The San Francisco Treat: A Few Days in the City By The Bay

Posted on 01/30/2013 by

 Day 1.

“Dude, put a spoonful of this stuff in it,” said my bartender/server. The “stuff” he was talking about was a spicy mignonette with cilantro, lime, and habanero – and the “it” was Dungeness crab fat.

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Oystah!

“People watch Bourdain on T.V. and they come in here order the stuff and they hate it…until they put some of this stuff in it.”

I am at, of course, Swan Oyster Depot. The legendary 18-seat seafood counter/bar in the Nob Hill area.

I got there at around 10:30am on a Monday and there’s already a line. Luckily, I was number 16 in the queue so I got to sit down.

“Getcha started with a beer?” Day drinking? Sure! 

“Chowder and some bread?” Why not!

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Chowdah

These longshoreman-looking dudes behind the counter are your cooks, servers, bartenders. Most of them have been here for decades and they know exactly what you need. It’s almost a requirement to start with an Anchor Steam, clam chowder, and a chunk of sourdough.

After that you’re on your own. They have oysters, clams, seafood salads, smoked fish, cracked Dungeness crab legs, and of course, the crab fat.

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Crabbies!

Start with some oysters. They’ll usually have a bunch of different kinds, so just ask for an assortment. Then go with either a half cracked Dungeness crab or the crab salad. It all depends if you wanna do some work and pick the crab out of its shell, or have it without shell and served on some shredded lettuce. Either way, ask for a side of the Sauce Louis. It’s like a thousand island dressing only tangier and a thousand times better.

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Buttah

After that you should get the crab fat. It’s basically the back shell of a Dungeness crab filled with all that fatty crab “guts.” Just think of it as crab butter. It’s creamy and gooey and perfect for you to dip the rest of your sourdough in. Just don’t forget to put a spoonful of that chili sauce and mix it in. It makes a world of difference

If you’re less adventurous or just wanna eat more, order the smoked salmon plate. Served on a rye bread with some capers and onions, the salmon is beautifully fatty and silky. It’s like lardon from the sea.

Take a look around and take some pictures. It’s ok, everyone else is doing it too. Even before Bourdain brought foodies all over the country here, this place has been already been written about and raved by just about everyone from Conde’ Nast to Bon Appetite.

Don’t forget to bring cash. These guys are old school through and through.

Stay Tuned for Day 2 – Mission Chinese. Which is better? SF or NY?

Swan Oyster Depot Image

1517 Polk Street

San Francisco, CA 94109

415.673.1101

Mon-Sat 10:30am-5:30pm

Cash Only

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A Flavorless Taste

Posted on 01/24/2013 by

First of all, I had no idea that this was a 2 HOUR premiere. 

2 HOURS!!

You know what can happen in 2 hours? John McClain flew to LA, killed all the terrorists, blew up Nakatomi Tower AND made up with his wife. Yippie kay yay.

Meanwhile, the four judges on THIS show are still shoveling massive spoonfuls of food into their mouths.

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Let’s eat!

The length of the show aside, The Taste was repetitive AND schizophrenic.

For a show that’s ALL about the Taste, we didn’t get to see a lot of cooking. Instead in true reality show fashion, we get backstory after backstory of contestants, and some of them never even make it onto the show! 

For example. There’s a whole segment on a guy who literally works at a shi*t hole (sewage facility.) And all day he thinks about coming home and cooking for his family. If he wins this then he can quit his job and maybe become a chef! 

Nope. Dude serves up some chicken with mole’ that looks like he brought it back from work. Cya. Thanks for coming out. Back to the sh*t hole you go.

 Did we really need to invest that time and emotion for that guy? No. 

It would have been a much more interesting show if they actually focused on the food and the cooking. Instead of the backstory on the Jewish grandmother who’s facing foreclosure but literally can’t cook to save her house, how about giving us the backstory on the ingredients? For all of the hype about “farm to table,” maybe you tell us where the fish came from, or what farmer grew those beets, or how difficult it is to raise lambs — give us the emotion behind the ingredients – so when the cooks butcher a dish we feel the pain of great food being wasted?

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Still eating.

This episode of “The Taste” was just the “audition” phase. So what we got was 2 hours of spoons after spoons, interspersed with sometimes meaningless backstories of people who we, after a while, weren’t sure if we should care about because they might not make the damn show!

