Knife's Edge - Restaurant Rants & Raves

Home On The Range

Economists have their favorite economic indicators. I think I just found mine. Restaurant equipment auctions.

When we put our place together 7+ years ago we were at the various Bay Area auctions constantly. During that period the dotcom frenzy was flying high. Those that should know said the economy was great. The used equipment was pretty good too. We've had to do some repairs and some replacement but we've gotten a lot of use out of the things we picked up at those auctions. Which would be every major piece of equipment from walk-in to dishwasher.

This last trip we visited American Restaurant Sales. They have auctions every two weeks or so in their spiffy (at least by the standards of their former location) place in San Leandro. They're family owned and the auctioneer, Gilbert, has probably equipped more Bay Area restaurants than Pat Kuleto, Pascal Rigo and Sam DuVall combined.

My hopes of finding that perfect, affordable range dissolved when I saw what was on the block. Everything there with the exception of a couple of sandwich prep tables and 2 20 qt Hobart mixers was tired and broken down. It wasn't Gilbert's fault, he's just the middleman.

My take is that the money is no longer flowing like Cristal at a hip-hop video shoot. Seven years ago even level headed restaurateurs, wait a minute, what the hell am I saying, that's an oxymoron. Even normally fiscally conservative operators were being seduced by the idea that the boom years were never going to go away and were replacing gear ahead of schedule, buying shiny new Jades and Montagues and expanding into new spaces. I hope they all fared well. I know their cast-offs have made me money. May those boom years come again soon. I'll need new equipment by the time they do.

Another indicator of economic health would also be competition. Seven years ago there were quite a few more restaurant supply houses. Now we're down to essentially one in SF and two in the East Bay, none of which offer any real bargains. I've never liked the pricing system at restaurant supply stores. They put some ridiculous "list price" on the item and then give you an arcane discount when they ring you up. Why can't they just put the price I'm going to pay on the item? I love auctions, but I hate negotiating price. At an auction I can see an item, set a limit and if I get it for my limit or less, great I feel good. If it goes higher I walk away and try for another item. Either way I feel good. When the salesperson is giving me my "discount", even when I'm paying a reasonable price I always feel ripped off, or that I could have shaved a few dollars off the price. And now, there are fewer options for comparison shopping. If only Kamei sold ranges. I'd be able to buy two, since they seem to be significantly lower on any item I can compare.

After much looking, I'll be getting my Montague. Granted, it's the entry level model The Grizzly but it's the best we're willing to buy. Now I have to see how much it's going to cost to get up here and from that information I'll determine who to buy from. No matter what I'm looking at at least three weeks because I need propane rather than natural gas.

City food was hit or miss.

The misses: We've been trying to find a great burger and have hit most of the burger-specific spots like Burgermeister, Burger Joint, Mo's, etc.  Once in a while we try the burger at a restaurant like Chow and we have yet to find a great hamburger. Part of our dilemma is we're looking for different things. I like a thick, medium patty while the GM prefers a thin, well-done one. The other part of our dilemma is that people just don't seem to know how to make a flavorful burger. We tried Tony's Cable Car on Geary, I think at Lyon, just by Masonic. Not it. Not much difference from what I remember of fast food chains. We also tried a late night burger at The Brazen Head since one of my friends had always proclaimed it best burger in SF. The ambiance/lighting was great. Most burger places are way too bright, especially if you're looking for late night dining. The burger was not great. First of all, mashed potatoes are not a suitable companion for a hamburger. Then when you decide to mash the potatoes with water rather than butter and cream the mashed potatoes are not a suitable companion for anything. The meat itself had zero seasoning.

A non-burger miss was Katia's Russian Tea Room.  Again, service problems. The door was open, the  restaurant empty and no one to be seen. After waiting around for a while a woman appeared from the back. The menu wording is confusing, at least at lunch, leaving you wondering if all the items are available or not (they are). My blini was decent, the GM's stroganoff bland, the piroshki tepid and the tea not very good. Our waitress was mostly absent from the dining room. It is hard to strike a balance between attentiveness and hovering in a small room when there are few tables but absence is not the way to go. At $50 (after tip) for lunch it was definitely not worth it.

