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The House restaurant in San Francisco is closing permanently

What a sad day for us — and what a tragic loss for San Francisco…. one of my very favorite restaurants anywhere has just announced that it is closing for good.

The House, a sensational Asian-fusion restaurant, on Grant Ave., on the edge of North Beach and Chinatown, was forced to shutter months ago due to the coronavirus pandemic and the owners cannot justify hanging on until dining inside a restaurant in San Francisco, at full capacity, is re-permitted.

 

My favorite sandwich anywhere - The House's 

brilliant Ahi-Tuna BLT

 

We are sad, sad, sad…. I have written numerous times that the Ahi Tuna BLT here is my favorite sandwich ever… if they gave out awards like the Oscars, or Tonys, or Emmys  for sensational restaurants — The House would have walked away with dozens of statues over its 26 years of keen devotion to serving tasty, original, memorable dishes. 

 

One of the tastiest appetizer's in any San Francisco 

restaurant -- the Salmon Roll, created by chef/owner  Larry Tse

 

The House proved that Asian fusion fare doesn’t have to be con-Fusion… they created so many memorable, tasty, harmonious, Asian-inspired dishes with local San Francisco ingredients that I treated visits to The House as though I were making a pilgrimage to Mecca. It was that special and meaningful.   

 

RIP The House. We loved you.

 

Top Food Trends in the Country

What do cauliflower, coconut, gluten-free breads, plant-based snacks, and bison jerky have in common?

They are all on display at the 45^th Fancy Food Show, in San Francisco, this week. And they are all hot trends in the food world.

Some 1,500 food and beverage manufacturers assembled in the cavernous Moscone Center to show off their paleo-friendly, keto-friendly, plant-based, foods and snacks, their fat-rich coconut drinks, their sumptuous chocolates, terrific tonics, reduced-sugar, caffeine-enriched, sustainably packaged, vegan-appealing, and gluten-free products.

I have attended this annual trade show for the past 30 years, originally as a food writer, then as a manufacturer of muffins, flatbreads and pizza crusts, and now, this year, as the dad of a talented daughter making the best-tasting macaroons in America.

Rather than offer an abusively long overview of everything I tasted at the three-day trade show, I will highlight my favorite discoveries, which underline nascent food trends.

That’s Carol, my wife (left), helping Jenn (right) at her ROONS booth at the Fancy Food Show.

My daughter, Jenn Topliff, exhibited at the Fancy Food Show, offering the 25,000 exhibition attendees a chance to sample her sensational, gluten-free, grain-free, no added preservatives, certified Kosher, woman-owned, macaroons, called ROONS.

Yes, she is my daughter but my adoration of her baked macaroons, available in six astounding flavors, has nothing to do with our family ties. If I were offered her ROONS in a blind tasting, I would proclaim them as the “best tasting macaroons that I have ever had. Period.”

Each ROON sports a hand-formed, pure chocolate base, a perfect complement to the rich coconut macaroon. If you can stop eating ROONS after just one… you may have permanent palate fatigue, or you may possibly already be deceased.

ROONS is a family affair; Jenn’s husband, Brad, works the aisles at the Fancy Food Show, to draw in retailers, brokers, store owners, and supermarket buyers attending the event. The event is trade-only, not for end-use consumers.

You can learn more about ROONS at eatroons.com.

Like ROONS, another sensational artisanal food product in Portland is Wildwood Chocolate, maker of the most original, precisely made, tastiest chocolate bar I’ve ever tasted.

I was WOWED by their chocolate tablets – each flavor SKU packs a powerhouse of originality, brightness, rich chocolate undernotes, and without any question, these are the most beautiful looking chocolate bars I’ve ever seen.

Wildwood is the creation of Steve Lawrence and Rebecca Savage, who have just renamed their former chocolate works Wildwood Chocolate. Their new website and different bars will be up and running by March first, so bookmark that date to go to wildwoodchocolate.com.

 

One of the tasty new foods I tasted at the trade show contains one of the hottest ingredients in the food world – cauliflower. I kid you not.

I saw or tasted cauliflower-based pizza, ice cream, snacks, chips, candies. But the item I think families preferring plant-based, gluten-free products will embrace are Caulipower‘s cauliflower-breaded chicken tenders, coming to supermarkets in your ‘hood this coming May.

I tried them; tender pieces of chicken breaded in a cauliflower coating without oil. Heat in the oven – simple and tasty!

While most vendors were touting products absent of ingredients – things made without gluten, lactose, fat, or meat – I appreciated the concept and taste of Pocket Latte, small chocolate squares endowed with 150 mg of caffeine, about what you’d get from a large cup of drip coffee. And the chocolate tasted great. Made in Los Angeles and available in four flavors.

But wait, there’s more….

I have had a long love affair with Peerless Coffee, a San Francisco-based coffee roaster. About 30 years ago, I hand-picked Peerless to produce a line of private label coffees for a supermarket chain to whom I was consulting. Peerless coffees have always been just that – peerless, perfectly balanced, never bitter, never acidic or sour, as so many trendy coffees are today.

Peerless’ Competition Blend espresso was my favorite coffee at the trade show, a gloriously rich blend, available in many supermarket locations. Roaster Magazine named Peerless the top coffee roaster in the US last year. Nice work, Peerless!

This is jubilant Peerless barista Sam Bouwens, cranking out a bagillion espressos and macchiatos during the 3-day trade show. I’ve never had a better macchiato made with oat milk than the ones Sam made for me each day. Thank you, Sam!

Many producers were pitching to the keto-inspired crowd… I thought this was an attractive package whose message was self-evident.

Tired of old-fashioned beef jerky? Then maybe Bison Bites will appeal to you. They are soy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, nitrate-free and the bison themselves are roam-free.

 And lastly….

Lots of event-goers seemed to like the plant-based, frozen-treat-on-a-stick called Dream Pops.

I know that everyone in our family did.

The product story is pitched to vegans and consumers skirting dairy and gluten. This 100% plant-based frozen treat is packed in single servings or four pops in a resealable pouch.

Each pop is less than 100 calories and is dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free. But fortunately, NOT taste-free - I tried several flavors and found this a tasty, calorie-conscious, alternative to ice cream.

Nice work Dream Poppers!

Happy 100th Birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

One of my favorite poets of all time wrote one of my favorite poems of all time.

The poet is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Godfather of the Beat Generation, whose bookstore, City Lights, in San Francisco, has been a beacon to all would-be writers, poets, satyrs and intelligentsia since 1953. Ferlinghetti turns 100 today.

Crowds gathered in front of City Lights this afternoon to celebrate the occasion while Ferlinghetti stayed out of sight, largely because his vision is, well, largely out of sight – he is nearly blind.

From 1 pm onward, celebrants, artists, poets, unusual dressers, and particularly hirsute partiers gathered to hear area poets read and to share stories about Ferlinghetti, with whom so many celebrants appear to personally have had a relationship.

In Jack Kerouac Alley, beside the store, attendees signed a LARGE birthday card for Ferlinghetti.

Local folks who attended the afternoon festivities:

My favorite poetry book of Ferlinghetti’s has always been A Coney Island of The Mind, containing my personal favorite poem, untitled, which starts out “Sometime During Eternity,” which is Ferlinghetti’s dirge about how Christ has come to be referenced.

I own several copies of A Coney Island of the Mind,even one translated into Italian, and one signed by Ferlinghetti. Since publication in 1958, the book has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the bestselling poetry books of all time.

When I lived in Toronto, Canada, I made numerous visits to San Francisco on business – often to review restaurants as I was the food editor and restaurant critic of the Toronto Star, then the third largest newspaper in North America.

And on every trip, I’d work in a visit to City Lights, to check out the unusual collection of books, magazines and floor dedicated to Beat literature. There was no other bookstore in America quite like it then. And, if you were wondering, there still isn’t.

I took the photo of Ferlinghetti in front of his store (top, above) in the summer of 1975. For me, it’s a sublime memory of that day, when we talked, exchanged ideas, and felt good about us, our country, and our place on this spinning orb.

But that was 44 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Especially how we feel about this country.

Over the years, Ferlinghetti has made unusual public appearances – he often popped up at times you wouldn’t expect. One such appearance was at the 1976 filming of The Last Waltz, the final concert of the Canadian-American rock group The Band, held at Winterland Ballroom, in San Francisco.

The film documented the Band’s last-ever performance and during the event, Ferlinghetti appeared to speak some nonsensical lines, which were included in the film’s final cut.

I wanted to attend the birthday festivities today at City Lights to commemorate Ferlinghetti’s gift to us all, his words of wisdom and wise-ness, and his coruscating view of so many of our cultural icons and habits.

For a fresh understanding of what makes the poet tick, you might read Ferlinghetti’s just published autobiography, titled Little Boy.

Happy 100^th Birthday Lawrence; thank you for making my voyage on the Good Ship LIFE so enjoyable – much more so than had you not also been a passenger.

Favorite Restaurants of 2016

Here’s a departure: At the end of most years, napaman gives readers a comprehensive list of new restaurants sampled in the previous 12 months, which have shown great promise.

This year, I thought it more meaningful to offer a list of area restaurants where you’re most likely to find me on oft-repeated visits; for what better proof is there in the legitimacy of a review than a critic who choses to dine on his own dime at a venue over and over?

So, for 2016, here’s napaman’s list of personal favorite Bay-area restaurants – where you’ll find me, and where you’re likely to enjoy one of your best meals in 2017.

As they say in the old grocery ads: Clip & Save!

In Napa Valley, in alphabetical order

Bistro Don Giovanni

Since moving to Napa Valley 20 years ago, I have dined here often. Giovanni and his capable lieutenant Neno and their dedicated team of cooks and servers make dining here a real treat.

I have dined at Bistro Don Giovanni more than 400 times and always walk away with a broad smile; the room, the food, the service, all work together to provide diners a sensational experience.

The Caesar salad rivals the one made at Mustards Grill as “the best in Napa Valley,” and I love the tasty beet and haricots verts salad, tossed with Roquefort; pastas are well prepared and, compared to other restaurants in the Bay-area, everything here is extremely fairly priced.

Bistro Don Giovanni, 4110 Howard Lane, Napa. 707-224-3300.

Brasswood Bar + Kitchen

Walk into Brasswood and there’s a sense of deja vu; just about the whole cast is from Tra Vigne, the now defunct, and once former favorite restaurant, in St. Helena. The menu is eerily familiar, too, featuring all the Best Food Hits from Tra Vigne’s heyday.

Relax, you’re not having a psychotic moment, and that pot you smoked in 1968 hasn’t returned to give you hallucinations.

There IS a similarity between what you find here and what we knew and loved at Tra Vigne, which closed for good last December.

The chef, the hosts, the bartenders, the waiters and bussers from Tra Vigne were hired en masse by Cairdean Estates, to run the winery’s on-site restaurant, now called Brasswood Bar + Kitchen, north of St. Helena by a few miles.

In fact, the restaurant has been so successful, that Cairdean opted to rebrand itself and its wine as Brasswood.

Remember those phenomenal cocktails made by Eileen Regan at Tra Vigne? She now shakes her heart out nightly at Brasswood.

Remember those warm and effusive hugs you got at the door by host and GM Jennifer Bohr? Now you’ll get them from her at Brasswood.

And remember all those lovely dishes on the menu at Tra Vigne, which made you salivate? Now you head to Brasswood to have them, prepared by David Nunos, who cooked at Tra Vigne for 15 years. Even the famous a la minute, hand-made mozzarella, originated by Nash Cognetti at Tra Vigne (in the photo above), is on the menu.

