Category Archives: Restaurants

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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News in Wine Country, Kids Eat Free & More

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New Happenings in Wine Country

After years of renovation, Rustic, Francis’s Favorites has opened in the soon-to-be-completed Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville.

The dining room is centered on the parrila, an Argentinian grill. Enjoy Neopolitan pizzas such as the one named after the famed director’s daughter (a stellar director in her own right), Sofia. This pizza comes topped with arugula, prosciutto, and Parmigiano. Other dishes include a whole fish cooked in salt, classic Fiorentino steak for two, short ribs Argentine-style, and “Mrs. Scorcese’s Lemon Chicken” (one guess where that recipe came from).

The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner daily. The winery has a temporary tasting room for now. Eventually, it will include two new tasting rooms, as well as Coppola’s collection of movie memorabilia, including Don Corleone’s desk from “The Godfather” and the original 1948 Tucker car.

Join more than 30 of the Napa Valley’s top chefs and wineries at Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation Grand Tasting at the Silverado Resort in Napa, Aug. 5.

Among the restaurants participating are Peter Pahk, chef of the Silverado Resort, who will be assisted by chefs from La Toque, the Restaurant at Meadowood, and Cole’s Chop House.

Funds raised will go to Share Our Strength’s efforts to eradicate childhood hunger in Napa County and across the nation.

Tickets are $75 per person. One of the sponsors, Pretzel Crisps, is offering a deal on $15 off the ticket price. Just use the code, “PRETZELCRISP,” when purchasing tickets online.

This month, Swanson Vineyards in Rutherford debuted a new, whimsical tasting room, Sip Shoppe.

It joins the winery’s Salon tasting room. The Sip Shoppe, open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays, is decorated in striped circus-like fabric and faux stone gargoyles. Enjoy sipping wines in unusual glassware such as glass “Dixie” cups, mini Riedel O’s, and colored cut crystal.

A sense of fun permeates this tasting spot, which was envisioned as a candy store for grown-ups. Wines are available by the glass or by specific tastings, including the “Oakville Irony” ($15, Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, a dollop of caviar atop a potato chip, and a New Orleans Snowball).

Look for new gift sets to be sold there, too, such as the “Newlywed Kit” (six bottles of  Swanson Vineyards “Just Married” wine, along with a feather ostrich duster, and a sage bundle).

Kids Eat Free at Chipotle Aug. 2

Parents who purchase a burrito, salad, burrito bowl or tacos at Bay Area Chipotle’s get a free meal for their kids on Aug. 2.

It’s a promotion to show off the new Chipotle kids’ menu, which includes choices such as small cheese quesadilla ($2.95, which includes a bag of chips, and beverage) and a “taco kit” ($3.95), which allows the pint-sized bunch to build their own tacos from three items (and enjoy chips and a beverage).

Just as with the grown-up dishes, the kid-friendly ones also are made with naturally raised meats, organic and local produce, and hormone-free dairy.

Today is National Cheesecake Day…

…And you know what that means? Half-price cheesecake slices for eat-in diners today at Cheesecake Factory locations.

Choose from more than 30 different flavors, including the new Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Cheesecake, which includes chunks of your favorite candy mixed into cheesecake with layers of fudge cake and caramel. How decadent is that?

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Treasures To Be Found Inside the Attic

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Earlier this year, I, like so many other foodies, mourned the passing of San Francisco’s Poleng Lounge, one of the few restaurants not only to feature modern Filipino food, but to do it exceedingly well.

So, I rejoiced when I heard that the Mosquito had landed — at least temporarily.

For those in the know, that’s the nickname of Filipino-American Chef Tim Luym, formerly of Poleng Lounge, who earned that moniker during college, when he used to deejay at club gigs by scratchin’ vinyl to create distinctive sounds. And nothing scratches more than a mosquito, right?

Luym now can be found in the kitchen at the barely two-month old Attic restaurant in downtown San Mateo, where he is the consulting chef. Whether he sticks around permanently, remains to be seen. Luym would only play coy, saying he was still exploring all his options.

For those who have missed the bold, memorable flavors of Luym’s former Southeast Asian small plates restaurant in San Francisco, you’ll be glad to know the menu at Attic features a lot of the same dishes you fell in love with there.

The vibe also is similar. Walk in the doorway, and you’ll find yourself first in the Bar under Attic — a small, bare-bones speakeasy on the ground floor that stays open late. Walk up a flight of stairs in the corner, and you’ll enter the actual restaurant upstairs, done up in warm reds and browns, and decorated with terracotta tea pots and wood crates. Dark, polished tables are set with caddies of chopsticks. Sliding glass doors overlooking the bustling street below let in a cool breeze on warm summer evenings.

Although my two gal pals and I paid our tab, Luym sent out extra goodies as a welcoming gesture because I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him multiple times over the past few years.

The best way to enjoy yourself, of course, is to share all the dishes family-style. That’s just what my friends and I did, starting with sweet potato fries ($3.50), which were wonderfully crisp. To dunk them in, there was a spicy, house-made ketchup made with banana. Yes, banana, which lent a wonderful note of fruity, tropical sweetness, so much so that you wonder why more ketchups don’t have banana incorpoated into them.

Then came monster-sized house-made Sinigang Chicharonnes ($3.50). They looked like tortilla-sized shrimp chips. But one bite revealed their porky, fatty lushness.

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Ad Hoc BBQ Goodies

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When it carries the name, Ad Hoc, synonymous with the high-quality famous at Thomas Keller’s lauded, family-style Yountville restaurant, you know it will come with good taste and a high premium.

Such is the case with the new Ad Hoc Apple Bacon BBQ Sauce and Ad Hoc Sweet & Spicy BBQ Rub, both sold exclusively at Williams-Sonoma.

Recently, I got a chance to try out samples of both — the 13-ounce jar of barbecue sauce, which sells for $16; and the 3-ounce canister of rub, which is $12.

The hubby, aka Meat Boy, smeared the rub on racks of ribs, then brushed on the sauce after they came off the grill.

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All-Day Eats at Presidio Social Club

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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.

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