The so-so's: Our late night stop at Yuet Lee wasn't bad, in fact the flounder with long beans and black bean sauce was one of the better dishes we had on the trip but the meal wasn't up to their usual standard. The foul-tongued, youngish Southern harpy at the table next to us recounting her experience at a hotel didn't help the digestion either. The hotel ended up calling the police on her. Bravo for them. Before heading to the controversial Tibet exhibit at the Asian Art Museum we decided to try a new banh mi place called Wrap Delight on Larkin. The sandwich wasn't bad but the Saigon Sandwich shop is better. Eating on the side of the museum was a disaster with wind whipping around and sauce flying all over the GM. It was an OK experience for me though because I am usually the one with food all over me, so it was nice to see the tables turned. Normally Shalimar is great but I was irritated because 1. we actually tried to go to Sultan (on Taylor between O'Farrell and Ellis) which might be that combination of cleanliness and cuisine we'd like to find in a Tenderloin Indian restaurant, but they were closed and 2. everything I wanted on the menu they didn't have. Not that I never 86 things. I understand things happen. But when your menu is printed on newsprint and made to look disposable, as if you print every day, in fact including the heading Today's Specials, it's less excusable. As it turns out they only have goat on Friday, rendering that Today's Special only valid once a week. Then, they were out of two other choices and when I tried to order Kashmiri chai I was told, "we never have Kashmiri chai." Well, then take it off your menu pal. I'm tired of the racism which allows for a place like Shalimar to get away with things which would never fly in a Caucasian owned restaurant.

We gave the Blue Jay Cafe another try. Our last experience there was poor service-wise and the food got me riled up. Sauteed zucchini has no place in red beans and rice. They were trying to "improve" dishes which need no improvement. Anyway, while we were there previously we eyed a good number of decent looking fried chicken plates and thought we'd give them a try for the chicken. A friend was over and we needed some take-out and she really wanted fried chicken so... When we arrived to pick it up it still wasn't ready even though we gave them 40 minutes rather than the 20 they said on the phone. The waiter was a little snotty and it's possible they forgot to include 2 of our 3 orders of collards. It's also possible they packed them all into one container, but if so, they should have pointed that out. The chicken was adequate, the mac and cheese good, the collards were good and the biscuits were really nice. All in all, no compelling reason for me to go back.

The hits: The zucchini pizza from Gioia on Hopkins, near Monterey, in Berkeley. A nice blend of NY pizza crust and technique with California sensibility. That combo can often turn ugly, morph into something that is different from both but no better than either, like Pizzetta 211 or elevate both concepts which is what Gioia managed to do. Pizzetta 211 fans don't howl, I'm not dissing your pizza place, just saying it's somehow become something different than pizza.

Truly Mediterranean on 16th off of Valencia satisfied my shwarma craving for a while. I'd say until next trip but thinking about it makes me want one now. Juicy lamb, harissa, tahini, mmmm. I order two legs of lamb for specials on our return.

Bob's Donuts on Polk were great. Warm, nice amount of sweetness, big selection. So much so that we made the mistake of going again the next night. The second night there were no freshly fried doughnuts and the ones we got were lackluster. Not bad, but not a transcendent doughnut like the first night. So, if you go to Bob's only buy when they're still fresh and warm. However, they're open 24 hours, so it's great if you need a late night sugar high.

On the way home we stopped at Willi's Wine Bar  in Santa Rosa. We've been 3 times and it's always been good and solid. No real missteps but nothing out of this world either. Parmesan, corn and bacon crusted baked oysters were wonderful, the pork belly potstickers were nice and crispy with shredded, fatty belly meat inside and the pomegranate glazed chicken meatballs with chickpeas and cucumber sounded like they'd be a mess but weren't.

So, now off to work.

This Week's Specials

I've been feeling guilty because although this is ostensibly a food blog I've not been doing much writing about food. In fact, I've not been writing much about anything. So, I should at least talk about what I've been cooking lately.

I've been getting really nice, head-on Gulf Shrimp lately and we go back and forth between appetizer and entree. As an entree they're somewhere in the $23 range for a half pound and while that might not be much by Bay Area standards where I am it's the upper end. As a $12 app they're more palatable, although you can get an entire free range chicken entree with starch, veg and your choice of sauce for $11, so it can create a kind of confusion. So preparations have included them as an entree with Jalapeno Risotto and Tabasco Butter which was delicious until I remembered a friend had done a similar dish a few years ago. They've also been an app sauteed with Housemade Worcestershire Sauce and Garlic. The What's this here sauce (say it out loud) is tangier with tamarind and a little thicker than Lea & Perrin's. We serve this in a little cast iron skillet. Tonight they were sauteed and served with Gazpacho Salad, all the elements of gazpacho in a chopped salad with lemon dressing.

