I'm really bummed. I hate when food lets me down. Let me just say upfront that I don't like to complain at restaurants. Behind closed doors, within the relative safety of my various web sites, sure. Face-to-face? Not so much. Yes, I'm a wimp. Yes, I should stand up for my food rights, but I just don't like to be "that sort" of customer. What can I say? I want everyone to like me.

However. This new place called Zero opened up near my work on the corner of Montgomery and Pacific and a bunch of us were excited to try it out. It was close, the menu looked tasty, and it might be a delicious excuse to get out of the office.

On my first trip, I sampled a simple salad with pear, blue cheese, and candied cashews. The menu said that the greens were dressed with an apple-pear vinaigrette, and although the greens glistened, I can't say that I tasted any vinaigrette. But I was okay with that, because the salad was quite good, if a bit on the small side for $7.75. Plus, I'm a sucker for salads with blue cheese, fruits, and nuts. Kim ordered the breast-wing portion of a roasted lemon-dijon chicken that came with a side of potato salad. That? Was delicious. The potato salad was more of the light vinegar persuasion than of the gloppy mayonnaise mixture. So, even though we stood and waited for our to go orders for well over fifteen minutes, I was definitely going back for both my salad and Kim's chicken.

A few days later, I went back and had the chicken and potato salad. The service was still fairly slow but the chicken and potato salad hit the spot so completely that I started to crave it. I even decided to overlook the fact that they had forgotten to put my Diet Coke in the bag and I had to go back and ask for it.

On my next visit, I waited over thirty minutes for my order. Ridiculous. The place wasn't even busy but I was. If I had thirty minutes to spare, I wouldn't be ordering take out. After one of the counterpeople asked to be reminded what I was waiting for and then checked in back, I got my lunch and left, eager to satisfy my craving. I wasn't even able to do that. When I sat down to eat in front of my computer (See? Busy.), I discovered that while the chicken was still tasty, the potato salad had gone the way of the Hellmann's. It was swimming in the stuff and the potatoes sat in my stomach like a lead bullet for the rest of the day.

Other reports about Zero started to come in around my office. In addition to the horrific service, two different co-workers ordered their $5.75 soup only to discover that the cup was barely filled halfway and the soup wasn't even that good in the first place! Forget it. I was just going to have to take my chicken cravings elsewhere. Like to Blue Jay Café for Jay's spicy fried chicken with a side of macaroni and cheese, homemade biscuits, and fresh cornbread. Oooh, now there's a good idea for dinner tonight. Plus the chef is as hot as his food.

Go to:

Blue Jay Café
919 Divisadero Street at McAllister
SF

Don't go to:

Zero
Corner of Montgomery and Pacific
SF

Title: UC Davis Grad Student/Marine Scientist/Culinary Enthusiast/
Webmaster of Food Porn Watch, the ultimate food blog aggregator
(FPW updates which blogs have been published every hour, on the hour)
Home town: Baltimore now living in Sebastapol

1. How long has Food Porn Watch been running?
Since the Spring of 2004. The code is something I taught myself. I was reading Grub Report and learned about some other food blogs. That's what inspired the site. Lately there has been an exponential growth in food and wine blogs, which is exciting. Food writing is a sensual adventure in words...

2. What do you cook for yourself at home?
Anything! I love to cook. No one specialty. Sometimes I hit a rut and just bake tarts or make things with coconut. In general, I cook lots of seafood. I also try to use what's fresh from my garden.

Everyone in the lab is a foodie. I have to trudge 1/4 mile to get to one research site with my lab partner--and the thing that keeps us going is discussing what we're going to cook for dinner. I surf blogs for dinner all the time.

3. Care to share any memorable meals inspired by blogs?
A rocket pesto from Chocolate & Zucchini. I had just gotten some nice looking jars, so I bought a ton of arugula and made the pesto.

One day after a long dive I remembered a post about a cherry tomato salsa for fish. I was at Lucas Wharf in Bodega Bay and I saw a gorgeous ling cod fillet. You're not really supposed to eat it, but even for a marine scientist, it was too tempting. I'd just spent hours underwater looking at ling cod!

4. What's the best thing about living in the Sonoma coast?
It's a foodie paradise, gorgeous, breathtakingly beautiful and a cornucopia of produce, wine, and cheese. It's unbelievable, the best of all possible worlds. I love the great restaurants-- like the Seaweed Cafe in Bodega Bay, and the small personal vineyards in this area.

5. What's the weirdest blog you've come across?
Cooking for Engineers--having almost gone into Computer Science I'm attracted to the sheer geekery of it, it's Alton Brown kicked up a notch.

KQED.org has a very cool online "devil's advocate" activity called "You Decide."

