Category Archives: Restaurants

Ensnared by Zare at Fly Trap in San Francisco

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Mahi Mahi on a bed of wicked good chickpeas.

It’s not every day that a chef threatens to come kidnap you if you don’t make it to his restaurant soon.

But that’s just what Chef-Owner Hoss Zare of Zare at Fly Trap in San Francisco did to me.

In the nicest of ways, of course.

Fiercely proud of his South of Market establishment that he returned to cook at last year, after having been the chef there also in the early 1990s, Zare invited me to come taste his punchy Mediterranean cuisine.

Born in Iran of Turkish heritage, Zare is a self-trained chef with a big personality and playful sense of humor (both de facto requirements needed to kidnap a food writer, after all). Previously, he’s cooked at Restaurant Ecco in San Francisco, and Aromi in San Francisco. He also ran his own restaurants, Zare in the mid-1990s in San Francisco, Bistro Zare in the late-1990s in San Francisco, and Zare Napa in Wine Country, from 2005-2007.

Zare at Fly Trap is as colorful as the chef. Deep red walls, a pressed tin ceiling, and a profusion of old botanical prints hanging everywhere, lend a casual, artsy warmth.

The innovative cocktails ($10 each) are hard to resist. I sipped a “Minted Memory,” a highball filled with gin, Pimm’s No. 1, lemon, and Iranian minted vinegar syrup. It was tangy, citrusy, refreshing, and yes, quite memorable. My hubby opted for the “Absinthe Frappe,” made with Kubler Absinthe, Orgeat, and lemon. One sip was enough to wake the dead, but then if you’ve ever had absinthe, you know how powerful the anise-flavored liquor can be. Sip it slowly and bask in the powerful warmth it envelopes you in.

A signature pistachio meatball in a powerful pomegranate sauce.

Dinner started with pistachio meatballs ($12), so tender, and floating in a pool of  harissa-honey-pomegranate glaze. The flavor of the meatballs, themselves, got lost in the sauce. But if you love big, big flavors, you’ll enjoy the earthy, fruity, tart, syrupy sauce that is definitely a mouth-full.

Smoked trout atop noodles made of cucumber.

Smoked trout ($11) gets a twist with a bed of “linguini” that are really thin, delicate strands of cucumber tossed with dill creme fraiche and topped with glistening orange trout roe. Truly, a lovely dish.

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Take Five With Poleng Lounge Chef Tim Luym — Or “Mosquito” To Those In the Know

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Chef Tim Luym in his shoebox-sized kitchen at Poleng Lounge.

For awhile, it looked like the inside of a tiny cubicle was where Tim Luym would make his mark.

After all, the 30-year-old Filipino-American had majored in marketing and programming at Santa Clara University, before going to work at nearby Applied Materials.

But seeing the movie,” Office Space,” the comedy satirizing workers who loathe their three-walled existences, changed all that. Luym saw his life flash before him. He realized it was not a life he wanted. So he decided to turn his back on that, and follow his heart — and stomach — by enrolling at San Francisco’s California Culinary Academy instead.

An externship landed him at Charles Nob Hill in San Francisco, where he cooked on the line with acclaimed Chef Melissa Perello. When she moved to the Fifth Floor in San Francisco, he followed her.

In 2006, Lyum and a group of investors — none of whom had ever operated a restaurant before — got together to open what was supposed to be a lively night club that merely served a little bit of food.

Papaya salad with sugarcane shrimp.

That place was Poleng Lounge, which nowadays has become known far and wide for Luym’s vibrant, daring take on modern Southeast Asian street food in dishes such as bone marrow with crispy coconut bread, and addicting crispy adobo wings.

Recently, I chatted with him about his quirky nickname, the enormous impact a three-star review from the San Francisco Chronicle can have on a fledgling restaurant, and how he’d like to reintroduce Chris Cosentino to a certain Filipino delicacy the Incanto chef once gagged on.

Q: So when Poleng Lounge opened, it was really envisioned to be a club, not necessarily a restaurant?

A: The whole concept was that it was a club. We had to serve food because of the liquor license. We were an Asian-themed bar, so it was only natural that we did Asian bar food. We opened with a menu of only seven items.

Some nights we only had seven people come in. I would go to the market every morning, and figure out how much to buy, based on how many people we thought might walk in. After awhile, we realized there was no way we could sustain ourselves at the pace we were going. We opened in May, and we realized in August that we were probably going to be closed by December. We would run out of cash flow.

