Category Archives: Wine

Eating Out for A Good Cause, Bon Appetit’s Barbara Fairchild, Special Ubuntu Dinner and Meal Deals in Silicon Valley

An event to help preserve Tibetan culture. (Photo courtesy of the Tibetan Aid Project.

Helping to Rebuild Tibetan Culture

Twenty-four top toques will be cooking at the 10th annual “Taste and Tribute” by the Tibetan Aid Project on Nov. 19 at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco.

The chefs will cook in teams of two to prepare four courses, with each table experiencing a different menu. Among those pairing up for the night to intertwine their culinary skills are: Bruce Hill of Bix, Picco and Zero Zero, all in San Francisco, with Liza Shaw of A16 in San Francisco; and Bruno Chemel of Baume in Palo Alto with Martin Brock of Gary Danko in San Francisco.

A silent auction will feature items such as vacation packages, wine tastings, and handmade Tibetan art.

Tickets are $350 per person.

Proceeds will help preserve and ship traditional Tibetan texts, art prints and prayer wheels to Tibetan refugees in the Himalayan region.

Aiding Mission District Youths

Mark your calendar for Nov. 10, when more than 30 restaurants, cafes, markets, ice cream shops and even food trucks in San Francisco will be donating 25 percent or more of sales to Mission Graduates, a non-profit that helps neighborhood youths prepare for and complete college.

The “Food for Thought’‘ event last year enabled more than 100 kids to attend a five-week summer program, and helped secure more than $250,000 in college scholarships to support high school students and their families.

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Annika Sorenstam’s Chardonnay

A new wine by golf great, Annika Sorenstam, and Wente Vineyards.

The only golf I’ve played has involved moats, castles and windmills.

So when a sample of the new Annika’s Chardonnay 2008 arrived on my doorstep, I was was primed to take a sip, then hit a hole-in-one at the nearest putt putt course.

After all, the wine is named for Hall of Fame golfer, Annika Sorenstam, one of the best female golfers of all time.

The Chardonnay is a joint venture between Sweden-born Sorenstam and Livermore’s Wente Vineyards, which also has quite the golf course. But natch!

Sorenstam worked closely with winemaker Karl Wente to create this second wine from Annika Vineyards. The first was a 2006 Syrah ($75), which was released last year.

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New Pinkberry, Free Pasta and More

Another Pinkberry Opens:

The tart fro-yo craze continues as the South Bay welcomes another Pinkberry, this one at 2362 El Camino Real in Santa Clara.

The grand opening, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 22, will feature free samples and celebrity guest DJ Joe Manganiello from HBO’s “True Blood,” spinning tunes.

Wine Dinner at Red Crane:

Chef Royce Mori of Red Crane in Cupertino. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)Join Burrell School Winery and Chef Royce Mori when they host a special wine dinner at Red Crane in Cupertino, 7 p.m. Oct. 26.

The four-course dinner includes such delightful pairings as crispy snow crab cake with papaya salsa matched with the 2006 “Teacher’s Pet” Estate Chardonnay; and pan-roasted petit filet mignon with roasted gold beets accompanied by the 2007 “Honor Roll” Estate Merlot.

Price is $80 per person. For reservations, call (408) 725-1990.

Prime Time for Prime Rib:

It definitely will be at Sent Sovi in Saratoga, Oct. 28, when Chef-Owner Josiah Slone hosts the “Big Scary Prime Rib” dinner.

Nothing to fear; the scary part refers to those big bottles of wine (magnums and larger) that we have stashed at home, wondering when we’ll ever have the occasion to uncork them.

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Bay for the Gulf Fund-Raiser and Food Gal Tickets Giveaway

It’s been six months since the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and three months since a cap installed plugged the well that had been spewing oil into that fragile ecosphere.

But how many years it will take to get that body of water and its surrounding wetlands back to normal, is anyone’s guess.

