"bay area restaurants" news and stories

There's a new trend in food-buying: getting beef directly from the rancher. Recipes are for: Marinated Grass-Fed Flank Steak, Sally Gale's Olive-Crusted Rib Roast, and Chileno Valley Beef Stew.

Apple recipes in preparation for Rosh Hashana: Currant- & Ginger-Stuffed Baked Apples with Honey Creme Fraiche, Butter Lettuce, Apple, Endive, Walnut & Cheddar Salad with Honey Vinaigrette, and Grilled Flatbread with Melted Brie & Honeyed Apple Compote.

Olivia Wu's Shanghai Diary has Drunken Soybeans.

In the news, THomas Keller's temporary Ad Hoc is open, Cindy Pawlcyn does fish at Go Fish, and Gary Danko tops the Zagat survey. Pan-Asian Red Ginger in El Granada and Oakland's country French JoJo both receive two and a half stars (**½). Mescolanza in the Richmond District gets two stars (**).

Bay area restaurants are suddenly enamored of huckleberries and yuzu, a tiny, suprmely tart citrus fruit that hails from Japan. The article lists sources if you want to use them at home.

A new column starts today called Chef's Night In, featuring a Bay Area chef and what he or she cooks at home. This week, it's Aom Phanthong of Citizen Thai and Monkey doing Crushed Sesame Sea Scallops with Yellow Curry.

Summer is the season for salads, so there's Frisee Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing, as well as an article deidcated to the art of dressing. Recipes include American -style Spicy French dressing, Simple Blue Cheese Dressing, and a Basic Vinaigrette. If simple greens aren't enough, the Working Cook makes Chicken Salad with Apricots, Almonds, and Yogurt Dressing and there's also a recipe for a Lightly Curried Pasta Salad.

One the dining out scene, Mediterranean Ziryab receives one-and-a-half stars.

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.

Over the weekend, I begged for some advice about dim sum in the Bay Area, with only Yank Sing and Ton Kiang as names that I had from Michael Bauer's List of the Top 100 Bay Area restaurants. Thank you to all for your suggestions! However, I ended up at Yank Sing anyway because our host couldn't stop singing its praises. He warned me that there would be some of the traditional dim sum like shiu mai and chicken's feet, but there would also be what he called "gringo dim sum." I was worried, but the new-fangled "gringo dim sum" was just as good as the OG. The photo tour is after the jump...

Over the weekend, I posted a picture of Monkey enjoying a Mandarin and soda during Happy Hour at a downtown LA restaurant and bar that's heavy on steaks, and asked you to guess where he was. No no no, it's not the Standard! Monkey wasn't on the guest list for the rooftop bar. Monkey was across the street at...Nick & Stef's Steakhouse of Joachim Splichal's Patina Group.

Now Monkey is on a road trip, and has motored into the Bay Area. For Friday Happy Hour, he was in downtown San Francisco enjoying another Mandarin & Soda in an almost all-black, wear-your-sunglasses-inside bar in the lobby of a swanky hotel. Just inside the front door, the ceiling goes all the way up to skylight, which at Happy Hour, lets some waning sunshine in. The bar has a list of about 40 "signature" cocktails (doesn't that defeat the idea of "signature?"), several of which include: the Wondertini (Chopin vodka with a splash of Bonny Doon Muscat Vin de Glaciere), San Franhattan (Johnnie Walker Black, Amaretto di Saronno and dash of cherry juice), and the Dot Com Bust, which is a glass of tap water on the rocks.

We also ordered French fries, which came out in a paper cone resting in a wire frame, mostly because we needed to sober up. The drinks are fairly strong, and had Monkey singing the alphabet backwards!

Where is Monkey having his Mandarin and Soda?