Brasswood, 3111 St Helena Hwy, north of St. Helena. 707-302-5101.

Market

This is one of those restaurants at which I have a difficult time deciding what I am going to have for dinner – because EVERYTHING ON THE MENU IS PHENOMENAL!

As I have many American favorites here, my advice is to scan the menu and simply order numerous dishes for your table and share.

Among favorite appetizers: lobster rolls wrapped in rice paper, crispy calamari, and who can say NO to Market’s ceviche, Caesar salad, or extravagant chopped salad?

I often order the pepper-crusted steak appetizer, served with a huge mound of truffled, shoestring fries, as a main course.

For dessert, there is no option: Resistance is futile. You MUST order the fabled butterscotch pudding, which I have often opined is the single best dessert in Napa Valley.

Yes, Cindy’s Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie at Mustards Grill is a Best Dessert rival. But Market’s butterscotch pudding has stood the test of time and is still my Favorite Dessert in Napa Valley.

Market, 1347 Main St., St. Helena. 707-963-3799.

Mustards Grill

For more than 30 years, Cindy Pawlcyn has turned out consistently great fare here.

In many respects, Cindy is the arch-creator of California grill cookery, having brought to market a sensibility for fresh, seasonal ingredients, prepared in the quintessential California style – grilled.

As good as the fare has been here for 30 years – it has never been better than right now. And I should know because I have dined here more than 450 times.

At lunch, I recommend everyone try the calamari slaw appetizer, followed by the pulled pork sandwich.

At dinner, Cindy’s hanger steak defines this dish and has become my personal benchmark for “hanger steak,” whenever I see it on another menu. And it’s NEVER as good as Mustards Grill’s hanger steak. NOT EVER.

Mustards Grill, 7399 St. Helena Highway, just north of Yountville. (707) 944-2424.

Redd Wood

Chef Richard Reddington continues to knock it out of the park in this intimate, contemporary, Yountville shrine to good taste.

While all the pastas are phenomenal, the fettuccine Bolognese is better than ANY version of this dish I ever ate in in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Ever.

The pizzas are among my favorites in the Bay-area. I’m crazy for the arugula-prosciutto pie.

And if you order a protein like chicken, salmon, steak, or pork, be sure to order the flash-fried fingerling potatoes -- proof that potatoes are actually a food group unto themselves... and you need to eat a full serving daily to maintain proper health!

The wine list is smart, as is the staff serving the wines. Put yourself into passive gear and ask your server, or sommelier on duty, to recommend a wine to complement your food selections.

Fun, flavor, fabulous. That’s Redd Wood. Oh, and did I mention that Byron and his bartender teammates turn out powerful, pleasurable cocktails? Ask for the “Jim White Manhattan” and see what you get.

Redd Wood, 6755 Washington St. 707-299-5030.

Goose & Gander (aka G&G)

About once a week, I get a craving for a big, juicy, burger and the one served at G&G is, without question, the best burger in Napa Valley.

In fact, I have yet to find one that I like as much in any of the San Francisco restaurants where the hoopla is all about their burger.

Yes, Mustards Grill makes a great burger, as do Bistro Don Giovanni, in Napa, and Market, in St. Helena. But the chuck champ is still the burger served at G&G.

The cocktails here are worthy of a detour, too. We love everything they concoct, but our favorites are always the Manhattans and Martinis.

They revitalized the menu here nicely this year; the salads, mains, and desserts have been tweaked and have never been better since we became regulars. Nice work, Goose & Ganderistas!

Goose & Gander, 1245 Spring St., St. Helena. 707-967-8779.

In San Francisco, in alphabetical order

A16

A16 is back in the game, serving better food than ever, and wowing patrons with exceptional pizza and pastas, authentically nuanced with flavors from Campania (southern Italy). And service is exceptional, too.

Owner Shelley Lindgren has appointed Izzy Berdougo, a recent hire from Cotogna, as Director of Operations, which is a very smart move.

The kitchen is turning out stellar pizzas; there are days I wake up dreaming about them and drive to San Francisco to fulfill the fantasy.

Waiter Omar Caruso once suggested that we order the sublime Margherita pizza and shroud it with a near-infinite number of thin slices of prosciutto. Ever since, this has become our signature, go-to pizza here. It’s served with scissors – to cut the pie into as many slices as a diner might wish.

The world may be round, but some of the best things in it are flat. And I include A16’s pizza on this list.

I love Shelley’s southern Italian-based wine list, too. Years ago, it was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the three top restaurant wine lists IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY!

Put yourself in the care of your server and ask him, or her, to suggest a wine to complement the dishes you’ve ordered. There’s a good chance that you will not recognize the brands, labels, or grapes pressed, of many of the wines on Shelley’s long, long, impressive wine list. Explore!

A16, 2355 Chestnut St., San Francisco. 415-771-2216

Coqueta

Chef/owner Michael Chiarello, who has had many Italian successes, has created my favorite, fun Spanish restaurant in San Francisco. The tapas here are sensational; the bar is superb, cocktails rock.

I noted last year that the selection of small dishes is overwhelming. One favorite, which I order every visit, is the truffled-honey, smoked salmon – in fact, we rarely stop at one order for our table.

Wine director Massi Giovannoni has assembled a superb selection of Spanish wines; service is keen and wait staff can ably assist you choose wines which will complement your selection of tapas dishes.

The room is a hoot, the food is superb.

Coqueta, Pier 5, The Embarcadero, San Francisco. 415-704-8866.

Cotogna

If I wanted to rent out a dining room for a celebratory evening in San Francisco, Cotogna would be my choice; this, small, intimate, cozy – and tasty! -- Italian restaurant has it all. GREAT cocktails, GREAT pizzas, GREAT pastas. Because I live nearby when I am in the city, this is my go-to restaurant for the homecoming feel, for the food, service, cocktails and for the imaginative wine list.

The bar is stupendous, tended by several of the most accomplished bartenders in a city that is brimming with talented mixologists.

The servers at Cotogna, the bussers, the cooks, everyone here, has been trained to perfection by Chef Michael Tusk and his detail-driven partner and wife, Lindsay.

Together they orchestrate authentic Italian, perfectly prepared, food; they initiate an ever-changing menu, which is seasonally brilliant; individual dishes launch on the palate with amazing texture and finish with rich flavor. All through the chew there is culinary magic at work. Thank you chef, and thank you Lindsay, for this mealtime magic.

Cotogna, 490 Pacific Ave., San Francisco. 415-775-8508

Delfina

Craig and Annie Stoll have been operating one of the classic, must-go-to Italian restaurants in San Francisco for nearly 20 years. It is easy to forget our old favorites as we tend to seek out new, trendy dining experiences, but you would be wrong to overlook Delfina.

I not only have a soft spot in my heart for what Craig has engendered in his restaurant – I think the food is as good today as it has ever been.

Craig’s classic appetizer, grilled Monterey calamari with a warm white bean salad, is still probably the single best appetizer in San Francisco.

And to prove that simple is best, that dishes made with fewer ingredients can be superior to those prepared with too many, Craig has devised the simplest – but tastiest! – pasta dish ... ta da!.... spaghetti tossed with ripe plum tomatoes, garlic, extra-virgin olive oil and a bit of pepperoncini for edge. I don’t think we’ve ever been to Delfina when someone at the table wasn’t required to order this dish to share!

Until Craig took his profiteroles and chocolate sauce off the dessert menu, he had, unquestionably, the best version of this dish made in the state, and quite possibly the universe.

But Craig told me that he got bored serving the same dish, night after night, and, in truth, what were profiteroles doing on an Italian menu anyway?

Nevertheless, I encourage Craig to put these back on the menu and if it takes 120,000 signatures, as California voter propositions require, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll have to get politically active and start collecting signatures to bring the profiteroles back!

How good is Delfina? I’ve lost track of the number of special occasions and birthdays we’ve celebrated here; my son-in-law even proposed marriage to my daughter at Delfina. He’d called, asking me for a favorite restaurant in San Francisco at the time... I said Delfina... and the deed was done! 

Delfina, 3621 18^th Street, San Francisco. 415-552-4055.

Quince

Like magicians pulling silk scarves out of a hat, Michael and Lindsay Tusk have invented the perfect counterpoint to their casual Cotogna (reviewed above); they have given us Quince, the best fine-dining room in San Francisco. Maybe in all of California. And while we’re about it, maybe in America.

I am so over-the-top happy that Michelin finally got smart and bestowed a third star on Quince this year. I’ve been kvetching for years that Quince was more deserving of three stars than many 3-star restaurants already on Michelin’s list.

In short: Quince is my favorite, multiple-course, prix-fixe, dining room in America. I have eaten at many 3-star Michelin restaurants including French Laundry, in Napa Valley, Le Bernardin, in New York, and Benu in San Francisco but they come up stuffy, or precious, or both.

My best-ever, multi-course, fine-dining experiences, based on return visits, have been at Quince, where one is made to feel welcome, where servers pick up on your energy and emotional flow, where wines, paired to complement a tasting menu, dazzle your senses.

Come to think of it, Michael and Lindsay Tusk aren't just "like magicians," they ARE magicians; I think of them as the Penn & Teller of fine-dining AND casual-dining because whichever restaurant of theirs you exit, Cotogna or Quince, which are contiguous, you are filled with the same sense of wonderment, awe and joy as you are after a Penn & Teller performance... you walk out slapping your forehead, asking yourself, “How the hell did they just do that...?”

Quince, 470 Pacific Ave., San Francisco 415-775-8500

Sessions

One of my new ob-sessions this year is a casual, fun, family-style restaurant called Sessions.

It is on the edge of the Presidio and the only fault I find here is that my appetite is never large enough to try everything on the menu at any one sitting, but everything sounds so good that you aim for that high bar.

Speaking of bars, note how good the one at Sessions is. Cocktails, like lunch and dinner dishes, are fun, well prepared and memorable.

Sessions is the creation of chef/owner Michael Bilger and GM/owner Evin Gelleri, pictured above. The pair formerly owned a restaurant in the financial district. Lucky are we that they gave up that effort and opened Sessions, which is airy, bright, attractive, oh, and yes, busy. Book a table early and often.

At lunch, I love the grilled mahi mahi tacos (two in an order), served with cumin slaw and fries. And even though fries come with this dish, don’t even think of dining here without ordering a freestanding side of the house French fries.

For burger obsession: Sessions’ is large and flavorful; order it with cheese and bacon to impact the taste and mouthfeel.

The cocktail menu, which is original, fun and extremely appealing, was concocted by bartender Peter Ziegler who is in charge of the spirit program. What’s not to love about Peter’s Mos Eisley Mule, fueled with mezcal and tequila, named after the spaceport bar in Star Wars?

Sessions features two-dozen craft brews on tap; I had one of the best American IPAs that I have ever had, Galaxy Juice, produced by Fieldwork Brewing Co., in Berkeley. Don’t look for it now because the only keg allocated to Sessions is long gone, but DO ask your bartender, or waiter, for something different than run-of-the-swill suds and you’ll be thrilled with their choice.

Of particular note: the Sunday, beer-brined, then fried Mary's half-chicken includes the restaurant’s take on a classic American side dish -- Cheddar-ale mac & cheese. Only served Sunday. I’ll see ya there. Trust me, it’s worth the schlep to San Francisco.

Sessions, 1 Letterman Drive, Bldg D, San Francisco. 415-655-9413

The House

This small restaurant, a sublime destination for Asian fusion cookery, is one of my top favorite restaurants in America, let alone the Bay-area. The Smithsonian should create an American Restaurant Hall of Fame, just for the purpose of making The House its first inductee!

