Ferry Building Goodies

A few little treats from the Ferry Building:

Why yes, that is a cone of meat. From Boccalone.

Finally tried the ramen from Hapa Ramen. This was the fried chicken bowl with a sous vide egg. Yum.  A little different than the top ramen of my college years. We also got the to go kit - basically they give you cold broth in one container and the noodles, meat and other fun stuff in a separate container with some instructions on how to put it all together.  Excited to try that later. 

And lastly, we picked up some chocolate, pear and red wine preserves (I know, it doesn't seem to make sense to me either, but I'm sure it's delicious) from the Tell Tale Preserve Company.

Happy eating.

Nopa

Finally! Nopa! I think this was my fourth time making reservations at Nopa, and all the other times I wound up canceling for one reason or another. Today Sarah and I made plans for brunch, and luckily I had been sitting on these reservations from weeks ago, so we got to try it out.

We got there at 11AM, which is when they open and before they filled up. They seated us upstairs so we got this great birds eye view of the place. I love those yellow stools at the bar.

I loved getting to watch the chefs prepare the dishes. How are they so tidy? Why does my kitchen never stay that neat when I'm cooking? 

Sarah ordered the oven baked farm egg with smoked tomato and pecorino. I love eggs baked in tomato and she was very happy with her order. We also ordered some fun drinks.  I ordered my usual -bloody mary (hold the vodka, hold the ice) and Sarah got the cardamom grapefruit juice.  The non-bloody mary was just on the edge of being too spicy for me, but in a good way (me = spice wimp). I loved how Sarah's drink was presented.

Sarah also got a piece of the goat cheese bread pudding, which was rich and delicious. Nice combo with the eggs.  I got soft scrambled eggs with potatoes and leeks which was great but my picture wasn't so just imagine what it looked like, ok?

Great brunch, awesome service (I forgot to mention I loved our waiter).  I will definitely be coming back here soon. In March, in fact - I just booked another reservation for dinner. Hopefully we won't have to cancel that one.

nopa
560 Divisadero St
San Francisco, California 94117
(415) 864-8643

Zero Zero, SOMA

Last weekend, as part of my plan to try a bunch of the Best New Places of 2010, we headed over to Zero Zero. It wasn't on the Bauer list (though he did give them a great review), but a couple of local food writers had named it as their "Top Restaurant Stand By" for 2010, so we thought we should try it.   

Unlike Bar Agricole, they don't tell you that you are meant to share the dishes, but we decided we wanted to do that anyway. The first two dishes we ordered (roasted meatballs and an arugula and beet salad with avocado and orange) were both excellent and we thought the meatballs were just as good as the ones we've had at Pizzeria Delfina.  Unfortunately the photos of those two didn't turn out, so you'll have to use your imagination.

Next up we ordered potato gnocchi with ham, artichoke and fava leaf pesto.  Yum.

We also ordered a couple of pizzas.  Apparently we hadn't really eaten anything that day and we were all starving.   The pizza on the left is the Fillmore (Hen of the Woods mushrooms, leeks, mozzarella, parmesan, pecorino, fontina, garlic and thyme).  The pizza on the right is the Margherita Extra (the Buffalo mozzarella makes it "extra" - you can also order it with regular mozzarella).  I preferred the Margherita of the two.  They were both good - but I still think Delfina and Flour + Water do a better pizza.

At this point, we were pretty much stuffed but I forced everyone to order dessert. I really, really wanted dessert because I kept reading about their soft serve ice cream sundaes. The waiter brings you a sheet of paper and you get to fill out what you want.  We chose vanilla ice cream with hot fudge, cocoa nibs, toffee, olive oil and salt.  Oh, and you can tell them you only want the half order, which is what we did.  I don't think I need to tell you that this was a perfect ending to this meal. I mean, just look at it, how could you not love that? 

We all really loved our dinner here. Even if the pizza wasn't our favorite, the meal as a whole was excellent. PLUS we found a parking space right out front, so extra points for that. AND the prices are really reasonable - there were four of us, and it wound up being around $20 per person, with tip.  This is definitely on my list of places to return to - I can see this being a top standby place for me for 2011.

