The Bees Knees
Actually, I don’t know if bees even have knees, but it’s a good title for this post.
There’s a group called the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, or CUESA. They put on the Farmers Markets in San Francisco, and offer classes and events as well. Granddaughter Demi found an event we couldn’t miss–urban beekeeping, and the venue was the Fairmont Hotel, which keeps bees to make their own honey and pollinate the flowers on their rooftop garden, where they grow items for their own kitchens, as well.
In a stroke of luck, we found free on-street parking right on top of Nob Hill, and entered the beautiful shrine to old San Francisco that is the Fairmont.
Events started with a cooking demonstration by J. W. Foster, executive chef of the Fairmont. He made a bruschetta with drained ricotta cheese, lots of honey and roasted plums. I’ll be serving it and claiming I invented it.
Chef Foster prepares the ricotta/honey spread for the bruschetta.
Chef is the man responsible for the beehives. The Fairmont website has an article about the bees and the garden which begins:
In June 2010, The Fairmont San Francisco’s Executive Chef jW Foster, in partnership with Marshall’s Farm, installed honey beehives in the hotel’s culinary garden in order to help support the bee population, which has decreased in number by 90 percent since the 1980s.
They take this stuff seriously–it isn’t just a publicity stunt. The Fairmont clearly believes in giving back to the community and trying to improve their neighborhood and their world.
There is also a honey beer, brewed specially for the Fairmont.
Honey beer, and a small mascot.
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I don’t drink enough to have a valid opinion, but I had a taste anyway. It wasn’t sweet, it tasted like beer. Color me confused.
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Now for the good stuff. All my life I’ve wanted to put on a bee suit with the hood and heavy cloth and go look at bees. This was my chance–we went out to the garden and got suited up. Miraculously, they had a suit big enough for me. No, you don’t get to see–there’s a reason I’m the guy who takes the pictures.
Gail’s daughter Kate and husband Brad, enjoying the bee suits.
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Gail the apiarist.
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I suspect that these honeybees are really pretty docile and safe–the beekeeper who went out with us didn’t bother with a bee suit, or gloves. Still, it felt very secure to be in the proper attire.
Granddaughter Demi holding a frame of honeycomb. A hive is composed of about 8 of these.
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Close up of the comb–the white things in the cells are larva developing into bees.
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Gail the beekeeper
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The big one is the queen. Notice the bare finger–the expert wasn’t afraid to work without gloves. That is most definitely NOT my finger.
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The raised beds of the garden.
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There was honey tasting, chatting with the chef, tasting of the beer, but in truth after we wriggled out of the bee suits we were ready to hit the trail–I don’t see us setting up a hive or three around here, so this was an adventure much more than an educational event for us. Nonetheless, I felt like I learned something about the little fuzzy fliers and had a great time in the process.
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After the adventure, we wanted to get a bite to eat and hadn’t been to the Top of the Mark in decades, so we dashed across the street and up to the 18th floor. It’s smaller than I remember, and less fancy, but it’s still a quintessential San Francisco location, like Tommy’s Joynt or the Tadich Grill.
The menu is “light dining”; there were 6 of us and we ordered three platters–the mezze, cold middle-eastern dips and delicacies, a charcuterie plate with paté, salami, cured duck, prosciutto, etc. , and a hot spinach and cheese dip. The breads served with the platters were all unique and excellent, the portions were sufficient and we were fairly well pleased with what might be called a heavy snack.
The cool part was when the band started to play 40’s music and people started to dance. These were clearly locals who come every week–the knew what they were doing, were dressed to the teeth and we had as much fun watching as they did dancing. One couple looked to be in their very late 70’s and were smooth and elegant. Gail asked the woman how long they had been dancing together and was told “a very, very, very, very long time.” Then the woman kissed Gail. It was sweet.
Cutting a rug at the Top of the Mark
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These two were great–they are not a couple, the woman came with another guy, the man came by himself, dressed in a white dinner jacket and black/white spectator shoes. They both seem to be regulars who do this often.
We had a great time–the Top of the Mark is pretty old fashioned, but we got to watch the fog come in, and then watched it lift and the Bay Bridge came into view. It was a pretty perfect evening. Just the bees knees.
