Category Archives: Restaurants

Dining Outside at Saffron in Burlingame, Ne Rasa

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India meets China in General Tso's cauliflower at Saffron in Burlingame.
India meets China in General Tso’s cauliflower at Saffron in Burlingame.

At this Burlingame spot, you will find a refashioned brighter interior, an added parklet, a new menu and name change, and owner Ajay Walia no longer greeting you in a sharp suit, but casual shirt and slacks.

In June, Walia closed his former Michelin-starred, fine-dining Rasa on this property, and morphed it into the second outpost of his Saffron (the original is in San Carlos). It was a difficult decision, he says, but one necessitated by the challenges of the pandemic.

Yet despite the transformation, Walia doesn’t believe anything is radically different.

“We’re still buying the same ingredients, and cooking with the same standards,” he says. “The only thing that has changed is people’s expectations.”

A feast al fresco.
A feast al fresco.

Indeed, when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant last week to dine outside, I found the food as delightful as ever.

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Where I’ve Been Getting Takeout of Late: Eataly

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A whole ball of burrata atop Roman-style pizza at Eataly.
A whole ball of burrata atop Roman-style pizza at Eataly.

The Bay Area’s first Eataly opened last month. And it’s a doozy.

Spanning three floors and 45,000 square feet of the Westfield Valley Fair shopping center in San Jose, it is the eighth Eataly in the United States and the 41st in the world.

Having visited the ones in New York and Las Vegas, I had a sense of what this one would be like. But it definitely dwarfs those two in scope and size.

Even on a Tuesday at 4 p.m., the place was hopping with plenty of folks checking out the wares.

On the top floor, you’ll find La Pizza & La Pasta, and Terra, Eataly’s two restaurants. Having heard how impossible reservations are to come by, I bypassed them.

A mere portion of the second floor that's devoted entirely to wines, beers, and spirits from Italy.
A mere portion of the second floor that’s devoted entirely to wines, beers, and spirits from Italy.

The third floor is also where you’ll find more than 1,000 gourmet specialty food products — everything from house-baked bread, handmade pastas and fresh-pulled mozzarella to shelves of olives oils, cheeses galore, tinned seafood, cured meats, and fresh produce.

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Reem’s Chocolate Chip-Tahini Cookies

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Chocolate chip cookies get an Arab twist with homemade halawa, sesame-like fudge, that gets folded into the dough and dotted on top.
Chocolate chip cookies get an Arab twist with homemade halawa, sesame-like fudge, that gets folded into the dough and dotted on top.

Growing up in Massachusetts with a mother forced to flee war in both Gaza and Lebanon, Reem Assil not only wears her fierce Palestinian and Syrian pride on her sleeve, but profoundly infuses it into her cooking and baking.

That’s why her new cookbook “Arabiyya” (Ten Speed Press), of which I received a review copy, is not merely a collection of more than 100 recipes that dive deeply into her Arab roots, but a testament to her hard-won battle to bring them to the forefront in all that she does.

The book’s title means “Arab woman.” And Assil exemplifies that inherent strength, never afraid to champion her Arab community at-large, starting in college, when she idealistically thought she could solve the issue of peace in the Middle East. When she realized that futility, she dropped out of school, and headed west to the Bay Area, were she became enthralled with its diversity and social consciousness.

It was here that she got the notion to start her own bakery, having grown up breaking bread at the table communally as the ultimate way to bring people together.

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Where I’ve Been Getting Takeout of Late: World Wrapps

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Furikake Salmon Bowl from World Wrapps.
Furikake Salmon Bowl from World Wrapps.

Way, way back in the mid-1990s, I set myself a goal to eat my way through the “specialty wraps” section of World Wrapps in downtown Palo Alto.

Alas, I was probably within a couple of orders of accomplishing that when the fast-casual cafe shuttered.

In early 2020 just before the pandemic hit, two of the original founders revived the brand with a location in San Francisco. It not only managed to survive the tumult of the past two years, but has expanded to five other Bay Area cities. A couple weeks ago, its newest debuted at The Pruneyard in Campbell, where I was invited in as a guest to try the menu.

Of course, my original plan was to dine outside there. But when a crazy heatwave sent temperatures soaring to 102 degrees, I decided to take the food to-go to eat at home with the A/C on. Can you blame me?

Inside the new location at The Pruneyard.
Inside the new location at The Pruneyard.

When co-founders Matthew Blair and Keith Cox (the latter also co-founded Pacific Catch) originally founded World Wrapps, it pioneered enfolding innovative, globally-inspired fillings of fresh ingredients inside a rainbow of burrito-sized tortillas.

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Dining Outside at Edge Restaurant

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A stunning halibut crudo with aguachile at Edge in Sonoma.
A stunning halibut crudo with aguachile at Edge in Sonoma.

Sometimes the best things hide in plain sight.

And if you’re very lucky, you stumble upon them before the rest of the world finds out.

Such is the case with Edge Restaurant in downtown Sonoma.

Steps from Sonoma Plaza square, this fine-dining restaurant operates inside a renovated Victorian home that you might easily pass by if you weren’t paying attention.

Fortunately, its management team reached out to invite me in as a guest of this sensational restaurant that’s operated by Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma.

The restaurant is owned by Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards and Winery, just a few miles away.
The restaurant is owned by Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards and Winery, just a few miles away.
The front of the restaurant.
The front of the restaurant.

The winery is owned by Leslie McQuown and her husband Mac McQuown, a serial entrepreneur who also co-founded the Chalone Wine Group and Carmenet Winery.

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