Marginal Profits

Let's all agree on some basic tenets:

1. Capitalism is the primary socioeconimic system of the United States of America.

2. In capitalism, the means of production are held by private individuals either individually or collectively in corporations.

3. These means of production are operated for a profit and those profits are based upon how that means of production (business) functions within the greater market economy around it.

4. Most restaurants are businesses, not charities or state-run food banks.

Do we agree? Yes? Good.

Moving on.

People don't like to feel ripped off. This is understandable. However, if the douche-baggery that occurs on Yelp! is any indication, most people (or at least most people who post on restaurant review websites) don't have much of a sense of how restaurants operate financially and what you're really paying for when you go out to eat. The most common complaint (after "the service was bad") is "the food was overpriced."

Let me explain.

First, a restaurant's expenses and how they affect prices:

1. Food Cost. This is what it sounds like. How much does the food that is served cost the restaurant. Included in this is how much food is wasted. For instance, any restaurant of any calibre and esteem doesn't keep ingredients for very long. Food has to be staffed and/or thrown away after a certain number of days. Another factor: sure a whole salmon might cost X dollars per pound, but how much usable meat comes from a whole salmon and how does that effect the real cost? Just like the Indians were purported to do, restaurants do what they can to use every part of the ingredients that they are sourcing.

Often a restaurant has little flexibility on food cost. In the hyper-competitive California Cuisine world, ingredient source and quality is all. As a result, the top farms have more business and there is more competition--and with the rise in the popularity and availability of farmers' markets, that competition comes from the end consumer as well, not just other restaurants--therefore they're able to raise their prices. And as their prices go up, so do the prices at other farms. Additionally, restaurants with massive purchasing power like the French Laundry and Chez Panisse can push their resources around and snap up the top product when they want or need it because they can pay virtually any price. Think of these places like oil-rich Arab sheikhs. For instance, a couple months ago no other restaurant in the Bay Area could get any fresh organic black-eyed peas because Chez Panisse had bought up everything available for that week.

Food cost at a Bay Area fine-dining restaurant makes up anywhere from 5%-50% of the menu price. Restaurants try to make their food cost average out at about 20-25%. If a menu item gets close to 50% food cost then most restaurants, depending on their overhead, are actually taking a loss on the sale of that item.

2. Labor. It takes a lot of people to run a restaurant.

Let's look at a basic Friday night dinner for a medium sized (120 seat) restaurant. This is an eight-hour shift (3-11PM) for most kitchen staffs. This is a bit shorter for the front-of-house staff, but not by much. You have one chef. He's making anywhere from $3K-$10K a month. Let's throw him in the equation at $40/hour. And then at least one sous-chef at $22/hour. You'll have one "advanced" line cook or supervisor level line cook at $15/hour. And then throw in two line cooks making $10/hour. Can't forget the dishwasher making $8/hour. So you have a total kitchen wage of $105/hour. That's a skeleton crew for a busy Friday night. And that's on the lower-end of average for wages.

Other staff. You have six waiters/bartenders, two bussers, a barback, and a food runner all making around $7 hour. You probably have your GM making the equivalent of $25/hour and then a host/floor manager/wine director making $15/hour. So there's another $110/hour in wages for your front-of-house.

Total payroll, $215/hour. Total payroll for an eight-hour night: $1720 (give or take a couple hundred). Divide that by 250 covers (about what a restaurant of this size will do on its busiest Friday) and roughly $6-$7 of each diner's meal goes toward paying the staff.

Yikes. No wonder restaurants push wine and cocktails so heavily.

And remember, this is basic bare-bones staffing for a busy fine-dining restaurant.

3. Non-labor overhead. Here's the catch-all for everything else related to restaurant operations. First there's rent, which varies heavily from location to location. Running a restaurant in Nob Hill is a helluva lot more expensive then running one in Antioch. Some (very few) restaurants own their own space. Others have cut sweetheart deals with their landlords because the property owners want a restaurant in the space or the landlord gets a share of the profits in exchange for a break on the rent. Regardless, all restaurants are paying a rent or mortgage of some kind.

And then you have utilities. Restaurants use a lot of energy. Most of a restaurant's operations involve either cooling or heating things, whether that's food, wine, coffee, or surly customers who are inevitably too hot or too cold. A commercial kitchen has some serious energy-using equipment running, in many cases, 24 hours a day.

Don't forget cleaning! Those designer banquette cushions don't clean flabby Berkeley ass germs off themselves. Most cleaning in restaurants is sub-contracted to linen companies, kitchen equipment cleaners, and janitorial contractors. $$$.

What else.... Oh yeah, breaking shit. Restaurants break shit all the time. Most of the time that shit is just a wine glass or two. Doesn't sound like much, but breaking $20-$30 in glassware a night adds up fast. Silverware also disappears into trash cans, dishwashers, and customers' pockets. Sometimes the shit that's broken gets bigger. An entire rack of glasses gets dropped. A couple decanters crack. A $200 Burgundy shatters. Or--look out--something in the kitchen breaks.

And then there's promotion, advertising, accounting, management, insurance, outreach, property depreciation, inventory control....

Unfortunately I don't have hard numbers for any of this stuff so there goes my chance of this article being published in The Economist.

But, this is starting to sound like a business no?

Jeremiah Tower's SF restaurant Stars, with famously high prices, also had famously insane overhead, and even $40 steaks couldn't keep it open. What's in its place now? Trader Vic's, a "fun" restaurant with godawful starch-heavy food and wicked expensive syrupy sweet drinks.

4. Profit. Not much left to go back to the owners at this point. Especially after the owners pay off their investors and the Mob. Presumably the owners are reinvesting a significant portion of their profits back into the restaurant for capital improvement and expansion, so how much money do the owners take home each year?

In most cases, nothing. Hopefully the restaurant makes enough to pay the owners a modest salary and then the rest of the profits pay off investors and fix the toilets.

To quote En Vogue: and now it's time for the breakdown:

In a typical restaurant with $25 entrees, $10 appetizers, $5-$7 desserts, and a full bar, the per-head sales average on a busy Friday will hover somewhere around $45, especially in Berkeley where it seems people are much more shy about purchasing drinks or multiple courses of food than in San Francisco. So how does that shake out?

Food cost: $10
Labor: $7
Non-labor overhead: $20 (this is merely an educated guess)
Profit (before dividends and reinvestment): $8

That's a profit margin hovering at 15-20%. Most comparable small retailers (clothing boutiques, antique stores, resale shops, skin and body care products) operate at a close to 50% profit margin. Bars operate at a 70+% profit margin.

Combine those limited profits with significant startup costs and it takes a goddamn long freakin' time before it starts making money. And as with any business model with marginal profits, you need to replicate replicate replicate before you can start seeing significant dollah dollah billz y'all.

So what do restaurants do to maximize profits? In many cases food becomes the loss-leader for wine, cocktails, and the experience. Restaurants depend on beverage sales (even coffee), where the profit margins are much much higher to make up for the losses in food cost and overhead. Restaurants try to operate with the minimum staff possible, which on inordinately busy nights can result in overtaxed waiters and a slower kitchen--though the limitation for a kitchen's speed is usually just as much about space as it is about personnel (you can only fit so many potatoes in the fryer and steaks on the grill).

Why are some restaurants cheaper than others? Often it comes down to ingredient quality and quantity. Frozen beef is perfectly fine (and cheap) for a sauce and rice-heavy stir fry, but it won't do for someone wanting a quality steak. Frozen pre-processed vegetables and canned soup stocks might work for certain places and certain times, but not for California fine-dining right now. Rice, pasta, beans, tortillas, bread, etc add low-cost bulk to dinners and can deceive diners into satiety. Some restaurants save money on payroll--if it's a family-owned operation everyone can share profits (and be exempt from many costly labor laws) without having to have a real payroll. These savings on overhead can also be procured by running your business from a taco truck instead of a pricey downtown storefront. Other restaurants might simply be operating as a no-profit front for illegal imports, drug dealing, and human trafficking.

So what does this all mean? It means that a restaurant is a business out there to provide goods and services in exchange for money. It also means that you're probably more likely to get "ripped off" (in terms of percentage of income going to the ownership) at a mediocre Indian chaat house than you are at an expensive restaurant. Especially when you factor in the profits the owners make off their sex slaves.

In conclusion.

If you don't want to participate in the dining-for-profit system, that's fine. But don't bitch about it. You're probably wrong. If every restaurant that people on Yelp! bitched about being "overpriced" was in fact overpriced, none of those restaurants would still be open because nobody would go to them, you flaming retards. Think about it just for a moment. Restaurants aren't a cartel and there are plenty of quality dining options across the price spectrum that are available. If people really thought they were being gouged by a restaurant, they wouldn't go there after a while. It happens all the time.

So keep being smugly happy with your contempt for nice things and keep enjoying your taco truck dinners.

And your diarrhea.

Farina - San Francisco, Ca

Hey hey check it out! I made it to a new restaurant before it was reviewed in the Chronicle! Sweet!

The big question mark that sticks out at me about Farina is.... do we really need another fucking Italian restaurant? Especially in San Francisco. Especially in the Mission. I mean, really? Really?

REALLY?

Admittedly Farina claims a "Genoese" bent, with waiters in jeans (which comes from the original French word, bleu de Genes or the blue of Genova for those of you keeping score at home) and t-shirts bedecked with Genoa's flag.

Fine. So it's northern Italian. Ligurian. A rose by any other name. Whatever. It's Italian. Antipasti, giant plates of meat, and some pasta. Whoopdifreakindodiddlyoo. Fuck Italian food and the oily uninteresting horse it road in on.

That being said, Farina was pretty damn good.

First, props to Farina's extensive, deep, and well-priced wine lists. Almost entirely Italian, sure. But I like Italian wine. Extensive selection of wines by the glass, quarter-liter, and half-liter carafe as well. Half-liter's a good amount of wine. More wine should be sold like that at restaurant. Let it be done.

First up girlfriend Charlie and I had the roasted vegetables antipasti. Fennel, eggplant, onion, and tomatoes oven-roasted and served room temperature. Flavors were nice and full and the vegetables weren't swimming in oily oily Italian olive oil. The tomatoes in particular were great.

Pasta course. I had the taglietlle with boar sugo. The pasta was nutty and al dente. The sugo was rich, tasty, but loaded with salt. Like, retarded salty. One of the saltiest dishes I've had. Charlie's handkerchief pasta with walnut-gorgonzola pesto was excellent.