Modern yet traditional
My favorite place to eat lunch in The City is the Rotunda, at Neiman-Marcus on Union Square. It’s very old fashioned; you can’t go there without remembering the City Of Paris and the famous Christmas tree that magically appeared the day after Thanksgiving.
Consequently, it was with some trepidation that I went to the new NM Cafe on the second floor of the Neiman Marcus in Walnut Creek. Yes, even though they opened 4 months ago, I hadn’t seen the inside of the new consumer palace until this week.
The store is, of course, beautiful and ultra-modern. Would the cafe measure up?
Good news. Tradition continues, and all the little niceties of dining at Neiman’s are maintained.
The really big item, to me, is how the meal starts: with bullion and a popover.
A tiny cup of bullion, a piping hot popover and strawberry butter–heaven on a plate
That’s the tradition, and it makes you feel like you belong to part of an exclusive in-crowd, which I guess is their goal.
Next up is the modern–lighter food that still has lots of taste. I had the seafood louie.
Shrimp, crab, lettuce, avocado and egg. Healthy, tasty, elegant.
Gail had the chicken salad.
Chunky chicken salad, melon, pineapple, tomatoes and avocado.
The service is everything you would expect. NM Cafe is tiny–it seats about 34 people, and I counted at least 5 waitstaff, including the bussers and host.
Everything on the menu includes a calorie and fat content listing–their main market is ladies who lunch, and these things matter.
Staying modern and maintaining tradition seem like antithetical aims, yet Neiman-Marcus has somehow managed the trick here in the ‘burbs. Good for them, now I don’t have to go into San Francisco to enjoy the popovers anymore.
Walnut Creek Soul Food
We eat out a lot, but I wouldn’t want you to think it’s all 10 course tasting menus from restaurants with multiple stars in the Michelin Guide. We eat high on the hog, we eat low on the hog. Today, we were on the low side.
I noticed in Gatlinburg last April a number of places offering chicken and waffles, which seemed like a strange combination. Then in Memphis, Mike and I were in a very nice dinner establishment offering “flights” –they had 39 entrees on the menu and you could pick two or three of them, getting appropriately sized portions, and one of the highfalutin’ choices was, you guessed it, chicken and waffles.
So when I heard that there was place in Walnut Creek in called Chicken and Waffles, it was ordained that there was a visit for lunch in my future. Today, when I should have been playing bridge with Mike, the club was closed (for Mike Lawrence’s lessons), so the four of us went to try it out.
Right on Mt. Diablo Blvd, C&W is one of a number of restaurants in the same building as Cost Plus World Market and the movie theater.
The retro 60’s look of Chicken and Waffles
The decor is 60’s diner. The noise level is loud–was asked them to turn down the music a notch or two, but I don’t think anything happened.
The cheerful staff. With those eyelashes, I don’t think she’d know if it was raining.
But you want to know about the food:
Chicken. Waffle. Grits. Classic southern food, well prepared.
The menu is large, with a great selection of down home cooking. But the name of the place is Chicken and Waffles, and that’s what I was there to eat, so I ordered the first thing on the menu–one waffle, a “succulent breast” of chicken and a bowl of grits.
The waffle wasnt’ really hot–I wonder if they make a bunch of them in advance. The chicken, though, was great. We don’t get much in the way of genuine Southern fried chicken, and this is the real deal. It was also the biggest darned chicken breast I’ve ever seen.
The bowl of grits was equally good. Grits is like a thick cream of wheat, or poor man’s polenta. Add plenty of butter and either sugar or salt and pepper, and it’s like a quick trip Mississippi.
Linda ordered a bowl of black eyed peas and rice for us all to share, and it was as if New Orleans exploded all over us. These people know their way around a pot of beans.
Mikey likes it.
This place will never be mentioned in the Guide Michelin but it sure is a good place for lunch–or a late snack. They’re open until 4 am on the weekends if you just can’t sleep for want of a waffle and some chicken. Give it a shot.
