Restaurants with the best views don’t always boast the greatest food.
Not so with Menlo Park’s Madera restaurant,which has one of the prettiest dining rooms around, and a most talented chef in East Bay native, Peter Rudolph.
Get a taste of his elegant, farm-to-table cuisine when he joins me for a cooking demo, 6 p.m. Dec. 3 at Macy’s Valley Fair in Santa Clara.
You’re in for a spicy, scrumptious time at Macy’s Valley Fair in Santa Clara when Lisa Murphy, founder of the Bay Area’s Sosu Sauces joins me for a cooking demo at 6 p.m. Nov. 19.
Sosu Sauces makes my favorite sriracha sauce. The artisan sauce is hand-made in small batches, then aged in whiskey barrels to give it great complexity and a hint of smokiness.
Learn how Murphy gave up a career in banking and high-tech to spread the gospel of sriracha and Srirachup (that’s her mashup of her sriracha with ketchup).
Chef Brandon Jew preparing his tofu “burrata” at the San Francisco Cooking School.
For some people, the thought of tofu is enough to disrupt their appetite.
But for others in the know, tofu is poised for the same geeky-chic disruption as so many other tech ventures.
Minh Tsai, former investment banker turned tofu master, is leading that charge.
The founder of Oakland’s Hodo Soy Beanery, Tsai brought together a group of the Bay Area’s top chefs and food writers last week at the San Francisco Cooking School to ponder and taste tofu 2.0 — the next iteration of thinking and cooking with the much maligned soybean product.
Tofu laab with shrimp, Asian herbs, quince and chicharron.
“We want people to talk about tofu differently, to take it to another level,” says Tsai.
Enjoy a taste of spice and all things nice when yours truly is joined by Chef-Owner Pradeep Kumar of Vedas restaurant for a cooking demo, 6 p.m. Oct. 19 at Macy’s Valley Fair in Santa Clara.
With outposts in Milpitas, San Mateo and Pleasanton, Vedas restaurants offer up a bold taste of the various regions of India. They are known for their proprietary spice blends, made in traditional stone grinders to preserve their robust flavors.
Born in Delhi, Kumar worked in New York City restaurants, Silicon Valley tech cafes, and with Food Network celebrity Robert Irvine of “Dinner: Impossible.”
A scene from last year’s FallFest. (Photo courtesy of San Francisco magazine)
If you’re mourning the end of summer, you’re sure to rejoice that it’s fall with FallFest, the outdoor foodie fest noon to 4 p.m. Oct. 10 at Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco.
Presented by San Francisco magazine, the event supports Meals on Wheels of San Francisco, which provides meals to home-bound seniors.
Enjoy live music, cooking demos, and tantalizing tastes from some of the Bay Area’s premier chefs, wineries and breweries.
Among those participating will be: 25 Lusk, Barbacco, Gaspar Brasserie, Cairdean Estates, and Blackbird Vineyards.
Tickets are $110 in advance; $125 at the door.
Get $10 off your ticket if you purchase before Oct. 2 and use the code: FOODGAL
San Francisco’s Tacolicious, which already has a venue in Palo Alto, is expanding even farther south with an outpost in Santana Row in San Jose.
It is expected to open sometime around February 2016 in the old Lavazza space.