Category Archives: Restaurants

A Slurping Good Time at Myzen Ramen

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The signature Myzen Ramen bowl.

The signature Myzen Ramen bowl.

 

Owner Sterling Zhuang knows that people may wonder what a Chinese guy is doing opening a Japanese ramen restaurant.

But Zhuang spent six months living in Tokyo, learning the finer points of ramen from a Japanese friend, before opening Myzen Ramen in Sunnyvale this summer. He also hired an all-Japanese crew for his kitchen.

The results?

One top-notch ramen establishment. And that’s saying a lot, given the plethora of ramen places in the South Bay.

I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant recently. I took along my Japanese-American husband, who of course, was quite skeptical at the start. But in the end, he was won over, having eaten his words, and a whole lot more.

Lone diners can sit at the bar that fronts the kitchen.

Lone diners can sit at the bar that fronts the kitchen.

The brightly-lit dining room has tables packed close together. But you understand why when you see the lines at lunch-time. At dinner on a weeknight, the place was still nearly full.

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Saluting Sunchokes (With A Caveat)

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Get to know sunchokes.

Get to know sunchokes.

 

They look like the love child of ginger and potatoes.

They taste deliciously nutty, sweet and a bit artichoke-like, and have a a texture akin to a creamier water chestnut.

Do you know sunchokes?

These knobby tubers are also known as Jerusalem artichokes.

They’re a pain to peel, as you can imagine. They’re also not easy to find in stores. I’ve bought them at Sprouts and Draeger’s in the past.

And for some people, unfortunately, they are not easy to digest. In fact, their nickname is, um, “fartichokes.” You can read more about that in this enlightening — and slightly amusing — Bon Appetit article.

If you’re trying them for the first time, you probably want to go easy on how many you eat just to see how well your body takes to them.

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Bar Crudo Celebrates 10 Years

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Avocado toast -- and with uni -- at Bar Crudo.

Avocado toast — with uni — at Bar Crudo.

 

For folks like my husband, the antidote to too much fancy food is a good ol’ burger.

For folks like me, it’s fish.

Raw fish, to be exact.

So when I was invited in as a guest recently at Bar Crudo in San Francisco, I jumped at the chance.

After all, with the overload of cookies, rich appetizers and big hunks of meat at this time of year, what better way to give the body a rest than with raw fish — Italian-style.

Plus, the restaurant is proudly celebrating its 10th year.

The packed dining room.

The packed dining room.

You can sit at the bar, too -- if you can snag a seat.

You can sit at the bar, too — if you can snag a seat.

I still remember its teeny-tiny, original Bush Street location. Now ensconced on Divisadero Street, it’s still not huge. But the long, narrow quarters here definitely offer more breathing room.

On a recent Saturday night, it was packed inside, with even more folks outside, hoping to snag a table.

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Join the Food Gal and Chef Peter Rudolph of Madera Restaurant For A Macy’s Cooking Demo

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MacysPeterRudolph

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.

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Joanne Weir’s Easy, Elegant and Festive Endive Salad

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The salad you need to make this holiday season.

The salad you need to make this holiday season.

 

Holiday dishes don’t get better than this.

It’s festive, chic — and unbelievably effortless. In short, everything you want when you want to impress, but are loathe to break out in a sweat to do it.

Leave it to the Bay Area’s Joanne Weir to come up with this dazzling “Endive Salad with Lemon Creme Fraiche and Salmon Roe.”

It’s from her new cookbook, “Kitchen Gypsy: Recipes and Stories From A Lifelong Romance with Food” (Oxmoor House), of which I received a review copy.

The cookbook is filled with the dishes that most influenced the life of this long-time PBS cooking show host, who cooked for five years at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, and now owns Copita in Sausalito.

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