Zero Zero

826 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 348-8800

Bar Agricole, SOMA

Last weekend we headed over to Bar Agricole for dinner. After Michael Bauer's Top New Restaurants of 2010 article came out, I made reservations at a few of the places he mentioned that we hadn't tried, and Bar Agricole was one of them.

Our waiter told us that the concept of the restaurant is that all the dishes are served in the center of the table to share, and for four people we should order five to seven dishes.  Done.

Because this was last week, and because the online menu has changed since then, and because I was lazy and didn't write down what we ate, I can't exactly remember what we ate.  I'll try my best.

This was the crab salad with farro.  It had a really light, flavorful dressing and lately I've been really into farro lately so I was happy.

This was an artichoke and arugula salad.  We're so predictable, always going for the arugula pick.  We liked this one as well, it also had a nicely balanced dressing.

Check out this poached egg with beans.  Egg was perfectly cooked and we liked the beans but this dish wasn't outstanding.

This was the pork and fennel sausage with roasted potatoes.  We all really liked this one, nice texture and flavor.

We ordered one more dish, a guinea hen - which we liked - and passed on dessert.  I wish I had more to say about this place but as I mentioned, we shared each of these dishes between four people so we only got a bite or two of each one.  What we tried all tasted good, but there just wasn't enough.  I'm all for smaller portions, but not when divided by four people.  

The environment is really cool and the outside space looks amazing, but I think if I were to come back I'd make sure to go with only one other person.

Bar Agricole
355 11th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 355-9400

Le Zinc, Noe Valley

Yesterday we took advantage of the weather and walked over to Noe for some breakfast.  When we used to live over there, Le Zinc was one of our go-to places for breakfast out (tied with Holey Bagel).  Now that we're a bit further we don't get there as often, but we always enjoy it when we do. 

There are a few tables in the front where you can sit, but if it's nice out I prefer to sit out on the patio in back.  You can sort of see it through the window in the picture above.  It's quiet and very charming back there.

They also serve a pretty good hot chocolate there. Actually, the menu has both a hot chocolate and a Viennois, but honestly I have no idea what the difference is. This is the Viennois.

Kev always orders the eggs benedict. They are pretty good here.  In fact, he says they do them better here than anywhere else he's had in the city.

I ordered scrambled eggs and asked them to add some tomatoes, which they did. They weren't quite the perfect scrambled egg, but they were pretty good.

One of the best things about Le Zinc is you never seem to have to wait for a table, which counts for a lot in my book.  If you live across town, I don't know that I'd suggest you travel to Noe just for this breakfast, but if you are in the neighborhood, it's a good pick.

Le Zinc
4063 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 647-9400

Spruce, the Presidio

If you ask me for my top three (higher end) restaurant picks in San Francisco, I would quickly be able to tell you: Range, Frances and Spruce.  While the three are all pretty different in terms of atmosphere, the food at all of them is consistently amazing.  

The first time we went to Spruce was because we had been given a gift certificate for our wedding (clearly these friends know us well!).  After that meal, I couldn't stop gushing about the experience.  I've been a few times since then, but usually just to the bar area. You don't need a reservation, you can order off the full menu or the bar menu (which features one of the best burgers I've ever had) and have amazing cocktails.  The drinks menu also features an enormous selection of wines and spirits, if you're into that kind of thing. 

The design of Spruce is definitely part of the appeal for me. It's really dark and masculine, with lots of dark wood, leather and velvet.  It's a very sexy vibe.

Last night Kev and I booked a table for his birthday and the meal was just as good as I remembered. I wish we had gotten there slightly earlier so we could have had a drink at the bar, just because the bar is so lovely.  Instead we ordered drinks at the table.  The pink drink is the Bitter Berry Bramble (russian standard vodka, lemon, raspberry, bitter lemon soda) and the other drink is the Harrington (vodka, cointreau, garnier yellow chartreuse).  I love that pink drink.