In the hopes that this show becomes what it could be, I shall continue. Here are the four judges. Three of which have my utmost respect.

Anthony Bourdain. If you don’t know who he is then I’m not sure why you’re here. It’s curious to see how he’ll do on prime time network television. I imagine a lot of bleeping will be involved. The other thing is with a show like this, will he still be able to keep his street cred?

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The guy on the right? Yeah I don’t know who he is either.

Nigella Lawson. “Domestic Goddess.” She “sensualized” food and cooking before Giada even knew what “food porn” meant. She’s here to represent the amateur home cooks and to be the nice big sister figure.

Chef Ludo Lefebvre. Classically trained chef. As French as they come. Definitely the most talented and technically sound person in the room. He revolutionized the art of the Pop Up Resto phenomenon. He’s here for the professionals. Having come up through old school French kitchens, he’s probably gonna swear a lot.

Brian Malarkey. Brian was a former Top Chef contestant who famously, according to Eric Ripert, committed a “crime against food” when he served up two kinds of cheese to pair with his steak. Being based in San Diego, his speciality is seafood. Hm. Curtis Stone must busy or something? (Actually, he IS probably busy filming the next Top Chef Masters.) Yeah I don’t know why Brian is here. I don’t think Ludo knows either.

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Stone. Curtis Stone.

The basic premise: Amateurs and professional cooks have one hour to produce their perfect spoon full of food for the judges. From that spoonful, the 4 judges will “draft” a team of 4 cooks. From there, the 4 judges becomes mentors to their team, and teams battle it out through different challenges. In the end the sole winner takes home $100,000 and a little car.

The catch here is, the judges will never see who’s cooking what. So there will be no discrimination, preconceived expectation, hell they don’t even get a description of the dish. Thus each “spoon” will only be judges by…you got it, its “Taste.”

Clever huh? Too bad the idea isn’t so original. 

A lot of people out there are trying to describe this show as a food version of “The Voice.”

For those of us not familiar with “The Voice?” Tough luck. I had to Google the damn thing myself to find out what the deal was.

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Doesn’t matter that you’re cute. It’s all about the food…sort of.

Alright. So four judges/mentors, four teams, each week team members jump through hoops and have different challenges cooking up a spoon full of food. The four judges will taste the food without knowing who cooked what and eliminate people. So conceivably the judges can end up eliminating someone from their own team. In the end, there can be only 1. They drive home in their new car, a hundred grand richer, and the mentor gets bragging rights.

Savvy? 

 I’m hoping that after the audition phase is over we get a better sense of what The Taste is really about. I’m hoping that we get to learn something from these 4 mentors about food. I’m hoping there’s more to the show then watching Ludo make fun of Malarkey and listening to Nigella say, “Come play with me in my kitchen.”

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I’m gonna need more than this to keep watching the show…

Given that this was part 1 of the “audition.” I’m afraid we might be in more of the same next week. I’ll tell you one thing though. I’m not sitting through 1 let alone 2 more hours of that. Let me know when they get down to actual cooking.

Now let me turn on Top Chef and wash this bland “Taste” outta my mouth.

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I’m still here…

Posted on 11/27/2012 by

Just an FYI, I’ve been posting Top Chef Seattle (Season 10) Recap over at FoodieGossip.Blogspot.com

I’ll post the archives onto this page.

In the meantime I’ll keep posting my musings of the food world and culinary adventures here.

Just wanted to remind you and more importantly myself, that I’m still here.

 

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Food or Scene?

Posted on 08/24/2012 by

So recently Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema slammed Mike Isabella’s
latest venture Bandolero, the Georgetown resto serving “updated” Mexican food. He dissed it not for its food, but for its ambiance. This, of course, sent the internets afire, especially since soon after Isabella, a ‘chef-testant’ on not one but two iterations of the TV show “Top Chef” and Sietsema started exchanging zingers and ‘explanations’ of their differences on Twitter.

It’s been a tweet skirmish worthy of a reality show catfight.

Sietsema said the place was way too loud and the decor too dark. He compared it to the Addams Family dining room and dubbed it “grimmest restaurant to open in years in Washington.” While he did give props to the food, what everyone’s gonna remember is how he slammed the place by saying that he’s glad the dessert was bad because he wouldn’t want “to stick around Bandolero any longer than necessary.” When confronted by Mike Isabella on Twitter, Tom has this to say.

