Restaurant Widow

Jai Yun

Tucked away in Chinatown is the little hole-in-the-wall Jai Yun; don't let the fact that it's reservation-only fool you - it's nothing fancy, just honest, great Chinese food for whatever you choose to pay.  There is no menu; when you are seated, you are presented with a little handwritten memo describing the chef's background, philosophy, and language barrier.  The chef purchases ingredients for the evening's reservations each morning, and you can choose a menu between $35 and $95, and you eat whatever is created.  There is another note that states the chef hopes if you have any suggestions or comments, you will write them down so they might be translated for him by his son. 

I wish I would have asked for a copy of the message, because the chef lists the regions of China from whence his cooking originates, and of course I can't remember.  We chose the $35 menu, which was the perfect amount of food for us.  We were only jealous when the table next to us was presented with an entire grouper, vertically placed on a plate with pieces of skin sliced out to give it the appearance of a dragon.

Each table is given jasmine tea, and 6 little plates of food to start: pickled lotus root, jelly fish (my first jellyfish experience), sliced cucumber, cilantro chopped with tofu, beef on soy beans, and layered tofu skin:

Next up was gluten (seiten), very savory and stir fried with yellow scallions, red and green bell peppers and eggplant:

Then shrimp with four colored peppers and ginko nuts (my first ginko nuts), which were very starchy if a little bitter.  The dish was very light, fresh and sweet:

Next we had loofah.  As a child, we grew loofah in our garden and I never realized that it was an edible squash.  I seem to only remember that the outer shell hardened, and you would crack it off to reveal the loofah "sponge" underneath, looking exactly as you might purchase it in a bath shop.  The loofah had a slightly slimy - though not unpleasant - texture with a flavor somewhere between cucumber and zucchini, and was topped with slivered Chinese sausage:

Next up, we had Spiced dry fried beef, sliced very thin and fried to an almost french fry-like crispness, tossed with lots of ginger, orange peel and chiles:

We had a light and savory celery salad with tofu:

We had wide, fat gelatinous noodles (maybe a tapioca-based noodle?) tossed with shaved BBQ pork - I love Chinese BBQ pork, and this was great:

We had stir-fried soy beans:

And lastly, and I love how the server brought it out, saying "this is the last dish," we had something she referred to as "tomato."  It wasn't a tomato, and we were never able to figure out what exactly it was; if anyone knows, please enlighten me.  The texture was firm but a little watery, almost like the white rind of a really ripe melon (but softer), which made me think maybe it was really some sort of melon.  The taste was very mild but not sweet, and it was topped with something akin to dan dan noodles - minced chicken with a dark brown sauce and some ginger and seaweed:

I loved the Jai Yun experience; it was great to eat a few things I had never had before, and to have "real" Chinese food (no, I have never been to China, but I'm guessing I won't be having General Tso's chicken everywhere I go when I do get to visit).  It's a must-visit for the adventurous diner, just as all of Chinatown is great for seeing foods you've never seen before.

Info:  Jai Yun  923 Pacific Avenue San Francisco  415.981.7438  Reservations are required and the restaurant is CASH ONLY.

Zuni Café

I have skipped a few restaurants, and I promise to backtrack, but first - our farewell dinner was at Zuni.  We arrived before dinner service started (along with at least 50 others, and this was a Wednesday), and had a, well, I guess we had a stand at the bar, as they have a nice long copper bar with no stools.  Do they have stools during the day?  Where do the single diners eat?  Oh well, questions that may never be answered.  There was a large piano in the bar, and I envision the place getting rather lively on the weekends.  I'm sure the bar pianists there are far more exciting than one with whom I've had to work.  I started off with a Meyer Lemon Drop:

We were seated upstairs, at a table which seemed to be in a walkway, and I grumbled a little bit - I never get a chance to grumble, but I always have to listen to everyone else do it!  But the Jens calmed me down, saying they felt it was actually a great table, because we were right next to the railing, and could look down at all the people below.  They were right, of course, and I settled down. 

We proceeded to be every server's nightmare - three women who refuse to stop chatting long enough to look at the wine list, let alone the menu, who won't order, and then won't order everything at once, etc. etc.  Our server, however, was very lovely, and she tolerated our bad behavior with ease.

Finally, though, we managed to order.  Now, I don't want to sound like I am being cheap, but earlier in the day we had decided to get the chicken on bread salad, one of Zuni's legendary dishes.  I make something similar and wanted to compare myself to Judy Rogers.  The chicken, however, was $38.  I know it's for two, and that's really only $19 each, which is pretty reasonable, but here's the thing - the little free range hormone free fryer chickens I buy from Weiland's cost around $6 - could Zuni's chicken really be $32 better?  (this is what happens when you start figuring out food costs - you start to want to eat at home more)  Well, we'll never know.  Unless we decide to go again, because we opted to order loads of appetizers instead of entrees.