Just around the corner
A minor upside to bad economic times: if more restaurants fail, then there are more new ones to take their place. Bing Crosby’s was a pretty fancy upscale establishment in Walnut Creek, and it went under. Now Corners Tavern has opened in the eastern half of the building, and I get to talk about yet another new place to eat.
The large floral display dresses up the servers workstation.
Murals decorate the walls. The racks of pewter steins emphasize the old pub atmosphere, and they are used to present the check.
Nothing remains of the old place. Where Bing Crosby’s was an homage to a 50’s night club, Corners is more of a Boston pub, with stuffed animal heads and strange murals on the walls, 13 different and exotic beers on tap, huge exposed steel beams (which don’t connect to anything) and large garage doors which open up to a large front patio dining the better to enjoy our balmy evenings.
Executive Chef Esteban Escobar has created a menu to please both modern and traditional tastes. His list of appetizers looked so good that I never got to the entrees–I just had 4 appetizers and called it a meal.
We started with the shishito peppers for the table. These medium sized peppers, briefly blistered in hot oil and sprinkled with sea salt, are usually quite mild with the occasional super hot one to keep you alert.
My first dish was the asparagus soup, a great dish where the chef avoided the temptation to overdo the flash glitter and just let the vegetable shine through.
Smoked salmon and a soft-boiled egg
It takes some kind of genius to create new dishes, new combinations of ingredients, new ways of thinking about a meal. How the chef ever came up with the idea of pairing smoked salmon with greens, shaved asparagus and a soft boiled egg is beyond me, but that’s why he gets the big money. The flavors blended magically, the presentation was unique and I was impressed.
The re-imagining of a Caesar salad
Gail loves Caesar salad and is almost a certainty to order it. Corners had re-invented the Caesar, with butter lettuce instead of the traditional heavy-ribbed romaine, large chunks of parmesan, and crispy pork rinds instead of croutons. The idea works, and our resident Caesar expert pronounced it excellent.
Is it a tartare or a ceviche? At least I’m sure it’s tuna.
I ordered the tuna tartare. What I got was more of a ceviche, where the tuna was cooking in the acid from the oranges. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a different thing. The texture of the tuna changes completely in the chemical process, and I don’t think for the better.
Still, the presentation was excellent, with the watermelon radish on top and some kind of cracker/toast/bread on top. I just wish this dish knew what it wanted to be.
A dinner size appetizer.
Gail asked the waitress which was better, the veal short rib or the pork chop, and was ably steered to the veal. Although it is listed in the appetizer section of the menu, it was quite sufficient for her as an entree.
Excellently prepared, tender and soft, and accompanied by delectable English peas, this dish is a major winner.
Baked apples and Gorgonzola cheese.
My final dish was again suffered from an identity crisis. I had the baked apples and Gorgonzola, which can’t quite make up its mind about whether it is an appetizer, an entree or a dessert. The idea is interesting, a small pan of sliced apples covered in cheese and topped with membrino, a quince paste that is like a solidified jam. The execution is decent, although the apples discolor in the iron pan and blue apples aren’t really all that appetizing. I don’t think I’d order this dish again.
The service was fair to good. I think I threw them a curve with my 4 dishes, as I was served the two in the middle all by myself which was sort of uncomfortable and then got the apple dish at the same time as everyone else got their entree. My ice tea glass got refilled with some sort of cloudy mixture (supposedly just because it was freshly brewed), but it should never have come out of the kitchen.
Like so many new places, Corners Tavern is LOUD. Hard floors, no tablecloths, heavy silver, lots of people and liquor add up to a lot of noise, and that’s clearly the way the owners want it. It isn’t the worst around, but it’s decidedly high on the noise-o-meter.
The bottom line is that we like Corners Tavern and will go back. Prices are high/moderate–dinner ran about $50/person, including wine and an automatic 18% tip for a large party. Not cheap, not awful. We definitely like it more than we liked Bing Crosby’s, you will too.
It doesn’t get any better than this
Monday was our friend Mike Patton’s birthday, and we wanted to do something special. So we made a reservation, picked Mike and Harry up in Vallejo, and motored on up to Healdsburg, for an incredible, fantastic, borderline insane dinner at Cyrus.
