Another Treat from Tartine

I've been off this week, and I guess I'm on a "staycation" since I haven't traveled anywhere and just hung out at home. But despite being home, I feel like I've spent as much money and ate as much food as if I were on vacation.

And it looks like getting together with friends, especially anywhere near the Mission District's 18th Street corridor, means a visit to Bi-Rite Creamery for some ice cream and then a trip to Tartine Bakery. It's like an annual trip now for me. This time I spotted a girl carrying a plate with this beautiful-looking cake. When I got to the counter, I found out it was a lemon meringue cake (that's right, not a pie) and picked up a piece for myself to take home.

The layered cake was just like eating a meringue pie with the tart and dense lemon cake with layers of curd. But I found my favorite part was the meringue, which is surprising because I generally think of the meringue as a puff of air and tasteless. This was fluffy and subtly sweet and I think I could have just eaten that.

So as you can see, I've been eating all the sugar before the new year begins. Hope you're all having a great last day of 2008, and here's to more fluffy meringues in 2009!

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Looking Back at My Favorite Meals

It’s the time for end-of-the-year lists as we say BUH-bye to 2008, and I decided I’d look back at my Top 10 dining reviews. (I feel like I ate out more than cooked this year. Gawd I was lazy. Resolution No. 1 for 2009: Cook more for Cooking With The Single Guy.)

So here’s my Top 10, starting with No. 10. These are solely based on the ratings I gave at the time: (And remember, these are only out of the restaurants I had a chance to visit. I'm sure there are many more top 10 restaurants in the Bay Area that I might have missed because I have yet to make it there.)

10. Serpentine, San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Rating: 4 stars. This sister restaurant to the Slow Club (haven’t been) is in the up-and-coming Dogpatch neighborhood just south of China Basin. I love the open, warehouse feel, and the California comfort food is always sharply prepared. (Ironically, I returned to Serpentine recently for brunch and now I’m rethinking the 4 star rating. Hmm, check back in 2009 to see what I mean.)

9. Incanto, San Francisco’s Noe Valley. Rating: 4 stars. This neighborhood restaurant headed by offal man Chris Cosentino offers creative dishes for the adventurous eater. I often think about its spaghettini with shaved tuna heart. Mmmm.

8. Zinnia, San Francisco’s Financial District. Rating: 4 stars. This is a fairly new restaurant to San Francisco’s dining scene, but it has a lot of old roots. One: the chef-owner is Sean O’Brien, who got raves when he was chef of the now defunct Myth. Two: The restaurant is in the old spot of the once popular Scott Howard. I’m sure Zinnia will do well because of O’Brien’s reputation, and always always order the crispy sweetbreads on the menu.

7. Yoshi’s, San Francisco’s Fillmore Jazz Heritage District. Rating: 4.25 stars. Beautiful new dining room with fresh, clean Japanese stylized cuisine. I’m a little sad to hear that Yoshi’s (the original is still in Oakland’s Jack London Square) is struggling in the current economy because it’s such a massive building with a lot of seats to fill. I hope they can ride out this rough time because Chef Shotaro Kamio is really talented.

6. Jack Falstaff, San Francisco’s SOMA district. Rating: 4.25. This restaurant in the PlumpJack Restaurant Group often gets overshadowed by its more well-known older sibling PlumpJack Café. But Chef Jonnatan Leiva is among the rising stars (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) and it’s worth checking out his elegant dishes in a plush dining area.

5. Coi, San Francisco’s North Beach. Rating: 4.25. I’ve been very vocal about my feelings about the price of Chef Daniel Patterson’s 11-course tasting menu ($120), especially when you see the portion size of each course. But there’s no doubt that his seasonal and sustainable dishes are creative and some are extremely tasty. I just want more of it! Coi got bumped up to two Michelin stars this year so you know people will continue to come check out this cozy but refined restaurant.

4. Wood Tavern, Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood. Rating: 4.25 stars. I’m proud to call this my neighborhood restaurant, but it’s more than a neighborhood restaurant, it’s a dining destination. This handsome, charming American brasserie provides perfectly cooked Mediterranean-California cuisine. The pastrami sandwich for lunch is always a popular choice.

3. Bar Tartine, San Francisco’s Mission District. Rating: 4.25 stars. One of my favorite restaurants around. A quaint wooden décor with a beautiful bar for the Single Guy diner and perfectly executed dishes with influences of California, Mediterranean and French styles.

2. Ubuntu, Napa Valley’s Napa City. Rating: 4.5 stars. For a place that can change your minds about eating your vegetables, you have to try the food by Chef Jeremy Fox at Ubuntu, a place that consistently gets rave reviews for good reason. Chef Fox creates dishes that make you forget that you’re missing the meat. Roasted peppers polenta or white pizza is just so fabulously done and served up in an African-inspired decorated room. And you can take a yoga class too!

1. La Vinera de Bolivar, Buenos Aires’ San Telmo neighborhood. Rating: 4.75 stars. The only restaurant to get the highest rating by me since I’ve started doing this blog two years ago is all the way in Buenos Aires. My eating vacation to this South American city in October was fun, but I wasn’t blown away by the food, which was very similar to San Francisco. That was until my very last meal on my very last day in Buenos Aires when I went to the tiny restaurant of chef Alejandro Digilio, who only serves a 9-course tasting menu. It was creative. It was entertaining. It was tasty. This is the only place where I didn’t really mind eating foam because there was actually a taste to it and a reason for it. My only criticism is that I have to travel more than 5,000 miles to eat here.

Thanks to all the chefs at the above restaurants for providing me with such memorable dinners. I hope to discover more in the coming year! (And living in San Francisco, I have no doubt I will.)

Ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 5.

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Dish on Dining: Miss Pearl’s Jam House

Jam House or Cruise Ship?
One Broadway, Oakland
Jack London Square
PH: 510.444.7171
Weekday breakfast and lunch, weekend brunch and dinner nightly
Reservations, major credit cards accepted
misspearlsjamhouse.com

In the Bay Area, it seems like a lot of people go out for Christmas dinner because when I tried to get reservations for me and my friend Sue at some of my favorite places, they were nearly booked. So we decided to have a Christmas eve dinner instead, and staying close to home we ended up at Miss Pearl’s Jam House in Oakland’s Jack London Square.

Miss Pearl’s Jam House is the once popular San Francisco restaurant at the Phoenix Hotel. And rising like a phoenix, albeit a couple of decades later, Miss Pearl’s is now an elegant restaurant with waterfront view. Opened a few months ago as part of the rejuvenation of Jack London Square, the restaurant is hoping to draw people to the neighborhood with its mix of old world and Caribbean cuisine.

While I’ve never been to the original Miss Pearl’s, I’m assuming it does have some resemblance to its old days because its former chef, Joey Altman, was hired as the consulting opening chef for the new Miss Pearl’s. Chef Altman, known mostly for his hosting of “Bay Area Café” on KRON-TV4, has created an eclectic menu of mostly Jamaican-inspired dishes with a few out-of-place choices like Ginger-Hoisin Glazed Salmon. These days, however, I imagine much of the food is influenced by Executive Chef Robert Barker, and Altman returns to Miss Pearl’s on weekends to perform with his band, the Backburner’s Blues Band.

When Sue and I arrived at the restaurant, the décor looked more like the Titanic than something called a jam house. The handsome room with a large bar area and open view of the kitchen seemed to emphasize more the sea than the Caribbean. There were sea shell motifs and pastel colors from the coral family. Even the menus are backed by mosaics made of fragments that looked like Mother of Pearl or oyster shells.

The only hint of the Caribbean is the attempts to look like an old plantation home with the wooden floors and ceiling. And the food, of course.

We started our evening with a special holiday drink called the Winter Solstice made of vodka and a whole lot of holiday spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. It had a citrus-color to it and definitely tasted festive, but I felt it lacked any punch and Sue didn’t like it at all. She swapped her Winter Solstice for a glass of wine instead.

When I said the menu is eclectic, I also meant it’s a bit segmented. It can seem overwhelming. It’s broken into small plates, soups and salads, which are all self-explanatory. Then you have the “Seafood Raw & Not So Raw Bar,” which is the seafood selection focused on shellfish. “From the Stove Oven” is a handful of dishes baked in, um, a stove oven. And “From the Jerk Pit” is the Caribbean-marinated meat section that you order ala carte and then add on a choice like Caribbean rice or fried plantains from the sides section.

Sue and I started by splitting the Mixed Greens with Roasted Spice Pears Salad ($9). Our waiter kindly served the salad in separate plates (so the serving size in the photo is half the normal size) and it was a pleasant California-style salad with the classic combination of blue cheese and pears all held together with a sherry vinaigrette. It looked more festive with the sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.

For her dinner, Sue got a couple of small dishes. The first was from the stove oven, the Cheesy Dungeness Crab Flatbread ($11), which looks a lot like a thin crust pizza. Sue says she liked the crab flatbread. The fresh crab meat was spread thinly over the flatbread, mixed with a few bits of spicy peppers. I thought the topping itself was average in flavor and the flatbread a bit chewy.

Sue also got the special soup, a Butternut Squash Bisque ($8) that was actually a big bowl for the money. It was spiced with a chestnut-apple-tamarind salsa that had settled to the bottom of the soup, so Sue learned that it’s important to always stir your soup before jumping in and eating.

I also ordered something from the stone oven, getting the Oysters with Tasso & Spinach ($13). This was basically like baked oysters in a sauce topped with cheese. I didn’t know if it was the tasso or the spinach, but the oyster was swimming in a thick green sauce that was almost like pea soup. But for some reason the green color looked really fake. It tasted bland and the oysters didn’t seem very plump.

For my entrée, I ordered half a Petaluma Chicken ($13) from the Jerk pit with a side of the market vegetables, which that night was roasted baby carrots. The chicken looked like a nice size serving and the meat was incredibly tender. It was fork tender pulling easily away from the bone. The jerk spices associated with Jamaica were very good, but stuck primarily on the skin. And since I don’t usually eat the skin, I don’t feel like I got the true jerk flavoring, despite the fact that the waiter says the chicken is marinated in the jerk spices for 10 hours. Still, I felt the jerk chicken was my favorite dish of the night because it really was so tender.

While dinner was a mix bag of pleasant-to-good dishes, I felt dessert, surprisingly, really picked up the evening. I ordered the Tres Leche Cake with passion fruit and strawberry sauce ($8). I don’t think I’ve ever had a tres leche cake, although I’ve always liked the name. But this particular cake was like a vanilla-coconut cake that was quite enjoyable and really enjoyable when you dredged it through the generous passion fruit sauce.

I have to say, though, that I really wanted to steal Sue’s dessert, which was the Key Lime “Bi” pie and sorbet ($8). I looooved the strong lime flavor of the tiny key lime pie (it was more like a piece of cake), a real balance of tart and sweet. The sorbet was served on top of a meringue cookie.

Side note: While the reception staff seemed a bit disoriented on this holiday evening, our waiter was extremely professional and engaging. He was very thorough in his description of the food, making them all sound really good to eat.

Miss Pearl’s Jam House seems like the perfect place for weekend brunch when the sun is out and you can enjoy the beautiful view of the bay. But the food isn’t distinctive enough, I feel, to maintain a steady night-time crowd who has to travel all the way down Broadway to Jack London Square. If Chef Barker focuses more on the Jerk pit offerings, becoming more a pit house than a jam house, then I think this new restaurant might be a winner. The seafood and other offerings just make it seem more like a cruise ship, when really I think Jamaican BBQ is more suited for a place called Miss Pearl’s Jam House.

Single guy rating: 3 stars (Stick with the jerk pit)

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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Fun Holiday Treats to Change Any Scrooge

OK, I admit that I’ve been very Scrooge-like this holiday season. I’m just not into it. I’m not feeling it. I just have to get it out. BAH HUMBUG. Whew. There. I feel better now.

My low-key holiday means I really haven’t been cooking anything special for Christmas. Other than the chocolate-making with April, I just haven’t been creating any snowflake-like cookies or yule log cakes. But that doesn’t mean everyone else out there hasn’t. So I scoured the Web for some creative, fun holiday treats being made by more festive food bloggers out there, and this is just a few of what I found.

Hopefully this parade of colorful holiday foods will make up for my lack of holiday sharing. (Just a reminder that these images are pulled from the Web and are not owned by me.)

Now cupcakes can always put me in the mood, and apparently cupcakes are the perfect canvas for beautiful Christmas creations like this ornament-like cupcake I found on the Cupcake Recipe blog.

The same blog was also responsible for these pretty poinsettia cupcakes …

… and this beautiful pair of star cupcakes. I love the color combo.

This is my favorite Christmas cupcake that I found on a blog called Banana Granola.

This is just a beautiful looking dessert I found on the BBC food blog. Doesn’t it look divine?

Another pretty looking dessert with a winter theme is this mont blanc poached pear creation that I found on this interesting British food blog.

Gingerbread men are always a joyous sight in the kitchen I think during this time of year.

These gingerbread men look like they have pink aliens coming out of their stomachs.

Aloha! Here’s a gingerbread that I can relate to since this is the kind of Christmas I had growing up in Hawaii … Christmas at the beach!

I found this plate of gingerbread men from a blog called 300 Million. I really don’t know what the blog is all about, but I thought it was cute how they made gingerbread men for each of their team members.

Speaking of gingerbread, you can always count on some amazing gingerbread homes, like this one that apparently won a national gingerbread contest back in 2007.

The Japanese are always creative with their food. Here’s a packed lunch with a snowman made of rice. It’s more like a snow-musubi.

And finally, here’s one of the most amazing creations I found out there. It’s actually done by a professional cake decorator (no wonder). I would buy from her. She’s called Cutting Edge Designs in Colorado. Isn’t it amazing? They’re Christmas ornaments made of cake.

Now that you’ve had your holiday sugar rush, you’re all prep for dealing with your families at that Christmas dinner, right? See, I give during the holidays. I’m not always a Scrooge. Have a Merry Christmas! (And I do mean it.)