For wine, we started off with the Qupé Marsanne ($29/750ml bottle) for the second time on the trip, and we were going to move right along with that theme and have the Qupé Central Coast syrah ($25/750ml bottle), but sadly they were sold out.  We had instead the Ribera del Duero Bodegas Balbas($28/750ml bottle) - when in doubt, order Spanish, I always say.  This was another thing I noticed in San Francisco, and I know it should come at no surprise, but most restaurants we visited had really great, far-reaching wine lists with fair markups (Ohio law dictates that we mark wine up a certain percentage, I don't know what the California laws are) and great options at reasonable prices. 

But I digress - on with the food.  I decided to eat a few things I have had before but didn't like, namely oysters.  I have shucked a fair amount of oysters in my day, but, being that I live in a landlocked state, they were probably not the best way to judge oysters as a whole.  Our server assisted my dining companions, more oyster-savvy than I - in ordering from their large selection, and there were 2 for each of us.  I don't remember what kind they were precisely, but they were all from British Columbia.  (See?  Now I know I'm being duped.  It's nearly 1000 mines from Vancouver to San Francisco, whereas Columbus is only about 400 miles from the East coast.  In theory, we should also be able to get good oysters; where are they all going?.  Perhaps I just enjoy the flavor of West coast oysters more?)  I loved oysters, and I will happily try them again.

Next up was a nice little pasta (which I will soon recreate) with butternut squash, bacon, butter, sage and black pepper.  The perfect late-fall dish, one that I look forward to in some form (squash raviolis in browned butter sauce, for example) every year.

We had a lovely bowl of soft and creamy polenta with mascarpone:

A warm rabbit salad with frisée (eat more frisée!!) and pecans in a sherry vinaigrette.  The salad was accompanied by prune crostinis that Jen 2 and I agreed were exactly what was missing at our Bouchon foie gras experience.

My least favorite was the squid stew with red wine and orange zest (maybe it was the orange zest):

Strangely enough, for a girl who grew up with cows and was forced to eat liver on numerous occasions, I had never had tongue, and so we had to order the beef tongue and potato salad with mustard shallot vinaigrette and dandelion greens.  This was a really nice and balanced dish - the contrast between the warm tongue and the plain, boiled potatoes, brought together with the really good vinaigrette. 

There were so many great-looking things on the menu that I will have to go back.  I love the Zuni Cafe cookbook, it's so full of sensible but great dishes (sausages with grapes).

We rounded out the dining experience with a few selections from their cheese course and some raspberry ice cream.  It was time to go, we had to get up for our early-morning flight, my time on the West coast had come to an end.

It might have been the company, being back with my best friend Jen, who left Columbus for the Golden Gate city in April, and my newer friend Jen 2, all of us discussing food and butterfat and the dining scene in San Francisco vs. Columbus (really, there is no comparison).  It might have been the service, provided by a lovely bespectacled (just like us!) girl, patient and knowledgeable, she frequently left the table to get the chef to answer our ridiculous questions (no, really, how precisely does the chef prepare the tongue?).  It might have been the food, full of comfort and seasonal goodness, or the wine.  It might have been the charming cup of pastel-colored paper straws on the bar (I am a total sucker for that sort of thing), or the line drawn clip art of a champagne-drinking frog on the menu.  Whatever it was, Zuni was my favorite all-around dining experience of the trip, and I highly recommend it if one is visiting or lives in the area.

Info:  Zuni Café (no website that I can find) 1658 Market St.  San Francisco, CA  415.552.2522

 

Chez Panisse Cafe

We hit the Chez Panisse cafe rather on a whim while shopping in Berkeley.  Since we sandwiched it in between two early morning bakery visits (the Buttercream bakery in Napa - a deliciously pink building, and the Bouchon bakery in Yountville), then a hop to Sketch Ice Cream shop in Berkeley and dinner at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, we had to keep lunch very light.

For some reason, I have been feeling an unnamed animosity towards Alice Waters lately.  I really can't explain it, and it probably isn't fair, but everyone told me to have dinner at Chez Panisse and I just sort of brushed it off.  I'm glad I went, because it was very nice, and I will have to go again for the full experience.

For starters I had a nice sour cherry soda (my favorite flavor, cherry red); this was one nice thing I noticed about the Bay area - every restaurant we visited offered interesting non-alcoholic drink choices instead of the standard Coke/Pepsi thing.  That and every restaurant had really good bread and butter.