I have dined so many times, and for so many years, at The House that owners Larry and Angela Tse have become good friends.

The single best sandwich I ate this year was, like last year, the Ahi Tuna BLT, served at lunch.

I have had this sandwich more than three-dozen times and the experience always makes me vocalize the same line:

“This is the best sandwich that I have had this whole year.”

Dinners at The House are filled with tasty surprises; there are sensational noodle dishes, superb fish-based specials.

It turns out that I am not alone in my praise for The House. Zagat readers just rated this destination of deliciousness as the 10^th best restaurant in San Francisco.

Here’s what all those irascible, quotation-mark-wielding diners had to say:

Some of the city's “top” Asian-fusion fare can ... be found in North Beach at this “small” but “mighty good” “eclectic” stalwart that “continues to impress” with its “phenomenal” “high-caliber” dishes (“especially the melt-in-your-mouth sea bass”), presented along with an “amazing” sake and wine list by an “accommodating” team; the “cramped, noisy” setting is “maybe not the best romantic date-night choice”, but fans attest it offers some of the best “food and value” in the city.

Without using annoying quotation marks, I will underscore that I’ve been saying the same thing for two decades! It’s about time the Zagaterites caught up! Or maybe they’ve just been taking a cue from napaman.

The House, 1230 Grant (at Columbus). 415-986-8612.

In Oakland

Belotti

Belotti is run by the eponymous chef/owner Michele Belotti (pictured above), who has cooked in some of the best restaurants in Piedmont, Italy, and who makes ALL of the pasta served here.

Michele prepares, or finishes, dishes on a six-burner stove in a kitchen that is not larger than what you’d find in a studio apartment.

In November, to celebrate the oncoming winter season, a group of 16 food fans (mostly) from Napa Valley, descended on Belotti for a 4-hour lunch during which Michele prepared 12 different pastas, many platters of salumi, and a meal-ending, game-changing, brasato (a five-hour braised flat iron steak, served with divine polenta, napped with a mushroom-enhanced, Nebbiolo reduction). You want tongue-clacking memorable? Any one of the dishes served during our lunch would achieve this grade.

Trust me, in food circles, we’re all buzzing -- Michele Belotti is THE chef to watch in the Bay-area –- no one is making home-made pasta as copious, or as delicious.

Michele’s pappardelle, agnolotti, tagliatelle, and casoncelli are in a league of their own. I swooned over his vitello tonnato, which is as good as, or possibly better than, any version of this dish I have ever had in Italy.

At Belotti, close your eyes. Open your mouth. You could easily be in Piedmont. And I’m not talking about the Piedmont in the nearby Berkeley hills.

Bravo, Michele, you have made a gustatory difference in our community.

Belotti, 5403 College Ave., Oakland. 510-788-7890

In Walnut Creek

Prima

One of my favorite wine shops in America, and its adjacent Italian restaurant, are both called Prima. They are located on Main Street in what we lovingly refer to as Walnutty Creek.

Since 2005, Prima’s partner-owners are John Rittmaster (top shot above), who looks after the wine shop and executive chef Peter Chastain (second photo), who runs the kitchen next door.

Call them Batman and Robin (though I doubt either of them looks great in tights...)... they are out to fight mediocrity in wine and food and, to my thinking, they have succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

The wine events, which John organizes, and the dinners built around them by Peter, are so compelling, and the food and wines so good, that we often drive 85 round-trip miles from Napa Valley to attend. THAT’s how good they are.

You need to get on Prima’s mailing list to learn about the monthly dinners, the wine tasting events and a series of visiting winemaker dinners.

I have never ordered a la carte off the menu at Prima but instead have been privy to Peter’s dishes, paired to complement selected wines, and these dinners are memorably good and fairly priced for what you get in terms of food, flavor and wines, all of which you will brag about having consumed at the office water-cooler the next day.

Thank you, John, Peter, and your capable crew who support your efforts; you have brought joy to Walnut Creek and beyond and, as Batman and Robin, you have likely reduced the crime rate locally... because who’s got time to conduct nefarious deeds in Gotham when there are so many great dinners and events to attend at Prima, which just naturally keeps the riffraff off the streets!?

Prima, 1522 North Main St., Walnut Creek. 925-945-1800

Best Restaurants of 2015

As we come to the close of the year, I am in a reflective mood (color me Nike headband).

“What were your best meals of the year?” you ask.

Surely, you assume, they might have been Italian, for napaman spent two weeks in October traveling in Italy.

But if you assumed this, you’d be WRONG.

My best meals this year, despite domestic and international travels, were in San Francisco and Napa Valley.

You can’t dine better, you can’t drink better, and you don’t have to take off your shoes, or have some guy pat you down, to dine at these restaurants.

Moreover, I have gained a sense of family in these particular dining rooms because the staff are friendly, casual and thoughtful. Which is why these are my top restaurants of 2015:

Drum roll, please....

In San Francisco, you cannot dine better than at the two sibling restaurants Quince and Cotogna.

I will go out on a limb and say these are the two best restaurants in San Francisco right now. Maybe in the country. They are certainly where I have had my own best meals in 2015.

Cotogna

Ahhhh, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Your bar is stupendous, tended by several of the most accomplished bartenders in a city that is brimming with talented mixologists.

The servers at Cotogna, the managers at Cotogna, the bussers, the cooks, everyone here, has been trained to perfection by Chef Michael Tusk and his detail-oriented partner and wife, Lindsay.

Together they orchestrate authentic Italian, perfectly prepared food; they initiate an ever-changing menu, which is seasonally brilliant; individual dishes launch on the palate with amazing texture and finish with rich flavor. All through the chew there is culinary magic at work. Thank you chef, and thank you Lindsay, for this mealtime magic.

If I wanted to rent out a dining room for a celebratory evening in San Francisco, Cotogna would be my choice; this is my favorite casual restaurant in San Francisco right now. Period.

One of the rare shots of Chef Michael and Lindsay Tusk in the same frame; they operate Cotogna AND Quince. The photo is from 2012.

Like magicians pulling silk scarves out of a hat, Michael and Lindsay have invented the perfect counterpoint to their casual Cotogna; they have given us Quince, the best fine-dining room in San Francisco. Maybe in all of California. And while we’re about it, how about maybe in America?

I dined in the 3-star Michelin Le Bernardin in New York this year and despite that fact that my lunch tab was TWICE as expensive as a dinner at Quince, the food, service, ambience, and experience at Quince are FOUR TIMES BETTER.

Quince wine cellar

As a former professional restaurant critic (with an unlimited budget to dine in any 3-star restaurant anywhere in the world), and then as a patron of the table for the next 35 years, I can say with authority – and from experience -- that I have never had a better multi-course dinner with complementary wine pairings in my life than I had this year at Quince.

And I had this multi-course dinner TWICE at Quince this year, once in May, once in November. And each dinner was a raucous symphony of flavors and textures, and the presentations themselves were original, inventive and memorable.

Come to think of it -- Michael and Lindsay Tusk ARE magicians; I think of them as the Penn & Teller of fine-dining AND casual-dining because whichever restaurant of theirs you exit, you are filled with the same sense of wonderment, awe and joy as you are after a Penn & Teller performance... you walk out slapping your forehead, asking everyone around you, “How the hell did they do that....?”

Cotogna, 490 Pacific Ave., San Francisco. 415-775-8508

Quince, 470 Pacific Ave., San Francisco 415-775-8500

Spoiler Alert – Nasty comment coming up...

Quince only has two Michelin stars? This is a travesty. A great dining injustice.

What the fuck is wrong with Michelin?

This is a dining room which heartily welcomes guests; the staff actually smile at patrons, portions are flavorful and, for a change in a multi-course setting, sufficient in size to actually fill you up. And the complementary wines, chosen by knowledgeable and sensitive wine folk for both of my multi-course dinners, were so good that I actually sought some wines out afterward, purchasing them by the case for my own home consumption.

Only two Michelin stars? Quince merits four, you insensate Michelin inspectors! But you are so used to surly French waiters and servings the size of an M&M, (as evidenced by many of the restaurants to which you have accorded three stars) that in the case of Quince, you have failed to recognize culinary brilliance when it is visibly evident and thoroughly accessible by taste!

Quince is the best fine-dining restaurant in which I have dined in 2015.

Cotogna serves the best casual fare of any restaurant in which I have dined in 2015.

But I would be remiss if I did not add some other 2015 favorites, which readers must try. Let’s commence with Napa Valley highlights.

Redd Wood

I became a regular at this Yountville dining haven this year, but I am making up for lost time given the recent frequency of my visits.

The fettuccine Bolognese here is better than ANY version of this dish I ordered in in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, last month – including a half-dozen restaurants in Bologna itself.

Chef Richard Reddington

There are mornings I wake up thinking about Redd Wood’s Bolognese ragu, which chef Richard Reddington created.

The pizzas here are among the best in the Bay-area, too. I’m crazy for the arugula-prosciutto pie.

And if you are ordering a main protein like chicken, salmon, steak or pork, be sure to order the flash fried fingerling potatoes (above) – they are proof that potatoes actually are a food group unto themselves... and you should have a serving like this daily to maintain proper health!

The wine list here is smart, as is the staff serving the wines. Put yourself into passive gear and ask your server, or the sommelier on duty, to recommend a wine to complement your food selection. THAT’S the smart move here.

Redd Wood, 6755 Washington St. 707-299-5030.

Other local restaurant favorites, which are also high on my list, and which need to be re-recommended to friends and visitors:

Mustards Grill

For more than 30 years, Cindy Pawlcyn has turned out consistently great fare here.

In many respects, Cindy is the arch-creator of California grill cookery, having brought to market a sensibility for fresh, seasonal ingredients, prepared in the quintessential California style – which is to say grilled.

As good as the fare has been here for 30 years – it has never been better than it is right now.

At lunch, I recommend everyone try the calamari slaw appetizer, followed by the pulled pork sandwich.

At dinner, Cindy’s hanger steak defines this dish and has become my personal benchmark for “hanger steak,” whenever I see it on another menu. And it’s NEVER as good as Mustards Grill’s hanger steak. NOT EVER.

Mustards Grill, 7399 St. Helena Highway, just north of Yountville. (707) 944-2424.

Bistro Don Giovanni

Ever since I moved to the valley 18 years ago, I have dined regularly here. Giovanni and his capable lieutenant Neno, and their dedicated team of cooks and servers, make dining here a real treat.

I have dined at Bistro Don Giovanni more than 400 times and always walk away with a broad smile; the room, the food, the service, all work together to provide guests a sensational experience.

Bistro Don Giovanni, 4110 Howard Lane, Napa. (707) 224-3300.

Market

I have written about this small, intimate, narrow dining room in St. Helena before; it is time to remind readers just how good the food is here.

This is probably the only restaurant on this page at which I have a difficult time deciding what I am going to have for dinner – because EVERYTHING ON THE MENU AT MARKET IS PHENOMENAL!

I have so many American favorites here that I would run out of digital ink naming them. Just go, scan the menu and order many different dishes for the table and share.

Among my favorite appetizers are: lobster rolls wrapped in rice paper, Crispy Calamari, and who can say No to Market’s ceviche, Caesar salad, or extravagant chopped salad?

I often order the appetizer portion of pepper-crusted steak, served with a huge mound of truffled, shoestring fries, as a main course.

