Category Archives: General

An Odiferous Time in Gilroy

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Smell that pungent, mouth-watering aroma?

You will as the day draws nearer for the 30th anniversary of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, July 25-27 at Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy.

Over the years, the popular event has raised nearly $8 million for local charities. And it’s fed quite a crowd _ more than 3 million, who have consumed 376 tons of beef, 119 tons of pasta, 68 tons of scampi, 50 tons of calamari, and 72 tons of California garlic.

This year will be more of the same as booths will dish out all things garlic, including garlic frog legs, garlic Kettlekorn, Cajun fried catfish, garlic chicken pizza, lumpia, garlic fried-green tomatoes, and of course, the ever popular, garlic ice cream.

July 26 at 10 a.m., eight amateur cooks from across the country will duke it out in the annual cook-off. This year’s local contestant is Linda Wang of Sunnyvale, who will be trying to sway the judges with her garlic corn creme brulee with pan-seared scallops and garlic pancetta saute. For the first time, the cook-off will be telecast over the Internet on the festival’s Web site.

July 27 at noon, the professionals get in on the act when four area chefs will vie for a top prize of $5,000 and 1,000 pounds of fresh garlic. This “Garlic Showdown” will feature chefs Mark Ayers of the Highlands Inn and Hyatt Regency Monterey; Christopher Preyale of the Fountaingrove Golf & Athletic Club in Santa Rosa; James Waller of the Monterey Plaza Hotel & Spa; and Ryan Scott of San Francisco’s Mission Beach Cafe and a contestant in this past season’s “Top Chef” show. This “Iron Chef”-style challenge will feature a not-so-secret ingredient — garlic, of course.

Tickets to the festival are $12 for adults, $6 for children ages 6-12 and for seniors, and free for kids under age 6.

For those who want to bring a part of the festival home — well, besides the resulting garlic breath — pick up a copy of “Any Bozo Can Cook,”  a collection of 102 recipes inspired by everyone’s fave smelly bulb. It was written by Sam Bozzo and Gene Sakahara, both festival cooks and former festival presidents. The $16 book will be sold at the festival, and online.

For a sneak taste, try this recipe from the book:

Garlic shrimp with spicy garlic peanut sauce

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Two New Bay Area Restaurants Coming In August

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Long-time San Franciscans might remember the popular Miss Pearl’s Jam House that was in the Phoenix Hotel back in 1989. Now, it’s being resurrected across the Bay in the Waterfront Hotel in Jack London Square.

The restaurant, expected to open in mid-August, will serve up New World Island cuisine such as crispy catfish fingers, black-eye pea fritters, gazpacho, and selections from a raw bar. There also will be killer cocktails, as well as the infamous Jell-O shots.

Joey Altman, the star of KRON’s “Bay Cafe,” was the chef who launched the original Miss Pearl’s Jam House. He’s back as a consultant on this new project. The executive chef will be Robert Barker, who was executive sous chef at Emeril’s  in New Orleans, and was a chef at three Wolfgang Puck restaurants.

Also expected to open in August in downtown San Francisco is Urban Tavern, a new restaurant owned by restaurateur Chris Condy and Aqua‘s celebrated chef Laurent Manriqe. Also working on the project is Dona Scala, owner of the ever-popular Bistro Don Giovanni in Napa.

Billed as a stylish “gastropub,” Urban Tavern will have a modern, artsy feel with a full-size horse sculpture fashioned out of tractor, motorcycle and car parts. The food will be Mediterranean-inspired.

Amped Up Sesame Cake

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Tender sesame cake.

Maybe you’ve tasted sesame cake before. Well, you probably haven’t had sesame cake like this before.

Extremely moist, artful with black sesame seeds throughout, and with the haunting, revved up flavor of toasted Asian sesame oil. Wow.

The recipe is from baker extraordinaire, Alice Medrich, who never ceases to amaze. It’s from her book,
“Pure Dessert” (Artisan). It’s a simple cake to bake, and one that needs no other adornment to shine.

Sesame Seed Cake

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Thomas Keller To Open Restaurant In Los Angeles

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Southern California, which no doubt has been starved for a stellar Thomas Keller restaurant, will finally get one in late 2009 when a new Beverly Hills outpost of Bouchon will open.

The French bistro will be on North Canon Drive in the Beverly Hills Gardens building. It will be adjacent to the Montage Hotel, which will open later this year.

“This project is a homecoming of sorts for me as I worked for many years in the Los Angeles area,” said Keller in a statement, referring to his time overseeing Checkers restaurant before he was fired for insubordination. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, as not long after that in 1992, Keller ended up buying the French Laundry in Yountville; and the rest, of course, is four-star culinary history.

World-class restaurant designer Adam D. Tihany, who created the look for Bouchon in Yountville, as well as Per Se and Bouchon Bakery in New York, will once again turn his magic on creating this Keller restaurant that will seat 225. The two-story structure will house the restaurant on the second floor and a Bouchon Bakery on the first level.

Rory Herrmann will be the chef de cuisine. He is the former private dining kitchen chef at Per Se.

Bouchon Beverly Hills will join the Bouchon family, which also includes a Bouchon Bistro and a Bouchon Bakery in Las Vegas.

Not to be left out, Laura Cunningham, Keller’s former long-time girlfriend who ran the front-of-the-house operations at French Laundry and turned service into a true art there, will be opening up a restaurant of her own in Yountville.

Cunningham, who has been a restaurant and hotel consultant all over the world since leaving the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group about two years ago, will take over the former Pere Jeanty restaurant site on Washington Street. She plans to rename the restaurant, Vita, which means “life” in Italian. It also was the first name of Cunningham’s late grandmother. The restaurant will be contemporary Italian with an emphasis on her family’s Sicilian and southern Italian heritage.

The concept, image and design will be overseen by Cunningham. The daily operations of the 120-seat restaurant will be managed by Culinary Director Jeffrey Cerciello of Bouchon and Ad Hoc restaurants, along with the team from the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.

Are You What You Cook?

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That’s the thought-provoking title of the Asian cuisine event, 6 p.m. July 21, upstairs at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

Join Chef Kelly Degala of Pres A Vi in San Francisco and Va de Vi in Walnut Creek; Eric Gower, author of “The Breakaway Cook”(William Morrow); Michelle Mah, former executive chef of Ponzu in San Francisco; Kirti Pant, executive chef of Junnoon in Palo Alto; and Chef Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco. They will talk about how they developed their signature styles.

Appetizers will be served, along with wines from Filipino-American estate winery, Eden Canyon Vineyards.

Tickets are $35 for general admission; $25 for full-time students and those in the restaurant trade. To register, click here.

The event is a kick-off for the Oct. 10-12 Asian Food Beyond Borders symposium at the Ferry Building. The event is being spearheaded by Bay Areans Andrea Nguyen, author of “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen”(Ten Speed Press), and cooking instructor and Asian foods expert, Thy Tran.

The three-day event will celebrate how Asian communities have created dynamic cuisines around the globe. Among the speakers will be: cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey; Public Television star Martin Yan; Google cafe chef and former San Francisco Chronicle food writer Olivia Wu; and James Oseland, editor in chief of Saveur magazine.

Yours truly also will be overseeing an Oct. 11 wine-pairing seminar hosted by Edwin Soon, oenologist and author of “Asian Food With Wine” (Tide-Mark Press), at Le Colonial restaurant in San Francisco. For more information, click here.

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