Category Archives: Restaurants

All-Day Eats at Presidio Social Club

Posted on by 24 comments

Ray Tang is back in the house.

After a two-year hiatus, Tang, the opening chef of the Presidio Social Club in San Francisco, is back at the helm of the picturesque restaurant located in the former Army post-turned national park. Indeed, the long, clapboard building, a short drive from the Laurel Inn, was once the barracks for enlisted men.

It’s always been a laid-back restaurant, where you can rock jeans and a T-shirt just fine. Tang has brought back a lot of familiar dishes from when he was first chef there, including crabcake sliders ($12) and island-style ahi poke ($11). He’s also re-instituted the Sunday pig roast, where he cooks a whole pig in a “Caja China” wooden box. A plate of roast pork with fixings is $20 those nights.

Tang also added a Monday night clambake through the summer, where $32 will get you a feast of lobster, clams and mussels, along with potatoes, corn on the cob and dessert. What’s more, Presidio Social Club is now an all-day restaurant, meaning you can walk in anytime from lunch-time to closing to get a meal without being turned away if you’re starving at, say, 3 p.m., when most other places would close the kitchen between shifts.

I was invited to dine as a guest at dinner recently to check out the new menu. We ordered a few dishes, and the kitchen brought out even more to make sure we tried enough items.

First to arrive was a sampler of  three of the day’s antipasti ($10), which included corn kernels spiked with a little chile, an assortment of tender-crisp summer beans, and lovely roasted carrots drizzled with pesto, which made me think I’ve got to replicate this at home with my backyard basil.

Next, those adorable crab cake sliders ($12). With a topping of aioli and tangy slaw on soft, airy tiny buns, they almost had an Asian flair to them.

Read more

Good Eats in Australia

Posted on by 42 comments

VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA — Traveling opens your eyes, as well as your taste buds.

My recent week-long trip to Australia, sponsored by Boundary Bend Ltd., was no exception.

Both in Melbourne and throughout the outlying countryside of the state of Victoria, there were so many wonderful new ingredients and dishes to revel in. Here are some of the highlights:

Prahran Market:

I could have stayed for hours meandering through the stalls at the famous Prahran Market, Australia’s oldest continuously running central marketplace. The covered marketplace, teeming with produce, seafood, fresh pasta, flower, soap and olive oil vendors, originated in 1864 at a smaller locale in Melbourne, and moved to its present location in 1881.

If there weren’t those pesky agriculture and customs laws (for good reason, of course), I would have brought back to the Bay Area armloads of the mesmerizing finger limes (above and below photos). The fragrance alone is intoxicating — beautiful enough to be a perfume that you’d want to dab on all the time. It smells of kaffir lime, with a bright floral, refreshing and very complex nose.

What’s really fascinating, though, is that this lime doesn’t have much juice at all. Instead, give one a squeeze and out will come these little globules that look for all the world like caviar. Damian Pike, a wild mushroom specialist, whose stand was selling these, explained that the fruit can be used in marmalade and all manner of dishes. One taste of the chewy globules that burst with tangy delight and I was dreaming of them atop sashimi.

Pike’s stand also sold fresh pepper berries, which I had never seen before, having only been used to the dried variety that fills my pepper grinder at home.

Read more

Garlic Fest & Unique Corkage Fee Program

Posted on by 22 comments

Gilroy Garlic Fest:

It will be a most pungent time at the 32nd Gilroy Garlic Festival, July 23-25, in Christmas Park.

Yes, that’s Mr. Garlic front and center above, with the two goofy Foster Imposter Chickens, who also will be putting in appearances as Foster Farms is the official chicken provider for the fest. The portly birds also will be on hand  to get the word out against salt water-plumped chickens, which contain more sodium and end up being more expensive with the added water weight.

At this year’s festival, enjoy live music, children’s entertainment, and a plethora of food booths selling everything from garlic chicken sandwiches to garlic steak tacos to garlic ice cream with cantaloupe.

