East Bay Weekend

On Friday I finished the last of my spring semester school work, which means I am free from school until August 25th.  Stacey and I celebrated with a weekend trip to the Berkeley area, our primary goal being dinner at Chez Panisse.

We started with a slight detour to a couple of favorite wineries in the southern part of Sonoma County.  We had wine to pick up from our Gloria Ferrer wine club, so we had a few glasses of bubbly and then, needing whites for summer, bought some Viognier and Pinot Gris at Cline Cellars.

Next stop: Berkeley.  Arriving early at our hotel and finding it un-air-conditioned (one of many unpleasant surprises), we walked a couple of blocks to explore Telegraph Avenue, which was admittedly kind of icky.  Maybe I am too old to appreciate several blocks full of tie-dyed t-shirts, incense, hemp necklaces, used merchandise, and many hole-in-the-wall restaurants (one hole-in-the-wall is fine though! We stopped at tiny Top Dog for hot dogs.  Good, but no match for Puka Dog).  Next we hit the Berkeley Art Museum, which was across from our hotel.  It was also not air-conditioned (what is the deal with Berkeley?) and the art was, well, not very good.  We ended up watching TV in our stuffy hotel room until it was time for dinner.

 I've wanted to eat at Chez Panisse for a long time, but Berkeley is about an hour's drive for us and reservations need to be made a month in advance.  My first weekend of freedom seemed like a proper occasion.  I was a bit nervous that I would be disappointed; the Chez Panisse name carries such weight that it seemed likely that our dinner wouldn't live up to our high expectations.  In the end, everything was delicious: the bread, the butter, my little gem lettuce with green goddess dressing and roasted beets and Stacey's brandade toasts with frisee.  For an entree, I had spaghetti with Hog Island clams and marjoram (simple but delicious, which is the Chez Panisse MO).  But what really blew us away was Stacey's halibut.  We have both had plenty of halibut in our time, but I have never had anything this tender and pure-tasting.  It was served with snap peas, mushrooms and chervil butter.  Yum.

This morning we went to the cafe at Oliveto in Oakland for breakfast.  Oliveto was founded by a Chez Panisse alum, and has the same seasonal/local food focus, so it was on my list of Bay Area restaurants to visit.  Since we are not in the East Bay very often, I was glad to see the downstairs cafe is open all day, including for breakfast.  After polishing off (with a great deal of my help) an excellent wood-fired breakfast pizza with pancetta and topped with two eggs, Stacey declared it the best breakfast she has had in a long time.  I enjoyed a bowl of rib-sticking polenta served with milk and poached fruit.

On to Berkeley's Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory.  Scharffen Berger is one of the few first-tier chocolate makers in the United States (meaning they oversee every step of the chocolate-making process, from bean to bar).  We enjoyed our free tour, from the chocolate samples to the hair nets to the intoxicating chocolate smell that hits you when you walk into the factory.  All of the chocolate is made in a small, hundred-year-old building with antique European machines.  We picked up some bars to go.

Last stop: Fourth Street in Berkeley, mostly because I wanted to go to Sketch Ice Cream, which I read about recently in a New York Times article.  In order to make room in our tummies, we did a little shopping.  We bought fresh asparagus-chive ravioli to cook for dinner, browsed home boutiques, and Stacey bought me the most beautiful deep red peonies.  I love peonies, but I have never seen them in this color.

  

We ended our trip at Sketch, with cups of cardamom and rhubarb ice cream, swirled.  Success.

Counting down to summer...

26 days left in my semester.  I can't wait, but am swamped with papers and projects until then.  Stacey and I are celebrating on May 3rd with a dinner at the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley.  Odds are, you'll read about it here.

The weather has been beautiful.  Last weekend, we planted a cherry tomato plant and a "mucho nacho" jalapeno plant in pots on our patio, as well as some herbs and flowers.  I'm hoping we'll be able to keep them alive during the dry San Jose summer so that we can reap the benefits.

Below, Scout proves that even vertical blinds will not keep her from her sunbathing.

Happy Birthday Stacey!