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Hanukkah Eats

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends out there! Tonight is the second night of Hanukkah and my friend David and his wife, Ann, invited me to their Hanukkah party. It's hard to believe, but this is my first Hanukkah party, so I was interested to see what's served.

The first thing that caught my eyes were these cookies. I don't know if they're traditional or not, but they're definitely Jewish. I mean, they have the star of David and they're blue, which seems to be the Jewish color of choice for the holidays. I'm wondering if the blue has something to do with the Jewish flag? Behind the cookies are macaroons, which were nice bite sizes. And yes, these were the coconut version. David got these from Grand Bakery in Oakland's Grand Lake neighborhood. It's a really kosher bakery. There's been a few times I've wanted to check out this bakery but it was often closed to observe the Sabbath. I don't think I would make a good Jew because I'm constantly thinking of eating on the Sabbath. Oy-veh!

Now this is definitely something associated with Hanukkah and Jewish food, and that's the latkes. I have to say, I was disappointed that David didn't make this himself because he's made them before for my blog so I was expecting them to be from scratch. Instead, he got these also from Grand Bakery. They were OK, I'm sure the homemade version would have been better. But don't you think they kind of look like veggie patties? Oh, that's apple sauce that's traditionally served with them.

Oooh, now these are the kind of holiday food I can get into. They're sufganiot, which is a kind of jelly doughnut. (BTW, none of the Jews at the party could spell the name for this doughnut.) For Hanukkah, a lot of fried food is served because the story goes that the Maccabees who liberated the country didn't have enough oil to light the candles in the temple, but the miracle is that the limited oil was enough to last eight nights instead of just one. (I learned this story from "Friends.") Anywho, so a lot of food made with oil like deep-fried doughnuts are served. Some also believe the sweetness of the jelly inside represent the sweetness of life after years of suffering.

Along with the food, there were also some dreidel spinning. But actually a lot of the kids at the party were babies because David and Ann also have a newborn. So most of the dreidel spinning were done by the dads. Above, David lights his menorah. It was an interesting night to learn about a different side of this holiday season. And of course, it's always fun to get together with good friends, old and new.

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18 Reasons for Holiday Cheer

I came in from the rain today and warmed myself up with some mulled wine, courtesy of 18 Reasons, a tiny community space in San Francisco's Mission District.

18 Reasons was started by the founder of Bi-Rite Market, which is just a few steps down 18th Street. (18 Reasons is on Guerrero at 18th Street). The idea is that it would be a space for the community to get together and enjoy art and food.

I came to enjoy the mulled wine and holiday cookies from Bi-Rite. This was my first time visiting the space, and it was a very intimate group. Partly because of holiday shopping and the rain, there wasn't a very large crowd. Still, it was nice just to drop in and enjoy some holiday cheer.


The space showcases local art, but it's not really a gallery. It's more a space for special food events, and supposedly the wine dinners are a big thing. If you want to learn more about future events, you can check out their Web site here.

18 Reasons, 593 Guerrero St., San Francisco. PH: 415.252.9816

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Yu-who? Yuzu.

One of the most common ingredient I see on restaurant menus in the Bay Area is yuzu, the Japanese citrus. It just sounds so exotic, huh? But I never met the yuzu, until last weekend at the farmers market at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza. Since we’re entering citrus season, there are more interesting lemons, oranges and such at the markets. I picked them up at my favorite place for fruits, The Hamada Farms from Central Valley.

The yuzu looked a lot like a tangerine, and when I cut into them at home I was right. It has sections like a tangerine and the peel came off easily like the crinkly orange-colored tangerine pith. But the fragrance was the most interesting part about the yuzu. It’s a little like a Meyer lemon with the scent of sweet lemons and tangerines combined. The juice itself, however, is really sour, more so than limes.

The Japanese often blend the juice with soy sauce. Since this is the first time I was using it, I figured I’ll do the same and just poured it over a fresh red snapper that I got from an Asian grocery store in San Francisco. I made sure to use the zest of the yuzu because I really do like the fragrance of it more than the juice. If you spot them at the markets (they are still pretty rare to find), give them a try. Enjoy!

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Steamed Red Snapper with Yuzu-Soy Sauce

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients
1 whole red snapper (or any whole white fish)
Juice and zest from two yuzu (or from the bottle)
1 t sesame oil
1 stalk of green onion, chopped into two-inch parts lengthwise
2 T vegetable oil
2 T light soy sauce
Salt for seasoning fish

Rinse your fish even though your fishmonger gutted it for you. Pat dry and score both sides (take a knife and cut tiny slits along the body). Season with a teaspoon of salt on each side, rubbing in if necessary. Place on a plate and into a steamer or a large covered wok with a stand and water. Steam for 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and leave covered for another 5 minutes. (You can test that your fish is cooked by getting a fork and seeing if the meat is flakey.)

In a small saucepan, warm yuzu juice, soy sauce, sesame oil and vegetable oil. Plate fish and sprinkle with green onions and yuzu zest. Then drizzle the warm yuzu-soy-oil mixture. Served immediately with steamed rice and sautéed greens.

Makes 2 to 3 servings, depending on the size of your fish.

Pair with a glass of Riesling.

TIP: When shopping for fish, check the eyes to make sure it looks clear and not cloudy. Also, give it a sniff and it should smell like the ocean and not rotting fish.

YUZU: I was able to find a vendor at the farmers’ market selling yuzu, so was able to use fresh juice and zest. But I know it can be hard to find. Yuzu juice is sold in the bottle at Japanese or Asian grocery stores. In a pinch, substitute with lemons or tangerines.

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Top Chef: Season 5, Episode 6

It’s a Top Chef Christmas Miracle

Previously: They throw a bridal shower for Gail and Danny throws shiitake mushrooms into Carla Top’s salad. But that’s not half as bad as the surf-and-turf sushi that went all wrong. The Cougar (Ariane) is the surprised winner again, and Danny and his beard are sent packing.

Cue the dance music. Hey, the first three cheftestants in this montage are gone. Are we half-way there yet?

Opening scenes of the subway and that weird slow pan of the condo building. EU Fabio and Stefan are the new “bromance” of this season, rivaling Andrew and Spike of Season 4. Fabio calls the two of them EU (hey, I already called you that!) but Stefan calls themselves the “dynamic duo,” and Fabio doesn’t understand because he either doesn’t understand Stefan’s accent or he doesn’t want to Robin to Stefan’s Batman. I wouldn’t either.

We get a solemn moment when Hosea calls his sister to check on his dad, who was diagnosed with cancer right before Hosea had to leave to do the show. So I guess the producers were nice enough to let him make that one phone call. (I don’t know what the phone privileges are on this show because they always seem to be using a special phone and not their own personal ones. And we already know they don’t usually have a TV in the apartment. Again, I wouldn’t last on this show for pure isolation reasons.)

We hear the jingle bells as the cheftestants enter the holiday-decorated Top Chef kitchen. Padma is all ho ho ho (I’m not going there). She’s really excited for some reason. For their quickfire challenge, she tells them they have to create a holiday meal that can be made using only one pot. That’s kind of a cool challenge because as the Single Guy, I hate doing dishes.

Since this challenge is focused on making life easier for the home cook (and the Single Guy), Padma introduces the pre-eminent home cook herself, Martha Stewart, who comes in looking all professor like carrying a book (hers, of course). Of course everyone’s stoked. And Leah even calls Martha “bad ass,” although I don’t think you get that honor unless you have tats and wear leather. (That would be the Biker Living Martha Magazine.)

Martha quotes Albert Einstein about keeping things simple but not too simple. Genius! They have 45 minutes and they’re off running.

Most people are planning to cook something and then empty it out and set it aside and then use the same pan to cook another item. I think that’s cheating because it really should be something cooked all at once in one pot because again, as the Single Guy home cook, me no likey having to wash the pan in between cooking. The only guy who really GETS it is Hosea, who makes a paella, and you know I love paella partly because it is a dish you make in one pan and can even bring to the dinner table in said same pan!

Jamie and The Cougar are working near each other and Jamie interviews that she likes The Cougar and having her nearby to taste each other’s food, although she makes a point to say that her cooking style is no way like Cougar’s style. And actually, this group of cheftestants seems like they like having others tasting their food because here’s EU Fabio feeding Stefan his grandma’s polenta recipe. It’s so cute how they like to share.

Commercials. Why do they always have the same commercials for the whole season? I’m bored with them already. How many more weeks until the finale? If I have to watch another Swanson-Xbox-Glad commercial, I’m going to have to stab Stefan in the head like what he did with the watermelon on this episode.

Oh, I’m digging their opening scenes now. There’s the Statue of Liberty and typical Manhattan traffic. (Huh, who knew BRAVO reads my recaps! Ha!) Now Martha and Padma taste the one-pot dishes and here’s how it went:

Eugene’s spicy Korean broth with pork. Martha asks how the broth is thickened and he says with cornstarch (which I actually do often too, I think it’s a Hawaii thing) and Martha walks away saying only “Oh-KAY.”

EU Stefan’s veal Celtic goulash with potatoes and mushrooms. Martha talks about picking chanterelles in the summer.

Hosea’s paella. Martha says she likes the flavors and talks about traveling in Spain and sipping Rioja with a matador.

Melissa’s pork tenderloin with fennel cabbage on top. Martha talks about feeding apples to pigs on her farm.

Jeff the Hair’s potato risotto, with crispy pork and sautéed brussel sprouts. Martha says it’s unusual and pungent and goes on talking about making risotto with Pavarotti. (OK, some of these I made up just because it seems like Martha does like to talk about herself. But some aren’t. You guess which aren’t.)

Jamie’s potato and scallops. Martha says she would fish for big scallops up in Maine.

The Cougar’s cauliflower puree with filet mignon. Martha talks about the fresh butter she churns for herself on the weekends to add to her purees.

Carla Top’s brined turkey breast with apple and dried cherry stuffing. Martha says she once made a turkey in the microwave for her prison cell mate Cheree.

EU Fabio’s roasted mushroom polenta with seared duck breast. Martha just says thank you.

Decision time. Martha says some cheftestants made their dishes too simple. She says she found Jeff the Hair’s potato risotto starchy, didn’t like Eugene’s cornstarch broth and thought EU Fabio’s polenta looked grayish.

She did like Jamie’s scallops, The Cougar’s beef and cauliflower puree and Hosea’s paella, but she eventually chooses The Cougar, and again people seem really surprised despite the fact that she’s won a couple of challenges already. Now I’m wondering how much Jamie still wants to work close to The Cougar since Ariane has narrowly beat Jamie out of winning two challenges in a row.

Martha gives her an autographed copy of her Martha Stewart Cooking School cookbook. They bond for a moment over both being from Jersey. Of course, Ariane has immunity.

For their elimination challenge, Padma says they have to cater a holiday party for AmFAR, which is the American Foundation for AIDS Research (often associated with Elizabeth Taylor but for this episode it’s Natasha Richardson who provides the Hollywood glamour). Next thing you know, a group of colorfully dressed people come in singing and a few cheftestants actually look a bit scared. I think some of them think the choir is going to help them cook. After a few minutes they loosen up and get into the singing from the Harlem Gospel Choir. Carla Top goes crazy for them.

Then the cheftestants draw knives, and when EU Stefan pulls a knife with the number 12, a guy from the choir sings out and startles Stefan. Others pull knives with numbers and we get the theme, they’re cooking for the 12 days of Christmas. I actually like this theme and has always thought about blogging something like that, but then I never get my act together because, really, how can I find time to cook for 12 days straight around Christmas?

But enough about my lazy blogging ass, so the cheftestants have three hours to prep their dishes and then one hour on the day of the party.

Commercials. Who knew Heidi Klum is still modeling for Victoria’s secret? Oh, they do that little Bravo snippet from Top Chef and they have all the cheftestants trying to sing their day of the song. At least this one is related and not some weird romantic tension clip.

The chefs are shopping at Whole Foods at night this time (and I can see a few customers just watching at the checkout counter, how cool would that have been to watch?). Carla Top has two turtle doves and she’s nervous. Some people aren’t really thinking their dishes through and, IMHO, grasping at straws trying to connect their theme with their dishes.

Jeff the Hair would have had a great dish with his frog legs for his 10 Lords a Leapin’, but Whole Foods didn’t have frog legs so he does this sad attempt at two types of cheese from two countries, so the cheeses are “leaping” from one country to another. See what I mean about grasping?

Leah lucked out because she gets the Three French Hens, which is like a giveaway that she’d make something with hens, in this case guinea hens. Another easy one is Radhika’s partridge in a pear tree because to me, partridges are like pigeons or squabs and she could pair it with some kind of pear compote.

The cheftestants head back to the Top Chef kitchen and start prepping. Jamie is doing scallops, again, and making it swim in a vichyssoise for her Seven Swans a Swimmin’. Hosea is smoking his pork tenderloin for another stretching-the-inspiration dish for his 11 Pipers Piping because he’s putting his pork through a smoke pipe? I would have made a dessert where he had to “pipe” in the cream or something. Anywho, Hosea is piping up the whole joint and it’s totally smoking everywhere. I’m surprised the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off.

There are tons of pans everywhere (poor production crew who does the clean up) and the refrigerator is packed. They leave to head home.

The next morning, when they arrive at the Top Chef kitchen, someone realizes that one of the refrigerator was left ajar, so it never got cold and with all the hot food, everything stayed warm. Everyone’s shocked and several temperature-taking minutes later, the food is declared garbage. The brunt of it seems to have affected Hosea and Radhika and Radhika is near tears because she thinks she’ll be going home without any dish to present.

Then a miracle happens. Everyone starts to look around the kitchen and get replacement ingredients for Radhika and Hosea. (Luckily, Radhika left some of her duck part, and just the duck breasts spoiled.) Everyone is pitching in to help the two get their ingredients ready and this team spirit is so nice to see, all we need is a little English orphan boy. You know this would so not happen on “Project Runway” or “Survivor.” And most definitely not on “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.”

The cheftestants arrive at the ballroom to finish prepping their stations and food. Of course, since it’s an AIDS fund-raiser, they get Jamie the sole survivor of Team Rainbow to talk about what AmFAR has done and how it’s close to her heart. (Wow, I’m cynical around the holidays.)