I gotta say. That’s a big “But” and I cannot lie.

Sure people head out to certain places for the “scene and be seen” aspect. However, if a chef felt the need to 50/50 their priority between food/scene, then that’s a chef who’s lost his/her way.

How many times have we been told, “It’s all about the food?” Sure the ambiance and the setting completes the whole experience, but the soul of a restaurant is in its food.

One of the best chickens I’ve ever had was in bum f**k nowhere Yucatan Mexico, where some dude with no shirt cooked that bird out of a make shift oil can grill. Dust was everywhere, it was hot and humid, and frankly I didn’t see many chickens running around. You know what? It was one of the best damn things I’ve eaten. I imagine that’s how a real bandolero probably ate back in the day.

Ambience? We don’t need no stinkin ambience!

Nowadays with the economy and popularity of food trucks, people know that paying for ambiance and decor is a luxury, not a requirement. The bottom line is that people are paying to eat good food. Wanna pay for a good show? Go to Cirque du Soleil, grab some popcorn and afterwards call it one of the best dinners you’ve ever had.

When I ate at Bandolero, they had recently opened. It was the middle of this miserably hot summer and their AC was barely working and the place was packed. It was uncomfortable at first. After a few icy cocktails we managed to shrugged it off and decided hey, given the name and the idea of the place, why not just go with it? Especially I doubt a place named after “thieves and outlaws” should be a quiet and air conditioned den of deliciousness that only takes Amex black. (Well, maybe in D.C.)

So…dark? Sure! Boisterous? Why not?!

This isn’t a place where you should feel the need to be prim and proper, hush over your amuse bouche and talk quietly about how the smokiness from the mezcal lingers in your mouth. This is where you down pitchers of margaritas, scoop queso fundido with chips, and fight over the last suckling pig tacos!

Yummy tostadas from Bandolero. Suckling pig tacos gone before pictures could be taken. Yes it was kinda dark.

As a journalist and RESTAURANT reviewer, Sietsema has to provide his readers with the full experience of Bandolero, food and all. Keep in mind, he’s not just writing for the food people who’ll drive an hour out of the way just to eat tacos. His readership ranges from the no reservation generation, to the early birds, to the date night couples. He’s gotta cover all bases. His focus isn’t solely on the food. (Evident by his tweet)

However, it is totally understandable why Mike Isabella was (seemingly) a bit perturbed by Sietsema.

Which brings us back to the question. What’s more important to a restaurant? Food or scene?

(If you answered scene then please hit BLOCK on this blog.)

(No, seriously.)

(The rest of you get over to Bandolero. Down some tequila and then slam your glass down on the table. Suck down some suckling pig tacos with loud slurping sounds. You’re here for the food. As well you should be.)

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Allez Cuisine!!

Posted on 08/13/2012 by

I’m a self taught cook. Like many of my fellow cooks, cooking wasn’t something that I thought about growing up. Sure I managed to fry an egg or two or make the occasional pasta, I never thought cooking would be a crucial part of my life.

Ten years ago, I was a producer for TV news in a top ten media market and I’d spent years to get there – working my way up from being a warm body on the graveyard shift and hopping up the ladder from one job to another in Philly, Boston and New York City. It’s funny to me now that my very first gig was producing a cable television show called City Cuisine that featured DC as a global food town. This was WAY before Food Network. Things might have been VERY different if that show had taken off. heh.

You know what changed my life? What turned me on to food? It was a TV show.

The Japanese cooking show “Iron Chef” came to America with terrible English translations and was first shown on then relatively new Food Network. Though campy, and only aired late at night,  it quickly gained a cult following.

Unlike American game shows, there’s a whole back story. The fictional “host” named Chairman Kaga, who collected a team of “Iron Chefs” who would take on all challengers from around the world in battles of culinary supremacy. It was the campiest and greatest food show of its time. The lavish costumes, the exotic ingredients, the outlandish techniques all combined to make this show a food wonderland. I felt like Alice. I was hooked.

Chairman Kaga and the Iron Chefs completely changed the way I saw food. It was a Cole Trickle moment (Yes, deep cut movie reference). It’s amazing how much you can learn watching the likes of Michiba, Morimoto, and Sakai practicing their craft on television. Before this, I didn’t know what bonito flakes were. I thought miso soup came in a box!

