Results tagged “gastronomique”

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.

Man, we can tell how long we've been doing this by the number of Zagat posts we've amassed!

Tuesday was National Hunger Awareness Day, and we're late mentioning it. We're kinda dragging our feet when it comes to this serious, depressing stuff. Turns out that a bunch of kids, when they are not fed through the school system (minus the fresh fruits) during summer break, go hungry. In California. Now.

It doesn't feel right that we're subbing in for SFist Ced, who's on hiatus for a few months -- so we're doing a combination Gastronomique/Philistine review in his honor!

Tartine Bakery is the perfect illustration of the Yogi Berra aphorism: nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded. We live walking distance from the 18th and guerrero shop, yet we shun the place many a week-end morning, not feeling up to standing in that long line, no matter how good the frangipane croissant or the banana cream pie. (Also, we slightly resent them for creating a smaller portion of the yummy bread pudding topped with seasonal fruits, instead of the earlier one-size-fits-all. We know have pang of guilts ordering the large one, the only one we ever want, but now made unreasonable by the smaller one).

We went to the PlumpJack Cookbook signing party at Jack Falstaff last night. And none other than the mayor was sitting at the table, pen in hand, waiting for us to bring our copy of book. And he deserves all the kudos, as it’s hard to sign with a bleeding sharpie on glossy paper when you are left handed. We are getting carpal tunnel just thinking about it. No smudge, and his sleeves remained pure white.

We've managed to avoid the north side of town, so far, as we find it over-sampled by other food critics. Yet we wound up a couple times at Nicky's Pizzeria Rustica, on Polk off Broadway. We hadn’t been back on that street corner since the good ol’ days of Johnny Love's, a sleazy meat market where we’re ashamed to admit we managed to entertain ourselves there a few times. It's long ago enough that we can safely admit it. We never meant to go to Johnny Love's, it was the hormones talking. The place has been Rouge since 2000, and for some reason, it looks like the brassy, bridge-and-tunnel vibe has survived.

The Chron is attacking the credibility of the Michelin guide on its cover today, as they dug out some gross and shamefully dated material about SF restaurants: belly dancing which had stopped 3 years ago, maître d' who had left the floor in 2000, etc. We don't condone googling material to fluff up a piece, as if we'd ever do that, but in the kicker, the Chron writes: "But if you come in with that pedigree, your fact checking has to scrupulous." Point taken, we will scrupulous a lot more, indeed.

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!

We studied the Doña Tomàs cookbook, of the eponymous Oakland Cal-Mexican restaurant, by cooking a few recipes for a dinner party.

We deplore often enough the closure of Mission icons to welcome a new addition: Little Star has opened tonight at the corner of Valencia and 15th, in the space previously occupied by opium den and baku de thai. They put in a brick wall so something falls on you during an earthquake, and a juke box, so you don't have to talk to your date while you eat.

If we were to name our column again, we'd go with "the SFist on the table" or Get ur food on or whatever witticism we did not come up with when we settled on Gastronomique. Snacks on a plate? We'd try to convey what we attempt to do: inform and show off our camera phone food pictures and maybe squeeze in a joke here and there. We assume that restaurant owner face the same conundrum, trying to achieve the right balance in how they name their place.

It is kind of silly to assign politics to restaurants or diets. But Cha-Ya, a relatively new Japanese restaurant serving only vegan food, struck us as a magnet for people left of the Kucinic wing of the Democrat party. Maybe Green party supporters or unrepentant Chomskyists. Or just basic wanna-be commune-living combi-driving Berkeleyans, as Cha-Ya is the sister restaurant of the similarly named Shattuck Ave eatery. Of course, this being SF, the place is packed.

We were the only one spitting out at the Wines of Spain tasting, organized by Greens' wine director Chaylee Priete. Not that they weren't any good, but it was only 6:30 p.m., and we hadn't had dinner. If you are looking for a nice sophisticated buzz, as were our tasting companions, the $45 fee (we were comped) would have gotten you six glasses of different Spanish varietals, with refills should you taste one without moderation. That's $7.5 per glass, a pretty amazing deal, come to think of it, since the bottles in the tasting average in the mid-fifties in the restaurant, which, --mmm, numbers, crunch, crunch,-- typically translates into a $12 glass.

We have to admit we don't take the Stinking Rose --"a garlic restaurant"-- too seriously: the only time we went there was on a Valentine's Day, and our date was with a group of people without dates. The choice of the Stinking Rose, Beverly Hills branch, of course was intended as irony. We were free to eat garlic that evening. Lemons, meet lemonade.

Here's a riddle. You invite a fisherman, his lobbyist, and his sales channel, ie. a fishmonger and a restaurateur, and what do you get? Not an all knives out fight, for sure. More like hugs and kisses, and lots and lots of fish knowledge. The congregation of the above-mentioned people was assembled to discuss sustainable seafood at the invite of the Slow Food convivium of the Russian River. From the Latin: con (with, together), and vivium (to live), that's much warmer than "chapter" or "group." It's all a big family. Maybe they all came down from West Sonoma in the same minivan.

The Russian River Slow Food movement comes down to San Francisco this Sunday for a Sustainable Seafood Salon, that is a panel discussion on the issues of sustainability in fishing in the Northern California coast. You guys remember we narrowly escaped having no local wild salmon on our plates this year, and it is only one example of fishing going awry.