Inevitably there are a few people who are weirded out by shrimp in the shell with their heads. Perhaps because they are confronted with the reality of eating what looks like an insect. Hey, for all I know they may taste like insects as well, the only ones I've ever tried being chocolate covered ants. And the worm in the mezcal, long, long ago. The dozen pierogi and multi-bottles of mezcal weekend still stands out as one to remember. I'm sure someone out there will tell me worms aren't insects. I know.

We also had a little ahi which I don't use often. Served it with ginger fried rice and chile-lime glaze. Sold almost all of it so tomorrow I'll do a Nicoise variation with these beautiful Dragon's Tongue beans one of our local growers brought me today.

Our downstairs and across the street pizzeria neighbor gave me some plums from her tree so we did a warm tart with olive oil gelato and a plum-mint tower topped with lemon curd. I've got some nice melons in house so I'm looking at a granita parfait type thing tomorrow. Probably spiked with a little chile. Or maybe a melon-red onion salad with the remaining shrimp. Maybe both.

There are ducks waiting too, dying to be put with my backyard blackberries. Tomorrow I'll make a a blackberry gastrique, maybe some walnut spaetzle. I know it's pretty fall-ish so we'll see what the weather brings.

There's so much to do tomorrow. One of my former cooks is in town, getting married. The wedding's at two so it's early in to work, prep like mad, go to the wedding (we still don't have a present for them) hopefully with something in hand for the pot-luck, return for service, hope my prep guy hasn't created any disasters, be busy as hell, type recipes and gather all the loose ends before we leave for SF Sunday.

So, we'll be in SF Sunday-Weds/Thurs if anyone is up for getting together. Please send me an email and we'll see what we can work out. I'll be doing some stove shopping and there is an auction in San Leandro on Thursday morning and we all know how I feel about auctions. Woohoo!!! Maybe some of you should come with and hold me back.

Summerteeth

It's been slow blogging lately. Summer is here. That means among other things that every weekend, the first table or two seated will barge in, sit down, mess up the table and then get up and leave because we A: don't have clam chowder, B: don't have burgers/chicken strips for their kids, or C: we're too fancy/too weird/not normal.

Now I will personally admit to being all those things in item C but our restaurant is not. Years ago after one such incident a cook muttered, "Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. How much more normal can you get?" At this point we don't take it personally, and have mostly given up on trying to convince people to stay. We do see at least part of what we do as education but talking someone into staying somewhere they feel uncomfortable for any reason just depletes our energy and at this time of year we need all we can get.

If we were cooking bass tableside in liquid nitrogen, or insisting people tear up the menu, toss it into a soup bowl, pour broth over it and eat the paper I'd understand. We are so far from being cutting edge it's ridiculous.

But summer it is.

I also have to confess I have a particular antipathy toward the foods of summer, save a few. I have never been a tomato lover. I'm not a tomato loather but I'm not the type to rush out to the garden, pull one off the vine and eat it like an apple. Never been a watermelon fan either.

Actually in writing this I realize it's not so much the foods but the process I'm not fond of. I love green beans, peaches, nectarines, figs, corn, really ripe melons. It's just that it seems pointless to cook anything.

To be continued...

I'm off for a day of meetings, although this time I'm hosting the group so at least I don't have far to go.

A Tale of Two Toilets

Notice anything odd about this picture? Hint: this is not a toilet showroom. It's a restaurant bathroom. In fact it's one of our restaurant bathrooms. This is a wonderful example of my landlord's following the letter of the law while completely ignoring its spirit.

In order to get an occupancy permit for the building he had to install a certain number of toilets. This he did. However, I would like to believe the intent of the law would be for those toilets to be usable simultaneously. I suppose these are but I'm not going to be the one to try it.

We have asked, threatened, offered to install, you name it we tried it except for just eating the cost ourselves and doing it without permission, for stalls in the bathrooms. At one point the response, after asking "Is that really a big deal?" was that he would remove one of the toilets?!

It's decisions like this that lead to things like our listing in Zagat to say things like "despite its location...". Supposedly stalls are on their way. We shall see. At this point we've gone 6.5 years without. Maybe we should insist the bathrooms remain the way they are and make it a marketing gimmick. "WORLD'S WEIRDEST BATHROOM, or something like that.

