Category Archives: Great Finds

‘Tis the Season to Give an Olive Tree

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Nudo Italian olive oil. (Photo courtesy of Nudo)

As you contemplate braving the stores tomorrow to shop till you drop on Black Friday, here’s a great gift without any of the hassle.

Give the gift of an Italian olive tree, along with all the luscious oil it produces for a year.

You can through Nudo-Italia.

Jason Gibb and Cathy Rogers chucked their careers as TV producers to restore an abandoned 21-acre olive grove in Italy’s Le Marche in 2005. (We should all be so lucky, right?)

In addition to selling lovely olive oils, organic jarred pesto and dried specialty pastas, they also offer a program where anyone around the world can adopt an olive tree for a year. The project is a collaboration between Nudo and small-scale artisan olive oil producers in Le Marche and Abruzzo.

You can even choose the tree you want in a specific grove. Each tree produces about 2 liters of oil a year. For $105, you receive three shipments during the year.  First, a personalized adoption certificate and booklet about your tree. Then, in the spring, you’ll receive delivery of all the extra virgin olive oil from your selected tree. Finally, in autumn, you’ll get three flavored extra virgin olive oils to enjoy, as well.

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Fruity Over Fruit Bread

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Panettone Autunnale from Emporio Rulli.

Meet panettone, the only fruitcake-like concoction I actually adore.

The others? Cloying, gummy, heavy and dense as can be, they’re the butt of so many tireless jokes. For good reason.

Not panettone, though.

The Italian holiday bread — baked in the shape of a towering cupola — is airy and fluffy, thanks to the long proofing of the sweet dough.

For a really exemplary version, try the one made by the Bay Area’s Emporio Rulli.

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Oakland’s New Cerruti Cellars Urban Winery

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The first vintage made by Tudal Winery, which includes a hand-drawn label done by John Tudal's mother.

For proof that the East Bay is turning into a hub for urban wineries, look no further than the new Cerruti Cellars, which is expected to open any day now across from Jack London Square in Oakland.

Yes, wine-making not in a bucolic, serene setting but a gritty one full of asphalt and concrete.

Nowadays, you’ll find just that at the 22 cosmopolitan wineries that make up the East Bay Vintners Alliance, whose members span Alameda to North Berkeley.

Winery owner John Tudal, holding up an old receipt from his family's produce farm.

John Tudal acknowledges that he’s taken some ribbing from his Napa Valley neighbors, where he operates his family’s more high-end Tudal Winery, about setting up shop in Oakland for his moderately priced Cerruti Cellars wines, which includes the well-known Tractor Shed Red.

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Presenting Auberge du Soleil’s Torte au Chocolat

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The magnificent, but pricey, Torte au Chocolat.

There are 11 layers in this showstopping cake made by the Michelin-starred Auberge du Soleil in the Napa Valley.

That’s layer upon layer of crisp hazelnut dacquoise, chocolate cremeux, pureed organic hazelnuts and dark chocolate ganache. It’s crunchy, nutty, densely rich and oh-so luxe tasting. The signature creation of renowned Pastry Chef Paul Lemieux, it comes packaged in a novel round gift box that splits open for easy removal of the cake.

How cool is this packaging?

This beauty, which can serve 6 to 8, can be yours — or that of a well-deserving friend or family member — for $57.50.

If that’s a little too rich for your pocketbook, you’ll be glad to know that the resort has added some more affordable items to its line of “Sweets from Soleil.” Recently, I had a chance to try samples of this glam cake and the newest sweet treats.

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Luke’s Local: A Taste of Local and Sustainable at a Caltrain Station

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Owner Luke Chappell outside his Luke's Local store at the Caltrain station.

As you race to catch the train home after a day that’s left you running on empty, wouldn’t it be great to pick up a fresh, nourishing, convenient meal for the ride home?

You can if you stop at the San Mateo Hillsdale Caltrain station, where Luke’s Local opened this spring in an old, vacant ticket office.

This is a convenience store that’s all about local and sustainable food products, as well as gourmet-to-go meals, made fresh daily by a former San Francisco restaurant chef. We’re talking Dungeness crab mac ‘n’ cheese, skirt steak with creamed corn, and chicken stuffed with chevre — all precooked and packaged (at $7.99 each) for you to take home to heat up easily.

Or grab a dripped-to-order Blue Bottle coffee, a pastry from San Francisco’s Sandbox Bakery, an organic locally grown apple, a Free-Trade banana, or a chorizo breakfast burrito ($3.49) that you can nuke in the microwave there to nosh on your morning commute. And yes, Caltrain does allow food and beverages on its trains.

The front of the store, just a few steps from the train tracks.

Sure, the Palo Alto Caltrain station boasts a gourmet coffee kiosk. And the San Francisco station has a coffee stand and a Subway sandwich shop. But the Hillsdale station, where 1,300 passengers go through daily, is the only one with meals like this, prepared by Adel Benmahdi, who used to work at Orson in San Francisco.

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