Results tagged “chezpanisse”

• Chez Panisse mafia don Alice Waters speaks to Charlie Rose. [Eater]
• Your alt weekly lawsuit word count. [Guardian 796, SF Weekly 1,559]
• SFPD deputy chief demoted. [SFGate]

Since the advent of the digital camera, we haven't stepped foot inside a Costco. Now we have a reason to return. Today's Hot Stuff ("Catering by Costco") in the Merc rates the appetizers found in the frozen food section of everyone's favorite warehouse store. Some of their top picks are the Full Circle Torta Stella, Cuisine Adventures' spanakopita, Clear Springs' smoked rainbow trout (smoked trout is phenomenal, folks -- miles above smoked salmon), and Jeremiah's Fine Foods shrimp and scallop cakes. To the best of our knowledge, we haven't tasted any one of these fine food products, but anything branded "Cuisine Adventures" can't be half bad, can it?

Three square meals a day is finished. Heartiness plunged to its death from the Golden Gate Bridge. The entree, sadly, is dead. At least according Kim Severson of the New York Times it is, and we couldn't be more delighted. The article interviews chef Tom Colicchio who says, "I think the entree has been in trouble for a long time...[e]ating an entree is too many bites of one thing, and it’s boring."

Eater SF uncovered something new and morally-questionable -- two of our favorite topics -- TablePronto, an online service that scalps restaurant reservations. Basically, it's a site that allows you to buy and sell reservations for a price. As of now they have a scant few available for SF: - Perbacco, 11/16, 9pm, $18; Foreign Cinema, 11/16, 8:30pm, $15; Town Hall, 11/16, 9:15pm, $10; Aqua, 11/16, 8:45pm, $10 Oh, all prime dining hours, too! But...

Tonight, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District has asked you, the Bay Area, to drive less as well as holding off on burning wood in fireplaces and woodstoves, which are a large contributor to airtime pollution level. (You hear that, Zuni Cafe and Chez Panisse, you depraved, Hummer-loving, slow-food bastards.) Read more about it here. Also, there's no free transit during winter/fall Spare the Air days. Bummer....

The bay area Michelin Guide 2008 is out, and there’s not much changed from last year: the French Laundry is the only place with 3 stars (the most) in the wider bay area. Aqua and Michael Mina are the only 2 stars in the city. Those Michelin guys are so stingy with stars, Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters still clutches her lonely one. Jean-Luc Naret, the director of the Michelin guide, was handing out press copie this morning at a brunch at Bloomingdale’s. He was ebullient. We asked him about last year belly dancers controversy, and he was like, but they were there, the inspector saw them! It was “a writing error,” he added, “not a rating error.” We do writing errors all the time too! We can totally relate.

Ever misplaced a grocery or to-do list? Your lost note could appear in Lost and Found in the Mission, a play based on true stories salvaged from scraps of papers found around the Mission District. The production, by Boathouse & Co., includes songs, dancing, beat-boxing and mass hallucinations. Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($15-$25), here, show starts at 8pm. Mama Calizo's Voice Factory in the Jon Sims Center for Performing Arts, 1519 Mission St.,SF.

The new Michelin was stingy with stars for San Francisco: no 3 stars restaurants (the only one in the wider bay area being the French Laundry in Napa), two 2 stars (Aqua and Michael Mina), and a 12 one stars (Fleur de Lys, La Folie, the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Rubicon, Bushi-Tei, Quince, Range, Acquerello, Masa's, Gary Danko, Boulevard, Fifth Floor). Alice Waters got only one tiny puny star for her Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Spanked!

The Michelin Guide will release its first San Francisco edition next fall. This follows in the footsteps of the New-York guide, whose first edition they released late last year. We can't hardly wait to put our hands on this. Which places will have the 3 stars rating, the one which means a restaurant is a trip destination on its own? The French reviewers are fussy, so the down-to-earth Chez Panisse might be out of favor. The French Laundry definitely checks in, especially since its little sibling, Thomas Keller's New-York restaurant, Per Se, got its *** already.

The poor lemon. It's so common that you ignore it even in the midst of its high season. But we tend to agree with , which lists this tart fruit as a cooking staple. No one will be surprised to learn that the book's authors dote on the low-acid Meyer lemons, which have become a defining ingredient in California cuisine. But nothing beats the mouthpuckering juice of a Eureka or Lisbon lemon, the two almost identical varieties you'll find at the market.

To get us out of the house, we need more than the promise of comfort food. We have all the comfort we want at home, what with running water and in-house sanitation. We can cook up a comfort storm in our kitchen, should we want boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin or mac&fromage. We'll make exception to any rule, of course, but to get our little tushes in a seat in a restaurant, we require something a bit more appealing. It could be something exotic, our pantry is bare of ethnic spices and rubs, or it could be something exciting: Winterland.