In case the above doesn't give you the picture, our landlord is an irrational, erratic lunatic. To say our relationship with him has been fractious would be to understate. We have been on the verge of suit at least twice, he's told us he doesn't give a shit about our lease, he's said he's never going to spend another dime in our restaurant and that the reason people come to the building is because of the fine job he did of developing it. He's also said he's very proud of us, that we made his building, that we are his anchor tenant and that he wants us to be happy. He has also spent more money in the restaurant. Fortunately, he doesn't live in town.

The problem in dealing with this kind of person is you have no idea what his response to a given situation is going to be. If he were just an asshole all the time, well you can deal with that.

This is especially a problem because we have 3.5 years left on our lease and unlike a retail business it's a little more difficult to move a restaurant. Thus my Damoclesian existence. All our decisions are informed by this reality. We need a new stove. Well, how much are we willing to spend on a piece of equipment that may have no home in a few years? It would be nice to have doors. Again, is it going to be worth the money?

He has a partner. The partner seems more reasonable although there is truth to the cliche about the company you keep. His partner has assured us that they want us to stay and to extend the lease we just need to tell them and they'll get the papers together. Our history of their broken promises, both verbal and written leaves me wary. I'd like to extend the lease. I don't want to be taken advantage of.

First, let's see the stalls.

Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man

Posting has slowed down as the summer business increases. Although I've had two days off so that's really no excuse.

Yesterday was spent primarily in committee meetings. I'm on our town's promotion committee and we're redesigning our website. A former committee member came to the meeting to voice his concerns. This guy is a local innkeeper and a thorn in everyone's side. You know, the kind of guy you see him coming and cringe. Anyway, he starts with his insane, bullying tactics and fortunately I was chair of the meeting so I was able to tell him diplomatically he was mistaken and to shut up. I was a little worried others would think I was too harsh but afterwards everyone from the director of the Chamber of Commerce to the city staff person who takes our minutes told me I handled it exceedingly well.

Then off to a filming of a promotional piece for our town (I'm feeling like Thornton Wilder typing that). I, as restaurant representative had to give the song and dance about the dining options here, which felt a bit of a sham since as I've posted here, our dining options, while plentiful are not exactly stellar. I did a credible job and kind of blew away the guys doing the production. When pressed I do have the gift of gab or as a former waiter put it, "I didn't know you were the king of bullshit."

Then dinner with my chef pal. If he reads the blog or was feeling slighted there was no indication of it at dinner. So perhaps I was just being paranoid or feeling guilty that I haven't talked directly about the service we've experienced where he works. Or as a friend pointed out, he perhaps has thicker skin.

We went to the new Mexican place here. This makes a total of three times in the past two weeks. I'm sad to report it's not wonderful but there are some standout dishes. Their mole is better than most restaurant moles I've had and they, unlike the other 7 Mexican restaurants here, make their own tortillas. The guacamole is inedible and their service needs help. The only way to get a good Mexican meal here is to go to 4 or 5 different places, get the dish they do well and bring them home.

A few years ago we had mole on our menu. It was the waiter's favorite and I ate it for dinner all the time but it didn't sell at all. Anyone reading this blog consistently would think all we have are a string of menu failures. We do have dishes that actually sell. But as you know the disasters stay with you far longer than the successes.

Now it's time get outside, smoke the bacon and fight with the dog over the blackberries. Last year we had mustard glazed ribs with Lulu's blackberries on the menu. I'm not sure what the customers reactions were when they found out that Lulu was a dog. We do wash the berries in case you were wondering.

The nasturtiums are going crazy as well so maybe I'll take a page from Jeremiah Tower and do a nasturtium butter for the shrimp that are coming in.

PS. aren't you glad those gruesome photos are gone? Although I agree with Fatemeh, the bruise was beautiful.

Why I've Been Sober For 18 Years

Restaurant work is dangerous. One of the first things I tell inexperienced new hires in the kitchen is they are working in a giant machine shop. You can cut & burn yourself, slip on grease, wrench your back and poison yourself. Plus you must be ever vigilant because someone else could do all these things to you. Waiters have it somewhat better although the psychological danger is greater. We have a pretty good safety record. It's what these people get up to in their own time that is troublesome. What you see here is the result of one of our waiters trying to fence walk.