I'm not a fan of Italian restaurant entrees. I know this is largely because of how American Italian restaurants attempt to shoehorn Italian-style dining into the established conventions of most American dining. We try to make entrees and appetizers out of a dining style that favors multiple single-item courses. I like a diverse well-articulated main dish of multiple flavors more so than a dish of protein, sauce, and a couple vegetable accents.

But Farina's entrees were good. I had yellowfin tuna seared very rare with fresh heirloom tomatoes and fresh burrata with balsamic reduction. Simple and fresh. Charlie had the red snapper with with something I can't remember and can't place because Farina doesn't have a goddamn website yet. But it was good.

Dessert proved a highlight. Gianduia-filled fried tortelli dusted with sugar and served with three sauces--a dark roasty espresso sauce, a bright concentrated blackberry sauce, and a forgettable orange sauce. Crispy, warm, chocolate-y, hazelnut-y, and taste-y.

Farina's space is sleek and stylish, a little bit over-conceived for my tastes. Outdoor tables jut out into the neighborhood, a private dining room sits upstairs near the uber-chic restrooms, and apparently, much to neighbors' chagrin, Farina's going to start rooftop dining as well. We'll see if that happens.

Service was present and attentive. Not overly engaging or solicitous, but definitely there. Bussers were great, keeping tables clean and reset between courses, circulating with fresh bread and keeping water glasses full.

So it's a nice restaurant with well-made food, stylish space, excellent pastas, and great wine list. I think it's rather characterless and pointless in the over-saturated Italian restaurant scene, and if it keeps making enemies in the neighborhood Farina could be short-lived. If you like northern Italian it's probably worth a detour.

Farina
3560 18th St
San Francisco, Ca 94110
Reservations 415-565-0360 or www.opentable.com

California Cuisine and Gangsta Rap: A Comparative Dichotomy

Ice Cube. Dr Dre. Eazy E. Snoop Dogg. KRS-One.

Thomas Keller. Alice Waters. Jeremiah Tower. Narsai David. Paul Bertolli.

Each profoundly influential. Each a genius in his or her own right.

Each blazing new trails by reinventing how they used the tools that were already in front of them.

Each using their fame and reputation to support dozens of far less talented artists on their coattails.

Each responsible for spawning a generation of mediocrity behind them.

Gangsta rap and California Cuisine share far more than just being popular with rich white people. Their basic shared tenets blur the boundaries between food and music, dancing and eating, beats and beets.

Sorry.

What are those tenets?

1. Simplicity is Key

What makes an excellent gangsta rap tune? A g-funk era landmark? A simple heavy beat. Catchy, repetitive synth hooks. Maybe a few simple vocal samples. And dope, dope rhymes. No flourishes. No guitar heroics. No multi-octave diva arias. No double bass pedal thirtysecond-note sextuplets. There's nothing to it that makes you think you should like it. It's not Dvorak or Mahler for chrissakes. Yet somehow some way gangsta rap still comes up with funky ass shit like every single day.

The same holds true with California Cuisine. Chefs aren't flambe-ing tableside, stuffing turkeys inside sardines, or serving domes of flavored air over tapioca pearls. I mean, some chefs are, but not California Cuisine chefs. That would be inappropriate. Transcendent California Cuisine is perfect organic seasonal ingredients cooked flawlessly. There's no reason for the food to be s0 damn good, other than from the culinary gestalt of perfect ingredients assembled perfectly.

Just as there's no reason that an old Parliament baseline, some high sine wave synth sounds, and flows about gats, weed, and bitches should be good, other than that same gestalt.

2. Careful Selection

Just as our California Cuisine chefs pick their produce for its peak of seasonality and freshness, so too do the top producers of gangsta rap select their basslines, beats, and synth hooks. There's nothing in theory difficult about deciding to cook with kale. But what kale? From where? When is kale at its absolute best? The producer makes the same decision--this sample of a breathy oversexed woman is great, but where should it be used? When can it be inserted into a song for its peak effect? Probably right after the rapper says "bi-otch."

3. Passion and Purity of Motive

One of the reasons California Cuisine works is because the chef is committed to the ideals of the movement. Seasonality. Locality. Simplicity. When one of these tenets is compromised, the whole effect slips away. Gangsta rap came out of the frustration and rage felt by a generation of black men living in the ghetto. California Cuisine came out of a desire to eat more simply and deliciously. Gangsta rap had the crack epidemic of the 1980's, California Cuisine had the fuel crisis of the late 1970's.

But as gangsta rappers become wealthier it's hard to take them seriously. Instead, hip hop now is about going dumb, bringing sexy back, and getting between you and dat booty. Hearing Ice Cube in 1990 when he was a pissed off 20 year-old is a helluva lot more compelling than hearing Ice Cube trying to be pissed off now that he's a multi-multi-multi millionaire who makes family road trip comedies. Most prominent artists from the gangsta rap era who are still recording have moved on into slightly different genres.

And as California Cuisine becomes accepted fact for most restaurants--that the idea of using fresh local seasonal ingredients is de rigeur--I'm no longer impressed. Now you're just doing it because you're supposed to, not because you really believe in the tenets of sustainability. It's time to forge new ground. Build on that very sturdy foundation and move forward. Stop being a multi-millionaire still rapping about the 'hood.

California Cuisine needs to stop being gangsta and find its hyphy.

DISCLAIMER: The author understands that he is conflating several related genres of hip-hop. The author also acknowledges that logical gaps that exist in his argument. The author understands that he is exaggerating for comic effect and/or entertainment factor. The author makes no claims at being an expert in either hip-hop or California Cuisine. Horny for Food is for entertainment purposes only. The author assumes no responsibility for actions taken either directly or indirectly as a result of reading his words. The author encourages all diners to think critically and come to their own conclusions about dining. The author thanks you for your readership.

The Rest of the Country, Volume 2: The Highlights

In my stumbles through the mid-Atlantic there were many many lowlights. Terrible wraps. Overcooked shrimp. Shitty beer. Shittier coffee. An awfully god-awful meal at King's Arms Tavern in Williamsburg.

But there were some high points. Here they are.

Vino Volo: Both girlfriend Charlie and I agree that this was the most interesting culinary stop on our travels. Located in Dulles Airport (and five other airports around the country), Vino Volo is a wine shop and wine bar that also features a short small plates menu. With liquid restrictions for carry-ons making transporting wine even more annoying, having a wine shop within the security checkpoint area fills an important void.

The wine selection is remarkably broad in scope for its limited size. Prices are also reasonable (especially by airport standards), with generous glasses as cheap as $6 (for the 2005 Casa Castillo Monastrell, a wine I've seen on lists around here for $8-$9 a glass). Wines are grouped into global flights and even provide for the opportunity to try a 1999 Caymus Cabernet and a 2000 Bordeaux Grand Cru Classe in one flight for $25 (the Caymus retails for $215 and the Bordeaux $125).

The food, while unremarkable, is tasty. Pretty simple heat and assemble food that was lacking in seasoning, but it hit the spot. And in the world of airport dining where you're so often limited to shitty Mexican food, spin-offs of local fast food chains, and bad pizza, having fresh and simple cuisine with a gourmet sensibility was nice. Options include smoked salmon rolls, pork soft tacos, and garbanzo bean "chili." Dishes are available in "taste" or "entree" sizes and many are paired with suggested wine flights. Food was also inexpensive, especially given the quality and the location. Vino Volo is set to expand into a dozen or so airports in the coming months, so keep watch. Right now you can find them in Dulles, Seattle, Sacramento, Boston, and JFK.

Crab Cakes: I'm about to say something that will get me strung up from my toenails and sodomized with a broken bottle by Alice Waters.:

California just doesn't get crab.

I like dungeness crab. It's fine. It's good size is nice, providing for some big chunks and nice meaty claws. But it's a little bit too sweet. And it makes a mediocre crab cake. Yet every restaurant in San Francisco is expected to offer this "signature" California treat. It's weird.

Give me blue crab any day of the week. The much smaller blue crabs, while much more work to crack and pick, have a more robust flavor and nice plump chunks of lump crab meat. The Maryland/Virginia crab cake is simply done with Old Bay seasoning, mayo, and saltines instead of being overly adulterated with bread crumbs, peppers, and excessive herbs. You'll usually get just one crab cake, but it'll be a big one. Makes for an excellent sandwich as well.

We get so excited by our dungeness crabs here but it's really an inferior crustacean for eating. Pretty though.

As an odd side note, I could not find fresh softshell crab in Virginia, despite the fact that restaurants in California are still getting fresh live softshells shipped from Chesapeake Bay.

Dunkin' Donuts: As ubiquitous on the east coast as tranny hookers are on the west, Dunkin' Donuts is one of the few remaining fast food chains that I would welcome gladly to my hometown. Krispy Kreme blows goats. Hardee's is Carl's Jr. with biscuits. Shoney's sounds like a dirty strip club. But Dunkin' Donuts offers something for everyone. If you like donuts. Which I do. Hence, Dunkin' Donuts is great. All the donuts that girlfriend Charlie and I tried were excellent, especially the cruller and the blueberry cake donut. The coffee lived up to the hype too. 'Twas tasty jet fuel, 'twas.

Penguin Isle: An Outer Banks restaurant with some class, Penguin Isle in Nags' Head offered little in the way of innovation, but the food was prepared very well. My tilefish oscar was delicious and moist, as was my crab cake appetizer. Impressive wine list as well.

Argyle's: Another Outer Banks restaurant where I encountered my first truly innovative dish in my travels. They called it oysters rockefeller, but other than being baked oysters with bacon their version shared nothing with the blue-hair favorite. Big James River oysters are baked with seaweed, bacon, and parmesan. Much lighter than most preparations and much appreciated.

Fresh Market: Sort of a Whole Foods type grocery store, seek this place out if you're in need for an array of organic produce, soy products, natural cereals, and (huzzah!) Peet's Coffee.

Harris Teeter: Food Lion got you down? Tired of grocery stores that smell like fish and cigarettes? Then go to Harris Teeter! Not as classy as Fresh Market, it's still pretty classy. Think $500 call girl to Food Lion's $25 back alley blowjob. Something in that range.

The Rest of the Country, Volume 1

So I spent the last eight days on the east coast. Not just on the east coast, but in the south. Not the Deep South of violent racism fame, just Virginia and coastal North Carolina of pervasive institutional racism fame. North Carolina has something like the fifth largest black population in the country but strangely in the affluent recreation-oriented Outer Banks I saw like five.

Anyway.

I do bag on California Cuisine. And I'm not saying it's not deserved. But I also came back from my trip with a newfound appreciation for what we do have here in California dining. It's apparent that a big chunk of this country has a lot of catching up to do.

