Category Archives: Restaurants

A Heavenly Time at Heaven’s Dog

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So much Chinese food often gets bogged down in grease, cornstarch and cheapo ingredients.

So much so that when you taste a once-mundane dish elevated with primo produce, it can be a revelation.

Such was the case when a friend and I encountered Chef Charles Phan’s distinctive take on the usual run-of-the-mill “Ants Climbing Tree” dish ($11) at his hip Heaven’s Dog restaurant in San Francisco, steps from the Holiday Inn Civic Center.

As a Chinese-American who grew up in San Francisco, I’ve long eaten this homey dish of ground meat (the so-called “ants”) cooked with garlic, soy sauce and ginger, then ladled over slippery cellophane noodles (the “tree”). My Mom would cook it or buy it to-go from an Asian deli. It was a fine dish — just nothing I necessarily ever craved or went out of my way for.

That is, until I tried the one at Heaven’s Dog, which was a most pleasant surprise. This meatless rendition was loaded with fresh black trumpet mushrooms and plenty of leeks. The crowning touch was the toasted pine nuts sprinkled all over the top, giving it unexpected crunch and richness. There was so much flavor and texture that I almost felt like I was tasting this warhorse of a dish for the very first time.

We couldn’t resist the Shanghai dumplings ($10), which burst appropriately with hot broth from the first careful bite.

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Scenes From SF Chefs 2010

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Didn’t make it to the SF Chefs 2010 extravaganza this past weekend at Union Square in San Francisco?

No fear. Here’s a glimpse of the opening festivities last Friday night, which featured a slew of chefs, mixologists and vintners doling out gourmet goodies under a billowing white tent on the square.

The big guns were out in force, too, including New York Chef David Burke and star restaurateur, Drew Nieporent of the Myriad Restaurant Group.

The event officially got underway with a sabering ceremony, where a bottle of bubbly was dramatically opened by using a long knife to slice off the top of it.

You can tell from the expressions of the crowd that it was quite the sight.

A bevy of chefs were in attendance, including Mourad Lahlou of Aziza in San Francisco, whose first cooking show is expected to debut on PBS in the fall of 2011. Filmed in Marrakech and the Bay Area, the show will shine the spotlight on both traditional and modern Moroccan cooking. He’s still looking for help from investors, too. So if you’ve done well in the stock market or with the Lotto lately, don’t be shy and drop him a line.

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The Most Anticipated Restaurant of the Year, Benu, Opens Today

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Expectations are through the stratosphere for Benu, which opens today in San Francisco, to unparalleled fanfare.

Discriminating diners have been salivating over every detail that has emerged over the past few months about this new restaurant from Chef Corey Lee, the esteemed former chef de cuisine of the French Laundry in Yountville.

Reservations already have been going fast on OpenTable for Lee’s first restaurant, with tables already nabbed as far out as late September.

But that’s not surprising, given Lee’s stature in the culinary world. The James Beard award-winning chef has built a restaurant, where every detail has been meticulously considered — from the specially designed porcelain plateware to the private wine lockers to the first-of-its-kind Viking cooking suite in the kitchen.

Indeed, Lee’s architect, the award-winning Richard Bloch of New York, calls this the most custom restaurant he’s ever worked on. It’s also the first restaurant that the French Laundry’s Thomas Keller has invested in that’s not one of his own.

Learn just what it took to build this elegant restaurant, housed in the former Hawthorne Lane-cum-Two restaurant space just a hop away from the W Hotel. Read all about it in my story in the September issue of Food Arts magazine.

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The Return of Chef Mike Miller

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Foodies who have been lamenting last summer’s closing of the Michelin one-star restaurant, Trevese in Los Gatos, will rejoice to hear that Chef Mike Miller is cooking again in the South Bay.

Since January, the chef who dazzled with creative, elegant fare at his Trevese and at his previous restaurant, Umunhum in San Jose, has taken over the helm at the Silicon Valley Capital Club in downtown San Jose.

Unfortunately, the 17th-floor restaurant is a private, members-only dining establishment, which means you have to belong to it to get in or have a member invite you.

But recognizing the caliber of chef now on board, the club has big plans to open the restaurant to the general public on select days in the near future. So, stay tuned.

About 80 applicants applied for the head chef job there, and only a few were restaurant chefs, according to chair of the culinary committee, Stu Carson. Miller blew away the competition when he cooked a Dover sole during his tryout that Carson still calls the best fish dish he’s ever eaten.

Miller and I go way back. During my time as a food writer at the San Jose Mercury News, he and I collaborated on two memorable Thanksgiving stories, where we pitted our respective menus against one another. Now, he gets the holiday off, though.

I was invited as a guest last week to try the new menu at the club, where about 40 percent of the menu has been revamped with Miller’s own dishes. He and his sous chef, John Burke, who also came from Trevese,  have big plans to shake things up on the once stodgy menu. Already, Miller is baking his own popovers, adding grass-fed beef to the menu, and instituting a new four-course, prix-fixe tasting menu ($40; or $60 with wine pairings). He’s also contemplating adding house-made charcuterie.

Some of the standouts of the evening were the canapes of foie gras terrine layered imaginatively with sweet cantaloupe; an amuse bouche of salmon tartare with caviar and preserved lemon; and meaty and very crisp pork pot stickers in a sticky, thick orange ponzu glaze ($8).

Among the starters, the Maine lobster cocktail ($12) piled high in a sundae glass with papaya, avocado and crisp tortilla chips was fun eating.

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Slide into SliderBar Cafe in Palo Alto

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After launching Mantra, the contemporary Indian restaurant in downtown Palo Alto four years ago, what was the next logical move for Ashwani Dhawan?

To open a restaurant that specializes in itty-bitty American hamburgers, of course.

Say what?

Yes, the Indo-American, techie-turned-restaurateur opened SliderBar Cafe in downtown Palo Alto at the end of March.

Don’t even strain yourself to look for a curry or tandoori burger on this menu. There is nothing Indian about it. Instead, find everything from the “American Classic Slider” ($2.89) with a Niman Ranch beef patty, and served with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, mayo and a pickle to the “Memphis-Style Natural Pulled Pork Slider” ($4.49), made with Niman Ranch pork, and coleslaw.

Breakfast is served all day, too. So you can enjoy a “Mediterranean Breakfast Slider” ($2.69) with a cage-free egg, olives, artichokes, tomatoes, onions, feta cheese and roasted garlic sauce on a puffy little white bun, no matter what the hour.

SliderBar also offers a variety of wines, including economical ones on tap from kegs and dispensing machines that help preserve the wines better.

Why baby burgers?

“I wanted to do something simple and not fine dining,” says Dhawan, who is still part-owner of Mantra. “Fine dining is too hard these days. I also was very interested in portion control.” Light eaters can order one slider while their carnivore companions can go to town to order them by the trio or even by the dozen.

Recently, I was invited as a guest to try SliderBar, where the menu is still being tweaked a bit. The yogurt shakes are now made with ice cream instead. The baked fries were axed in favor of the more traditional fried ones. And dessert offerings are still to come.

The casual restaurant was packed with folks with laptops on their tables, as well as families with young children. The front of the restaurant spills out onto the sidewalk, with tables for prime people-watching on bustling University Avenue. Two flat-screen TVs at the bar also provide entertainment.

You order at the bar, and the food is delivered to your table.

Garlic fries ($2.89) and sweet potato fries ($2.89) arrive in silver julep tumblers, hot, crisp, and done perfectly.

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