For dessert, there is no option: Resistance is futile. You MUST order the fabled butterscotch pudding, which I previously opined on these pages was – and remains - the best dessert in Napa Valley.

Yes, Cindy’s Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie at Mustards Grill is a Best Dessert rival, as has been the strawberry shortcake at the soon-to-close Tra Vigne. But Market’s butterscotch pudding has stood the test of time and is still, again in 2015, my choice as Best Dessert in Napa Valley.

Market, 1347 Main St., St. Helena. (707) 963-3799.

Goose & Gander

Once a week, I crave a burger and the one served at G&G is, without question, the best burger in Napa Valley.

Yes, Gott’s Roadside has its fans, Mustards Grill, too, and even Bistro Don Giovanni serves a sensational one. But the champ is still the burger served at G&G.

The cocktails here are also worthy of a detour. We love everything they concoct, but our favorites are the Manhattans and Martinis.

Goose & Gander, 1245 Spring St., St. Helena. (707) 967-8779.

Now let’s look at some sensational San Francisco dining rooms,

which should command your attention:

 The House

This small restaurant is a sublime destination for Asian fusion cookery, which never comes close to con-fusion cookery, as so many mixed-ethnic cuisines do.

For the record: I have dined so many times at The House that I have become a friend of owners Larry and Angela Tse -- but they should not be punished and left out of my best-of-2015 restaurant list because they are friends.

The single best sandwich I ate this year was the Ahi Tuna BLT, served at The House at lunch.

I have had this sandwich three-dozen times and the sandwich always makes me vocalize the same line:

“This is the best sandwich that I have had this whole year.”

Dinners at The House are filled with tasty surprises; there are sensational noodle dishes, superb fish-based specials. The House, a tiny gem, merits a spot on the National Registry of Best Restaurants in America, if such a thing existed, because it truly is a national culinary treasure.

When the Japanese/Asian/fusion restaurant Ochame, in Berkeley, closed a few years ago, I felt my left arm had been cut off; it was an outpost of delicious, original, Asian fare. If The House were ever to close, I would feel I’d lost my other arm, as well as my heart.

The House, 1230 Grant (at Columbus). (415) 986-8612.

Perbacco and Barbacco

These two restaurants are immediate destinations when I crave Italian fare and don’t wish to head crosstown, or fight for a parking space, at Delfina, Locanda, SPQR, or A-16, each worthy of being on my list of sensational Italian San Francisco restaurants. I love every one of these restaurants and recommend them highly.

But this year, Perbacco and Barbacco, ably operated by Umberto Gibin, just feel “new,” alive and worth special attention.

You want a luxe experience? Try the white-clothed Perbacco.

Want something a bit more casual, a great wine list by the glass, sensational appetizers, rich pastas and happy-go-lucky staff, who know what everything tastes like? Then Barbacco is your choice.

Perbacco, 230 California St, San Francisco, (415) 955-0663.

Barbacco, 220 California St., San Francisco. (415) 955-1919.

Coqueta

Chef/owner Michael Chiarello, who has many Italian successes behind, beside, and in front of him (several new places opening soon – napaman is obliged to not say where or when); but his attempt at creating a GREAT Spanish tapas experience has paid off in spades. I LOVE THIS RESTAURANT.

The bar is superb – cocktails rock – and the selection of small dishes is overwhelming. One favorite I order every time is the truffled-honey, smoked salmon – I dare you to stop at one order!

I love the selection of Spanish white wines; service is keen, focused, and the waitstaff can ably assist you to choose wines that complement your selection of tapas dishes.

The room is a hoot, the food is superb. Why this isn’t a one-star Michelin restaurant shocks me. Further proof that the Michelin inspectors are brain dead – or maybe they are just insensate from eating too much foie gras?

Coqueta, Pier 5, The Embarcadero, San Francisco. 415-704-8866.

Trestle – My Newest Favorite Restaurant in San Francisco!

Every once in a while, napaman strays from his wine-country beat to discover a hot new restaurant, or bar, in San Francisco.

Call me Wanderlustman . Or SFman, if you must.

Until now, my three, all-time, favorite SF restaurants (in alphabetical order) are:

+ Cotogna, the sister restaurant to Michelin-studded Quince, to which it is adjacent.

I swoon at the pizzas and pastas served at this neighborhood Italian eatery. My taste memory returns time and again to brilliant dishes, which I have enjoyed here.

Cocktails, served by a highly capable team, are as good as they ever have to get.

If you are lucky enough to have eaten at Roscioli, one of the truly great, casual, restaurants in Rome, then you will appreciate what chef/owner Michael Tusk has achieved at Cotogna: the fare here is superb and as memorable as anything I have ever eaten at Roscioli.

 

+Delfina; we have loved everything Craig Stoll has served us at his Italian restaurant in the Mission for something akin to 20 years.

Craig’s calamari and white bean appetizer is the best starter on any menu in town. I don’t think it’s ever come off the menu... with good reason.

His pastas are simple yet sublime; Craig understands that the essence of taste resides in how few ingredients are used to make pasta sing, not how many are incorporated. Most often, in the kitchen, “the more the muddier.”

Delfina pastas, like those at Cotogna, are Top of The Class.

 

+ The House, where Angela and Larry Tse serve the best Asian American fare I have ever tasted; their Ahi tuna BLT, served at lunch, is a contender for “best sandwich in America” and is, for sure, worth a detour.

I once drove 150 round-trip miles to have this sandwich. It is that good. For that matter, everything on the lunch and dinner menus here is sensational. And as small as the place is – that’s how big your welcome will be.

 

And now there’s a new restaurant in town, which, even though only three-weeks old, has vaulted onto my short list of Favorite San Francisco Restaurants:

It’s Trestle.

It’s easy to miss the front door of this small restaurant. For simplicity’s sake, remember that it’s on the west side of Jackson St. at the intersection of Columbus Ave.

The restaurant is the brainchild of Ryan Cole and his partner teammates.

More about him, and them, in a minute.

Trestle serves a three-course prix-fixe menu nightly for $35 a head. The menu changes every few days so what you fall in love with tonight may not be on the menu the next time you return.

Among the items on the prix-fixe menu the night I dined here:

 + The best falafel I’ve ever had, creatively worked into a first-course salad.

I asked Ryan to keep this on the menu forever. Or suggested he start a take-out falafel restaurant where hungry customers can get one of these tasty, not greasy, ethereally light, falafels on a 24/7 basis.

+ A delicious roasted carrot soup served with croutons of – can you believe it? –

crisped-up carrot cake! As tasty as it is original, zipped along with ginger, colored with a “pesto” made from finely diced carrot tops. 

For an additional $10, you can order one of two delicious pasta offerings, prepared with the care and attention you’d expect to find at a serious white tablecloth destination.

The winner pasta on my visit was a small plate of tiny ravioli filled with a short rib forcemeat, served with a gremolata and horseradish soubise, which was so tasty the dish could have been served with a straw to slurp up the sauce.

Less successful were the gnudi, a variation of gnocchi, which are made with ricotta instead of potatoes. Trestle’s pudgy pillows were napped with a sauce incorporating pesto.

A sensational roasted chicken was served here

Of the two main courses offered, the winner was the thyme and garlic roasted chicken, a generous, boned portion so tender that it could be cut with a fork.

The moist chicken was served atop a mound of creamed corn kernels, which tasted like something out of a Michelin-starred kitchen.

The other “mains” option was a crispy skinned branzino, served with charred scallions and a salsa verde. It wasn’t that the fish dish was weak; it was just that the roasted chicken outshined it for composition, flavor, color, and taste.

Two desserts were offered: a fudgy, dark chocolate brownie capped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and an equally short-lived, bread pudding crowned with a spoonful of whipped mascarpone.

Hey! What’s with the short half-life of these desserts? They disappeared from their respective dishes in the time it takes for a meson particle to vaporize in the CERN particle collider, in Switzerland. POOF! ... they instantly vanished!

Who would have guessed that Ryan and his culinary team were into advanced, particle physics?

There is a well-thought-out wine list here, a smart beer list and an applause-worthy, wine-by-the-glass program.

Interior of Trestle

The three-course dinner starts out at $35 per person, but with the added $10 pasta course, a glass of white wine, then a bottle of red wine, we drove our bill for three to $75 per person. Even so, the dinner was still easily a value proposition.

We came away with smiles so wide that we looked like poster children from a Crest toothpaste ad... those After The Dentist Visit kids who are beaming with Grand Canyon-sized smiles.

 

Trestle delivers a HUGE knockout punch of pleasure, small as the place is in size.

Readers note:

Elements of the prix-fixe dinner at Trestle change daily, or every other day. Tonight’s appetizer might appear for a day, or two, while the pasta and main course may remain unchanged for a few consecutive days, but then they’ll change, too.

By the end of three, or four, calendar days, you can expect all the items on the menu will change. This is good news if you’re a regular patron... but sad news if you get hooked on one of the dishes as we did. Damn it! Those falafels were tasty critters! Or should I say fritters?

Partners in Trestle, left to right: Cyrick Hia, Exec chef Jason Halverson, Front of House Operations Tai Ricci, Jason Kirmse, and lead operator/owner Ryan Cole.

How’d the restaurant get its name?

A trestle is defined as one of the earliest interpretations of a dining room table – a framework consisting of a horizontal beam supported by two pairs of sloping legs, used to support a flat surface -- such as a tabletop.

And who’s this guy Ryan Cole behind the venture?

Although he graduated with a degree in Finance and Hospitality Admin,

Ryan was sidetracked early-on by his love of wine. As a Kopf Scholar, he traveled the world, learning the intricacies of winemaking.

Ryan’s restaurant years include stints as Wine Director and Manager at Clio restaurant in Boston, then Bastide Restaurant in LA, which he helped earn 3.5 stars from the LA Times.

From there, Ryan joined Bay-area superstar Michael Mina, opening three restaurants for the renowned chef, including his eponymous, Michelin-starred  dining room in San Francisco, which was chosen as Esquire Magazine’s US Restaurant of the Year.

Out on his own, partnered with a talented kitchen and front room team, Ryan has already turned heads at two San Francisco locations -- Stones Throw, 1896 Hyde St., and Fat Angel, 1749 O’Farrell St.

And now, there is his newest jewel in the crown, Trestle.

 

 

Trestle, 531 Jackson, St., at Columbus Ave. 415-772-0922.

Want to Get High in San Francisco? Visit Coit Tower!

View from the top of Coit Tower

While napaman is a Napa-centric website, every once in a while a guy’s gotta get out of town, blow off some steam... and get high.

My idea of getting high is to visit a tall, landmark building, enabling me to capture sweeping, panoramic shots of the skyline.

The best place to do this in San Francisco is one of the city’s top tourist sites, Coit Tower, on the peak of Telegraph Hill.

View from the front

 

View from the back

Built in 1933 with funds bequeathed to the city by Lillie Hitchcock Coit, the unpainted, reinforced concrete tower with fluted vertical sides, is a monument to Art Deco.

The interior of the tower houses America’s very first publicly funded art project; 27 different artists were hired with public funds to paint huge murals, which wrap around the interior of the ground floor lobby.

Murals even sweep up a hidden stairwell toward the top, but these stairs today are off limits to the public.

The only way to reach for the stars now is via a slow-moving elevator.

The line-up for the elevator to the top of the tower forms the second the doors open at 10 am. As of Sept. 1, the price of the up-and-down ride is $8. Well worth it to catch the panoramic views above.

The murals were funded by the Public Works of Art Project, the first New Deal federal employment program for artists in America.

