Category Archives: Restaurants

New Eats in San Francisco

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Will it be sushi, Spanish, Mexican or California cuisine tonight?

When you’re hanging with a group of friends with varying cravings, it’s sometimes hard to settle on one eatery to satisfy everyone. The new Art’s Tapas & Sushi Lounge in San Francisco’s Marina district, a short drive from the Fairmont Heritage Place at Ghirardelli Square, makes it easy.

At this hip lounge, consulting Executive Chef Taka Yamaguchi, formerly of the Bay Area’s Blowfish Sushi restaurants, serves up a mix of small plates and libations that span the gamut of all those cuisines and more.

Enjoy grilled tofu ($7.50); Japanese-rice paella with vegatables and squid ink ($14); carpaccio with wasabi aioli on a bed of arugula and capers ($9); sushi, including “build-your-own” rolls; and crema catalana ($6).

There’s also a full bar with draft beers, wine, sake, sangria and signature cocktails. During weekday “Happy Hours,” 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. to closing, indulge in 99-cent oysters, too.

Friday nights also just got even more delicious and fun at Show Dogs in San Francisco, the gourmet sausage eatery that’s a short walk from the InterContinental hotel.

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Ferry Building Happenings, Glam Foodie Fund-Raisers & More

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In San Francisco:

The offerings at the Saturday farmers market at the San Francisco Ferry Building just got a whole lot sweeter.

The Arlequin booth, manned by Luis Villavelazquez, executive pastry chef of Absinthe restaurant in San Francisco, will now be a regular fixture at that Saturday market, just steps from the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, beginning May 1.

The booth, which already had been up and running at the smaller Thursday farmers market there, will be selling the likes of malted cupcake with banana cream and Oreo frosting; strawberry and tobacco-infused scone with creme fraiche; spiced ramp and provolone biscuits; and milk chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

Find the Arlequin booth next to Blue Bottle Coffee’s exterior stand,  8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Thursday and Saturday.

If luscious libations are more your thing, you won’t want to miss “Berries, Citrus and Rhubarb,” a fun cocktails class at the Ferry Building, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. May 7.

Master mixologist Scott Beattie will conduct a hands-on class to teach you how to make market-fresh strawberry margaritas, classic mai tais, and gimlets.

Master distiller, Lance Winters of St. George Spirits in Alameda, will talk about micro-distillation.

The Ferry Building’s Il Cane Rosso also will serve up cocktail-friendly noshes. Additionally, participants will get to take home a recipe booklet.

The class will be held under the North Arcade of the Ferry Building. Tickets are $45.

City College of San Francisco invites you to its 12th annual “Wok on the Wild Side,” a benefit for its culinary arts and hospitality studies department, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. April 26.

Participating in the star chef-studded affair are Staffan Terje of Perbacco in San Francisco, Bruce Hill of Picco in Larkspur, Laurence Jossel of Nopa, Jennifer Biesty of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, and Mauricio Sibrian of John’s Grill in San Francisco.  They will be honoring City College alum, Tom Sweeney, the famous Beefeater doorman who has been welcoming visitors to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel for more than 30 years.

The chefs will be cooking up their specialties and being assisted by the students and faculty of the program.

Tickets are $150. For information, call (415) 239-3152.

You won’t want to miss another gala chefs gathering, 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. April 29, when “Taste of the Nation San Francisco” rolls into town on the Club Level of AT&T Park in San Francisco.

The benefit for Share Our Strength, will feature tastes from more than 40 top San Francisco chefs, including Dominique Crenn of Luce, Mark Sullivan of Spruce, Hoss Zare of Zare at Fly Trap, and Matthew Accarrino of SPQR.

Live music and a silent auction will add to the festivities, which will benefit one of the nation’s largest organizations dedicated to alleviating childhood hunger.

Regular tickets are $85. VIP tickets, which get you into the event an hour earlier, are $140.

Monday, April 26, dine at a Pasta Pomodoro in San Francisco or elsewhere in the Bay Area to do a good deed.

That night, the restaurant chain will donate 25 percent of profits from every “Cena di Familia” meal to local food banks to help families in need. The three-course, family-style meal, which feeds four, comes with choice of salad, pasta and dessert for $35.

Around the Peninsula:

Take a taste of more than 100 wines from all over Italy in one spot. You can at “Enoteca 100 Primavera,” an Italian wine tasting at Donato Enoteca restaurant in Redwood City, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. May 1.

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Harmony and Simplicity Meet at Hachi Ju Hachi in Saratoga

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At Hachi Ju Hachi, the Japanese restaurant in downtown Saratoga, you won’t find the standard menu of teriyaki, Philly rolls, and Bento Box “A”’s like that of so many other establishments. Nor will you find bells, whistles, over-the-top flourishes or modern sensibilities that jar and shock.

Instead, you will find dishes with a real purity of flavor and lovely simplicity.

Chef-Owner Jin Suzuki may be only 45 years old, but he is decidedly old-school when it comes to cooking.

At 19, he started his training as a chef at a restaurant just outside of Tokyo. For six months, all he did was clean the windows and floors. He wasn’t even allowed to step foot inside the kitchen to wash dishes. It would be another three years before he was allowed to wash the rice. All of this had a profound effect on him.

