Category Archives: Restaurants

Foodie Events

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Ahi tartare at Restaurant Michael Mina. (Photo courtesy of the Mina Group)

Restaurant Michael Mina in San Francisco is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a “birthday tasting menu.”

For $125 per person, guests can enjoy a meal of signature favorites. It starts with a trio of classics (lobster corndogs, ahi tuna tartare, and caviar parfait); then butter poached South African lobster tail; seared day boat scallops; Four Story Hills poularde (a young hen); Brandt Farm beef rib-eye; and finally, a delectable Trio of Dessert Classics (root beer float, strawberry mascarpone, white peach financier).

Paired wines are an additional $55.

The gourmet birthday meal is available through July 11.

Mina’s Clock Bar (across from his eponymous restaurant inside the Westin St. Francis) also celebrates its first year in business with five nights of guest bartenders who will be shaking up special cocktails, starting July 13.

Among the celeb bartenders who will be making appearances will be Scott Beattie (formerly of Cyrus in Healdsburg) on July 13, and Erik Adkins, of Heaven’s Dog in San Francisco, on July 16.

Clock Bar is open daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. For reservations or group bookings, contact Matthew Meidinger at (415) 397-9222.

Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar (with Northern California locations in Palo Alto and Walnut Creek) is serving up an Alaskan King crab legs feast for $99 for two people.

Alaskan crab summer special. (Photo courtesy of Fleming's)

The three-course meal includes butter lettuce salad with citrus vinaigrette, warm Yukon Gold potato salad, summer squash, and two berry cobblers with vanilla ice cream. Each guest then gets a choice of either 1 1/2 pounds of crab legs with drawn butter or 3/4 pound of crab legs plus a filet mignon.

This special is being offered through Aug. 31. If you reserve online, you’ll receive a $25 Fleming’s card at the end of the meal, which is valid for the month of September.

Fans of San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will be glad to know that it’s now also open on Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

This new market day features not only local produce for sale, but sustainable street foods to enjoy for lunch. Among the purveyors are: smoked hot dogs and peanut butter bacon brownies from 4505 Meats; Korean barbecue tacos and kimchee fried rice from Namu; pizza made to order from Pizza Politana; and smoked fish sandwiches from Cap’n Mike’s Holy Smoke.

Over in the East Bay, Pican Restaurant in Oakland is now serving weekday lunch and Sunday brunch.

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March Your Way Over to Marche

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A halibut dish that will blow you away.

Why is it that we end up taking most for granted what’s in our own backyard?

I remember friends in Boston who’d lived there for decades but had never been to the New England Aquarium.

I know long-time residents of the South Bay who have never visited Napa.

Me? I’m a San Francisco native who has never set foot inside Coit Tower.

I think it’s the “cleaning out the garage” syndrome at work. We know it’s there. We know we have to get to it some day. But we figure we have all the time in the world to do it, so ironically, we never do.

That’s what I thought about when I sheepishly stepped foot inside of lovely Marche restaurant in downtown Menlo Park last week. The restaurant is eight years old, but this was my first time there.

I’d always heard good things about this modern French restaurant. It was on my radar to try. Some day, I always thought.

I’m glad some day finally came, when Executive Chef Guillaume Bienaime invited me to dinner as his guest. Born in France and raised in part on the San Francisco Peninsula, Bienaime is all of 27 years old. You’d never know it by what arrives on your plate, though. I don’t know what I was cooking when I was 27 years old, but it definitely didn’t have anywhere near the sophistication and elegance of what Bienaime crafts.

After studying math at Foothill College in Los Altos, he turned his attention to cooking instead, enrolling in Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island. During that time, he apprenticed at Marche, the French Laundry in Yountville, and La Mediterane in Paris. After graduation, he returned to Marche as a banquet sous chef, before becoming sous chef in 2006 under then-Executive Chef Howard Bulka. In April, Bienaime stepped into the head chef position.

His love of great produce shows. Indeed, July 17-18, he will spotlight fresh corn with a $65 four-course dinner that features the likes of warm corn flan with lemon basil emulsion.

He enjoys combing local farmers markets. Recently, he also helped students plant summer squash at a local Menlo Park elementary school, where his wife is a teacher.

Summer squash with French feta.

Bienaime has a sure hand with produce, as evidenced by a first course of summer squash with French feta and red-stemmed peppermint, a wonderful way to open up the palate for what’s to come.

When dining at Marche, diners can choose from entrees priced from $25 to $39, a three-course prix fixe (which runs about $39 to $49 per person), or a six-course chef’s tasting menu (from $85 to $95 per person), which I enjoyed the night I was there.

Bigeye tuna makes a big impression.

Slightly smoked rounds of tender bigeye tuna followed, crowned delicately with coriander, ginger, snap peas and baby radishes. Then, the showstopping Brentwood corn soup, with a foamed top that hid slivers of Dungeness crab. With its creamy, concentrated flavor of the freshest kernels, this is a soup that will make you appreciate soup again.

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Born to Cook

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Dominique Crenn, chef of Luce restaurant, serves up melon specialties in her home.