And it's not just an issue of ingredients--there's no other region of the country, with the possible exception of Hawai'i, that has such an immediate access to such an impressive array of produce, I understand that--it's an issue of concept all the way down.

Most of the problems I encountered are not endogenous to the region I was in. They're my standard complaints. Very little articulation of an entire dish is the biggest--instead you get your protein with a rotating cast of sides--mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables. Sometimes that side gets a little more adventurous--risotto spring roll in one case--but you'll still find it making appearances on multiple entrees. At the best and even not-so-best restaurants in the Bay Area every ingredient in each dish was cooked and arranged with every other ingredient in mind.

I also ate more asparagus last week then I had in the past year. And we're well past asparagus season.

While these are the problems of middling and casual dining restaurants in the Bay Area, I ate at some of the priciest and well-regarded restaurants in the Outer Banks.

Am I saying the food was bad? Hardly. A lot of it was quite good. I love east coast seafood, so I ate a lot of it. They just do crab better in that region. Shrimp too. Super-fresh ahi. Ahi was also super-cheap ($10-$12 a pound) and the reddest I've seen outside of Hawai'i. I found that the quality of the protein was excellent and the preparation of it superb in most cases. There was an overcooked pork chop here and dry chicken there, but overall the main ingredient was prepared quite well and with a degree of style and grace. Wasabi and coriander crusted ahi, for instance. It was in how the dish was presented and how the accompaniments were cooked that was problematic. Gummy, overprocessed mashed potatoes. Undercooked steamed vegetables. Stale flourishes and garnishes. Dry rice.

Basically, food like mama used to make. Big communal pots of veggies and potatoes ladled onto the plate with your steak.

Now I come from a weird background where family dining at home consisted as often of pan-seared pork tenderloin with cherry-reduction and risotto as it did a big pot of spaghetti. That's how we rolled. But I understand that eating at home often consists of mom steaming some vegetables, cooking some rice or potatoes, and preparing a roast, or meat loaf, or fried chicken, or pork chops, or whatever. And that's great. It's probably fucking delicious and better than at most restaurants.

But if I'm going out to eat and spending $25-$35 on entrees I'm looking for something more than steak and potatoes.

And as I encountered on a fishing trip out in the Gulf Stream, catching fresh mahi-mahi, taking it home, and broiling it with olive oil, salt, and pepper is easy and delicious. So why go out to eat?

Stay tuned shortly for a more detailed elaboration on my eastern adventure.

The Alembic - San Francisco, Ca

Something weird's going on out there. Why am I getting better food and service at a place that is packed with drinkers, where we have to pass food across the aisle, and where the food is simple small plates of pub food with little flourish of technique or preparation than at places that cost twice as much and with actual tables?

The Alembic, a hot busy spot in the Haight, was fucking great.

We arrived late on a Friday night and the place was packed. It's a narrow storefront bar with a counter on the right and banquette tables in the back. We grabbed a spot at the bar when we could and ordered food and drinks. Already this was shaping up to be a bad night. Busy bar, no comfortable place to sit--we're bound to get ignored.

But strangely we weren't. We had prompt service from the bartender, he answered a couple wine questions and took our food order.

Drinks were nice. Big selection of whiskeys. Decent small wine list. Selection of Magnolia beers and a few others. Some house cocktails. Bartender made an excellent amaretto sour.

First up were two orders of the gnocchi with serrano ham and heirloom tomato. I really liked this dish--fluffy pillows on super-thin slices of ham. Admittedly it was weird. My dining companions weren't sold on it at all and I could see why. The flavors were disparate and far from complimentary, but it was fun. I appreciated the risk.

Next, Moroccan lamb sliders. As much as sliders are ridiculously overdone (both Gourmet and Bon Appetit had meatball sliders on their respective covers one month apart) these were good. Well spiced and served medium rare. A little too rare for one of our diners.

Truffle mac and cheese, another overdone item, was cheesy and aromatic. This was my least favorite, only because the cheese sauce was too thin and bechamel-y.

Spiced frites were thin and crisp and remarkably hot. My consistent complaint with thin-cut fries is that they get cold and soggy far too quickly. Not the case here. The accompanying thousand island-ish dressing was weird but once again showed a willingness to take risks on flavor combinations and thought it worked perfectly.

But the highlights. Oh yes, the highlights.

Duck confit club. Tomato, Niman Ranch bacon, and meaty tender chunks of duck. Everything was so perfectly combined that the fact that the dish is assembled of room temperature ingredients didn't matter.

And then the spaetzle. The spaetzle with braised rabbit and, yeah, more bacon. Hot and hearty. Odd dish for a summer menu, but it was foggy and cold as fuck in the Haight, so it worked. There was enough of everything without being too much of anything. I could eat a bowl of this for breakfast twice a week. And that's saying something.

So first reports on The Alembic are fucking great. Great food, great service, hip and pretty spot in a nice location. Even on a slammed Friday we got service that was better than at Cesar on a Tuesday.

I'll be back earlier on a weekday to really have a chance to do the menu right, but color me impressed. I think that color is purple.

The Alembic
1725 Haight St.
San Francisco, Ca 94117
415-666-0822
Reservations: No.
www.alembicbar.com

HFF Does LA 2: The Quickening

I've found myself back in LA again, this time for a wedding. I decided to keep it cheap from a food standpoint a splurge on lodging, but some new observations about the LA dining scene.

First, I'd like to point out Michael Bauer's somewhat well-observed article about his trip to LA. He pointed out what's the hallmark of LA versus SF dining: service and execution. Much more money has gone into the design of restaurants, perhaps to the point of excess, perhaps not. But there's a definite willingness in the Bay Area (especially Berkeley and Oakland) to pay three star prices in one or two star decor. The destination quality of restaurants is absolutely there too. When you go out to eat nice in LA, you're making an excursion of it. You're piling in the Hummer and going to culinary Disneyland.

Another difference that he did not point out, but is an offshoot of that service quality is:

We cram people into restaurants like sardines in this fucking town.

This fucking town being San Francisco.

We've all sat down at those restaurants where the host has to pull the table out of your way and then locks and loads you in to the banquette. This is a hallmark of Bay Area (and from what I'm told, New York) dining. Back the seats in, do as many covers as possible, etc.

I'm sure this is largely a product of much higher property prices, higher rents, etc. But it's also a matter of attitude toward the customer.

We're willing to forgo comfort for the quality of our food. Diners in LA aren't. I went into Table 8 in Hollywood and noticed that they could've rearranged the restaurant and probably added 20% more seats and still have the seating be spacious by SF standards. The server there informed me that if a party of two doesn't get their corner booth with enough room for 6 they raise a serious stink. When paying LA prices, good food is a given, comfort and ease (and the scene) is what brings people back.

But I guess once you factor in two people, their laptops, smartphones, notebooks, and shooting scripts, that's at least six people worth of stuff right there.

So what should we do about this phenomenon then? I don't really care. I'm not big on space. As long as I have enough room to eat and I can get up to go the bathroom without tea-bagging the person next to me, I'm fine with a restaurant.

But maybe we could learn something about LA's restaurant--maybe you can make money and still let your customers have room for their pirate hats.

Oh yeah, the few bites of food I had at Table 8 were excellent, for what it's worth.

You Get What You Pay For

I recently had the dubious pleasure of dining at two upscale family dining chain restaurants. One, Buca di Beppo, is a national operation of vaguely Italian food that made it's reputation on big portions and family-style dining. The other is a smaller local chain, The Fish Market, based out of the South Bay.

These types of restaurants, more so than any other, confuse the fuck out of me.

Here's why:

I understand the popularity of fast food restaurants. They offer a very cheap, quick product. Sometimes that product is actually semi-decent too.

I understand the popularity of conventional casual dining restaurants. They offer long hours, convenience, hefty portions, family-friendliness, consistency, and prices that are a good 50% cheaper than most Bay Area fine dining. I grew up in the suburbs. I grew up where Chili's and TGIFriday's were the only places to go and hang out after 10PM in high school. I have a soft spot for casual dining. Hell, I think Red Robin is actually pretty good for what it is. So's Joe's Crab Shack.

I understand the popularity of greasy Chinese restaurants, donut shops, and hot dog stands of questionable cleanliness, particularly when said establishments are near a college campus. They fill a desperate, desperate need for cheap, filling food for dirt-poor students.

I don't get places like Buca di Beppo, the Cheesecake Factory, The Fish Market, and other restaurants of that ilk. They seem like a giant waste of money that aren't offering anything unique other than kitsch and, in the Cheesecake Factory's case, cheesecake.

Take The Fish Market. I'll admit that the quality of the fish itself was pretty good. However the preparations were without skill, cooking every fish the same way and overcooking it at that. Sure you probably got 20% more fish at 20% cheaper price than at a comparable fine dining establishment, but is that really worth it? Are the sides of lukewarm French fries and steamed vegetables really that big of a deal? Let's compare.

The Fish Market had harried service and not enough of it. I don't blame our server. Literally one other person visited the table besides her and that was once to refill water. Empty plates weren't cleared. Food was not run promptly. We could see it stack up under the heat lamps. So we already see one spot where that extra 20% in the price goes toward, staffing. Fine dining restaurants employ enough bussers to keep tables relatively clear and water relatively refilled. I'm not saying it's perfect every time, but it's a helluva lot better than the Fish Market. They also employ food runners/expediters whose job is to make sure that your food gets to your table as soon after it is cooked as possible. This is a little-understood and under appreciated evolution in dining. Also note the quality of product that you'll get for that extra 20%. While the fish at The Fish Market was fresh, it was also from some of the most questionable fisheries in the world. Filipino ahi instead of Hawaiian, trawl-caught salmon, etc. Spend a little bit extra, get a helluva lot better product prepared with actual skill.

Let's move on to Buca di Beppo. Admittedly Buca di Beppo is a bit cheaper than The Fish Market or the Cheesecake Factory. But you're dealing with pasta which is pretty much the cheapest edible thing out there after rice. Besides the absolutely disgustingly filthy tableclothes and the undrinkable house chianti (our server clumsily tried to upsell us on the $50 chianti classico after the $26 chianti classico proved unavailable), you didn't get water unless you asked for it and you get to set in an enormous overly-lit dining room. I will admit that Buca di Beppo's food was cooked pretty damn well for what it was. The pasta was al dente, the eggplant parmesan had a remarkably fresh-tasting marinara sauce, and the crust on the pizza was crisp and tasty. Everything also tasted of cheap cheap cheese. Was it an alright meal? Sure. I would've gladly paid $10 more and had a truly great meal some place else. Or hell, I would've paid less and had a good meal at Magnolia or Sophia. Once again at Buca di Beppo we had similarly harried service that was only slightly more attentive. This time our server forgot to bring us our garlic bread, then brought it at the end of the meal in a to-go bag and still charged us for it. We complained.