The intention of the exercise is to foster critical thinking around nationally debated issues. Here are two food-related activities:

Should fast food companies be held legally liable for the impact of their products on consumers' health?

YES | NO

Should we all be vegetarians?

YES | NO

After people learn I've gone to culinary school, and now edit cookbooks and write about food, they act a little intimidated about having me over for dinner. Do you want to know how I alleviate their fears? I tell them of the Thanksgiving of 2000.

It was our first "Married Holiday" and I was deep in my amateur food fever. A recent edition of Cook's Illustrated told me, in its usual exhaustive but highly informative way, which was the best-tasting frozen turkey for my hard-earned editor's money. My husband duly went to Star Market and bought a seven-pound turkey based on my carefully researched brand specifications. Because our families live in Minneapolis, the D.C.-area, and my husband all his school holidays as bonus thesis-time, our Thanksgivings were always pretty small. However, we liked to provide a haven for any grad students in the math department who were knocking about with no other place to go. At the most, though, we never had more than two or three extra mouths, so we got used to buying the smaller birds. Seven pounds, maybe eight, was our limit. After sufficient thaw-time in the fridge, I put the beast in the sink and slit the plastic shroud. I don't know how long it took me to notice that there was something wrong. I think it was when I tried to start washing out the cavity and couldn't find it. I also couldn't find the legs and wings. I called my mother in a panic:

Me: "Where are the legs and wings? I can't find the legs and wings!"
Mom: "Who is this?"
Me: "It's me! I can't find the legs and wings on my turkey!"
Mom: "I don't understand what you're talking about."
Me: "Mom, pay attention -- I've got my turkey but it doesn't have any legs or wings!"
Mom: "Did you thaw it properly? Maybe they're folded against the sides. Look inside the thing -- does it have the giblets?"
Me: "Okay, hang on...IT DOESN'T HAVE AN INSIDE!"
Mom: "That's just odd -- are you looking at it right end up?"
Me: "I don't know -- the thing doesn't have a head any more, how do I know which end is up?"
Mom: "Do you see the neck flap?"
Me: "NO!"
Mom: "Well, the other end would be the cavity."
Me: "See, you're not listening to me -- there is NO CAVITY!"
Mom: "What kind of turkey is this?"
Me: "I don't know, a seven-pound something Cook's Illustrated recommended -- what is going on with it?!"
Mom: "I've never heard of a turkey where you couldn't see the legs and wings attached to it." Then, as I double-checked the weight, I noticed all the writing on the wrapper: "Seven pound [BRAND NAME] turkey breast."
Me: "Oh."
Mom: "What, 'oh'?"
Me: "It's a breast."
Mom: "I don't understand -- what's a breast?"
Me: "My turkey -- it's a breast."
Mom: "You mean, it's not a turkey at all?"
Me: "No, it's a turkey, it just doesn't have legs, wings or an inside."
Mom: "So, it's a breast."
Me: "Yes."
Mom: "So, no dark meat?"
Me: "No."
Mom: "Okay, well, enjoy that!"
Me: "But I don't know HOW to cook a BREAST! I know HOW to cook an entire turkey, I have all the INSTRUCTIONS for an entire turkey, but I don't know how to cook JUST A BREAST!"
Mom: "It can't be that much of a difference."
Me: "Mom, it's a HUGE difference of, like, many pounds of weight!"
Mom: "I have to get back to our actual turkey. Are you going to be okay?"
Me: "Yeah, I guess so."
Mom: "Okay, happy Thanksgiving -- we'll call you later."
Me: "Yeah."

To be fair to my husband -- who was responsible for bringing home the legless, wingless, cavityless thing of turkey meat home to us -- it was a MASSIVE breast. I mean, we were looking for an entire bird to weigh seven pounds and he brought home just one part of that bird that weighed seven pounds. I opened my Jacques and Julia and found a nice recipe for turkey breast provencale. However, not having any herbes de Provence on hand at that time in my life, I compensated and sent my husband back to the store for olives and to Cambridge Naturals for lavender. To those, I added garlic and thyme and ground everything together with a bit of olive oil until it reached paste stage. Then I loosened the skin around the breast and smeared the Provencal Paste all around. Considering everything, the seven pound breast came out really great and, being white meat, it was a very healthy and extremely aromatic alternative. Even so, I do love a good drumstick at Thanksgiving. The other mistake I made that year was thinking I could make mashed potatoes from red-skinned potatoes. Never again. What I got was a gluey, glutinous mass of grossosity. I even spooned the potatoes into our Apilco pan and tried to bake them dry, but it didn't really get me anywhere.

When people hear about the Thanksgiving of 2000 along with the story that I once tried to make toast in a microwave they're not so afraid to have me over for dinner any more.

