I had the opportunity to taste some very expensive and seriously delicious coffee yesterday. Peet's Coffee is bringing some of their blends to grocery stores in Philadelphia, and so they've come to town with their coffee educator Erica Hess to promote the availability of their products around the City of Brotherly Love.

My first exposure to Peet's coffee was Christmas when I was 14 years old. My cousins, knowing that I was getting an espresso maker from my parents, brought with them a pound of espresso roast from Peet's down from Berkeley as a gift. I remember it as excellent coffee and the fact that its availability was sort of limited in those days made it seem that much more special.

Since we heard about some chefs who are not exactly following the all-natural philosophy of the "Alice Waters school of cooking" yesterday, it seems only fair to take a look at one of her cookbooks today. The Chez Panisse Café Cookbook has a lot of material on her beliefs, her philosophies about food, ingredients and cooking, and even a few recipes to complement the text. Essentially, the core of Waters' beliefs is that food should be produced as sustainably as possible and served when it as fresh as it can be. Her recipes focus on highlighting the flavor of the ingredients in as close to a natural state as possible.

Chez Panisse Café is not exactly the same restaurant as Chez Panisse. It is actually a somewhat more casual restaurant above the Chez Panisse dining room where dishes are ordered a la carte, rather than as part of a prix fixe. Not that the less formal presentation detracts from the food or flavors. Instead it gives the chefs a bit wider range of dishes to work with, both casual and fancy. The recipes in this cookbook are some of both: Beef Carpaccio with Capers, Parmesan and Anchovies, Roast Pork Loin with Rosemary and Fennel, Meyer Lemon Eclairs and Pizzetta with Farm Egg and Prosciutto.

If you ever find yourself in Berkeley in the morning, I highly recommend stopping by Bette's Oceanview Diner for breakfast. The diner is always bustling and the food is great, especially if you like pancakes. The Pancake Handbook is Bette's official recipe book, with lots of favorites. You can preview many of their recipes online, including their German Apple Pancake, Sour Cream Cloud Cakes and Crispy Potato Pancakes. As you can see from their menu, though, they do serve more than just pancakes and the book also has many of the Diner's other favorite breakfast/brunch fare, including scones, muffins and even english muffins.

The recipes are presented in a friendly way, with conversational introductions to the dishes that are along the lines of discussions you might have with the servers at the Diner, though these discussions are followed by easy-to-read recipes. Fair warning, though: you may find yourself eating a lot more breakfast food after checking out this book, so you might just turn yourself into a "morning person" - and a happy, well-fed one at that!

The fatty acid Omega-3 has been the topic of discussion ranging from a treatment for prostate cancer to treatment of mood disorders. Although numerous wide-reaching studies have shown positive and negligible results, grants for studies and participants roll on.

Why? It has been proven that Omega-3 fatty acids, particularly as found in fish like mackerel (highest content/weight ratio) and salmon, prevent and aid those who have cardiovascular disease. When you start throwing the human heart into the fray of what's good for it, and there's a compound isolated proven to help keep it healthy, there will be no shortage of interest. What's good for the heart may good for all the heart supports: the brain, the rest of the vital organs, the health of our blood itself.

The problem with relying on fish for our daily intake of Omega-3 is that today's fish have much higher levels of mercury than those that our ancestors ate. So, where can you get your Omega-3?

Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time in Berkeley and has eaten more than two meals there knows the Cheese Board. Owned and operated by the workers, in true Berkeley style, it is a fantastic cheese shop and bakery, with a pizza place next door that has lines down the block at lunch and dinner. The Cheese Board is the kind of place that locals go to on a near-daily basis and others take trips out of their way to stop in.

But stopping in isn't an option, particularly if you live nowhere near the SF Bay Area. If you want to try your hand at some of their products at home, The Cheese Board: Collective Works is definitely the book to get. It has recipes for some of their most popular items, including currant scones, bran muffins and lots of their famous breads. The quick pastry items, such as the scones, are much easier and less time-intensive than the bread recipes, but their instructions are comprehensive and you will achieve good results if you put in the time it takes to work through the recipes. Aside from the breads, the book also has a cheese guide and a history of the co-op, which was founded in 1967 and has become a Bay Area institution in the time since then.