The guests start arriving, and more people are singing songs and even more are getting drunk on the cocktails. The judges arrive with Natasha Richardson in holiday red and guest judge Chef Michelle Bernstein of Miami, whom I’ve seen before on Top Chef and she’s always a real cranky judge. This is going to be good.

After a few opening remarks from Richardson, whom Stefan has a crush on, they head off to the tasting tables starting with, oh, Stefan. I’m not going to get into any details because it’s all so cumbersome, but from what I can tell the judges seem to like Radhika’s braised duck, Leah’s guinea hens, Hosea’s smoked pork and Jeff’s salad of cheese.

The low points were Eugene’s ceviche with pineapple rings (he got Five Golden Rings), Fabio’s greasy and dense crab cakes, and Jamie’s warm raw scallops. I have to add that I though Carla Top’s mushroom cap over her braised chicken made to look like the back of the turtle totally is so off base from her Two Turtle Doves. I thought that always referred to a type of dove, so she could have made squab too. Again, a lot of stretching going on.

As you can imagine, there were some really interesting people at this New York function, including Kenneth Cole, who is the most handsome straight male fashion designer around, and Cheyenne Jackson, who is the most handsome gay male actor on Broadway.

But it’s the girls who get Hosea’s attention, as he’s flirting with some floozy with a drink. It’s not just bad that Hosea has a girlfriend back home, but he actually goes to Leah who he supposedly has romantic chemistry with and tells her that he’s been flirting with another girl. Apparently, the flirting helps because the guests vote by pinning their little red ribbons onto the board of their favorite cheftestant. Hosea’s board is pretty red, but not as red as Jeff the Hair, who is doing his own style of flirting.

Back from commercials, Padma arrives in the stew room to get Jeff the Hair, EU Stefan, Hosea and Radhika. They look nervous and I don’t know why since they’re obviously the leaders because they could see how many ribbons they gathered. Plus, Top Chef is so predictable. Wow, it’s another long show (we’re passed the hour mark and it’s still judges’ table). I wonder if they’re making up for taking a bye next week during the real Christmas holiday.

They go through each cheftestant and Natasha Richardson says she’s more a duck leg woman than breast when addressing Radhika’s duck dish. Stefan explains his chicken pot pie was the first thing he ate for Christmas when he arrived in the United States, which is kind of sad to me.

Padma tells Jeff the Hair that he was the crowd favorite and the red ribbon winner, but that’s not enough to win the whole deal because the judges’ opinion still counts. Natasha chooses Hosea as the winner. Guest Judge Michelle Bernstein also has a new book to hawk, so she gives a copy to Hosea. And because he mentions how everyone pitched in to help him when his food went bad, and because Bernstein knows a good marketing ploy when she sees one, she gives a copy of her book to all the cheftestants.

Hosea sends in Melissa, Eugene and Jamie. As they head in for judgment, The Cougar cheers them on, saying “stand up for yourself, fight! Fight! Fight!” Isn’t this a turn of riches for the Cougar? Remember how insecure she was in the first two weeks?

The judges grill the cheftestants, asking about Jamie’s warm raw scallops and Eugene’s overly sweet ceviche with coconut milk. And of course, they both stand up for their dishes saying they thought it would win.

You can tell Jamie is mad because she has her arms folded as usual, and Eugene looks like those guys I would always see at the beach in Honolulu drinking beer and complaining about how the mainlanders are ruining the islands.

For Melissa, the judges just didn’t like the blue cheese in her dish, and Melissa says a lot of people came back for the dish. Bernstein is quick to point out that if a lot of people came back, then why didn’t she get the most red ribbons? Oooh, girl just slapped her into place.

Bernstein also puts Eugene in place telling him that as a chef, he needs to fix his food if others say it doesn’t taste right instead of just being stubborn. I don’t think Eugene’s going to be taking a copy of Bernstein’s cookbook, Cuisine A Latina, now in a bookstore near you.

The judges debate the dishes some more when the three leave, and Chef Tom Colicchio is doing the grumpy bear routine where he says he wishes he could send them all home. In fact, he feels some of the people who weren’t called in could have easily gone home, too. Wow, this may turn out to be a pre-Christmas massacre in Top Chef land.

Sweet Natasha Richardson (c’mon, you know she has to be good to host an AmFAR event) says that it was nice that they all pitched in to help Hosea and Radhika during their mini crisis. And Padma turns to grumpy Tom and says maybe that should be a consideration?

Commercials. None worth talking about. Back to the stew room.

In walks grumpy Tom who sits down and tells the cheftestants that the food weren’t very inspiring. He tells them to step up and cook like they want to win instead of cooking to just not get eliminated. Leah puts her head on the chopping board by speaking up and saying that “no one’s food sucked.” Yeah, good argument Leah. Go for the “at least we didn’t suck” position. Chef Tom singles out The Cougar, who was getting overly confident but now is told by Tom that making deviled eggs is not going to make you Top Chef.

And then just when everyone thought this was going to be the longest elimination in Top Chef history, Tom announces that no one will go home tonight because it’s the “holidays” and this is a gift from the judges to them.

Everyone is relieved and Radhika is near tears, although Eugene still looks pissed. And LOOK! He is drinking a beer. All he needs is the beach and a palm tree and he could be my rough cousin that always beat up on me.

Next: (FYI, the show will not be on next week and instead a Top Chef Christmas special will air with returning favorites competing with holiday dishes. When the actual show returns, this is what will be next:) Tom wakes people up, it’s a free-for-all challenge, Jamie is cooking scallops again, and the substitute judge for Gail look scary.

“Top Chef: New York” airs every Wednesday at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV’s Web site.

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Dragon Fruit Lands in the Bay Area

This weekend I was shopping over on Clement Street in San Francisco's Richmond District, and made a stop at my regular favorite Asian grocer New May Wah Supermarket. I can always count on finding something interesting in their boxes of fruits and vegetables lining the front entrance on the sidewalk. This is the dragon fruit, which comes from places with tropical weather and mostly from Southeast Asia. I saw it for the first time in Vietnam. The fruit inside is just as interesting, with a gray-white meat with black specks. The texture of the meat inside reminds me a lot of a kiwi. I can't say it's my favorite tropical fruit, but it definitely has the nicest color. It was selling for $5.99 a pound. Won't it look pretty hanging from a Christmas tree?

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Dish on Dining: Mua

New Club Vibe on Auto Row
2442A Webster St. (near Broadway), Oakland
Uptown neighborhood
PH: 510.238.1100
Open Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to late; Sat. and Sun., 5 p.m. to late
Major credit cards, reservations accepted
http://www.muaoakland.com/

With the current economy putting pressure on car dealerships, the landscape along Oakland’s Auto Row on Broadway is sure to change as a few showrooms are emptying out. If you’re feeling the effects of the downturn, maybe you should drown your sorrows with a drink at Mua, a new restaurant and club built in what looks like a former mechanic’s garage.

Opened in mid-October, this huge warehouse-like space is becoming the latest hotspot in an area that has only been home to Luka’s Taproom for years. Paired with the recent opening of Ozumo, there are more places for night revelers visiting the nearby Paramount Theatre or traipsing through the art studios during the First Friday Art Walks.

My initial taste of Mua was for lunch, because I really wanted to check out the food first. So last week I met my friend Valerie and we entered the nearly empty dining space. The fact that the space is so huge just accentuates the small crowd. (Mua only started offering lunch recently, so it still hasn’t caught on as a lunch spot.)

The spot is a mix of eclectic street art with Asian touches, and that’s also reflected in the limited menu, which has a lot of basic comfort food like hamburgers and fish mixed in with Asian touches like Korean kim chee.

Valerie and I started by sharing the Endive Salad ($7), which came beautiful tossed with fennel, radicchio, almond slices and persimmons. A few specks of pomegranate seeds finished off the festive-looking dish.

The salad was light and crunchy, a really bright and cheery start to lunch. I really enjoyed the persimmon slices, which seem to have cured in the light dressing so that it was soft and smooth and not at all mealy the way persimmons can sometimes be.

For our entrees, Valerie got the special sandwich of the day made with pulled pork and served with French fries ($10). The meat was very tender and the bun was nicely toasted, but it lacked any strong flavors. It was more texture than taste.

The same could be said about my Lamb Tagine ($16), which came in this beautiful blue-glazed bowl. The tender chunks of lamb meat sat on a bed of couscous. While very tender, it lacked any distinctive flavor. Only near the end did I get a slight lamb taste, but there were no spices to conjure up the sense of Morocco, which is often associated with the tagine. (The tagine is a cooking vehicle that looks almost like a pot with a huge teepee-like lid, and it’s often used in North Africa to braise meats.)

A few days later, I returned to Mua to check out the Friday night scene with my friend Joe. The bar was crowded with a mix of people who were drinking and watching the flat screens. The dining area wasn’t very crowded, but then again it was after 10 p.m. and it really is a huge space.

I started with one of their specialty drinks. It was a lemonade ($10) made with yuzu-infused vodka and grapefruit juice. It was pretty but nothing special. Joe skipped the drinks because he ordered from the dessert menu the Adult Float ($7) made with double chocolate stout and a scoop of caramel ice cream. It was an interesting idea to use beer to make a float, but I wasn’t sure if the flavors of the ice cream and the stout really complemented each other. Both tasted fine by itself (Joe really enjoyed the caramel ice cream), but together it seemed an odd pairing.

I also ordered the Lamb Cheeks ($9) off the dinner menu, which was pretty much identical to lunch. The lamb cheeks were tender but—again—lacked any major flavors. It wasn’t bland, but it wasn’t tantalizing in my mouth. It’s like it just sat there wondering what to do (not that lamb cheeks really do much).

During my lunch with Valerie, the waitress we had was very friendly and helpful. I really thought she was great. But at the bar, the bartenders were perfunctory, talking to you only to get your order and nothing more. That seemed odd for a bar when you expect people to chat, especially a new place that needs some talking up. Several times a bartender worked right in front of me creating drinks and not once did he look up at me to smile or ask how I was doing. It really made the space seem cold, just like the vast warehouse environment.

Mua seems like a welcomed addition for the neighborhood, creating more of a night life for Oakland. The vibe and space are very attractive and engaging. But the food falls short, delivering in presentation but lacking in flavor. If the chef can add more complex flavors (or really any flavor) to his dishes, then the food will live up to the overall club vibe.

Single guy rating: 2.75 stars (Funky but Flavorless)

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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Holiday Chocolate-making with Friends

’Twas a month before Christmas, and an invitation did come
From my co-worker April, with promise of fun;
It’s a day of chocolate-making for gifts or yourself,
Our co-worker Rhonda could be another elf.

So we spent an entire Saturday at her SOMA loft,
Making caramel with lavender that was pillowy soft.
There were espresso-infused truffles and apricots galore,
Which were made into chocolate barks with nuts and a lot more.

Out in the living area there was a whole lot of chatter
From her two interesting parrots who really did matter.
“Who’s the prettiest bird?” could often be heard;
While Rhonda’s husband read quietly saying hardly a word.

Jason and John came later to help
And we ordered pizza for lunch without using Yelp.
My wondering eyes enjoyed the silky dark candy,
And my Canon digital SLR sure came in handy.

I captured hundreds of photos to remember the day
So I could blog about chocolates made the personal way.
More rapid than eagles I quickly uploaded
The images to my laptop, then a horror unfolded;

“Damn it! Damn it! How can this be?!”
The card said ZERO, there was nothing to see!
Call it a fluke, but all my images were zapped;
So was my spirit, I felt like a sap.

All I had were the candy, all finished and nice
I took photos of them and said they’d suffice;
Because in the end, no matter the pain
I had memories of fun and friends that I gained.

So thanks to April for the generous invite
And Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!

If it wasn’t clear from the above, the digital memory card gremlin cleared all the images from my memory card while I tried to upload my images of my day of chocolate making. At least it wasn’t photos of my Buenos Aires trip or of a honeymoon!

My co-worker April has been making chocolates for fun for years, and during the holidays she makes them as gifts, which is a great idea now with the economy the way it is. One of the chocolates we made was this incredible lavender-infused caramel covered with dark chocolate and sprinkled with fleur de sel. She adapted a recipe from Michael Recchiuti’s cookbook, “Chocolate Obsession.” It’s so good, I plan to make it again (and maybe then I can show you photos of the process). Or you can try to make them yourself. It’s actually pretty easy. I’ve reprinted the recipe below with the addition of the lavender (which actually came from our co-worker Rhonda’s garden).

Lavender-inflused Fleur de Sel Caramels
Adapted from Michael Recchiuti’s “Chocolate Obsession”

About 50 pieces

Ingredients
Flavorless vegetable oil for the pan
1.5 cups (10.5 oz.) granulated cane sugar
1/2 Tahitian vanilla bean, split horizontally
1 cup (8 oz.) heavy whipping cream
2 T (1.5 oz. by weight) light corn syrup
1 T (1.5 oz.) unsalted butter with 82% butter fat, chilled
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel in fine grains
Tempered 61-70% chocolate for dipping*
Fleur de sel in fine grains for finishing
1 T lavender flowers for cooking

Making the caramels

Bring heavy cream in a small pot to a boil over medium low heat and then remove from heat. Add lavender and let seep for about two hours.

Line the bottom of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper. Lightly coat the paper and the sides of the pan with flavorless vegetable oil.

Put the sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed pot. Use a copper pot if you have one. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the pot. Place over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until the sugar melts. (This may take awhile.) When all the sugar is melted, then continue to cook without stirring until the sugar turns dark and amber, about 5-6 minutes.

When the sugar is the correct shade, stir in the corn syrup. Remove the pot from the heat and put a sieve or splatter guard over the pot. Reheat the heavy cream mixture if necessary. Wearing an oven mitt, slowly pour the hot cream into the sugar syrup a little at a time. The mixture will splutter and foam.

When the bubbling subsides, return the pan to medium heat and cook undisturbed until the mixture registers 252 degrees F on a candy thermometer (about 5 minutes). Remove from the heat, and stir with the wooden spoon. Add the salt and stir until evenly distributed.

