So many places opened in 2019; and so many places closed. Be it astronomical housing costs to an extremely tight labor pool and the rising price of ingredients, the Bay Area remains a challenging landscape for restaurants.
Still, they somehow manage to put their best forward day in and day out. Here are my favorite eats of the year (in no particular order) — the ones I still dream about, and the ones I’d race back for in a heartbeat. Enjoy! And cheers to even more delicious morsels in 2020.
At his Sushi Nagai on Union Square in San Francisco, Chef Tomonori Nagai may specialize in Edomae-style, considered the purest and one of the oldest forms of sushi, developed hundreds of years ago as a way to preserve fish in salt, vinegar or seaweed.
But he is not above putting his own spin on it with flair, wit and technique, as I found out when I was invited in as a guest of the restaurant earlier this month. After all, where else can you get a play on a hot dog that’s fashioned from uni? But more on that later.
The restaurant, which is across the street from Macy’s, opened quietly in spring but is now having its grand opening.
San Francisco has seen a number of high-end omakase restaurants of late. Sushi Nagai joins that roster with menus priced at $200, $250, and $350-plus. Each comprises about 18 courses, with the more expensive menus featuring more premium ingredients and intricate dishes. At the media dinner I attended, we were treated to the $350 menu.
Growing up in the small coastal town of Iwaki, Nagai had wanderlust and thought the best opportunity to explore more of the world was to become a French cuisine chef. But after a stint at a hotel in Tokyo, where he ended up working the sushi bar because they were short-handed, he found his voice in his native Japanese cuisine.
Calligraphy on the dining room wall.Chef Tomonori Nagai behind the sushi counter.
After working at Morimoto in Honolulu, where he ended up serving sushi to then-President Barack Obama, and the Michelin-starred Shinji by Kanesaka in Singapore, he was recruited to head the new sushi restaurant in San Francisco.
Make Burma Superstar’s famous tea leaf salad — in the comfort of your own home.
If you’re a fan of Burma Superstar’s signature Burmese tea leaf salad, you’ll be glad to know it’s never been easier to make a version at home now.
No more hunting around fruitlessly for fermented tea leaves or any of the other specialty ingredients needed. Burma Superstar’s new Burma Love Foods Company has put together a Fermented Tea Leaf Salad Kit. It’s vegan to boot.
The kit.
The kit, which should be kept refrigerated until used, comes complete with the already made fermented tea leaf dressing made with organic tea leaves, as well as Burmese Crunchy Mix, which is a blend of crispy yellow split peas, toasted sunflower seeds, fried garlic chips, sesame seeds and roasted peanuts.
A wonderful mix of ingredients creates a powerhouse of nuttiness in these cookies.
Are you making a list and counting it twice…
To figure out which cookie you should make and eat next?
Then, prepare to add this one to it.
“Toasted Sesame-Chocolate Chip-Cashew Cookies” is an unexpected mix of so many good things you love that you wonder why nobody thought to put them all together before.
It comprises more than 150 cookie recipes. There are short-cut ones such as “Santa Heart-Shaped Cookies” that make use of Betty Crocker cookie mix. But if you’re more inclined to make your cookies entirely from scratch, there are plenty of those types of recipes, too, including boozy “Bourbon Old-Fashioned Cups” (that includes bourbon and Angostura bitters), “Sparkling Orange Ricotta Sandwich Cookies” that makes use of orange juice, orange zest and candied orange slices, and “Chocolate Coconut Cookie Tots” (that require no baking at all).
Sonoma duck breast with apples and cider jus at The Kitchen.
The Kitchen in Sacramento offers a Michelin-starred dining experience like no other.
It is like fine-dining in the middle of a rollicking three-ring circus with Executive Chef Kelly McCown its ring leader, bellowing warm welcomes, directions for the evening, and goofy jokes the entire time.
Banish any thoughts of a starred restaurant being staid, stuffy, stiff or oppressive. This is as far from that as it gets.
Earlier this fall, my husband, his nephew and I decided to check out the restaurant, paying our own way. Although my husband and his nephew grew up in Sacramento, this was the first time for all of us to The Kitchen, which opened in 1991, and has long been regarded as one of the Capitol’s best restaurants. We figured there was no time better than now, when the Michelin Guide expanded this year to encompass the entire state of California, and awarded Sacramento’s only star to The Kitchen.
Nothing quite prepares you for this singular experience, though. Dining at The Kitchen is like dinner and a show — all in one.
Executive Chef Kelly McCown at the center of the open kitchen.
The dining room is taken up by the open-kitchen that has seats all round it. Around the perimeter of the room, there are more tables, all bar-height — all the better to see the kitchen that’s akin to a theater stage, only with flames and the most delicious smells.
A spread of sushi — before the dinner even starts.
Immediately, you’re encouraged to walk around most anywhere — through the wine cellar, into the courtyard, into the open kitchen, and into the back production kitchen.
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), of which I received a review copy. 
