Canapes of Wagyu tartare topped with Wagyu “caviar” at Gozu.
Nowadays, there are many restaurants where you can enjoy a Wagyu steak. But at Gozu in San Francisco, you can sink your teeth into smoky skewers that spotlight both familiar and unusual specific cuts of the prized Japanese beef.
When Chef-Owner Marc Zimmerman opened his hearth-centered restaurant in 2019, it was thought to be the only restaurant in the United States to directly import from Japan full cuts of top-grade A5 Wagyu. That amounts to a whopping 750 pounds in one shot.
That gives him the ability to use nearly every part of the outrageously marbled beef, often in audacious ways, including burning the bones as charcoal and fermenting lean cuts to make shoyu.
Japanese A5 Wagyu being aged at Gozu.
You can experience it for yourself with a $125 four-course menu or a $225 tasting menu. Or opt for the a la carte Stickbar menu that allows you to try individual skewers, priced from $14 to $55, depending on the cut.
Olive oil-poached steelhead trout at The Elderberry House.
When Ethan de Graaff was just 13 years old, he knew there was no other choice but to become a chef.
Now, the head chef of The Elderberry House in Oakhurst, he explains with a chuckle, “Once my dad started using mayo as a sauce on everything, I knew what I had to do.”
Today, he oversees the menu at the fine-dining restaurant at the Old World Chateau du Sureau, a 9-acre oasis in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not far from Yosemite National Park. He works in conjunction with Culinary Director Chris Flint, the former chef de cuisine at New York’s storied Eleven Madison Park and former executive chef of Michelin-starred Maude in Los Angeles.
Also tasked with overseeing sister property First & Oak in Solvang, Flint was hired in late 2022. Since his arrival, he’s brought back the restaurant’s tasting menu and leaned into sourcing locally even more.
Last week, when I was invited in as an overnight guest of the Relais & Chateau property, I had a chance to experience the roll-out of his first full new menu.
Chateau du Sureau.Keys to your guest room.
You might say my visit was more than two decades in the making. Way back when, while staying at another property near Yosemite, my husband and I had made dinner reservations at The Elderberry House. Unfortunately, it happened to be one of those precarious winters with such a deluge of snow that we were alarmed to see a snow plow had gone off the side of the road. Because the onslaught kept forcing the closure of the roads, we ended up canceling our reservations, fearing that even if we made it to the restaurant, we might never be able to get out again.
Finally making it here was definitely worth the wait. Imagine pulling up to a turreted estate in the European countryside, and you get an idea of what Chateau du Sureau is like.
Say hello to my new big friend — the playfully decorated concrete fermenter at Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards.
Umpqua Valley, OR — Wine-growing here dates back to the 1880s, when German immigrants who once worked for St. Helena’s Beringer Vineyards (the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa), planted the first wine grapes in this valley.
More than 30 wineries now make their home here, producing more than 40 varieties of wine.
On a recent trip to Oregon, I had a chance to visit three of them, courtesy of Travel Oregon.
Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards
Few wineries in Oregon boast their own wine cave. Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards in Roseburg does, and boy, is it a sight to see.
The wine cave built on the side of a hill, one of the few such winery caves in Oregon.Part of the cave’s ceiling.
Stephen and Gloria Reustle, husband-and-wife owners, added theirs in 2008. It was built by the same man who made the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, which gives a hint to its Old World-style taken up a big fanciful notch.
So thankful to come across an easier yet equally delicious version of this Stanley Tucci favorite.
You may not remember that last year I made Stanley Tucci’s famed “Spaghetti Con Zucchine Alla Nerano,” the captivating dish spotlighted on his CNN show, “Searching for Italy,” and in his memoir, “Taste: My Life Through Food.”
But I sure do. How could I forget every minute of carefully frying batch after batch of zucchini slices in a big pot of oil over a hot stove in summer for what seemed an interminable hour?
Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely adored the resulting pasta dish. But I haven’t made it since, even though, I’ve longed for its taste again. Heck, can you blame me?
That’s why I’m so happy to have discovered Cook’s Illustrated’s version that I could have hugged and never let go of its 2022 July/August issue that it published in.
In this rendition, there no deep-frying involved. Let me repeat that: No. Deep. Frying.
