Category Archives: Restaurants

Fig Fun, Killer Tomatoes and More

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Attend Fig Fest to sample lovelies like these.

This little figgy went to market.

Actually, a lot of figs will be at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 15, just in time for Fig Fest.

With August the peak season for these delicate, sugary delights, what better time to meet eight fig farmers who will be showing off their different varieties, including Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Adriatic, and Kadota.

Learn all about the cultivation and nutritional benefits of figs. Pick up a hand-made fig bar (for a $1 donation), learn how to grow your own fig tree from garden designer Maria Finn of Prospect & Refuge, and watch free cooking demos.

Tune in 10 p.m. tonight as San Francisco’s own Chris Cosentino, chef of Incanto, debuts his own show, “Chef vs. City” on the Food Network. He’ll be joined by New York chef Aaron Sanchez.

Each week, the duo will challenge two local foodies to find the “biggest, boldest, most unexpected” food places in each city they visit.

The ever-chic Masa’s Resaurant in San Francisco will host “A Tasteful Pursuit” on Aug. 17. The star chef-studded dinner is a benefit for Share Our Strength, the organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America.

Masa’s Executive Chef Gregory Short and Executive Pastry Chef John McKee will be joined in the kitchen that evening by Xavier Salomon of the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay, Mark Dommen of One Market Restaurant in San Francisco, and William Werner of Quince in San Francisco.

Tickets for the five-course dinner with wine pairings are $150 per person. Live and silent auctions also will be featured.

Foreign Cinema in San Francisco celebrates its 10th anniversary on Aug. 20 with an extravaganza of magicians, dancers, henna artists, acrobats, and jugglers. Of course, there will be cocktails and tasty bites to nibble, as well.

Tickets are $65 per person. Proceeds benefit DrawBridge, a Bay Area non-profit that provides creative programs for homeless children.

Scott Beattie's "Blackberry Lick'' cocktails. (Photo reprinted from "Artisanal Cocktails,'' published by Ten Speed Press)

Master Mixologist Scott Beattie will conduct a hands-on cocktail class, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 15 at San Francisco’s Ferry Building.

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“SF Chefs Food Wine” Opening Reception

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A sculpture in bread.

Last night, underneath a billowing white tent in San Francisco’s Union Square, hundreds of foodies gathered for the start of the four-day SF Chefs Food Wine extravaganza.

The event, more than two years in the making, is an attempt to proudly celebrate in proper fashion this region’s extraordinary culinary mecca. Wine tastings, cooking demonstrations, ingredient-focused seminars, and gala dinners are on the agenda. But first, of course, there was the matter of the official ribbon-cutting.

Tyler Florence

Master of Ceremony, Tyler Florence, the Food Network star who plans to open a restaurant in San Francisco later this year in the former Rubicon space, introduced San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to do the honors.

As the mayor greeted the gathered throngs, he yelled out, “Take that, Aspen!” in a jibe to the flashy, much more established food and wine festival there that he’s hoping San Francisco’s will usurp.

Mayor Newsom.

Thursday night’s opening reception featured tasty morsels prepared by a number of former ” San Francisco Chronicle Rising Star Chefs.”

Among those in attendance was Corey Lee, former chef de cuisine of the French Laundry, who left the world-renowned restaurant this month to venture out on his own.

Lee said he hopes to open his own restaurant in San Francisco next year. It will feature a range of tasting menus focusing on seasonal ingredients, so that if diners don’t have the time or inclination for a massive three-hour meal, they can opt for a less extensive option.

Chef Corey Lee.

Let’s hope he puts the potato soup with uni foam that he served last night on the menu of his new establishment, because it was truly decadent.

Corey Lee's potato soup with sea urchin foam.

Chef Melissa Perello, who has been traveling since she left the Fifth Floor two years ago, hopes to open her restaurant, Frances, by the second week of October.

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A Secret Garden At Quattro in the Four Seasons Silicon Valley

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Flowering oregano in the secret garden.

It may not exactly possess storybook charm. Indeed, you might walk or drive past it without even knowing it’s there.

But if you look closely on the grounds of the swank Four Seasons Silicon Valley in East Palo Alto, you might just spot the secret garden that’s brimming with Meyer lemon trees, a Kaffir lime tree, lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon thyme, orange mint, pineapple basil, rosemary, and bronze fennel.

The Herb Garden at Quattro, as it has been so dubbed, serves an important purpose: It provides culinary inspiration for the chefs at the hotel’s Quattro restaurant, with its fresh, aromatic bounty just steps outside their door. It saves money, too. The garden now yields enough mint for the restaurant and bar that none ever has to be purchased. And when Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini needs a few Kaffir lime leaves to roast fish, he just goes outside to pick some, rather than being forced to order a larger quantity than necessary from a supplier.

Cartumini planted the garden a year ago just around the corner from the restaurant, in a 100-square-foot, concrete-walled berm that’s part of the hotel’s landscaping. Like an Italian Johnny Appleseed, he’d like to sprinkle a few more seeds here and there on the hotel grounds, but he laughs that the landscaping crew might not go for that.

Executive Chef Alessandro Cartumini (left) and Sous Chef Edward Higgins (right) inspect the garden's citrus trees.

