Category Archives: Restaurants

Happiness Is Getting A Table At Happy Crane

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Hand-pulled noodles with hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms at Happy Crane.
Hand-pulled noodles with hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms at Happy Crane.

After opening in August in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, Happy Crane has garnered acclaim far and wide.

So, it’s no wonder that landing a reservation to enjoy Chef James Yeun Leong Parry’s contemporary take on Cantonese cuisine is as hard as getting invited to Taylor Swift’s upcoming nuptials.

A tip to the wise: Reservations open up 30 days in advance at noon on OpenTable. So, set yourself up with your phone, laptop or desktop five minutes before, and keep refreshing the page over and over again. When the reservations finally so pop up, immediately pounce.

That’s how I managed to secure a reservation for four a few weeks ago. And it was absolutely worth jumping through those hoops.

The dining room.
The dining room.

Like with Mister Jiu’s and Four Kings, both in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Happy Crane has reinvigorated Chinese food with fresh, young energy with the use of top-quality ingredients, time-honored and modern techniques, and playful reinterpretations.

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A Visit to Cafe Vivant — Where the Chickens Come Home to Roast

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The roasted Pescadero Red chicken at Cafe Vivant.
The roasted Pescadero Red chicken at Cafe Vivant.

When my husband told a friend at the gym that he was going to dinner at a restaurant where a whole chicken costs more than $100, the response was:

“What?!? Does it lay golden eggs?”

Not quite.

But Cafe Vivant, which opened in late October in downtown Menlo Park, is definitely not your average fast-casual rotisserie or fried chicken joint.

Instead, this unique upscale restaurant specializes in heritage-breed poultry. If you remember decades ago when heritage turkeys started to be all the rage, despite a price tag multiple times larger than your average Butterball, then you get the gist of how these chickens differ.

These breeds, which existed before chickens became an industrial commodity, take longer to raise, are harvested when they are older, and not surprisingly, are in much smaller supplies. The results are chickens raised more purely, with more pronounced flavor and texture.

The upscale restaurant opened in Menlo Park at the end of October.
The upscale restaurant opened in Menlo Park at the end of October.
The striking dining room.
The striking dining room.

The restaurant is owned by revered sommeliers Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung, who also run Somm Cellars in New York City, which specializes in rare and collectible wines. They have partnered with farmer Rob James of Corvus Farm in Pescadero, who raises a couple of the specialty breeds.

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A Visit to Paso Robles, Part II: Michelin-Starred Six Test Kitchen

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Hamachi with Asian pear and chili crunch at Six Test Kitchen.
Hamachi with Asian pear and chili crunch at Six Test Kitchen.

Paso Robles, CA — Six Test Kitchen made history in 2021 — becoming the first Michelin-starred restaurant in San Luis Obispo County. It has held that honor ever since.

It’s a true achievement for Chef-Owner Ricky Odbert, especially when you realize his 12-seat restaurant’s very humble beginnings.

Odbert had worked at some of the Bay Area’s most acclaimed restaurants, including Postrio, Spruce, Masa’s, Aziza, and the Restaurant at Meadowood. But he wasn’t even making enough to afford a cab ride home at the end of the night after work when MUNI had shut down its lines or curtailed them.

So, in 2015 he moved back to his parents’ house in Arroyo Grande. It was there he got the notion to start a restaurant of sorts in his parents’ garage. Fortunately, his father, who built commercial kitchens for a living, was all in on the idea and helped trick out the space.

Chef-Owner Ricky Odbert.
Chef-Owner Ricky Odbert.
Sommelier John Seals.
Sommelier John Seals.

Odbert’s underground supper club — all six seats of it — took off. That is, until someone complained to the authorities, and he had to shut it down until he got the proper permits for what he then promoted as a “test kitchen” with “cooking classes.”

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A Visit to Paso Robles, Part I: The Ava Hotel

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Shrimp and beef souvlaki at EMRE restaurant in the new Ava Hotel.
Shrimp and beef souvlaki at EMRE restaurant in the new Ava Hotel.

Paso Robles, CA — When you live in the Bay Area, it’s almost automatic that a visit to Wine Country typically means a jaunt to the Napa or Sonoma regions.

Paso Robles Wine Country, on the other hand, may be in the opposite direction. Yet it really isn’t that much farther away in driving distance, especially if you live in Silicon Valley. Even better, it possesses a charm all its own.

I was reminded of that earlier this month when I was invited as a guest of the newly opened The Ava Hotel in Paso Robles. It’s part of the upscale Curio Collection by Hilton.

The pool by the rooftop bar-lounge at The Ava.
The pool by the rooftop bar-lounge at The Ava.
A two-sided fireplace warms things up inside and outside.
A two-sided fireplace warms things up inside and outside.

The location can’t be beat. The Ava is just steps from downtown Paso Robles, which reminds me a lot of Sonoma, with its boutiques, tasting rooms, and restaurants surrounding a central public square.

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