Pour the caramel into papered pan and let cool at room temperature.

Assembling the caramels

Invert pan and peel off parchment paper. Cut into sticks one inch wide with a slightly oiled knife. Then cut into 1-inch squares.

* Temper chocolate by melting about 1 pound of dark or semi-sweet chocolate in a double boiler or microwave until chocolate reaches 100 degrees (use a digital thermometer to test the temperature). Stir chocolate to cool it to about mid-90s. Throw in a few pieces of hard chocolate and continue stirring. When temperature of chocolate dips to 86 degrees, then start dipping in caramel squares to coat. If chocolate starts to seem thick, you may need to warm it up again to temper the chocolate. (Coating works best when temperature stays around 86 degrees.) Lay coated caramels on parchment paper, and sprinkle some fleur de sel on top. Then allow to cool to set.

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Dish on Dining: Shan Dong

What’s All the Fuss Oakland Lunchers?
528 10th St. (near Webster), Oakland
Chinatown
PH: 510.839.2299
Open Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–9:30 p.m. (till 10 p.m. on Fri. and Sat.)
Major credit cards accepted (reservations for large groups)
Web site

In the United States, Chinese cuisine is primarily influenced by Cantonese dishes from Guandong Province in Southern China (where many early immigrants came from) and Hong Kong (where high-end culinary chops are tested).

But sometimes I crave the food from the north, often characterized by tender meats, dumplings and hot spices to warm your insides in the face of the brutal cold weather. I had the cravings recently with the change in seasons, and finally went to check out Shan Dong Mandarin Restaurant, the often-mentioned place for good northern Chinese cuisine.

This tiny restaurant in Oakland’s Chinatown gets a lot of raves for its dumplings, which you can sometimes see them make at the front along with the hand-pulled noodles. Since it’s in Chinatown, it also makes it another lunch option for me during the work week.

When I first arrived, the restaurant was already packed with office workers. I noticed there were several large tables filled with workers who apparently like to come here and eat together. (Hmm, my office never goes out to lunch in such a large group unless someone’s quitting.) The décor is that of your typical hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant with mirrored walls, old Chinese paintings and colorful paper with Chinese calligraphy.

I was seated in one of the small tables and asked to share with an older gentleman. This is the Chinese version of the communal table trend except it wasn’t planned that way but created out of necessity. I got off on the wrong foot with my tablemate because I smiled at him politely and then proceeded to pour myself a cup of tea. But I accidentally picked up his cup (which was empty BTW). He tried to wrestle it back from me, which I thought was odd since he wasn’t using it, and then I discovered my cup off near the wall.

After that mini skirmish, I ordered a plate of the Special Shan Dong Dumplings ($6.95) made with pork and vegetables. You get a plate of 10 huge dumplings that is definitely enough for a meal.

First off, I was really put off by the appearance of the dumplings. They really looked dumpy. I guess one might think of it as home-made or “rustic,” but it really looked poorly made to me. The skin was thick and kind of mealy in texture, and the inside was your basic chopped pork and vegetable filling with nothing exceptional in taste. I was really disappointed to know that people considered this the best dumplings in town because I’ve enjoyed better at dim sum restaurants like Koi Palace in Daly City.

Side note: For lunch, everyone is always given a complementary bowl of Hot and Sour Soup, which is the most common dish associated with Northern Chinese cuisine. Shan Dong’s version wasn’t necessarily really spicy. So the soup is fairly mild and balanced, which suited my tastes.

Stuffed with the dumpy dumplings, it took a couple of weeks before I decided to give Shan Dong another try. Again, I arrived to a nearly packed restaurant (again filled with office workers) and was seated at a round table that I shared with a guy who was reporting for jury duty at the nearby courthouse.

This time I ordered the Mandarin Beef Soup Noodles ($6.95), and added $1 for the hand-pulled noodles. I love beef noodle soup from the north because of the richness of the broth and the tender beef flavored with star anise.

The bowl came out looking very common and not at all Northern. It was spotted with western broccoli, button mushrooms and zucchini. Most Northern-style dishes have preserved vegetables often diced thinly, adding to the exotic flavors. To me, I could have made the same thing at home.

The beef pieces were the only redeeming ingredient. They were tender and very tasty, with the distinctive mix of Northern spices that are hearty and warm. The hand-pulled noodles, however, were another disappointment, just like the dumplings.

The noodles were clumpy and short, looking very amateurish. Northern-style noodles are often thick like Japanese udon, and I often thought of them as worms eating them growing up. While Shan Dong’s noodles were thick, they had a starchy taste and just didn’t look at all like noodles. They just looked like poorly made pasta.

For the price and having to deal with waits, I just couldn’t imagine coming back for a third try. I don’t really understand all these office workers who come here for lunch when there are so many other better tasting Asian restaurants in the area. Sure, they have the big round tables but I get a sense that Shan Dong has past its prime, if it ever had one.

Single guy rating: 1.75 stars (Dumpy starched dishes)

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 5, Episode 5

Till Danny Do Us Part

Previously: They cook for live TV, but not really because only their food makes it to the Today Show. Melissa burns everyone’s mouth, and Alex is sent packing so he can finish that crème brulee.

Opening scenes of the approach to Grand Central Station and a weird pan shot moving up along the cheftestants’ condo building. Another shot of Jeff the Hair shirtless. You can do a drinking game of every time Jeff runs his hand through his hair or is seen shirtless.

Elsewhere, Melissa is thinking about being smart. The Cougar (Ariane) is getting cocky. And Jamie has a weird stuff animal that Stefan gave her. Apparently EU Stefan has a crush on Jamie because, you know, in Europe they swing both ways.

The cheftestants arrive at the Top Chef kitchen and Padma is there by herself in pigtails. There’s no guest judge this time because they’re doing the tasting test. But instead of tasting secret ingredients, they have to taste a secret sauce and guess what’s in it.

They make the cheftestants pull knives with numbers, and they’re paired up so two will go head-to-head, and, of course, Stefan is paired with Jamie (wink from the editors). He is just drawn to her lesbian scent!

They enter for the sauce tasting and it’s like some World of Poker face-off where they each have to give a number of how many ingredients they have to guess and then the other person has to go higher, or else “call” the other person to do the naming.

First up is a shrimp and lobster bouillabaisse, then a Thai green curry, and finally a Mexican mole sauce, which I never make simply because of all the many many ingredients that go into it. The cheftestants come and go, until in the end it came down to Carla, EU Stefan and Hosea, using a spelling bee format taking turns naming ingredients.

Carla gets cut first on her first guess of peanut butter. Then Stefan gets cut by guessing tomato paste. Hosea wins immunity by naming vegetable oil. And now we know one-tenth of the ingredients in mole.

For the elimination challenge, the cheftestants draw knives again with words that says “old,” “new,” “borrowed” and “blue.” Get where this is going? So did the other cheftestants. They knew either a wedding or something to do with a bride is coming up. Ugh, I hate weddings. Oh, Radhika just says she doesn’t want to be on Stefan’s team and she’d rather be on Satan’s team. Too bad Satan’s not on this season, because then maybe there’d be more drama.

Padma says they’re working in teams to help her throw a bridal shower for one of her girlfriends, and in comes Gail with some wind machine blowing because she’s just breezing in. Daniel is all pumped because I’m pretty sure he has the hots for Gail, and all the other women on the show, I’m sure.

Gail says most of her friends will be from Food and Wine magazine, and that she doesn’t like veal or black beans. Huh, I wonder how often she’s had that combo? Daniel can’t stop smiling listening to Gail.

The teams break away and start to plan their meals following the themes. On Team Borrowed, Jamie uses the idea of borrowing the cuisine of Radhika’s Indian culture. This, of course, prompts Radhika to go into a whole discussion of how she doesn’t want to be known as the Indian spice queen. Radhika really is worried about being seen as an Indian chef but she always ends up using Indian ingredients. Oy.

In the Something New Team, Daniel, Carla Top (that’s my nickname for her because she reminds me of carrot top with her hair), and Eugene are throwing out ideas, well, mostly Daniel who for some reason thinks he knows Gail really well and tells the rest of the team that she loves pickled foods. Eugene suggests a surf-and-turf sushi and Carla Top is really just letting the boys do their thing.

Commercials. Wal-mart’s Christmas commercial is soooo blue. And something about the Bluefly commercial and that naked girl at the holiday table is just not right. I mean, really, food and naked flesh? Dat don't mix.

The cheftestants are back at Whole Foods to shop for their ingredients. Fabio is smelling fish. Danny is tasting ice cream. Carla goes around saying “hootie-hoo.” We learn this is the way she calls her husband when they’re looking for each other at the grocery store. And apparently because this is the wedding episode, we get old family photos of the cheftestants and their spouses like Carla Top and her husband, Mr. Carla Top.

After some bossing around by EU Stefan in the tomato section, they head back to the kitchen for some prepping. There’s a lot of running around as usual and Jamie is using some secret ingredient she brought with her called vadouvan. Never heard of it.

We learn Eugene’s wife didn’t have a bridal shower because they just went to the courthouse. (More family photos.) We also learn that his sushi rice is too mushy because he’s not used to the digital rice cooker used to cook the rice.

In comes Chef Tom Colicchio to check on the cheftestants, visiting the Blue Team first. He tells them there are no blue food in the natural world, not even blueberries, which he says is purple (although I’ve seen some really blue looking blueberries).

When visiting Team New and their sushi, Chef Tom looks a bit skeptical. When visiting Team Old, we learn that Stefan was married twice, to the same woman! But now they’re divorced, and despite Tom’s prodding, Stefan doesn’t plan to make it three because he knows the three-strikes rule.

Outside, Tom gives a rundown and says this is personal because the cooking is for Gail, who will assemble a real foodie crowd. He thinks the Blue Team is stretching it with their interpretation of blue, and instead he thinks it’s boring. The New Team has too many components and it can be great or totally bomb, he says.

Back at the homestead, Eugene and his team are on the balcony smoking and he gets an inspiration to serve their surf-and-turf sushi deconstructed. So that means the girls get to make their own sushi, picking the ingredients they want to use. EU Stefan is nearby and tells Eugene that that’s a stupid idea because women don’t like to make their own food. Eugene tells him to fuck off and take care of his own cooking.

BTW, this is like the EU Stefan episode. Even the dumb text message question of the week is about him. They want to know whether Stefan is a bully. Um, what do you think? Duh.

Commercials. Who knew Victoria’s Secret sells robes and Pjs?

We get one of those weird short clips and I’m starting to think maybe these are scenes from the current episode, so why don’t they just show it during the regular episode instead of these commercial-like scenes? Anywho, since this is Stefan’s episode, it’s a scene of him in bed with Jamie. It’s not what you think because Carla Top is there with them. Stefan keeps trying to get Jamie to kiss him. I don’t think this will end pretty.

Back to the “real” show, they’re still at the condo and they’re featuring the other running romance of Leah and Hosea. They playing cards, and Leah says Hosea is her favorite. I can see why, he’s very cuddly I bet. Still, Hosea says they both have significant others back home, so really they’re just “friends.” Yeah, friends go around writing I (heart) H on women’s ankles.

The cheftestants head to Twenty Four Fifth, one of those exclusive Manhattan restaurants that’s so fancy they didn’t even bother thinking of a name.

The women arrive for the party and there are baggies for giveaways. I didn’t realize there’s so much swag working at Food and Wine. In a toast from Padma, we find out that Gail’s husband-to-be is named Jeremy. But that’s all we know. Tom tried to crash the party, but there’s no way that’ll happen so he’s stuck in the kitchen watching the cheftestants. Fabio feels nervous with Chef Tom watching them and calls him The Pope. Hey, for an Italian that’s serious.

EU Stefan is pissing all over his teammate Jeff the Hair’s sorbet. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea as a starter. Hosea, on the other hand, has the shakes as he brings out a plate. I mean, really, you can actually hear the glass clicking against the plate because he’s shaking so much.

In the crowd of women is this week’s guest judge, Dana Cowin, the editor-in-chief of Food and Wine magazine. I recognize her because I see her picture in the letter from the editor in my Food and Wine magazine that comes every month, and she’s always writing about what part of the world she’s eating from this month. Nice gig if you can get it.

Team Old used heirloom tomatoes, and everyone ironically loves Jeff the Hair’s tomato sorbet while others think the terrine by EU Stefan is kind of bland. No one says anything about Hosea’s tomato gazpacho.

Team Something New is next and in the kitchen Daniel decides to soak some shiitake mushrooms and throw them under the Carla Top’s salad, without consulting her. Hosea, watching from the sidelines, says there’s a lot happening on their plate.

When the present, Daniel is all excited saying the food will be so great the women will be taking off their clothes. Danny, that doesn’t happen until the stripper arrives.

They present their plate with tempura shrimp, beef skewers in peach-miso BBQ sauce, Carla Top’s salad and a yuzu sorbet that’s a palate cleanser. But Eugene forgets to tell them they have the option of creating their own sushi, so people are confused about how to eat and Dana Cowin doesn’t think it’s sushi so wonders what’s new?

For the Borrowed Team, they’re preparing their dish and that carrot puree is soooo yellow it looks like Playdoh. The Cougar is in charge of cooking the lamb and they’re up against the clock and it’s still rare. So when it’s finally ready to plate, all the cheftestants help the team out to plate. I thought that was actually really sweet of everybody because it shows how they’re competitors but they’re still friends. Awww.

When they serve the plate, everyone’s raving about how well the lamb is cooked, especially Dana who must have eaten bad lamb before because she says she’s so happy to have good lamb. Gail is really happy with this dish as well.

Next is the Blue Team and for some reason Melissa says they’ll rip her a new one if she doesn’t like the food. You know, I really don’t like that expression. It’s crude and always brings up a really bad imagery. But fair warning, this expression rears itself later in the episode.

They get Fabio the charmer to present and of course you have a handsome Italian with an accent before a group of women, smart move. He tries to convince them that their dish is blue with the ocean theme and they choose a Chilean sea bass, and that the green vegetables mixed with the yellow sweet corn puree are the components to create the color blue. They’re really stretching, yeah?