The Michelin Guide gives only one restaurant in the Bay Area three stars, The French Laundry. Cyrus gets two stars, along with Manresa, Boulevard, Meadowwood and a couple of others. If they asked me, Cyrus would get 3 stars, too. I’ve eaten at both, and there is simply no difference in quality, inventiveness, ingredients, service or ambiance.
With light traffic, we arrived almost 30 minutes early for our reservation, but they seated us immediately. Cyrus isn’t large, seating perhaps 75 people in a plush, warm environment designed to put you at ease from the start. Carpets are thick, silver is heavy and solid, they keep the sound down so you can converse easily during the long dinner process.
The meal begins with a tower of amuse bouches designed to wake up and sharpen your taste buds in all 5 of the flavor groups–sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. The small red item on the spoon in the photo below is the sweet, which is somehow magically encapsulated in such a way that it “pops” in your mouth, exploding with flavor. That sort of technical trickery is a hallmark of the molecular gastronomy movement, which (it seems to me) is often used to substitute kitchen technique for flavor, but not at Cyrus. They use the kitchen wizardry in the service of the food, sparingly, not just to have flash and glitter in their presentations.
The tower of amuses, to sharpen all your taste buds.
It being a special occasion, we then started with the caviar. Three 1/2 ounce portions of different types–they were all a rich, black osetra, but there were distinct differences in flavor. We all agreed that we liked the Israeli product the best.
Three types of osetra caviar, served with mother of pearl spoons.
The caviar is accompanied by phenomenal small breads, and a plate containing creme fraiche which has been flash frozen to make it like a powder, which promptly thaws back into a cream. Cucumbers minced microscopic and some kind of tube of egg yolk custard complete the accompaniments.
That line of white powder is really creme fraiche, flash frozen with liquid nitrogen.
A tiny parfait, another amuse bouche
When you are having a lot of courses, each one can be very small. This “parfait” had three or four layers of goodness inside a cup that held perhaps an ounce and a half. I wish I could remember what was in it; I do remember that the little balls on top were very crunchy and added a level of texture to the dish.
At a perfect restaurant, nothing is overlooked. Here’s what is on the table:
For the table–sea salt, cows-milk butter, goats-milk butter, red Hawaiian salt
Next up was the first official course. The play of colors is as important as the play of flavors:
Chilled Salmon with ginger and daikon, snap pea-basil broth
The inevitable foie gras, another work of art.
Only two more weeks to enjoy foie gras here in California, so of course it was on the menu. Cyrus is offering “Humane” foie gras, grown by loving hands in a secret location in the central valley. They claim the ducks line up for their force feeding. Somehow I was picturing a facility full of kindly, aproned Jewish mothers saying ‘fress, kindela” as the livers grew and grew. In any event, the dish was wonderful.
A fingertip sized popsicle of avocado and lime as a palate cleanser.
Seared beef cheek with green and black garlic, lotus root and natural jelly.
I don’t know who first thought that cooking just he cheeks from a cow was a good idea, but he’s my kind of guy. This dish was simply superb; the meat falling-apart tender and tastier than a filet.
It was hard to photograph because there wasn’t enough light on the sides, so I enlisted Mike’s help–having a top professional director as your lighting assistant seriously improves your photography. And his iPhone makes a great little accent light.
Cheese course, presented on a slab of slate
You get your choice of a variety of cheeses: this is the goat’s milk selection. I even had a glass of wine with this–a 1985 Toro Alba PX, which is very dark red and tastes like you just squeezed a handful of raisins until you got juice. The waiter kept explaining that it is really a white wine, but that just goes over my head. If it looks red, it is red as far as I’m concerned.
Yuzu crémeux, bergamot meringue and cream cheese ice cream.
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One of my desserts. This is indeed ice cream, again frozen with liquid nitrogen so it looks all granular and then melts quickly to the normal consistency.
The other dessert disappeared too fast to take a picture: goat milk panna cotta with rhubarb, parsley lime ice. I was the only one who got that, so I passed it around the table. It made two complete circles and was gone. Gail, who isn’t much of a dessert eater, wanted another but decided to be mature.
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Cocoa nib “affogato”, condensed milk semifreddo
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The dessert the others had. I noticed no leftovers.