We have a pretty talented circus company here and this young lady, being  friends with the performers, has been trying to learn some of their skills. An accomplished equestrian she was featured in a previous performance as Lady Godiva, but she's trying to master the tightrope. I'd say she's got a little practicing to do before quitting her night job.

We will soon start planning our 7th anniversary, which isn't until January, but last year we had an evening with the circus which went well, but we all felt it could have been completely amazing if we had more time. So, this year we hope to have an early start on things and to really work out a truly integrated show and dinner package. I think though tightrope walking may be out.

Ah, this looks more like it you say. This young Mayan was obviously furiously chopping away, miscalculated and did some damage to the pinky. A good supposition but no. His cousin, with whom he lives, and a two of his cousin's friends were living it up at their apartment and this young man was trying to get a little sleep. Things degenerated into fisticuffs leaving this Mayan with a black eye, a print from a baseball bat across his lower back and his pinky, which you see, bitten down to the bone. And leaving me short one line cook until it heals. The police were called. They are "investigating" the incident.

I'm not posting these to make you ill. I'm just very grateful alcohol isn't part of life in this way. I sell it, I taste and spit, I appreciate the epiphany that a good bottle of wine can bring to a meal, I work with the vintners and brewers up here to promote their products but I found out long ago that if I drink it, things like the above happen. My job is dangerous enough, I don't need any additional ways to harm myself.

Don't take this as a screed against alcohol, or any other drug for that matter. My makeup is such that it's not something I can handle. I have absolutely no problem with other people enjoying themselves.

I Think I Can

The stove drama continues. The guy actually had two Montagues on eBay, so there is still one available. He sent his number so I can ask all the pertinent questions and see if it's what I really want to do. In the meantime I called one of my chef friends to check in and to see if he had advice about stoves, brands, convection or not. I think he reads the blog and is upset with me. He seemed rather cool on the phone, perhaps I'm being paranoid. So now I'm back to the original quandary about this particular stove. I'll call this afternoon.

We had a good night of service, although I was being pretty grumpy. It's hard for me to achieve a balance of discipline and good humor. My pendulum swings to one extreme or the other. Anyway we had good diners. Two tables drove two hours out of their way to dine with us (OK, one was a family friend). No one complained (that I heard about) that their shrimp had heads and we sold all our rabbit, which in summer is sometimes difficult as the Thumper factor increases.

The ham hock will come off the menu on the next reprint to be replaced by country-style spareribs. The quail is also a non-seller so I'll be coming up with another appetizer. My backyard blackberries are getting close. It's always a good selling point when the waiters can tell the customers, "The chef picked these this morning." That and mint are I all I have left. We have two cherry trees in the yard and if we're lucky we each get one or two cherries before the birds strip the tree. We used to have an apple tree in the back but our younger, more energetic dog snapped first one, then the other of the major limbs as she was "picking" apples. She would leap, grab an apple, wrest it from the tree, take a bite, look confused, as if realizing she didn't like apples, then leap and pick another. The tree was quite old and the trunk was hollow, so it was only a matter of time before it was coming down. The apples weren't very good anyway, best used for applesauce which is what I did with them a few years ago in a dish of pork shoulder confit.

This year I'm trying to get it together to can tomatoes. Every year I swear I am going to do this. One of the farmers we deal with grows a huge amount of tomatoes, which I would love to use for pasta sauces throughout the winter. Today I'm going to buy the jars, and tomorrow do a batch. I think the impediment has been the prospect of trying to do a big, end of season canning marathon, because by then I am completely exhausted from the summer, my crew is frazzled, and what could be a fun, community activity looms as a potential nightmare. So this year I'll try a batch a week through summer. The big problem is storage.

OK, I'm off to pick blackberries.

Outbid!

I am an auction junkie. I LOVE a good auction, preferably with an impossibly fast speaking auctioneer but more importantly with lots of good, underpriced merchandise. I am inordinately proud of the paltry amount we spent to open our restaurant. I love auctions so much I regularly contemplate opening a side venture as equipment purveyor, just so I can have an excuse to go to more auctions.

That said, it can get you into trouble. Quickly. As in the time I bid on a trip to Tulum at a Chamber of Commerce dinner we were hosting. I was certain someone else would bid higher and I was just trying to do my part for the Chamber. Well, after spending all the cash we made hosting the party we still haven't made the trip. This was 4 years ago. Or buying umbrellas for a possible waterfront restaurant we were discussing. Before we had anything concrete. Yes, you guessed it. We never opened the place. But the new grill we bought at the same auction for $100 has done very well for us.