Yesterday was Stacey's 30th birthday.  We celebrated with dinner at Arcadia in San Jose and Scharffen Berger ganache cakes from Miette Patisserie in San Francisco (above).  Highlights of Arcadia: foie gras sliders, an excellent gin gimlet, and tiny doughnuts in a vanilla glaze with house-made bananas foster ice cream and pecan praline.  Highlights of Scharffen Berger ganache cakes: chocolate.  Enough said.  Miette is one of my favorite places in the Ferry Building Marketplace.  Everything they make is precious and delicious, especially their Parisian macaroons.  Friday my friend Daniel and I sampled some grapefruit-flavored ones.  Yum.

Last week, Stacey's mom, Peggy, flew out from Florida to visit and celebrate.  We took her up to Sonoma County, which was a lot of fun.  Now that spring has come to California, the hills are green and yellow mustard is growing in all the vineyards (apparently it replenishes nitrogen in the soil that the grapes take out).  The grapevines don't have leaves yet, but will soon.  With true spring in wine country comes the crowds, which we only sort of avoided.  The limos full of bachelorettes were already storming some of the cheaper wineries.  I think I liked it better in the January rainstorm, though we had incredible weather this time.

Benziger Family Winery

Hills behind Gloria Ferrer Winery

Stacey and Peggy on the terrace at Gloria Ferrer

Stacey is smiling because she's getting some Mommy time, because it's warm enough to wear shorts (and she is), and because she's just taken her first sips of her glass of Gloria Ferrer's excellent Carneros Cuvee, our new favorite special occasion sparkling wine.  We are smitten enough with Gloria Ferrer that on this, our second visit, we joined their wine club, which grants us, among other things, four free glasses of sparkling wine each time we visit.  Who wants to come along?

On our way home, we stopped by the Golden Gate Bridge.  Between its hills, bridges, and bays, San Francisco really does have better views than any other city I've been to.

Marin Headlands, looking out to the Pacific Ocean

My spring break is coming to a close this weekend and I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for two more months of schoolwork before the close of the semester and the beginning of my summer off (from school, anyway.  I'll still be working).  For now, I am just trying to enjoy my last day of freedom.

Wine Country Adventures

I had high hopes for my end of 2007/beginning of 2008 blog post.

Inspired by the deluge of best-of-the-year lists that crop up around this time, I considered one of my own. Mostly, I was inspired by best-meal, best-restaurant, and best-eats lists, and relished the opportunity to meditate on the feasts of 2007. I soon realized that I could remember very little that I had done or eaten earlier than August, beyond the menu tasting for our wedding and some great appetizers at the Blue Room this summer (grilled calamari stuffed with braised oxtail, and a pizza with peaches and bitter greens). Now I understand why movie producers try to release their Oscar hopefuls shortly before the nominations are chosen.

There was, after all, a lot going on for us in 2007. I slogged through four more classes in library school while working full time. Stacey and I planned and orchestrated our wedding. We packed up all of our earthly belongings and managed to get them and ourselves (and our cat), no small feat, to California. We started new jobs in our companies, both with their own new challenges and benefits. We visited Florida, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, and upstate New York. We attended four weddings other than our own, including Stacey's sister Christine's and my father's. We welcomed a new nephew, Gavin, and two little boys, Austin and Chase, for our friends Rebecca and Dan.

The new year came along, and I had no list. But Stacey and I were headed to Sonoma on January 3rd, and I was sure our wine-and-relaxation weekend would make for good blogging.

Enter one of the worst rain storms in recent northern California history. The Golden Gate Bridge had to be closed due to high winds. Roads flooded. Thousands of Bay Area residents were without power for days. Fortunately, Stacey and I were safely installed in our hotel room by this point, ordering room service and preparing for a marathon spa day, which was unaffected by the weather.

On Saturday the rain let up a bit, and we went out, stopping first to taste olive oils at The Olive Press. They make citrus-flavored olive oils using the oils in the skins of the fruit rather than the juice; the Meyer lemon olive oil, which we bought, is incredible. I can already tell that we are going to have to have it shipped to us if and when we leave the area, and that if the company ever dissolves or the oil is discontinued, it will be a moment of profound grief for us.

Next we stopped at Gloria Ferrer Winery to taste sparkling wines. While we were there, the rain finally stopped and as I looked out over the hills and dormant grapevines, I thought about taking a picture for the blog. Too bad my camera's battery was dead.