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There was more, but this is already the longest blog post in history. Sweet Corn and truffle Risotto. Chorizo crusted Scallop with sweet corn and lobster froth. Halibut with pea sprouts and asparagus, lemon verbena. Spring lamb tataki hot pot. Wines for every course. Over 1200 wines in the wine list, and a sommelier who seems to know every one, the winery it came from and what side of the hill the grapes grew on.
The service is magnificent; always helpful without being intrusive or obsequious, willing and able to answer my endless questions about rare ingredients and technical cooking methods, completely professional at all times.
Critics will always vary and every year they crown another “best restaurant” in the world. I’ve had the good fortune to eat at Cyrus twice, and it would be very hard to be better than they are at any part of the experience. It was a wonderful, fantastic night and I recommend you find a special occasion, make a reservation a month or two in advance and go on up to Healdsburg for the meal of your life.
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Happy Birthday, Mike
Willi’s Winebar
On our way to yet another adventure Saturday,Gail was furiously Googling to find a great place to eat. We ended up in Santa Rosa at Willi’s Winebar, on Old Redwood Highway to the north of the city. I have to say we were both surprised and impressed to find a restaurant this good this far off the beaten path.
Willi’s serves small plates, so we got to try a variety of dishes, and there wasn’t a clunker in the lot. I liked this place from the moment we sat down, and saw the way the table was set.
Coarse ground pepper on the left, see salt on the right, smoked hot paprika and salt in the middle. A very nice touch.
Crab Tacos with a hint of curry
Baked Oyster. The bed of salt crystals and peppercorns makes a great presentation.
Foie Gras “poppers”. It’s like the week before Prohibition with all the bars getting rid of their gin, only now it’s goose liver.
Roasted carrots. Perfection on a plate.
Fried pigs ears. Not just a treat for your dog anymore. Strange, but wonderful.
Big, beautiful marrow bones.
When I think of Santa Rosa, I sometimes think of Willybird, a famous fried chicken establishment. From now on, I’ll be much happier thinking of Willi’s Winebar, a seriously great place to eat.
Listening more than preaching, what a concept
Look at all the options
I went to Catholic school, so I tend to think of churches as completely top-down organizations that tell their members what to think and how to pray. I was intrigued to see this sign for a Lutheran church in Sacramento last Thursday.
Look at all the options–contemplative, traditional, Spanish, contemporary and FLOW (whatever that means). This says to me that here is a church which wants to work with people to help them find their way to God in their style, not what the church elders deem as “correct”.
Not the most important thing I’ve ever seen or written about, I just wanted to note that there is another way besides the Catholic hierarchy or the evangelical didacticism.
Quel dommage
I wanted to like Chevalier tonight, I really did. A fine, classic French restaurant in Lafayette would be an asset to the city and a place to enjoy some old-fashioned elegance. Unfortunately, dinner was a failure.
We went out with BJ and Larry Ledgerwood for what should have been a great experience. Chevalier is right on Moraga Road, in a strip mall with little parking. The facility itself isn’t large, but the patio has considerable seating, and that’s where we chose to eat.
The menu is French, French, French. Escargot Bourgingone, Torchon de Foie Gras, Salade Nicoise, and that’s just the appetizers. Prices are steep, except for the prix fixe menu, which offers 3 courses for $39.
Friday nights are busy, and Chevalier simply doesn’t have enough staff to handle the crowd. We were promptly seated for our 6:45 reservation, but it was quite a while before food started to arrive.
Enjoy it while you can.
At first, the food was wonderful. Foie Gras will be illegal in California on July 1, courtesy of the tree-huggers at PETA, so that’s what I started with. A torchon of liver from an over-stuffed goose, accompanied by a bit of poached pear, was excellent.
Gail loves escargot, and I love sopping up the garlic butter, so we had winner #2.
Skate wing–hard to find, hard to cook. This one is about perfect.
The special this week was Massachusetts skate wing, a marvelous piece of fish you rarely find. The chef did a magnificent job of preparing it, served on very thick, creamy mashed potatoes with a unique vegetable melange which included some very tiny purple carrots. I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Chicken. Just chicken. BJ has a nice manicure, don’t you think?