The fresh herbs are used in many dishes, most noticeably in the chef’s special tasting menu, where every course gets a flourish of them.

“It really gets cooks more in touch and makes them have more respect for the food,” Cartumini says of the on-site garden.

Adds sous chef Edward Higgins, “You can cut what you need five minutes before. It really preserves the flavor that way.”

If you haven’t visited the contemporary Italian restaurant since it opened three and a half years ago, many changes have occurred.

Higgins joined the team late last year. The Boston native, who worked at Craft Restaurant in New York, Insieme restaurant in New York, and Ekki Bar & Grill at the Four Seasons Hotel  Tokyo, has brought an international flair and modern sensibility.

House-made ricotta for the house-made bread.

The food, once a bit rustic, is decidedly more refined now, positioning the restaurant as more a destination dining spot, Cartumini explains. The restaurant also has a new-found emphasis on local and house-made. It shows in the creamy ricotta that’s made daily to serve in place of butter with the freshly baked focaccia brought to the table.  All the pastas are made in-house now, too, with the Ferrari of pasta machines, which set the restaurant back a cool $13,000.

The pricey pasta machine at work.

Filling Lombardian ravioli.

Gnocchetti.

When I asked Piemonte-native, Cartumini, why the pasta machine, with its 1.5-horsepower engine, is so pricey, he deadpanned:

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Food Gal Contest: Winner of the Morton’s Steakhouse Dinner, Plus A New Dinner Prize Up For Grabs

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Beets with pickled egg salad at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

Talk about fierce competition for the prize of dinner for two at any Morton’s The Steakhouse in the world. I sure am glad my husband, Meat Boy, had the responsibility of choosing the winner this time around, because I would have been hard pressed to pick just one from all the incredible entries submitted.

The winner of this ultimate carnivore contest will be revealed at the end of this post. But before you scroll down like mad, you’ll first want to know about the delicious new contest that starts today.

The Tavern at Lark Creek in Larkspur is kindly offering a prize of dinner for two (a total value of $75, which can include beverages, too). The contest for this prize is open to anyone in the world, as long as you can find your way to the restaurant in Marin County, Calif. within the next year. That’s because the dining certificate is good — you guessed it — for one full year.

A muffaletta mouthful at the Tavern at Lark Creek. (Photo courtesy of John A. Benson)

So what do you have to do to win? Read on.

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Enticing Events to Savor

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The fun bar at Aquarius restaurant. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Millman)

How’s this for one cool looking bar?

You’ll find it at the new Aquarius restaurant in the newly renovated Santa Cruz Dream Inn in Santa Cruz.

The modern American bistro is headed up by Chef Philippe Breneman, formerly of the Ventana Inn and Spa at Big Sur, who’s all about sustainable seafood and seasonal, organic produce. Look for California white bass with udon noodles, lychee glaze and miso-truffle broth; and seared Pacific cod with white corn succotash, smoked bacon, and mache.

The 2,900 square-foot restaurant features wraparound windows to take advantage of the views of Monterey Bay. A whimsical canopy of handmade surfboards and teardrop-shaped latticework lamps hang from above to give the restaurant a carefree attitude.

Leave it to Napa Valley’s celeb chef, Michael Chiarello, to know how to throw a shindig.

Aug. 9 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., he will host a “Mid-Summer Zin n’ Ribs Party” on the lawn outside his Bottega restaurant in Yountville.

Meet celeb Chef Michael Chiarello. (Photo courtesy of Phil Harvey)

Chiarello, a finalist on this season’s “Top Chef Masters” on Bravo TV, will sign cookbooks and wine bottles at 11:30 a.m., then host a 1 p.m. cooking demonstration.

The menu includes Chiarello’s signature barbecued honey espresso ribs, and Chiarello Family Vineyard’s Zinfandel.

Tickets are $30 per person for those ages 21 and older; $15 per person for those under age 21. Proceeds benefit Clinic Ole, and the Land Trust of Napa County’s Connolly Ranch.

For more fun with chefs, head to San Francisco’s Union Square, Aug. 6-9, for “SF Chefs. Food. Wine.” The multi-event extravaganza features a bevy of the Bay Area’s best chefs and sommeliers heading up cooking demos, wine seminars, food panels, grand tastings, and special gala dinners.

Tickets range from $40 to $700 for individual events and multi-day passes.

Chef Ross Hanson and his wife of Restaurant James Randall. (Photo courtesy of Laura Ness)

The town of Los Gatos invites you to try its many highly regarded restaurants during “Sizzling Summer Restaurant Week,” Aug. 5-12.

Participating restaurants will feature special three-course prix-fixe menus for $25, $35 or $45. California Cafe, Cin-Cin Wine Bar & Restaurant, Crimson, Forbes Mill Steakhouse, I Gatti, Nick’s On Main, Restaurant James Randall, Tapestry, Three Degrees, Trevese, Viva, and the Wine Cellar are among those who will be participating. Reservations can be made through the restaurants directly or through OpenTable.

If you’re a fan of “Top Chef” and in the Los Angeles-area, you’ll be interested to know that “Top Chef” contestant Stefan Richter, whom fans loved to hate, is expected to open his first restaurant, Stefan’s at LA Farm in Santa Monica, on Aug. 6.

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