The gougeres is an amuse bouche sent by the chef. I hope he never stops sending these because I love them.

We ordered the beet and pear salad with hazelnut vinaigrette and warm goats milk cheese to share.  They were nice enough to portion it out for us individually. I loved how the arugula was shaped around the cheese, it reminds me of Roman headpieces.  This dish was my favorite of the night. It was perfect, especially since Kev doesn't really like goat cheese so I got his serving as well.  All the flavors and textures went together so perfectly. You really wanted to get a little bit of everything on your fork.  I probably could have had the full order of this and called it a day.

Instead, Kev ordered the tuna with Italian broccoli, pinenuts and warm olive vinaigrette and was really pleased with the dish.  The tuna really felt meaty - I thought it was slightly dry, but he disagreed, especially with the addition of the olive vinaigrette.

I ordered the grilled bavette steak (I know, how shocking!) with duck fat potatoes.  The steak was excellent - the outside was a little peppery and the meat was tender and juicy.  Certainly as good as the steak at Range. I loved the duck fat potatoes as well - crispy outside, creamy inside, what's not to love?

We were too full to order dessert, but we did get some cute little treats with our check.  The fruit jelly was pear (it was like they knew we were coming) and the cookie was maple with tangerine marmalade.  We weren't too full to eat the additional cookies our very nice waitress brought us.

Excellent meal overall and a great way to start our 2011 food adventures.

Spruce
3640 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 931-5100

Intelligentsia Coffee, Los Angeles

We just got back from a trip to LA and I had wanted to do a whole "scenes from Los Angeles" kind of post but I didn't get much further than this picture, taken at the Intelligentsia in Silverlake.   We did have two  great meals though: at Eveleigh (I didn't bring my camera) and Osteria Mozza (Mario Batali is anti-photo). 

Not too much to say with this photo, but I loved these cups so I had to post them. Oh, and the lattes were good too.

Christmas Dinner: Timpano a la Big Night

This year for Christmas, we essentially had one very long Sunday Night Dinner, which started on Friday afternoon and ended on Sunday morning - complete with two sleep overs. For Christmas Eve we made Kev's beef stew and for Christmas morning I made this strata.  None of that compares though with what we ate on Christmas night.  If you've seen the movie Big Night, you probably know what a Timpano is. If you haven't - you can check it out here.  

I wish I could take credit for this creation, but it was really all Simon. He had been talking about making a timpano for well over a year and this seemed like the perfect time to do it. The recipe isn't hard, but it is super time consuming and labor intensive.  He prepared the meatballs and sauce a couple of days in advance and then the rest of the steps were done on Christmas day. 

While he made the dough, we drank some tea and ate some of Heather's amazing linzer torte. 

And then the assembly began.  We prepared two different timpanos - one meat and one veggie.

(click on any photo to make it bigger) 

 Got all that? Once the timpano comes out of the oven, you let it sit in the bowl for 30 minutes and then you very delicately flip it over onto a plate - this requires two people.  Let that sit there for another 20 minutes. 

Here's one of our timpanos (timpani?) patiently waiting its required 20 minutes. 

And then, very very carefully, we sliced into it. 

This is the veggie version. We held off slicing the meat version until we had all had a slice of the veggie. By the time we made it into the meat version, I was already in a food coma so don't expect any photos of that one.

After we were all thoroughly stuffed and couldn't possibly eat another bite, we had dessert.  I made this Pear and Raspberry Crostata, from a new cookbook I received as a present.  I love that the pears are halved and not thinly sliced.  I also love the little hints of ginger in there and the tartness of the cranberries. This recipe is a keeper. 

We used the timpano recipe from the official Big Night Cookbook. If you don't have $1,000 to spend on a cookbook (Simon found his in a used bookstore), you can look here for the recipe.

Hope you all had a happy Christmas as well.

Sunday Night Dinner: Slow Cooked Brisket + a Whole Lot of Other Stuff

Hello Internet! I took an unintended break from writing/photographing, for no real reason actually, but then one week became two then two became... six and then here we are. So annnyway...