And now let's move on to Cheesecake Factory....

But first, an aside:

WHY THE FUCK DO SERVERS AT THESE PLACES INSIST ON TELLING US THEIR FUCKING NAMES! It's not fucking important. I don't care what you're name is. I don't want to holler your name to get your attention. I don't tell you my name, why would I want to know yours? Take off the fucking name tag and just give me good service, don't pretend to be my friend. This whole give your name thing also means that trashy douche bags who accidentally stumble into a real restaurant (where, incidentally, nobody tells you their name BECAUSE IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER!!!! CHRIST! WHY DO YOU CARE YOU UGLY BITCH?!) are offended when the server doesn't tell you their name.

"Oh I didn't catch your name."

"That's because I didn't tell you, you frizzy-haired witch."

I've had my best service at places where nobody tells me their name. I've had the crappiest service at the aforementioned "Hi my name is Cunty McTwatburger and I'll be your server today" establishments.

But on to the Cheesecake Factory. I was told the name of the host, server, and "designated breaker," all of whose names I promptly forgot because, like I said, I don't give a flying gorilla fuck. Here, the focus is the cheesecake, I guess. I don't like cheesecake all that much so I didn't order it. I just needed food in the 'burbs at 11PM. I got the cajun prawns. Let me tell you this. I got a rather small number of prawns, a tiny ladleful of black beans, and two tablespoons of mango salsa.... AND AN ENORMOUS BALL OF RICE! If Trashy O'Livermore went to a "fancy" restaurant and spent $18 on a dish of five or six sauteed prawns with a black beans and mango salsa she would be pissed the fuck off and consider herself ripped off. But if she goes to the Cheesecake Factory she'd consider it a great meal because she gorged herself on a rice and spent the extra $5 for 900 empty cheesecake calories as well.

It must be that for most Americans leaving bloated=money well spent.

I'm going to try harder to avoid places like these. I don't want to support them. They offer a terrible product at only a modest discount from actually good restaurants, despite admittedly offering a shitload more starch on the plate for you. I pretty much eat at either hole-in-the-wall ethnic places for $5-$10 a meal or go and spend $50 on dinner.

The area in between is rife with disaster. And full of people with more money than sense. Or taste.

Don't look at how much you spent on dinner. Look at how much more you spent on dinner and what you got in return.

Because isn't spending $100 for two at Wood Tavern an infinitely better experience than spending $70 for two a the Cheesecake factory.

And what's more, 30 or infinity?

I rest my case.

An HFF Glossary

I would figure that anyone willing to spend $50 on dinner would also know what they're ordering. Apparently this isn't the case. As a public service and so I can make it clear that I'm better than everyone else, I present to you a glossary of commonly seen menu terms:

Frittata: I know this is pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how many people don't know. An egg dish that exists somewhere in the netherworld between crustless quiche and omelette. Veggies and meat are added to scrambled eggs but the eggs aren't scrambled in the pan. It's cooked on the stove until it sets and then carefully finished under the broiler. Served hot or at room temperature as a slice or as an individual frittata.

Po'boy: A sandwich of Cajun extraction with nebulous etymology. Consists of a chewy French roll loaded with turkey, ham, or roast beef (served cold) or shrimp, crayfish, oysters, or crab (usually fried and served hot). Often dressed with spicy mayo, mustard, pickles, lettuce, tomato, etc.

Brandade: A mix of salt cod, cream, and olive oil often with potato as well. Pureed and served hot with bouillabaisse. When potato's added, the mixture is often fried as a croquette or used to stuff peppers or beignets.

Bouillabaisse: A fish-stock and tomato stew loaded with fresh fish and shellfish. From Provence.

Sabayon: French term for zabaglione, a sauce made from egg yolk (sometimes whole eggs), cream, sweet wine, and sugar. Essentially a light airy custard. It's becoming trendier to omit the sugar and make savory sabayon to accompany entrees.

Au poivre: Something (usually a steak) cooked with one side crusted in loosely cracked black pepper. Served with the peppery pan sauce.

Sugo: Basically Italian gravy. A slow-cooked meat and vegetable sauce that can either be served chunky over noodles, or the sauce can be strained and used as a stock or based for another dish. In sugo (basically the same as ragu) very little initial liquid is used and most of the sauce consists of the natural juices of the vegetables and meat that you're cooking.

Bottarga: Pressed and salted fish roe. Usually tuna roe (bottarga di tonno) but sometimes mullet (bottarga di muggine) or swordfish (bottarga di idon'tknow) roes are used. Usually a small amount is served grated over pasta or beans. It has a strong salty fishy flavor and is quite delicious. It's origins stem from when fish roe was packed and salted for storage and shipment the eggs at the bottom would be pressed from all the weight above it into a formless cake.

Mojama: Salted and air-dried tuna loin. Basically tuna jerky. Has a similar flavor to bottarga but is meatier and a bit less fishy.

Bresaola: Salted and air-dried lean beef.

Salumi: A general term for Italian-style cured meats. Salami being one of many types of salumi. While salumi is usually made of cured pork, there is some beef salumi (see bresaola) and some cooked salumi (cotto, for instance).

Charcuterie: Salumi's French counterpart. Cooking plays a more significant role in charcuterie and includes things like rillettes and pates.

Rillettes: Meat (or sometime fish) that is chopped and heavily salted and then slow-cooked in (usually) its own fat. Served cooled and shredded into a paste. Usually served on toast.

Confit: This refers to a few different cooking and preservation methods. Originally it is meat preserved in fat. In the classic duck confit the duck is slow-cooked (essentially poached) in its own fat. Nowadays the duck is usually served within a few days of cooking, but originally the cooking pot would be sealed and stored. When the fat cooled it formed a thick preserving layer over the meat that would keep it stable for many months. Confit can also refer to fruit preserved in sugar. Whole fruit or pieces of fruit are covered in sugar until the sugar infusesall the into the fruit juices to the core. Confit cherries are a classic dessert delicacy and the maraschino cherry is its bastard mutated grandson. Many confit recipes now (like onion confit) consist of quick-cooking methods designed to replicate the textures and flavors of classic confit.

Provencal: Generally speaking this means cooked with tomatoes, onions, and garlic. The use of tomatoes in particular is what distinguishes Provencal cuisine (and its Mediterranean proximity) from other regional French cuisines.

Offal: A general term for organs and entrails. Basically any part of the animal that isn't muscle or bone.

Vacherin: A Franco-Swiss dessert of meringue, whipped cream, and often fruit but I've had vacherin with chocolate and almonds as well.

Pot de Creme: Thick egg custard traditionally served in a wee pot. (Pronounced poh-du-crehm).

Ganache: Melted chocolate mixed with milk or cream. When ganache cools it partially solidifies but is still soft and malleable.

Profiteroles: Cream puffs. Choux pastry stuffed with whipped cream, ice cream, or pasty cream. Can sometimes be savory.

Choux pastry: One of the basic French pastry doughs. This one is light and and puffs when cooking due to a high water content.

Beignet: Deep-fried choux pastry dough, though yeasted dough is sometimes used in France. While usually served with sugar and/or jam, beignets can also be stuffed with meat and vegetables before frying.

Zeppole: Italian analogue to the beignet. Deep-fried pizza dough with sugar and spice.

Krapfen: Sweet yeast dough deep-fried and stuffed (usually injected) with fruit or cream. The Berliner (jelly doughnut) is the most celebrated krapfen.

Rocket: Arugula. That's all. It's just arugula. Wild rocket is wild arugula (or rucola).

Panna cotta: Italian for "cooked cream." A dessert made of sugar, egg, cream, gelatin, and flavoring (such as vanilla or coconut). Served chilled. Heavier than Jell-O, lighter than custard.

Affogato: Italian for "drowned." A scoop of ice cream (usually vanilla) drowned in a shot of hot espresso.

Chicory: Bitter leafy vegetable. Includes such luminaries and escarole, endive, frisee, puntarelle, and radicchio. Because of its fibrous texture and bitter flavor, many chicories hold up well to grilling and sauteeing. One type of chicory is cultivated for its root and used as a coffee substitute, but this is not the chicory you encounter on restaurant menus.

That's all I've got right now. I'll update this periodically. Please comment with other terms you'd like explained.

Most of my knowledge of the basics comes from The Food Lover's Companion, an indispensable everyday glossary of food terms and preparation techniques. Buy it.

HFF Has Lunch: Boulevard - San Francisco, Ca

It's time to crack into the heavy hitters in San Francisco dining. Lunch at Boulevard seemed like a good first step.

I know Boulevard is no Dining Room or Fifth Floor, but it's at least a half-step up in classiness (and prices) from the places I've been frequenting in SF.

Once you cross that threshold (I'll call it the Zuni-Bar) expectations step way the fuck up in terms of decor, service, presentation, and amenities. It's silly, but it's true. That's one of the reasons you go out to eat--to have a good time in a nice place.

Plus, it was my birthday. So I wasn't paying.

We were greeted professionally at the door and directed to a nice round table in the back of the dining room. Sunny day. Views of the Embarcadero and the Bay Bridge. Gorgeous.

Boulevard's wine list is a nice mix of major French and California wines with a broad selection of funkier boutique and independent wineries. Prices ranged from the mid $20's to close to $1000. Most of the wines fell in the $50-$80 range, but there was a decent selection below that.

We went with a bottle of Bonnaire NV Blanc de Blancs. Dry, crisp, and very tart. I thought it was pretty fucking great.

First round of appetizers were a couple orders of the beef carpaccio--thin slices of seared beef with shaved Washington summer truffles. Fragrant and meaty. I had the softshell crab, also really nice though the accompanying bacon-cabbage slaw was really freakin' vinegar-y.

Other appetizers were the seared scallops--one of the best scallop preparations I've had. Also a mixed lettuce and nectarine salad that was simple and elegant.

Entrees were also pretty good. Slightly overcooked pork tenderloin with really nice grilled figs and polenta. The stuffed sand dab was enjoyed as an entree and that was mild and flavorful. The lamb burger was a big hit as was the bavette.

Second bottle of wine was a Bourgogne rose that was nice and dry with good fruit without being overly Bandol-y. Not that Bourgogne is anywhere near Bandol, but you get my point.

Desserts were fucking great--I had a neoclassical Rocky Road Sundae: two scoops chocolate sorbet, candied walnuts, and a light marshmallow creme. Angel food cake with ginger and mascarpone was good but light on flavor.