The women think the food is boring, and Gail is right when she points out that Chilean sea bass is a politically incorrect choice because of the over-fishing. One other woman thinks the dish taste like “old people” food, which I didn’t get at the time and now realize it means everything had a soft pureed texture to make it easy for old people to eat without their dentures.

Gail’s all happy from her party, and can’t wait to get married. I bet next season she’ll be pregnant and they have to do a baby shower.

The cheftestants arrive at the stew room and Padma comes in to get the Old Team and Borrowed Team members.

At the judges’ table, Padma tells them they were the favorites and hugs all around. Tom says he thought Jeff the Hair’s tomato sorbet was fabulous (oh, maybe he didn’t use that word and it was Gail?) and of course they do a close-up shot of Stefan who looks disgusted or jealous or both.

Gail says she liked Jamie’s spices in the carrot puree. Jamie says they were going for big flavors but subtle. Gail thought the lamb was cooked perfectly, and Dana Cowin adds that it had a lovely lingering taste. So you know she’s still eating a wee bit of it in her mouth. Right this moment. As she’s talking.

Dana chooses the winner saying it’s the person who made the most flavorful component, and I’m thinking Jeff the Hair and Jamie’s thinking Jamie, but it’s the Cougar who wins for making the lamb. I’m kind of shocked because really how do you affect the taste of lamb other than salt and pepper? I don’t think Ariane did anything else to it? I think that was a weird choice and I would have gone with Jeff the Hair.

Jamie, of course, says she’s always a bridesmaid. And not just because of losing out but because of dang Prop. 8 in California where she’s from. (Down with H8).

The other team goes in to face the judges and they talk about how they didn’t know how to eat the sushi and Padma calls out Eugene for making mushy sushi rice. They ask Carla Top how the mushrooms got into her salad, and Danny says it was his brilliant idea. Chef Tom asks Danny if he thought the plate was good and he, of course, says yes and Chef Tom can’t talk about it any more because he’s so disappointed at the thought of Danny’s palate. You can tell he’s a goner (Danny, not Tom).

For Team Blue, they repeat their comments about the food being nursing home food, and Tom says Team Blue’s food gave him the blues.

When the cheftestants head back to the stew room, Eugene says he’ll pull down his pants so everyone can see how the judges ripped him a new one. See, I told you someone would bring this up again, and this episode has gone down the toilet.

The judges deliberate and they use some pretty harsh words like “indefensible” and “catastrophic.” Yes, but what did you think about the food?

Commercials. I want that Calphalon movable grill pan and I want that guy to deliver it me. ;-)

Shocker: 73 percent says Stefan is way overbearing. Double duh.

Judgment time. Hey, why is this show so long today? It’s more than an hour. Why no warning guys? I’m so tired. Anywho, Tom says it was personal because it was for their girl Gail. Team Blue is boring. They’re excused. Team New, dishes go wrong in execution and conception. What’s up with Danny’s messed up beard? It’s like Tre came down in the middle of the night with an electric shaver to shave his beard in that weird way. See how boring this episode is that I’m obsessing with Daniel’s beard? Padma sends Daniel and his weird beard packing.

Daniel says he would have been there longer if he had thrown people under the bus. Melissa gets him to do this weird cartoon face shaking, which I’ve never seen him do in the show before. Maybe if he did that for the judges they would have kept him longer just for a laugh. He says something about football and that just loses me, so BUH-bye.

Next: In comes Martha Stewart looking like a professor with her book, and something goes really bad in the refrigerator so it looks like they’re cooking with garbage. And Christmas comes early for Top Chef land.

“Top Chef: New York” airs every Wednesday at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV’s Web site.

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Travel Dish: La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar (Buenos Aires)

This is the last in my series of reports chronicling my eating adventures in Buenos Aires this past October. And this final post is a doozey, so pull up a chair and pour yourself a glass of wine (preferably Malbec) and enjoy the reliving of my best meal there.

Nine (Plus) Courses to Remember for a Lifetime
Bolivar 865, Buenos Aires
San Telmo neighborhood
PH: 11/4361.4709
Dinner tasting menu only, Tue.–Sun.; and Sunday lunch
Major credit cards, reservations accepted

BUENOS AIRES
On my last day in this city, my flight didn’t leave until 10 p.m. so that meant one last meal to squeeze in. And I can’t think of a better place for a farewell meal than La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar in the funky San Telmo neighborhood.

Just 1 year old, this small restaurant is the master lab for Chef Alejandro Digilio, who has been drawing attention for his molecular gastronomical creations coming out of this tiny kitchen. Seems like these days, anyone interested in molecular gastronomy—which fuses technical creativity with culinary flavors—has to make a stop at El Bulli, the famous Spanish restaurant outside of Barcelona and belonging to noted Chef Ferran Adrià. Digilio has done his stint there, and it seems to be paying off for him.

La Vineria only offers a nine-course tasting menu for dinner (AR$130 or $45), but the chef works double time on Sundays when he provides a tasting menu for lunch and dinner. So I arrived on a Sunday afternoon to taste the delicacies to be created by Chef Digilio.

The nine courses—scribbled at the top of one wall on a chalkboard—are determined by the ingredients the chef finds at the market. To give you an idea of how long this post will be, let me just say that this last meal in Buenos Aires lasted four hours.

The restaurant has just 18 seats on the first floor, including a few stools that face the open kitchen, where you can see the chef at work. On this day, La Vineria was filled mostly by tourists like me. Sitting at the table next to me were this fun couple of ladies, Marge and Karen, from Ohio. They ditched their tour group making the rounds of the neighborhood’s art studios to grab some lunch instead. I had a lot of fun talking to them about their travels and their impressions of the food, which came in a parade of small to medium to large plates.

To start the meal, the chef sent out an amuse bouche of three one-bite items. The first was described as a “bread vinaigrette,” which was a crusty bread shell shaped like a tiny pillow that was injected with balsamic vinegar. It was a quaint marvel with a burst of acid from the vinegar.

Second was an “apple caramel,” which was a slice of apple with a thin sliver of caramel candy. This was beautiful and delightful in a crunchy, refreshing way.

But my favorite has to be the “liquid ravioli,” or a pearl-shaped gel of roasted red bell peppers served on a spoon. The flavor of the liquified red bell pepper was intense, like taking a big bite of a sweet pepper but instead doing it with one quick scoop of the spoon.

Next came a “Two Temperature Split Pea Soup” topped with tomato powder. The pea soup, served in a shot glass, was served warm on one side and cold on the other. This interesting combination of hot and cold in your mouth was an experience I never felt before. (It wasn’t hot soup like how a hot pizza burns the roof of your mouth; instead it was just a mingling of warm and cold textures awakening the insides of your mouth.) The soup was a bit thick for my tastes, but I found the play on hot and cold intriguing.

This was one of my favorite courses: a tiny provolone croquette with a zest of lime and served with a side plate of curried cashews. The melted provolone encased in the perfectly fried croquette was amazing. Chef Digilio would make millions if he set up a shack just selling these little fried delights.

Also served in a shot glass was the chef’s ceviche, which is raw fish cured with lime juice. He used a type of tuna that was mixed with some diced onions and cherry tomatoes and garnished with pea shoots. It was tart because of the citrus, but it also had a savory underpinning to the flavor profile that reminded me a lot of poke, which is the Hawaiian version of raw fish cured with soy sauce and seaweed. This course had the least innovation of the meal.

At this time, I’m going to talk about the wine. You can request a wine flight to come with your tasting menu for an additional cost. But the lead server, a friendly young Argentine and also the wine expert in the house, will instead present you wine glasses in a very organic way. Which is to say that he pours you different varieties of wine until you request another one or until you say stop. All the wine he poured for me came from small wineries in Mendoza—Argentina’s wine region. I started with a refreshing Sauvignon Blanc and then moved on to a Torrontes, one of the country’s most famous white wines (often overshadowed by the red Malbec). And to be honest, I stopped keeping track after a few glasses, but they were all lovely and well-balanced with the meal. The server charges you based on what you drink, and like the tasting menu, it’s all reasonable and worth it.

This was one of the larger plates and it was a salad made with 30 ingredients. This was also a combination of flavors, texture and temperature since some vegetables were raw and others were cooked. It was a fun mixture again of contrasting feelings, but I did feel the dressing was a bit too salty. Overall, it was a beautiful dish but it didn’t compare to the balanced salads at Ubuntu in California. Still, I applaud the chef for preparing 30 different items just for one course. (Disclosure: I didn’t get a chance to count whether there were really 30 different items; I just took my server’s word for it.)

The next few dishes really demonstrated the cutting edge of molecular gastronomy dining. This is goat cheese foam with a slow-cooked egg. (The server claims the egg was cooked at a low temperature for 50 minutes.) The entire dish was drizzled with truffle oil, so you can bet this combination of flavors was rich, and it was. The egg, despite its 50 minutes in a warm bath, was still creamy and runny like a poached egg, and blended so nicely with the savory taste of the goat cheese foam. I really enjoyed the flavor combination for a savory dish that wasn’t, thankfully, too savory.

This is shrimp served with a lime and chili salt. The shrimp was fresh and nicely cooked, but wasn’t anything surprising.

Octopus was served covered with a tomato foam and olive oil emulsion. My server corrected to say the tomato foam was “air,” which apparently is the new way of calling foam in the molecular gastronomy world. And while I have misgivings about foam or air because I never understood how they complemented a dish, this particular foam actually tasted like tomato. The olive oil emulsion on the side also had a distinct olive oil flavor and melted away as you bit into it. Definitely eating calories light as air. (The octopus was a bit chewy, but that was to be expected.)

Some of the dishes could actually be an entrée selection at other restaurants and not just a tasting portion. This sea bass is a perfect example. The filet was a nice portion and it was prepared sous vide-style (cooked slowly in a special plastic bag to preserve the tender flesh) and sitting in a liquid of paella broth. This Spanish-influenced dish was enhanced by a bowl of crispy saffron puffs that was served separately. I was told by the server to sprinkle a few on top of the fish and this is how it looked combined…

The sea bass was excellent and I loved the paella broth, mostly because I love paella in general. The saffron puffs, which didn’t taste like saffron but definitely embarked the color, added a nice texture to the top and, I admit it, it was fun just playing with the rice crispies!

At this point I felt like a guest at a Chinese banquet where the food never seems to stop coming. Next up was this dish of beef cheeks served with beans and mushrooms. The beef cheeks were incredibly tender, and reminded me of cow tongue, which of course totally grossed out Karen sitting next to me. But I remember eating cow tongue prepared by my mom when I was young and this dish was like total comfort food for me. The preparation seemed simple but I’m sure Chef Digilio had to do something special to make it taste so elegant and tender.

Being in Argentina, you have to have beef. And while this portion is much smaller than what you would get at a parrilla (the Argentine steakhouses), it is much more creative. It’s your basic meat-and-potatoes dish, but instead of French fries, Chef Digilio created a French fry-flavored “air” encased in a thin strip of potato chip. The air carried an intense flavor of French fries, so this is definitely a way to eat fries without feeling the guilt of all the grease. I could drink a cup of this. The beef was perfectly cooked, and seasoned simply like it’s often done in Buenos Aires.

I should note that our server told us the chef wasn’t feeling well that day, and I saw Chef Digilio actually leave right before we were served dessert. What that meant was we ended up with just one plate of dessert instead of a few courses, but I wasn’t really complaining at this point. In terms of tasting menus I’ve had in my life, this was definitely one that made me feel like I got my money’s worth and then some. The courses (which really numbered more than nine) added up to a filling and enjoyable dinner. Oh, but you want to see what we had for dessert, right?

A trio of desserts came on a plate, meant to be combined at your leisure. In the center was a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Next to it was a drizzle of a mandarin orange reduction. Behind it was more of the goat cheese air from an earlier course, and next to that was a sliver of orange-almond cake. Everything was perfect on its own but taken to another level when playfully mixed on the plate. The savory goat cheese foam provided an unusual contrast to the sweet chocolate, and the orange-almond cake simply helped fill you up while tasting light at the same time. The mandarin orange reduction was intense (like all of Chef Digilio’s flavorings) and is the classic pairing for dark chocolate.

This four-hour lunch at La Vineria is one of those meals of a lifetime. But it wasn’t in a fussy hotel dining room nor did it cost me my life’s savings. This was an extremely affordable dinner in an unassuming casual restaurant that makes you feel like you’re on the ground floor of something great. I just know that Chef Digilio will one day have a larger, and perhaps, grander playground to display his talents. So I feel lucky that I’ve had this memorable chance to get just a taste of his culinary talents. And really, what better lasting impression to remember Buenos Aires by?

Single guy rating: 4.75 stars (a meal worth traveling across the globe for)

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

Bueno … life in BA

Sunday in the San Telmo neighborhood is clearly a day to stroll around the antiques fair at the Plaza Dorrego. This weekly event draws a large crowd of tourists who take over the streets, which are closed for street vendors and tango dancers. The antiques fair is in the actual cobblestone plaza, and you can see an array of blue-tinted antique seltzer bottles and maté tea gourds for sale. Get there early to beat the crowds or get there late to see the impromptu tango dancing that occurs right after the antique vendors pack away their stalls.

As my last gift to you of this memorable trip to Buenos Aires, I made this video of this really fascinating street performer/artist at the San Telmo Sunday street fair. He drew the most crowds and he would create paintings quickly to music, using only his hands. So just for fun, here you go!

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Travel Dish: 647 Dinner Club (Buenos Aires)

I’m wrapping up my series of food reports from Buenos Aires. Today and tomorrow will be my final posts about my eating experience in this South American city while vacationing in October. And I’ve definitely saved the best for last.

Dine Like a VIP in This Luxurious Spot
Tacuarí 647, Buenos Aires
San Telmo neighborhood
PH: 11/4331.3026
Dinner starting at 5:30 p.m.
Major credit cards, reservations accepted
www.club647.com

BUENOS AIRES
One of the places getting the most buzz here as a dining destination is the 647 Dinner Club, opened initially in 2006 as a private club by English director Terry Walshe but now open to anyone who wants to walk through the velvet ropes.