Which came first, the Big Mac or a consumer culture built on the need for immediate gratification in super sizes?

In How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and Psychology of Food, Leon Rappoport unveils social, psychological, spiritual, and political motivations for eating behavior. He initially became interested in the topic when he was learning the practices of yoga and Zen Buddhist meditation while simultaneously doing research on the Holocaust. He became aware of the symbolic role that food played in these radically different cultural scenarios. Starvation played a key role in dehumanizing and demoralizing inmates in concentration camps. The process of starvation is similar to drug addiction; people start to lose their humanity and they are reduced to a predatory/prey state where only one thing matters: survival at any cost. On the other end of the spectrum, Buddhism emphasizes the spiritual significance of eating as an act of communion with all beings. Feelings of humanity are intensified through community ritual and mindfulness.

Rappoport's chapter "The McDonaldization of Taste" was particularly revealing, especially after seeing the film Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock. In the book, he defines "McDonaldization [as] the process whereby all or most other social values become subordinated to efficiency, convenience, and immediate gratification of artificial needs." The underlying motivation is profit and the consumer gets manipulated not only psychologically but physically. In Super Size Me, the most revealing part was that Spurlock became "addicted" to McDonald's. He experienced withdrawal symptoms of physical discomfort and depression which were immediately alleviated by ingesting a super-size dose of fries and a Big Mac. He began to eat to not feel sick. Sound familiar? That is how junkies describe heroin addiction. However, McDonald's is significantly cheaper, readily available to children through school lunch programs, and legal.

Food as a tool of cultural manipulation is discussed in Rappoport's book as a means of spreading American values of democracy by giving the masses in other countries easy access to valued products they might not be able to access in oppressive societies with rigid class structures. The main thing fast food is spreading is people's waistlines and the values are poor nutrition, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. This concept of "democratization" seems absurd when you see how fast food has affected American society.

The reality is that these "valued products" promote poor health and feed classism inherent in American society. In the United States, the masses that McDonald's serves are overwhelmingly poor and working class families. Fast food is poisoning Americans at a greater rate than it is serving to democratize other cultures. Spurlock discovered how toxic fast food really is. In the short period of time he exclusively ate McDonald's he succumbed to rapid weight gain, high blood pressure, depression, digestive problems, and was on his way to permanently damaging his liver. The American waistline has spread incrementally with the institution of fast food culture and the new plague is obesity. But people have a choice, don't they?

Title: Pastry Chef, Restaurant Gary Danko
Home town: San Francisco

1. How did you become a pastry chef?
You know the happiness people get from good food? That's what drew me to cooking.

I fell into pastry. I went to culinary school at City College but I didn't learn too much about pastry there. I did savory first. But I'm a picky eater and I realized I can't cook savory stuff if I can't try it. I can eat a lot more sweets.

2. What are your favorite fruits?
Strawberries and lemons. I just love berries. Lemons are so versatile and such a flavor enchancer. I think strawberries go with everything--in breakfast items, in desserts, panna cotta, crepes, with chocolate...

3. If you could take one thing off every menu in America what would it be?
Warm chocolate cake is so played out. I see it on every menu now. But our clientele really likes rich chocolate. My ultimate dessert is basically chocolate chocolate chocolate. It's three layers of chocolate--a rice crispy hazelnut base with chocolate ganache and a whipped cream lightened ganache mousse and a bittersweet chocolate sorbet.

4. What big trends do you see in desserts?
Deconstructed desserts. I saw one deconstructed dessert cake with a pile of cherries and alcohol on the side. But who wants to drink a shot of kirsch? It can only go so far if it's just components.

Pastry here is about comfort. On the East Coast there are more components to dessert. Here a lot of people do a tart with ice cream but I would add one more component. My style is comfort redefined.

Another trend is fun desserts from childhood. For instance I make a PBJ, it's a peanut butter mousse and jam, filo instead of bread and milk ice cream. It's fun flavors. Lately I've been playing with the "got milk" idea. I'll make something like milk foam or milk ice cream to go with rich foods.

On the menu right now I like the lemon souffle cake with raspberry swirl ice cream. Lemon souffle cake is getting to be common, but it's so good. Lemon pudding cake or fallen souffle cake--it's like the new molten chocolate cake.

5. What do your order when you go out to breakfast, sweet or savory?
Breakfast is my favorite meal. I always like to order sweets. I'll order french toast, pancakes, waffles. I don't really like eggs.

When dining, I'll order 2 or 3 desserts. Crepes, anything with berries, citrusy fruits, I like panna cotta a lot. Delfina makes a good one. Panna cotta makes me really happy.