All throughout the meal we had impeccable and unpretentious service in an absolutely stunning dining room. Bussers were quick and efficient (guy cleared our entire table of six in one pass). We never felt hurried and other than taking a little while to get to us at the beginning (that's what happens when the entire restaurant fills up from 11:30-11:45.

Admittedly the food was not particularly memorable (except for the carpaccio, that was pretty distinctive) but it was just a fucking nice place to have lunch. When those things click on all cylinders, the food can get knocked down to 1a on the priorities. It just goes to show that service and decor can't be dismissed, especially when you're stepping things up past the "neighborhood restaurant" level.

It's all psychology baby.

Boulevard
1 Mission St.
San Francisco, Ca 94105
415 -543-6084/www.opentable.com
www.boulevardrestaurant.com

A Response: An HFF Manifesto

Apparently unbeknownst to me there are other people reading this blog. This is a good thing. It's also made my very aware that these random strangers might not "get" what's going on here.

Steven is an attentive reader who took umbrage to my Oliveto write-up.

I will now respond. Italics represent the content of Steven's comment.

"Oh right, Alice Waters. I hear she's an uncut eight inches." In the face of such wit, it's tempting to respond with another ad hominem attack.

This is sort of a weird use of the term ad hominem. The size of Alice Waters' penis and its circumcisional status is irrelevant to her abilities as a chef. And while it might have mattered to Bertolli when he was blowing her, it also has no relevance on his abilities as a chef. I don't believe I was making that assertion. I'm sure there are many fine chefs who have large uncircumcised genitalia.

However, it can't be denied that working under Waters earlier in his career gave Bertolli an immeasurable amount of fame and exposure and aided greatly in his ability to open his own successful restaurant.

In a post in which I am speculating (rightly or wrongly) that perhaps Bertolli's restaurant doesn't deserve all of its accolades, I think that suggesting a (probably) figurative submissive sexual relationship with Alice Waters is a fair one to throw out there.

Flippant and tasteless, perhaps. Ad hominem? Hardly.

Besides, if you read this blog you know my love-hate relationship with California Cuisine and its sacred cows.

Lastly, if you have photos DISPROVING the rumored size of Ms. Waters' penis, please show them to me and I'll promptly remove that comment.

You're an idiot.

Come on, you can do better than that. At least criticize my sexual prowess or something. There's a whole lexicon of insults out there.

But I think I can do better.

We'll later see that this was an overly optimistic statement.

Unlike you ("I should probably give Oliveto a second chance") I can judge Oliveto on the basis of more than one visit. I've had a few bad meals there. Many good ones. And a few excellent ones. I've eaten at enough restaurants to know that it deserves the praise it gets.

Notice here where he implies that I haven't eaten at enough restaurants. Interesting. You obviously like Oliveto. A lot of people do. That's not a bad thing. There was a lot to like about that place. My goal is to get people to question why that is. Which I succeeded in getting you to do and you have defended it competently. I don't think it deserves the praise it gets. But I'm not saying that I know one way or the other. How do you know what anything does or does not deserve?

It balances excellent cuisine with appropriate prices. It's impressive and imaginative without being pretentious and exclusive.

I thought the prices were inappropriate and the food unimaginative. I guess we'll agree to disagree here.

To be fair, Oliveto might not be the best fish restaurant in the Bay Area. But that's my point. It's not a fish restaurant. From your description (more than 50% of your comments are positive) it sounds like most of the food was at least OK.

Actually I would say that more than half of my food was good. That's my whole point though. Excellent ingredients competently prepared should be the baseline for any restaurant of Oliveto's stature. I want to see where restaurants push beyond that. I don't care if you aren't a "fish restaurant." You're doing a seafood dinner and I'm going to judge that seafood dinner by the same standards that I'll judge your meat. Same standard as movies, plays, art galleries, blogs, etc. If you're putting something out there for public consumption it's going to be judged by people who don't give a fuck if you are or are not a seafood restaurant. Because I can play the trombone doesn't mean I can play the saxophone and I would fully expect to be torn a new asshole by critics if I gave a saxophone recital and sucked.

I actually can play the saxophone, but that's neither here nor there.

And that's despite the fact that Oliveto is a meat restaurant. You know that, right?

No? Really! That's amazing. I wondered why Bertolli ceased working the kitchen to open his own charcuterie and sausage-making business. Running a meat-focused restaurant makes a lot of sense...

Of course I know that you shrill, condescending, impotent douche!

That is an example of ad hominem. The fact that you're an impotent douche has no relevance to your abilities to criticize me.

They are one of the world's greatest meat restaurants.

This would perhaps be an overstatement. And it's an overstatement that calls into question your own objectivity.

And that's another principle of this blog. You can't pretend to be objective. I'm calling it like I see it (completely colored by my tastes, mood, and opinion) based on that visit. If I go back and something's changed, I'll comment on it again (I've changed my tune on Wood Tavern and Maverick, for instance). I have my tastes, I'll admit. Italian is one of least favorite of the major cuisines. And I think that California Cuisine is a viable but creatively bankrupt institution. That's clear to anyone who reads this blog. So the deck was already stacked against Oliveto. But I don't see anything wrong with that.

But to say with a straight face that Oliveto (or any restaurant) is one of the world's greatest in any category is showing your hand a little too early, I think.

So, again, to spew up so much vitriol based on one unrepresentative experience is more than unfair, it's rude.

I really don't think I spewed that much vitriol. Other than my profane, swaggering bookends, I think most of my comments were well reasoned and substantiated.

The point is, I'm exaggerating to make a point. The women at my table didn't actually eat everything on the plates (though they ate more than their fair share). And they probably weren't as attractive as I might've made them out to be. Oh well. Does what I write have to be factually accurate for it to be true? I'd say no.

Besides, I can attack Oliveto more strongly than I might other restaurants. Oliveto is a successful institution that is immune to any potshots a little opinionated blogger might throw at it. That's the style of this blog. That's the point. Language that one might consider "rude" (who says we have to be nice? who made that rule?) forced you to have both an intellectual reaction to the content of the post and a visceral reaction to how that content was expressed. It forced you to jump to the defense of something you love with a zeal and indignation you wouldn't've had if you'd read a more "polite" review.

You claim that "David Bowie, Martin Scorsese, and Dr. Dre are it for decades-long enduring creative thinking." It's hard to continue reading your review after that.

It's really hard to take your criticism seriously if you thought I was being serious.

I mean, have you heard of Miles Davis? Prokofiev? Graham Greene?

No I haven't. Who are they? Are they as awesome as Dr. Dre? I hope so. Dr. Dre is pretty awesome though.

In the (paraphrased) words of Homer Simpson: If they're so great, how come they're dead?

Your presumptiveness is interesting. Would you respond in a similar way if I told you I had a master's degree and season tickets to the symphony? I would hope not, because that's not relevant to the topics I discuss here.

And I think that Paul Bertolli continues to be pretty creative. I've had stuff at Oliveto that I've never had anywhere else, cooked with consummate skill. Can you ask for much more?

I can because I haven't had that yet. But hopefully I will. I'll make it back to Oliveto sometime soon, I'm sure.

Oh, this isn't much fun. Let's go ad hominem again:

"The bisque tasted like lobster, cream, and cognac. Which I guess makes it good if you like those things." Idiot.

I'm not sure what makes that statement idiotic. I don't like lobster all that much. It's not that I think it's bad, it's just not my thing. I imagine someone who likes lobster more than I would like the bisque much more than I would. But why didn't you make a note of my point that the two servings of the bisque, served at the exact same time tasted markedly different?

I could tell you that my assessment was corroborated by a professional chef friend of mine who was dining with me. But that shouldn't matter, right?

"I was personally offended by the cioppino." Pretentious boob.

I have every right to be offended. I don't have the right to expect anybody to care.

Though you're using ad hominem correctly now. Kinda. That's pretty cool.

To be honest, I enjoyed reading your review. I think you write reasonably well. But I think you want to show off more than you want to be thoughtful. I suggest you visit a restaurant at least twice before reviewing it. And tone down the wild generalizations and pronouncements. They're just silly.

I don't think I could get a greater compliment than that right there. Thank you.

Of course I want to show off. That's what I hope makes this interesting and different. If I toned stuff down I wouldn't been able to engage in such a great virtual dialogue with you, would I? I think I'm being a whole lot more thoughtful than you give me credit for. I imagine you equate "rude" language with "not thoughtful-ness" like most people of a certain demographic do. Not to make presumptions or anything. I'm serious. Reread the review.

Edward R. Murrow is an infinitely better journalist than Hunter S. Thompson, but Thompson's a helluva lot more interesting to read. And there's a lot more truth in some of Thompson's rants and madness than in Murrow's reporting. Both men did important work. Both are admirable.

With the exception of Wood Tavern, I haven't been to a single restaurant before it's been reviewed in all the local media. I'm not really reviewing a restaurant for the same purpose or with the same intent as those reviewers. I'm don't even consider what I'm doing to be reviewing a restaurant. I'm writing an essay about my experience. If it means that someone who reads what I've written decides not to go to a restaurant, so be it. But it's not my intention to tell people what to do or where to go. Knowing my tastes and opinions, people can take away what they will from what I write.

And that's a beautiful thing.

So there you have it, Steven. I hope that cleared things up for you and for other casual readers. I appreciate your kind words and am glad you're enjoying what I'm doing.

But I'm not going to tone things down or stop being silly. Because that wouldn't be any fun at all. I take what I do very seriously, but that's not to say I'm very serious about what I do.

Here's to ruffling more feathers.

Cheers!

HFF in the Kitchen: No Teeth

I got wisdom teeth out last week. The procedure wasn't so bad and the significant pain went away after about 48 hours.

But the soreness and tenderness won't go away!

It actually has now (somewhat), but it didn't for a while. This makes for better writing anyway.

So what have I been eating?

Smoothies. Lots and lots of smoothies. My blender's been going pretty much nonstop. The problem with smoothies (and most soft foods) is that there is a lot of sugar.

I don't object to sugar, but I can only take so much. Making smoothies with whole fruit, silken tofu, and a splash of not inordinately sweetened soymilk made things work pretty well.

TastyBite Indian food from Trader Joe's. I'd forgotten that India is the mother of cooked-to-death cuisine. Makes it easier to eat when your lips fall off from leprosy. Point is, these boil-in-the-bag dishes are pretty freakin' great, rich and spicy and $2-$4 a pop.