Then, out of left field, we got three stars in the Chronicle. I was just the cook. I didn’t know about media and all that stuff. I didn’t grasp what it meant. When the review came out, a public relations agency told us, ‘You better get ready. You’re going to be busy!’

On a weekend, we were used to doing maybe 20 covers. That Sunday night after the review came out, we quadrupled in business. We had all kinds of people come in — young, old, and people who had traveled from all over the Bay Area. It was shocking, and a blessing. To this day, I don’t understand it. I know a lot of talented chefs and can’t figure out, ‘Why us?’

Q: When Poleng Lounge first opened, you weren’t even able to pay yourself a salary. So you ended up cooking on the side for the dental fraternity at the University of California at San Francisco to earn extra cash?

A: That was my income while opening the restaurant. It was a means to an end. About 20 people lived in the house. I did this for a year and a half. I’d do themed nights. When it was “Mediterranean Night,” I’d make couscous with lamb or beef, and Greek salad with feta. When it was “Italian Night,” I’d make Caesar salad, linguine vongole, and tiramisu. Some of them had never had this kind of food before. It was all stuff that I liked to eat.

Once the restaurant got busy, though, I had less time. I started having to repeat menus. The worst was when I did a Macy’s cooking challenge. I was so busy that I called a pizza place to deliver to the fraternity. But I must have given the wrong address, because the pizza never showed up. The next day, they were like, ‘Man, we have to talk!’ And I knew I couldn’t do it any longer.

Q: So, being Asian myself, I must ask you the infamous Asian parental question. Did your parents think you were crazy when, after graduating from an expensive, private university and landing a job in high-tech, you told them you wanted to become a cook instead?

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Good Eats & Drinks

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Chef Chris Cosentino of Incanto. (Photo courtesy of Michael Harlan Turkell)

Nosh on a special three-course menu from the Italian countryside every Sunday and Monday evenings this summer through Aug. 31 at San Francisco’s Incanto.

Executive Chef Chris Cosentino changes the prix fixe “Cocina Povera” weekly, highlighting a specific region each time. Price is $30, or $39 with two wine pairings included.

Chef Alessandro Cartumini of Quattro. (Photo courtesy of Chris Schmauch)

Four of Northern California’s best chefs will be serving up specialties at the 27th annual Vintage Affaire June 27 at a spectacular Atherton private estate.

Enjoy the creations of Alessandro Cartumini of Quattro Restaurant and Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley in East Palo Alto; Daniel Patino of Michael Mina’s Arcadia in San Jose; Xavier Salomon of the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay; and Cal Stamenov of Bernardus Lodge in Carmel Valley. More than 25 of California’s best wineries also will be pouring special vintages.

Live and silent auctions will give guests a chance to bid on rare wines, wine dinners, and special vacation packages.

Tickets are $300 per person. The event benefits Palo Alto’s Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. During the past 26 years, this gala has raised nearly $6 million for the center clinic, counseling, and computer training services.

In this stagnant economy, restaurants and hotels are realizing that more than anything, diners want options and values.

That’s why all Ritz-Carlton Hotels around the world are introducing a new bar menu that invites guests to linger, share, and relax. It’s also an attempt to show that even in these tough times, you don’t have to sell the family jewels to afford a bite to eat and a drink to sip at this chain of luxury hotels.

Southern-style barbecue pork sliders. (Photo courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton)

Look for smoked salmon and arugula egg rolls, calamari in remoulade sauce, comforting crab cakes, barbecue pork sliders, and an array of cool cocktails. Items range from $10 to $20.

For another deal, head to Urban Tavern in San Francisco, June 8-12, when the downtown gastropub will allow diners to “pay what they think it’s worth.”

Yes, you got that right. Diners can enjoy up to a three-course meal at lunch. At the end, they’ll be asked to pay what they think the meal was worth. The server will then ring up that amount, plus tax. Lunch can include food, soft drinks, coffee, and tea, but not alcohol.

The offer is limited to 100 diners per day. Reservations are required.

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Noshing on Pizza at Oakland’s Marzano

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Calamari pizza, anyone?

There was a time when my husband was on a kick to eat at every San Francisco Chronicle “Top 100” restaurant in the Bay Area. Not in one year, mind you. But just to be to able to check each one off the list eventually.

There was a time when I was fully employed, too. Ahh, the good old days. (Am I sounding like my parents yet?)

