Gastronomique: Savor for the Savvy Cook.
We first saw the book Savor: San Francisco on the hostess stand at Myth. We used to live near Savor in Noe Valley, and while there's a line on weekend for brunch, it is not a place which would compile its recipes to put in a book. So we had to browse, and it is a selection of recipes from 25 restaurants, with a suggested wine pairing from 25 wineries.
The restaurants include Myth, thus the proud display there, but also Acquerello, the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Farallon, the Fifth Floor, La Folie, etc. That is the crème de la crème, and for each place, there is a whole dining menu in recipes. A typical menu will include the dishes a restaurant is famous for: the Indian Spiced Lamb Burgers at Levende, the Sweetbread Salad at Myth, the Quail Lollipops at La Folie, the S'mores at Luna Park. One has to appreciate the care given to the selection of the restaurants and of each menu: while the book's publisher is in Seattle, the effort really feels local.
Also, the recipes cover a wide range of ingredients, and there is some, but not too much overlap between the different restaurants: say two seared foie gras, or three scallop dishes. As you can intuit from the restaurant list, the recipes aim at high-end sophistication, so be ready to break the piggy bank for the ingredients: truffles, lobster, crab or yuzu juice.
For each menu, a wine pairing is offered with all the wines from the same local producer. The idea is neat, but it looked like the blurb from the winery was written by the producer itself. While most likely the recipes are written by the chef, at least they do not prejudge on the quality of the end results. It is a bit disconcerting to read that so-and-so winery produces great wines in this context. Similarly, the few paragraphs of introduction for each restaurant read more like a tourist office press release than an objective opinion on the restaurants. We would have prefered that the chef explained why they chose the dishes, or how they composed the menu. Or why the "couscous 404" at Luna Park is called "couscous 404."
Actually, we know that one, but you won't find the explanation there. It is named after the Peugeot 404, a car which, when its career ended in France, ended up having a second life in Algeria and became first a symbol of Algerian immigrants in France, then, eventually, a high-end couscous restaurant in Paris. Thus the name of the recipe.
The recipes, written by the chefs, are not for beginners. First, they are ambitious dishes, and one must be well versed in the culinary arts to understand them. There is no cutting it in little pieces and chewing it for you here. Consider this ( p.47): cook until mixture reaches 252 degrees. Once desired temperature is reached, remove from flame and cool to 210 degrees. You better pay attention in that kitchen. But the results are worth it, with a peek in the different techniques of different chefs, as if looking over their shoulder when they are working.
One small nitpick: we found the font for the recipe titles difficult to read. But all in all, we cannot think of any other recipe book which attempts to cover the cuisine from San Francisco from the perspective of different restaurants. We would cook from the book, but we more likely imagine using the book the same way people read from the score while seating at the symphony, as a written guide to our dining pleasure.