind the Silky Sexiness of Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate,” 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 16 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco (Starr King room), 1187 Franklin St. at Geary Street.

Experts Patricia Rain (vanilla), Juan San Mames (saffron) and Mark Magers (chocolate) will be on the panel with moderator Janet Fletcher, a San Francisco Chronicle food writer.

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Food Gal Giveaway — Tickets to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show

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A gorgeous protea. (Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show)

Step inside the 26th annual San Francisco Flower & Garden Show, March 23-27, for a real whiff of spring.

Get ideas for your own backyard by checking out 20 full-sized garden installations from top Bay Area designers, including a 6,000-square-foot “Homestead” by Star Apple Edible Gardens of Oakland, which will feature a chicken coop and demonstrations on beer and jam making.

Indeed, this year’s show — which takes place at the San Mateo Event Center — is full of foodie fun. For the first time, the show will feature a series of cooking demonstrations by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley (March 26), Sean Baker of Gather restaurant in Berkeley (March 23), and Jeffrey Stout of Alexander’s Steakhouse in Cupertino and San Francisco (March 25).

Additionally, the Livermore Valley Wine Growers Association will debut a new wine garden tasting area.

A garden exhibit from a previous year. (Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show)

The show also will include seminars, book signings, a farmers market and a marketplace with more than 200 vendors selling everything from plants to seeds to tools.

Filmmaker Deborah Garcia will be showing scenes from her newest documentary, “Symphony of the Soil,” which examines the state of community based and scientific growing practices around the globe.

Advance tickets are $16 online for a single day or at the door for $20. A multi-day, all-show pass is $25; a half-day pass is $15; and children under $16 are admitted free at all times.

The Food Gal is happy to be able to give away three pairs of multi-day passes. Yes, tickets good for any and all days of the show. Tickets are valued at $50 per pair.

Contest: Entries are limited to those who can attend the show in San Mateo, March 23-27. Entries will be accepted through midnight March 12. Winners will be announced March 14.

How to win?

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Food Gal Giveaway — Chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s New Book

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Chef Gabriel Hamilton's new memoir.

“Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef.” The title says it all, doesn’t it?

It’s the new memoir (Random House) by Chef-Proprietor Gabrielle Hamilton of much-loved Prune restaurant in New York, which is adored by other chefs for its soulful, no-nonsense approach, as well as for its roasted marrow bones, fried sweetbreads and extensive menu of Bloody Marys.

I’ve always been impressed by the articles Hamilton has penned for the New York Times Dining section. With a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, she’s one chef who really knows how to craft a beautiful, evocative sentence.

I just started reading her book (which I received a review copy of). It’s  a frank, honest recounting of her rather bohemian childhood, raised by her set designer father and former ballerina mother in a burnt-out, 19th Century silk mill in rural Pennsylvania, where they threw great parties complete with baby lambs roasting on spits and wine bottles chilling in the nearby creek. That life came crashing down when her parents split up when Hamilton was only in her teens. She started smoking, shop-lifting and got her first job washing dishes in a restaurant when she was only 13.

She spent many tumultuous years trying to find herself, before opening her restaurant, which she called “prune,” after the nickname her mother had for her as a child.

As she wrote about her vision for the restaurant, “There would be no foam and no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food; just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry. There would be nothing tall on the plate, the portions would be generous, there would be no emulsions, no crab cocktail served in a martini glass with its claw hanging over the rim. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. Preferably gin. I wanted all of that crammed into this little filthy gem….”

Meet Hamilton when she visits the Bay Area this week. She’ll host a dinner with Book Passage at Left Bank restaurant in Larkspur, 6:30 p.m. March 10. Tickets are $100 per person or $170 per couple, and includes dinner and a signed copy of her book.

March 11, she’ll conduct a book-signing at noon on March 11 at Rakestraw Books in Danville. Tickets are $20 each. Reservations are required by calling (925) 837-7337. Then, that evening, she’ll be the guest at a special dinner at Camino restaurant in Oakland. The evening starts at 6 p.m. with Negronis, hors d’oeuvres and a book-signing, followed by dinner at about 7 p.m. Tickets are $100 per person. Reservations are required.

March 12 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., Hamilton will swing by Omnivore Books in San Francisco for a book-signing.

If you miss those events, you’ll be glad to know that Food Gal is giving away one free copy of Hamilton’s book.

Contest: Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be taken through midnight PST March 12. Winner will be announced March 14.

How to win?

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