647 was named one of the hot tables in 2008 by Condé Nast Traveler. And it has all the ingredients of an exclusive club: sketchy neighborhood (check), indiscreet entrance with no name in the front (check), velvet ropes (check), chandeliers (check) and high prices (double check).

The restaurant is in the Bohemian neighborhood of San Telmo, but more on the edge away from the clusters of restaurants and shops. (Most of the dinner club’s neighbors on the street are closed when you walk by.) Its name comes from its street address, and that’s all you see when you arrive at the black-painted doors that look like the back of a loading dock. But you can tell it’s not just a warehouse because of the velvet ropes and the security guard in front.

The first night I tried to get into the dinner club I was told there was a private event, so I experienced what it’s like to be rebuffed behind the velvet ropes. But I returned a couple of nights later on a Saturday evening, and was led passed the ropes and down the long corridor toward the dining room.

Despite all the reports of “reservations recommended,” I got the sense that’s all hype because it wasn’t that crowded for a Saturday night. I asked my waitress if it was a slow evening, and she said this was the typical crowd for the weekend. My guess is that mostly tourists or businessmen come here since the prices are higher than most places in town (similar to what I pay dining out in San Francisco). And while the menu is promoted as “haute cuisine,” it seems like the attention focuses more on the two large bars and the specialty drinks offered at 647. It seemed more like a place for some pretty drinks and appetizers before heading out to your real dinner.

But I was here for dinner, so I sat myself near one of the colorful glowing lights and perused the menu. I started with one of its specialty drinks called the Herr Hesse, a vodka martini made with grapefruit juice and Choya perfume. The bartender actually comes to your table to pour the drink in front of you. While the Herr Hesse was very pretty, it seemed lacking in punch. Eventually I asked my waitress to order me another drink, which was actually better and stronger but I didn’t get the name (it had Cassis and some herbs in it).

The menu by Executive Chef Guillermo Testón changes with the season, but you can always count on starting with his wonderful tart tartin (AR$36 or $12.45). I had read about his tart with goat cheese and red grapes, but on the night I went it was made with goat cheese and pears served with a small arugula and endive salad.

When it arrived, it didn’t look like any tart I’d seen before because the crust was primarily on the bottom and there were no borders. Still, it had all the crumbly features of a tart, with the goat cheese whipped so perfectly that it felt light and heavenly and topped with subtly flavored and tender pears. It was my favorite part of the dinner even though I felt I was near the end eating dessert.

The entrée selection had a lot of things to tempt me, from the corn risotto to squid and saffron fettuccine to duck prepared three ways. But I was still gorging on Argentine meat so I ordered the ojo de bife or rib eye served with a chorizo and cheese kebab (AR$62 or $21.50).

Despite asking for medium, the rib eye seemed more well. It was still tender, though, and had a nice crusty exterior from the grilling. There’s no doubt that Argentines know how to use fire. The meat was served over potatoes and portabella mushrooms with a “criolla” sauce that seemed to be a salsa made of tomatillos and garlic.

The meat did have a slight greasy layer on top that I didn’t enjoy, and the cheese square and chorizo on the skewer were both a bit overdone, so they were dry.

For dessert, the menu by pastry chef Magdalena Martinez offered up a lot of creative items but I decided to try the white chocolate mousse with coffee croutons, balsamic marinated raspberries, and spiced strawberry ice cream (AR$27 or $9), primarily because it was kind of warm in the restaurant and I wanted some ice cream.

The mousse was creamy and tasty, but what I really loved were the tiny coffee-flavored croutons that added a real different level of tasting for this dessert, which came out plated beautifully.

The service, as you can imagine, was formal and helpful with my servers having no problem with English. Like I said, it was a quiet evening with only the flashes from the cameras of diners taking photos of themselves eating in this glamorous spot. (It wasn’t the paparazzi taking pictures of a local celebrity.)

647 Dinner Club is definitely a luxurious dining experience with some creative touches like the tart tartin. I’d recommend another entrée, though, to really experience the chef’s creativity beyond the standard Argentine beef.

Single guy rating: 3.75 stars (Expense it if you can)

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

Bueno … life in BA

Buenos Aires is the birthplace of the tango, and in recent years the tango (once seen as the dance of the lower class) has experienced a resurgence. So when in town, you have to visit a tango class or watch a tango show.

However, like Las Vegas, the tango shows here can be very commercial and pricey, with tickets costing as much as $60 American dollars or more. I went to a smaller venue that was still touristy but affordable. It was the Café Tortoni, which also happens to be the oldest café in the city.

Café Tortoni’s tango show takes place in the basement under the café, and you’re squeezed in tightly around small cabaret tables. And while at times cheesy (there’s a skit retelling the history of tango), there are moments when focused purely on the dancing it can be very beautiful.

Café Tortoni, Avenida de Mayo 825, Buenos Aires. www.cafetortoni.ar

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Today We Cook With the Letter C

This is the time for root vegetables, and one of the ugliest looking root has got to be the celeriac, sometimes known as celery root. I don't usually cook with this, but decided to buy it today at the farmers' market to make a soup.

With all the holiday eating, I thought it'll be nice to just make a really light soup, so I just added celery, which I actually enjoy although I know a lot of people don't seem to like this vegetable. I think celery cooking always make me think of stuffing for some reason. Now, the soup recipe I made below is pretty simple, but can look a bit muddy in this light green color, so to dress it up, I added some minced cilantro, another vegetable that gets extreme reaction from people.

So if you like celeriac, celery and cilantro, then this soup is for you. Enjoy!

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Celeriac, Celery and Cilantro Soup

Copyright 2008 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients
1 celeriac (or celery root), peeled and diced
4 stalks of celery, chopped (about 1.5 cups)
2 leeks (white portion, about 2 cups), rinsed and cleaned, diced
1/2 cup cilantro, minced
2 (14 oz.) cans of chicken broth
2 cups of water
2 T extra virgin olive oil
salt for seasoning

In a large saucepan, warm olive oil over medium high heat and then add diced leeks, cooking to soften (about 2 to 3 minutes). Then add broth, water, celeriac and celery. Cook at medium heat for about 30-35 minutes until celeriac is soften.

Remove pot from heat and with a hand blender, puree soup until silken. (Or pour a few cups at a time into a blender and puree in batches.) A minced cilantro to blend in and serve. Season with salt and pepper per your taste.

Makes 4 to 5 servings.

TIP: If you're going to freeze some of the soup for later, don't add the cilantro when freezing. Just freeze the base soup, and when reheating, add the minced cilantro in the end.

SILKY SOUP: You might want to run your soup through a sieve for extra smooth soup.

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Top Chef: Season 5, Episode 4

No Longer the Crème de la Creme

Previously: Team Rainbow gets formed and it doesn’t last very long as week by week the trifecta crumbles, starting with young Patrick and last week with the downfall of Richard the Bear, who unfortunately serves spit-like banana s’mores during a Foo Fighters Thanksgiving. Gosh, they’re really milking the crying scene from Richard. Oh, and Ariane makes a good turkey.

Opening scenes of busy New York traffic. You know, I have to say the editors at The Next Food Network Star put together better opening scenes showing off the beauty of the Big Apple. It’s boring in Top Chef land. Anywho, we see Jeff the Hair having breakfast in front of the New York skyline and The Cougar (Ariane) feeling confident from her turkey challenge.

Alex misses Richard the Bear, who was his roomie. And apparently when they film the axed cheftestants packing their knives, they really do leave the kitchen all alone. But as we saw from last week, Richard was a whole bottle of emotions so he had to write them down in a letter to Alex.

“Dear Alex, even though we were roommates for a brief moment, I believe we have bonded, And even though I’ve lusted over the dashing and shiny domed Tom Colicchio, who would take me to super Bear status if I brought him back to my circles, I will miss you the most, my cuddly furry friend. Love, Richard. P.S. Tell Padma I’ll miss her outfits the most.”

OK, so I kid. That’s not really what the letter said. The hand-written letter actually looks pretty long and Alex is reading it to Jamie and Carla, and Alex is getting just as emotional as Richard probably was when he wrote it. Alex says reading the letter (which really just wished him luck and stuff) made him miss home even more. Jamie, the surviving member of Team Rainbow, is wearing her rainbow T-shirt and says she made a rainbow-colored bracelet in memory of Richard. Awww.

The cheftestants arrive for the quickfire challenge and this week the guest judge is Rocco DiSpirito, who was on last season. (How come he’s back already and we haven’t seen Ted Allen yet?) EU Fabio disses Rocco for being Italian, but not a real Italian like him, which I don’t really know what that means but I guess Italians don’t consider Italians born in the United States as real Italians, capiche?

Padma says Rocco’s most likely surgically altered face is one of the most recognizable in the culinary world, so he needs no introduction so let’s just get on to the challenge. The cheftestants have to come up with a breakfast amuse bouche, which sounds odd considering how people barely have time to make breakfast itself, let alone a little tasting of what’s to come. Rocco throws in that he loves bacon, and Padma says who doesn’t? And I have to say, I like it but don’t love it because it can be salty and greasy, so, yeah, I’m one of those who doesn’t, so there.

They have 30 minutes and off they go, with EU Stefan busting out a special device to cut off the top of eggs perfectly. Eugene is cutting up bacon (ass kisser) and Daniel is working with corn flakes and zucchini flowers. EU Fabio says breakfast in Italy (again with the Italy, we know already, you’re Italian!) doesn’t really consist of bacon and eggs but typically just something sweet like a brioche and cappuccino. Ah, the breakfast of champions!

So everyone is working mostly with eggs, and I’m starting to notice that some of these don’t really look like an amuse, which is really a small tasting —often just one bite— to start your meal. And even Leah agrees with me, as she notes that some of her counterparts are really just making mini breakfast dishes. But bring on the tasting!

Rocco and Padma go around, and among the highlights is Rocco loves EU Stefan’s heuvos ranchos breakfast inside an egg. And while I like the idea, I think the whole presentation of an amuse in an egg shell is so 1980s, but Padma and Rocco seem impressed.

Jamie did a spin on a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich but with an egg on top, and it actually looks a lot like what Leah made, except Leah used a quail egg and hers is more an amuse bouche size compared to Jamie’s mini bite.

Rocco didn’t like Daniel’s cornflake-battered zucchini flowers, saying it was too sweet. He also didn’t like Fabio’s, which was like a miniature dessert plate. He did like Stefan’s egg thing and Leah’s and Jamie’s competing mini egg sandwiches. He ultimate goes with Leah, which really burns Jamie up because she’s all like, “well Leah won it last week. That’s not fair.” Hmm, I didn’t realize there was a rule saying you can’t win immunity back-to-back. While Jamie’s festering in rainbow colors, Rocco gives Leah a copy of his latest book “Rocco Gets Real.” OK, how much do you want to bet Rocco’s number is hand-written inside?

Elimination challenge. Padma says it’s important to raise their chef’s profile so people will know them and what to eat their food. So they have to come up with a 2 ½ -minute food demo for a live TV audience, although not really live and not a real audience. But it’s going to be just 2 ½ minutes, dang it. Leah is scared of TV and live demos so she’s already thanking the Top Chef kitchen gods for giving her immunity yet again.

Commercials. Wow, two car commercials. And not one of them is an American brand.

The cheftestants do their run at Whole Foods with Fabio going straight for tuna. How do you say predictable in Italian? He goes behind the fish counter to cut himself a block of the tuna, which I think is kind of arrogant. Oh, wait, Hosea and Eugene do the same thing. Did they all once work as fishmongers or something? Oh, Eugene is bustin’ out the Hawaii pidgin’ talk already with the ‘brah that he says to the Whole Foods guy, who’s probably thinking, dude, go catch a wave or something.

Alex is the only one planning a dessert, which is a rose-infused crème brulee, which sounds delicious. But everyone’s saying he can’t do it in an hour, which is how much time they have to prep back at the Top Chef kitchen.

After a few more glimpse at what others are doing (Jamie’s doing a salad with duck egg, Radhika’s doing some sweet shrimp thing, Carla’s making tortilla soup, The Cougar is cutting up watermelon), Gail, Padma, Tom and Rocco waltz in and they set up a makeshift kitchen demo spot.

The judges act like talk show hosts huddled around the cheftestant and Gail is holding some kind of weird timer that looks more like a calculator. The Cougar is up first and she’s talking about being from New Jersey and making something with beef steak tomatoes. She serves it up with a quick basil oil and watermelon for a salad, and the judges seem to like it and she has 14 seconds to spare. Wow, I’m impressed. (Although, it’s not like it’s the first time anyone’s made a salad with watermelon.)

Jamie does a bitter green salad with duck egg and caviar and she’s feeling pretty confident, which is a sure sign of impending doom. Sure enough, the white around the yolk doesn’t really set in time but she still plates it up and forces the judges to try it with her salad.

Alex makes his dessert and Padma asks him about vanilla extract and he’s busy yakking and time runs out. They try his crème brulee and Gail’s shaking her head and Tom doesn’t look happy.

Jeff is making some Middle Eastern food called malfouf. You know what’s weird? When he’s doing his one-on-one interview and they put up his name, if you read really fast the name of the restaurant he came from, it looks like it reads Dildo Beach Club, but it’s really Dilido Beach Club. Come on, I bet I’m not the only one who noticed that.

Then the next few minutes they do quick cuts of the other cheftestants and it goes by pretty fast like they squeezed all the rest into 2 ½ minutes. The highlights include Daniel smoking up the joint, Eugene making sashimi and not really knowing the difference between that and sushi (sushi contains rice and sashimi doesn’t) and Melissa nearly killing all the judges with her habanero hot pepper soup.

The cheftestants are back in the stew room asking each other who ran out of time (almost all of them) and who thinks they’re leaving (Jamie, Alex, Melissa, Leah, and amazingly NOT The Cougar).