BJ ordered the poulet. You would expect that there would be something special about the chicken here, but you’d be wrong. This was just plain roast chicken, and nothing you couldn’t make at home and probably better.
Filet Mignon, theoretically.
So there I was, enjoying my skate, and Gail offered me a taste of her filet. I bit into it, and chewed, and chewed, and chewed. I don’t know what kind of meat that was, or where they bought it, but it was decidedly not what you would expect from a $44 filet in a first rate restaurant. It was dreadful. It may have been camel meat. Gail sent it away, not wanting anything else.
Larry’s sorbet. LIght, fresh, tasty the way sorbet should be.
Desserts were back to excellent–Larry’s sorbet was light and fresh, BJ’s creme brulee was everything it should be. I had the molten cake with creme anglaise and had to fight Gail for it.
Chevalier is almost incomprehensibly inconsistent. Some of the food was superb, some was damn near inedible. The waitress was clearly trying, but she was over-worked, had too many tables to handle comfortably and they appear to employ no runners or expediters to help the waitstaff–because she only has two hands, our server could only bring out two dishes at a time and had to make a long trip back to the kitchen for the rest, so we could not all be served together.
Due to the debacle with the filet, that entree was taken off the bill, along with a round of drinks and one dessert. And the bill for the four of us was still over $200.
I wanted to like it, I really did. But there is just no way I can recommend Chevalier. Quel dommage.
Roya’s Garlic GardenThe
Writing a blog is hardly a one-way experience–readers write back to me, give me hints, send me to places they like. Danny Friedman sent me a note this week to tell me about Roya’s Garlic Garden in Lafayette–he and Linda ate there and enjoyed it, so he thought I should give it a try. I’m glad to say we did.
Tuesday was Dinner with Margaret night, our monthly dinner with Margaret Kozak and Barbara Hanson, so off we went to downtown Lafayette, across from Postino.
Roya’s is a small, simple place that looks larger because of the mirrored walls. They have a full bar (so Margaret can have her martini). The entire staff seems to consist of Roya in the kitchen and one waitress who hustles all over the place–they weren’t busy, thank heavens.
Roya is an Iranian lady trained in Sweden by a French chef; the menu displays a considerably versatility of cuisines, with European specialties on the left and middle-eastern on the right. An extra menu lists pastas and pizzas–if you can’t find something you like on this menu it’s your fault, not hers.
The portions are enormous–a couple could easily share one. Margaret had the pork:
The presentation on these large charred planks is quite unusual.
Barbara had the chicken:
This is almost a big as Barbara is.
I couldn’t pass up the veggie pasta:
Angel hair, veggies, mozzarella and a light tomato sauce. Just what I like.
I wasn’t much impressed with the pizza quattroformaggio Gail ordered, but we own a pizza restaurant and I’m awfully picky about it.
There was an item on the dessert menu I could not pass up
Deep Fried Breaded Camembert with Fried Parsley, Vanilla Ice Cream and Cloudberry Jam
You have to order this one 20 minutes in advance, so I put in the order when our entrees came, then cleared the table and set up my photo:
You don’t often need a sharp knife for dessert; for this one it’s essential. The four forks are because there was no way I was going to get this all to myself.
This dessert is ready for its closeup, Mr. DeMille.
Cut into that hot, crusty ball and the camembert oozes all over, to be scooped up with a bit of the ice cream and savored. It’s a fantastic creation, somewhat marred by very icy, overcrystallized ice cream that had been in and out of the freezer too many times.
The fried parsley was very reminiscent of the fried spinach at Origen, but has even more flavor. I have no idea what a cloudberry is, but it sure makes good jam. The combination of all this is an interesting, different dessert you need to try. Don’t worry about the sharing–it’s big enough for four.
One of the benefits of a small place like this is the interaction available with the owner/chef. Roya is right there, ready to talk to you about the menu, make suggestions or just chat in 3 or 4 languages. The server was friendly and capable; our meal moved smoothly and effortlessly.
The bill was reasonable, the food was good, the ambiance was pleasant. What’s not to like? Thanks, Danny.
Totally Unauthorized 