July 24 at 10 a.m., eight amateur chefs from around the country will vie for the $1,000 cook-off prize. Locals will no doubt be cheering for the two California contestants: Jamie Miller of Napa, who will be making “Deconstructed Beef Wellington with Garlic-Tarragon Aioli” and Michael G. Labrador of Newhall, who will be whipping up “Garlic Paella with Garlic Aiolli.”

July 25 at noon, four chefs will take to the stage for a $5,000 cook-off. “Top Chef” contestant Fabio Viviani will host the cook-off featuring another “Top Chef” alum and the defending champion from last year, Ryan Scott, who will go up against Jerry Regester of C Restaurant in Monterey; Jesse Llapitan of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco; and another “Top Chef” alum, Mattin Noblia of Iluna Basque in San Francisco.

New this year is a commitment from festival organizers to make the event as green as possible in the next three years by featuring local ingredients and products, as well as sourcing re-usable materials.

Read more

Fish Tacos Still Rule

Posted on by 26 comments

With all the hub-bub lately about the spicy Korean short rib taco craze, you might think fish tacos have gone passé.

Not so.

In fact, two San Francisco Bay Area spots have rolled out new, inventive versions just in time for summer.

First up, Gott’s Roadside (the restaurant formerly known as Taylor’s Automatic Refresher) is serving up fish tacos — poke-style. Yes, three crispy tacos ($13.99) are filled with Hawaiian-style raw, marinated ahi tuna cubes, avocado, green cabbage, cilantro and spicy mayo.

Gott’s also features a new “B-Side” menu — sly, you-have-to-ask-for-it selections on a special list that you have to specifically request at the counter or follow @gottsroadside on Twitter for updates on that particular menu.

A few of the recent secret menu items have included the “Big Tasty” (buttermilk fried chicken with house-made ranch dressing, aioli, melted Swiss cheese and bacon on a butter-toasted egg bun) and the “Fish Royale Sandwich” (fresh mahi-mahi, tartar sauce, Romaine, and American cheese on a toasted bun).

The “B-Side” items are meant to showcase fresh-picked ingredients from Gott’s new garden in St. Helena, which will be used at all Gott’s locations. Those include heirloom tomatoes, herbs, shallots, squashes, potatoes and peppers.

Read more

A Visit to Two Australian Wineries

Posted on by 22 comments

YARRA VALLEY, AUSTRALIA — Just about an hour’s drive from Melbourne, this picturesque region is the country’s leading cool climate wine region.

On my recent trip to Australia, sponsored by Boundary Bend Ltd., I had a chance to visit two outstanding wineries in this valley, the oldest wine region in the state of Victoria in the southern part of the continent.

With its stunning, contemporary main building with sweeping lines that echo the ridge line it overlooks, Yering Station hardly looks like the the oldest winery in the Yarra Valley. But the first grapes were planted here in 1838.

The family-owned winery is known for its Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and sparkling wines. In fact, Yerring Station’s Assistant Winemaker Marc Lunt says that many wine critics consider Australia second only to Burgundy, France for its quality of Chardonnay. The 2009 we tried was wonderfully creamy and tasted vaguely of peaches. It also had a lovely mineral note, giving it nice balance.

Yering Station also makes an interesting blend of Shiraz and Viognier, apparently a quite common marriage in the Yarra Valley because Merlot does not grow well here. The Viognier takes its place instead, softening the power of the Shiraz grape.

A small group of food journalists and I had the pleasure of dining at the winery’s fabulous restaurant with Lunt. The large dining room has a back wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the rolling hills. Even on an overcast day in the fall in the Southern Hemisphere, it was breathtaking.

We shared an assortment of appetizers at lunch. You know a restaurant is good when it can turn out such outstanding dishes when the head chef isn’t even in the house that day.

The prices may seem high by American standards (about $21 each for the appetizers), but you have to take into consideration that the gratuity system is much different Down Under. In Australia, it’s not customary to tip 18 percent or what-have-you as it is in the United States.  Instead, even if you leave a token tip, it’s viewed as more than enough. So the prices reflect that.

Read more

« Older Entries Recent Entries »