It wasn’t just lessons in techniques and theory. It was also a history lesson of who’s who and what’s what in the culinary world. Yes. Iron Chef the Japanese cooking show taught me about Paul Bocuse, Tour D’Argent and Kyoto style cuisine. I didn’t learn everything from the show, but suffice to say that it definitely gave me the red pill about food.

From then on I was obsessed. I read everything I could get my hands on: Escoffier, McGee, Rhulman, Bourdain you name it. In my spare time I chopped mirepoix to practice knife skills (still shoddy) and made stock as often as I could. I still remember the first time I tried to cook my way through the French Laundry cookbook. Ha

For a Chinese kid whose parents owned a Chinese-American restaurant, you’d think that I’d have some great grounding in food and food culture, but aside from gorging myself on my mom’s homemade dumplings, my interactions growing up with food were meaningless. I didn’t roll out meatballs with my grandmother. I didn’t trot along with my parents as they went to open up their restaurant every morning. I didn’t learn to stir-fry late at night while the chef made family meal.

It took a Japanese game show to open my eyes, and my mouth, to all the awesomeness of food culture.

What about you? What inspired your love of food?

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Happy?! Who’s F’n Happy??

Posted on 09/14/2011 by

I realize it’s been a WHILE since my last post.  Well partly because owning a restaurant is NOT easy.  It’s freaking HARD work.   So after reading this about a week in the life of a restauranteur BEFORE opening, I decided to share a little bit about what life is like AFTER a place has opened.  Basically what he has to look forward to.

Pretty much every other day either someone or something goes wrong or breaks down.  Let’s put it this way.  The term “Future” is a mere suggestion because you never know what’s gonna happen.  You know why there are no comprehensive insurance packages for restaurants?  Because it’s not even a question of  “in case shit happens.”  You can pretty much BET on things going wrong and messes with your life.

That’s not even the “woe is me” part.  The really fun part is that “service” doesn’t care if your freezer broke down (and it’s 109 out,) fry cook got drunk during lunch, or line cook just doesn’t “feel” up to it that day.  Freaking customers keep on coming in (if you’re lucky) and you better deliver a great plate of food or else they’re not coming back.

So much of being a “restauranteur” is depending on others.  We’re at the mercy of the customers, plumbers, electricians, delivery guys, inspectors, most of all our own staff (and again, the customers.)   They all can choose to make your life just Purgatory or  pure Hell.

Not to mention at the end of the day, you’re worried about the economy, the weather, or if Chipotle is gonna open a Chinese place to really F you over.  And people wonder why we drink.

After it’s all said and done, we’re all just glorified cooks and waiters and we do this because we’re either crazy, have nothing else better to do, or love making food.

I leave you with this brilliant clip from Treme. I always remind myself this.

(Can’t figure out how to rip the video from the page, so please go here and watch the third clip down with David Chang.)

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Something good to eat…

Posted on 08/17/2011 by

The picture in the heading is my Pappardelle Bagna Cauda.

The beauty is in its simplicity. It is basically pasta, butter, garlic, anchovies, parsley and Parmesan cheese.  Oh and a fried egg on top because everything tastes better with a *fried egg on top.  Don’t be afraid of the anchovies. When mixed with butter and garlic it turns into this unbelievable paste that gives off a rich nutty aroma. Then when you break the yolk and everything becomes this lovely, gooey mess…oy!  I highly suggest making it, albeit only once a year (then take a nap).

Yeah it’s not Chinese food and it’s not on the menu at the shop. But this is the kind of foods that inspires me to cook a different style of “Chinese”.  Not to mention everyone knows Marco Polo took a lot of recipes from the Chinese!  Ha.

*Speaking of fried egg.  My favorite kind of fried egg is the crunchy kind.  Back in Taiwan no one’s ever heard of “over easy” eggs.  Yeah, the protoplasmic whites is very unappetizing. It’s like eating white goo.  Usually when I fried an egg, I let the oil sit in the pan until it really hot (like almost smoking).  When it egg goes in, it sizzles and crackles like it’s about to blow up.  What happens is you’re creating some crunchiness that give you some texture to this otherwise gelatinous form.  No worries though, when done right the yolk will still be there as its own sauce. Try drizzling a little soy or ponzu with just a touch of sesame oil.  Trust me on this one.

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