In many ways, January is a great time to visit Sonoma. Hotels have plenty of rooms and wineries are empty. Everyone we visited was delighted to see us, offered us more wines than are usually included in the tasting fee, and had plenty of time to talk wine or recommend places to eat. A gentleman at Cline Cellars even gave us a private tour of the property and wine-making operation. I think the weather, while potentially rainy, is better in January than in the summer, when it is typically above 90 degrees. I prefer the rain and the clouds sliding in and out of misty hills -- especially when the sun tries to break through. While we were driving to one winery, we actually saw the clearest, brightest and most complete rainbow I have ever seen. You could see both ends.

We had a lot of good food in Sonoma, but I'll just highlight my favorites.

The Red Grape was a recommendation from the aesthetician who did my facial at our resort's spa. She said it was where the locals go, and it was the best pizza around. They describe their pizza as "New Haven style," which made me nostalgic for my trip with Emily to New Haven for the express purpose of sampling pizza at the Big Three: Frank Pepe's Pizza Napoletana, Modern Apizza, and Sally's Apizza. (OK, we were also going to Ikea). Our efforts were thwarted by the fact that none of these establishments serve pizza by the slice, so a scientific study such as we'd planned would have required us to order three entire pizzas in a period of about five hours. One of them -- I believe it was Sally's -- was closed. And I think we compromised our study by failing to order white clam pizza at Frank Pepe's, as that is the house specialty. In fact, white clam was on the menu at The Red Grape, and right across from our table, a black and white photograph on the wall featured the sign at none other than Frank Pepe's Pizza Napoletana in New Haven. These people knew what they were doing.

The Red Grape is exactly the kind of place we like: the food is simple, but everything was done well. The pizza (we didn't actually order the white clam -- I need to have Frank Pepe's first) was excellent, and the salad was well-dressed. But I must somewhat sheepishly admit that the biggest revelation of the meal came when we were served our order of garlic knots. Garlic knots seem to hail from the New York tri-state area, and I had never heard of them until I met Stacey. For those of you who may not yet be enlightened, they are basically a soft pizza-dough breadstick that has been tied into a little knot. The garlic is usually brushed on by way of garlic-infused oil. Herbs may or may not be included. They're good enough. When Stacey and I got our Red Grape garlic knots, we were a little skeptical. They were huge, but there were only two of them in the order. The surface looked somewhat dry, rather than oily, and there was no garlic in sight. I know what I was thinking, anyway: these Californians. They don't know what they're doing.

But the garlic was on the inside! Not minced garlic, which usually adorns garlic knots, but whole cloves of creamy roasted garlic. The knots were stuffed with them. The flavor was both stronger and less sharp than the usual flavor of garlic knots: mellow, but really garlicky. I think everyone should make them this way.

We also had good meals at The Girl and the Fig and Carneros Bistro, but my favorite meal was at El Dorado Kitchen, in the swank and stylish El Dorado Hotel. They have an amazing cocktail list -- perhaps a bit surprising in a town where it's all about the wine -- so Stacey and I had a peach jalapeno martini (her) and a kir (me) made with local pinot gris, the most delicious elderberry liqueur, and a bit of sparkling water. It was just the thing after drinking cabernets and zinfandels all day. And Stacey and I are still daydreaming about the mussels I ordered, which may have been the best I've ever had. The mussels were totally sandless and plump, and they were cooked in a creamy, buttery sauvignon blanc broth with a bit of tarragon. They arrived at the table nearly hidden by a mound of perfectly cooked french fries, which were pretty incredible dipped in the broth.

Last weekend, Stacey and I had the opportunity to spend a few hours in Napa with her friend Chris and two of his friends from Virginia, who came out to California for a whirlwind Macworld/San Francisco/Napa tour. Though I always enjoy wineries -- and Napa is beautiful -- the trip confirmed my preference for Sonoma County, which is less crowded, less pretentious, more rustic, and has less traffic and cheaper tastings.

Things are settling back to normal and busy. My spring semester has begun, and with it, the usual piles of reading. The Bay Area has finally started to settle into a typical rainy winter, and we are looking forward to an early spring.

Weekend in San Francisco

At long last, Stacey and I finally got the chance to spend more than a few hours (her) or a work day (me) in San Francisco. I took Stacey to some of my favorite places and we visited a few new ones. Our room at the Hyatt Regency meant that a nap was never more than a few minutes away -- and that, I'm beginning to realize, is the key to successful sightseeing.