Cottage cheese. Sure the curds get into the stinking gum holes, but it's a cheap low-fat source of protein. But not has tasty as....

Yogurt! Yes! Yogurt! Milk that's been partially digested by bacteria is easy to eat and delicious! And really, if you've never had real full-fat cream top yogurt you're missing out. It's like sour heaven as it slips down you're throat.

Fruit. But not all fruit. Berries with tiny seeds are no good. Soft stonefruit and melon have been pretty tasty. Bananas are annoying (except when pureed into smoothies!)

Refried beans have been my fiber-rich savior!

Soup is trickier than you think. Most soups aren't simple purees. And the purees from Trader Joe's are middling. The Butternut-Apple soup is as odd as it sounds. Not bad, just odd. Chunkier soups, particularly homemade ones with al dente vegetables, cause serious soreness and trauma. I still need vicodin by the end of the day.

Some other suprisingly difficult foods: mac and cheese (sticks to the wound sites), broccoli (not cooked to mush), prawns (hard to eat with the front teeth), and smoothies from Coldstone (just too goddamn thick).

Here's what's coming up for HFF: Emmy's Spaghetti Shack, Boulevard, and more adventures in wine country.

Oliveto Oceanic Dinners 2007 - Oakland, Ca

Complacency's a bitch. When the dollars keep coming and you can keep yay up your nose and Thai hookers on your junk, what's the incentive to even maintain your standards, let alone push the boundaries of your creative thought? You have a nice restaurant, people keep coming, and you can charge whatever the fuck you want for whatever you want to serve--even if it means that two bowls of the exact same soup served at the exact same time taste completely different. Why would you pay attention to such a detail? You have sex slaves to traffic!

History is riddled with brilliant creative thinkers who couldn't maintain for very long. Hemingway blew his load with his first four novels. J.D. Sallinger barely wrote a second one. Coppola hasn't made a good movie since 1980.

Basically David Bowie, Martin Scorsese, and Dr. Dre are it for decades-long enduring creative thinking.

And enduring creative thinking is definitely not present in California Cuisine. It all began thirty years ago when someone came up with the brilliant idea that, "Hey, seasonal ingredients that aren't shipped from halfway around and are cooked properly are tasty."

Fucking genius right there. Brilliant. Took some real critical thinking to come up with that one.

The problem? While other parts of the country (and even the Bay Area) have been moving forward with that idea--combining freshness and seasonality with a rewnewed sense of innovation in preparation and presentation--the Berkeley/Oakland greater Gourmet Ghetto is still stuck in 1979.

But when the same wealthy ex-hippies keep clamoring to spend their ill-gotten gains at your restaurants at exorbitant prices, why would you need to offer an exciting product or anything new? What's the incentive (besides your integrity, of course)?

What will you do when those hippies die? What happens?

It's simple. You stop being relevant because you've surrendered your self-respect for complacency and a comfortable income. That's the upper middle-class American way.

What does this have to do with Oliveto? Everything.

I went with a large group which afforded me the benefit of being able to try things I wouldn't necessarily have ordered and the disadvantage of not getting things that I would've ordered.

I'll admit that Oliveto is pretty. Very pretty. Big dark dining room. Scene-y downstairs cafe. Nice bars. Sharp place-settings. Casually elegant servers. It's a pretty place.

First round was the "Grande Aioli" fish, shellfish, and vegetable platter and the platter of salted, marinated, and smoked fish.

The fish platter was remarkable in its ability to make king salmon, skate, tombo, swordfish, sea scallops, and bluefish all taste pretty much the same. The smoked sea scallops tasted like inexpensive canned smoked oysters. The marinated skate was the highlight inasmuch as it actually tasted like something other than salt and smoke.

Hard to judge the Grand Aioli since the chicks at the other end of the table had pretty much picked it clean. The crayfish I had was nicely cooked and the veggies were pretty fucking tasty. The aioli was sharp and garlicky almost to the point of oppressiveness.

Next up, crostoni topped with monkfish liver pate and served with arugula. Here the monkfish lacked the soft creamy texture and almost vegetal flavor of ankimo-style preparations. The monkfish was basically pureed, salted, and mixed with oil to the point of tasting nothing at all like monkfish. Yay! The arugula was good but on the bitter side, even for arugula.

The fritto misto of softshell, anchovies, salt cod, and grass shrimp was pretty damn good though once again picked through by the attractive but voracious women at the other end of the table leaving behind little more than a smattering of tasty fried grass shrimp.

What does it mean when one of the best things in a $150 dinner are tiny shrimp (which you can buy at a bait shop for pennies) served deep-fried and salted?

Next round, two servings of the Maine Lobster bisque, two orders of spelt pasta with dried swordfish belly, and an order of cuttlefish canneloni.

The bisque tasted like lobster, cream, and cognac. Which I guess makes it good if you like those things. I'm relatively ambivalent. What was odd here was that the two servings of bisque tasted markedly different, one tasting strongly of cognac, the other tasting mildly of cream. Inattentive plating or what? Weird.

Spelt pasta was nice and al dente and pretty damn good once you got used to the texture. The shaved swordfish belly (used similarly to bottarga or mojama) added a welcome fishy salty dimension to the otherwise one-dimensional pasta.

I really liked the cuttlefish canneloni, though others at the table were less impressed. I thought the ink-colored pasta was cooked perfectly and the contents were fishy and flavorful--one of the only deeply flavorful dishes we were served.

Entrees came and went with little fanfare. I was personally offended by the cioppino, which consisted of a large garlic and crab covered crostone, a small ladleful of tomato broth, maybe a half-dozen clams and a chunk of overcooked rockfish. I'm not one to bitch about prices, but $30 for that dish was an unconscionable mark-up and also wasn't a damn thing like what cioppino should be. Who did Paul Bertolli blow to be able to get away with serving a dish like that at his restaurant? Oh right, Alice Waters. I hear she's an uncut eight inches.

I will admit that the tomato broth was pretty good--rich and focused.

The whole sea bream was the entree highlight with the sweet old balsamic complementing the light buttery flesh. The fish itself was expertly deboned.

Grilled Boston mackerel was a disappointment only because it was overcooked to the point of dryness, a rare feat in cooking for such an oily fish.

Fava bean puree side dish was pretty tasty--sort of like aromatic Italian refritos.

Lastly a round of desserts and digestifs. My rosewater, saffron, and pistachio "bombe" was a disappointing plate of three milky (as opposed to creamy) tasting and very lightly flavored ice creams. No fruit. No cake. No mold. No sauce. It wasn't even shaped into anything unusal. Just a square. It looked like a piece of neapolitan ice cream sliced out of a rectangular ice cream box. And like I said it tasted like sweet milk. The souffle was much better, though surprisingly eggy tasting.

The highlights of our dinner was the alcohol. 2006 Bandol Rose was excellent, as was the 2006 Vieux Telegramme white. A glass of 1988 Malvasia was rich and sherry-ish. A second rose de pinot noir was decent but a bit sweet. We had a nice moscato d'asti that tasted of pear and sweet apples. We also enjoyed a rich oak-aged moscato grappa that was deep, complex, sweet, and caramelly. Probably the best distilled spirit I've ever consumed.

A few of the other attendees at the dinner were Oliveto regulars and they acknowledged the sub-standard nature of this dinner. So I should probably give Oliveto a second chance. But here's my thing--if you're going to do such a highly publicized dinner that is the source of much celebration every year it should be a showcase for your kitchen's cooking. This dinner felt like an obligatory after-thought. Like the Tony Awards.

I don't care if you don't specialize in fish. If you're going to make the decision to serve it, it'd better be good. This food was competent with flashes of exceptionality and a few instances of mediocrity.

One last note. Much of Oliveto's fish was not sustainably harvested despite the assertions of "conscientiously harvested fish" on their website. The scallops are trawl caught and the harvesting of scallops by trawl is one of the most destructive fishing methods around. The skate, triglia, and (most surprisingly) King Salmon are also trawl caught. All of Oliveto's tuna, swordfish, and rockfish are longline caught which is also of questionable sustainability and results in significant bycatch, particularly in overseas fisheries.

Given the availability of hook-and-line caught, diver harvested, and sustainably farmed versions of many of these fish and Oliveto's super-premium prices I question why such a major player in the California Cuisine world wouldn't use the most sustainable sources for these fish.

Seems lazy and complacent, just like Oliveto.

Oliveto Cafe & Restaurant
5655 College Ave
Oakland, Ca 94618
Reservations: 510-547-5356
www.oliveto.com

HFF Returns: Wood Tavern

I'd never put much stock in how outside forces can conspire to muddle one's enjoyment of a dinner out. Until, that is, I went to Wood Tavern (6317 College Ave, Oakland) for the first time and service was so goddamn weird (even before the credit card debacle at the end) that it put an enormous damper on the meal.

Our return visit, however, was exceptional.

We were greeted warmly and offered a spot at the bar while we waited for our table to be ready (a nice big table in the window). We got a bottle of the 2002 Au Bon Climat "Hildegard" white table wine (pinot gris/pinot blanc/aligote). It was crisp and honeyed with light toasty oak and refreshing acidity. I would've liked a little more complexity on the finish, the wine fell off pretty sharply after moving warmly across the palate, but other than that it was tasty. Perhaps it was just the slightest bit too old. Wood Tavern's wine list is still middling at past, lacking significant geographic and varietal diversity and depth. I'm sure it'll grow with time.

First course. Charlie had the english pea and mint soup (with suprisingly no pork products). Really fresh green pea flavor and pronounced garlic. The mint flavor was present but subtle. I had the ahi tuna tartare which was a trio of small plates--a molded disc of diced tuna, another disc of Oregon bay shrimp with spicy chilies, and a dollop of fresh light cucumber and avocado mousse. All three were good separate and combined, though the tuna was of mediocre quality.

Entrees. I had the "Wicked Good Seafood Stew." It was excellent. Truly spicy tomato broth filled with chunks of meaty linguica, monkfish, clams, Oregon shrimp, mussels, and a shit ton of octopus. Other than a few tough bits of octopus, the disparate ingredients were each cooked impeccably. Charlie had pan-roasted chicken wtih artichokes and bread crumbs. Chicken was rich and moist, accompanying veggies were cooked nicely. The added pan jus, while buttery and flavorful, was very salty.

Desserts were much more interesting this visit. Charlie had the profiteroles filled with bright minty ice cream and I had the strawberry shortcake which was surprisingly moist. Strawberries were sweet and juicy and the obligatory balsamic glaze was complementary without being trite.

Service was friendly and approachable but professional. No weirdness, though I'd say that Wood Tavern still needs to figure something out with their water service. Having the first thing a server ask you is if "tap water is okay?" is something of a turn off.