California cuisine means something different to everyone. Some equate it with local, artisanal producers. Some cast it as a Mediterranean cuisine realized with California ingredients and American techniques. But for us, it all comes down to the fennel. Every chef who's come through Chez Panisse's kitchens uses this anisey, wintergreen-colored vegetable. We're pretty sure that if you made a pizza with grilled fennel, meyer lemon-infused artisanal olive oil, and rocket, the space-time continuum would collapse and Alice Waters would magically appear in your kitchen.

Boulevard has been a SF favorite for many years. It has long reigned over the Zagat list of best restaurants in San Francisco, and its popularity never seems to diminish. Our last meal there left us with the impression of bee's nest bustling with a seemingly chaotic activity, which somehow delivered highly structured and tasty dishes.

Certain summer fruits—tomatoes and peaches come to mind—are poster children for farmer's markets. When these ingredients are bound for the supermarket, they're picked way too early and stored in taste-damaging conditions.

Whenever we see persimmons, we remember one of our first encounters with the matte orange fruit. Some joker had set out a bowl filled with pretty persimmon wedges and so of course we tried one. This, it turns out, is a Bad Idea. If you make the same mistake we did, the tannins in the fruit will wither your tongue and completely dry out your mouth. It's a distinctive, odd, and not very pleasant experience. Then you'll no doubt encourage everyone around you to try it. The same way you urge them to put 9-volt batteries to their tongues. No? Maybe that's just us. We later learned that not all persimmons do this: Acorn-shaped Hachiya persimmons are highly astringent for most of their lives, tomato-shaped Fuyus aren't. So why do farmers sell Hachiyas this time of year? Because when they ripen, all the tannins in the flesh bind to other chemicals, and the mouth-shriveling meat gives way to a delicious, jelly-like interior. The fruit will be squishy-soft and fragile and the fruit's color changes from pale orange to angry red. Eat this liquid interior with a spoon, or put it in the freezer for forty-five minutes or so until the interior solidifies into persimmon granita. If you want a fancier treatment, we're tempted by the persimmon pudding in . To tenderize still-firm Hachiyas, wrap them snugly in plastic wrap to deprive the fruit of oxygen and kick start the necessary chemical reactions.

, "the color combinations can be striking." All the pretty peppers at the market are in the species , but there are two main subdivisions: sweet peppers and chili peppers. We'll give you some ideas for sweet peppers this week, but next week we'll gird our tongues for chili pepper recipes. If you've got any suggestions (for cooking or girding), let us know.

species, which are culinary equivalents. Sure they all look pretty, with their yellow skin, their green skin, and their yellow-and-green skin, but they don't suggest an abundance of recipes. The simplest treatment features sautéed slices with minced garlic—we suggest the flavorful, hard-necked Rocambole variety you can find at various market stalls. Before turning on the heat, slice the squash into thin rounds, toss with a little salt, and let sit for half an hour or more to extract a portion of the moisture trapped in the flesh. The cooked slices make a nice side for lighter summer fare. We were a little too liberal in our adaptation of the zucchini fritters in . Instead of pancake-like dollops of batter, we tried making deep-fried croquettes. The confetti we scooped out of the hot oil tasted great, but lacked a certain cohesion. Ah, well. It still went just swimmingly with steamed mussels washed down with the Basque wine Txacoli.

In tech news, stoned graphic designers were stunned when they realized that they had no idea that Adobe was going to swallow Macromedia whole. South Park laughs to keep from crying.

Alder Yarrow has written up the results of the UK-based Restaurant Magazine's top 50 list. You can set aside your obligatory "English food sucks" jokes, as The Fat Duck in the village of Bray, Berks, England has claimed the top spot, besting El Bulli in Spain (foams are soooooo 2004). Coming in at number three? Yountville's The French Laundry, winning best restaurant in the Americas. Berkeley's Chez Panisse was the "Highest Climber," rising to thirteen, and the South Bay got some love with Manresa of Los Gatos making the list at number 38.

We first tasted green garlic at the Chez Panisse Café eight years ago. Gosh, was it really that far back? We were mere toddlers, of course, but we remember the restaurant served it with fresh parsley-flecked pasta topped with black trumpet mushrooms and goat cheese. We liked the way the heady perfume and mild garlicky taste—less harsh than the older bulbs most people know—filled out the dish. We tried to replicate the recipe at the time, but these younger forms of garlic were hard to find. You still only see the purple-streaked plants during springtime farmer's markets, which gives them street cred with California cuisine aficionados.

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