Most of the muralists were faculty and students of the California School of Fine Arts.

Being young and idealistic, many of the artists were leftists, some even outright Marxists. All were asked to depict life in California during the Depression.

Themes included were work in the countryside, and work in the city; many of the artists stressed the imperative of racial equality.

The murals are glorious works of art, commanding a visitor’s time to be able to absorb all the detail.

A small corner of Lucien Labaudt’s large mural depicts Eleanor Roosevelt who was National Director of the Public Works of Art Project (WPAP).

The following shots will give you an idea of the themes and detail of the oversized murals.

The dynamic duo who welcome more than 500,000 visitors a year to Coit Tower:

On the left, Terry Grimm, who operates the facility; on the right, Davy Crockett (Yes! America’s original Davy Crockett is a distant relative...), who is tour director of the tower.

To give an idea of how large the murals are, tower operator Terry Grimm stands before one of the ground floor panels.

One you’ve ridden the rickety elevator to the top, you have access to breathtaking, 360-degree views of San Francisco and the Bay.

On a clear day, there isn’t a better view of the city and Bay from anywhere.

From this perch, you can see all the other top tourist sites – The Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, and the Embarcadero leading to Pier 39.

Talk about a birds’ eye-view!

The thing I find strange is that there is no closure atop the tower, no roof!

A 32-foot high wall vaults over the highest, last platform on which one can stand.

There’s a strange resemblance to Stonehenge here, or some druidic temple, the way the sunlight and open-air top interact.

 

Want to visit Coit Tower? It’s open seven days a week, 10 to 6 pm from May through October, and 10 to 5 pm, November through April.

Check the website for details:

http://sfrecpark.org/destination/telegraph-hill-pioneer-park/coit-tower/

You Will Want to Take This San Francisco Cocktail Safari!

The two things most talked about in Napa Valley these days are:

1. the water shortage

2. well made cocktails

It turns out that if you have enough of the latter, you can forget your worries about the former.

So to do my community service, to help shake our collective concern about the drought, napaman set out to study the current craze in cocktails. The chilled ones are especially hot.

San Francisco seemed like the perfect place to devote a night’s research to cocktails. Bartenders here are recognized for their innovation as well as for their keenness to revive classics, which have been lost over time.

I contacted Lisa Rogovin, who operates a series of sensational food tours in San Francisco (www.edibleexcursions.net) and signed up for her Thursday evening walk-about of four different trendy bars where tour participants get to talk to the bartenders and learn about popular cocktails.

Bartenders is such an old term. Nowadays, these masters of the spirit world are called mixologists by the press, and are as revered as DJs were when raves were the hot trend.

The bar scene at Cantina.

There were eight people on my cocktail tour. We met at a bar called Cantina. Our tour guide was Quinn Sweeney, a Vermonter who fell in love with the San Francisco cocktail scene nine years ago when he arrived and never returned home. 

Quinn talks about Pisco to our group in a back corner of Cantina.

Quinn is a teacher, writer, photographer and artist. He writes for several publications and knows where to find the best cocktails, or ingredients to make them. 

Quinn also designs and sells "distinctive devices for discerning drinkers" as he puts it. You can check out his offerings at https://www.etsy.com/shop/libationlab

The Peruvian distilled spirit used at Cantina to make delicious Pisco-based cocktails.

Cantina is really ground zero in America for the Peruvian spirit called Pisco. Bar owner Duggan McDonnell is a principal in the brand Encanto, produced in Peru, which is used here to make a cocktail called Pisco Punch. It was THE San Francisco drink back in the 1850’s gold rush era.

Bartender Brian Deconinck at Cantina makes eight Pisco Punch cocktails with Encanto Pisco for our group.

Duggan has been relentless in researching the origins of Pisco Punch and thinks the one he now serves is as close as anyone has ever gotten to the version served 150 years ago, when San Francisco’s seediest section was called The Barbary Coast – where sailors who had one-too-many Pisco-based drinks would get konked on the head and wake up on a ship halfway to Shanghai (hence the term “to be Shanghai’d”).

Bartender and general manager Brian Deconinck uses Lillet Rouge to give his pineapple-infused Pisco Punch color.

Brian also explains how Pisco is made in Peru – through the distillation of a variety of up to eight different fermented grapes.

As we take our leave to head to the next bar stop, this is what our group looked like:

The BEFORE shot; our group at the start of the cocktail safari. Sober as a judge, each and every one of ‘em. That’s Quinn on the far left.

Here’s the AFTER shot - our group after four bar stops and five cocktails:

Next stop on our safari – a bar called Royale.

Here we are introduced to two flavor sensations. Quinn serves us his favorite Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches, which he has brought along from Fresh Brew Coffee. “These are some of the best bánh mì sandwiches in the city,” he says.

Tour leader Quinn Sweeny brings mescal-based cocktails called “The Last Word” to our table.

Quinn also introduces us to The Last Word, a mescal-based cocktail which, he says, originated in Detroit in the 1930’s and which has been painstakingly recreated at the Royale.

We are given an introduction to mescal. Unlike Tequila, which must be made by distilling only the blue agave plant, mescal can be made with many different agave varieties.

The Last Word cocktail.

The Last Word is a blend of mescal, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and a squirt of lime juice. It has a smoky finish and the acidic lime flavor lingers.

 Quinn explains the difference between mescal and tequila to the group.

TIP

Speaking about Chartreuse, which is made by an order of Carthusian monks in France, Quinn says that one of his favorite shots is called Lucky Charms. “To a jigger of green Chartreuse add a dash of your favorite hot sauce,” says Quinn. “Knock it back as you would any shot – divine!”

These shoes have absolutely NOTHING to do with mescal or our tour – but I sure did like them on this  woman sitting at the Royale bar. Smokin’!

Time to move on to another bar.

At Trocadero Club, bartender Zander Sheets specializes in drinks made with schnaps, a German term derived from the verb “to swallow.” Schnaps are strong distilled spirits and, as Zander explains,  can even be made from distilled beer!

Bartender Zander Sheets creates his drink The Baroness for our group.

The ingredients required to make The Baroness.

Okay, the evening is moving on and so are we. To our fourth, and final, bar.

At Rye (the name of the bar), bartender Vincent Toscano prepares a Basil Gimlet. A large basil leaf, about the size of a lily pad, floats on the top of each cocktail.

The first cocktail served to us here is a Basil Gimlet. Quinn confides, and bartender Vincent confirms, that one of the best gins you can use to make gin-based cocktails is actually one of the least expensive – Gordon’s.

“It’s a myth, perpetuated by marketing people, that you have to spend a lot of money for gin,” says Quinn. “If you’re making a gin-based cocktail, Gordon’s is a great ingredient.”

The Basil Gimlet prepared at Rye Bar.

The deafening bar scene at Rye.

Our second cocktail at Rye is, like the first, NOT made with Rye. How curious.

Vincent shakes up eight Nail Gun cocktails, a sweetish drink with a lemony, peach finish. It is made with Dewar’s blended Scotch whisky, Drambui, bitters and freshly squeezed lemon.

“It’s a variation of the Rusty Nail,” explains Vincent. “We add peach simple syrup and lemon to the classic recipe to give it a twist.”

The tour ends. It’s after 9 pm. It’s been a hoot, and a colorful, and tasty one at that. If you are interested in taking the San Francisco Cocktail Tour, go to

http://bookeo.com/edibleexcursions?type=213RNLMY9140EA177AF0 

and fill in the blanks.

The tour is offered every Thursday, 6 to 9 pm, and costs $115 per person, which includes all cocktails and appropriate food nibbles. But not your Uber ride home!

Secret to Making the World’s Best Negroni Cocktail!

Recently, I had the best Negroni cocktail that I’ve ever had at Il Buco Alimentari,  in NYC.

That cocktail, the color of faded Venetian draperies, displayed a pitch-perfect balance of sweetness and bitterness; it sported a sensational middle palate with a lush, syrupy texture, and had a long, lingering, bitter cherry, finish. I can still taste it a month later.

The Il Buco Alimentari Negroni.

The Negroni is said to have originated in Florence, Italy, in 1919, at Caffe Casoni when Count Camillo Negroni reputedly asked the bartender to strengthen his favorite drink, the Americano, by replacing the soda water with gin.

The drink became so popular so quickly that it was soon called the “King of Aperitives.” Eventually, the originator’s name was affixed to the cocktail.

I’m sure the Count never imagined that one day he’d become the spirit(ual) leader of drinkers around the world.

One taste of the Negroni at Il Buco Alimentari and I knew that I had to learn how to ace this cocktail at home. So I asked Melissa, the bartender, for her secrets to make the perfect Negroni, which is basically a concoction of three spirits:

Equal parts of:

Gin

Campari

Sweet Italian vermouth

Mixology 101: Stir, do not shake, the mixture of three spirits over ice, pour into old-fashioned glasses filled with ice (different ice, not the same ice used to mix the concoction) and, if desired, squeeze the oil from a strip of orange rind over the drink, and then add the rind.

Sounds simple. But the mixing’s a mathematical nightmare: which gin, which vermouth, and does one really add equal parts?

Campari is central to any Negroni and is the one part you don’t substitute when formulating a strategy to mix The Best-Ever Negroni.

This was an assignment for napaman akin to decoding the human genome. And equally as important to humanity if you agree that what happens daily at 5 o’clock somewhere in the world is critically important to the survival of mankind everywhere in the world.

Melissa told me that she uses Breuckelen Distilling’s Glorious Gin, a NY-made gin (Breuckelen is the old Dutch spelling for the borough in which it’s made).

The secret ingredient in the Il Buco Alimentari Negroni. Should be on the UN watch list as a dangerous weapon of mass intoxication.

This one night, she also replaced Carpano Antica, the sweet vermouth typically used here, for Cocchi di Torino, a more focused, slightly edgier, sweet Italian vermouth. It’s a complex, very intense vermouth; if Cocchi were a psychiatric patient, you wouldn’t learn in five years of psychoanalytic couch therapy what makes it so moody and intense.

San Francisco skyline; I had to head off to San Francisco to conduct basic Negroni research.

Back home, in California, I contacted my favorite wine and spirit retailer, K&L Wine, in San Francisco, and asked the dynamic Duo of Daves (Dave Driscoll and Dave Othenin-Girard) if they could order Cocchi and Breuckelen Distilling’s Glorious Gin for me. And also sell me some other branded gins for the exercise I was about to undertake.

“No problem” they chirped in unison in their standard echo-like fashion to please this customer.

While waiting for the gins and vermouth to arrive, I thought I’d be smart to conduct some basic bar research, to better understand how different brands of gin and vermouth altered Melissa’s recipe.

So I visited two of my favorite bars/hotels in San Francisco, both which happen to be Kimpton properties, the classy, high-end, boutique lodger, in whose hotels I often stay.

I visited Jasper’s Corner Tap, where I have enjoyed one of my favorite burgers ever in San Francisco. (This hunk o’ beautiful bovine is served on an original, crusty bun that is as memorable as the meat.)

I figured that if they know as much about mixing as they know about meat, this would be a solid place to start my Negroni research. I was right.

Barman Dan Wootton agreed that not all gins, and not all vermouths, are created equal. So he set up a trial of drinks to make his case.

Each was made with equal parts of three spirits, each contained Campari and Cocchi, which I’d already determined in tests is a superior vermouth for Negronis, better than Carpano Antica or even VYA Sweet Vermouth.