To lend a much needed hand, Chef Guillaume Bienaimé of Marché in Menlo Park, organized the “Bay for the Gulf,” an event that will take place 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 24 at the beautiful Rosewood Sand Hill resort in Menlo Park.

Proceeds from the gala event, which will feature more than a dozen chefs, artisans and wineries, will go to the “Save Our Gulf” initiative of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which will help support the seven Gulf Coast Waterkeepers directly impacted by the oil disaster.

Bienaimé was prompted to act after befriending Pietro Paravanno, a local fisherman here who is also the president of the Institute for Fisheries Resources. It also spurred him to visit Louisiana recently to see the area for himself.

“The oil spill forever changed this unique eco-system, and way of life for so many who live in the bayous and surrounding areas. For many families who rely on the waters of the Gulf as their means of survival, it’s crucial that everything that can be done to clean up the area is done,” said Bienaimé. “The Bay for the Gulf gala, with the collaboration of the amazing chefs, wineries and restaurants that are participating, is a way for those of us in the Bay Area to show support for the people working day and night to clean up this mess.”

Among those participating in the event are: Manresa of Los Gatos,  Aziza of San Francisco, Pastry Chef Carl Swanson of Ubuntu in Napa, Andante Dairy, Far Niente, and Ridge Vineyards.

A silent auction will feature such items up for bid as rare wines and extravagant dining experiences.

Tickets are $150 each.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win two tickets to the gala. Contest is open only to those who can make it to the Menlo Park event on Oct. 24. Deadline to enter is noon PST Oct. 17. Winner will be announced Oct. 18.

How to enter?

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A Visit to Saison 2.0

Perhaps no restaurant epitomizes today’s necessitated bent toward creative entrepreneurship better than San Francisco’s Saison.

Last summer, much like so many budding tech impresarios of yesteryear,  Chef-Owner Joshua Skenes and sommelier whiz Mark Bright, cloistered themselves away to improvise on what would become a makeshift once-a-week restaurant. Their location wasn’t a garage, but what was once a historic stable that is now the Stable Cafe, which leased its kitchen and rear dining room to the dynamic duo.

From the spacious but far from state-of-the-art kitchen, Skenes turned out elegant, four-star, fine-dining fare served on the best china to jeans-clad diners who sat at bistro-style, slat chairs before cramped, bare wood tables.

It wasn’t long before word spread, important restaurant critics came calling, top food magazines started taking notice, and investors wanted, well, to invest.

The result this summer is version two of Saison — with a lot more waitstaff, a fancy Molteni stove in the kitchen, a large hearth on the redone patio for open-fire cooking, and actual upholstered, cushy banquettes in the dining room the shade of washed denim.

The restaurant has gone from pop-up to permanent. It now serves dinner five nights a week.

It’s a fitting stage for this young chef and young sommelier to show off their talents. Skenes earned rave reviews when he was at Chez TJ in Mountain View, then impressed the likes of Michael Mina so much that the San Francisco mega chef tapped Skenes to open his Stonehill Tavern restaurant in Monarch Beach, CA. Bright also has a Mina connection. At 17, he started working at Mina’s Aqua restaurant in the Bellagio in Las Vegas. On his 21st birthday, he became part of the Bellagio sommelier team, before being asked to become the opening sommelier at Restaurant Michael Mina in San Francisco.

My husband and I had a chance to check out the remodeled space last week, when Skenes invited us in as his guests to celebrate our anniversary, throwing in a few extra dishes for the occasion.

One eight-course menu is offered each night for $98; with an additional $78 for wine pairings. Big spenders can get a real bird’s eye view of the cooking by sitting at the chef’s counter at the back of the kitchen for a personalized 14- to 20-course dinner that runs $300 to $500 per person, depending upon ingredients used.

A dish before it goes out to the dining room.

We sat in the dining room, where Bright was eager to have us try a surprise — his own wine, the first he’s ever made.

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