Dish on Dining: Serpentine

A Home to Chowdown in Dogpatch
2495 Third St. (at 22nd), San Francisco
Dogpatch neighborhood
PH: 415.252.2000
Lunch: 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., Mon.–Fri.; dinner: 6–10 p.m., Tues.–Sat.
Major credit cards, reservations accepted
http://www.serpentinesf.com/

You can spot a new wine bar and café across the street, but really, the restaurant Serpentine is out there on its own in the emerging, industrial neighborhood known as Dogpatch. If it weren’t for the new Muni T-Line, I probably wouldn’t even venture out in this area that also includes a sparkling new UCSF Mission Bay campus.

But the T-Line drops you off a block away from the restaurant, so I made the ride out to check out this sibling of the popular Slow Club. Joining me was my friend Laurie, who typically needs a dining locale with easy parking. She didn’t have any problems finding free street parking right outside Serpentine.

We made last-minute dinner reservations on a weeknight, so we were tucked away in a table in the corner of the bar. But it gave us a grand view of the bar and main dining area with its mix of high ceilings, brick walls, velvet drapes and wood accents. The warm setting sun of Dogpatch filled the room to create a cozy but sleek environment. As the evening went on, the restaurant bustled with the after-work crowd, their drinks twinkling amongst the candles.

Side note: The only odd thing, IMHO, about the layout of the restaurant is that the restrooms are almost right in the middle of the dining room. If you can imagine, across from the bar and next to some dining tables, there’s this tiny room that looks almost like a closet with velvet curtains in front. When you pull back the curtains, you find the entrance to the men’s room. Next to it is a couple of other dining tables and then there’s another closet-like room that’s the women’s restroom. The restrooms were clean and private, but it just seemed a bit odd that they were kind of out in the open. I’m just glad we weren’t seated at a table next to this draped commode.

Serpentine’s dinner menu is a nice mix of comfort dishes and unusual choices—from a Prather Ranch hamburger to Buffalo bone marrow. The starter plates or appetizers seem to outnumber the entrée selection. The entrées (the most expensive was $24.50) included Alaskan cod, roast chicken, flatiron steak and Liberty duck breast. There were too many choices among the small plates, so Laurie and I decided to order a few of them to share.

We started with the Warm White Shrimp Salad ($11.50) made with little gem lettuce, Castroville artichokes, crispy potato cubes and lemon aioli. Who knew a salad could be so comforting? The warm shrimp and potatoes blended nicely with the crunch of the little gems coated with the refreshing lemon aioli. Now and then you’ll find a piece of grilled artichokes to add to your pleasure, but really it was the crispy potato cubes that got me excited about this dish. They were so much better than croutons.

Our server was especially friendly and answered our questions thoroughly and with much honest enthusiasm. It was his sincere appreciation of the bone marrow dish that convinced us both to give it a try even though neither of us had ever eaten bone marrow.

The Buffalo Bone Marrow ($11.50) came with a kumquat and parsley salad and some grey salt for sprinkling and grilled levain bread slices to eat. Our server gave us two utensils to eat this dish: a small fork-like utensil to dig the marrow out of the bone and a tiny knife to spread it on our grilled bread.

The bone marrow was slow cooked until it softened into a gel. I think the idea is to make it almost like butter. The bones itself were still pretty warm, so you have to be careful touching it when digging out the marrow. Laurie said the marrow imparted a real beefy flavor and I felt it was interesting but not as smooth as I imagined. It felt like eating slowly braised tendons. The fresh kumquat slices provided a nice acidity to cut into the heaviness of the marrow, but Laurie and I didn’t really love the marrow. At least we’ve now checked off bone marrow from our culinary list of things to try.

Next came the Hand Cut Egg Noodles ($14.50) served with black trumpet mushrooms, fava beans and grana padano cheese topped with a poached egg. The combination of the creaminess from the egg after we broke into it and the grana padano cheese was heavenly. The dish was a little more salted for my taste, but I’m told traditional Italian pasta is generally heavier on the salt. Still, the freshness of the pasta and the combination of the ingredients made this a wonderful comfort dish.

Our last dish was the Lamb Riblettes ($12.50), which are like baby-sized ribs (not to be confused with baby back ribs). Riblettes are supposedly the end cut of the lamb ribs, so they’re smaller and include some bones that are so thin that I could actually bite into them for a nice crunch. The tender lamb riblettes were served on top of a fava bean puree and served with French feta cheese. It was covered with a pile of parsley (which is why you don’t really get a good view of the riblettes in the photo).

The riblettes were a slow-cooked marvel. The meat was tender, but not necessarily falling-off-the-bone messy. And the sauce was a rich combination of earthiness and barbeque. I couldn’t decide which. But it was enjoyable.

We ended the evening with the Earl Grey Pot de Crème with Bergamot Granita, which was a new item on Serpentine’s dessert menu. Some of you know I’m a big tea lover, and Earl Grey is the king of teas in my eyes, so this was a home run either way. I mean, how can you go wrong with a creamy pudding infused with the citrus-floral essence of Earl Grey? The bergamot granita was an unusual touch. They looked like sugar cubes on top of the pot de crème but were little bursts of icy bergamot flavors to add to the whole Earl Grey experience.

Chef Chris Kronner, who still oversees the kitchen at Slow Club, has created a seasonal menu that draws on his strengths of using strong flavors and interesting ingredients to provide comforting dishes that will satisfy you without stuffing you. Serpentine may be out there on its own in the city’s Dogpatch, but it’s definitely a place you should venture out and try.

Single guy rating: 4 stars (Delicious chow)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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Seen at The Market: Purple Asparagus

I love finding really interesting looking produce, especially when they come in an unusual color such as these purple asparagus I found at Market Hall Produce in my Rockridge neighborhood.

I don’t really know the story behind purple asparagus—is it a hybrid, do asparagus start off purple and then turn green, or is it a dye job? My search of the Internet found that most point to Italy as the creators of the purple stalks.

Unlike white asparagus, which takes longer to cook than the more common green asparagus, the purple variety is just like the green. In fact, when I cut into them, there was a thin layer of green under the purple surrounding the white flesh. It’s almost like someone spray-painted my green asparagus purple.

I thought they looked really dramatic, but after I bought it I wasn’t sure what to do with them. So I just made a stir-fry below. Problem is, the asparagus turned from purple to green under the high heat. So I basically lost any benefit of the purple-ness.

I think if I see purple asparagus at the market again, I might just lightly steam or grill them and then serve it with a traditional hollandaise sauce or a garlic aioli in order to retain the integrity of the royal purple. Or maybe I might just dye the white ones! :P

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Spicy Asparagus and Tofu Stir-Fry

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
1 lb. asparagus, diagonally cut into 2-inch pieces
7 oz. fried tofu (Hawaiian style optional)*, cut into strips
1 T black bean sauce
1 T sesame oil
1 T fish sauce
1 T sugar
2 t chili sauce
½ T of oyster sauce
1 garlic clove, minced
1 T cornstarch
¼ cup water
2 T Canola oil

In a bowl, mix sesame oil, fish sauce, sugar and chili sauce. Add in slices of tofu and let sit for about 10 minutes.

In a wok or large skillet, warm Canola oil over high heat. Then add garlic and asparagus. Stir-fry for about a minute, then add black bean sauce. Stir to blend well. Add tofu with some of the marinade, enough to create sizzle and make a sauce.

In a small bowl, mix cornstarch with water to create a slurry. Then add to wok to thicken sauce. Finish with the oyster sauce and garnish with some cilantro.

Makes 2 to 3 servings. Serve with steamed jasmine rice.

* Can substitute with firm tofu.

Pair with a glass of Riesling.

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The Yin & Yang of Dining: A Conversation with Chef Tim Luym of Poleng Lounge

In just two weeks I’ll be traveling to Honolulu, which I’m totally excited about. But unfortunately that also means I’ll be gone when the special food event, East West Eats, takes place on May 8 (Thursday night) at the San Francisco Ferry Building.

This is the second year for this fund-raiser by the San Francisco chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association, featuring some of the city’s top Asian chefs. Since I can’t be at the event in person, I decided to meet with one of the featured chefs. Of the list of participating chefs and restaurants, Poleng Lounge and its young chef, Tim Luym, were on the top of my list of people to meet.

I’ve heard a lot about Poleng Lounge since it opened in the summer 2006, and my friends and I keep making plans to check it out but never seem to get out to that area of San Francisco, now popularly known as NOPA (north of the Panhandle).

Poleng Lounge is a hip music destination that also serves as a neighborhood restaurant bar. Chef Luym (pronounced loo-em) and his partners have created a space that’s zen-like upfront but cool and energetic in the back. Accenting everything is the authentic Asian cuisine from Luym, reflecting his Chinese-Spanish heritage along with his exposure to other Asian countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Chef Luym’s food created so much buzz that he was named in 2007 as one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Rising Star Chefs.

This past week I visited Chef Luym, 29, at his restaurant-lounge to learn more about his approach to cooking and the rise of Filipino cuisine.

The following are edited excerpts of our conversation:

Ben: So tell me how you got into food, because I know you didn’t start off planning to be a chef. Weren’t you actually in marketing?

Chef Luym: MIS (management information systems). I had a business degree. Honestly, coming out of college I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do. But the hot thing at the time was working in the high-tech industry. I liked business, but with a concentration on computers. I ended up doing some programming and some database work and online marketing work for about three years. That was soon after that whole dot-com bubble kind of burst. … I’m just naturally a hard worker. I usually give 110 percent in everything I do. But I couldn’t see myself moving up in that corporate kind of “Office Space” environment. (He was referring to the 1999 movie.)

So one day I cooked steamed tilapia with ginger and scallions similar to what you find in the Chinese restaurants, with the recipe from my mom. And as a joke, my roommates I was living with said “this is really good, you should go into cooking or something,” because they knew I was unhappy with my job.

B: So what happened next?

CL: I was at the point that I couldn’t do this Office Space thing anymore. I just couldn’t do it anymore, so it was either cooking school or film school. But if I went to film school I had to go to New York or LA, and I was really comfortable around the Bay. There was a good culinary school in San Francisco (the California Culinary Academy) so I decided to make the choice then.

B: Did you cook often for your roommates?

CL: Yeah. It was really budget-type stuff. (laughs) College cooking and I cooked what my grandma and mom used to teach me. … A lot of braised pork dishes, Chinese fish. My mom always experimented. She had a really good palate.

B: Did your mom do a lot of cooking when you were growing up?

CL: She did a lot of cooking. For some reason my dad was always at work so after school I would help my mom. I was the rice boy. That was my chore. I always cooked the rice.

B: Did you have one of those rice cookers or did you cook it from scratch in a pot on the stove?

CL: Eventually we did get a rice cooker. But in the beginning I had to do the pot thing with the fingers. (Note: Using the index finger is an old trick to measure how much water to add to make the perfect rice. I like to stick with the rice cooker.)

B: So did you grow up in the Bay Area?

CL: I was born in Manila (the Philippines). When I was 3, my family in 1981, we all migrated here and lived everywhere. We started in San Francisco and then got raised in San Mateo, Palo Alto, went to college in San Jose and found my way back to the city.

B: I heard your parents moved back to the Philippines?

CL: About 10 years ago they moved back and me and my sister ended up staying here.

B: So did you and your sister have to cook for yourself?

CL: Actually, I went to the Philippines to study for one year when they first moved back and then decided to finish up high school here so I could get a better chance getting into a good college. And then stayed with family and friends but then moved into the dorms.

… My sister did cook a lot. Even my brother. Everyone but my dad cooks. So my dad loves to eat. (laughs)

B: There always has to be someone to do the eating. Who would you say influenced you the most for your food?

CL: Probably my mom and my grandma.

B: How did your grandmother influenced you?

CL: I used to visit the Philippines every year, or every couple years. …Every time we’d go there she being the grandma would always cook all kinds of traditional Chinese dishes that she was really proud of but sometimes as a kid you just want your fried lumpia (similar to spring rolls) or stuff like that. Every time we had dinner at her house when we’d stay there for the summer, she’ll always cook fresh Chinese lumpia with wrappers and braised pork and pig trotters—different things like sticky rice. And then it kind of grew on me.

And every time I’d leave to come back here, she’ll always ask if I wanted to learn some recipes or to take some recipes with me. Because she’ll say if you ever get hungry, you’ll have something easy to make. You can take care of yourself. I guess the big thing with food is she doesn’t want us to go hungry.

Recently over the past five years or so, I realized with her cuisine and what she’s doing it’s really traditional stuff that you can’t really find because she grew up with it and she lived in the Philippines. So I gained a new appreciation for the Chinese dishes that she was feeding us, because as a kid I didn’t really understand. I just thought food is food.

B: Tell me how Poleng Lounge came to be?

CL: It came about when I was working with a bunch of friend-acquaintances and this idea came about. This guy Desi Danganan, one of the managing partners, he pulled together a group there was six of us in the beginning to pitch this bar-restaurant-tea-lounge-night-life idea. He was pretty deep in the promoting scene with the night life, so that was his strength. And there was another investor his strength was kind of like general managing, financial stuff like that. So they were looking for a chef. I decided to take the risk. I used to also deejay and promote so I thought that’d be a really fun kind of venture.

B: Did you guys already have this location in mind?

CL: No, they were searching for spaces. And this came on the market. And the real estate was for sale with the business. That was when we knew that it was the spot to invest in because with our banking strategy, owning the real estate is one of the smartest things to do especially in the restaurant business where there’s a high rate of failure.

B: What were you hoping to do when creating the menu?

CL: The original plan was for this to be a successful night club that served food. We thought liquor would make the most money, so just building around that. I was cooking French food (for Charles Nob Hill and then Fifth Floor) but obviously that wouldn’t work here. And so I love street food. Like every time I would go home and travel through Asia, just the simple things you find on the streets or beer food. So I thought that was a great idea to kind of utilize here.

… I don’t really enjoy too much fusion. I mean, I think fusion is great. But I just wanted to portray some of the things I’ve tasted or seen with the culture behind it. So I wanted to also use the identity of the country.

B: What is it about fusion food that made you decide you didn’t want to replicate it at Poleng Lounge?

CL: I’ve tried a lot of Asian fusion food and it’s something that I find exciting and I learn from it. But it’s not something I can eat every day. So being this kind of neighborhood here, being a neighborhood restaurant … I didn’t feel it was right to do that.

B: You wanted to keep it very simple?

CL: Right, very simple. But also give the homage almost to these random cooks and street stall hawkers.

B: When you try to recreate the street food, do you find it a challenge to make sure it’s authentic because you might not find the right ingredients?

CL: I try really hard to source that ingredient. Like sometimes for calamansi citrus I’ll drive down to Sunnyvale because the lady totally grows it on her tree and she barters with the grocery store and then I’ll go to the grocery store to get it. … Pandan leaves we’ll get from Hawaii. But also we try to keep as much local sustainable stuff too but it’s really hard with Asian ingredients because of the competition with all the Chinese restaurants. The growers I talk to, the producers, the vendors, it’s not worth it for them to produce all those organic Asian greens because there’s no market for it. The (Chinese) restaurants around won’t pay those prices.

B: Your menu reflects food from all types of Asian countries, but is there one country’s cuisine that’s more dominant?

CL: I think just recently it’s been leaning a lot more toward Filipino food, partly because I have some roots in the Philippines but also because recently there’s been a trend with a lot of interest in Filipino food.

B: I noticed that too. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s because there’s a large Filipino community in the Bay Area?

CL: I think that’s a good start, the fact that there’s a good-sized Filipino community. But it’s also a little unexplored. Because with Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, you can find that anywhere in the U.S. But Filipino food, the only ones they’ve had here was like the canteen-style almost. … It’s very cafeteria-like. You get these huge portions. … A chef in New York opened a place that’s pure Filipino, an upscale Filipino restaurant and it’s doing really well. Down in San Mateo, Bistro Luneta opened up, it’s kind of Filipino fusion also. It’s opened peoples’ eyes to what Filipino food is and also the different ways it can be portrayed.

B: I’m actually not very familiar with Filipino foods. How would you describe it? Is there a particular characteristic like how Thai food uses peanuts and limes and Vietnamese food uses fresh herbs?

CL: There’s three types. There’s native Filipino food, Chinese-Filipino food and Spanish-Filipino food. Native Filipino food is a lot of pork, local vegetables, beans grow well. There’s not a lot of vegetables like tomatoes. The citrus would be calamansi. Fruits: mango, jackfruit, durian. And I guess a lot of stews. All the vegetables dishes, native Filipino dishes, are very stewy, like Chicken adobo.

B: Is braising really popular?

CL: Yeah, yeah, they have oxtails, braised chicken, braised pork. I think the reason for that is it’s a Third World country. If you eat a stew like in Ethiopian cuisine or wherever, if you have a nice, rich sauce it’s not very expensive. So the sauce on the rice is actually more of the meal than the actual chicken or pork because of the financial situation of the country.

At the same time by using a lot of vinegars and salted fish, like dried fish, it helps preserve the food because it’s a warm country. And so the acidity and saltiness of these dishes acts as a preservative so it doesn’t spoil quickly. Any culture or any region, the reason why they cook this way or the reason why they do these things is not because they read it in a cookbook. It says something about their culture and lifestyle.

B: So what have you tried to bring to the menu at Poleng Lounge that’s reflective of the Philippines?

CL: Right now we have a secret menu.

B: Oh, what’s that?

CL: On our menu there’s only so much space to list like 20 dishes. And some dishes a lot of people, especially other ethnicities, might be a little offended by. Like a pig’s head or trotters or gizzards or eating just like chicken skin, where in Asia it’s like a delicacy. Like salted eggs and century-old eggs. We’ve had instances where people almost freaked out or like, “what is this?”

So we decided to develop a secret menu for diners who are more experimental or regulars who know the things that we do and are willing to try new things, and it doesn’t take up any space on the menu and we don’t take the risk of offending someone.

B: Do you need like a password for this secret menu? How do people order off of it?

CL: (laughs) Basically you just ask your server. Sometimes they’ll see if you order certain things, like we have bone marrow on the menu—it’s pretty common but some people might not think it’s too common. So if it seems like you’re ordering more the adventurous things rather than more of the basic things, sometimes the server will say you might be interested in the secret menu.

B: When you were first describing Poleng Lounge, it really seemed to have a lot of identities—a tea room, a lounge, a restaurant, a bar. Was that on purpose?

CL: It was on purpose. It’s kind of dangerous if you have too many identities. But we were all first-time business owners and it was out of a little bit of naivety.

B: You wanted to see which stuck?

CL: We ended up tying everything together. When you dine here you’ll see tea is pretty big here. We’ll cook with tea, in some of our dishes, some of our curries. We have a big tea menu with 35 loose leaf teas. It’s not the main part but it’s still there. The night life and the bar is also just as big a part as the restaurant so we try really hard to tie it together and make it seamless for a diner who might want to stay for dancing. Every now and then people won’t understand it but for the most part I think we’re able to transition from a restaurant to a bar.

B: You want them to get that all-in-one experience?

CL: I guess so. Yeah.

B: So then they won’t ever leave.

CL: (laughs) Yes. And that’s why Desi chose the name Poleng, because Poleng (in Balinese) is the dualities, the yin and yang. So you have the tea aspect which is very healthy and relaxing and you have the liquor aspect. So it’s plays off the opposite. … We have the dinner aspect where people are dining and enjoying themselves and we have the dancing aspect where it’s more energetic.