Do not lose sight of the fact that VYA Dry Vermouth is the secret to making the world’s best martini. But that’s another story and to fully understand how to make the World’s Best Martini, go here:

http://www.napaman.com/napamancom/2007/05/vya_the_stephen.html

And do not lose sight of the fact that Carpano Antica made some stellar Negronis in the course of my research, not the least of which was the Negroni made at Bistro Don Giovanni, in Napa town. Here they mix No. 209 gin, Campari and Carpano Antica. Fabuloso.

But back to Dan; he made three Negronis to prove his point.

Ginning at Jasper’s Corner Tap

The one made with Old Tom Ransom Gin from Oregon was muddied and unfocused.

The one made with Aviation Gin from Portland, which was Dan’s preferred Negroni of the trial, was a bit too clean; for me, it exhibited too much vanilla on the finish.

I selected the Negroni made with Martin Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin, Westbourne Strength, as “Negroni of the Night.” It was sensational. Properly named, it Reformed my opinion about which gin makes the best Negroni. 

Dan and assistant general manager Jose Carlos Delgado pointed out that to meet the demand for Negronis, Jasper’s Corner Tap actually has devoted one wine/beer tap to… Negronis! 

That’s right, they pull a pressurized Negroni off one of their bar taps and the beverage is… FANTASTIC!

To make their wildly popular “draft Negroni,” they mix one part each of Campari and Plymouth Gin and for the third part, they mix Cinzanno and Punt e Mes, an Italian vermouth. This is a sensational, house-ready, Negroni. And it’s On Tap!

Over time, I’ve also come to respect and enjoy the spirits, wine and food at the Fifth Floor restaurant and bar, in another Kimpton San Francisco property, the Palomar Hotel.

As the Fifth Floor is a Mecca for Martini- and Negroni-drinkers, I knew it was time to visit an old friend here, Amy Goldberger, head sommelier at Fifth Floor.

In turn, she introduced me to Brian Means, the affable and skilled barman who mixed many variations of the Negroni on my visit so that I could test the impact of different gins and different vermouths.

Bartender Brian Means at the Fifth Floor. You could say that Brian Means business when he makes you a Negroni.

Plymouth gin produced a rusty, rustic, serviceable Negroni; Martin Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin, Westbourne Strength, produced a superior cocktail with a sensational middle palate, and a sunburned finish.

St. George Dry Rye Gin, made in Alameda, CA, produced a Negroni that was flavored with bandages and Mercurochrome, and which had long lasting bitter notes.

Fords Gin, from England, produced a watery, non-descript beverage with not much of a middle palate and no memorable finish. Call it the Mitch McConnell Negroni – absolutely no personality.

Brian Means in his laboratory... er, I mean bar, planning a few more Negroni combinations to try.

We tried a Negroni made with Greenhook Ginsmiths Gin from Brooklyn, NY, which Brian wangles from a special source as it is not commercially available in this market. It produced a drink with slow attack and slow release; there were a few floral notes and a hint of cucumber. This might be the Negroni to have if you’re planning to have more than two Negronis, as the flavor build-up is slow. 

But I’m in search of the one-off, single best Negroni you can make at home, not one of which you need to drink a bathtubful to obtain a flavor hit.

(By the way, let’s not forget to mention that the bar area of the Fifth Floor is THE place in San Francisco to have a sensational, rich, burger – order it with “the works”  -- with a side of fries. Major delicious.

If your server is Dillon, he will guide you through all the other spirit and food options on the bar menu. This is one of my favorite after-hours destinations in San Francisco; it is quiet, comforting, secluded. The drinks and service are first-class.)

When my bottles of Breuckelen Distilling’s Glorious Gin and Cocchi finally arrived at K&L Wine, I started to conduct mixology trials at home.

After determining that Cocchi sweet vermouth makes the best Negroni, I mixed the cocktail using many different gins.

Here’s what I discovered, on my way to selecting my all-time favorite, Best Ever Negroni. In order of preference, from least liked to best liked:

Boodles Gin

Not much of anything. The spirits and flavors do not integrate with one another. There is a succession of tastes, including cinnamon and ripe fruit, but overall, the Negroni lacks luster, focus and zip. 89 points out of 100.

Hendrick’s Gin

Here’s a gin I often like for martinis, but in auditioning for The Negroni Idol, this straight-forward gin produces a rather straight-forward, rather pedestrian, cocktail. There’s not much “there” there.

A rather simple drink, missing the complexity and alluring character found in other Negronis in this taste test.

91 points out of 100.

Plymouth Gin

Somewhat soapy, pallid, pastel-flavored in the Negroni. Even with the addition of bitters and an orange peel, this gin underwhelms in the cocktail.

This gin is far more successful as an ingredient in a martini.

91 points on its own, 94 points when made with bitters.

No. 209

The best US gin you can use for martinis. Bar none. In any bar.

But for Negronis made with Cocchi, this very floral, very botanical, gin produces a beverage that is a bit sloppy, and unfocused. Almost socially backward and embarrassing. Still, it produces a refreshing cocktail. Much better when combined with Carpano Antica vermouth. 95 points.

Breuckelen Distilling’s Glorious Gin

A winner by any standard of comparative measurement.

The presence of Cocchi lengthens the finish considerably.

Love this gin for the Negroni, though when tasted straight, on its own, it’s a rather mundane, lackluster spirit. How curious. 96 points.

 

Martin Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin, Westbourne Strength

This gin makes a sensational Negroni; the cocktail is bright in the mouth, bouncy and alive on the palate.

The cocktail is vibrant, and does what a proper cocktail before dinner is meant to do: arouse one’s appetite. 98 points.

In short:

Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin, Westbourne Strength, makes a superior Negroni when mixed in equal parts with Cocchi di Torino sweet vermouth and Campari.

This combination of spirits produces an Academy Award-worthy Negroni.

(For the record: Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin is distilled in the UK, then shipped to Iceland where it is blended with Icelandic waters and bottled. How curious! How delicious!)

Here’s what happened next:

Thinking that I’d found the Holy Grail Recipe for The Perfect Negroni, I called my friend Eileen, who is the bartender at Tra Vigne, in St. Helena, and who is, in my humble opinion, the best bartender in Napa Valley.

“I want to make you a Negroni and get your feedback,” I offered.

I made my Negroni with equal parts of Miller’s Reformed London Dry Gin, Cocchi and Campari, and as good as it was, Eileen improved it!

She suggested upping the gin to 1.5 oz. while keeping the Cocchi and Campari at 1 oz. each.

“The extra gin softens the drink, reduces the perceived sweetness, and generally makes for a better cocktail,” Eileen concluded.

And she was right.

So now you have all the trade secrets – the ingredients, the ratios, and bartender tips -- to make The Perfect Negroni at home. So what are you waiting for...?

Want to taste the best commercial Negronis?

In NY, go to:

Il Buco Alimentari, 53 Great Jones Street,

Tel: 212-837-2622 

In San Francisco, go to:

Jasper’s Corner Tap, 401 Taylor, off the lobby of the Serrano Hotel.

Tel: 415-775-7979.

The Fifth Floor, on the 5^th floor of the Palomar Hotel, 12 Fourth St.

Tel: 415-348-1555.

In Napa Valley, go to:

Bistro Don Giovanni, 4110 Howard Lane, Napa.

Tel: 707-224-3300.

Tra Vigne, 1050 Charter Oak Avenue, St. Helena.

Tel: 707-963-4444.

Mission Murals: Eye-Candy for the Soul!

 

 Last week, I recounted the story of taking Lisa Rogovin’s Saturday Food Tour through San Francisco’s Mission district. (http://www.napaman.com/napamancom/2010/11/mission-impossible-tasting-all-this-great-food-in-one-visit.html)

Part of the tour included a walk down Balmy Alley. Lisa, our food tour guide, introduced us to Patricia Rose, a talented muralist and Mission folk art historian, who shared the stories behind the many colorful murals, which adorn the walls, doors, garage doors and car ports of this neighborhood lane.

You don’t have to be balmy to enjoy the colorful murals on Balmy Alley, named after a successful racehorse. There are 40 colorful murals on this short city lane.

Muralists working within Precita Eyes, a community-based, inner-city, mural arts organization established in 1977, have now spent decades beautifying their ‘hood with large outdoor murals.

The community effort, led in large part by Patricia, is dedicated to bringing the story of human struggle to life in richly colored murals – to share concerns, joys and collective triumphs.

Patricia Rose speaks to our Mission tour group

Patricia leads independent cultural and historical walking tours of the Mission District on weekends, during which time she points out significant murals, describing their meaning.

Details for signing up:

Tours commence at 11 am Saturday or Sunday, and the fee is $12 per person, $8 for college students, $8 for seniors and $5 for teens.

To sign up for a mural tour, contact Patricia Rose at [email protected] or leave a message for her at 415-285-2287.

Make a point of ending your tour at the Community Art Store, 2981 24^th St. where they have a large collection of mural materials, including postcards, posters, T-shirts, maps, eco-bags and books. Your purchase helps fund community muralists buy paints for future projects.

I can’t think of a better way to express what you’re likely to see on a tour than to share what we saw on ours:

 

 

Mission Impossible: Tasting All This Great Food in One Visit!

 

Having recently returned from Rome, where I enjoyed a personal walking tour with a knowledgeable guide, I was ecstatic to take a similar – even tastier! – guided tour of San Francisco’s Mission district last week.

Background: I received a Taste the Mission tour gift certificate from a talented pastry chef, whom I have been mentoring and about whom you will learn more shortly, when her delicious baked goods are ready to be rolled out in America’s gourmet food stores.

The gift certificate entitled me and three others to join the amazing, knowledgeable and oh-so-pregnant Lisa Rogovin, on one of her 3-hour, Saturday-only, walking tours of San Francisco ‘s colorful, Hispanic-centric center, with no fewer than six gourmet food pit-stops.

This is Lisa:

She is as knowledgeable about food and the Mission as she is sweet and charming. Lisa could lead me on a three-hour tour of a fish-packing plant, or an abattoir, and I would be happy, because I would be in her company.

The fact that the Mission is so colorful, so filled with start-up and traditional food firms, is the Big Bonus on her Mission walkabout. (Pay attention: you are going to want to sign up for this tour! Details at the end of this story.)

In an email, Lisa instructed my family to meet the walking group “in front of Mission Minis.”

From the sound of it, I thought we must be meeting in front of the Mission’s Mini car dealership. It turns out that this is the home of the Mission’s exceptionally good, mini-cupcake maker. So much for napaman’s qualifications to stay atop regional food trends!

A young employee, Diego, works the retail counter at Mission Minis on Saturdays

The specialty flavors here are indigenous to the area; I really liked the mini-cupcake flavored with horchata, the modestly sweet rice drink loved by Latinos in the ‘hood. Bakers tweak  the sweetness with nutmeg and cinnamon.

Other original cupcake flavors include Aztec Chocolate, and Pumpkin Spice.

Mission Minis is at 3168 22^nd Street. Tel: 415-817-1540. Find them online at www.missionminis.com.

Then we walked on to Mission Pie, an exceptional corner store in the ‘hood, serving brilliant baked goods.

Lisa asked Karen Heisler, bakery co-founder, to speak to our group to explain the Mission Statement of Mission Pie. Looks like you can’t be in the Mission making Mission Pie without a Mission Statement.

Karen Heisler, co-owner and co-baker of Mission Pie

Karen said that the bakery only uses organic, heirloom wheat and hormone-free butter to make their tasty sweet goods (with emphasis on “tasty”).

Karen talked about the importance of relationships in the workplace and said that Mission Pie makes a lot of room for interns in the business “because whom you work with… and the business practices that you follow… are as important as what you produce… and how good you make things taste.”