Without the distractions of my previous trip, I was able to appreciate more the decor which is tony but unpretentious. The dark wood is fabulous, tables spacious, and the mismatched vintage (real silver) flatware is a great touch.

I thought the menu was taking what I viewed to be bigger risks with flavors and preparations this time. Sure Wood Tavern still had the obligatory menagerie of animal products available, but many of the preparations seemed more creative. I don't know if this is a product of a successful review or the opportunity to use more diverse late spring/summer produce, but whatever it was I appreciated the evolution of the menu.

So consider my opinion changed. Add Wood Tavern to rotation.

Still need to get back there with a bigger group to try the charcuterie and cheese plates.

Why Yelp! Sucks

Our nation, every wondrously putrid acre of it was built on democracy. The premise that all educated land-owning white males had the right to a say in how their nation would be governed. What did they come up with? An elaborate republican system that would become increasingly centralized and imperialistic with time while spawning massive spiraling bureaucracies. It's in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, give it a read.

What they didn't envision was a world where any old douche bag with a computer could make declarative assertions about the quality of restaurants.

This started with Zagat's (it probably started with some cocksucker in ancient Rome who collected opinions on stone tablets, but the Masons make sure no record exists). What was originally one sexually frustrated couple's attempts to correlate their friends' restaurant reviews is now a guidebook of international authority.

What people forget is despite this institutionalization, Zagat is still just a bunch on uninformed persons' opinions based on no credentials or rubric. It's meaningless folks! No more important than your opinion or mine.

This is why citysearch, Yelp!, et al are dangerous. They lend institutional credibility to anybody's opinion. There is not strength in numbers, more does not necessarily equal better. Besides the fact that self-righteous assholes are more likely to post their criticisms than their praises, users of these sites are also going to gradually develop similarly focused opinions. It's groupthink. It happens. Take a look at Yelp! and pay close attention to what people criticize and how they do it. The vast majority of reviewers are going to overemphasize service complaints and are going to be uncritical in their food reviews--using terminology as to what "works" and does not "work" instead of approaching the food critically.

Here comes the interjection--aren't you a self-righteous asshole posting opinions on the internet?

I most certainly am.

What I don't have behind me is a machine that lends credibility to what I write beyond the credibility that my own opinion brings. I'm one man with one opinion. I try to be informative, critical, helpful, and eminently subjective but all that I write is just that.

And this is why individual food critics are better than democratic shouting matches on websites. They have the authority of one man or woman and that one man or woman's palate and taste.

Despite his pretendings of objectivity, Michael Bauer of the SF Chronicle has very particular tastes that are easily read. You can learn whether a restaurant might interest you not based on the end 1-4 star assessment, but from the content of the review. Maverick, a restaurant which Bauer only gave two stars I went to because it sounded like something interesting based on what he wrote about. I also know that Bauer has a thing about loud restaurants and he dinged Maverick by AT LEAST a half-star if not more because he found it oppressively loud. I don't care so much about that so I didn't factor that aspect of his review into my equation. Wood Tavern, a restaurant that I had very mixed feelings about I figured Bauer would love and sure enough, he gave it three stars not soon after I ate there.

Are there people who slavishly follow Michael Bauer's reviews? Sure. But at least they can't pretend that they're doing anything else. A Yelp!, Zagat, or citysearch user can claim that they're decision is based on that institution's rating as an opinion clearinghouse. Not to mention that Yelp! and citysearch are forprofit entities that sell services that can boost restaurants' exposure on their sites. But nevermind that.

The Michelin Guides (and most travel guides in general) are better alternatives to review websites and Zagat because they rate based on a rubric that you can either agree or disagree with. The Michelin Guide reviews restaurants and attractions based on a rubric that has been shaped by what they have come to understand that their members/users expect and appreciate. The criteria is nothing but the dubious assertion that everyone has a right to have their opinion codified into some sort of worthwhile standard (what's oft-forgotten about Wikipedia is that despite it's open-source democratic editing process, there are set criteria and there is an oversight board).

And if you want the amateur perspective (and there's nothing wrong with that--the professionals are just amateurs who get paid) read food blogs. Bloggers are going to get more in depth than a 100 word Yelp! post. You'll get a sense of that writers' tastes and critical skills. You'll know whether you have similar tastes. You'll probably learn something. Enjoy it as you would any other writer's work. If you're traveling, pick up a guide that provides information more than it levies judgments and go with an entity/agency/author whose tastes are in line with your own.

In conclusion? Read mainstream restaurant reviews. Read food blogs. Boycott Yelp!

That exclamation point is part of Yelp!'s name. I'm not trying to exclaim that you should boycott Yelp! I'm just saying it.

Swan Oyster Depot - San Francisco, Ca

What does a place have to do to be one of those spots that can do no wrong? Some place that no matter how expensive, or dirty; no matter how crappy the service people still think it's the best place ever.

Those places piss me off.

I'll admit I love Magnolia despite the unavailable service, but at least the food is really freakin' good. There are also all sorts of sketchy taquerias in the Mission or dim sum places in Chinatown that, no matter how many health violations they rack up still draw in crowds. I understand that.

I think I can say, however, that I've been to what must be the pinnacle of such places, Swan Oyster Depot over in Nob Hill.

I like seafood. I like shellfish. I don't even mind casual dining at counters. Here's what I do mind:

1. Filthy filthy counters.
2. Thin, stale chowder.
3. Slow oyster shuckers who rinse the oyster shells, devoiding the oysters of liquor.
4. Nasty oysters.

Maybe it's because it's a tourist trap. Or maybe it's because it was featured on $40 a Day or whatever the fuck. Maybe it's just because people are willing to pay borderline exorbitant sums to have weird old men open oysters for them.

So I enter and I sit down at an impossibly low stool at an impossibly crowded bar. The counter had visible crust. Nice beers on draft. An older gentleman behind the counter asked us if we wanted some chowder while he opened our oysters. We ordered a cup.

It was thin, broken, and to me tasted stale and/or scalded.

Next up, our oysters. An assortment. Now I don't know about you, but if three people order a dozen oysters I'll give them three each of four oysters, not four each of three oysters.

Admittedly, the oysters are probably the cheapest you'll get consistently (except for dollar oyster specials), but the older gentleman served us one bad oyster and two sketchy oysters. Not good odds for a place that prides itself on fresh shellfish.

And now we come to the washing of the shell phenomenon. This is odd. They essentially remove the oyster meat, rinse the shell, and then replace the oyster meat. Apparently this is to eliminate shell. All that this seemed to do was eliminate the oyster juice, as there was still plenty of shell in the meat. Cocktail sauce lacked significant heat and the mignonette suffered from being made from cheap ingredients--rice vinegar and red onion rather than shallots and champagne vinegar.

On to the entrees--two mixed seafood salads and an order of smoked trout. I will admit that the shellfish was well-cooked and plentiful--big prawns and bay shrimp with lump dungeness crab meat on a bed of shredded romaine with louie sauce. Not bad, not bad at all. The smoked trout was pretty good, as were the samples of smoked salmon the weirdos behind the counter gave us complimentary.

So yeah, some of the food was alreight. In fact, other than the chowder and a few of the oysters, the food was good. Was it great? No. Did it require cooking? No. And the three of us spent about $110 for a filling lunch. Not the most expensive lunch I've had, but it's up there. And the more expensive lunches (and many of the cheaper ones) involved more food and in much nicer surroundings.

I understand not wanting to pay for atmosphere--but what are you paying for at Swan then? Inconsistent food?

Just chalk me up as one of those people who just doesn't get it. If Swan was half the price I could see its charm, but as it is, Swan Oyster Depot feels like a tourist trap.

Swan Oyster Depot
1517 Polk St.
San Francisco, Ca 94109
415-673-1101

Mad Props

The food scene is boring or over-conceived and under-executed. Or hyper-executed. Or whatever. Point is, finding a spot that is compelling, ever-changing, and unpretentious is a rare beast and when it is it needs to be folded up and put into your pocket for later.

For instance, I like Sophia, Sophia's tasty. Sophia's menu doesn't change, however. Same thing with Daimo. Lanesplitter too. But there's one spot that I frequent almost weekly where I'm able to get something completely different every week. It's also unpretentious, friendly, and reasonably priced. It's pretty much the best place ever.

That place is Solano Cellars.

It's a pretty compelling wine shop (though I'll admit it's sister store Vintage Berkeley is probably a better bet if you're looking for inexpensive wines) with a broad global selection. It's the best spot hands down for Northern European wines and a great spot for the more eclectic boutique-y California (and Oregon and Washington too) wines. More importantly it's one of very few wine shops that has an expansive collection of wines (randing from $10-$80 a bottle) from every major winegrowing region in the world.

Plus mark-up is reasonable, 10% discount on cases, monthly wine club, tasting events, etc.

How could it get any better?

I'll tell you.

A few months ago they reinstituted a small plates menu at the wine bar. They've always had a wine bar with tasting flights (red and white flights for $15 and a special flight for $25) and a couple cheese and charcuterie options. The previous incarnation of Solano Cellars had a "bistro" (re: lame-stro) menu at their wine bar that was unremarkable. This time around however, they've hit it pretty much right on the lower back tattoo.

The small menu has a bunch of wine-friendly appetizers in the $5-$10 range that are bold and flavorful but simple. A retarded good arugula salad with roasted strawberries, salt-cured olives, pine nuts, bacon, and feta. Artichoke hearts and Berkshire prosciutto served warm with Bellwether frams ricotta. A plate of manchego, membrillo, and marcona almonds. A personal favorite, fromage fort served warm over bruschetta. The rotating mix of cheeses is melted with garlic and wine and then spread over thin slices of La Farine baguette. Simple, earnest, and very very wine-friendly.

And there's no pretention in either prices or preparation. The guys (and gal) working the shop really like wine and really like food and really like drinking wine with food and without the contrivance that goes into the overwrought myth of "wine pairing." Drink and eat and enjoy.

And that's what it's all about, right? Good munching food with good wine. And the wine bar selection is heavy on earthier food-friendly reds and crisp refreshing whites.

Solano Cellars wine bar is one of the best places (and in many ways the best place) to eat on Solano Ave.

There I said it. If you don't like it you can go fuck yourself.

Napa Style, Sans Douche Bag

It was a fortuitous coming together of circumstances--some consecutive days off with girlfriend Charlie, some promotional deals at a nice bed and breakfast (Bordeaux House), and Yountville being only 45 minutes away. So I got home from work, packed up some stuff, and headed across the Carquinez Bridge to Vallejo, American Canyon, Napa, and Yountville.