We did the interview outside in the lounge and dining area, which has a warm fireplace in the center and trickling waterfall along one wall. In the corner is the DJ booth for music. Afterwards we walked to the back room known as the Temple Room, where there’s room for dancing and a lot of ambient lanterns and a statue of a female goddess.

B: So I heard you used to be a deejay. Do you still do that?

CL: I wish I did. My nights and weekends are completely gone because I work. After work I just enjoy other people’s entertainment.

B: Did you start doing it in college?

CL: When I was in high school, I lived in Palo Alto. There’s a college radio station, the Stanford Radio station, and my brother got me into hip hop music. And so I called to do an internship there and I was able to do an internship from 3 to 6 in the morning, the graveyard shift on Saturday nights, and found out that was my first real love, music, deejaying. So I did that all throughout high school and college and realized the music industry is pretty cutthroat, and I’m a pretty nice guy. (laughs) … And it was something I couldn’t do forever. No one wants to see a 50-year-old DJ.

B: How did you get involved with the East West Eats event coming up?

CL: Just networking and meeting. We do a lot of benefit events, donating food—it’s a good way to give back to the community. It’s also good PR and marketing. … One of first group I joined was the Asian Chefs Association. Through them I networked with other Asian nonprofits like the Asian Art Museum and some of the groups fighting human trafficking in Asia. We have a lot of roots in Asia so we thought it’ll be very beneficial to support the nonprofits especially in the Asian communities because they’re also the ones who support us.

B: There’s a really interesting lineup of Asian chefs. Is it easy moving up in the kitchen as an Asian chef? I think the assumption is it is pretty easy in San Francisco.

CL: Now the industry has changed a lot from before when it was based on the French structure. Plus there’s a lot of Filipino Americans and Asian Americans finding themselves in the kitchens. … And with the help of the media like “Top Chef” or the Food Network having Ming Tsai, (Martin) Yan, (Masaharu) Morimoto. Last season on “Top Chef” it was a Vietnamese American who won and this season they have a Filipino chef there too. I think it’s really helping to break that stigma for women chefs and minority chefs, too. But I remember starting out, most of the chefs in the limelight were Caucasian and a few Latinos and a few Asians. But with what’s going on now with the media and the work ethic of Asians, it’s really changing.

B: But I think it’s still true when you think of San Francisco and whenever they talk about the best chefs, you probably might see Charlie Phan of Slanted Door mentioned, but he’s like just one of all these Caucasians that reach that celebrity status. Why do you feel that is?

CL: The Asian culture, in general, it’s just old school the way I was brought up. We’re not very outspoken or braggadocios. We get our work done. We believe in what we do and keep that integrity rather than searching for attention here and there.

B: So what are your plans for Poleng Lounge? Do you plan to expand it?

CL: The group eventually does want to expand. But for me it’s more the integrity of having a story behind the food. Because Asian food can easily get lost with your American-Chinese foods and your fusion foods. Especially deep-rooted Chinese foods, it can easily get lost in misinterpretations. It’s almost like you need to know where it came from to move it forward.

Special thanks to Chef Luym for taking time out of preparing for the dinner rush to sit down and talk with me. He had just started cooking for the evening—that evening he was making jook, a Chinese porridge—so I didn’t get a chance to see any of the finished products. So I suggest you check it out on their Web site. For me, I hope to visit in the near future (and will definitely ask for the secret menu).

If you’d like to get a taste of Chef Luym’s cooking style and those of other chefs, including those from restaurants like Betelnut, Straits, Butterfly, Red Lantern and Three Seasons, then check out this year’s East West Eats on May 8, starting at 7 p.m. at the Ferry Building.

Hosts for the evenings will be ABC7 reporter/anchor Alan Wang and "View From the Bay" co-host Janelle Wang. Tickets are still available at a cost of $115. You can order them online here. Remember, this is a fund-raiser to help Asian American students pursuing careers in journalism. I used to be one of those kids. :)

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What's In My Frig?

Sometimes we all need a little bubble in our lives. Bubble baths. Bubble gum. Bubbly juice drinks.

One of my regular sparkling juice drinks that I buy is the Izze brand of natural fruit drinks. I just love the whole approach of Izze. But I typically buy them in those cool bottles, then I noticed these tiny cans at my local Safeway. I thought, how cool? They look more easy to handle than the bottles. But when I bought them home, I realized they were less juice than the bottles. It's officially just 8.4 oz. So while I thought the cans were probably more compact than the bottles, I thought that's too bad they gave up on the bottles.

Then I went on their Web site and realized they still sell the bottles. It's just that these mini cans are the new Izze Fortified line of drinks. The can include extra Vitamin C, and was designed to pack a lunch for a hike or maybe a baseball game. So now I know I can get my bottled Izze when I want, but I can get these mini Izze Fortified for convenience and that extra kick. Cool.

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 7

Who’s Laughing Now?

Previously: Jennifer’s kicking some ass, winning the quickfire for her beloved Zoi. Spike cheers for lesbians. Australian Mark is a mess, but Ryan is inappropriate. So it’s back to Cali for the pretty boy (and apparently a lot of guest appearances at food events).

Has the prizes changed this week? I think not. Because it’s all for the title of …TOP CHEF.

Oooh, that’s a neat reflection of the clouds on that metallic bubble sculpture in downtown Chicago. Cool. At the homestand, Andrew jokes that the room is a bit uglier because Ryan Pretty Boy left. (See, I wasn’t the only one calling him Pretty Boy.) Jennifer says yet again that she’s going to go all the way for her Zoi, in case we forgot. Who’s that again? ZO-i.

The cheftestants arrive at the Top Chef kitchen for the Quickfire Challenge, and look at all those pastries and dessert! Oh. My. Gawd. I’m not usually a sweet person but they all look so beautiful. Speaking of beautiful and tasty, who’s that yummy treat standing next to Padma? Why, it’s this week’s guest judge, James Beard award-winning pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, declared by the New York Daily News as New York’s sexiest chef. I concur, especially after I saw that photo of him with his tattooed arm on his site. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you check it out. You know you want to. (Click on the “Who’s Johnny?” link) OK, are you back?

Iuzzini is executive pastry chef at Restaurant Jean Georges in Manhattan so you know this challenge has something to do with desserts, if the buffet table of cakes and pastries didn’t already give it away.

After Chef Iuzzini says something about advanced planning and preparations (and really, who’s paying attention when they’re distracted by his pretty face?), Padma peddles the Top Chef Cookbook, which includes recipes from cheftestants from the last three seasons. But she says one Season 4 cheftestant can contribute a recipe, and that will be a winning dessert recipe that they have to make … NOW.

Not everyone’s happy about making desserts. Big surprise. But this is Season 4, so anyone with a clue coming into this show knows they’ll have to make a dessert at least once during the season. So a few smart cheftestants are busting out recipes they’ve memorized prior to coming to the show. (I wonder what they’ll do if they make it to the finale?)

For Dale, he’s going to make a coconut dessert with shaved iced. I’m not really sure what the name was; it sounded like a Filipino dessert. But I have to say, when he just laughed right now, he looked so genuinely fun that I would totally hang out with him as opposed to the bad-ass Dale that we’ve seen so far.

Australian Mark is wearing some odd red flower behind his ear. I’m kind of worried about him. He seems like he’s bordering on a breakdown. He hasn’t really looked happy the last few episodes and haven’t been really doing well. Richard, on the other hand, looks like he’s been gaining weight. Or maybe it’s that pastel-lime apron he’s wearing.

So it’s no surprise that a lot of people are cooking with chocolate, and for some reason bananas. Spike came into the game with a recipe for molten chocolate cake, but he decides to take it up a notch by turning it into a soufflé. That seems kind of ambitious for a 30-minute challenge.

Chef Johnny and Padma do the tasting, and this is pretty much the highlights: Spike’s soufflé is sitting in a pineapple and looks weird but Chef Johnny likes that Spike took a risk by making soufflé, Richard is serving chocolate, guacamole and bananas (twisted IMHO but Padma likes it), Nikki does a buttermilk cake that looks really cute and well presented, Stephanie does a chocolate cake with a salt-basil ganache that looks really gooooood, and Australian Mark brings the down under up to the windy city with a pavlova tasting.

Chef Johnny doesn’t like the desserts from Antonia, Spike and Mark. But his favorites are Richard, Dale and Lisa’s strawberry dessert. He declares Richard’s pseudo scallops made of bananas the most original. So now you can check out that recipe in the Top Chef cookbook (but please don’t serve it to me because I still will not mix chocolate with avocado). Oh yeah, Richard has immunity.

(BTW, they didn’t do anything with the huge table of desserts that greeted the cheftestants when they walked in. That must have been a big sugar-rush day for the crew.)

Padma says they’ll learn about their elimination challenge later, but for now they get to go see an improvisational comedy sketch show by the famous Second City troupe. Everyone’s excited about getting the night off (yeah, right) and they’re all at home preparing to hit the town. For some reason Australian Mark is ragging on Richard wearing a pink shirt. I’m thinking, should one be judging Richard’s shirt choice when one wears blue briefs (with probably the Superman logo on the front?). That was such an odd sight.

At the club, the Second City comedians are working the crowd and doing a lot of improv about animals. Then they call out for suggestions from the audience about colors and feelings. The cheftestants are laughing at some of the suggestions. Then the comedians call out for cooking ingredients. Then the cheftestants aren’t laughing any more. They know what’s happening; the crowd is coming up with their menu. Heads and eyes are rolling all over the place.

One of the comedians announces that the cheftestants are in the audience and they have to cook dinner for the cast tomorrow night using the audience’s suggestions for inspiration. Things like Yellow Love Vanilla and Magenta Drunk Polish Sausage. Yummy. The cheftestants are laughing it up but in their minds they’re thinking, “we’re screwed.”

Back at the apartment, they put numbers of each course into a hat and they’re going to take turns picking which course they’ll make. They all choose their own pairs and most people go with people they say they respect for their cooking but it’s all a matter of who not wanting to cook with whom.

Commercials. SoyJoy is fortified with optimism. Yeah, take it next door sister because I’m not falling for that crap.

The cheftestants arrive at Whole Foods to go shopping, and they all seem really relaxed today. There’s no panic running for ingredients. Australian Mark and Nikki has Purple Depressed Bacon as their theme so they’re going to make pancetta and pork tenderloin. Stephanie and Jennifer have Orange Turned On Asparagus, so their cart is filled with asparagus. Jennifer asks the cheese guy for a particular goat cheese called bucheron and he brings out a whole log so she decides to add that to their menu.

Dale and Richard are teamed up for Green Perplexed Tofu, so they decide that curry is perplexing. Richard also asks the butcher for beef fat, and good thing to know: Beef fat is free from your butcher. They’re just giving fat away! Richard says he’s going to grill the tofu in beef fat to give it a meaty flavor and then he does this Jerry Seinfeld bit about how “this tofu tastes like beef.” You know, he’s kind of funny that Richard guy.

Lisa and Antonia aren’t happy with their Magenta Drunk Polish Sausage assignment. So they say they’re going to quote, improv, unquote, by making a dish with chorizo paired with sea bass. To me, that’s more like changing the rules of the game than improv-ing.

Andrew and Spike, of course, is the crazy team with Yellow Love Vanilla. I say crazy because they’re really just like a couple of goofballs at the market, and they’re just making up their dish on the fly.

The cheftestants arrive at the Top Chef kitchen, which already has a table set up with white table cloth and place settings, so a few of them foolishly believes they’ll be serving dinner there. This episode really should have been called Red Herring.

Spike starts cooking and guess what he’s making? Yep, butternut squash soup. That’s right, the boy finally gets to make his damn soup. It’s really not just butternut but also some acorn squash. Antonia, who a couple of episodes ago pissed over Spike’s suggestion to make squash soup, says she’ll vomit if Spike wins this challenge. Get your barf bag ready, girrrrl.

Dale runs to the back to get a big pot and he notices the pantry shelf typically filled with electrical equipment is totally empty. They’ve been robbed! What neighborhood is this Top Chef kitchen in? OK, so maybe the producers hid the equipment because they thought it’d be soooo hilarious. Oh, I get it. They want the cheftestants to improv on their cooking. LOL. What a riot. (<–sarcasm)

Dale lets everyone else know there’s no equipment, and Andrew runs in and starts jumping around with Spike and they’re all like “ooooh shiiiit.” They’re going to have a hard time making pureed soup without a blender (I would hate to give up my nifty hand-blender as well). But Spike and Andrew’s all “vanilla loooove” and says they’re making soup like the old days, with love. They’re actually using a ricer.

Australian Mark is pounding away since he has no spice grinder, and in comes Chef Tom Collichio. He lets them know that the comics will go to their house for dinner, so they’ll have to pack up their food and finish cooking at the apartment. Now the cheftestants scramble for the first time this episode as they grab their Gladware and coolers.

Commercials. Sorry, I didn’t watch the commercials because I’m flipping back and forth between Top Chef and the San Francisco Giants game against the San Diego Padres. The game is tied 1 to 1 in extra innings.

The cheftestants crowd into their apartment kitchen and Andrew says he’s glad they have the first course so they can cook their food and be done with the crowds. Spike is getting his soup just right so he tastes it and adds a pinch of salt or more vegetable broth here and there. Dude, it’s just soup!

The guests arrive and Andrew wonders if there’s any soup left because Spike spent the last half hour tasting it. They plate up their soup in pretty big bowls and serve their Yellow Squash Soup with Vanilla Crème Fraiche. Padma says she would lick the bowl if there weren't anyone else in the room. (You can't take that girl anywhere! The guy next to her jokes that he would lick everyone's bowl but really, he just want to lick hers I bet.) Everyone is digging the simplicity of the soup with the complex flavors. OK, I admit it. Nice call Spike.

Next course is Stephanie and Jennifer’s Ménage a Trios of Oranges, Asparagus and Goat Cheese. They’re like a comedy duo and this is the first time I’ve seen Stephanie laughing and smiling. Jennifer says they cut “sex-tions” of oranges and then they try to do this sexy dipping of the asparagus spears in the sauce and throws it down their throat in a very suggestive way that a couple of men can’t eat asparagus in the same way ever again. Everyone has a good laugh, but once they start eating the dish, the laughing ends. No one likes the bread served on the plate, and they don’t get the cheese. Ted Allen says it’s not really a ménage a trios but an orgy because there are so many things going on on the plate. (Woah Ted, can you take me to one of those orgies next time?)


It’s funny how only Spike the Faker has something bad to say about everyone’s dishes in this episode. Like he just said the tofu looks weird grilled like meat.

Dale and Richard present their grilled tofu in green curry for their Green Perplexed Tofu theme. Everyone is enjoying the tofu that tastes like swordfish or some other meaty ingredient, and Chef Tom is loving the spices in the curry. He says he would have been bummed out if he got tofu as a secret ingredient. (Tofu gets such a bad rap. I love cooking with it.)

Now come Antonia and Lisa’s Magenta Drunk Polish Sausage, except they come out and serve chorizo and Chilean sea bass. The “magenta” comes in the purple-ish puree underneath. Oh, and for the “drunk” theme, the two down a shot of tequila. A few guests stare at each other like, “What, you not going to share?” And the editors cue the scary music. I’ve come to learn that the scary music is really a sign of bad news to come and not just a red herring. I have to say the girls did a poor presentation because they justified changing their menu because it’s improv night, but they didn’t explain that to the judges and guests so they didn’t get it. They now just think the girls are lazy.

Nikki and Mark present their Purple Depressed Bacon, which is actually a pretty hard theme to deliver. Why is Australian Mark wearing sunglasses? I guess he doesn’t want the sun to interfere with his depressed state? Everyone seems to be enjoying the taste and one lady says this is comfort food that she would eat when depressed. A success!

The cheftestants pack up and get ready for judgment and Jennifer quips that it’s a bad omen that she’s packing her knives. It does seem like a bad omen, but then Andrew is also seen packing his knives, so maybe he counteracted Jennifer’s packing. Or did he?

Commercials. Giants are leading 3-to-1 in the bottom of 13th. When will this game end? Huh, there’s this weird commercial for a chip called Flat Earth but its logo is a pig with wings. WTF?

Judgment. Padma calls in Dale, Spike, Andrew and Richard. She tells them they’re the favorites (we get the pattern already) and the boys are happy. Spike says he took the improv challenge literally and just went into the kitchen doing what he does best. Chef Johnny says the soup was balanced, with just enough sugary goodness and savory taste. It should since Spike tasted it like 100 times. Chef Tom says it was “the best seasoned dish all season.” Now that’s some good seasons.

They talk to Dale and Richard about how they thought green curry is complex and tofu was dressed up like meat. Chef Johnny says he liked how they came out as a team, which I’m not sure how they appeared more like a team than the other pairs but does it matter? He’s so cute I agree with everything he says. Anywho, Chef Johnny names Dale and Richard the winners and they both get $2,500 worth of cookware from Calphalon.

The bottom chefs are called in, and it’s the girls: Antonia, Lisa, Stephanie and Jennifer.

Chef Tom asks Antonia and Lisa why they went with chorizo instead of Polish sausage. Lisa says the only Polish sausage she ever had was from a package and cooked over sauerkraut. To me, that doesn’t mean she had to make it that way. She could have done something totally different. I actually love kielbasa. That’s Polish isn’t it? Chef Johnny says they could have done sausages cooked in beer.

Antonia says “from now on,” and then we get that scary music as Chef Tom quickly adds “if there is a from now on.” Antonia was trying to say “from now on we’ll follow the rules instead of spitting into your face.”

Stephanie is back to her serious face and the judges question why they needed to add the goat cheese when it wasn’t one of the named ingredients. Chef Johnny also felt like the composition of the plate was a train wreck. (Train wreck is a pretty popular term in reality TV. Just like how Jason’s song on American Idol was a train wreck. I think I’m going to start using it more in my day. Boss: “Ben, did you finish that copy?” Me: “No, I had a train wreck of a day.”)

Jennifer tries to explain that they wanted to plate the asparagus in a phallic position because she’s literal like that. Chef Johnny makes this odd expression and I nearly fall over when he uses the word “erect” in a sentence. I should have rated this recap NC-17.

When they excuse the cheftestants to deliberate, Lisa is back with the group and getting upset that they had to cook meals based on what some drunk suggested. She’s not very happy. Antonia thinks the judges don’t get that they were improv-ing. Well, maybe you should have explained that? Antonia's a bit of a whiner.

In the judges’ room, everyone’s upset that the two teams didn’t use their secret ingredient as the star on the plate. Chef Johnny says Jennifer and Stephanie’s cheese dish was the least tasty in his opinion.

Commercials. Hidden Valley Ranch is trying to have us believe that a quart of their cheesy dressing is like eating your vegetables for the day. Ugh, and they’re showing kids eating salad dressing like ice cream. There should be a law against this.