I had an avocado and beet salad - two of my favorite things - with a simple citrus and shallot vinaigrette and a sprinkling of sea salt.  It was the promised simple, good-ingredient fare that made Alice Waters a legend in the first place.

Next up were chanterelle toasts, which came in a rich mushroom broth.  Again a simple dish that allowed the good mushrooms to show through.  My dining companion had the pecorino and pine nut salad, which I did not photograph.  And that was about all we had there.  Simple but tasty. 

When we were leaving I took a peek into the huge open kitchen.  The open kitchen would be reason enough to go to the main dining room for dinner.  A manager was very nice when I asked if I could take pictures, even telling me to "go right in" to the kitchen, but only take pictures of pretty food and people.  Fortunately, there were plenty of both (don't you love my super stealthy identity hiding airbrush?  someone tell me where to find a pixellation function!):

Info:  Chez Panisse 1517 Shattuck Ave Berkeley, CA  510.548.5049

Bouchon

Bouchon is my kind of place - nice but not stuffy, and possessing a menu loaded with French comfort food.  After a pre-vacation discussion with my friend Philip, who fondly remembered consuming large amounts of foie gras, I went to Bouchon with one main motive: eating cold foie gras.  Politics aside, I cannot squash my foie gras cravings.  Considering I only get to eat it about once every 6 months, I don't really mind. 

And so it happened that Jen 2 and I found ourselves sitting at the lovely zinc bar at Bouchon - she after missing two flights and finding that it can indeed take 18 hours to fly to San Francisco from Columbus - sipping Qupe's Marsanne, and waiting impatiently for our foie gras and fries.  The menu states that the foie gras is 5 ounces, but if it is anything shy of a fully cup I would be amazed.  The bartender set that charming little jam jar of pure, luscious fat liver before us, and, noticing our hesitation, asked if he should remove the butter cap for us before we began.  "NO!  no, no, no - we are just having a little moment of silence before we tuck in!"

And tuck in we did.  We consumed so much foie gras (although we didn't nearly finish the jar), that when we arrived at Bouchon the following evening for a little pre-French Laundry glass of rosé, the bartender remembered us fondly as "the girls who ate all the foie gras!"  Well, I guess it's nice to be remembered, for whatever it may be.

Our only complain with the foie gras is that it came alongside a little ramekin of coarse sel gris (gray sea salt) which, although it added a nice crunch and saltiness, was really too much.  We both admitted that we accidentally oversalted each bite.  One of the things that I love about Chef Richard Blondin's foie gras at the Refectory is the way the delicate flakes of sea salt melt with an ethereally light crisp, leaving just a slight wash of saltiness to give the liver an edge.  The coarse salt at Bouchon was a little too much, and if I felt in any way elevated to give them some advice, it would be to offer a flakier salt.

But on with the fries, which come in a tin vase lined with a paper cone . . . It is because of the fries at Bouchon that I will never again be able to enjoy fries the same way.  Served with what the bartender cheekily referred to as "sauce rouge et sauce blanc" (ketchup and mayonaisse), these twice - fried fries were unbelievable crisp with a light interior and a full potato flavor.  Heavily salted as all fries should be, they didn't really need either sauce, but we dunked anyway - we were in the process of consuming 1000 calories in duck fat, why shun the mayonaise? The best part is that the fries never wavered in texture - even to the last one we ate (nowhere near the bottom, I might add), which was just as perfect as the first.

Oh, and we also had a little palate - cleansing salad of mache (aka lamb's lettuce) and roasted baby beets (from Bouchon's own garden, of course).

There was also a lemon tart, about which I will make no comment, seeing as I do not like pine nuts and feel that it would be unfair to thrust my opinions thereof on my readers.

I regret that I did not have any oysters or croque madame at Bouchon, but will definitely be on my must-stop list the next time I am in either Napa or Las Vegas.  I have told several friends that if they find themselves in Napa without their much-coveted French Laundry reservation, they should be sure to have an all-out at Bouchon - it's a snap to get a reservation, or just walk in to the bar, and they serve food until 12:30am - where I think they perfectly happy.

Info:  Bouchon 6534 Washington St  Yountville, CA  707.944.8037

Hang Me Out to Dry - Hangar One Tasting Room

Yes, Chubby was exactly right.  The picture was Buddha's Hand Citron being soaked in Vodka at Hangar One.

I have this little rule about drinking during the daytime - it's okay if it's after 12:01pm.  I have always followed this rule with the exception of one ill-advised but delightfully fun brunch that started at a friend's house, and then moved to a restaurant where we had dessert, followed by dinner.  See what happens when you start drinking too early?  Calories.

