Category Archives: Restaurants

Top 10 Eats of 2009

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My Top 10 eats that make me smile. (And yes, those are coffee beans.)

Some people like to look back at the year to ponder, scrutinize and revel in their accomplishments.

I like to look back at the year to relive moments in time that I can’t forget because, well, they just tasted so darned good.

Yes, here’s my list of the top 10 dishes I had in 2009.

Oh, it was hard to narrow it down to just 10, believe me. I hemmed and hawed about which would make the cut and which wouldn’t because there were so many bites over the past 12 months that I truly savored.

In the end, I decided to limit it to the meals I ate out, rather than cooked at home. The dishes that made the list were ones that I still savor in my memory, again and again. They’re ones that I would rush out to eat once more in a heart beat. They are — in a word — unforgettable.

Here they are, in no particular order:

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Lunch With Tony? You Bet!

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Short rib sandwich with caramelized onions. Oh, yes, indeedie.

Recently, I had lunch with Tony at Lunch with Tony’s.

Uh, got that?

That would be Chef-Proprietor Tony Santos and his new breakfast-lunch cafe, named — you got it — Lunch with Tony’s. It’s located in Alviso. And if you don’t know where that is — and I’m sure many of you don’t even if you live in the Bay Area — it’s a bayside community that was once autonomous, but was annexed into San Jose in 1968.

Santos knows Alviso well. After all, he grew up just three blocks from what’s now his cafe. The building that houses Lunch with Tony’s used to be his grandfather’s bar in the 1940s. His grandfather was the elder statesman of Alviso, having been both its mayor and police chief in the 1950s. As you drive to Lunch with Tony’s, you’re bound to pass Tony P. Santos Street, which is named after Santos’ grandfather.

Have lunch at Lunch with Tony.

The simple, yet warm dining room.

Over the years, the old bar morphed into a couple of different restaurants, then fell into decline.

As Santos puts it bluntly, “It was condemnable when we took it over.”

Indeed, it took a year and a half of clean up and construction to get the family-owned building to what it is now — a cozy, casual cafe with cheerful orange walls and green columns. A corner outfitted with easy chairs and a coffee table, made of old planks from the building, invites patrons to take a load off.  During construction, Santos even found the original “Tony’s” sign that graced his grandfather’s establishment. He plans on hanging it in the patio area.

The "Tony'' of Lunch with Tony.

Ever since the 31-year-old Santos opened up his cafe on Sept. 9 (his birthday), the place has been packed. Workers from nearby Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Sun Microsystems come in to get their fill, as does a steady stream of Santos’ cousins and old friends who still live in the neighborhood.

It’s the “Cheers” bar in sandwich joint-form.

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The Art of Hoshigaki

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Hoshigaki -- a persimmon dried in the traditional Japanese method.

As chef of Pizzeria Picco in Larkspur, Restaurant Picco in Larkspur and Bix in San Francisco, Chef Bruce Hill has a flair for creating stylish Italian and New American food.

He also has a thing for massaging fruit.

Before you raise your eyebrows too high at that, just know that it involves the ancient and quite labor-intensive Japanese tradition of preserving persimmons.

Chef Bruce Hill. (Photo courtesy of the chef)

Hill has been making the dried persimmons, known as hoshigaki, for the past four years, ever since he was inspired to give it a try by the lovely sight of all the bright orange persimmons at his local farmers market.

He doesn’t use the hoshigaki at his restaurants or sell them. He just makes them for fun to give to family and friends. And when he asked me if I would like to try some, I jumped at the chance.

Hill employs the traditional method of making them, which requires that the persimmons be peeled by hand, then hung by string for several weeks. During that time, he gives them regular massages to help break up the flesh and to help maintain their uniform shape. The rub-downs also help smooth the exterior to retard mold. After about six weeks of this pampering, a white powdery bloom naturally appears on the fruit, signaling that they’re ready to be enjoyed.

A younger version of the dried persimmon that still has its orange color.

He sent me two kinds of hoshigaki, each made of the Hachiya variety of persimmon, so that I could get an idea of the transformation process.

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Sweet Treats at the St. Regis

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Traditional Alsacian holiday cakes at Vitrine. (Photo courtesy of Marc Fiorito)

For Chef Romuald Feger of Vitrine, the restaurant inside the glam St. Regis San Francisco, winter is an especially sweet time of year.

As a child growing up in the Alsace region of France, he fondly remembers his Grandmother Alice lovingly baking more than 20 different kinds of bredele.

These holiday biscuits or small cakes are a staple there. And his prolific Grandmother would turn out upwards of 50 pounds of these treasured baked goods, most of which found their way into the lucky hands of friends and family.
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Breakfast is Big

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Breakfast is becoming a very important meal of the day for restaurants. By the way, that's a pistachio-citrus brioche from Bouchon Bakery in Yountville.

If you think you’ve seen more restaurants doing breakfast and brunch this year, it’s not your imagination.

With restaurants struggling to make a buck in this lackluster economy, more and more of them have decided to add brunch or breakfast to their menus in hopes of enticing more customers through their doors.

Will this trend continue when the economy picks up?

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