The judges talk about the demo and Rocco is especially harsh, I think. He definitely didn’t like the raw egg in Jamie’s demo or Carla’s nervous energy. Gail likes Daniel’s charm, but Tom thinks he’s a goofball. Rocco is having a wet dream over Fabio, saying he’s the perfect TV guest, but all the girls agree The Cougar knocked it out of the park with her watermelon salad.

Padma comes in to get the bottom three — Melissa, Alex and Jamie — and then the top three — Jeff the Hair, Fabio and The Cougar. There’s a noticeable gasp when Padma named Ariane as one of the top three.

Instead of going to the judge’s table, they go home because apparently it’s too late and they’ll pick it up tomorrow. The chefestants do more talking about how badly they did, except for Jamie who’s crying herself to sleep. Meanwhile, Alex is saying how some people “pussy-ied out” and did something easy like salad, which doesn’t sit well with The Cougar. Leah tells Melissa that she has to fight for herself and I just keep thinking, doesn’t Melissa look like a young Daryl Hannah?
They go to bed, and then we see Chef Tom arriving at what the editors tell us is 2 a.m. He goes to get The Cougar, Jeff the Hair and EU Fabio. Of course, they’re not happy since they probably only went to bed just two hours ago. They’re whisked away to a restaurant next to the NBC Today Show studios. So not only don’t they get to sleep, but they have to cook early in the morning.

Chef Tom tells them that the Today Show hosts will taste the finalists’ dishes and then choose the winner live on the air. EU Fabio is excited, except I don’t think he realizes that he’s not going on air, just his dish.

Bianca, the food stylist for the Today show (I want her job!) tells them to put their food on the cart and she takes them to the green room. Back at the homestead, Eugene wakes up and notices the three of them missing. Gosh, imagine if they were actually kidnapped, all the cheftestants would sleep right through it. Anywho, the others wake up and they see a big screen TV set up in the living room, which makes me sad to think that they normally don’t have access to a TV. (I can’t imagine living for weeks without one.)

They turn on the TV and see the crowds at the Today show and everyone’s jealous. Again, I don’t think they realize that none of the three will be on TV, but whatev. On air, we have what kind of looks like the ladies at The View, but its Meredith Vieira (wait, she was on The View), a very pregnant Natalie Morales (I heard it was twins), Hoda Cotb, and Kathie Lee Gifford (sans Regis). Chef Tom is with them to feed them the three dishes.

They start by eating The Cougar’s watermelon salad. Meredith hates watermelon, which I don’t get. Next is Fabio’s seared tuna, which they don’t say much, and then Jeff the Hair’s dishes, and all the ladies look confused about what they’re eating. Then Kathie Lee has to go spit her out, which is probably not the first time she’s done that.

Then the four morning show hosts huddle and I’m thinking, this is probably the most boring live television segment to watch, and they choose what they call the most original dish and that’s the watermelon salad. The Cougar screams in the green room (and Jeff the Hair generally looks happy for her) while Carla is screaming just as much back at the condo — maybe because she feels a mystical connection with Ariane.

Back at judge’s table, the top three reassembles, which doesn’t make sense because we already know The Cougar won the challenge. But we get to hear from Padma that Ariane will demo her dish live Thursday morning (I didn’t watch it but I’m sure YouTube has it) and Rocco gives her a thoughtful gift, actually, of hand-selected chef’s tools. Aww, he is sweet in that publicity-seeking-I-only-wear-designer-jeans kind of way.

In walks the bottom three cheftestants. Padma gives each of them a chance to talk about what went wrong, and Melissa says she tried her spicy soup, which Rocco doubts because he says it was inedible. Jamie says she got frazzled by the time, and Alex says he wanted to be different with his dessert choice. Then Melissa channels her inner Leah and tells the panel that “I want to be here. I really want to be here.”

The judges deliberate with Rocco saying all three dishes were inedible (I think that’s his favorite word). He also said Jamie shutdown, which is not good for a publicity-seeking celebrity chef. Back in the stew room, Melissa is going around telling anyone who will listen to her that “I want to be here, I really want to be here” and Alex asks Jamie if Melissa’s throwing him under the bus, and Jamie says yeah, and he says “that’s fucked up.” (But of course, I spelled it out while Bravo spelled it f - - ked up. I played hang man, you know.)

Commercials. Oh, we get another one of those out-of-the-blue snippets and I can’t tell if this is happening in this episode or in the future but it’s the continuation of the sexual dance between Hosea and Leah and this time Hosea grabs a red marker and writes on Leah’s leg “I (heart) H.” If this was Melissa, that would mean “I love Habanero.”

Judgment time. Tom says they thought the challenge was straightforward, but of course it wasn’t. He gives a recap of why they suck — Melissa … spicy, Alex … wrong dish, Jamie … raw egg. Then Padma sends Alex packing. Back in the stew room as everyone commiserates with hugs, Hosea whispers to Melissa he’s glad she’s still here. Hey, what about Leah? The cheat.

Alex says he should have stuck to his guns, which I’m not quite sure where they were pointing, and says you have to give 100 percent when on Top Chef, but he has a fiancé and a wedding in 20 days to think about so he only could give 87 percent, if even.

Next week: Gail comes flying in and announces that the cheftestants all have to cook at her bridal shower. Wow, talk about free labor. First, Chef Colicchio gets them to work at their restaurant, now free catering for Gail. What? Is Padma going to have the cheftestants stuff and mail out her cookbook, “Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet”? Geesh.

“Top Chef: New York” airs every Wednesday at 10 p.m. (9 p.m. Central) on Bravo TV. Photos courtesy of Bravo TV’s Web site.

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Dish on Dining: Limón Peruvian Rotisserie

Classy Take on Home-style Peruvian Food
1001 South Van Ness Ave. (at 21st Street), San Francisco
Mission neighborhood
PH: 415.821.2134
Open daily, noon to 10 p.m. (until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays)
Major credit cards accepted, walk-in only
Limonrotisserie.com

Sometimes it pays to be a Single Guy dining out.

Awhile back I visited Limón Peruvian Rotisserie on the edge of the Mission on a Friday night, so of course it was packed. But I spotted the last single seat at the bar and quickly nabbed it.

The fairly new Limón Rotisserie is a smaller version of Limón on Valencia Street—a popular Peruvian restaurant and my go-to place for ceviche (the Latin riff on raw fish). When it closed in October because of a fire, I was devastated.

But Limón’s flames never died, in a way. Chef Martin Castillo and his brother opened this offshoot on Van Ness Avenue, focusing on fiery rotisserie items and a few cold dishes. They continue to refurbish their flagship restaurant, and Limón, thankfully, is scheduled to reopen this month.

It may have some competition from its sibling because the rotisserie seems to have caught on with the neighborhood because of its low prices and quality food.

The menu is limited to a few ceviches, other cold dishes and a few hot dishes—all in the small-plate format. Rotisserie chicken is sold whole, half or quarter with choices of sides. The same menu is served for lunch and dinner.

As Missionites circled around me with their glasses of sangria (a bit too sweet for my tastes), I started with the Ceviche Mixto ($9.25). It was a mix of halibut, octopus, shrimp and calamari simply tossed in lime juice and chilies. It’s served with roasted corn nuts and the Peruvian corn, choclo.

It was refreshing and exactly like how Chef Castillo makes it at the main restaurant. (I actually prefer his cream ceviche but that’s not offered at Limón Rotisserie.) Some people might find it a bit too tart, but that’s where the crunchy corn nuts come in. The slice of choclo still on the cob looks like corn on steroids, but tastes more like kernels of starchy white yam.

The guy sitting next to me was raving about the Tuna Tartar ($7.25) so I got an order of that. I have to say, I’m not a big tartar kind of guy so I wasn’t really blown away. The tuna tasted fresh, but the tartar preparation gave it a muddied texture (I guess the chef was trying to simulate raw beef). And unfortunately on this night, the accompanying chips on the side were stale.

On the hot side, I got a plate of the Chicharron de Pollo ($7.25), which is a dish of pan-fried chicken nuggets that surprised me. The nuggets—marinated in orange juice, soy sauce and peppers—had an umami-like crispy exterior and a warm, tender meat inside. I could eat a whole plate of it.

Side note: Chef Castillo can be seen on most nights at the prep counter, expediting dishes like how Tom Colicchio did on a recent episode of Top Chef. Beyond Chef Castillo you can see the various cooks firing up dishes (and I mean that literally because those flames were flying high). On this Friday night, the wait staff seemed a bit overwhelmed, but the diners didn’t seem to mind, even those still waiting for tables.

While most plates are small (including a small version of the traditional marinated beef dish, lomo saltado) the desserts can be downright huge. Just take a gander at my Tarta de Crema Chantilly ($6.50), which is a slice of cake dripping in custard-like cream sauce, powdered sugar and fresh fruits. This dessert was good, but not exquisite. It was more filling than tasty, but still worth the price.

I enjoyed the food so much that I felt bad that the dim lights of this hot spot didn’t allow me to really showcase the food. So I returned a week later for lunch on a bright, sunny Saturday.

The restaurant was quieter than at night, but it eventually started to fill out. I got a seat at a table by the window so I could photograph the food, including my starter dish of the Aquadito de Pollo ($5.25), a Peruvian chicken soup that was warm and comforting, with chunks of tender white chicken meat and a slight spicy undertone from the peppers. The broth was soothing on a cold day and I could probably have just had this for lunch and be satisfied.

But I decided to try the rotisserie chicken, ordering the quarter portion ($7.25). With each order, you get your choice of two sides, which includes a green salad, yucca fritas, tacu tacu, stir-fried vegetables, and papas fritas. I got the stir-fried vegetables and the tacu tacu, which is a type of bean-and-rice cake.

The chicken is also served with a few dipping sauces, which looked pretty but I actually didn’t even bother to use. The chicken itself was tender and juicy enough on its own. My only complaint might be that it may be a wee bit too salty. But I simply balanced it with the tacu tacu, which is the first time I’ve eaten this rice cake that’s almost like leftover risotto that’s been pan-fried.

The cake held together, maybe from a bean paste, and was a nice tasty base for the chicken. The vegetables, which were prepared in the style of how they make the lomo saltado, was OK but seemed a bit overwhelmed by the saltado-like marinade. (Plus the wax beans I had were too al dente.)

Limón Rotisserie is a pleasant little spot with a tiny menu executed well by the kitchen, but the menu seems so limited that I wonder if one would still be excited about the food after several visits? Unlike the main restaurant where the offerings are more diverse, the limited menu makes Limón Rotisserie a nice place for a low-priced, quick dinner or nice lunch. But I’m looking forward to the reopening of Limón, where Chef Castillo’s talents can be displayed on a bigger canvas.

Single guy rating: 3.75 stars (Fire-roasted 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

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Travel Dish: Axel Kitchen (Buenos Aires)

This is part of a series of reports recapping my October trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Check back next week Monday and Tuesday for my final two posts on my food adventures in this South American metropolitan city.

A Quiet Evening Near Home Base
649 Venezuela (inside the Axel Hotel), Buenos Aires
San Telmo neighborhood
PH: 11/4136.9383
Open daily for lunch and dinner
Major credit cards accepted

BUENOS AIRES
One night I ventured out to try a hot new restaurant in the San Telmo district, and I was excited that it was just a few blocks from my hotel. But when I arrived, it was closed for a private event, and I was kicking myself for not carrying my list of restaurant options so I could hunt for an alternative.

It was also an unusually cold evening with blustery winds (another reason why I think it doesn’t make sense to be eating at midnight, but when in Rome …). What I’m getting at is by the time I got back to my hotel, the Axel in San Telmo, I didn’t want to head back into the late evening cold and instead decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant, the Axel Kitchen.

Generally I avoid hotel restaurants when traveling, but I was pleasantly surprised at my night in.

The Axel, where I stayed during the last weekend of my vacation, is a relatively new boutique hotel that caters to the gay clientele. So that means all the hotel staff are young, hip-looking Argentine men dressed in black. It wasn’t that different at the restaurant.

A floor beneath the restaurant is the hotel bar, Sky Bar, which was hosting a DJ event that evening, so pulsating dance music rippled through the hotel and I could see a big screen with flashes of images near the pool. The restaurant, however, was the complete opposite in mood. In fact, there was no one there except me and another couple.

I sat down and ordered a dry martini (I feel like James Bond when traveling) when my waiter brought out the ubiquitous bread basket. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts about my Buenos Aires dining, restaurants always brought out a big basket of bread, which often contained rolls and breadsticks. But Axel’s presentation was more sophisticated, an indication of the level of dining ahead.

Along with the bread basket came a tray with a mousse in one dish (it tasted like salmon) and some extra virgin olive oil in the other. The extra virgin olive oil (from Mendoza, the country’s wine region) was refreshingly rich and flavorful, with the grassy undertones you find in quality oils.

The menu continued the sophisticated tone with a contemporary twist to Argentine cuisine. I started with the watercress salad with duck confit and creamy orange-citrus dressing (AR$20 or $6.90). The salad was huge (and people in Buenos Aires seem to like serving their salads in these clear cylindrical bowls) and there was a lot of duck meat. The duck was a bit on the bland side, but the overall salad was light and had clean flavors from the citrus dressing.

For my entrée, I ordered the Merluza Negra or Patagonian Toothfish (AR$66 or $22.80). This is actually a huge and toothy (kind of ugly looking) fish that is commonly known as Chilean sea bass back home in the States. Since I stopped eating Chilean sea bass because of sustainability issue, I gave myself an exception because I was eating it from the local source.

The fish, luckily, was just a filet and not the whole thing. It sat on a bed of wheat cereal with slices of chorizo. While the dish wasn’t very colorful (it was mostly brown), I enjoyed the light broth and the fish was cooked perfectly with some crispy skin still attached. I wasn’t a fan of the mote (a kind of wheat) although I did feel like I was eating very healthfully after days of grilled beef.

I finished the evening with the burnt caramel with passion fruit sorbet (AR$22 or $7.60). It was a very interesting presentation with the scoop of sorbet served in this tall stemware topped off with a lavender flower (my favorite). The burnt caramel was creamy and nice (although the flavor wasn’t necessarily extraordinary) and the sorbet was a refreshing complement (the plate was finished off with a drizzle of cilantro sauce).