Decision time. Chef Tom says both dishes went off track (but he doesn’t say “train wreck” but you know he wanted to). The sausage dish became a fish dish. The goat cheese became the focal point instead of asparagus. Jennifer looks confused. Tom says they’re all accomplished chefs and the dishes on their own were comparable, so all the judges had to go on was the technicality of who followed the rules. Since both teams didn’t follow the rule of enhancing their secret ingredient, Chef Tom says it fell on taste and he says Jennifer and Stephanie’s dish was the least favorite. Then Padma sends Jennifer and her already packed knives packing. Then there’s this collective groan from San Francisco and I just hope it’s not because the Giants blew it in the bottom of the 13th inning. (Whew, luckily no. Giants squeaked out a 3-to-2 win over the Padres.)

Jennifer gets hugs from everyone, and Richard seems especially shocked. (My guess is that the judges felt Stephanie is a more accomplished cook since she’s won several challenges already, so she was spared. I actually would have sent either Antonia or Lisa home because they really didn’t even try.)

Jennifer is upset that she couldn’t go further for her Zoi, but at least they get to be together again. Jennifer says Top Chef expects you to give 1,000 percent. Funny, I would have said a gazillion, but that’s because I try harder.

Next week: The cheftestants get munchkins as helpers! A kid is hitting a skillet on the table, and Australian Mark thinks Chef Tom isn’t giving him any love.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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Dish on Dining: Nihon Whisky Lounge

Not Really Tokyo But a Whole Lotta Fun
1779 Folsom St. (at 14th Street), San Francisco
Mission District
PH: 415.552.4400
Open Mon.–Sat., 5:30 p.m. to midnight (bar open till 2 a.m.)
Reservations, major credit cards accepted

Despite the fact that I keep thinking whiskey is misspelled in its name (apparently whisky is the Scottish way of doing it), Nihon Whisky Lounge is an amalgamation of several cultures. A little bit Japanese, a little bit European, a little bit Californian. Whatever. It blends well on the edge of San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood.

Part of the Dajani Group, Nihon Whisky specializes in the izakaya-style of dining, which could be loosely compared to Spanish tapas. These are small bites served with beer or sake in Japan, frequented by businessmen who never go home at a decent hour. You won’t find sushi at an izakaya establishment, which favors more the grilled foods like yakitori.

But Nihon Whisky is far from a traditional izakaya. They have a wide variety of Scotch and Irish whiskey at the bar and the izakaya menu has a mix of appetizers, salads and large plates. It’s also a very popular place, even though it’s kind of out there on its own on the border of the Mission and SOMA right next to Rainbow Grocery.

I visited Nihon Whisky on a Friday night and asked fellow food blogger Foodhoe to join me. Making a rare appearance was Foodhoe’s husband, Mr. K, who I’ve never met and only read about in Foodhoe’s foraging. We planned on meeting during happy hour because that’s really the best time to enjoy Nihon Whisky—all drinks, appetizers and salads are half price. (Happy hour is from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday.)

I arrived first and saddled up to the bar, which has an amazing wall of multiple brands of Scotch and Irish whiskey. The décor looks like any hip SOMA lounge, but the locked cabinets with whiskey behind the glass added to a private club feel. The casual lounge is a mix of white tiles and dark woods, almost like a lodge. There are also tables in the mezzanine level where you can watch the scene from above.

My drink for the night was a whiskey sour made with Jack Daniels and lemon and lime juice. The bartender was really friendly and she mixed up a really balanced whiskey sour IMHO. (Side note: Later in the evening, I ordered a second whiskey sour from our server and she brought back a glass that had a blush color instead of the yellow-gold tint of my earlier drink. Tasted fine but I thought it was odd how their whiskey sours come in multiple colors.)

When Foodhoe and Mr. K arrived, we grabbed an open table in the lounge right in the middle of all the action. Then we started to focus on the menu. (For this recap I’m listing the full prices for the items, but keep in mind that we got the appetizers and salads at half price because of happy hour.)

First up was a cup of the Tako Wasabi ($3), which was raw baby octopus with wasabi vinaigrette. Raw octopus (like raw squid) is not the most appetizing of ingredients, but I knew this going in. The bits of baby octopus really looked and felt like slime. Still, there was an oddly interesting crunch to each bite and I thought the balanced wasabi vinaigrette added a clean freshness that made this a light starter.

There are a lot of fried foods at an izakaya, so despite my aversion to all things fried I relented to the Oimo no Tempura ($8) or fried Japanese mountain potato and taro and the traditional Agedashi Tofu ($8), which is fried tofu in a mushroom sauce.

The fried Japanese mountain potato came in an odd stick shape and had a light flavor. The taro was grounded up into a paste and deep-fried as mini balls. Both were perfectly fried and fitting for bar food. The Agedashi Tofu was also nicely fried, but I didn’t like the cornstarch-thickened sauce that came with it. I rather prefer the light dashi broth instead of this gooey mess.

Then we got this big plate of the Nihon Salad ($7), which is a noodle salad made of somen in a light citrus sauce. It was surrounded by what the menu described as “tempura fried rice” but was basically plain white rice rolled with maki (dried seaweed) like sushi and deep-fried and sliced. It was an inventive presentation to go with the somen salad and I enjoyed the contrasting textures of the warm sushi rice and the slight crunchy tempura bits.

We ordered a couple of dishes off the entrée section, including the 8-piece Omakase Sashimi ($17) and the tuna carpaccio with white truffle oil. The sashimi (or raw fish) was a nice selection of the day’s fresh fish. There was one particular white fish that was new to me that Foodhoe and Mr. K explained to me, but now I’ve forgotten the name! But it had a nice subtle flavor, especially after Mr. K taught me to wrap a piece of shiso leaf with my bite, giving it an herbal citrus twang to the fish.

The tuna carpaccio was a deep burgundy color. Foodhoe and Mr. K didn’t seem to enjoy this dish as much, but I really liked the smoky flavor of the raw tuna, which I’m guessing came from the truffle oil. And really, how can you go wrong with fresh tuna?

As we were enjoying our food, the big group next to us got this dish delivered to them that was on fire. It was literally on fire. We asked what it was, and was told it was simply called Dynamite ($7). Always eager for a dinner and a show, we ordered one for our table.

When it arrived, the serving platter was on fire, warming a claypot that contained a baked seafood dish. The contents looked pretty dark (which is probably why in the picture all you see are flames) but it was this savory comfort dish made mostly of oysters. I don’t think Mr. K liked this either, but I enjoyed it. It was kind of comforting with a custard-like texture, and I’m a fan of any kind of oysters (raw or baked).

We ended our parade of small plates (which we had to eat right away because we had a small table with little room for the next plate) with a green tea cheesecake for dessert. The cheesecake was creamy and thick, with a very slight green tea flavor. It was OK, but the accompanying strawberries were unusually frozen. I couldn’t tell if it was some molecular gastronomy or an accident.

Being a Friday night, you can imagine how crowded the place got into the night. As the lights dimmed, the bar seemed to glow with embers just like our Dynamite dish.

Service at the lounge was your typical bar service, which means one woman who has to deal with a lot of people getting drunk on whiskey. While at times she may have seemed curt, she always acknowledged us and met our requests whenever we flagged her down.

I don’t know if it was the whiskey, the food, the company, or maybe a combination of everything, but I had a lot of fun at the Nihon Whisky Lounge. (Hmmm, maybe it’s also because I’m typically at the gym on a Friday night so it was nice to have fun for a change to start my weekend.) It’s a lively, hip spot with some creative small bites. It might not be a traditional Japanese izakaya, but Nihon Whisky fosters a classic casual, festive mood. And if you’re hit by the current economic hard times, you can’t beat the good eats of happy hour at this Mission hotspot!

Single guy rating: 3.5 stars (izakaya fun)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

You can read Foodhoe's recap of our happy hour here. She remembered more than me, like the white sashimi, which was waloo from Hawaii. I like it. More waloo for me! And that frozen strawberry actually was stuffed with cream cheese. I totally didn't get that.

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It’s Easy Being Green

Ever since I watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” I’ve tried to be diligent about reducing my carbon footprints. (BTW, I would so love to have lunch with Al Gore just to see what he eats!) So today being Earth Day, I think it’s a good time to remind everyone about the little things we can do every day to help our planet. I’m focusing on things related to food or the kitchen:

Re-bag it. In the Bay Area, I’m seeing more people carrying reusable cloth bags. Yay! This is the best way to go shopping. My tip: Buy more than one bag so that you’ll always have one in your car when you go shopping. Sometimes you bring your groceries into the house and then forget to bring the bag back out to the car. So buy a few extras to keep in your car or near your door to make it easy to grab on your way out. If you’re a Bay Area resident, the San Francisco Ferry Building is passing out free reusable bags on the South Side of the building today (4/22) while supplies last or until 2 p.m.

Dispose of the garbage disposal. My garbage disposal in my apartment konked out last year. But instead of replacing it, I paid $200 for a plumber to come and remove the relic. I feel it’s money well spent. I read somewhere that people end up using more energy standing there with the power switch on churning away at waste that can easily be thrown into a compost station in their backyards. Even if you don’t have a compost station, throwing away the waste that eventually decomposes in landfills is a better option than wasting energy used to churn it up.

Shop local. This is the mantra of the Bay Area and sustainable food lovers. By buying locally produced products, you’re not contributing to companies that consume tons of gasoline each year to transport goods to the consumers. So spend more of your money at farmers markets where local farmers aren’t bringing goods across the country to you. Luckily in the Bay Area, there are tons of farmers markets to choose from. (Check out this list from the San Francisco Chronicle.)

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Baseball + A Couple of Dogs

It's baseball season, so you know I now have to squeeze in my food adventures with watching baseball games. And when the weather's nice, it's hard to resist the temptation to just hangout watching a game as opposed to cooking in the kitchen. Sorry, but I be honest.

This weekend I went to an Oakland Athletics' game against the visiting Kansas City Royals. The Oakland team is my hometown team, but I still favor the San Francisco Giants across the bay. (And if you wonder why, it's because Oakland is in the same league as my ultimate favorite team, the New York Yankees, so you know I can't root for the A's.) I haven't been to a Giants game yet, but it's pretty easy to on a whim decide to go to an Oakland A's game. That's what I did on Saturday.

While it's easy getting great seats at the A's game, I have a hard time deciding what to eat. I feel like there are fewer options at McAfee Stadium than at AT&T Park in San Francisco. My friend David says Oakland has the "real baseball fan" food, so that's what I got.

The first thing I ate was the Big Chili Cheese Dog ($7.50). You can see it above, and yes, it was really big. The hot dog portion was a bit squishy and salty (which I kind of liked) and there was a big bun that I used to sop up the chili beans and sauce. It was actually pretty satisfying, but I didn't really get the cheese on top. It was real processed cheese and made it taste like I was eating nachos.

At about the 5th inning when the Athletics' starting pitcher was struggling against the Royals, I went to distract myself with a corn dog ($3.50). I know, I never eat fried foods but somehow the idea of a corn dog was appetizing at that moment. Corn dogs are the most oddest looking food; it's like a pistol or something. But I'm a big fan of cornmeal. This particular corn dog at the stadium was a bit chewy. The hot dog portion was squishy again. Somehow all the hot dogs in Oakland are soft and squishy with salt. It tasted good after I lathered it with ketchup.

I think for future games I may just bring in a Vietnamese sandwich from Oakland's Chinatown instead of buying something at the stadium. Unless any of you have any suggestions of something I may be missing? But I really didn't find many things tempting.

The food may not be great, but with the small crowds at the Oakland games, you really get some of the best seats in town. Look at these photos I shot from my field level seat on the first base side. I could have caught a few foul balls if I didn't have a camera in my hand. The nice weather was made better by the fact that the Athletics swept the Royals this weekend. It's no skin off my back, but at least the people around me were happy. I don't necessarily want to get an A's fan angry. ;-)

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Dish on Dining: Gaboja Sojubang (closed)

Home-made Korean Dishes in a Lounge
UPDATED ON 7/22/08: The restaurant was left abandoned and after several weeks a sign was put up looking for a new tenant.
347 14th St. (at Webster), Oakland
Downtown/Chinatown
PH: 510.272.0046
Major credit cards accepted
Open Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

You can feel intimidated standing outside of Gaboja Sojubang, a Korean restaurant just east of Oakland’s Chinatown. The photos of the dishes look good in the window, but everything is written in Korean. I got the same twinge of fear I get at restaurants in a foreign country where I feel like it’ll be a big production of sign language just to get a meal.

But I’ve walked past Gaboja Sojubang often from my office on my way to Chinatown for lunch—even before when it was known as Core Lounge and was more of a karaoke bar. I don’t know what the dishes are on the sign outside, but the prices looked interesting for lunch (about $3.99 to $5.99). Plus, there were always a few Koreans eating inside, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?

I finally got the nerve to go in for lunch a few weeks ago and it was pretty packed with a mixed crowd of diners. I waited a bit until a kind-looking old gentleman motioned me to one of the tables. I sat down and waited, and waited some more, as I watch this young guy running from table to table but never looking in my direction. He was the only server and looked like the son of the owners.

The room had a big screen television, which was off when I was there but I don’t know if it comes on for dinner or maybe for some late-night karaoke. At a couple of tables, people were eating big pots of food in soup that were being cooked at their table.

I finally got up and picked up my own menu from the front. The menu, luckily, had English subtitles to explain the dishes. It was a nice mix of appetizers, traditional meat dishes, casseroles and soups. But I was disappointed to see that most of the dishes were more than $8. Apparently, the $3.99 and $5.99 prices advertised in the sign outside were for the vegetarian side dishes.

When I was finally able to get the attention of the young guy, I ordered the Ojingo Dupbob or Squid with Vegetables over Rice ($7.99). Then he brought over the panchan, which are little plates of side dishes served before virtually every Korean meal. I admired the dishware they came in, and was pleased that the panchan seemed fresh and of decent quality.

During this visit, the panchan included the traditional Napa cabbage kim chi, black beans, dried tiny fish, and pickled preserved vegetables.

The poor service was made up for by the quick turnaround for my order. It seemed like my Ojingo Dupbob came in less than five minutes. The plate looked beautiful, with this rich, juicy-looking sauce mixed in the stir-fry with a nice mound of steamed rice on the side. (So technically it wasn’t “over” rice.) The plate looked so lovely that a table next to me pointed at my order and told the waiter, “I’ll have an order of what he’s having.” (I really am a trend-setter. Remember when that happened to me at Coi?)

But once I started eating the dish, I realized why it came so quickly. The red paste, which is the traditional sweet-spicy paste used in many Korean dishes, was barely blended through with the ingredients. It was as if it hardly had time to warm up. The squid pieces were nice and tender, but they were buried in a pile of onion and scallions. As for other vegetables in the mix, there were maybe two or three pieces of broccoli and I think two or three button mushroom slices.

I felt cheated by false advertising (it really should be called Squid and Onions with Rice), just like how I felt I was misled by the sign outside advertising cheap prices only to find out it wasn’t for any of their main dishes.

I waited for nearly 10 minutes after I finished eating to see if the young guy would come over and ask if I needed anything else or if he could bring my check. But after watching him walk by me a few times without looking at me, I got up and paid up front and left.

Despite my unsatisfying lunch, primarily marred by the neglectful service, I decided to return because maybe it was a fluke? Also, I was really tempted by those pots of soup cooking at the tables.

So this week I returned with my friend Jeanne because I could never eat all that food in the pot by myself. It really is an order that’s more fun to share.

Jeanne and I arrived a few minutes before noon and Gaboja Sojubang didn’t seem to be as crowded. In fact, I think there were only two other tables with guests. So we were seated promptly and menus were brought by the server right away. (I’m pretty sure it was the same young guy.)

We ordered the Boolnag Jungol or Beef and Octopus Casserole ($23.99), which is probably one of the more common Korean dishes next to bulgogi and bi bim bap. You also have the option of adding noodles so we ordered our Boolnag Jungol with ramen noodles for an additional $2.

Our mini parade of panchan dishes arrived. It was similar to the first time except this time we had boiled, marinated cold potatoes and spicy bean sprouts.

The server set up our tableside burner and not too long after that came our casserole, which was this huge bowl of food that looked so appetizing. And this time it really seemed like how it was advertised, filled with thin slices of beef, cuts of octopus, tofu, daikon, jalapeno slices and onion all in a light soup base. The only thing that was off was the ramen noodles added in. It was basically a bar of instant noodles tossed in the soup.

The idea with the casserole cooked at your table is that the food is a hearty family meal, with the ingredients partly cooked and finished off at the table. But the food really looked pretty much cooked, so Jeanne and I turned down the burner and dived in. (We did leave the noodle bar alone for a bit to soften.)

All the ingredients were nice and well prepared, but nothing special. The soup was tasty but not necessarily spicy. When we finally dug into the noodles (which were actually tricky to scoop out with a ladle without splashing on your shirt) it was like any instant noodles. As expected, the noodles got soggy as they sat in the soup while we ate our lunch.

In the end, the noodles were a bit unnecessary (especially since we were served two bowls of steamed rice with our order). The overall dish felt authentic and was filling for the two of us.

The food experience was a bit better in this second go around than my first visit, but service still was lacking. Even though the young guy got our orders quickly, he never checked in with us until he brought us our check. And I noticed the same thing with the other tables. I saw one guy get up to pour himself more tea.

Gaboja Sojubang has a high-end look but runs like the mom-and-pop shop that it truly is. The food is decent and authentic, but with such poor service and so many other Korean options in Oakland, next time I’ll probably continue to walk on by on my way to Chinatown.

Single guy rating: 2 stars (authentic and clean, but have patience)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 6

Someone’s Tail Gets Knocked Out the Gate

Previously: Zoi isn’t seasoning her mushrooms, which she believes are delicious. Spike wants to squeeze a lemon on them. There’s a whole lot of bleeping, and Zoi is gone, leaving Jennifer behind. Can their love story continue in Chicago? We find out tonight.

And in case you forget. No it’s NOT Top Model. It’s NOT Top Designer. It’s the title of … TOP CHEF.

The sunrise’s back over the Chicago skyline, but the camera does this weird slo-mo action up the steps of a Chicago brownstone, which totally doesn’t look like the brownstone the cheftestants are living in. Spike’s ears are burning because he hears the gossip that everyone thinks he should have gone home, but he says they’re all threatened by his passion and maybe his fakery.

Jennifer, not surprisingly, is bummed that Zoi’s gone but is fired up to win it for her spirit (like she’s some kind of ghost that will make a guest appearance at the finale to lift Jennifer to the title of Top Chef). And Ryan is stretching in some really odd-looking pajama bottoms. Dude, you’re from San Francisco. Way to represent.

We get a segment stretching out the fight from last week between Lisa and Dale, who were actually teammates. Lisa confronts Dale to try to work things out since they have to live together and Dale apologizes for yelling at her but stands behind the fact that Lisa’s negativity still throws off his mojo. Lisa keeps repeating “that’s your opinion,” which is really a fancy way of saying “you’re rubber and I’m glue.” They kiss up and make nice at the end but Lisa interviews that Dale can go fuck himself. Geez, that worked out well, didn’t it?

The Top Chef kitchen has turned into some pub, and there are a slew of pitchers of beer on a counter. Padma (who is wearing some odd stretchy striped sweater that’s half Waldo-inspired) introduces guest judge Koren Grieveson, head chef at the Chicago wine bar Avec. (She was recently named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs of 2008 and for you San Francisco people, she cooked under Michael Mina at Aqua. But since most people won’t know that, they get Chicago girl Stephanie to vouch for Grieveson’s kitchen creds.)