On Friday evening, we paid homage to the Vamvas family with dinner at Kokkari Estiatorio. I know it's going to be a good dining experience when the first thing I see upon entering is some kind of animal on a spit over a fire. In this case, they were Muscovy ducks, and there were potatoes roasting in their drippings. We were most in love with appetizers (mezethes) and desserts (glyka). More and more we have been realizing that this is what we like to eat best. We like to taste lots of things -- the better the restaurant, the more we want to try -- and an entree requires too much sustained attention to one thing -- though we always seem to order them anyway. Our duck and our lamb were good, but we loved our grilled calamari stuffed with feta and served with oranges, thinly sliced raw fennel and black olives; also our brussels sprouts roasted with bacon and lemon. We were particularly taken with a persimmon salad with manouri (a soft, Greek, sheep's-milk cheese), almonds and a drizzle of excellent olive oil. I think the persimmon gets scant attention on the East coast, but here they are very popular in the fall and winter, grown locally and very delicious -- a far cry from the first one I ever tried, in the Bryn Mawr College dining hall. It made my mouth feel fuzzy and turned me against persimmons until, well, Kokkari. For dessert, Stacey ordered baklava, which was quite good and served with some really excellent (house-made?) praline ice cream. I had galaktoboureko, long phyllo rolls filled with semolina custard and served with a rosy-tasting "quince spoon sweet" and pistachio ice cream (not that green stuff, silly).


In the morning I brought Stacey to my beloved Ferry Building. That's it, above, behind the seasonal Embarcadero Center skating rink. Seems silly to ice skate past palm trees, but then, I am from the land of the Nor'Easter. And, no, we did not skate. We ate -- Mexican breakfasts at Mijita -- and drooled up and down the aisle at blood orange olive oil, Bartlett pear jam, Constant Bliss cheese, and chocolate truffles. Then hopped on the old-fashioned F streetcar to Fisherman's Wharf. Our streetcar just happened to be chock full of Santa Clauses playing klezmer music. Occasionally klezmer Christmas carols. This seemed a little less weird -- or was it even weirder? -- when we got to Fisherman's Wharf, where our klezmer Santas were joined by many, many other Santas: trampy Mrs. Santas in fishnets, gangster Santas in dark suits and glasses, frat boy Santas, and one drag queen (Mrs?) Santa wearing an all-too-revealing little pair of red-and-white-striped panties. Santa, put it away! As far as we can tell, the Santas were boarding a ferry to Oakland. What they were doing to do there is hardly within the scope of my imagination.


Stacey and I joined hoards of tourists on the island of 

, which is actually quite interesting. I had no idea that Alcatraz was home to a military prison before it was a federal penitentiary, that families of guards and wardens lived on the island, or that activist Native Americans took it over in the 60's.

We had dinner at Zuni Cafe, a San Francisco institution and inspiration for one of our favorite cookbooks. We frequently make the roast chicken with bread salad from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, and don't let the word "salad" fool you into thinking "healthy," since really we're talking about hunks of good bread toasted just slightly to avoid sogginess and dressed in a heady combination of chicken drippings and vinegar, with pine nuts for crunch and currants for sweetness. Of course we had to order it at the restaurant, and I can report that it is, in fact, the most delicious roast chicken in the world (it is possible that we have actually made a better version of the bread salad at home). Also notable: Sancerre that reminded me how and why I love Sancerre, and one of the best servers I've had in a long time. Zuni is a cozy triangle of exposed brick with a long, copper bar and the smell of a woodstove (their ovens are wood-burning, hence the amazing chicken). It's possible that I like being there even more than I like eating there, though the eating is pretty darn good.

Today we went to the jazz brunch at Anzu in the Hotel Nikko, down near Union Square. Yum. We shopped a bit (I tried on a diamond vine necklace at Tiffany, just for fun. Sigh.) and then headed home, where we are now doing some very serious loafing and ordering delivery.

Happy Holidays

Now that I'm finished with all of my papers, I have time to do things like this.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1188604811

Count down to free time...

As of 9 PM on Wednesday, December 5th, I will be free of school work for an entire month! Stacey and I have big plans for fun and relaxation, including a weekend in San Francisco and a weekend in Sonoma. I promise we'll post pictures and other tidbits.

Hope you are all surviving the holiday hubbub. We're almost done with our shopping, working on our holiday cards, and finally having a bit of cold(er) weather.