One of the best things I tasted on the Mission Taste Tour – the fresh walnut pie at Mission Pie. $19 for a whole pie. A trip to the Mission is not complete without tasting this pie!

Mission Pie is located at 2901 Mission St. Tel 415-282-4PIE. Read more about the bakery’s environmental, social and economic initiatives at www.missionpie.com.

If we were down a quart of carbohydrates at the start of this tour, our tank was about half-full by this point on the tour.

Next stop: a restaurant and another bakery, housed in the same space.

Sign out front; the location is shared by two food businesses – Local Mission Eatery, serving tremendous sandwiches and hot fare, and Knead, a hands-on, artisanal patisserie.

Only open about six months, Local Mission Eatery is the brainchild of Yaron Milgrom, a New York transplant who did his university dissertation in New York on Jewish mysticism, then decided that what he really wanted was to move west and open a restaurant!

Regulars love the soups at Local Mission Eatery

The pastries at Knead are the handiwork of Shauna des Voignes, whose name you may recall from her stint at Ubuntu, in Napa Valley.

Mission Local Eatery and Knead Patisserie share space at 3111 24th Street. Tel 415-655-3422. Check hours and days of operation at www.localmissioneatery.com.

Now we’re walking onward, heading for a seriously good, seriously local, taqueria.

Most pork tacos are called “carnitas,” as the pork for this style taco is fried. By contrast, the pork at Taquerias El Farolito is marinated – which makes a big difference in taste. This marinated pork treat is called “Taco Al Pastor” (the Pastor). From my vantage point, there’s another distinction from carnitas, too:  this is one of the best, greaseless tacos I’ve ever had. Worth a detour to The Mission.

Lisa Rogovin at “the Little Lighthouse Taqueria”

Then Lisa marshaled the troops and we were re off to another bakery.

Jaime Maldonado, whose family owns La Victoria Bakery, is in the foreground, cutting up different house-made pastries. That’s Lisa in the background.

La Victoria Bakery is the oldest Latino-owned business in the Mission. Jaime Maldonado’s dad started the bakery in 1951.

Of all the things, which our group was offered to taste Saturday morning, I thought the Walnut Pie at Mission Pies and La Victoria’s macaroon, were the tastiest items. In a word: outstanding.

If I were ascribing points, as one does to judge wines, the La Victoria Bakery macaroon is a 100-point food item!

The colorful kitchen at La Victoria

One of the signature items at La Victoria – empanadas

La Victoria Bakery is at 2937 24th Street. Tel 415-642-7120.

Then we’re onto something cold, original and delicious: Humphry Solocombe Ice Cream.

Apparently, everyone on the planet who knows anything about cult ice cream knows about this brand. The Mission location, site of production, is ground zero for Humphry Slocombe.

Flavors are as originally named as they are flavorful: I tried and loved

“Elvis, The Fat Years,” which has a banana-peanut butter base, and which is textured with Bacon Peanut Brittle.

I also loved “Secret Breakfast.” Flavored with bourbon, textured with ground crunchy cornflakes, this variety offers ice cream fanatics a natural way to start the day!

Other flavors tasted on our visit:

White Miso Pear

Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee

Chocolate Suicide

Humphry Slocombe is served in some Bay-area restaurants and there is talk of a second location opening soon somewhere in the city.

The ice creams are made with Straus Family organic milk. Ingredients, which can be sourced organically, are. They rotate through a long list of ice cream flavors here, serving a dozen at any one time. The store is open noon to 9 pm daily. Cash only.

Humphry Slocombe is located at 2790 Harrison Street. Tel 415)-550-6971. Visit their website for a list of all the freaky flavors; http://www.humphryslocombe.com/%7C_Flavors_%7C.html

No, we didn’t taste Jimmy The Corn Man’s Corn Whatever…. But I liked the sign and the eponymous reference to me (Jimmy!)

A joy of being on a photographic safari in the Mission with Lisa is the opportunity to see colorful signs and paintings, which pop out to speak to you. Like this and the next sign.

At least 10 minutes have gone by and we have not ingested any new tasty foods or colorful carbs; our combined group blood sugar count is starting to plummet. The group appears to be going into a crash landing of insulin resistance – quick, Lisa! Get us some immediate carbo-shock therapy … take us to nearby Dynamo Donuts!

Opened in 2008, Dynamo Donut and Coffee rotates daily through 30 different flavored donuts, which are fried in organic palm oil.

The only donut which never comes off the rotational menu is: Maple Apple Bacon, which has a cult following. The largest selling variety, it was featured in a recent episode of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network

Dynamo Donut and Coffee is located at 2760 24th St. Tel 415-920-1978. Check out the full list of varieties at www.dynamodonut.com.

Patricia Rose, muralist and Mission mural historian

In addition to introducing the tour group to sensational food, Lisa introduced us to some fantastic eye-candy – the street art of the Mission.

Patricia Rose walked the group down Balmy Lane, detailing the art and history of some 40 different murals.

Rather than speed through them here, I will offer a visual inventory of what we saw in this space next week – it’s something visually delicious to anticipate.

The Information you’ve been waiting for:

If you’d like to take Lisa Rogovin’s Taste The Mission tour or give a friend a gift certificate, contact Lisa by email or phone.

The cost of Lisa’s Saturday-only Mission Food Tour is $75 per person, and the tour runs rain or shine, 11 am to 2 pm. Call Lisa at 415-806-5970 to book space. Or email her -- [email protected]. Or visit her website, www.inthekitchenwithlisa.com, to learn about other area food tours, which Lisa offers.

Best new pizza in San Francisco!

The good news – we’ve discovered the best new pizza in San Francisco.

The bad news – now that we’re telling the world, not a one of us will be able to get in to the cozy 16-seat (interior) boite known as Piccino, Italian for “tiny.” Which this place most certainly is.

The pixie pizza perfectionist behind Piccino is Sheryl Rogat, 41, who formerly worked, among other places, at Pizzetta 211, which, until now has been one of our favorite pizza hangouts in the city.

But wanting to set out on her own, instead of being an employee all her life, Sheryl partnered with Margherita Stewart-Sagan (always a good idea to have a Margherita on your pizza menu – and one in the office, too!), rented space and opened a place of her own.

The line-up of seven pizzas changes every three weeks. Ingredients are wholesome, fresh and did I mention – helluva tasty.

The crusts are thin as a cracker, perfectly baked. They exude flavor, warmth and care. The toppings are alluring, not in the least oily (Molto Mario Battali – take a lesson!) and I was SO into the nettle, roasted garlic, mozzarella and fresh ricotta pizza that I was already trying to figure out when we could get back to Piccino for another visit – and we weren’t even half-way through our nettle melt.

The stunning “white” pizza of the week – nettle, roasted garlic, mozzarella and ricotta. A six-star pizza in a five-star universe!

Favorite New Pizza

There is pleasure in the nettle pizza that is both textural and sensual. It has deep roasted garlic notes, spiffy, spicy top notes of red chili, and then there’s this green-y taste, nettle-y thing, that dances on the middle palate. Sort of like a complex wine that doesn’t stop gifting your senses. Except that with the pizza, there’s also a textural crunch/chew that is as wonderful as the topping tastes.

The marjoram-dusted, sensually arousing Margherita pizza. If you can stop at one slice – you may be clinically dead.

The other pizza we tried (and loved) is “boring old Margherita,” which at Piccino is anything but boring. Or old. I love the way Sheryl has added a dusting of marjoram to the tomato sauce; it dances on the palate, gives depth to what is often just a “plain sauced” pizza.

Like the nettle pizza, this one has a purity of flavor that transcends what you normally expect in a “pizza parlor.”

The beer list is short – two brew, each at $4. We tried, and loved, the offering from Sonoma County Ales; their hand-brewed, Bear Republic Racer 5 India Pale Ale, which hales from Healdsburg, makes your mouth happy. ‘Nuf said.

The Oh-No’s

Parking in Dogpatch, the neighborhood, is a pain in the ass, to put it bluntly. If you tell someone you’re going to meet them at Piccino and you’re driving – leave today for tomorrow’s rendezvous because it just may take that long to find a parking spot.

While Piccino is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, even with hours as long as 7 am to 9 pm a few days of the week, WHAT HAPPENS TO US WHEN WE GET A PIZZA URGE AT 11 PM ANY NIGHT OF THE WEEK, HUH? Sheryl, if you really cared about us, you’d open the first 24-hour pizzeria to satisfy our nocturnal cravings.

Piccino is at 801 22nd St., in “Dogpatch, San Francisco. Tel: 415-824-4224. No reservations. No parking. No valet. No worries – you’re still going to want to go!

How do you spell Gary Danko?

A-R-R-O-G-A-N-C-E would be good for a start.

This multi-starred restaurant in San Francisco, where we have eaten six times and really liked the fare on most visits, has firmly moved into a zone, which can only be described as rigid and not fun.

Point in question: four of us from Napa Valley made the trek last week to Gary Danko, usually ranked Number One on restaurant dining lists in San Francisco. Maybe the departure of long-time sommelier Jason Alexander (his real name!) had something to do with our treatment, but surely, the knowledgeable and professional Maitre d’ had the authority to resolve our issue but chose not to.

Background: Being part of a winemaking team in Napa Valley, and having spent 30 years writing about food and wine and professionally reviewing restaurants, I often bring my own wines to dinner.

I have no objection to pay a corkage fee and when restaurants are extremely gracious and don’t charge corkage, I ALWAYS include what would have been the cost of the opened wines, which I brought, when calculating the tip, because why should the waitstaff get short-changed when management is gracious enough to waive the corkage fee? In this fashion, there are many meals in Napa Valley where the tip we leave equals the price of the food on our bill! We are, if anything, generous to a fault with waiters; for the record, we are not cheap, we are not whiners, we are not bumpkins.

And so, we took three bottles of wine to Gary Danko, where our foursome intended to spend the bulk of a Saturday night. Our reservation was for 9.30 pm.

I was told at the door that the corkage policy is that you may ONLY bring two bottles to dinner and that Restaurant Gary Danko charges $35 per bottle opened. I agreed to the terms and pointed out that the third bottle was simply a back-up – in case one of our primary wines was flawed, or corked, which happens these days with too much frequency.

Oh oh... the fun is about to end...

For starters, we ordered three glasses of Billecart-Salmon Rose Champagne at $32 a glass; we ordered one martini at $15. We ordered three bottles of sparkling water at $7.75 each. We ordered a delicious 2004 Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet for $112. We asked the sommelier to open our two wines: a 2004 Leroy Vosne-Romanee and a 1997 Guigal La Landonne Cote-Rotie, which is considered by serious wine lovers to be one of the great wines of the world (maybe not the 97 vintage, but in general, this 100 percent Syrah Cote-Rotie is one of the wines you would choose to take to a desert island).

I have cellared the 1997 Landonne for some time, but contemporarily, if you wanted to replace it, you would have to pay $400 for the bottle. Even so, when we opened the wine, it was not a charming example; I have had this wine many times, even been to the cellar in Ampuis, France, and tasted different vintages of Marcel Guigal’s single vineyard Cote-Roties from cask with him. In short: while this was a modestly flawed bottle, I did not feel the wine would complement the delicious fare at Gary Danko. If anything, it was a comment about the quality of the food and the wine not being able to keep up with it.

So I called over the server and asked him if he would please open our third bottle, to replace the undrinkable Cote-Rotie, which we were not going to drink. Note: I was not asking for a bottle to be opened as a third beverage – I was asking for a replacement to be opened to take the place of the flawed Landonne.