Their Quickfire Challenge is to make a dish to pair with one of the beer. (Beer and fancy food are on the upswing now in San Francisco Bay Area, but apparently not so much in Chicago last year when this was filmed given the cheftestants’ reactions.) Each cheftestant gets to taste three beers and selects one. They come up and start tasting and most of them seem to try to pick something interesting except for Spike the Faker who could give a rat’s ass and is all like, “where’s the Bud?” because they all taste the same.

The cheftestants start cooking and most of them are repeating the mantra of “keep it simple, stupid” so we see a lot of sandwiches and meat bites. Dale is blending up pretzel and it’s really turning into dust. (I would have just put them in a plastic bag and pulverized them into bits with a rolling pin.) Australian Mark hasn’t looked happy since the start of this episode and a sauce he’s mixing in the blender explodes on him right before time is called.

The tasting begins and the guest judge, Chef Grieveson, doesn’t look like she wants to be there, let alone be drinking all that beer. (Maybe it’s because it’s probably 10 in the morning. Damn those Top Chef segment producers!) In fact, Grieveson rarely says anything. So for this recap, I’m tallying how many words the guest judge actually spoke for each person.

Richard’s grilled tuna sandwich. Spoken words: 2 (“thank you”)
Andrew’s Rainbow trout with raspberry. Spoken words: 0
Dale’s roasted pork tenderloin with miso and pretzel crust. Spoken words: 2
Antonia’s miso-glazed cod. Spoken words: 2
Nikki’s citrus-marinated shrimp and cole slaw. Spoken words: 1
Stephanie’s mussels with cilantro vinaigrette. Spoken words: 0
Mark’s Juniper-spiked lamb rack with honey. Spoken words: a whopping 11! (“I can’t taste the beer but the flavors are very nice.”)
Disclaimer: Ryan made something here and I totally missed it because I was busy counting words. I guess this wasn’t a good idea after all. Don’t hold me to the word counts because apparently I’m bad when not reviewing a tape. But you get the point.
Spike’s charcuterie platter and clams. Spoken words: 2
Lisa’s bacon cheeseburger. Spoken words: 3
Jennifer’s shrimp and scallop beignets. Spoken words: 2

Chef Grieveson notes her bottom three and three favorites. And this episode the editors are especially childish because they’re continuing to fan the flames between the battling cheftestants. For example, when Grieveson says Spike’s dish wasn’t composed and united, the editors cut to Jennifer laughing out loud. And when Grieveson labels Dale’s dish as “not moist,” Lisa interviews that she’s all happy and like, “good bitch” to Dale. (Note to parents with kids wanting to grow up to be chefs: DO NOT WATCH TOP CHEF.)

Anywho, the bottom are Nikki (lack of seasoning), Spike and Dale, while the top three are Richard, Stephanie and Jennifer, with Jennifer being granted immunity. (This is when Spike interviews with some stupid remark and then does this lame, sarcastic “Go lesbians!” salute.)

Elimination challenge. It goes from Da Beers to Da Bears as Padma announces that they’re all going to a football game at Soldier Field to cook for a bunch of tailgating Bears fans. The fans will decide the top and bottom three dishes. They have two hours to prep and to learn what is a football.

Commercials. That girl in the Sun Chips commercial frolicking in the wheat field sure has a lot of freckles. That’s all.

The cheftestants run into Whole Foods to buy their ingredients, and Spike makes a mad dash to the meat section to buy up all the chicken wings. Everyone else is upset that he cornered the market on wings, so some start to rethink their plans like Dale who now goes for ribs.

Richard interviews that he’s never cooked for a tailgate party and that he likes more refined food. So he’s going to add his sophisticated twist to things by making a hamburger but calling it a pâté melt. He’s so proud of his bad self—thinking he’s such a rock star chef—that he calls himself a “wise ass.” Sigh. Richard, you don’t become a bad ass by calling yourself an ass. You just come off looking like one.

Other contestants talk about what they’re making. Australian Mark is all upset because everyone’s buying up the shrimp so he jokes, “how am I going to put the shrimp on the barbie?” And if you listen closely, Ryan says he’s not a sports guy. But the next few sound bites afterwards sound different, like his voice was dubbed in a studio from a later interview because it sounds all echo-ey. The dubbed in lines were basically Ryan saying something about how he’s more of a metrosexual and he’d rather go out and dance. It must have taken them months in editing to figure out the right line for him to say.

Back in the kitchen, everyone starts prepping their ingredients with Spike rubbing spices all over his chicken wings like crazy and Lisa beating up on a poor slab of skirt steak. Chef Tom Colicchio makes an appearance, chatting with Jennifer first about having immunity. (The editors show Spike making faces while she’s talking.) Chef Tom walks over to Antonia who’s making Jamaican jerk chicken and she says she imagines there will be a lot of “big fat men who like to drink beer” at the tailgate party so she figures they’ll like chicken. Isn’t she a sweet talker?

When Chef Tom talks to Ryan, he goes over his five-course menu that he’s creating including … bread salad (??). And when you look really close into Chef Tom’s eyes, you can see that just a wee bit of him died inside because he’s so bored at this moment with Pretty Boy Ryan. Really, Chef Tom could give one of his glazed eyes to Sandy Duncan. (Oh, bad recapper. I know. I’ve crossed the line.)

The cheftestants pack their food into plastic containers (I’m not even going to mention the product maker) and tape the refrigerators because they’re so overflowing with food. And it also ensures no one from the film crew can go in later that night to “have a snack.”

Back at the home stand, they show the cheftestants relaxing for the first time. A few of them are drinking red wine, Ryan is writing in his journal on a sofa (“Dear Diary, the people in the Midwest don’t seem to understand a metrosexual like myself.”) and Dale is doing his ironing.

Spike and Mark, in the meantime, have fired up the bubbles in the tub and are both soaking in and enjoying themselves. They try to get Lisa to join in on their “Real World” escapades, but she’s all, you’re not the right gender. Antonia walks by and is all freaked out at the sight of the two guys, calling it a “cheap porno.” Just because two men are in a tub together (both wearing board shorts, I might add) doesn’t mean it’s gay. I actually applaud Spike and Mark for being comfortable with themselves to sit in a tub together as friends, although I understand now that they’re both trying to adopt a child from Africa. (I’m kidding. Geesh.)

Commercials. That AARP commercial is so odd because did you notice it doesn’t feature one single old person? They just show kids talking about how lucky grown ups have it because they get to do things like fight Medicare for proper reimbursement or scramble for the last remaining Sunday matinee tickets at the Opera.

It’s game day and there’s a weird Bear mascot with an apron on doing some martial arts moves in front of Soldier Field. This must be a football game or a really bad premiere for the animated movie Kung Fu Panda. (In theaters June 6.) The cheftestants come running in dragging their coolers behind them and they each get a station with a grill to set up their food. Also, looks like typical Chicago weather. A bit of rain. A bit of wind. A bit of sun.

The judges all walk in wearing jerseys with the number 4 emblazoned on the front. I’m guessing it represents Season 4 of Top Chef. But since there are four of them, I guess it could also help them remember how many judges there are in case one gets lost. (Can you see it? Gail gets lost in a group of big, burly football fans and they’re like, “So pretty lady where’s the rest of the gang?” And she’ll be like, “I don’t know, but I know there’s four of us.” Hmm, I guess the number 4 could be for that very reason.) So the four include Padma, Gail, Chef Tom and Chicago chef Paul Kahan, also of Avec. (I guess Koren Grieveson was exhausted from all the talking she did in the Quickfire. Oh, and Chicago Stephanie once again has to vouch that Kahan is indeed popular and respected.)

The fans start piling up to the cheftestants and start eating food. And given that these are tailgaters, they basically love everything so far. I mean, it is free. Then Dale is getting ready to serve up his ribs when all of a sudden he’s surrounded by these really big guys in blue jerseys, and I wouldn’t know who they were if they didn’t captioned the segment. Apparently, Dale is a huge Da Bears fan and so he already knows this is Richard Dent, William “The Refrigerator” Perry (even I’ve heard of him) and Gayle Sayers.

Dale’s all in awe that he’s serving up all these Bears legends, and he’s basically shoving his tandoori-style dry ribs down the throats of these big guys. The judges give it a try too, and Gail declares it tasty (although it looks really dry to me on TV).

Spike the Faker is telling the fans around him that he’s a Bears fan as well, but they catch on to his web of deceit early on when he asks, “So when was the last time they won the Super Bowl?” (The answer would be 1986 if you were a true Bears fan.) Still, fans like his spicy hot wings with jicama pineapple slaw.

So the fans have a scorecard and they rate each cheftestant as either scoring a touchdown or fumble. Pretty Boy Ryan has a line growing in his area and he starts charming the fans to get them to help him set up. Behind his back some fans say that his food was too fancy and hard to eat at a tailgate party, which is pretty much what the judges think when they arrive.

Oh no. Andrew is wearing a helmet. And he doesn’t know how to take it off. I’m worried he’s going to hurt himself, or that a bunch of bullies are going to attack him.

Over at Australian Mark, the other cheftestants are commenting on how messy he is. And like I said, he hasn’t smiled this whole episode (except when he was in the bubble bath with Spike). He looks pretty stressed, and when Padma arrives, he drops a tong. He made New Zealand chowder and chicken skewers with a soy and onion glaze. Tom calls it an “absolute disaster” but I think partly it’s referring to Mark’s messy station and not just the food.

Nikki is being really strict about passing out her sausages with onions and bell peppers. The servings look really tiny, but she says they can come back for more if they want. Of course, she starts serving seconds and doesn’t realize the judges haven’t made a spin to her area yet. So when they do arrive, all she has are a few sorry pieces of sausage and leftover shrimp. The judges don’t seem please at all. And guest judge Chef Kahan is slamming her for buying the sausages instead of making them.

Commercials. OK, it’s official. A bunch of teenagers are writing the poll question for Bravo TV. This week’s question (which will qualify you for a chance to win a Napa food getaway) is “Who would you most want to touch in touch football? A) Padma, B) Tom, C) Yourself.” Oh. Give. Me. A Break. You know what the sad thing is? I thought Padma would be the runaway winner but Tom won by 46 percent. And it was pretty much a tie for second between Padma and “yourself.”

Judgment time. Padma asks for Antonia, Dale and Stephanie. They’re declared the fan favorites. Tom says he liked Stephanie’s pork but it might have needed just a tad more seasoning. Gail says she was worried about the rosemary mayonnaise but it turned out all right. (What is up with her and rosemary? Last week she didn’t like the rosemary used in Zoi’s mushrooms either.)

The guest judge Kahan names Dale’s ribs as the winner for their complexity and depth in flavor. He gets a Top Chef jersey and a gas grill from Webber. Dale does this weird MJ fist pump and a Sammy Sosa chest pump to the sky in his interview. He’s so street. (What’s weird is Ted Allen on his blog says something about Dale doing a crotch grab ala Michael Jackson some time during this episode. I totally missed that.)

Australian Mark, Big Hair Nikki (seriously, have you seen her up ‘do?) and Pretty Boy Ryan go in to face the judges as the fans’ least favorites. The judges harp on Nikki for not making her own sausage but when they talk to Ryan about his dessert of poached pears with crème fraiche, Ryan goes into the story about creating a dining experience and how all the fans were so sweet. But I’m pretty sure his speech was edited because it seemed to go on and on and all of a sudden it was finish, but Chef Tom had that same Sandy Duncan-glazed look in his eyes again. With Mark, they didn’t like the yakitori sauce that he put on his chicken skewers and they basically called him a pig.

When the three comes out to let the judges deliberate some more, Nikki says she thinks she’s the one to go, and I totally would be on board with that train, but Antonia asks, “did you fight?” Yeah, that’s what we need, more talking back to the judges. It’s like Antonia wants to sabotage her. Nikki also tells Stephanie that Ryan is longwinded, and Ryan looks mad for the first time this season.

When the three comes back for judgment, Tom says they couldn’t bring the passion of football to their cooking. He notes that Ryan’s food was totally inappropriate for tailgating, and even if it was, it didn’t taste good. Padma tells Ryan to pack his knives and go, and he seems really pleasant and polite, thanking all the judges. He comes out to the other cheftestants and what’s weird is that their reaction is very muted. They’re either all in shock because he’s so good and they thought Nikki should have left, or they never really liked the pretty boy.

Ryan gives a little speech about his experience and he gets mostly hugs from the guys and maybe a few from the girls. Most of the others just give a lackluster applause. Ryan is now the third San Francisco cheftestant to go in as many weeks. So it’s not looking good for the Bay Area with only Jennifer left to hold up the San Francisco culinary flag. Ryan adds that he cooks with his heart, not his hand and that he hasn’t changed and will always be the same Ryan Scott, which I’m sure his mom is happy about.

Next week: Looks like it’s a pastry challenge and of course most of the cheftestants suck at desserts. And they get a turn on the improv stage and later serve dinner to a bunch of jokers.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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Chilling Out With Ceviche

We had a warming trend this past weekend in the Bay Area, so that inspired me to make something light and cool for lunch. Since I was also visiting the Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley, I decided to make ceviche for the first time at home. (It’s a dish I like to order at restaurants but never make at home because you have to make sure you get super fresh fish.)

Ceviche is a raw fish dish popular in Latin America, often made by fishermen on their boats by simply cutting up the fresh fish and “cooking” it with citrus juice, usually limes. Today it’s made with a variety of seafood, including scallops and shrimp. I fell in love with ceviche after eating it at Limon, my favorite Peruvian restaurant in San Francisco.

Limon has a particular ceviche dish that uses a chili-infused cream, which I thought was so seductively rich. So I decided to make something similar with my fresh fish.

At the Tokyo Fish Market, next to the sashimi-grade yellowfin tuna and hamachi, was this small sliver of Kona Kampachi from the Big Island of Hawaii. I’ve eaten Kona Kampachi at numerous restaurants, and I’ve mentioned that it’s now becoming the ahi tuna of ’08. Everyone’s serving this sustainable fish from Hawaii, and oftentimes raw.

It’s consider sustainable because the producers of the fish, a company called Kona Blue, which started in 2001, believes that farming this fatty Hawaiian yellowtail will reduce the desire for other fish species that are being depleted from over-fishing. Kona Blue also practices good farming methods, including raising the fish 200 feet deep in the ocean off the Kona Coast so that the farming doesn’t disturb the rest of the ocean dynamics. (You can learn more about Kona Blue’s Kona Kampachi on its Web site.)

I started looking for Kona Kampachi at my local grocery stores after trying it for the first time at a San Francisco restaurant. It’s fatty just like salmon, but without the controversy over “color-added.” Even though it’s served at almost all the hip restaurants in town, I couldn’t find it at any of the markets I visited (including Whole Foods). When I would ask for it, everyone kept looking at me like I didn’t know what I was looking for and kept asking me if I meant “hamachi”? Um, no.

So it was like finding a treasure after a long hunt when I saw it sold at the Tokyo Fish Market. (I later found out that it’s also sometimes available at Bristol Farms.) It was selling for $19.95 a pound, so not your everyday fish. But it’s such a luxurious fish to have now and then. It was so fatty that when I was making the ceviche, I felt like the fish was coated with olive oil. So you can just imagine what it was like when I added a touch of cream! Enjoy!

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Kampachi Ceviche en Crema

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:
6 oz. Kona Kampachi, sliced into bite-sized pieces or tiny chunks
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
1 habanero chili, seeded and minced
juice from three limes
1 t sea salt
¼ cup heavy cream
¼ cup cilantro, finely chopped

Cut the Kampachi into slices or chunks, depending on your preference. Rinse lightly in a bowl filled with chilled water. Drain in colander and let air dry.

Slice onions thinly and place in bowl of chilled water for a few minutes. In a non-reactive bowl, mix kampachi pieces with salt, chili and onion. Then add lime juice and let sit for 10 minutes to let the fish get a bit opaque in color around the edges. Add cilantro and cream and toss. Serve immediately with roasted or grilled corn. (To make it more Peruvian, you can also serve it with yam.)

Makes two servings.

Pair with a glass of crisp Chenin Blanc or something bubbly like Cava.

TIP: If you can’t find Kona Kampachi in your local fish market, you can substitute with any other white fish. I see a lot of recipes recommending tilapia, which is easier to find. Just make sure you buy really fresh fish, so shop at a place you trust. Also, try experimenting with other raw seafood, such as making a mix of fish, scallops and shrimp.

PERUVIAN HOT: A more traditional Peruvian ceviche would actually use the rocoto hot pepper. But it’s not easy to find so I use the habanero, which I also like because of the tiny specks of orange in the dish.

TART OR NOT: Sometimes lime can be a bit tart for some people. So if you'd like to soften the sharpness of lime, you can maybe create a combo of two limes and one lemon or a tangerine. Just add your favorite citrus that might lean on the sweet side to counter the tartness of limes.

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Something’s Fishy … But in a Good Way: Tokyo Fish Market

Berkeley’s Tokyo Fish Market is a real food destination. And I’m not just saying that because it took me a good 45-minute bus ride (with one transfer) to get there. This Japanese-American institution is out there on its own on San Pablo Avenue but still attracts a loyal following after more than 45 years in business.

One block north of the REI store, the Tokyo Fish Market offers an abundance of fresh fish, Japanese food products and snacks, and fresh fruits and vegetables. From the street you’ll see a small, red-brick shack with the store name on the side, but that’s the old Tokyo Fish Market (and now its gift shop). About 2½ years ago, the owners expanded into a garage warehouse in the back so everything now is big and new.

Last Saturday, I made my first trip to the market looking for some high-quality fish. It’s a good thing I caught the bus because parking looks horrendous. I got there at mid-morning, so not sure if I missed the early morning rush or I beat it because the store wasn’t very packed.

Tokyo Fish Market is more than just fish, although it really shines in that area. (More on that later.) It’s really a Japanese supermarket selling a variety of goods, including an assortment or rice and sake, miso, Japanese crackers and snacks, fresh mochi from Los Angeles, frozen foods (including a section of Hawaiian goodies) and a grocery section with many organic fruits and vegetables.

Near the entrance, there’s also a deli section that sells bento—the Japanese boxed lunches. They have a variety of combinations, many featuring the fish sold there. There’s also a section of pickled and marinated foods like poke and kazunoku (salted herring). Of course, there’s a sushi counter.

The fish counter was just amazing. It ranged from fillets of halibut, ono, sea bass and butterfish to whole fishes like tai snapper, sand dabs and monkfish. There’s a live crab tank (selling for $6.95 a pound right now since we’re near the end of the season) and a refrigerated section of more fish-related foods like ceviche.

But I was staring at the center where the Tokyo Fish Market featured chunks of sashimi-grade fish, including ruby red blocks of yellow fin tuna and the pale pink hamachi. There were also more exotic sashimi ingredients like mirugai (that clam that looks like an elephant’s trunk) and fresh abalone.

On Saturday, the fish counter seemed to be staffed by a bunch of college-aged students. All perfectly nice and helpful, but not whom I would call my local fishmonger. I guess a lot of the old-timers just work on the weekdays.