Here's a meal from a few weeks ago that makes me super happy.  It was our turn to cook Sunday Night Dinner, and it was a cold and gray day, so I took the opportunity to spend the day in the kitchen, something I really wish I would do more of.  The starting point for the meal was that I wanted to slow cook something, and I thought that this pulled brisket recipe sounded pretty good.  But that didn't take all day, because basically you just brown it, add some spices and let that thing sit in the slow cooker all day. And by all day I mean, all day - a good 8 - 10 hours. Make sure you start early. 

What did take all day were the accessories.  The Smitten Kitchen recipe suggests serving the pulled pork with pickled onions and some slaw. Those things all sounded good to me, so I got to work on that.  Because we weren't going to be eating though for another 8-10 hours, I just prepped what I could ahead of time, which meant getting those onions pickling, making the dressing for the slaw and chopping up a bunch of cabbage.  Also, because we were transporting all of this stuff over to our friends' house I got to use our fancy new glass storage containers, which I highly recommend.

And then the baking began. I wanted to bring some cookies into work, and I frequently check out the Smitten Kitchen cookie section and think, "I wish I had time to make those" about pretty much everything on there. And since I was already having a love affair with Smitten Kitchen, and spending the day in my kitchen, I decided to make two different types: Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip and Pecan and Chocolate Toffee.

These are the Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip, Pecan (but you knew that). I forgot to take pictures of the Chocolate Toffee cookies, which is just as well because I didn't think that they looked nearly as pretty as they should have.  I highly recommend these oatmeal ones though, especially for this time of year. They taste like fall, due to the orange zest, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon, but still have that good old fashioned chocolate chip texture thing going on. These are a keeper.  I personally didn't love the chocolate toffee cookies, but others preferred them, so go figure. 

After all the cookies finally finished baking, we transported ourselves, the glass containers, and a slow cooker full of brisket over to our friends' house.  We plugged the slower cooker back in for another two hours, and got back to work - next up was Mac and Cheese.  I decided to use the Jamie Oliver version, because well, I love Jamie Oliver and also I liked that he used tomatoes in his as well as breadcrumbs on the top.  We also added in what we like to call "cheesy nuggets" - basically the rinds of the parmesan that are set aside when the cheese is all done.  These little bits add lots of chewy, cheesy surprises in the dish. While that was baking, we assembled all the other ingredients.. and then had ourselves a feast. 

The only low point of the meal for me were the rolls - they just weren't very good.  The brisket was excellent, and super super easy.  The verdict on the mac n cheese was: More Cheese! (and that was after we had added well more than was called for) but I'd still make it again. 

It was a long day and in the end, I wasn't very hungry - somehow being around all the food all day just completely made me lose my appetite - but it was extremely satisfying. I am very much looking forward to having some time off in the next few weeks to get back to making some more big meals.

The Summit, Mission

Valencia Street seems completely unaware that the rest of the country is still in the middle of a recession.  In the last six months or so, it seems like every time I walk along there I notice new stores and restaurants, and it's getting hard to keep up. I'm not complaining though, I love that this little neighborhood is thriving. 

On Halloween we headed over to the brand new cafe The Summit.

At 2pm the place was packed and it was hard to find a seat, which seems slightly strange because the place is so huge. I think they probably could have done a better job of laying it out to make better use of the space.

Fear the beard!

I wanted a coffee and Kev wanted some tea, but tea is only served by the pot, so I went with that too.  Check out the presentation: cute little tray with tea pot and cups and also a 1/3/5 minute hour glass timer.  FauxBrian Wilson instructed us to wait until the green sand ran out and our tea would be done steeping.

 

 

I wish I liked the tea as much as I liked the presentation, but sadly (or not, sadly for my wallet) I prefer good old PG Tips. 

I also ordered the pulled pork sandwich which was... ok. Not bad, but not great.

