Category Archives: Chefs

Get Ready for “Top Chef” — New York

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Meet the new Top Chef cast

Tune in starting 10 p.m. Nov. 12 for the fifth season of Bravo TV’s “Top Chef: New York.” The lone Bay Area contestant this time around is Jamie Lauren, 30, executive chef of San Francisco’s Absinthe Brasserie and Bar. Let’s hope she fares better than her Bay Area chef colleagues from last season.

She is one of 16 chefs competing this year for $100,000, a feature in Food & Wine magazine, and a showcase at the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.

Among the guest stars this year will be: Martha Stewart, Foo Fighters, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Eric Ripert, Rocco DiSpirito, Wylie Dufresne, Jean-Christophe Novelli, and Natasha Richardson. A new judge will be introduced, as well, to spice up the mix. He is Toby Young, food critic and author of the book, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” (Da Capo Press), which is the basis for an upcoming film.

Here is a complete list of this season’s “Top Chef” competitors:

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Holiday Lights, Tyler Florence, Wines, and More

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Yountville sparkles for the holidays.

Mark your calendars for Nov. 28 when Yountville’s 20th Annual Festival of Lights gets underway in the small town with the big-city palate (it boasts six Michelin stars and more than 20 wineries).

From Nov. 28 through the end of the year, the city will be a winter wonderland lit with twinkling lights. On Nov. 28, look for carolers, elves horse-drawn carriages, ice carving, and a visit from Santa.

The fun gets going at 2 p.m. with a block party. Local restaurants, including Redd, Bistro Jeanty, and Bouchon Bistro, will serve up tastes of their specialities. Tasting tickets for food and wine are $1 each. For more information closer to the date, click here.

For more star wattage, trek to Santana Row, 5 p.m. Nov. 8, when Food Network darling, Tyler Florence, stops by to do a holiday-themed cooking demo at Sur La Table. He’ll also sign copies of his new cookbooks, “Dinner At My Place” (Meredith) and “Stirring the Pot” (Meredith).

To purchase copies of the books, visit the store or call (408) 244-4749.

For a fix of Indian food, New Delhi Restaurant in San Francisco celebrates its 20th anniversary, 5 p.m. to midnight Nov. 16, with a gourmet buffet, libations, and dance performances.

Attendees are asked to make a donation of $40 per person for the event. Proceeds will go to the Tenderloin After-School Program and the Ghandi Ashram in New Delhi, both of which help underprivileged children.

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Take Five with Sent Sovi’s Josiah Slone, Who Came Home to Forge Success

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Chef-proprietor Josiah Slone (Photo courtesy of Sent Sovi)

Josiah Slone’s story is that of a local boy done good. Born in San Francisco, and raised on the Peninsula, he had a pretty good idea even as a child that he wanted to be a chef one day.

You see, while other kids were watching Looney Toons, he was tuning into the cooking shows of Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and Martin Yan.

After stints in Santa Monica and Jamaica, the 31-year-old chef opened his first restaurant, Saratoga’s Sent Sovi in 2003, realizing his dream of having his own place in his home area.

I sat down with him to chat about the cookbook that changed his life, studying electrical engineering in college, and how everyone else  — except him — felt the pressure when he bought Chef David Kinch’s famed Sent Sovi restaurant.

Q: You actually read the “The Joy of Cooking (Scribner) when you were a kid?

A: I looked through it when I was a really little kid, before I could read very well. It was this big book, and it had two red ribbons in it to mark your place. The old one had menus for bridge parties and afternoon tea. It reminded me of going to my grandma’s house.

I remember cooking out of it when I was in the 6th grade. I made meatloaf out of it, and cookies. It was my Mom’s go-to cookbook. We still have a copy of the “Joy of Cooking” in the kitchen at Sent Sovi. I also took “Joy of Cooking” to Jamaica with me.

A modern take on classic sole.

Q: Did your Mom inspire you to cook?

A: (laughs) My Mom did cook. She likes to say “I taught him everything I know about cooking. It wasn’t very much.”

Q: You’re a Bay Area native. Do you think that’s also a reason why you’re so into food?

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Cupcake-itis

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Clockwise from back: Strawberry-filled vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter-filled chocolate, and marble cupcakes.

I blame this on Nate of the House of Annie blog.

After returning from my Los Angeles vacation, where I made the rounds of bakeries, I thought I was done with nibbling on cupcakes. At least for a little while.

But then Nate had to tell me that one of my favorite South Bay bakeries had started making cupcakes.

Darn him. Darn him.

So, of course, I had to try them.  Calories be damned.

Off I went to Sugar Butter Flour’s original location in Sunnyvale (there’s a second one in Campbell now, too). Last year when I was still writing for the San Jose Mercury News’ food section, I had picked Sugar Butter Flour’s pastry chef-partner, Irit Ishai, as one of the top pastry chefs in the South Bay. Consider her resume: Former pastry chef at Sent Sovi in Saratoga under then-Executive Chef David Kinch; former pastry chef of Kinch’s subsequent restaurant, Manresa in Los Gatos; and an apprentice at Fleur de Cocoa in Los Gatos, owned by Pastry Chef Pascal Janvier, whom I also singled out in that same story as a stellar pastry chef.

Sugar Butter Flour’s cupcakes are $3 each. I picked one of each available that day to cart home: a strawberry-filled vanilla cupcake, a marble cupcake topped with chocolate buttercream, a chocolate cupcake with a white squiggle a la Hostess, and a peanut butter-filled chocolate cupcake with peanut butter buttercream.

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A Dang Good Burger

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Burger nirvana

If a shrine could be built for a burger, fans of Father’s Office gastropubs in Santa Monica and Culver City would erect one to be sure.

Sang Yoon, a South-Korean-born chef who has worked with the likes of French culinary genius Joel Robuchon, turned his back on fine-dining to create these two casual, fun, hip pubs that serve gourmet bar food and 36 craft beers on tap. Smoked eel with poached egg and horseradish creme fraiche, anyone?

It is his “Office burger,”  though, that has got tongues wagging and teeth chomping for seconds. A $12 burger made of dry-aged strip steak, bleu cheese, arugula, and onions caramelized with a splash of sweet-tangy balsamic. It trounced other chefs’ creations in a “Today Show” cook-off. Esquire and Chowhound fanatics have labeled it the best around. Indeed, foodies have deemed it a “masterpiece” of burger-dom.

But the real question, of course, is what my hubby, aka Meat Boy, would think of it. He had been looking forward to sinking his teeth into one ever since we planned our recent Los Angeles trip.

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