Side note: I walked into the gift shop and it was super quiet with no one inside. They were selling mostly Japanese housewares from sushi bamboo mats to pottery to kid toys to cookbooks. Ideally the owners wanted to tear down the front shop and make more room for parking but the city of Berkeley deemed the red-brick building a historic landmark. Such is the life of an institution.

I left the market with a bunch of grocery items and a cut of sashimi-grade Kona Kampachi, a farm-raised fish from the Big Island of Hawaii. (Check back tomorrow to see how I prepared it.) My only wish is that Tokyo Fish Market is walkable from where I live. For now, it’ll be my occasional special trips for fresh fish and more.








Tokyo Fish Market, 1220 San Pablo Ave. (at Gilman), Berkeley. PH: 510.524.7243. Open Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Sundays.

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A Chocolate Affair to Remember

On an unseasonably warm Sunday in San Francisco, chocolate oozed and people sweated at the 2nd Annual International Chocolate Salon in Fort Mason near the Marina. Even though I’m not one of those crazy-for-chocolates people, I had so much fun last year that I decided to return again this year.

Last year the Chocolate Salon was over two days but this year it was shrunk to just one day. (I bet they probably got a lot of pleas from vendors who were overwhelmed from having to give out free chocolates for two days.) So I decided to get there early yesterday because I worried it’ll be crazy packing two-days of people into one day. There were already mass confusion when I arrived because no one knew which line was for tickets and which was will call. When it was finally clarified, the will call line (I pre-ordered my ticket online) was running slower than the ticket sales line. You can see the mass confusion in the photo above.

I give thumbs down to the poor organization by TasteTV, who sponsored and organized the event. They could have easily added one more person to check the names of people in the will call line. Or at least offered up a few pieces of chocolates for those of us waiting in line.

But most people in line were pretty considerate and pleasant. I think because they were all dreaming of the chocolates in store for them inside.

Once I got in and adjusted to the stifling air from the warm day and crowded room, I started talking to the vendors and snapping shots. Here are some of the highlights of the tables I visited and the chocolates I tasted.

The first table I saw was Schoggi, the Swiss chocolate maker who opened a store at Yerba Buena Lane in SOMA. They were offering up tastings of this dried orange dipped in white chocolate and milk chocolate. I like oranges, but not dried because the acidity is often too intense to eat alone. Dipping them in chocolate didn’t help. It didn’t taste awful, but it wasn’t a pleasant first taste. Luckily there were 30 more vendors to try.

I bumped into a friend who recommended I try the E. Guittard chocolates, the artisan line of chocolates made by the family-owned Guittard Chocolates of Burlingame. I’d never heard of Guittard Chocolates, but its E. Guittard line of chocolates uses all-natural ingredients. I tried the bittersweet and white chocolates and while they were nice, I didn’t find anything special about them. There was no rich depth or complexity in the flavors.

I knew I could count on some good chocolates at my favorite Poco Dolce of San Francisco, which I first discovered at last year’s Chocolate Salon. This year’s table was only offering three tastings from these small canisters. And I had to wait a bit because I felt like I was surrounded by a lot of chocolate-tasting newbies who wanted to take a bite and then stand in front of the samples contemplating the flavor. PUH-lease, take your bite and then move to the side. Anywho, I was calmed by Poco Dolce’s burnt caramel with fleur de sel. I left with an 8-piece box of their mixed flavors, which was $3 cheaper than the retail price at stores like Whole Foods. I’m going to have such a good week trying one flavor a night. ;-)

Among some of the first-time presenters at the Salon this year was this chocolate from Los Angeles called Marti Chocolatt. It’s made by a Filipino-American who uses her background to create flavors like Jasmine citron, mango caramel or buko pandan. Marti Chocolatt was experiencing the first-time vendor shock when all the samples they put out for display were gobbled up by guests. And it wasn’t even noon. So when I arrived, they were in panic mode trying to cut up more pieces. They were nice enough to cut me a piece of the mango (which was too sweet for me) and the banana (which was an interesting flavor but kind of unusual). All the chocolates by Tonet Tibay are ganache-like, so pretty much truffles.

I dropped by the Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates table to say hello to owner and chef Chris, who I interviewed for my blog when he opened his store in Hayes Valley earlier this year. Chris says he’s still flying back and forth every other week between San Francisco and his home in Kansas City, Missouri, to make sure the store is running smoothly. His table definitely had the most beautiful chocolates on display, and he was offering samples of his Aztec chili-infused chocolates.

This is Dennis Kearney, the chocolatier behind Coco Delice Fine Chocolates, which is produced in Oakland. His chocolates have a French influence, so they’re ganache-filled candy using darker chocolates. Chef Dennis has been making his chocolates for about two and a half years and they’re mostly sold online and at stores like Whole Foods, The Pasta Shop and Bittersweet Café. One thing I liked about Coco Delice is its environmental consciousness. Most of their ingredients are purchased locally near their production facility in the Bay Area and their packaging is from recycled materials. Even their sample containers at the Salon were made from biodegradable plastic.

One of Coco Delice’s chocolates I tried was this Peanut Butter Cup. I feel like peanut butter is this year’s trend in chocolates, taking over from last year’s trend of salted caramel topped with sea salt. I saw a few tables that were offering up peanut butter-based chocolates. The flavor reminds me of my favorite candy growing up, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Coco Delice’s version comes very close in matching the flavor of Reese’s but with a more creamy texture.

Along with regular chocolates, there were a few specialty items such as this body frosting sold by Chocoholics Divine Desserts, a family-run business in the Central Valley. The body frosting is actually a rich chocolate that you apply on your body with a brush. The sampling I tried was surprisingly good, a nice rich chocolate taste. And no, I didn’t lick it off someone’s body. They gave out samplings in little plastic spoons.

Chuao Chocolatier is from the San Diego area and was started by a couple of brothers from Venezuela. So all the chocolates are from Venezuela, which has some of the best dark chocolates. The brothers infused the chocolates with a creamy ganache in a variety of flavors like Cabernet Sauvignon and Earl Grey. They were providing samples in these leaf-shaped mini-candy nibbles. While I liked the chocolate shell, I thought the ganache filling was too sweet.

Cosmic Chocolates is another Oakland-based chocolate maker and their chocolates are always really wild in color. They’re the ones who were selling the Obama chocolates with the face of the Democratic presidential candidate applied on top. It had a mix of ingredients but I couldn’t remember them all; I just remember it had espresso. So I joked that meant Obama had a lot of energy, but they didn’t get it. I also tried their dulce de leche flavor they were sampling and it was nice with a slight spicy ganache filling. But you know, at this point I was sampling so many chocolates I think some of the flavors were mixing together.

Here’s the Earl Grey truffles being sampled at the XOX Truffles table. San Francisco-based XOX has a store in North Beach and the flavors are all the creation of Chef Jean-Marc Gorce, formerly of Fringale Restaurant. The Earl Grey truffle was last year’s popular flavor at the Chocolate Salon and I can see why. It had a definite bergamot flavor, but not overtly sweet. They were melt-in-your mouth good but I find truffles with the dusted coating a challenge to eat. I also tried the lemon-ginger truffle, which was good but not as good as the Earl Grey.

The most colorful booth was this one by Sacred Chocolates of San Rafael. The guy in the psychedelic costume (OK, maybe it’s not a costume to him) is Steve Adler, the founder and chocolate maker of Sacred Chocolates. He makes all his chocolates raw, meaning he doesn’t cook the cocoa bean and even includes the skin. All the beans are organic. I tried it. I didn’t like it. But I give him credit for showing up in his business suit.

This is the Raspberry Chambord truffle from Moonstruck Chocolates, which has several chocolate cafes around the country including one in San Francisco’s Marina district and another in Walnut Creek. This was another chocolate that was too sweet for me. I also tried their Bailey Irish Cream truffle and it was a little better, not as sweet but creamy. (Although it didn’t taste like Bailey Irish Cream.)

Here’s the table for the San Francisco Toffee Company. Their candy reminds me a lot like Almond Rocha, which is that caramel brittle with the almond bits and chocolate coating. I don’t think Almond Rocha exists anymore, but if you have a craving for it, the San Francisco Toffee Co.’s version is pretty much a classier version of this childhood favorite. (What’s funny is the company started in San Francisco but now operates out of Seal Beach. I think they said they’re trying to make their way back to San Francisco.)

One of my favorite discoveries this year at the Chocolate Salon is the chocolates from Jade Chocolates, a small chocolate maker that just started this year. The owner and chocolate maker, Mindy Fong, gets dried mango from the Philippines and hand-dips them in chocolate. But she doesn’t stop there. She then creates them into these chocolate orchid creations. I thought the mango-dipped chocolates were all right, but what really got me were her genmai chocolate bars.

BTW, I took the above photo after I got home because a lot of my photos from the Salon were a bit shaky. I think I was all hopped up on sugar. I bought two of Mindy’s Genmai chocolate bars because it was such an interesting candy. I love genmai cha, which is the Japanese green tea with toasted brown rice. Mindy mixes the tea with the chocolate, so you get a candy bar with little bits of toasted brown rice. It reminds me of an Asian version of a Nestle Crunch. So good. Right now, Mindy’s hand-made (and hand-wrapped) chocolates are only sold online and at select stores around the Bay Area such as The Pasta Shop, Bi-Rite Market and Leland Tea Company.

The perennial favorite table at the Chocolate Salon is Charles Chocolates of Emeryville. This year Charles Chocolates offered up this peanut butter chocolate butterfly, which I think was the best version of the peanut butter chocolate I tasted at the salon. The peanut butter wasn’t overly strong and it had a nice nutty crunch to it. I loved it. They also had a papaya pate de fruit, which was nice and sweet but lacked a papaya essence. (And I should know since I ate lots of papaya growing up in Hawaii.)

Here’s Charles Siegel, the man behind Charles Chocolates, answering questions from the crowd.

So another year, another chocolate binge. Next year Taste TV is talking about finding a bigger space (um, you think?) but they’re also talking about raising the $20 admission price because of the popularity. I hope not. This is a chance for a lot of small, local chocolatiers to share their goods with a diverse audience, and it’ll be too bad to see their audience shrink because of economic forces. Chocolate for the people!

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Coming Up: Chocolates + Ceviche

I'm enjoying the last few hours of this surprisingly summer weekend in the San Francisco Bay Area. But once I sit down and process all the photos I took in the last few days, this is what you can expect on my blog in the coming days:

Crazy for Chocolates, Part 2: The Chocolate Salon took place again in San Francisco, and I braved the crazy crowds again to bring you a peek at some of the gourmet chocolates being made. Check back tomorrow night for a rundown of what I loved and hated at this second annual chocolate lovers' paradise. (The photo above is from the Salon. And yes, it's Obama chocolates. Find out which chocolatier is endorsing Sen. Obama.)

Something's Fishy: I visit for the first time the wonderful Tokyo Fish Market. No, it's not in Japan but nearby in Berkeley. It took a bit of a bus ride for me to get to this fresh fish market, but it was worth it.

Home-made Ceviche: Like I said, it was hot this weekend so that means light dining. So check back for my recipe for ceviche, using fish I got at, of course, the Tokyo Fish Market. Perfect for the summer. Did I say summer? Yowza. It's hot here.

Of course, I'll be posting the lastest recap of Top Chef. This week's episode looks like a tailgate party with Da Bears. As it stands, looks like it's anyone's game! And see what happens when I get Korean for lunch in this week's Dish on Dining.

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Childhood Dishes: Spaghetti and Meatball

All the fancy eating lately got me hungry for the basics. These are often simple dishes from your childhood.

But when I think of what I ate growing up, they were mostly Chinese-style steamed chickens or fish and a lot of boiled green Chinese broccoli. This is what my mom made. Then there were times when my dad cooked. It wasn’t very often, but it would be dishes he learned as a bachelor. So things like meatloaf, turkey, stew or spaghetti.

I got a craving for spaghetti lately so I purchased—for the first time in a long while—a packet of Barilla thick spaghetti. Yeah, not just spaghetti, it was the thick spaghetti. I haven’t eaten this thick, long pasta for a long time because when I got older I discovered angel hair pasta or capellini and fell in love with that. That’s usually what I made with my basic tomato-meat sauce.

But there’s something about the thick, stringy spaghetti that just makes you think of being a kid. Maybe it’s because of the slurping you have to do to get it all in your mouth, or the mess it often makes because of it. Anywho, I used the same recipe I printed earlier for lamb meatballs and a basic tomato sauce here. The only change was I made the meatballs using a blend of lamb and buffalo meat. Yum.

You can follow the recipe, and the only thing you need to add is a pound of dried thick spaghetti. I dare you to eat it without slurping. Enjoy!

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 5

Oh Just Make the F*@%ing Butternut Squash Soup Already!

Previously on Top Chef: The cheftestants went to the movies, and Antonia and Zoi’s “Talk to Her”-inspired dish wasn’t talking to the judges. Still, it was the team of Spike and Manuel that had poor box office reactions when their “Good Morning Vietnam” was more like “So Long Manuel.”

Yada, yada, French Alps, yada yada, Glad, yada, yada … and the title of TOP CHEF.

This week’s episode is as tense as those commute-hour riders on the L train. What happened to the pretty sunrise over the water? Times they are a changin’. Antonia says being in the bottom last week felt like shit. Zoi feels like she got jacked. Jennifer (Zoi’s life partner) thinks it’s ridiculous that the judges don’t see how talented Zoi is. And Ryan catches us up by saying two guys left and two girls left, so it’s time for somebody else to go. My guess is that it will be either a girl or a guy, or maybe a guy or a girl. What do you think Ryan? I’m glad he’s paying attention to how the game works.

The cheftestants arrive at the Top Chef kitchen to find Padma with a kind of long-haired Ming Tsai. (I love Chef Tsai’s show on PBS. He’s always really good about talking about wine pairing with his Asian-inspired dishes.) Lisa is also a fan of Tsai’s Asian fusion cooking, so she’s grinning from ear to ear.

Padma says the Quickfire Challenge is all about taste, so you know this is the episode where they have to eat stuff blindfolded and guess what it is. But the producers are mixing it up this year. Padma says a chef needs to be able to be sensitive to good quality ingredients, so they’ll be given pairs of ingredients and the cheftestants have to say which is the higher quality (or basically the one with the higher price tag).

Antonia’s all psyched because she says she would watch this at home every year and would always win this challenge. Hmm, I don’t think this is a game you can play along at home, Antonia, unless you have the patent to taste-vision that I’m unaware of?

So they do a run through of all the cheftestants and linger on Ryan and Stephanie who starts off, but they don’t show every item they taste so it’s hard to really recap what happened, or to even get a sense of who got how many questions correct. They tasted things like maple syrup, bacon, crab (yum), soy sauce, sake, and caviar. I’m sure there were more ingredients that were taste tested but this Quickfire was lightning quick on the editing.

In the end, Stephanie had the lowest score with six out of 15 correct, while the runners-up were Ryan and Jennifer, who both got 11 out of 15 correct. The winner with 12 out of 15 correct is our home viewer Antonia. She has immunity and, apparently, the patent to taste-vision. Woah.

Elimination challenge. Padma says the cheftestants will be cooking for the Meals on Wheels Chicago fund-raiser. But this time the fund-raiser isn’t leaving everything to these novices. Celebrity chefs are doing the main courses, but the cheftestants will have to come up with the first course, which is some pressure because it’ll set the tone for the rest of the dinner.

They’re going to work in four teams representing one of the four elements: earth, water, fire and air. (They should have knocked off water and just go with Earth, Wind and Fire. LOL.) The cheftestants draw knives to see which team they’ll get, and Australian Mark says “water” in this really funny accent. WAH-tah. Kind of like, “Sir, can you spare me a cup of WAH-tah?” (That was my Oliver Twist impression if you didn’t get it.)

They just have 15 minutes to plan their menu. Andrew, Mark and Richard are the water team, and already King Richard is taking the lead again. Team Air is Jennifer, Ryan and Nikki, so they’re thinking some kind of poultry because birds, you know, fly in the air. Spike, Zoi and Antonia is earth and Spike suggests butternut squash soup because, I guess, it’s earthy? Antonia doesn’t want to spend all her $500 just making soup, so she scoffs at that suggestion. Spike is annoyed because he thinks since Antonia has immunity, she shouldn’t be so bossy and should step aside for the others since this challenge will mean more to them.

Playing with fire is the team of Stephanie, Dale and Lisa. This group is all over the place, but really the editing just basically shows Dale making suggestions, Lisa knocking them down, and Stephanie looking stressed as usual. Dale wants to make a tartare. Lisa says no. Dale wants to make deviled eggs to play with the fiery hell theme. Lisa thinks deviled eggs are boring. Dale thinks Lisa’s a negative person. Lisa says she’s not.

Commercials. Gosh, I haven’t seen a movie in a long while. That “The Forbidden Kingdom” with martial arts masters Jet Li and Jackie Chan looks pretty hot. I love those costumed martial arts flicks, although is Jackie Chan wearing dreadlocks?

The cheftestants go to Whole Foods to shop for ingredients, but many of them are still figuring out their dishes on the spot. This doesn’t really bode well for the whole evening. Richard gets this brilliant idea to cook fish in—oh my, you can’t believe it—water. Not WAH-tah, just water. Can’t you just stand it? (Really, he’s going to do a sous vide method.)

Team Earth decides to do a carpaccio because Antonia says the dish should be all about quality. I’m thinking how hard is it going to be to slice a piece of beef? Spike isn’t enjoying it either and he brings up the suggestion of again, possibly, maybe in a shot glass, putting a shot of butternut squash soup on the plate with the carpaccio. Antonia and Stephanie don’t think it’ll go well with the meat.

Dale overhears that Team Earth is doing carpaccio, and I guess he was going to have a red-hot beef with his deviled eggs, so Team Fire starts to breakdown with Lisa stressing out over the ingredients and concept and Dale stressing over Lisa’s negativity. Stephanie, who is an expert at being stressed so in comparison she seems like the calmest of the three, suggests doing a grilled shrimp with fiery spices. Lisa goes for this idea because she wanted to add some Asian influence to the dish to kiss up to guest judge Tsai.

The day of the elimination challenge, the cheftestants arrive at the kitchen of the old Marshall Field’s building. I don’t really know this building, but Australian Mark says you could fit Yankees Stadium in the kitchen. OK, maybe the old Yankees Stadium. I’m sure the new one will be much bigger.

Team Earth is prepping their ingredients, which they say are all earthy tasting: sunchokes, mushrooms, beef. Spike starts slicing the beef fillets, but he’s still not enthusiastic and brings up, yet again, how he thinks they should have made the butternut squash soup instead. Enough already with the soup. I love butternut squash soup, but come on. Get with the program already!

Team Fire is working on their grilled prawns and bacon, and Lisa is really going on an on about how she’s preparing the bacon. She layers them on a roasting pan with all the fat on the same side with just the slightest bit of overlap. She says this way they’re shrivel up and do something. I wasn’t really paying attention because I’m not obsessive compulsive with my bacon like how apparently Lisa is.

Like I said, there’s a lot of tension in this episode, so it’s not really fun watching all of them rush to cook and pretty much making some visible mistakes that I can guess will be an issue at Judges’ Table. The only light moment comes when Jennifer of Team Air (Jordan) is busy cooking the duck and she wants them golden brown. When she pulls them out, she’s all “nice legs” and Pretty Boy Ryan standing nearby says “thanks.” (Small chuckle, I admit, in a very tense episode.)