TurnHere is a media company that has videos that try to capture the real essence of their subjects, which range from "insider" tours of neighborhoods around the country and the world and tips on activities and restaurants. Basically, they're short films on where to go, what to do and why you would want to do it.

The restaurant and food videos are particularly interesting (of course) because video review/tour of a restaurant can show you so much more than just a photo or written review can. Many of the restaurant videos include interviews with customers, chefs and shop owners. Some of the videos are sponsored and some are not, but even the sponsored ones seem much more "real" than anything you'd see on the Food Network. For a preview, check out a guide to the Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley, a look at Canter's Deli in Los Angeles and the all-dessert restaurant ChikaLicious in New York.

I recently learned from one of our sister blogs, Gadling, that there is a museum devoted to sake, one of my all-time favorite libations. That such a place exists is no surprise. There are several sakaguras, or sake breweries, that offer tours, but most are in Japan. The cool thing about this sake shrine is that it's in Berkeley, Calif., and it's free.

The museum is the creation of Takara Sake USA and features tastings, brief tutorials on sake making and exhibits of sake brewing equipment. It is my sincere hope that such a place will help broaden the tastes Americans whose only experience with the fermented rice wine has been hot sake or overly alcoholic and nasty tasting cheap cold sake. There's a whole world of flavor out there to experience in premium cold sakes. Among the many notes that can appear in a good sake are: licorice, peaches, cherry, herbal grassy flavors, and, of course, rice. If you're curious about sake and live outside the Berkeley area, seek out your local izakaya, or Japanese pub. Another good place to learn about sake is John Gauntner's Sake World. Kanpai!

Keeping track of what foods are in season at different times of the year can be difficult. For those who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, finding in-season, locally grown foods just god a little bit easier. The Local Foods Wheel is a bright, 12-inch wheel that rotates, revealing all the foods that are seasonally available. The front of the wheel indicates the produce that is available year round. The back of the wheel has a full seasonality reference, including a listing of the precise seasons a given product is available and a list of some of the more obscure foods that don't have icons on the wheel itself. Take the wheel shopping with you, or just use it as a reference when you're making your grocery list at home.

The wheel is $11.95 and can be purchased online, as well as at the Berkeley farmer's market and several other Bay Area locations.

A masters student at UC Berkeley, Mike Wooldridge, started thinking about the relatively young "sport" of competitive eating and noticed that there were many records, but no way to compare performance results across food groups. He set out to see if he could normalize, or standardize, the results from all types of eating contests and make it possible to compare the performance of the eaters across different foods.

Mike analyzed 23 records and converted them into a rate of ingestion (ROI), resulting in a kilograms per minute value for every food.

The blue bars are the average ROI of given foods (easier foods have higher bars) and the yellow bars are the eaters' records. The big spikes are some of world champion eater Takeru Kobayashi's records, but you can see that, because the rest of the yellow bars are approximately equal, the eaters mostly perform up to the same standards, despite the food involved in the challenge.

[via Trencherwomen]

Dream on, Cal alum. Zachary's has no plans to open a restaurant in Los Angeles, or at least, not that I've ever heard of. However, there is a way to get your favorite deep-dish, stuffed Chicago-style pizza from your college days at home in LA. It's' called the 6-hour Drive With a Half-Baked Pizza.

On the last day of a mini-vacationin the Bay Area, I stopped at a couple of my old food haunts in Berkeley, making Zachary's on College Avenue my last stop. On purpose. I wanted to take home a half-baked pizza. I stopped in (no parking in the Albertson's lot!), had a slice of their special stuffed pizza for lunch - grilled chicken and artichoke  - and ordered two spinach and mushroom half-baked pizzas.

Normally, the half-baked pizzas are for people who want to pick-up a pizza earlier in the day to avoid the chaos at Zachazry's around dinner time. They can take the half-baked pizzas and fully bake them for about 15-20 minutes at home somewherein the Bay area that night. I however, drove them for 6 hours along the I-5 back to LA.

The pizzas taste just as good in southern California. Zachary's recommends that you do not freeze the pizzas, but heck,next time I'm up in the Bay area, I'm buying a half-dozen half-baked pizzas, bringing them home, and freezing them to eat once a month.