Stay the fuck away, glassy winged sharpshooter.

Checked into the b&b early, which left us with a few hours before our 8:30 reservation at Bistro Jeanty. A stroll through Yountville yielded not a damn thing so we settled in at the bar at Redd after a small sidestep to an art gellery that showed that you can in fact make queer landscapes look somewhat okay.

We had dinner plans elsewhere, though in hindsight Redd was perhaps the more intriguing choice. Extensive a la carte menu, also available as a tasting menu. California cuisine to be sure, but with a subtle Japanese influence that was appreciated. Very nice wine list and well-priced, all things considered. We split a half-bottle of the Schloss Gobelsburg "Steinsetz" gruner veltliner which was excellent, and phenomenal with the one appetizer that we split, an asparagus and (scant) green onion tempura with bonito soy dressing. It was really tasty, light fluffy tempura batter around tender (but fully cooked) asparagus. Not much spring onion in the mix though, and the whole dish was a bit salty, especially when paired with the soy (salty) and bonito (salty) sauce. Still, it was freakin' tasty. In addition to the regular menu, there's a concise bar menu with somewhat more quotidian (and drink-friendly) options.

Moving along, we arrived at Bistro Jeanty for dinner a bit early and was promptly seated. Simple and to be expected French menu with a poorly conceived wine list. French wines and some typical Napa suspects. Nothing bad, of course, just really unremarkable for a restaurant of such regard. Got a bottle of Trefethen riesling for kicks.

First course, Charlie had a petite salad of beets and arugula. It was good. The escargots, which came highly recommend, were remarkably flavorless, though dragging bread through the butter and herb leftovers was fabulous.

Entrees stepped up where appetizers left off. Charlie's coq au vin was rich, redolent, and melting apart. My cassoulet, which I had to send back the first time because it was cold in the middle (I got a complimentary glass of wine while I waited), was oppressively rich. It was delicious, to be sure, but it was also a huge bowl filled with white beans, two andouille sausages, some bacon, and a whole confit duck leg. It was a lot of freakin' food.

Despite the obscenity that was our entree portions, we still got dessert. A nice tarte au citron with smooth creamy meringue was quite pleasant.

A quiet stagger home did little to help me digest the uncomfortable quantity of pork and beans in my stomach and I spent a fitful night dreaming about prostate exams and dragons.

Morning presented us with breakfast at the bed and which was surprisingly pleasant. Spinach and egg casserole was the highlight. Hardboiled eggs were very very green. Fruit salad featured watermelon with a lot of residual pith and peel.

We hit the road and dropped in on a few wineries. Martini is always a good stop. Nice tasting room, pretty good wines (steer clear of the wine list stuff and try the winery exclusives), and nice folks. The long-time tasting room mainstay, I forget her name, is retiring at the end of May. It's the end of an era.

Another mainstay of any greatest hits stop in Napa is Mumm. Great champagne cellar, even if (despite their claims of being "pure Napa) most of their grapes come from Carneros. The winery-exclusive flight was tasty. Good art gallery as well. Eclectic Ansel Adams collection in the permanent gallery and an always interesting new photographer in the rotating gallery.

We stopped at Duckhorn which was awkward. Despite the fact that we made reservations, we were headed off at the tasting room entry by an unpleasant woman who made us feel decidedly unwelcome. I informed her that we had a reservation. We were told to pay the $20 tasting fee in advance, directed to a table, and waited for a young man to come and pour the wines. Despite his assurance that we could flag him down should we have any questions, he disappeared from the tasting room entirely. After finishing our flight, we waited for someone to come back and talk to us, see if we wanted to buy wine, etc. but to no avail. So we left.

Spent some time strolling in St. Helena and Calistoga, only to discover that these towns don't really have anything worth going to (other than restaurants). Stop off at the CIA's Greystone campus was productive, mostly resultant of a Le Creuset sale at the shop.

Hunger finally turned up so we went to Auberge du Soleil. Not for the fancy-pants reastaurant or $1200 a night hotel, but for the rather pleasantly priced bar. Beautiful space, nice deck with a phenomenal view, and, I'll be honest, really good food. The menu doesn't change much (at all) but the food is great. Charlie had a chicken panini that was tender and tasty. I had the duck confit pizza which was retarded rich but retarded good.

Plus, beyond anything else, it was relaxing. Even if we had to listen to a string trio play "Champagne Supernova" as a party prepared for a timeless wedding that will be remembered forever and ever. Or at least for eight months until they get divorced, because really, "Champagne Supernova?" Christ.

That basically concluded our Napa excursion. We laughed. We cried. We made fun of people relentlessly. And at the end I learned a valuable lesson. Cassoulet dreams are even weirder than burrito dreams. Remember that.

Wood Tavern - Oakland, Ca

It's become clear I think to those who read this blog that I do work as a server in this here restaurant business and I do it at a very popular, very busy, somewhat trendy fine dining establishment in the East Bay.

I've found that servers either have very high standards for service when they go out, or very low standards. I like to think of myself in the second category. While I might be critical of service while I dine that' s just who I am. I'm a critical asshole and I like to compare how I work against how others work for professional purposes. I truthfully have adopted certain strategies and approaches that I've seen other servers use that I've found particularly effective on me as a diner. But, at the end of the meal, all I really look for in determining good service (who gets the 22% tip versus the 18% tip) is:

1. Knowledge of the menu/wines when I ask a question.
2. Attentiveness.
3. Availability.
4. Cordiality.

I'm not a diner who needs much follow-up. I do appreciate it when a server drops by to check in on each course, but I understand that that's not possible on some busy nights. At the very least, a walk-by with eye contact is good because it allows me to check in with the server if there is a problem with my food. And as far as cordiality goes, I'm not looking for banter or someone who says "honey," I'm just looking for a smile and a "how is everything?"

After dining at Wood Tavern I discovered how weird service can ruin an otherwise pleasant meal.

I cruised into Wood Tavern in Rockridge with girlfriend Charlie, winemaker Brendan, and mutual friend Mei on a Thursday night at around 8PM. I was immediately impressed with the decor. Warm dark wood befitting the name. Nice long bar. Log cabin inspired furniture. Our table was nicely set with unmatched vintage flatware which did honestly remind me of our family cabin in Tahoe where 60 years of visitors have left behind a melange of forks and spoons and knives so that there isn't really a matching set of anything.

Despite the busy-ness and crowded-ness at the restaurant, conversation wasn't overly difficult.

The menu is nice and simple, 8 or so appetizers and 8 or so entrees as well as cheese and charcuterie.

Nice compact if unremarkable wine list. Lacking signicantly in more unusual reds. Bauer gave the list props for its "esoteric" selection, but it's only esoteric if your idea of an exotic wine is gewurztraminer.

Shortly after sitting down the weirdness began.

Our service approached our table and just stood there. We stopped talking and looked at her. I said hello. She said hello. Still nothing. Another awkward pause. Then, "how about I get you guys some water?"

Um, sure.

She then disappeared. Water arrived. She returned.

"Did you decide on wine?"

Yes. We had decided on wine when you first came to our table.

We ordered our wine. And we ordered our food. She honestly said maybe a dozen words to us the entire time.

So... odd, but not super odd. Yet.

I ordered the black bean soup with chive creme fraiche. That's what it said on the menu. Remember that for later. I also ordered the duck. Also ordered was the pork belly appetizer and the romaine, apple, and blue cheese salad.

My soup arrived and it was essentially a pork chili with a few black beans. Not a big deal because I like pork enough, except that this was a lot of pork. It wasn't a bit of ham hock or bacon flavoring the soup, it was a good 1/4 pound of pork meat and very little in the way of beans.

This would've been useful information for someone to know, especially if he or she was, oh I don't know, a vegetarian ordering what looks like the only warm vegetarian appetizer on the menu. But it still would've been useful for me because I wouldn't've gotten the duck entree knowing that I was eating that much pork for my appetizer. I just don't want that much meat in one evening. Criticism one is that there should be a mention of the pork on the menu, subcriticism 1a is, failing that, this is something a good server lets a customer know. 90% of the time it probably won't matter, but that 10% can be seriously pissed off. I speak from experience here.

Entrees were good. Thick chunk of seared duck breast over wild rice and hazelnuts. Charlie had the halbut with polenta and Mei had the roasted chicken with artichokes and spinach.

Desserts were decent but limited. Conventional warm chocolate cake, seasonal fruit cobbler, and a couple of ice creams/sorbets paired with liqueurs. More concept then execution there as they seem to forget that most liquers are disgusting holdovers from an era when we had to suspend herbs in alcohol to preserve them for medicinal purposes and then added a shit ton of sugar to it to make it remotely palatable. No real reason they should exist anymore.

The espresso that I got took a really long time, came void of crema, and was barely lukewarm. When I sent it back I was asked if I wanted another one. No apology. I was made to feel like it was my fault. This proved to be a theme.

Anyway.

While all the food was expertly prepared and quite tasty, the cuisine itself was utterly uninteresting. It's all food that Range, Maverick, Town Hall, and to a lesser extent even Magnolia have been doing for a while now. And Range had more refined service, Maverick takes bigger risks with flavors, and Magnolia is more compelling and at half the price. While I suppose there's a void in Oakland for this type of food, in the Bay Area as a whole it's just another restaurant serving uninteresting New American. You get your pork, your chicken, your fish, your steak, and your vegetarian entrees coupled with seasonal produce. Tum tiddly tum tum ter.

Speaking of the service issue, when we got our check and paid (split on two cards) the server overcharged us by $10.70. Simple problem, these things happen. But when we told are server she made it seem like it was somehow our fault. Then, when the checks came back the amount on the receipt still didn't mach the amount on the charge slips (by seventy cents). Fucking weird. Even when the owner came over we still felt like we were talking past him. It wasn't a big deal, it just became one because nobody seemed to understand what our complaint was.

Finally, when my charge finally posted online, the amount charged was for the CORRECT amount, still seventy cents off from what I had signed. I think there was also an additional ten dollars on the gratuity (I failed to write the exact amount on my copy of the receipt).

So now I was really annoyed.

To the owners' credit, when I called to complain, Rebekah Wood was very conciliatory, informed me that our server had already been removed from the schedule, and offered to send me a check. So that was something.

So I left with a newfound understanding of the importance of competent service and a reinforced feeling that we're creatively bankrupt in the Bay Area food scene right now.

I'll be waiting for the next innovation.

Wood Tavern
6317 College Ave. (at Alcatraz)
Oakland, Ca
510-654-6607