Fortunately, we didn't make the trip over the bridge from San Francisco to Almeda until 1:23pm. 

I think I might have mentioned before that I feel partly responsible for getting Hangar One into Ohio (just give me this one thing, okay?), and their tasting room was the one thing I really wanted to experience whilst in San Francisco.  What a great experience - well, until these two old ladies sidled up next to us being loud and talking about how they only liked plain vodka and nothing else.  No Eau de Vie, no nothing.  Explain it to me.  If you live out there or are visiting, I highly recommend the trip; it really doesn't take more than an hour to experience the whole thing.  We were there on a Sunday, so they weren't working in the distillery, and we got to walk around and be nosy.  As you can see from the picture below, it's like Willa Wonka's factory for grownups:

One funny thing that happened while I was there, taking notes, is that the man pouring asked me if I was a reporter or a blogger; it's funny because San Francisco has such a huge food blogging community that he asked right away.  There are hardly any food bloggers in Columbus  (Here are the only other 2 I know of:  Rosie and Jason)

Please read the extended post for all the spiked and juicy details . . .

Info:  Hangar Vodka/St. George's Distillery Tasting Room, 2601 Monarch St, Alameda, California (about a 30 minute drive from San Francisco)  510.769.1601.  The tasting was $10 and included the glass, which I of course left there.

Thanksgiving Recipes and Links

I can't believe how many people are looking for Thanksgiving recipes!  I wish I had time to make some more recipes and take pictures, but at this point, the best I can do is point you to some tried and true recipes I have used:

Bon Appetit's Creamed Corn Gratin:  the first time I made this, I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant kitchen with a fryer, so I made the onion rings.  The next time, I was at home (with no fryer) and just left them off - the gratin was just fine.

My Own Perfect Brussels Sprouts

Alton Brown's Turkey and Cranberry Sauce

My Family's Party Potatoes and Sweet Potato Casserole

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Happy Cooking and Eating, and Happy Thanksgiving!!

But What is It?

Any guesses?

 

Airport Food

While airlines have decided that we no longer need to be fed when we fly, I had some delicious airport food (at least, I remember it that way, but then again, maybe it was just the Xanax, for once allowing me to enjoy everything I ate).  The tempura udon (at Tokyo Carryout) in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, for example was so delicious - although the shrimp a little underfried - that I was looking forward to having it again on my return trip.  Unfortunately, I missed my flight out of San Francisco and was rerouted through Detroit.  I had udon there, too, but was too tired to take a picture.  It doesn't show in the picture, but the noodles come in a typical Asian noodle bowl, only it's made from Styrofoam - that was incredibly fascinating to me at the time.

Then, there's the San Francisco airport.  It's all a haze to me now, but I remember standing at a dim sum counter for a few minutes before finally making my selections - coconut shrimp, fried chicken bun, banana shrimp roll, and a baked bun of some sort.  It was very comforting after my long flights, and the people-watching in airports is always a treat, no matter where you are.

 

Thanksgiving Recipe #4 - the Turkey!

Ah, the turkey.  There it sits, prominently on the Thanksgiving table, so proud and golden, and so . . . dry.  Why is this always the case?  Well, I had an entire, very long article written and ready to go, when my internet connection went down (although to be fair, this was the first time it ever happened), and I was too defeated to write it all again (the truth is, I'm working this Thanksgiving, and so maybe I don't have the warmest fuzzies about it as I typically do) Here's the gist: follow Alton Brown's recipe, but don't bother to buy anything fancy.  I am also a big fan of his recipe for cranberry dipping sauce, and have seen it eaten as soup around my Thanksgiving table.  Besides, it looks so nice in the turkey-shaped sauce boat pictured above.  Shame it only gets to be used once a year. . .

WCW #24

It's that time of the week again, when we all unite to share pictures of our feline friends.  I missed last week because I was in San Francisco, cheating on my kitties with my friend Jen's German Short Haired Pointer, Arlo.  (The truth is, he doesn't like me, and never has.  Ah well.)

First of all, I would just like to welcome Clare (click on the link to visit her and see all of the other kitties) back to the land of the well, after spending a week in the hospital with a few (okay, something like 30) cat bites.  Welcome back!  By the way, does anyone else find it strange that in Australia the Emergency Room at the hospital is called "Casualty?" 

And now for this weeks' edition:  Ike waits all summer long to lay atop this particular heating vent, and can be found there anytime the furnace starts up.  Sometimes in the summer you can catch him staring at longingly.