The rest of the segment just falls into a lot of swearing and bleeping as Lisa gets mad at Nikki (who’s not on her team but I guess is taking up space on the stovetop) and that sets her off and Dale interviews that he doesn’t want to be around that fucking attitude. Lisa says she’s honored to wear the title of Top Bitch.

Tom Collichio makes a visit to this lovely day in the kitchen and asks Spike how he feels working on his team with two girls, and this is where I believe Spike is in this reality show for the celebritydom rather than to hone his cheffing skills because he puts on a big smile and says “I love it.” What a liar. He is now on my shit list. I can’t stand fakers like that.

Chef Tom checks up on Team Water and Richard is all excited about his “cooking fish in water” plan. Really what he’s doing is the sous vide technique of cooking the salmon fillets in plastic bags in tank of temperature-controlled water. I’ve said it before, I hate the sous vide trend. Sure, it makes food tender but they look like raw meat. You know who else doesn’t like sous vide? Chef Tom. He doesn’t say it but I can see it on his face. He’s giving Richard that “What are you talkin’ about Willis?” look. Richard feels the cold Chicago wind blowing up his pants because he says “The Richard Blasé charm is wearing off” on Chef Tom.

Chef Tom later interviews that he thinks Nikki, Jennifer and Ryan don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on their duck plate, he hopes Team Fire’s shrimp dish is not too spicy, and Richard is clearly having too much fun for a mad scientist and may be too overconfident.

Commercials. Another movie preview. Doesn’t that “Made of Honor” look like the male version of “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? But it’s really “McDreamy’s Best Friend’s Wedding.”

The cheftestants plating their dishes as people start arriving for the fund-raiser. I wonder how much were the tickets because those are some swanky attire. Andrew asks Richard if they should start plating their salmon dish, but Richard doesn’t want it to be cold when it arrives at the table. Then we get into the issue of Scale Mania.

Andrew spots a few fish scales on the fillets and all chefs know that’s a sin in the kitchen to have scales on a plate. (Me, I don’t really care since I rarely eat the skin.) Richard says he tried to catch them all but he’ll keep an eye out for any scales, but the way he’s stressing out, I doubt it. Andrew says leaving scales on a plate is like having the fish head still on. Yum.

The servers come to start taking the dishes and Spike feels Zoi’s mushrooms are under-seasoned. She thinks they’re fine. I think this is like a flashback of Nimma from Episode 1. Where’s the salt?

First up is the sous-vide Salmon with Parsnip Puree and Watercress Salad. Andrew made his faux caviar again from tapioca as a garnish. The judges take their first bite and already Ming Tsai is talking about the scales. Tom says some things should not be sous vide. So far, looks like Team Water is really swimming upstream.

Next is Team Fire’s Grilled Shrimp with Pickled Chili Salad. Padma likes the spice of the shrimp, and look, there’s that woman from La Brea Bakery in LA, Nancy Silverton. I love her bread. She thinks the shrimp is fiery too, which matches the team’s element.

Team Air serves up their Duck Breast with Citrus Salad and a Pomegranate aperitif. Everyone’s complaining about the fatty duck skin and Chef Ming says they need to score the skin to help render the fat. Oh. My. Gawd. These chefs seem to be missing all the elementary steps of cooking. Not seasoning right. Not cleaning off the scales. Not scoring the skin. So far, Season 4 not looking like a group of Top Chefs.

BTW, Chef Silverton isn’t a fan of the shot drinks on the side, and neither is Chef Tom. Don’t they watch Iron Chef America? They always serve liquor as a side to bribe the judges. I guess these judges aren’t falling for that.

Finally the last of the starter dishes comes from Team Earth with its beef carpaccio and mushrooms salad. Why is Ming eating from Gail’s plate? Chef Tom feels like it’s bland. He says they’re earthy ingredients but there’s nothing earthy about it. Chef Ming says they should have topped it with a sprinkle of fleur de sel. The camera cuts to some of the guests and one guy looks like he’s spitting out the meat onto the plate. I guess he's ... recycling?

Everyone seems to love the spicy shrimp, and Chef Ming is still stuck on the scales. No one’s excited about Air’s dish, and Chef Tom is down on the carpaccio.

In the kitchen, Lisa is very zen because she suggests her group burn their fire sign for good luck. As the card burns, they may get good luck or Team Fire may go up in flames.

Commercials. Those GNC vita packs look just like condom packets. And that commercial is so aware of that. See, watch them seductively put those vitamins into their mouths. Oh my. ... What was I talking about?

Judge’s table. Padma comes in asking for just Team Fire, and only them. Wow, this episode’s cooking must have sucked. You can tell Dale knows they’re the winners as he’s walking in because he’s totally smiling while the other girls are serious. But they start smiling too after Padma lets them know they’re the favorite dish.

The judges asks some questions, but it’s mostly to find out who did what. You can tell they’re trying to figure out who should be named the individual winner. And no wonder. The winning chef gets a trip to Italy (to some town that I couldn’t understand the name). Chef Ming announces the winner, and he gives it to Lisa for her OCD-bacon component in the dish. Oooh, Dale is soooo jealous. You know how I can tell? Because he said so.

Lisa sends in the Earth and Water teams. Jennifer stares at Zoi in shocked that her girl could be in the bottom. You know, it’s not like unfamiliar ground, so I don’t know why she’s so surprised.

Padma tells the teams that their dishes sucked, and they start to asks the questions to assign blame. Richard falls on his sword, admitting that he cooked the scaley salmon. Tom adds that he’s not a fan of sous vide for salmon. Andrew did the tapioca and Gail felt it needed flavor, even though the judges loved it last week when he made it in that other dish. Mark made the parsnip puree and the judges felt it didn’t complement the dish.

For the Earth team, ChefTom says the entire dish was bland from start to finish. Ming says every element needed more seasoning. Zoi says she doesn’t have a light hand when it comes to seasoning, but then says that she didn’t want to overpower the meat. Gail hated the rosemary with the mushrooms that Zoi made, and Spike says he would have added lemon to the mushrooms.

Then Spike brings up again that he wanted to make butternut squash soup, and adding fuel to the fire, Chef Ming says that would have been a brilliant idea. Spike is all, I told you so. (And adding more to his acting gig, Spike says he should have been an asshole but he was too nice and took a backseat. Yeah, backseat faker.)

The judges discuss the dish some more but don’t really add anything new. Chef Tom is back to his old cranky self because he says he would send both Spike and Zoi home because they were so bad. But you know that’s such a veiled threat because in previous shows he said before “they all should go home” and he never does because the producers would slap him back in line.

Judgment. Tom says the judges agreed with the diners who voted the Earth Team as the worst dish. Padma sends Zoi and her knives packing. The first person she hugs is Spike, but I think it’s more a proximity thing.

So you think that would be it as they play the sad goodbye music and Zoi talks about how she really wasn’t into competing but just wants to cook. Then she leaves.

And everything gets quiet as they cut back to the storeroom and the cheftestants are all still in shock with Zoi gone. You can tell some people really felt Zoi had a lot of talent, but then I wonder who they thought should have gone? Spike?

Of course, you know who’s mad. Jennifer. She is pissed. I guess I would be in her shoes. Which is probably why spouses and partners shouldn’t be on the show together because, really, how impartial can they be? Anywho, Spike gets into it with Antonia saying she had immunity and should have let them make the damn butternut squash soup. Antonia says he should have spoken up for himself, and really in the end she would have made the soup (although I don’t remember her really conceding that).

Then Dale wants a piece of the stewing and he tries to jump in to defend Zoi while Lisa’s all: “Dale, X-nay on the commenting.” Which totally blows him up because’s he all, WTF you can go around the last 60 minutes swearing and cursing and the one time I want to swear you tell me to shut it. This would be such a dramatic segment of the episode if I really knew what they were fighting about. Anyway, the only thing that gets the short end of this fight is the poor chair that’s slung by Jennifer. And … SCENE.

Next week: Dale is tired of Lisa’s constant negativity and tells it to her face, Jennifer is fighting on for the memory of her Zoi, everyone’s grilling, Ryan’s not a sports fan, and Spike and Mark is in some cheap porno.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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Feed The Economy

Soon you'll be receiving your federal rebate to help stimulate the economy. What are you going to do with yours?

Awhile back someone asked me to talk about what kind of cooking equipment I use. I've mentioned some in the past in various posts, but now you can get a good idea by looking at "My Favorites" at Amazon.com. I've made some recommendations in the column to the right. I'm listing products that I've either owned and tried or those I would really want to have. I give a short little review, too. You're welcome.

If you want to go shopping at Amazon.com, by clicking via my list on the right you'll also be supporting this blog since I'm now an Amazon associate and I receive a referral commission. (PUH-lease, it's just a few pennies, just like those Google Ads. Please don't forget to click. You know, every penny adds up.)

Want to start small? Well, I recommend you consider getting the above beautiful water bottle by Sigg. I have a similar one and I love it. I use it at work to keep water at my desk, and every time I'm walking to the kitchen to refill my bottle, co-workers always look at my bottle as I'm walking by checking out the design. (Or maybe they're looking at the wrinkle in my pants leg? Hmmm....)

Having this bottle will mean you don't need to buy those plastic, one-time use bottled water that's now overloading our landfills. Just like the restaurants in San Francisco that's leading the trend in getting rid of bottled water on the menu, you can do the same at your home by buying one of these beautifully designed Swiss-made bottles at Amazon.com. Just be sure to buy it by clicking on the right. ;-)

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Dish on Dining: Coi

The High Price of Eating With All Your Senses
373 Broadway, San Francisco
North Beach neighborhood
PH: 415.393.9000
Dinner, Tues.–Sat., 6–10 p.m.
Reservations recommended, major credit cards accepted
www.coirestaurant.com

Daniel Patterson’s Coi, which celebrates its two-year anniversary this month, has been mentioned by several reviewers as one of the top restaurants in the country, not just San Francisco. But it’s a fine-dining restaurant, which means it’s pricey and reserved mostly for San Francisco’s power diners or special-occasion eaters like me.

So that’s how I ended up at Coi (pronounced “kwa”) last week for a special splurge dinner in recognition of getting another year older. (You know, the older you get, the bigger the celebration!)

Patterson, who rose to fame with his previous restaurant Elisabeth Daniel that he owned with his then wife, has chosen a smaller location in an unusual strip of Broadway next door to one of those adult entertainment showcases. The entrance leads you right into the quiet lounge, with its brown interiors and shaggy white pillows.

As the Single Guy and a solo diner this evening, this is where I was relegated to for my meal, which was a bit of a disappointment because when I made my reservations I was told that there wouldn’t be a problem getting a table in the main dining room. The lounge was perfectly fine, and the tasting menu is available there as well. But I had heard the lighting in the main room was brighter than the lounge, so my apologies for the yellow-tinted photos to come. (If you want to get a peek at the restaurant’s interiors, including the main dining room, you should check out these photos on Coi’s Web site.)

Like I said, you can order Patterson’s 11-course tasting menu at the lounge for $120. Or you can order items from the tasting menu ala carte, with the pricing at about $9 for the starter items and $15 for what they consider the “entrée” items. Keep in mind, even though you order ala carte from the tasting menu, the portions don’t get any bigger. So you’re better off getting the tasting menu. There’s also a lounge menu with popular items like the udon noodles, but from what I could see from my neighbors, the portion size wasn’t much bigger. Overall, it’s a very French approach to plating.

I feel at this point I should address the pink elephant in the room, which I’ve never seen raised in the mainstream reviews I’ve read on Coi. No, there wasn’t really a pink elephant in the lounge, although that might have liven up the place. I’m talking about the cost of the tasting menu and the portion sizes.

What is a fair price for a tasting menu of 11 courses? Some may say $120 (which is a recent markup from the Web site’s stated $115) is a fair price to be tantalized by Patterson’s innovative cooking. But when courses come out the size of quarters (you’ll see below that one course was just a 1.5 inch-square piece of cheese), then I wonder if this borders on price gouging. Sure, the ingredients might be expensive, but really, $120 (not including tax and tip)?

I struggled with this issue after my dinner and I’m still conflicted as I write this review about whether I felt like I had a satisfying meal for the money. So I did want to bring this up because I don’t want people going to Coi on my recommendation and then feeling cheated if they felt like they overpaid.

I would say you should try the tasting menu at Coi if you fall under one of the following categories:

A) People have told you in the past that “you eat like a bird.”
B) You believe the Barbara Walters’ special that says you can live to 150 if you eat smaller portions.
C) You believe trying new tastes under the master hand of a great chef is priceless.
D) You write a food blog and you need to get the word out about what’s happening in one of the buzz restaurants in your city.

OK, so enough of the debate about pricing of tasting menus. Let’s focus on the food. So here’s a rundown of the evening’s parade of bites:

I started with this lovely aperitif. The lounge actually only serves wine and beer (which probably explains why few people were there just for drinks), but it does offer about six specialty drinks. The first one, simply known as the Coi Aperitif, caught my eye with its hibiscus tea and cassia with an accent of Southeast Asian long pepper. This bubbly drink was light and refreshing, and the pepper was something you could smell on the rim of the glass but luckily not taste in the drink itself. This drink was so pretty that a woman nearby pointed to my table and said “I’ll have what he’s having.” (I love it when they do that!)

My waiter brought out an amuse bouche from the chef, and it was a signal of the kind of dinner in store for me. It was a spoon with a milk-and-honey pearl encased in gelee served alongside a wild blossom from Napa Valley. I was supposed to sniff the blossom and then swallow the pearl in one bite. I loved the concept of pairing food with scents—adding another sensory element to the dining experience. Still, the flower didn’t have a strong fragrance and the pearl was just OK. But I applaud the effort.

The first course of the tasting menu is Patterson’s signature grapefruit starter. It was a grapefruit sorbet sitting on top of chunks of fresh pink grapefruit. But next to it on the plate was a tiny dab of Coi’s signature grapefruit perfume, which I was supposed to dab on my wrist before eating. The perfume oil was a lovely fragrance, but it seemed heavier than most citrus-based scents I’ve experienced in my life. While it smelled nice by itself, IMHO it did not enhance my eating of the grapefruit dish. The perfumed oil was almost jarring next to the natural fragrance of the grapefruit.

Here’s the house-made wheat rolls and butter. I typically don’t photograph the bread offerings, but I had to showcase Patterson’s hand-made butter because he wrote about this last year in the New York Times. The butter had an intense yellow color and was a bit dense in texture. It lacked any natural sweet flavor and was only enjoyable after I sprinkled some accompanying sea salt. I appreciated that this was hand-made, an indicator of how every element of the meal has been touched by Patterson.

In the tasting menus, there were four courses where you get to make a choice. This course was one of them, and I selected the Kampachi Sashimi. (Sorry, I was so busy taking notes on what I ate that I forgot to list the alternative I didn’t select.) Two slices of Kampachi was marinated in white soy and yuzu. The flesh was firm and tasty, but this dish didn’t offer any innovation. It was just a solid offering of raw fish.

This is the Andante Dairy Fresh Goat Cheese Tart served with two dime-size bits of roasted beets with dill. In earlier reviews, I had read that Patterson—like many chefs at the time—went overboard with the foam, so I was happy that my dinner didn’t have many foam-topped dishes since I’m not a foam fanatic either. However, this goat cheese tart had a filling that could have been a foam. It was fluffy and light and I felt like I was eating air, which was disappointing because I couldn’t detect any rich flavors of the goat cheese because of that. Still, it came in a very delicate and thin tart shell—which I loved—and it was nicely paired with the beet flavors.

This is the first dish that wowed me. It’s the Wild Nettle Soup with ricotta cheese enrobed in a lemon gelee topped with an oxalis flower. The presentation was dramatic, the color of the soup was brilliant and the balance in texture was amazing. It was a complex soup that had a perfect texture—not a wimpy light broth and not a heavily creamed soup. It was just perfectly light but substantial at the same time. The many flavors came with each spoon—a bit of curry, a hint of maple syrup, a bite of tartness from the flower stems. It was a symphony of flavors and I drank up every bit, eating even the flower.

Here’s another course that was an option. I selected this artichoke dish, which was a bit like risotto, but not. This was another winner for the evening and with back-to-back home runs in courses, I thought maybe Patterson was on a row. The thinly shaved seasonal artichokes were blended with fava beans and cereal rice that was cooked almost like risotto but not fully creamed. It was topped with a pretty wildflower. The taste and overall texture of this dish made me wanting more, which made me think that it would be great if tasting menus were just that: offering you a taste so you can decide what larger portion of a course you’d want to order later. I would so eat a large plate of this artichoke dish.

Side note: A wine tasting is also offered with the tasting menu, but I opted against multiple glasses of wine. It was already a bit of a production having the servers come to deliver and remove each place settings for every single course. Instead, after I finished my aperitif, I ordered a glass of Sleepy Hollow Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands of California. It was perfect!

Patterson seems to be a fan of yuba, which is the soybean-based tofu skin used in many Asian dishes. His yuba pappardelle dish seems to be consistently offered on the tasting menu. I wish it wasn’t. The yuba “papparedelle” was served in a mushroom dashi broth with five spice and baby bok choy. The Asian flavors were too aggressive and not subtle like his previous offerings. It didn’t reflect the zen approach to Japanese cuisine that I’m accustomed to.

Another course with an option, I selected this Sauteed Madara served with manila clams and parsley. My waiter informed me that Madara is a Japanese cod, which was a nice white, flakey fish. But I was thrown off by the execution. The dish came with the typical “fishy” smell that I don’t like, almost like unclean fish. (I believe fish should smell like the sea, not the fish counter of your local supermarket.) The fish itself was a bit too salty, and the sauce barely had any semblance of manila clams. If they were there, they were probably those small brown bits I saw.

Getting to the grand entrée, which was also a course with an option, I opted for the Beck Farms Pheasant. What I got were these two medallions of pheasant meat that were tasty but not very satisfying. I felt I was a giant eating a tiny meal. On the plate were these itsy bitsy pieces of roasted cauliflower florets (you could barely call them florets as much as they were cauliflower crumbs). But I have to say I did like the fusing flavors of Japanese ingredients. There were bits of sea kelp and pickled daikon in the sauce—both flavors that I love so they made the dish a winner after all.

This is my cheese course. One tiny slice of a Swiss goat's milk cheese served with a tiny wild greens salad with champagne vinaigrette. I liked the cheese. I liked the salad. I wish I had a bit more. (If I were designing a tasting course, I would have served a fan of three slices of the cheese with the greens.)

Now for the sweets. First up was this spoon carrying a citrus sorbet on some powdered sugar with spearmint. I loved the color of the sorbet but it was just OK in taste and had a bit too much of the powdered sugar underneath.

This is a Carrot Ganache Cake with Celery Sorbet. It was delicate and moist and an interesting combination of the carrot and celery flavors. I enjoyed it but wasn’t really wowed.

My final dessert course was this Banana Confit with Thyme Ice Cream. This was a very playful plating and the banana confit had a perfect thin crunch to it. It was a bit like caramelized bananas you get at Southeast Asian restaurants. This was the best of the three dessert courses, but it wasn’t necessarily exceptional.