Hayes Valley has turned into a friendly neighborhood. They have a perky positive attitude, with banners saying haYESvalley. See: YOU are in the neighborhood with the YES inside, thus YOU are the affirmation of what is possible. We'll put little +++ signs around you. That is instant karma shining right on you. Take that, mariNO. Plus, they did get rid of some seriously bad feng shui, with a freeway off-ramp like a wart on the nose. Once that was gone, and cute little Hayes Greens set up instead, all of a sudden you find yourself with a family friendly, almost suburban neighborhood.

Aslam's Rasoi sounds a bit like Occam's razor, especially with our thick French accent, which has us straining our little brains to find a relationship here. We know that if we don't, the next reviewer will steal our shtick. But Aslam, first name Mohammed, does not keep things simple: every dish which comes out of his kitchen is a multi-layered, sophisticated, refined dish with a list of ingredients long like the arm. Yet, he achieves consistently bright flavors, and varied textures. Even in the naming of his restaurant, he took over a place called Rasoi and complexified it.

Did you see a Craigslist post titled "How to Rescue a Cursed Restaurant Location?" Because that is the one that Dylan MacNiven replied to when he opened Woodhouse Fish Company, across Market from the Safeway. The corner of Church and Market puzzles us: is it a big shopping and public transportation hub, with a Muni station underneath and the north-south 22 Fillmore and J lines meeting with the east-west N line. It is a gateway to the Castro, the Dolores side of the Mission, the lower Haight. It is a busy corner, even for foodies, with Home and Chow doing brisk business, and the best burrito in the city --flame away in comments, we can take it-- at El Castillito.

In explaining how he came about the Shangri-La Diet, UC Berkeley Professor Seth Roberts tells a story about how, in Paris, the soda he drank tasted so different from the usual that it inhibited his appetite, causing him to lose weight. We don't know much about dieting, we don't care much for the Shangri-la diet, and honestly, we won't trust much someone unable to find coke in Paris, it's available at every corner. Nevertheless, if there is a lesson in the anecdote, it is thusly: if you want to lose weight, go eat at Inka.

Hungry Planet, the latest book by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, visits 30 families in 24 countries to take a look at what they eat. The book's subtitle is What the World Eats but the authors are a couple from Napa, the publisher from Berkeley: this is a local effort, and we can chauvinistically be proud of the James Beard Foundation award it just received. Each family in the book is photographed with all the food they would eat in one week displayed on the dining room table, or whatever substitutes for a dining room or a table. The effect is striking as one can see at a glance how much, or how little one family eats in different countries.

The TableHopper is an fun email that we look forward to every Tuesday. Since you have to be a tiny nimble thing to gracefully hop on tables, we find this food-and-restaurant-scene newsletter incredibly sexy. Were we to jump on a table, we would look as ridiculous as Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch, and the table would crash under our weight. Lithe we are not. We leave this sport to the playful Marcia Gagliardi, a San Francisco-based food writer, who kindly agreed to answer our questions.

How less Berkeley can you be? The Phoenix Pastificio will move out of its Shattuck ave. location in Berkeley and has already stopped serving lunch. We don't know all the details, but it looks like a greedy landlord has other plans for the space and served them a notice to vacate the premises. Owner Eric Sartenaer, dubbed "the nicest man in the universe" by our significant other, who used to live a block away, would not say anything mean about the situation, so he said very little.

, ie. cotton candy. As in: a sweet indulgence. And it does smell a bit like cotton candy when you step in the store front at the corner of Mission and Yerba Buena lane, across from the Yerba Buena garden. This is the first store of this cream puffs chain in San Francisco, with more to come in the area. The cloying smell took us back to the good old times when the Hostess factory was wafting its saccharine-loaded winds towards Division St, and you'd get a sugar high just from walking by.

Sunday and yesterday, the James Beard foundation announced their annual awards for 2006 in a posh ceremony. We (a) did not win for our excellent food coverage; and (b) were not invited, which is fine, because we would not have been able to go to New York. Keep not inviting us, as long as you don't give your hardware in our backyard, we don't even care. Losers. Whatever. Even our Gothamist siblings were (a)-and-(b) snubbed, despite holding home court, so at least we have a shoulder to cry on. Or vice-versa.

We thought of Zuni when we had dinner at Nopa. Let's count the reasons: a short, punchy, four-lettered name; a location slightly off the mainstream; an expansive space with high ceilings, a mezzanine and abundance of light coming through floor to ceiling windows; a food fire oven; a focus on the so-called California cuisine, with beautiful ingredients and preparations which are kept simple to highlight the ingredients; a crowd of beautiful people who might be here to enjoy the food, or might be there to be seen, or both; and an ambitious burger on the menu.

We picked a camembert of the brand Le rouge et le noir at Trader Joe's the other day. Oh my, what a mistake, that thing is not even worth turning into a hockey puck. It is a shame they put the name Camembert on such travesty. It got us in a really sour mood. Will people actually think this is what we French enjoy? And how dare they use Stendhal's beautiful classic as a marketing hook for a piece of doo-doo?

God knows no one will ever confuse us with Josh Sens, so we don't want none of that SFMag stuff here.

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.