After a little while of sitting on a stool over by the window, the couch opened up and we headed over there.  I got the coffee I had wanted originally (they serve Blue Bottle, by the way) and we sat on the couch with our books and just hung out.  And the thing is, while I could sit on my own couch with my PG Tips and read a book, sometimes it's just nice to get out of the house - which to me is the appeal of this place.

25 Lusk, SOMA

When I saw a reservation on OpenTable for 25 Lusk, it seemed obvious that I should book it. That week I had read about the opening several times (emails from Daily Candy, Urban Daddy and TableHopper) and Kev had told me that the owner is the brother-in-law of his friend. 

The restaurant is located down a small alley (Lusk Street, to be exact) that I had never noticed before, near AT&T park.

The space itself has been written about tons, and it is really impressive.  They've kept a lot of the original structure (beams and brick) and added modern details, some really warm lighting and lots of rich looking woods.  The upstairs is the main dining room and I liked how spacious it was. At so many restaurants in San Francisco, you're on top of the tables beside you and can't help but feel as though you are part of the conversation of people at the tables next to you. The booths here are roomy and private and it's easy to forget that there are others in the restaurant too. Someone later asked me what the crowd was like the night we were there, and I had no idea - I hadn't even noticed them. 

There were four of us at this dinner and we ordered a whole lot of stuff for all of us to try. 

Cauliflower crème brulee, sunchoke escabeche, truffled wild arugula.  This was my favorite of the appetizers. It sounds crazy - but it was amazing.  Imagine taking cauliflower soup then brulee-ing the whole thing and adding truffled arugula on top and this is what you get. It was savory and smooth but also sweet and crunchy. 

 

Wild Arugula, watercress, cucumber, grilled fig in a champagne vinaigrette.  Fresh and flavorful, but nothing to write home about.

Braised pork cheek terrine, with roasted quince and apple compote, swiss chard and spiced cider reduction.  I had texture issues with this one - the pork texture didn't work for me, but Kev really liked it.

Lobster ravioli, saffron lobster nage, shaved thai basil.  It looks like soup, but hidden in that creamy broth are ravioli, stuffed with lots of meaty lobster. We all really enjoyed this one. 

We also ordered four entrees to pass around between us.

This was the braised short ribs with roasted sweet potatoes and wilted escarole in a syrah demi-glace.  The good part about sharing is you get to try everything. The bad part is you only get a little bit of everything. I really liked the short ribs, they were perfectly tender and were barely hanging on to the bone.  The sauce was rich and a good match to the meat.

 

Verbena steamed pacific halibut, sea beans, tomato, eggplant, lemon-lobster vinaigrette.  The fish tasted incredibly fresh and the citrus-y sauce made the dish feel really light.   We liked this one a lot. 

Grilled top lamb sirloin, roasted garlic, potato rosti, apple-spearmint demi-glace.  I love baby carrots.  This lamb didn't have that super-distinctive lamb flavor, which meant that Kev would eat it (whoever heard of a Welshman that didn't like lamb?).   I liked this one, but it's been a week and I can't remember much more about it!

Pappardelle, grilled treviso, roasted baby fennel, braised artichokes, parmesan.  Pappardelle might be my new favorite pasta, there's something about those fat ribbons that I always enjoy. This dish had a really smoky flavor, and while I didn't think it was as successful as the other dishes, I still enjoyed it. 

Somehow after all of this food, our waitress convinced us we needed to order not one, but two of the dessert sample platters. We agreed.

There's a whole lot of stuff on this plate, but my favorite by far was the dulce de leche cheesecake. I'd definitely just order that if I were to get dessert here again. Not too sweet, creamy and light, it was the perfect dessert. 

After dinner, Kev and I debated where this restaurant fell in terms of our favorite places to eat. I liked it - and I'd put it on the same level as my meal at RN74 or Commonwealth - but wasn't blown away like I was at Frances, which is now my high bar.  Kev disagreed and thought it was up there with Frances. Either way, it was an impressive meal, especially considering they had only been open six days when we ate there. I'll be curious to return in a few months when they've really established their rhythm. 

25 Lusk
25 Lusk St
San Francisco, CA 94107
415-495-5875