I was told that this was an unusual request – we’d already reached our limit of two BYO bottles; I said that I understood, but that we wanted to open the third bottle (a 1991 Philip Togni Cabernet from Spring Mountain) to replace the less than perfect 1997 Landonne.

Ultimately, we were told that "Restaurant Gary Danko" (they always talk about themselves in the third person, which increases the drama and makes employees feel – and, I presume act – more important) would permit us to have a third bottle opened – but just this one time – (they underlined this part with great inflection in their voice) and then informed us that we would be charged an additional $70 corkage to open this third bottle!

How can you have "Highway Robbery" when you're not in a car?

I queried the charge, citing the fact that they were simply replacing an already opened bottle… and even if they felt compelled to recharge me for opening another bottle, why were they PUNISHING ME for the poorly made wine that I’d brought? I hadn’t walked in with a bottle of Two-Buck-Chuck, I wasn’t a novice at this game; I have, in fact, eaten at many three-star French restaurants to review their fare and not a one of them has ever attempted to make me, or other patrons, squirm in their plush seats by PUNISHING guests with an aggressive, unreasonable, elevated corkage fee.

In the end, our bill for the evening came to $848.47 for four people. And, for the first time that I can ever recall in 30 years of eating at, or reviewing, restaurants, I was compelled to leave NO TIP.

Rather than generously over-tip the mostly brilliant waitstaff here, I felt I had to make a statement – to “Restaurant Gary Danko” and the Matire d’ who insisted we be charged the extra fee – that they are part of the hospitality industry, not the in-hospitality industry, and that until “Restaurant Gary Danko” understands this, I refuse to contribute to the corruption of the morals of its staff for instituting and maintaining an offensive, and impudent, corkage policy.

Imagine; had the waiter, or maitre d’, simply agreed to open our replacement bottle and not made a fuss about it, we would have come away from our dinner feeling like kings. We would have told our friends to visit the restaurant; we would have planned to return ourselves. We would have graciously left a large tip. We would have returned many times in the future to spend thousands of dollars.

But from a point of shortsightedness, and the stupidity of charging an unwarranted step-up fee to open a third bottle -- replacing a flawed bottle for which we’d already been charged corkage – we will not go back to Restaurant Gary Danko.

There are many fine top-tier restaurants, and many sensational neighborhood restaurants, in San Francisco, which want our business, which go out of their way to get it and keep it.

There is no place in my life for a restaurant that heaps haughty, effete, belittling or arrogant behavior upon any of its patrons, me included; because, sometimes, the customer just actually happens to be right.

My Take on Wine Books

To learn about wine, nothing beats buying and opening lots of different bottles. Tasting lots of wine… and the attendant hangovers… are the best teachers of what you like… and what likes you.

There’s another way to learn about wine: through books. Over the years, I have read many about wine and am often asked for my favorites. Some are variety-specific, some are geography-centric, some are anthologies, some are encyclopedic, some are light, some are heavy, some are well written, many are not.

Probably my favorite “best written” wine book was penned by wine retailer Kermit Lynch, (Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley) in 1988.

Adventures on the Wine Route tells of Kermit’s discovery of the very winemakers whose wines he imports today. His stories, profiles and myth debunking are superb. Kermit was one of the first retailers to rail against the numeric rating system of critics. What he said in 1988 sounds as though it were printed in a wine magazine today:

“This all reminds me of an acquaintance who always seemed to have a new girlfriend. His girlfriends all had two things in common: huge breasts. His choices might be pretty or not, intelligent or not, interesting or not. Nothing seemed to matter to him as long as the breasts were enormous. It was such an impractical way to assess the quality of a woman that it began to seem almost perverse. And I have an identical reaction to those who go gaga over an inky, oaky monster wine…. I cannot begin to communicate how profoundly the critics’ embrace of such freak wines depresses me.”

“Why ask that a wine be jarring to the senses, a criterion that we do not apply to other arts like music or painting in which delicacy is valued, where shading, nuance, even silence or empty space can be considered remarkable. But keep an eye on the wine critics’ ratings. If a wine is black, packs an alcoholic, tannic wallop, and smells like a lumberyard, it receives high points.”

Amen, Kermit. You set the stage for others to follow. Your book is filled with revelations like this and like many of the wines you sell, your tome ages beautifully… and is still showing quite young!

One of the encyclopedic books that I have often gone back to, time and again, is out-of-print but available used from third-party sellers on Amazon – The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine, last updated in 1988, the same year Kermit published his book.

Read the buyer’s comments about this out-of-print book on Amazon and you will see that wine lovers are still reading it, using it, learning from it. Sure, we have new terms, and new processes that did not exist in Schoonmaker’s day – spinning cones that modify alcohol… and cold stabilization – but the book has the goods on all the classic stuff you need to know about wine.

For sheer detail, authority of subject matter and infinite tasting notes, one of my most prized books is Wines of the Rhone Valley, written by Robert Parker Jr., who is billed in Business Week as “the world’s most influential wine critic.” Which he most certainly is.

My copy is very special to me; it was given to me by Parker himself after we met at Mustards Grill, discussing the pros and cons and age-ability of (then) contemporary vintages of Gigondas and Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines. A few weeks after our talk, Parker sent the book, inscribed, “To Jim White, a guy who really knows how to Rock and Rhone!” It was signed and then he added a PS: “Mustards Grill Rules!”

I have thumbed through my copy for years, always finding something new among the 685 pages. Today, Parker’s notes are available – and updated – on his website, erobertparker.com, but this column is about My Favorite Wine Books, and this one rates near the top for me as I am so passionate about the wines of the Rhone Valley.

Times change and so do people’s tastes. Zoom ahead 19 years from Kermit’s and Schoonmaker’s day to today – and we see a growing backlash to over-oaked wines; we see consumers experimenting with cheeses and wines they would never before have considered serving together; we see wineries that made their reputation fermenting in stainless steel reverse their M.O. by 180 degrees and pledge their (new) undying love for wood-fermented wines. What goes around comes around. What was trendy became untrendy… has become trendy once more.

Commentary about the contemporary taste of wine has been distilled through the palate of a bright, young San Francisco sommelier named Courtney Cochran in her just-published book, Hip Tastes, The Fresh Guide to Wine.

Courtney holds Hip Tasting sessions in San Francisco to introduce 20-somethings (actually, let’s hope they’re legal 21-somethings!) to the world of wine. Which is what her book also attempts to do. The book is a bit like Chic Lit; it is airy, fun to read and not overly pedantic, which for a subject as sensual as wine is probably the right path to follow.

The narrow paperback will fit into your back pocket, or cargo pants pocket, like a mickey of Jagermeister, and probably will keep you out of a lot more trouble. Courtney shares her passions, gives lightweight lessons in how to taste wine, buy wine, store the stuff and, what I like best, is a guide on how to pronounce the stuff.

For some reason, many Americans are linguistically challenged and it’s rare to find anyone who can say “pinot noir,” as a Frenchman might say it, rhyming “noir” with “armoire,” and rolling that last ‘r.’ Instead, Yanks come up with something that sounds like “pee-no-nwah.”

I like the fact that Courtney advises readers to pronounce “Gigondas” (wonderful wines from a village of the same name in the southern Rhone) as “jhee-gohn-doss,” which is how the locals there say it. Somewhere, in cold northern American climes, someone once started pronouncing it “jig-an-dah,” dropping the final ‘s,’ which no respecting Frenchman would do.

If you want to find out more about Courtney’s book, go to Amazon. If you want to find out more about her Hip Tastes sessions in “the City,” (as locals in Napa Valley refer to San Francisco), then drop her a line: [email protected].

Summary of Books

Adventures on the Wine Route, Kermit Lynch, published in paperback by North Point Press. $11.56 on Amazon.

The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine (Hardcover)
by Alex Bespaloff, from third-party sellers on Amazon, from $12.82

Wines of the Rhone Valley, by Robert Parker Jr., expanded and revised in 1997 from an earlier edition, published by Simon & Schuster in hardback, $18.75 from third-party sellers on Amazon.

Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine, by Courtney Cochran, in paperback from Viking Studio, $12.89 on Amazon.

One of San Francisco’s Best Neighborhood Restaurants – The House.

As San Francisco is the gateway to Napa Valley and is only 67 miles distant, it seems appropriate, from time to time in this space, to comment on Must-Try restaurants in the Golden Gate city.

The House is one such restaurant, a beacon of culinary delight. How can a place this good stay under the radar for so long? Just thinking about The House menu as I type brings a smile to my face.

Locals rate The House a 5-star experience, but visitors
have yet to put this great (but tiny) restaurant on their San Francisco "eatinerary"

The House is pegged “Pan-Asian," but the term is off-putting. I prefer “Asian Fusion,” suggesting a marriage of Asian flavors and ingredients with western, or Californian, cooking techniques. But the problem even with this term is that most restaurants offering “Asian Fusion” rarely offer more than “Asian Con-fusion,” a cacophony of cuisines that fight each other.

But The House is different. The two families who run it have a sensitivity to flavors and food combinations that you just don’t find in other Fusion restaurants. Or, for that matter, in many restaurants of any culinary persuasion.

The Ahi Tuna BLT is a prime example of a Perfect Dish served here. I have been known to drive to San Francisco for the express purpose of having it. That’s a 150-mile (round trip) drive for a sandwich. And even more startling is the fact that it's worth it!

Chef Larry Tse sandwiches freshly caught, just-seared, Pacific yellow fin tuna, crispy bacon and lettuce on a thin, buttered slice of grilled ciabatta bread that has been liberally swathed with tangy, homemade, wasabi mayo. The sandwich is served with a tasty miso-dressed salad of fresh baby greens. If there is a tastier, more compelling lunch item in San Francisco, I don’t know what it is, or where it is served.

For dessert, don’t miss the mango-tapioca pudding, a sensual confection of creamy nirvana. There are not enough exclamation marks in my computer to truly express how I feel about this pudding. (Hmmmm….. I must speak to Apple about fixing this system error….)

Other desserts, including the homemade pies, are also merit consideration. The care, thought and execution that go into appetizer and main dishes continue through to the end of your meal. Nothing is left to chance.

While Larry tends the stove, his wife Angela works the room, suggesting wines (which she selects for the restaurant), or beer, to complement the food. On the days that Larry is absent, Angela’s brother, Michael, cooks. And at all times, Nicaraguan-born Oswaldo, the lead waiter, will have a suggestion, or comment, to make about your food selection and wine pairing. Oswaldo has a good palate and broad knowledge of regional wines. (Any guy who identifies Grgich Hill’s Napa Valley Chardonnay as his favorite Chard knows what he is talking about!)

The House is hard to find. The sign outside is small and the confusing star-like intersection of Grant, Broadway and Columbus is enough to give your GPS device a nervous breakdown. But there is much reward in reaching this dining Xanadu.

The House is at the intersection of three major streets - Grant, Columbus and Broadway.
If you find yourself at City Lights Books, you are getting warmer....

One final note: The House is also small, not much bigger than your neighborhood Starbucks. Don't be shocked when you enter and think to yourself, "Jim had us schlep half-way across the country for this?" Let me reassure you: The food served is of the caliber you expect to find at a high-end, landmark San Francisco restaurant. The difference, however, is that at The House, they meet, or exceed, your dining expectation, which rarely happens at the big-name restaurant.

The House, 1230 Grant. Open for lunch six days, and dinner only on Sunday. 415-986-8612.