Since those two factors went together hand in hand — one does need a certain amount of income to knock off that full list — the hubster rejiggered his goal when I was laid off from my job as the food writer at the San Jose Mercury News.

Now, we still try to make it to restaurants on that list that we haven’t been to yet. But these days, they’re apt to be the more moderate-priced ones than the go-for-broke ones.

Marzano in Oakland fits that bill perfectly.

The warm, lively Oakland restaurant is indeed on that list. It’s easy to see why. It’s a neighborhood spot that’s comfortable enough and priced well enough to chow down at regularly — even in these tough times.

The wood-fired oven turns out pizzas that are blistered, thin in the center, and with a thick, chewy edge. The crust has a lot of character, full of that deep-fermented flavor of well-made artisan bread.

The "Bianco.''

Ten pies are offered on the menu. The hubster went for the “Bianco” ($14) — prosciutto, wild arugula, Parmigiano Reggiano, and extra virgin olive oil. I had my eye on the “Calamari” ($14) — yes, rings and tentacles strewn over the pie with spicy tomato sauce, gremolata, Pecorino, baby artichokes, red onion, and radicchio.

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Restaurant Doings & Foodie Happenings

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Scottish eggs, crisps, and pasty of the day at Martins West Pub. (Photo courtesy of Martins West Pub)

* A century-old Redwood City Alhambra building, once housing a saloon that apparently Wyatt Earp frequented, has been tranformed into Martins West Pub.

How’s that for apropos?

Executive Chef Michael Dotson, formerly of PlumpJack Cafe in Squaw Valley, turns out honest-to-goodness British gastropub eats, including herb-crusted marrow bones with kumquat and celery salad ($8), fish & chips with peat-smoked fries ($12), and brioche-crusted black cod ($22).

Pastry Chef Kelly Fields, formerly of Restaurant August in New Orleans, offers playful desserts such as Devonshire cream tartlet with strawberries, elderflower and long pepper; and chocolate “rillettes” with Scottish heather ice cream, peanuts, and sugared brioche.

Devonshire cream tart with strawberries. (Photo courtesy of Martins West Pub)

* If you haven’t noticed already, Tanglewood in San Jose’s Santana Row has closed its doors. Left Bank Brasseries, which operated Tanglewood, is expected to open LB Steak in its place in June. It will be Santana Row’s first steakhouse.

Blame the economy, as well as construction on a new mixed-use building right next door, which made crowds stay away, says company CEO Richard Miyashiro.

“Tanglewood started out as a high-end restaurant and could not survive without a transformation,” he says.

When LB Steak opens, look for signature dishes such as braised pork belly with five spices and Coca Cola glaze; and a 20-ounce Porterhouse.

* For 11 days beginning June 3, enjoy the “City Bites” promotion in downtown San Jose. Twenty-six downtown restaurants will feature three-course dinners for $20, $30, or $40.

The event kicks off June 3 when participating restaurants will offer sample bites for free or for a charge of $3.

Among the participating restaurants are 19 Market, A.P. Stump’s, and Paolo’s restaurant.

* Similarly, San Francisco kicks off its eighth annual “Dine About Town” promotion, June 1-15.

Participating restaurants will offer three courses at lunch for $21.95 and at dinner for $34.95. Participating restaurants include Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, B44, Luce, and Poleng Lounge.

Napa Valley Chef Cindy Pawlcyn (Photo courtesy of Steven Rothfeld)

* May 30 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., sip fine varietals at the fifth annual “Ultimate Blind Date” wine tasting event at Flora Springs Winery in St. Helena.

More than 60 of St. Helena’s best wineries will be pouring their finest. For those who want to put their palates on the line, there will be a fun blind-tasting challenge in which you can win a cellar-full of St. Helena wines (valued at more than $2,000). All the participating wineries will pour one wine blind. If you venture any kind of guess at all about the wine, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win the prize.

Napa Valley restaurateur Cindy Pawlcyn, who owns Go Fish, Mustards, and Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, will offer up food to nosh along with the wines.

She’ll also sign copies of her new cookbook, “Cindy Pawlcyn’s Appetizers” (Ten Speed Press), which will be available for a 50 percent discount at the event.

Tickets are $60. For more information, call (707) 963-6045. A portion of proceeds will be donated to St. Helena’s Work Connection, a non-profit providing assistance and work placement to vineyard and migrant workers.

* It’s cherry time and there’s no better time to celebrate the joys of everyone’s favorite pitted fruit than 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., May 30-31 at C.J. Olson’s fruit stand in Sunnyvale.

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