My well-battered Wolf is on its final days. Two of the valve stems are now free spinning so it's quite difficult to tell whether the gas is on. The oven, despite my best attempts to calibrate it, still runs quite cold and the door doesn't shut all the way although when you open it it wants to slam shut because the springs are wonky also. So I've been on the lookout for a new one for a while now.

I've been keeping my eye on eBay, waiting for a lonely Montague (my current preference) to show up, looking for a home. I also search for the elusive (and much coveted by me) Jade, but the only ones which appear are ranges only and I need the oven below.

Lo and behold, there's a Montague. In San Jose. The local trucking company can pick it up for me. I'll have to convert it to propane, but that's not a big deal. Not many bids. I watch, and watch and finally bid. $300 high bid, knowing full well if I don't get up before the auction ends sometime just past 9 I'll be outbid, but hey, who knows. Miraculously this morning I am still the high bidder. I keep checking the page, still high bidder.

Then I start to revisit my auction failures, like those described above. Or the proof box that actually is a holding cabinet designed to hold hotel pans, not sheet pans, which now functions like a giant equipment stand and cd holder. And I second guess. The oven's not going to be big enough (like the one I investigated at the last SF auction we visited) and won't hold a full sheet pan. The flat top will be rusted through. The thermostat will of course be dead. And knowing we're going to have to put some new vinyl on the floor of one of our service areas to stop the leaking to the floor below makes me feel very reckless about bidding $300 on another used stove. Oh yeah, it's also 5 feet long and the one I need to replace is only 3 feet. But, there's extra room under the hood and I'll work it out.

Less than 10 seconds left, outbid. A sigh of relief and regret.

I do need a new range/oven combo. Preferably one with convection and preferably one with at least some of the surface a griddle or flat top. I never thought I'd love the flat top so (mostly because I dislike cleaning them, and they burn up gas) but I really do. It saves pans during the rush and I can cook a lot of stuff in a small area without significantly cooling the surface.

Also it will preferably be a Montague. Much as I'd like to have a Jade, they're out of my price range. A new Montague is as well but since it's a Bay Area company (Hayward) a reasonable number of decent used ones show up at auctions.

Summer Reading

I've been slowing down on the stack of cookbooks Kudzu has loaned me. I did recently finish A Gracious Plenty: Recipes & Recollections From the American South. This is a collection of recipes from community cookbooks from all over the south compiled by John T. Edge from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. As a book it's wonderful, great flavors on every page, snippets of fine food writing from the heavy hitters of Southern literature (no Tennessee Williams or Flannery O'Connor though. I know, I go for the obvious, over-wrought examples but that's what moves me. I'm more a broad stroke kind of guy).

As a cookbook it's less so. I tried a couple of recipes. Biscuits, cornbread. Not good. I looked at the collards recipe and didn't try it because I had already tried the biscuits and could tell the greens recipe would be a waste of good greens. I realized these recipes, given the source, are missing something. Call it intuition. These dishes are what Southern women have been bringing to picnics, pig-pickin's, fairs and Ole Miss tailgate parties for decades. If you think there is rivalry among chefs you've never been in a roomful of Southern belles evaluating everyone elses covered dish. There is no way these ladies are going to publish their secrets.

I also read Einstein's Cosmos, on loan from my father-in-law. About 15 years ago I spent two years reading nothing but non-fiction, specifically astronomy/cosmology books. I had a subscription to Sky & Telescope and Astronomy Magazine. I think I was trying to prove/disprove the existence of god and ended up believing that there must be some sort of guiding principle to this universe but that I was certainly in no position to know what that might be. At any rate, I promptly forgot all I had read with even my recognition of the constellations only marginally increased. Or so I thought, until I started reading and terms like red-shift, cosmological constant and Lorentz transformation came rushing back. It's comforting to read that 15 years later physicists are no closer to a unified field theory than they were before.

I'm trying to balance the cookbook/blog/general food reading with other things. Without a lot of success though. Every time I turn around there is a new magazine, a new book I must read, another blog. I'm sure you're all familiar with this dance. Trying to remain current and actually engage with other people seems nearly impossible these days. No wonder there are so many speed freaks in this town.