With my tasting menu done, my server brought me this tiny cup of house-made milkshake and truffle along with my bill. It was a nice touch, but such a poor last impression to the evening. The milkshake was partly frozen so I couldn’t drink it. I really needed a spoon, which ironically after several courses of utensil changes I didn’t have one to eat this thick milkshake with. The truffle was nice and light and basically melted in my mouth.

With so much talk about the food, you’d think I wouldn’t have anything else to say about my dining experience. Well, I am going to get my full $120 worth of venting (actually, my total bill including tax, tip and two drinks came out to be $188).

Coi is from an archaic French language, and the word means “quiet.” While the restaurant’s setting with its contemporary lines and warm brown finishes does impart a quietness to it, dining in the lounge was not. The lounge wasn’t very filled (it’s not your typical North Beach hangout) but I could hear the chattering of the dining guests in the main room and out in what I suspect is garden seating. It wasn’t deafening, but it was almost like a reminder of how I was on the outside unable to enjoy the festivities of the other diners. I was such the outsider looking in.

Service was efficient, almost perfunctory. I wished my servers were more engaging, especially since I was dining alone. I did notice this one server (who actually may have been the sommelier) who was chatting it up with guests at another table. He was very animated and fun, and I wished he was working my table.

Even though I was at the lounge, some regulars walked in and ate there and Chef Patterson came out to say hi to them. He seemed really relaxed and friendly and I had visual proof that he was behind all the dishes that came out this evening.

So my final analysis of Coi? You may be surprised at my final rating after all my venting, but it’s mostly high because of the inventive and interesting tastes of the highs that I experienced. The lows were not that low to drag the overall experience down. However, my rating would have been higher if the service was more friendly and the portion sizes were more satisfying for its price.

Daniel Patterson is a star chef in sustainable dining, but his tasting menu at Coi is best served when you’re someone else’s guest because a price tag should never really be attached to such talent.

Single guy rating: 4.25 stars (inventive but not filling)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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Jumping for Jamón: A Conversation with Caty Salas of The Spanish Table

WARNING: This interview will make your mouth water. Not recommended for pre-mealtime reading.

For what seems like more than a year, food publications have been touting the arrival of Jamón Ibérico—Spain’s most prized cured ham—to the United States. It’s a big deal because it took years of behind-the-scenes work to get the United States to approve the import of this particular ham. And even then only one producer has received the blessings to do so. But it’s mostly big news because of its rarity.

I’ve tasted jamón (pronounced HA-mone) while traveling in Spain, and loved it like how I love any paper-thin sliced ham such as prosciutto or speck. But the jamón I had in Spain was the everyday Serrano. Still good, but not the premium Jamón Ibérico.

The first Jamón Ibérico arrived to the States last fall, and was quickly picked up through pre-orders by restaurants. But it’s now starting to trickle its way to retailers specializing in Spanish goods, so that means we regular folks can now go get a cash withdrawal from the bank to buy this precious ham. And I’m not kidding. This is such premium ham that a 4 oz. package can run between $34 to $36.

The Spanish Table, a specialty gourmet shop that started in Seattle but has a location I often visit for my Spanish fix in Berkeley, got its first shipment of Jamón Ibérico about two months ago. I visited the store last week and chatted with manager Caty Salas about Jamón Ibérico, the different varieties, and what makes it one of the most desired pork products in the world.

The following are edited excerpts of our conversation:

Chef Ben: Maybe if we can start by explaining what is jamón?

Caty Salas: Jamón, in general, is a salted, dried cured ham. I was lucky enough to go to the company where our regular jamón comes from (in Spain). I got to tour the facility and it’s really low-tech. They get pig legs and they pack them in salt for a few weeks in these big vats of sea salt and then that draws out a certain amount of moisture and salt goes into the meat, which is the only preservative. And then they basically hang them up to dry.

In the old days you would have killed your fattened-up pig in the fall and the weather would be cool and it would dry all winter. It might get progressively colder and drier. Then it would start to warm up again when spring came. So they would try to mimic that when they’re making them for mass production.

They start out with pretty fresh legs hanging in a really cold meat locker and then they just keep track of the moisture content. And after they’ve been in a super-cold locker for awhile, they move them into a not-as-cold locker and cure in there for awhile. So they’ll keep moving them. There’s just this series of meat lockers. Different grades of ham take different times. The (jamón Serrano) that we have is 18 months. The longer they cure, the more rich and developed the flavor.

A typical Spaniard buys one around Christmastime and just keeps it in the back room under a towel and just shaves parts of it off whenever they want a snack. Any bar you go into, there’s a leg of ham on the counter, there’s more hanging up above the bar with little cups under them because the fat continues to drip out.

CB: In Spain, how long will a leg of jamón last for a family? Do they keep it the whole year and just snack on it throughout the year?

CS: They kind of snack on it all year, but it really isn’t going to last all year. (laughs) Spaniards use ham in everything. I mean they eat it as tapas, as snacks, as sandwiches. It flavors so many dishes it’s incredible. … Sometimes it can be a bit of a problem when people come in (to The Spanish Table) and look for vegetarian recipes. I’d go to a few of our cookbooks but so many of our things are primarily a vegetable dish but it’s flavored with ham. It’s everywhere.

CB: Is there a certain time of the year when there’s a big abundance of jamónes? Is there a season when they’re released because you were saying they usually start preserving the pigs in the winter?

CS: Well, that was before modern production capabilities. Now it’s year-round. There are a few artisanal producers who do it the old-fashioned way. But they cost a fortune and there aren’t very many of them. It’s still traditional to buy one at the beginning of the year, but they’re available constantly.

CB: There are different types of jamónes, so what determines the variety? Is it the type of pig used or how long it takes to cure them?

CS: It’s both. There are two primary kinds of pigs. For the longest time the only ones allowed to be imported here were the more typical domestic white pigs. And the ones that are available now are from the black Ibérico pig, which is also called the pata negra because it has black feet. The pig itself varies in color but it’s generally a black, very dark pig. The meat from that animal is different than the meat of the white pig.

CB: In terms of jamón sold in the United States, has it mostly been Serrano?

CS: It has been mostly Serrano. Serrano is just your basic, dried cured ham. It means “mountain ham” because ham was traditionally produced in the mountains where it’s drier and colder. You can’t dry cure things down on the coast where it’s wet, hot and humid. So jamón Serrano is kind of your basic, generic ham.

CB: How long has Serrano been available in the United States?

CS: For about 10 years. And even that was a project. The U.S. didn’t approve of any of the slaughtering facilities in Spain so the hams that were finally accepted for export to the U.S. were white pigs that were raised and slaughtered in Denmark and then those legs were sent to Spain and processed to be jamón.

For the Ibérico, they’ve approved that one company from start to finish. (NOTE: Only one producer in Spain has received the United States’ blessings to slaughter, produce and import Jamón Ibérico to this country. That company is Embutidos Fermín, run by the Santiago Martín family in the mountain village of La Alberca in Spain.)

CB: Why wasn’t the Jamón Ibérico available earlier?

CS: It’s a native pig (to Spain). They don’t have those pigs in Denmark. I guess they could have sent them there and raise them. … In Spain, the pata negra is just a much more prized product. There’s just more flavor in it, which is probably why they didn’t go through the complicated Danish route because they were perfectly happy to keep all of it for European consumption.

At this point in the interview, Caty goes to the store’s refrigerated section to pick up some packets of jamónes to show me. She comes back with three 4 oz. vacuum packs containing two versions of the Jamón Serrano and one of the Ibérico.

The Ibérico is actually known as “Paleta Ibérico de Bellota.” This is the prized Ibérico that’s been raised with acorn. Regular Jamón Ibérico comes from the black pigs raised on a normal diet of grain. Caty was actually waiting for her shipment of the regular Jamón Ibérico to arrive, so she didn’t have any to show me.

Looking at the jamónes, Caty points out how the Ibérico had a more marbled look to the ham from the fat compared to the leaner Serrano. And like they always say, fat is flavor.

CB: So why is this known as “Paleta Ibérico” instead of “Jamón Ibérico”?

CS: Paleta is cut from the front leg. Jamón is the back leg.

CB: Are there different varieties of Jamón Ibérico?

CS: Pata negra has a couple of varieties. There’s your regular jamón pata negra, which is black pigs raised on a regular diet of grain like a regular pig. But it’ll certainly be more marbled and more flavorful than the regular. The really special kind is Jamón Ibérico de Bellota. That is the pig that has been finished on acorn. This pig is native to an area called a “dehesa,” a scrubby meadow. Pigs that are going to become Jamón de Bellota, those pigs spend the last four or five months running around out in those meadows gorging on acorn.

… They put on half of their weight during that finishing time. Because it has more fat in it, it takes longer to cure the meat. The leaner meat is drier so you can’t cure it as long because it’ll dry out and lose its flavor. This is so fatty, it takes much longer to cure. The flavor develops and gets more complicated than regular jamón.

CB: Why is the Ibérico so prized? Is it because there’s fewer production of it?

CS: Especially the bellota. They can’t raise nearly as much because they need the open ranges. There’s just a limited amount of space for that and there’s just a limited amount of pigs designated to finish that way. It takes twice as long. This is a minimum of 24 months whereas top-of-the-line Serrano is 18 months and most Serranos are 12 months.

CB: Do the jamónes Serrano and Ibérico taste different?

CS: What’s different is the nature of the fat. Because (the Ibérico) ate so many nuts, the fat is different chemically. It has a lower melting point than normal. … You want to keep it at room temperature because generally jamón you don’t want to eat it cold because it loses a lot of its flavor. But when you bring it to room temperature, it’s totally shiny and glisteny, and when you put it on your tongue, it melts.

CB: Oh wow.

CS: It just melts all over your mouth. And the flavor is this incredibly sweet nuttiness from the acorn. Even the conventionally raised Ibérico, like regular jamón not fed on acorn but still the black pig, even those has a definite different flavor. A lot of that is because it had to be cured longer because the fat is all interwoven in there. But once you take that pig and feed it acorn in the last part of its life, then the flavor is just completely different.

Paleta is the front leg of the Ibérico. The back leg is so much bigger that it takes them several months longer to cure than the front legs. So they’re actually not even available until the fall because they’re just not finished yet.

CB: Which is the one coming in the fall?

CS: That one is Jamón Ibérico de Bellota. This is Paleta Ibérico de Bellota (pointing to the packet in front of us that’s now available). Paleta is a minimum of 24 months. The Jamón Ibérico de Bellota is probably more like 30 months.

CB: How different will the Jamón Ibérico de Bellota be from the Paleta de Bellota?

CS: I would expect paleta because of the nature of the cut it tends to be gamier. So it’ll be milder. The reason we have paleta is so that we have something that is de bellota, the acorn. Because the regular Jamón Ibérico is delicious, but everyone always ask us is this the one that ate acorn? Is this the one that ate acorn? Right now, this is the only one we have that ate acorn. The other (regular Jamón Ibérico) is fantastic but we can’t say it ate acorn. It is pata negra but it’s not de bellota.

So in Spain, they sell mostly paleta at holiday time because it’s a lot smaller and a lot cheaper comparatively speaking. It’s not cheap, this is $36 for a quarter pound. I expect the Jamón Ibérico de Bellota is going to be at least $50 for a quarter pound. This is a less desirable cut because it’s tougher and gamier, whereas the jamón will be much more tender. Not just will the fat melt in your mouth but the meat melts in your mouth.

CB: Mmm, that sounds so exciting. Going back to the fat because there’s so much of it, I read it’s supposed to be a healthier fat?

CS: Because it has so much more unsaturated fat, it’s almost like the pig is half olive oil. It comes from eating all the nuts.

CB: So it’s not too bad if you eat a lot of it? Because it does look like a lot of fat.

CS: It is different than your average pig fat. That’s the acorn one.

CB: So do most people in Spain eat this as is, or do they actually put it into their cooking? Seems like it’s so expensive you don’t want to heat it up like how you wouldn’t heat up quality extra virgin olive oil.

CS: You would serve this just at room temperature on a plate. Maybe with a little bit of olive oil drizzled on it, but really I wouldn’t even do that. What’s so extraordinary about it is the nature of its own fat. And so, it would just be sliced paper thin. Just have it by itself where you can really enjoy it.

We walk over to her store computer to look up something about the one producer of Jamón Ibérico and Caty shows me photos of her trip to the jamón producer. There’s a photo of her standing in front of racks and racks of hanging pig legs. She says the rows of jamónes never seemed to stop. It’s like jamón heaven.

We went to the refrigerated section and The Spanish Table had one jamón Serrano hanging as a full leg. This is how jamón would typically be displayed in the Spanish market, but because The Spanish Table doesn’t have a deli license, they can’t slice into that full leg. Instead, they sell the prepacked jamónes.

Caty says the whole legs are often sold to Spaniards living here who wants the whole leg to cut up at home. It’s also sold sometimes to restaurants, and recently they sold a couple to the Pixar employee cafeteria. A whole leg of Jamón Serrano runs about $300. You can special order a whole leg of the Jamón Ibérico, which may run as much as $800. Caty says she doesn’t even want to guess how much a whole leg of the Jamón Ibérico de bellota will go for when it’s available in the fall.

CB: What’s the difference between jamón and prosciutto?

CS: They’re definitely related. Prosciutto de parma, their diet is different. Those pigs get to eat the leftover parmesan cheese. So they’re eating whey and dairy products so that’s why they taste so good. Also they’re covered in a layer of lard on the outside of the leg on purpose as part of the curing.

… I’ve done taste tests between prosciutto and jamón Serrano and to me Serrano is sweeter.

CB: What has the response been like for Jamón Ibérico? Has there been a lot of people wanting to buy it?

CS: When I first got word from my supplier that I could order some, I sent out an email and these are people who responded to that email. (She shows me a clipboard of a couple of pages of names of Ibérico-hungry eaters.)

Now we’re gong to be keeping it on stock. We’re not going to have a lot of it on hand. There’s a limited number of people who can afford to buy this stuff. But we do want to have it as long as we’re able to get it from our supplier. We’ll always have something on hand.

I couldn’t resist, so I bought Caty’s last packet of Paleta Ibérico de Bellota, which normally sells for $36 for the 4 oz.-pack. In it, you get about 8 to 10 thinly sliced Ibérico.

I have to admit, I was a bit suspect of how different the acorn-raised Ibérico could be from say a good prosciutto. But after letting it sit out at room temperature for awhile, I could see the Ibérico start to glisten, transforming into a luxurious state, almost like silk. Then I picked up a slice and ate it and was wowed by the tender texture, which felt like velvet oozing into my mouth and down my appreciative throat.

There were some bits of tough parts, probably because this is the cut from the front leg, but they were very tiny and didn’t detract from the overall luxury of eating Jamón Ibérico. Sure, it worked out to be almost $4.50 a slice, but it was a splurge worth doing because everyone should be able to taste this at least once in his or her lifetime.

Special thanks to Caty Salas for taking the time to chat with me about jamónes, especially since she just got off of two weeks working a special event for The Spanish Table at Macy’s. By the way, the store is a great place to find those special Spanish ingredients and supplies like paella pans. So if you’re ever in the mood to cook Spanish, or feel the hunger to try the Jamón Ibérico, visit The Spanish Table in Berkeley.

The Spanish Table, 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. PH: 510.548.1383. Open Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m. Web site.

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My Annual Pilgrimage to O&Co. for Extra Virgins

A few years ago when I was burned by the dot-com bust (Part Uno), I took a part-time job at Oliviers and Co. working as a clerk at its Fillmore store. This is how I learned everything I needed to know about premium extra virgin olive oil.

All of the olive oil at the store, now known simply as O&Co., are imported from Europe. No California olive oils are sold, primarily because the founder doesn’t believe the California olive trees have matured to the point to deliver the same quality of oil as those produced in Europe. There might be a big debate about this among Californians, but having tasted the oils at O&Co. and tasting some California oils in Napa Valley, I tend to agree. It’s hard for the California oils to measure up.

The extra virgin olive oils come primarily from Italy and France, and are such a premium that they sell for more than $30 a bottle, most typically around $45. This is why—no longer having an employee discount—I come to buy my supply of olive oil just once a year. Then I take my selection home and use them sparingly, mostly as a finisher to a dish like pasta or meats or as a base for salad dressing. You never cook with O&Co.’s premium oils. (Although, they now offer a cheap olive oil for cooking but really you can just get a generic extra virgin olive oil from Trader Joe’s.)

A couple of weekends ago, I went to check out the oils at O&Co. Its tiny Fillmore store was the first store to open on the West Coast. (Eventually they opened stores in Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.) When it’s busy, you can hardly maneuver yourself around the narrow store without worrying that you might knock down a bottle of $42 olive oil.

Along with a wall of extra virgin olive oils (now sold in bottles; they were mostly sold in cans when I worked there), there are a variety of olive oil-related products, including olive oil soap. (The company also owns L’Occitane and many of the O&Co. products can be found at some L’Occitane outlets such as the one at the Embarcadero 1 in the Financial District.) But there are also vinegars, cruets, herbs and spices, sea salt, and even dried pasta. The company has branched out to many specialty gourmet items that use olive oil as a base since I worked there. So now you can find special mustards, flavored honey and tapenades. (Many of the products are small enough that they make great hostess gifts.)

What’s really great about the store is that there’s an actual tasting bar where you can try the oils to decide which one you want. This is a big deal if you’re going to put down all that money. When I worked there, a few customers would sometimes ask where’s the bread to dip in the oil? But when we did tastings, we just gave a tiny plastic spoon of the oil because that way you taste just the oil and not the bread.

The vast majority of the oils are not flavored, instead carrying only the essence of its growing environment. The oils can be described as grassy or buttery or nutty. Some of my favorite oils come, of course, from Provence, which have slight floral tastes. For more bold oils, I’ll try a Sicilian oil.

Because most Americans are used to flavored oil, I’ve noticed that O&Co. over the years have added more flavored options. Before it was only basil and lemon, but now it’s grown to Mandarin Oranges, Mint and the new Bergamot (which is the base for Earl Grey tea). Most people love the basil for its intense aroma and flavor, but I’m not a big fan of that. My all-time favorite is the Lemon because I love lemony flavors and this captures the intense flavor of the lemon.

I love the lemon oil so much that I used to drizzle a little bit of it on top of French vanilla ice cream and I would get this wonderful lemon ice cream treat. (I find no one makes lemon ice cream, just sorbets.) I don’t do this as often any more because I’ve cut down on my ice cream eating at home.

I left O&Co. on this recent visit with my replacement can of lemon oil and the Bergamot to give it a try. (It’s very perfume like, so it’ll be a challenge thinking what to drizzle it on. Maybe another dessert?) I also got a can of the Greek oil because it’s the most versatile and affordable. I also picked up a tiny bottle of mustard infused with the flavors of three different berries.

The Pacific Heights neighborhood is a fun place to walk around on a sunny weekend, so the next time you’re enjoying the day strolling the neighborhood, you should visit the O&Co. store to transport yourself to the Mediterranean. If I could afford to soak myself in this oil, you know I would.






O&Co., 2208 Fillmore St. (at California), San Francisco. PH: 415.474.1408. Web site.

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Top Chef: Season 4, Episode 4

This Recap is Rated PG-13 for Adult Language

Previously on Top Chef: The cheftestants run around the block grabbing food from unsuspecting neighbors, and Rick Bayless was down on the food. A team won based on a drink. Really, a drink. And Erik is sent packing back to San Francisco.