“The more I saw, the more I got curious,” he says. “I learned that in-between confidence and arrogance is humility. So many chefs can be good technically. But so few chefs can attain spirituality in their cooking.”

One need only glimpse Suzuki, with his crisp chef’s coat, perfectly knotted tie, geta sandals, and serene composure to know this is a chef who has indeed attained that.

The name of the restaurant, Hachi Ju Hachi, which opened in November, comes from the word for  “rice” in Japanese. Taken apart, the kanji characters represent the number,”88.” Whether it was fate or not that led Suzuki to this exact location to open his restaurant is anyone’s guess. All he knows is that a few months after he opened, he happened to notice that the sidewalk tree right in front of his restaurant bears an identification medallion with “88” engraved on it. Coincidence? Or not?

Suzuki likes to believe it was destiny that led him to Saratoga, where he practices his version of washoku: traditional Japanese food based on the principles of harmony, balance, simplicity and restraint.


He practices techniques that form the basis of the art of kaiseki (Japanese haute cuisine), some of which are not even done in Japan anymore because they are so time-consuming to do, he says.  This is a man who makes his own salt by boiling iodized salt and sea salt in water for six hours until the liquid evaporates and all that is left is a softer, milder alchemy with an almost faint sweetness. He preserves shiitake mushrooms by braising them in sake, soy and kombu until they are soft, sticky and almost candy-like. Suzuki also makes his own miso with shrimp heads that he’s fermented for six months, as well as homemade tofu using white sesame, black sesame, edamame and corn.

“When I learned how to make tofu properly, it moved my soul,” he says. “I kid you not.


Although the restaurant has a few tables, most of the seats — and the best ones — are at the shiny, blond bar that has a view of the kitchen. A kids’ playroom, complete with all manner of toys, is at the back of the restaurant for diners’ children, as well as Suzuki’s 4-year-old daughter, who sometimes helps deliver menus to patrons.

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Kobe Beef and Killer Cabernet Sauvignon — at Two South Bay/Peninsula Restaurants

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Take some of the richest, most marbled beef around.  Pair it with an inky, full-bodied, Old World-style Napa Valley Cab.

What’s not to like?

Especially when it’s Snake River Farms’ American-style Kobe and Signorello Estate’s 2005 and 2006 Estate Cabarnet Sauvignon with its balance of raspberry, cedar, earth, and tobacco notes.

The two specialty producers have partnered for the past few years to introduce foodies to the luxurious combination of Kobe and Cab. In fact, Signorello even runs a “Kobe & Cabarnet Club,” in which participants receive three shipments a year of Kobe cuts with bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon. Each shipment averages $390.

If that’s a little too rich for your blood, those in the South Bay will be glad to know they can experience the “Kobe & Cab” magic in a slightly more economical way at two local restaurants.

The Grill on the Alley in San Jose is serving a 12-ounce New York Snake River Farms steak seasoned with grilled asparagus ($65) with a bottle of 2005 Signorello Cab ($75)  through at least the end of May.

And Quattro at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley in San Jose is featuring two dishes at lunch and dinner through the end of April: An open-face Snake River Farms tri-tip steak sandwich with porcini gravy, fried artichokes and aioli ($19); and a Snake River Farms rib eye with gigante beans, oven-cured tomatoes, black chanterelles and spinach ($45).

The 2006 Signorello Estate Cabarnet Sauvignon is available there by the glass ($21) or bottle ($85).

I had a chance to find out just how wonderful the meat pairs with the wine when I was a guest at a special kick-off dinner at Quattro last month that spotlighted not only Signorello wines and Snake River Farms’ Kobe beef, but also its incomparable Kurobuta pork.

The Wagyu breed is famous in Japan, where the cattle have been raised in the Kobe region for hundreds of years. Snake Rivers of Boise, Idaho crosses Japanese Wagyu with Black Angus cattle for its American-version of Wagyu beef.

No, Snake River Farms doesn’t massage its cows with sake and feed them beer as the folklore in Japan goes. Instead, the Snake River Farms cows are fed Idaho potatoes, white wheat, corn and alfalfa hay. While most other cows in the United States are brought to market at 16 months, the Snake River ones are fed up until they’re 30 months old, resulting in more flavor and a whole lot more marbling.

Just how good is this stuff? Uber-chefs, Michael Mina, Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller are huge fans, especially Keller who buys almost all of the Snake River rib eye caps produced (the extremely marbled muscle around the outside of a center-cut rib-eye steak).

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A Celebration of Lamb and Asparagus

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If there are two ingredients that sing of spring, it’s lamb and asparagus.

To celebrate both, the Lark Creek Restaurant Group is partnering with California asparagus growers and lamb ranchers to showcase those ingredients on menus at four of its San Francisco Bay Area restaurants through the end of the month.

Guests also can take home recipes for each dish to recreate them in their own kitchen.

Here are some of the dishes you can enjoy:

*  One Market in downtown San Francisco, walking distance from the Hotel Vitale, will be serving up warm, grilled Zuckerman’s Farm asparagus salad with 62-degree Marin Sun Farms chicken egg; and grilled Sonoma lamb loin chops marinated with espelette chili and garlic.

* LarkCreekSteak, also in downtown San Francisco, steps from the Marriott Marquis, will feature pan-roasted local asparagus with toasted macadamia nuts; and grilled lamb chops with harissa, mint sour cream, and fava beans.

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