New & Old Friends

We're back and mostly refreshed from days in SF. Actually I'm a little exhausted since we had a shopping marathon yesterday and didn't get home until 1:30 am. We had great food, but more importantly were with great people. Apologies to MeatHenge. I left without your phone number.

Our first night was spent with Sam & Fred of Becks & Posh at The Helmand in North Beach. She did such an excellent job of reviewing it I have nothing to add besides the GM's comment on leaving about how beautiful Sam is and that Fred's delightful Gallic outlook and facial expressions made us miss our friend Giacinto in the best way possible.

Monday breakfast at our standby Nob Hill Grille was lovely as usual. It's fun for us to be customers here. "Our" waitress is very cute and is always stealing glances at us and smiling. We have customers who come frequently, who we know a little about but have concocted some fantasy of what their lives are like. I can tell she is doing the same with us. The food is basic breakfast, don't rush over there expecting some mind-blowing breakfast experience.

Monday evening we spent with family and had some in-depth, thought-provoking conversation (as we always do in this company). Afterwards ended up at Brother's Korean BBQ on Geary. I've probably written about it before and you've probably had Korean BBQ before so I won't go into details. We were both wanting the side dishes which come with the dinner. My knowledge of Korean cooking is quite scanty, certainly nothing like Jonny Angel's (otherwise known as Kimchee Jon) but I love it just the same. While eating we realized the similarities between the Korean and the Southern American tables with all the pickles, relishes and other accompaniments to the meal, allowing each person to customize the dishes to their taste.

Tuesday we spent with an old friend from up here, meeting her husband for the first time over a small buffet from La Mediteranee on Fillmore. The food was adequate, but for Med takeout I much prefer the place on 16th and Mission (called I believe Truly Mediterranean). Again the conversation was great and led us to some more soul-searching during our dinner at Gary Danko .

I've mentioned before we've never been to the various Bay Area (and beyond) temples of gastronomy, like Chez Panisse and the French Laundry. Gary Danko is another. After the dinner I'm in two camps. One is that the Bay Area is seriously lacking in high-end dining. The other is that for the price Gary Danko delivers.

We went for the 5 course option, which at $79 per person is a pretty good deal. There were missteps, the GM's risotto was barely lukewarm, cold even, the pace was a bit slow and some of the remarks by the staff could have been construed as a bit snotty. There were highlights as well. The GM's duck was perfectly cooked, the lentils with my frog's legs were beautiful, earthy but elevated with Jerusalem artichoke puree and mignardises were a delight.

But no one would mistake this for Jean-Georges. There's an air at Gary Danko of trying too hard, of the service being too much of a performance, rather than something comfortable and ingrained. I'm not saying running a high-end dining room is easy but I would have to grudgingly agree with those who posit NY as America's fine dining city. I'll still fight for SF as America's best dining city,period, because I am one of those stodgy, ingredient-driven cooks, not someone waving a bottle of liquid nitrogen tableside and we have the best ingredients in the country here.

Wednesday brought us to the East Bay and lunch with family where we enjoyed the bounty of Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market and our host's deft touch with the hummus. The GM actually had a quick sun-drenched nap before we had dinner at Huynh Vietnamese with Fatemeh & C. of Gastronomie. For the second time in a few days we met fellow bloggers who were really fun to be around. The food was great, Fatemeh and I went for different proteins with the same preparation. Mine was Ca Xao Lan,  Sauteed catfish fillets w/ black mushrooms, clear vermicelli, onions, spices & coconut milk topped w/ mint leaves & peanut. She went for the beef version, while C. had the pho and the GM tried Tofu with Japanese eggplant in spicy plum sauce, which is pretty unusual for her, not being much of tofu eater. We shared crispy Imperial rolls and beef salad while we talked about the Oakland Renaissance, dogs, Southern culture and food, empowering your staff and a lot of personal history in between. I'm afraid we tend to keep people up past their bedtimes, being on a slightly different schedule than those who have to rise early for work so my apologies to Sam, Fred, Fatemeh and C. if you found yourself dragging the next day.

As I mentioned Thursday was a shopping marathon but we did manage to get in a meal at Shalimar  on Jones for Bhuna Gosht and Palak Aloo Methi and a late dinner at Straits Cafe on our way out of town. We noticed that Straits seems to do a lot of large party business.

Now, I've spent too much time writing this. I intended to go into details about everything but of course didn't and now it's time to get to work. Happy 4th everyone.