That just means one less person competing for the title of … TOP CHEF. (Cue the music and dance montage.)

Sunrise over Chicago and the lake. Everyone’s missing big Erik. And Manuel also misses his son (or is it sons?). Zoi and Jennifer don’t have to miss their loved ones because they get to see each other every morning, and like Jennifer interviews, they get to touch each other. TMI, if you ask me. Still, out of respect to the others who are separated from their families, the two San Franciscans try to keep their distance. OK, who believes that? Spike says he’s ready to see one of the pair leave because he thinks them having each other to lean on puts the rest in a slight disadvantage. (So far, no evidence of this. Maybe Spike needs to hook up with someone there?)

The cheftestants arrive in the Top Chef kitchen for the Quickfire Challenge and they’re greeted by Padma and the venerable New York chef Daniel Boulud. Padma tells the cheftestants that if they don’t know who this guy is (fine-dining restaurateur, James Beard-winning chef, noted author, and host of his own cable TV show) that they should just leave now. Of course, a breath later, she introduces everyone to Daniel Boulud. (Um, if he needed no introductions then why Padma?)

Padma asks Chef Boulud what’s the most important foundation a chef needs and he replies, “technique.” So their challenge is to come up with a “beautiful vegetable plate” in 30 minutes demonstrating three techniques to impress Chef Boulud. (Also, Chef Boulud lets it out of the bag that two cheftestants once worked for him—gadget geek Richard and pretty boy Ryan—but Boulud reassures everyone that it won’t be an issue. I don’t know if that means he’ll be impartial or that both Richard and Ryan have such poor techniques that Boulud thinks the rest of the cheftestants shouldn’t be worried. Ryan interviews that he spent a very short time working in Boulud’s kitchen and found that “it was just not my style.”)

Scrambling ensues among the cheftestants and most of them are stressing about this challenge. It’s not just knife skills, but still it would be nice to see some fine cutting like Jamie Oliver. You ever watch that guy with a knife? Brilliant! Anywho, Dale seems to be doing OK cutting a cucumber skin and avocado while Spike isn’t worried because he says he was trained in France, and you know how those French people are such snobs about technique. Spike also brought along this really interesting kitchen gadget where you shove a scallion in one end and it comes out like floral curls on the other end. Cute.

Presentation seems to be really big in this challenge and they’re some really interesting plating going on. It really looks like a tasting menu (you know, pretty but itsy-bitsy food). Rather than go through each cheftestants’ presentation, I’m just going to hit the highlights: Dale does this sashimi dish with sushi-like sides using the cucumber for the maki wrapper, Lisa poached an egg and her blanched asparagus and grilled zucchini looked really sloppy and Chef Daniel commented that it was “back to basics,” and Manuel’s plate had lots of color but really just specks of ingredients cut here and there.

Chef Boulud seemed only impressed by a few dishes, commenting that he wished they took five minutes to compose a plan before jumping into the chopping and cutting. He apparently doesn’t realize the producers love the mad rush for the camera. Chef Boulud singles out Nikki (who used an endive as a boat for her food), Lisa’s sloppy plate and Manuel’s specks of food as the bottom, calling Manuel’s technique “level 1.” Ouch.

His favorites were Zoi’s poached egg dish, which he felt was very composed; Dale’s sashimi dish and Richard’s presentation. Dale is named the winner and has immunity.

Elimination challenge: Padma tells the cheftestants that their challenge is to create a dinner where each course is inspired by their favorite movie. The dinner will be thrown by Chicago Sun Times movie critic Richard Roeper (and host of “At The Movies”) for his friend, actress Aisha Tyler. (OK, what’s weird is that Padma never explains what the party is for. So basically, it’s Roeper’s way of helping Tyler get more face time on TV.)

The cheftestants draw knives to figure out which course they’re going to make and who they’ll be paired with. Dale, who has immunity, can join any pair he likes and he quickly gravitates to Richard, who is now pretty much the front-runner because all the cheftestants want to work with him (and they seem so out of his league). BTW, not only is Richard’s faux hawk growing, but I think Jennifer is giving him a run for his money with her ’do.

Commercials. Round Table is trying to fancy up their pizzas. That reminds me of a memo I’ve always been meaning to write. “Dear Round Table Pizza. Your food turned me off on pizza as a child in Hawaii. Thanks for scarring my childhood.”

The pairs get together to talk about their favorite movies. Richard and Andrew are doing the first course (with Dale) and Richard quickly suggests Willy Wonka. (BTW, it’s “Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory.”) Spike and Manuel are competing with each other’s cooking style. Spike’s a little bit Vietnamese and Manuel’s a little bit Mexican. So Manuel suggests “Like Water For Chocolate,” which Spike has never heard of, so he suggests “Good Morning Vietnam” (one of Robin Williams’ best attempts at drama) because he wants to cook a Vietnamese dish. Manuel goes along saying he wants to try something new (instead of being himself?).

Jennifer and Nikki are doing the third course and they both gravitate to something Italian, going for a tortellini dish with Nikki making her home-made pasta, of course. Jennifer suggests “Il Postino.” (Love that movie!)

Antonia and Zoi is going with the Spanish movie “Talk to Her” (one of the few Pedro Almodovar movies I didn’t like) because they feel they’re both like the two strong female leads in the film. When we zoom to Ryan and Mark, Ryan is throwing out “Dumb and Dumber.” What does that say?

Mark is a bit eclectic with his movie viewing and is throwing out names like “To Kill A Mockingbird” and “Bad Boy Bubby.” (It’s also apparently that he hasn’t seen a movie from the 90s on.) To Ryan, according to him, all he’s hearing is “wha, wha, wha.” Finally, Ryan gets all excited and starts doing charades about some Christmas movie where the boy gets shot in the eye and the family gets Chinese food for their Christmas dinner, settling for duck. Ryan, I am so not going to the movies with you.

Turns out he’s talking about “A Christmas Story.” Now, I haven’t seen the movie even though people are calling it a “holiday classic.” (Yeah, like how “Home Alone” is a Thanksgiving classic now.) So I can’t say whether I’m linking to the right film because I’m sure there have been several Christmas story movies. End result, they’re cooking duck.

The last course is Lisa and Stephanie and they’re already stressing because they don’t want to make dessert. And if you’ve watched Top Chef in seasons’ past, you know dessert is typically the downfall of cheftestants. So the pair makes the smart move of not doing dessert and doing a final meat dish instead. For their movie, they go with “Top Secret!” because of the flying cows, which Lisa says always makes her think of beef. ‘kay.

They go shopping at Whole Foods with $150 to spend on each course. Everyone’s excited about their dishes. Andrew is a little too excited because he interviews that he wants the judges to taste their food and basically “have a culinary crap in their pants.” Really?

Spike is buying Chilean sea bass for his Vietnamese summer rolls, which is really weird because I’ve usually had shrimp, so not sure how authentic his summer rolls will be.

Ryan and Mark can’t find any duck, so they’re going with quail. And they just found some cranberries, which again makes me ask, when was this episode filmed? It sounds like this was filmed back in October right before the holiday season because last week it was like Indian summer at that Chicago neighborhood block party. Bravo sure takes a long time editing these shows.

It’s the day of the elimination challenge and crazy Andrew thinks it’ll be really fun to present their Willy Wonka dish by being an oompa loompa. To demonstrate, he puts shoes on his knees and pretends to be a little chef. Dale and Richard are trying their best to disassociate themselves from Andrew. You know, if Andrew and Spike were paired together they’d totally be doing it right now.

The cheftestants arrive at some restaurant where they start cooking in the kitchen. Richard is really taking the lead with his group, basically bossing Dale and Andrew around. For their starter, they’re smoking salmon and serving it with faux caviar. Richard busts out his smoker gizmo and starts shooting smoke onto a plate and covering it with plastic wrap so the diner will have to puncture the wrapper to release the smoke. All the cheftestants are gathering around to watch like it’s some kind of trade show demonstration.

But then after just setting up one dish, the gizmo doesn’t work. Andrew starts panicking and starts looking for alternatives. I think I see him with a burning wood chunk under the plastic wrap. How old school.

Commercials. Bud Light always cracks me up. Did you see the guy with the fire breath and how he’s allergic to cats and starts sneezing fire all over his date? LOL. I don’t know why but sometimes frat humor makes me laugh.

Back at the non-smoking zone, Richard chucks his idea for the plastic-wrapped smoke presentation, saying the food will taste good just the same. Oh well, no magic tricks up his sleeve tonight. Dale gets a smoking wood and runs it under the piece of salmon. Then it’s time to serve.

Richard Roeper is there and so is Aisha. And so are some other people along with the judges Tom Collichio, Ted Allen, Padma and Chef Boulud. Altogether it’s a table of 12.

Richard, Dale and Andrew present their smoked salmon and Richard talks about the Willy Wonka inspiration, which explains the white chocolate and wasabi sauce. They also serve a pear and celery soda. Nice. Chef Tom says it’s surprisingly good and Chef Boulud is impressed by the combination of flavors that no sane chef would think of combining.

Next come the Vietnamese summer rolls from Spike, who tells the crew that Vietnamese cuisine is on the rise. (I agree but what he presented totally doesn’t look like anything I got in Vietnam.) He and Manuel created summer rolls with black vermicelli, green apple, sea bass and pickled Swiss chard. Chef Boulud says he wouldn’t have used fish, and Ted suggests why not lobster with their budget? Aisha felt the wrapping was tough and Tom doesn’t know what to do with the little Swiss chard on the side.

This lovely, romantic music plays and it’s Lisa’s and Nikki’s “Il Postino”-inspired dish. Love it. The judges don’t seem to love the dish as much as the movie. Tom’s like meh, it was OK. Chef Daniel didn’t like the shape of the tortellini. Richard Roeper loved it, and I think it’s funny how he slapped down the critical foodies. Even Ted Allen got a bit defensive, saying something about how they had to be more critical to find out what’s good. Too funny. Thumbs up, Richard!

Ryan and Mark serve their Christmas dish—roasted quail with carrot puree and cranberry chutney, along with a spring roll to play off the Chinese restaurant scene in the movie. Ted goes crazy for this dish, calling it beautiful and sophisticated. Richard loves the connection to the movie and Aisha is loving the carrot puree. Mmm, now I want to try it.

Antonia and Zoi present their really thinly sliced lamb chops. (Antonia during her shopping said the lamb turned out to be muy muy expensive, so they could only get so much.) They talk about their movie and how it’s about passionate women with lots of color and spice. Everyone looks at their plates and think the film was in black and white because they think the lamb dish with cauliflower is boring and plain.

Lisa and Stephanie present their New York strip steak with a won ton. They have all sorts of fancy sauces too, including a reduction made from the braising liquid and a Vietnamese-style caramel sauce that Lisa adds as a final touch at the table. Chef Daniel says it’s definitely Asian (can’t tell if he liked it) but Tom really likes it. Ted asks if eating the dish reminded anyone of Val Kilmer in a cow suit? Ted, you’re so literal.

The guests leave (who were those women?) and the four main judges discuss the dishes. So we actually get to hear a lot more critiquing before Judges’ Table compared to last week. Everyone loved the first course from Richard, Dale and Andrew but didn’t like the fishy taste in Spike’s summer rolls. They also saw through his plan of selecting the dish and then finding a movie to go with it. (Foiled again!) The other comments for the other dishes pretty much mirrored their earlier comments, but Tom was really effusive about the last dish from Jennifer and Stephanie. He called it “flawless.” Wow, that’s the first I heard him use that word this season. He usually saves those adjectives for the finale.

The cheftestants arrive for judgment and boy do they look like a tired lot. I bet there are a few cranky pants in the group because I saw some major bitch fighting in the previews before going to commercials. Padma calls for the first course chefs and the pair from Top Secret! (Jennifer and Stephanie) Padma tells them they’re the favorites, and it’s hugs and kisses all around.

Most of the judges seem really surprised that the ingredients in Richard, Dale and Andrew’s dish came together. Tom called it a “strange idea” but it worked. For the girls, looks like the judges really liked the sauces and the meat was cooked spot on. Chef Boulud names the first course as the winning dish and singles out, no surprise, Richard as the winner, cementing his position as the David Archuleta of Top Chef.

The rest of the cheftestants are brewing in the back, especially Spike who thought his dish should have won. Also kind of mad-looking is Zoi. They both make their grand statements that white chocolate and wasabi don’t go together and probably tasted like shit, so if that dish wins, Zoi doesn’t know what she’s doing on Top Chef. Well, karma’s a bitch because Richard comes out and announces he won and then says the judges want to see, of course, Spike and Zoi along with their cooking partners, Manuel and Antonia.

Tom talks about the non-vibrancy in Zoi and Antonia’s lamb dish and says he feels cheated out with such a tiny slice. Zoi says she wanted the cauliflower to have more color. She really looks like she’s about to cry being in the bottom. Antonia goes into a bit more about their movie selection and how it inspired the dish, and Padma’s a bit like “too little too late.”

For Spike and Manuel, the judges come down hard on the choice of fish and tries to get more at who drove the selection of the movie. Tom says it didn’t look like the boys spent all their money because the dish didn’t reflect it. He says he could get similar summer rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant for $8. (WORD!!) Manuel says he wanted to cook Vietnamese even though that’s not his style because he wants to learn, and as a chef he’s always learning. Padma asks who should go home and Spike won’t give her the satisfaction, saying “I don’t play that way.”

The cheftestants are dismissed and Zoi is mad, saying she can’t compete with Richard’s magic tricks. Jennifer is mad that Zoi’s in the bottom (right, very impartial observation on her part). The judges’ discuss some more but they really don’t spend too much time because we already know how they’re leaning.

Commercials. Oooh, Target. I need a lamp. Hello, hello. Goodbuy. Love them!

Judgment. Tom says the challenge was straightforward. He tells the girls that they told a great story but it never translated to their dish. Luckily it tasted good so they’re safe. Which means it’s either Spike or Manuel and from a purely TV entertainment point of view, you know Spike has more personality than Manuel. Tom says Spike took the lead on the dish but Manuel didn’t exhibit any Top Chef qualities by just going along with it. Ah, the old dreaded “you should have spoken up for yourself” nail in the coffin. Padma tells Manuel to pack up his knives and go, and he seems pretty happy about it thanking everyone and giving a mini speech to his fellow cheftestants about how this has been a life-changing experience for him. Aww, I feel bad now that I called him Mr. No Personality. Anywho, now Manuel can go back to his son or sons.

Next week: Ming Tsai is the guest judge and he’s eating something at a dinner that apparently is really bad. I think he says the scales were left on it. People are getting tired of King Richard, Dale fights with someone, Jennifer fights with Spike, and some poor chair gets the brunt of it.

Top Chef aires Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Check out videos and multiple blogs at the Top Chef Web site. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV.

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Dish on Dining: Monk’s Kettle

Warm Glow of an Upscale Neighborhood Tavern
3141 16th St., San Francisco
Mission District
PH: 415.865.9523
Open weekdays, noon to 2 a.m.; weekends, 11:30 a.m. to 2 a.m.
No reservations. Major credit cards accepted.
www.monkskettle.com

Like moths to a flame, the people seem to be packing into beer destination Monk’s Kettle since this Mission District tavern opened last December. I remember first noticing this tiny spot at the corner of 16th Street and Albion, and seeing the warm glow of ambient lighting framing the picture-perfect scene of young patrons enjoying a good time. Now that’s what a pub should be.

So I visited Monk’s Kettle last week with my friend David, who is on his own mission of squeezing in as much entertainment before May (when his first baby arrives and his social life ends, ha!). We grabbed a couple of stools at the bar since most of the tables were already filled with people who looked relaxed and in no rush to leave this cozy spot.

Monk’s Kettle is the latest to tap into the recent wave of upscale wine and beer taverns, and they’re not fooling around when it comes to the beer. The beer menu is more than six pages long listing upwards of 100 beer by the bottle and about two dozen on draft. For some reason I thought they specialized in Belgian beer, but Monk’s Kettle has representative beer from all over the world.

David was the first to pull the trigger by ordering a German beer that was like a light ale. I couldn’t decide, so our friendly server gave me a tasting of three of the amber beers on draft. I ended up with the first Belgium amber beer I tasted, which had a nice rounded flavor with just a bit of barley oats.

Along with the friendly bartending staff, Monk’s Kettle also has a full array of beer glasses. They make a point of serving the beer in the glass that was designed especially for it. For my beer, it came in this cool holder that I’ve never experienced before. The glass has a rounded bottom, which means it can’t stand on its own. Thus the holder. Since I don’t drink beer that often, it was a nice novelty item for me.

But really, I wanted to test the food at Monk’s Kettle, which at least from its menu promised to be more than your regular fried pub food. The menu by Chef Kevin Kroger prides itself on its fresh and sustainable ingredients, from the Niman Ranch meats to the Quetzel Farms organic tomatoes in the burger. The menu also nicely recommends a beer as a pairing with each dish listed.


We started with the mixed green salad with pears (although it tasted and looked an awful lot like green apples)($9) and the giant pretzel ($6.50), which I had heard so much about. The salad, which came with Humboldt Fog goat cheese in a sweet maple vinaigrette, was tasty and fresh, but nothing to write home about. The giant pretzel, while big, didn’t seem as big as I imagined. When you put “giant” in your menu, it really has a lot to live up to. I would have just called it jumbo.

While the bread of the pretzel was fresh, warm and soft, there was this odd sheen on the exterior that made the pretzel slippery to hold. It was almost like it was sprayed with butter in a can. There were two dipping sauces: stone-ground mustard and a cheddar ale sauce. The cheddar ale was pale and subtle in taste, while the stone-ground mustard was dark and had a nice twang to it.

The menu also contains quite a bit of sandwiches such as Sesame Seared Ahi or Niman Ranch Pulled Pork. And I heard that the burger is supposedly good for lunch. But David is on a cholesterol watch (even more so than me) so he went with the house-made veggie burger ($9.50) and I decided to tackle the slow-braised beef short ribs ($17)—one of three large entrée selections.

David’s veggie burger came out looking really sad and pathetic. It lacked any color or vibrancy and really is a reminder to me how difficult it is for vegetarians to find a good burger. David confirmed this by saying that the veggie burger was just not very good.

My short ribs were an impressive plate of meat served over gorgonzola polenta, and it was fork tender, easily falling off the bone. But while I liked the texture, the short ribs lacked in flavor. It tasted very home-cook, in the way that you have very little fancy ingredients in your pantry so you use the basics to create a nice-but-nothing-fancy type of dish. That was how I felt about the short ribs.

I really wanted to like Monk’s Kettle because the people there are really friendly and it has a real fun vibe, but I can’t recommend it for the food. The menu is ambitious for a tavern, but it fails to deliver anything extraordinary. And in the hot Mission District, you want to be wowed.

Monk’s Kettle is a fun place to have a pint of beer (especially in those cool-looking holders), but check out the other places in the neighborhood for a real dinner.

Single guy rating: 2.75 stars (It really is 100 bottles of beer on the wall)

Explanation of the single guy's rating system:
1 star = perfect for college students
2 stars = perfect for new diners
3 stars = perfect for foodies
4 stars = perfect for expense accounts
5 stars = perfect for any guy's dream dinner

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