The food at Axel Kitchen is subtle in taste, but exquisite in plating and sophistication. It seems that with so many eating options around town, many people probably bypass this hotel restaurant, which is a shame because it seems to be quite different than your typical hotel experience.

My hotel dinner was a pleasant and elegant detour from my original plans.

Single guy rating: 3.75 stars (sophisticated room service)

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

Bueno … life in BA
I always find it fascinating when you travel and see all the different ways people serve their food. One interesting element of dining in Buenos Aires that I discovered is that in some restaurants when you order a carbonated drink, they serve you the drink with your own seltzer bottle like the one you see above. I ordered a lemonade at this Italian restaurant. (The food was awful but I ate here out of desperation after hours of walking the town.) It was fun adding my own bubbles to my drink, although you have to be careful not to squeeze it too hard the first time. Believe me, I learned the hard way.

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23 Shopping Days Left

All this talk about Cyber Monday reminded me about my Amazon store. I've gathered some of my favorite things for foodies, and you might get some ideas for gifts as well. Just check out the items in the slideshow on the top right of this page (don't you like the bouncing effect?). Remember, when you click on the slideshow and get to Amazon, anything you buy will help my blog out. (Even if you end up buying something other than what I recommend.) I mean, I'm 98 percent done with my Christmas shopping with only one gift left to buy. So stick with me and maybe you'll finish your list early this year too. ;-)

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Home Cooking: A Conversation with Daniel Perlman of Casa Saltshaker

This is part of a series of reports recapping my recent trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Check back every Monday and Tuesday when I’ll be giving you a taste of my food adventures in this South American metropolitan city.

BUENOS AIRES
I got to do some interesting activities while in Buenos Aires, and one of them was attending a home-cooked dinner. It’s not like I was friends with the host. This was part of a regular weekly meal prepared by Dan Perlman, a former chef and wine sommelier in New York who moved to this city about four years ago.

Perlman started cooking meals for strangers at his apartment that he shares with his partner (in life and business), Henry. I read about his dinners, Casa Salt Shaker, when I was doing some research for my trip. I scoured Chowhound for recommendations for Buenos Aires restaurants, and I kept noticing that the sharpest comments came from this one particular poster. When I checked his profile, that’s when I discovered Perlman’s blog and read more about his unique dinners.

Of course, I booked myself for one of his dinners while I was in Buenos Aires, but I thought it would also be interesting to find out how a boy who grew up in Michigan and worked in the kitchens of New York City finds his way to welcoming strangers into his home in Buenos Aires.

The following are edited excerpts of our conversation.

Single Guy: How did you get into cooking?

Dan Perlman: I started actually as a teenager when I was 14, working in a neighbor’s restaurant in Michigan. I worked there all through high school — after school and on the weekends — and onto the start of college. Then I took time off from the culinary world and didn’t get back into it until I was living in New York five or six years later.

I’d always wanted to get back into it but just hadn’t figure out how to do what I wanted to do, and it just happened my grandmother died around that time and left each of us kids a decent amount of money — enough to pay for tuition for me and time off from working.

SG: I heard you worked with Tom Colicchio of Top Chef fame. When was that?

DP: I went to work for Tom Colicchio at his first New York restaurant, Mondrian. I started as an intern there and continued to work for him afterwards. From there I went to work at a Cajun-type restaurant in the West Village and worked my way up to sous chef there, then went to the Kitchen Club as a chef. The Kitchen Club was a Japanese-Dutch fusion restaurant.

SG: What did you think of Chef Colicchio?

DP: I like Tom Colicchio. This was his first New York restaurant so it was the only place he was working. I think he was 24, 25 years old at the time. It was his first shot as head chef. He’d actually come in to work with a different chef, Dennis Foy, and then I don’t know what happened between Dennis Foy and the owners but Dennis Foy left and Tom sort of stepped into the position. I don’t know if it was intended he be the head chef long term except that they got a review from Food and Wine Magazine that named him one of the 10 rising stars. So at that point, there was no question they were going to keep him. But the restaurant didn’t last very long; it was only opened a couple of years at the most.

SG: What was he like in the kitchen?

DP: Very intense. … One of the things I really liked about him was he had this really great power of, he could imagine how things would taste together, and he would put them together and they would taste the way he would imagined. And he likes to train people to do that. I think I’d gotten to the point where I could generally do that, not always, but in large part due to the training I got from him.

SG: So you left the kitchen and got your certification as a wine sommelier. How did you end up getting back into cooking?

DP: I was in the sommelier world and I basically continued to work in the wine world, but I did these monthly dinners during the time I lived in New York for about 10 years. People would come over once a month and there would be a big dinner party with six to eight people, just experimenting with food. … People would say, oh, you should do this professionally again.

SG: How did you wind up in Buenos Aires?

DP: Came down on vacation.

SG: Oh, so it’s one of those stories where you came on vacation and just fell in love with the place?

DP: Liked the city. Fell in love with Henry. I met Henry and we hit it off and I spent a couple of weeks down here. I went back to New York and we kept in touch. I was planning to leave New York at that point, thinking of going to Key West and opening a place. And I decided to take about six to eight weeks to come down here, to see if (Henry) and I still had something interesting, and then think about whether or not we could get him to come to the states or whatever. About that time was when the series of hurricanes kept hitting the Florida Keys so I thought, well, I’m not going there. So I just decided to stay here.

Perlman’s partner Henry is originally from Peru and had been living in Buenos Aires for more than 12 years when the two met. A quiet, soft-spoken man, Henry works with Perlman with the home dinners, serving primarily as the head server.

SG: Other than Henry, what else attracted you to Buenos Aires?

DP: It just felt comfortable from the time I arrived here. I liked the place.

SG: Did you already know how to speak Spanish?

DP: Nope. Just taco burrito and combo No. 1. That was about it. You know, just a little bit of kitchen Spanish just from being around New York restaurant kitchens. Enough to ask for a clean plate or some more ice, things like that. … I saw this as an opportunity to live somewhere overseas and as an opportunity to learn a language intensively.

SG: How soon after you moved here did you start doing the home dinners?

DP: It was close to eight or nine months. We’d gone to a few places that were doing restaurants in homes and really liked that idea and decided we could do something similar. And I thought about the dinners I used to do in New York and I thought let’s try that format and see if people like that, and it turns out that they did.

SG: Do you do this full time?

DP: It’s not full time. We do the dinners two to three times a week. But then I’m also a food and wine writer. We teach cooking classes here as well. I take people on food-related tours. Anything food and wine related.

SG: How would you describe your food?

DP: Good.

SG: Yes, I’m sure it is. But is it a particular type of cuisine? Are you influenced by any particular country?

DP: No. If you look at our Web site we do everything all over Europe, all over Asia, to Australia, to South and North America. We do everything. The only continent we haven’t hit yet is Antarctica. … There’s obviously going to be influences from the things I was trained primarily. It’s got some influences of working at a Japanese fusion restaurant. Every now and then a little bit of the Cajun stuff sneaks in. A lot of the presentation tends to come from working with Tom (Colicchio). And the first restaurant I worked in back in Michigan was an Italian restaurant. But it’s a real mix. Tonight we’re doing Malaysian.

SG: So you have a theme for your dinners?

DP: Yeah, we pick a theme that often connects with the date. But the food’s not traditional. For example, nothing we’ll have tonight will be like what you’ll get at somebody’s house if you went to Malaysia. But the flavors and ideas are inspired by Malaysia.

For the dinner, Perlman prepares five courses and also offers a wine tasting to go with each course for an additional cost. At the Malaysian-themed dinner, we started with a Malaysian-inspired ceviche called umai, an Indian-influenced soup, an eggplant tart inspired by a Malaysian dish called tiyung belacan, fillets of white tuna in a sauce inspired by a dish called ikan tenggiri and finally dessert, which was simply slices of melon in a caramel-coconut sauce (loved the sauce!).

SG: Who typically comes to your dinners?

DP: It’s about 40 percent tourists and the rest split between Argentines and ex-pats from all over.

SG: And how do they hear about it?

DP: Word of mouth, searching the Internet. We don’t do any kind of advertising. At this point having been in business for three years, we’ve gotten written up in a bunch of places, different blogs refer to us, we’re in a couple of guidebooks now. … When we started out we were thinking of doing it once a month or once every two or three weeks at a time, and it built very quickly. Within six months we were doing it once a week and within another six months we were doing it twice a week.

Perlman’s home is in the Recoleta district, which is a really fun neighborhood close to the main shopping street and filled with a lot of little shops and cafés. In his house, he sets up two tables that can seat a total of 12 diners. On the night I went, everyone was from out of town and from the United States. So as a solo traveler, it was a fun evening talking to fellow travelers and listening to their discoveries in Buenos Aires.

At my table, there were three young recent college grads from Southern California, a nice couple from Chicago and newlyweds from outside Vegas. I also chatted with a couple from Los Angeles who travels often to Buenos Aires and has eaten at Casa Salt Shaker more than a few times.

SG: How do you handle issues like vegetarians?

DP: I look at the menu. Like when I sent you the response (confirming my reservations), I ask if there’s any dietary restrictions. There are times when I can’t do it. We had a dinner recently where four of the courses had meat in it. I think it was a Romanian dinner. I just said I wasn’t going to make four totally separate dishes. … I’m the only person doing the cooking. There’s no assistant or anything like that. It has to be something I can easily substitute. If it’s leaving a piece of steak off and putting a piece of fish or tofu or something, that’s easy. If it’s something that’s integral to the dish or stewed together, that’s not going to happen.

SG: So for those people do you just tell them not to show up?

DP: I just let them know, this is what I can do, this is what I can’t do. You make the decision. Some people still want to come and they’ll skip the course, and that’s fine. That’s their choice. As much as we can we try to accommodate people’s requests.

SG: Do you notice if the people who come to your dinners are certain types? Like are many of them real foodies?

DP: Not necessarily more food-oriented but more adventurous. I think it takes a certain spirit of adventure to go to somebody’s house in a country, especially for the tourists, to go somewhere where you don’t know what the language will be. There are nights where out of 12 people, 10 of them speak only Spanish. Then you get two people who speak only English. In general there are a few people who are bilingual, and other languages, too. We’ve had nights where we had French, German, Dutch, Turkish, whatever going on. Although I’d say English and Spanish are the most common.

SG: It must be fascinating meeting people from all over?

DP: It is. It’s fun for us. We get to meet new people from all over. A good number of people who’ve come have become friends. We have a lot of people who are regulars who live here and even some who are tourists who just come back often. We have a guy who comes down to Buenos Aires every year for three months. While he’s here for three months, he’s here every Friday night. He books it in advance. …

During the dinners, Perlman is tucked away in his kitchen preparing the courses. At the start of the evening, he holds a cocktail hour as people arrive and meet each other, then after a brief welcome, he’s back in the kitchen and stays there all night until after dessert. His partner, Henry, takes care of bringing out the courses and wine, and the guests are left to marvel at each course and talk about the meal and Buenos Aires.

SG: What do you think of Argentine cuisine?

DP: It depends what you’re looking at. If you’re looking at what most people think of which is the typical steak-salads-potato sort of stuff, it’s not that interesting. The beef is good, and who doesn’t like a real nice grilled steak that’s simply seasoned with salt and pepper and maybe a little steak sauce on the side? But there’s a lot more to Argentine cuisine. You’ve got Patagonian game dishes, and fish and shellfish dishes.

From the north you’ve got all sorts of stews and the different empanadas, most people think of empanadas as mostly steak and potatoes, but there’s a whole sort of mushrooms, lamb, spicy vegetable ones. It just depends what part of the country you’re talking about. So there’s a wide variety of cooking. You don’t see it all here in Buenos Aires. There are very few restaurants serving much in the way of northern Argentine cuisine.

SG: Is there a particular kind of approach to cooking that represents Argentine cuisine?

DP: Given that it’s heavily European influenced with the Italian and Spanish populations and English populations that are here, there are all those same techniques that we’re used to from straight-forward oven baking to sautéing to braising. There’s nothing really out there that’s what we would think of being different.

There are a lot of creative Argentine chefs here that are doing interesting stuff, ranging from being very creative about traditional dishes and creating modern versions of them, to those restaurants doing molecular movement cooking. I wouldn’t say it’s taking off, but there’s a local molecular gastronomy association that a lot of chefs belong to and a lot of home cooks take classes there.

SG: Do you ever think about opening your own restaurant?

DP: I think about it. Then I think about how easy and simple it is to do this by comparison. How much fewer headaches and how when I want to take two weeks off to go on vacation it’s not a problem.

SG: Many ex-pats moved here a few years ago because of the cheap cost of living, but with the recent inflation, I’ve read a lot of them are thinking of moving back.

DP: At one point I think that was a stupid reason for people to come here to live. I think it’s a perfectly valid reason to come here for vacation, even an extended vacation. Anybody who moved down here just for the cheap cost of living thinking it’ll stay that way given Argentina and any country’s history of economics, Argentina has had economic crisis before and they always have hyper inflation for the next five or 10 years until it gets back to a quote-un-quote normal level. …. I hear from people, it’s like they take it personally like it’s been done to them. It’s a recovering economy. The fact that their entire economy collapsed wasn’t done to make their life cheaper.

SG: How much longer do you think you’ll be living in Buenos Aires?

DP: No idea.

SG: Do you miss the United States?

DP: Not really. I miss things about it like the access to certain ingredients. It’s much easier now than it was a few years ago to find things. But a few years ago it was hard to find ingredients to do stuff. Now it’s gotten a lot easier. … then friends, family. It’s just a place to live.

It was a wonderful evening of tasting some excellent cooking without the stress of ordering in Spanish or struggling with explaining what I need from a confused server. I enjoyed my time at Casa Salt Shaker and meeting all the people who gathered to taste Perlman’s dishes.

Special thanks to Chef Perlman for letting me hangout as he prepared our dinner, and for a wonderful home-cooked meal!

If you’re in Buenos Aires and would like to learn more about Perlman’s home dinners, check out his blog at http://www.casasaltshaker.com/.

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