The University of California, Berkeley just became the first US college to offer students food from an organic certified kitchen. The kitchen at the relatively new Crossroads dining commons was approved by the California Certified Organic Farmers, a trade organization that issues certificates to state and local restaurants and businesses based on their compliance of the USDA National Organic Program.

While some other universities do offer their students organic options, the certification of the Berkeley kitchen, which is separate from the other kitchens in the dining hall, means that every item served in their new organic salad bar is produced via environmentally sound farming practices. The certification process took about one year and the produce offered costs roughly 10 to 15% more than traditional produce. Some students reported that the food tasted the same as conventionally grown, while others thought it tasted better; the majority of the students who were aware that the certification had taken place were happy to see the change. Berkeley plans to offer more organic options in the future.

 

The previous post on Saveur's April 2006 issue highlighted a short article on how college students are dismissing their standard dining halls, even if they're serving sustainable, free-range, organically grown, slow food, and turning to things like taco trucks and food carts. Maybe they're cheaper, faster, easier to get to than trekking all the way back up the hill to the dorm. College was a long time ago for me, but the article still got me thinking about some of the great (dinners out in the Bay area), some of the not so great (joints around Berkeley), and some of the downright horrific foods (stuff I "ate" at home) that made up my diet, er rather gave me a reason to diet.

1. Instant ramen -- not even the kind you have to boil water in a pot on the stove top: this was the stuff that you add hot water to from the Sparkletts water cooler, cover, and wait three minutes.
2. Steamed white rice with canned tuna and soy sauce -- I have no words. It hurts me to think about it, too.
3. Top Dog -- one bird dog = not so bad. Two bird dogs with everything, plus a bite of someone else's hot link at 2 am = very very bad.
4. Fat Slice vs. Blondies -- with an occasional treat of Zachary's if I found someone with a car
5. The baked potato cart parked at the edge of Sproul Plaza -- I think it was called Spud Brothers. A baked potato doesn't sound so bad, until you add butter, sour cream, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses!
6. A full day diet of pure sugar -- starting with a bear claw (Go Bears! that was the excuse) from King Donuts, a sugar shake disguised as a "smoothie" from Fresh Blend (the store was later replaced by Jamba Juice), and then more sugar! Ice cream from Double Rainbow
7. Steve's Barbecue -- Wuan ordah numbah two! Dae-jee bulgogi when I really missed home, because steamed white rice with canned tuna doesn't remind me of home
8. Chez Panisse -- made up for four years of crap.

Now don't let me be the only one. I know you didn't eat grilled mahi mahi with pineapple mango salsa at 3 am in college either!

Road trips are the best way to go outside of your comfort zone and dig up some new eats. It's hard to be choosy when there is only one dining option for 50 miles, but how do you know which one of the last 50 diners is the best one for lunch? And is fast food really your only dinner option? Because the Michelin guide is too conservative to take on the whole United States, New York Times writer Christine Muhlke decided to do it herself. With her boyfriend and a 1978 Porsche 911 Targa, they hit the road to eat burgers and fries and to see what local chefs are doing across the country.

Aiming for good food at the rather extreme price points, Muhlke compiled lists of low priced and expensive eats from magazines, chefs, friends and the Zagat guide before hitting the road. On the low side, highlights included a stop at the Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley, CA and Shotgun Bubba’s BBQ in California, MO. Pricey favorites also popped up at every stop, from Metropolitan in Salt Lake City, UT to 40 Sardines in Kansas City, KS.

The short list won't make it into book form any time soon, but it's still a nice resource if you're traveling.

I had fun putting together this list because it brought back so many wonderful memories of dining out with my husband. (Most of these memories are before we had kids, wonder why?) For me a romantic restaurant isn't just about the food. It's also about atmosphere and marking special occasions and evoking a mood. My top four restaurants are romantic because they have personal meaning for me. They are:

1. La Folie: There is no more romantic restaurant in all of San Francisco, in my opinion. The tables are intimate, the food is delicious, the service warm and friendly.  We dined at La Folie for our ninth wedding anniversary dinner.  We started the meal with a bottle of Laurent-Perrier vintage brut, and I remember we had caviar and foie gras...everything else is a blur. But, when dessert arrived, I do remember finding out why the host asked if we were celebrating a special occasion when me made our reservations.  I won't spoil the surprise.  You'll just have to dine there and find out for yourself. (wink! wink!)