Dominique Crenn, chef de cuisine of San Francisco’s Luce restaurant, was practically born to be a chef.

After all, as the adopted daughter of a well-known French politician and his wife, Crenn grew up with an adventurous palate thanks to her mother’s fine cooking highlighted by fresh, seasonal ingredients from farmers markets in France.

With her father’s best friend a famous restaurant critic in France, Crenn also found herself often accompanying the two powerful men on excursions to Michelin-starred restaurants when she was all of 8 years old.

“When I was 8, I told my mother I wanted to be a chef,” Crenn says.

“Or maybe a policeman or a photographer,” she adds with a laugh.

It may look like tuna sashimi, but those are actually slivers of pickled watermelon rind atop that tomato-melon salad.

Cooking did win out, but not before she had to battle French culinary school directors who discouraged her from becoming a chef because she was a woman.

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Delicious Doings

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Redwood City's new Donato Enoteca. (Photo courtesy of the www.diLuNa.org)

Hungry for braised Niman Ranch oxtail and asparagus tips served over “bigoli” pasta ($14)?

Or pizza topped with house made spicy sausage, broccoli rabe, tomato, and fresh mozzarella ($11)?

Or Mediterranean sea bream sauteed with prawns, mussels, clams and tomato sauce ($18)?

Then, head to downtown Redwood City’s new Donato Enoteca. It’s the new venture by Executive Chef-Owner Donato Scotti who cooked at the Michelin-starred Ristorante dell’Angelo in Italy, and most recently at La Strada in Palo Alto. Originally from Bergamo, Italy, Scotti’s menu reflects his northern Italian heritage.

The wine program focuses on smaller-production wines, most of them Italian. A large variety of grappas is also available, as it’s one of Scotti’s favorite spirits.

Ubuntu Annex is open for business. (Photo courtesy of Ubuntu)

In the market for upscale gourmet cookware, plus stylish yoga clothing?

Then, you’ll be glad to know that Ubuntu Annex has opened next door to acclaimed Ubuntu Restaurant in downtown Napa.

Find specialty dishware, specialty salts, artisan olive oils, and Ubuntu chef coats and aprons. Wines also will be available by the taste, vertical flight, or bottle at the wine tasting bar.

Colorful houseware available at Ubuntu Annex. (Photo courtesy of Ubuntu)

Wine specials can be had at Lark Creek Restaurant Group establishments throughout July.

For the seventh year in a row, every bottle on every wine list at every restaurant in the group will be offered at half price for brunch, lunch, and dinner during that month.

For instance, at Yankee Pier in Santana Row in San Jose, a bottle of 2008 Honig Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley that’s normally $32, can be enjoyed for $16.

Wine aficionados will find more to like at One Market and LarkCreekSteak restaurants, both in San Francisco. Through July and possibly beyond, both restaurants are touting a premium wine special.

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Tantalizing Preview: Ad Hoc Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe By Thomas Keller

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Just-baked chocolate chip cookes from the upcoming Ad Hoc cookbook

Confession time.

I have “The French Laundry Cookbook,” the “Bouchon Cookbook,” and the “Under Pressure” sous vide tome, all by Thomas Keller.

These oversized, coffee-table books reside in a prominent place on my bookshelf. I have leafed through them all, savoring the recipes, and lusting after each and every magnificent dish photographed so dreamily.

But I’ve yet to cook from any of them. Maybe I’ve felt unworthy. Maybe I’ve lacked the equipment necessary. And maybe I’ve lacked the time for some of the rather involved dishes that my husband joked he’d have to take days off from work to help me pull off.

That is, until now.

Until a promo brochure for the upcoming “Ad Hoc At Home” (Artisan) book arrived in my mail, and I fairly ran to the kitchen to start pulling measuring spoons and bowls out of my cabinets.

I’ve had the pleasure of eating at Ad Hoc in Yountville a couple of times. I’ve always been won over by the impeccable quality of the seasonal, family-style food served at this casual eatery. It’s comfort food done with utmost fun and finesse.

Salmon tartare cornets I’ll leave to the French Laundry staff to construct. A Bouchon recipe for French onion soup that requires a half day to caramelize onions ever so slowly (I’m exaggerating, but not by much) makes my eyes glaze over. Sous vide anything makes me start to tremble.

But chocolate chip cookies? OK, this I can do.

Making the dough.

Keller acknowledges his other books might be intimidating to most of us. He goes so far as to refer to the new Ad Hoc book as “the long-awaited cookbook for the home chef.” It’s described as uncomplicated, the way Keller cooks at home — without intricate garnishes or an immersion circulator. Though, knowing him, I’m sure he cooks in the world’s most organized, uncluttered home kitchen around, with everything labeled and alphabetized, and every electrical cord neatly wound just so. He can’t help himself.

The book won’t be available until November. But the promo materials give a hint at the very doable, very delectable dishes in store: leek bread pudding, blow-torch prime rib roast, caramelized sea scallops, and pineapple upside-down cake.

Being the cookie fiend that I am, though, it was the recipe included in full for chocolate chip cookies that got me pumped up.

With so many chocolate chip cookie recipes already out there, how could this one be any different?

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