Today at 10am on KQED Radio 88.5FM, Michael Krasny, the host of Forum is discussing Bay Area Food with Jan Newberry, food editor at San Francisco Magazine; Michael Bauer, food and wine editor at the San Francisco Chronicle; Narsai David, food and wine editor for KCBS Radio and the culinary expert at Macy's.

(If you missed the program go to the Forum archive to hear the program online.)

The audio archive is another excellent web feature that supplies media on demand. If you miss your favorite local talk radio program on air you can always listen to the program later online from the archives.

KQED's Radio program, Forum has an audio archive spanning back to October 2001. Numerous food-related topics have been discussed on this show over the years and here are some of the highlights you can listen to:

Harold McGee: Kitchen Science Dec 7, 2004
Michael Krasny talks to Harold McGee, author of "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen."

Eating Habits Feb 17, 2005
Forum discusses how and why people eat the way they do.

The Food Industry Nov 29, 2004
Forum welcomes Christopher D. Cook to talk about his book "Diet for a Dead Planet: How the Food Industry Is Killing Us."

Thomas Keller Nov 8, 2004
Michael talks to French Laundry chef Thomas Keller.

Wine Industry Jul 16, 2003
Forum looks at the state of the California wine industry: how is it coping with ongoing economic and environmental changes?

Jacques Pepin Jun 11, 2003
Forum talks with chef Jacques Pepin about his new memoir "The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen."

It's party time in New Zealand -- that is, if you consider working twelve to fourteen hour days, seven days a week a party. We've begun harvest here at the Craggy Range winery, picking and pressing Chardonnay over the weekend and bringing in the first red grapes of the vintage in the form of our estate Merlot.

As you might imagine, I haven't had much time to sample any more Kiwi wines working these long hours, but I have been learning a bit about the area in which the winery is located. It's called the Gimblett Gravels, and it appears to have the potential to produce wines on a par with the finest bottles from France.

I know what you're thinking. Everyone likes to claim that their wines are as good as those from Bordeaux or the Cote Rotie, but few and far between are the bottles which actually deliver. The wines of the Gravels, I believe, have a good shot at it.
Graced with a climate nearly identical to Bordeaux and rocky dry riverbed soils, this regions vines produce fruit which has amazingly complex and mature flavors and aromas without high alcohols and the overt jamminess which is characteristic of overripe new world wines.

There are a number of producers in this region who are beginning to turn out stunning Bordeaux blends as well as Syrahs, and if this trend in quality continues, New Zealand's famed Sauvignon Blanc may take a back seat to these up-and-coming reds from Hawke's Bay.

On my next day off I'm planning a wine-buying trip around the area to search out some interesting wines and will pass on what I find to you. In the meantime, for more information on the Gimblett Gravels region and some of the wineries located here, visit their website at www.gimblettgravels.com. Hunt down a bottle or two at your local savvy wine shop and enjoy.

My friends and colleagues don't really like to bring up the subject of pizza in front of me. I have quite strong opinions when it comes to the topic, and some people might even think that I have a tendency to go off the deep end. Okay, well, most people. But truly, what is better than a perfect pizza? To me, when it's perfect, it is the perfect food.

A perfect pizza comes fresh out of the blistering heat of a wood- or coal-fired oven (often around 800F!) and should be eaten as soon as possible (while avoiding the burn!). I am partial to the Margherita pizza because I think it shows off the best qualities of a pizza: a crisp chewy crust, fresh tomato sauce, just the right amount of top-quality mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil. Of course, housemade sausage, roasted peppers, and sometimes anchovies are all welcome on my pizza too, depending upon my mood.

Over a decade ago I discovered this perfect pizza on a trip to New York City. John's Pizza on Bleecker in the Village became my gold pizza standard. (It is how I have described the perfect pizza above, although covered with crispy-edged slices of meatballs.) Unfortunately I live on the west coast, where finding a good pizza, much less the perfect pizza, is painfully difficult. Yes, you can get a great thin-crust pizza at Oliveto and Chez Panisse, but I'm talking about the real deal pizza place. A pizzeria. (And I'm not talking about one of those by-the-slice places. As far as I'm concerned, only a place that sells whole pies, no slices, is serious about their pizza. More on that in another blog.)

When I first moved here, I started looking for pizza. This was back in 1994. The best pizza I found back then, and which I still love to this day (although it has been surpassed as my ultimate Bay Area pizza), was Tommaso's. Tommaso's is a family-run Italian restaurant in North Beach that has been around since 1935. It's a great, casual, old-school kind of place. In the last few years, 3 other fantastic restaurants have opened that offer pizza as the main draw: Pizzetta 211 (well-known by any pizza hunter worth their salt), A16 (true Napoli-style pizza at its finest), and Dopo (beautiful thin-crust Roman-style pizza). I could go on and on about each of these places, the different styles of their pizza, how I love all three but for very different reasons, but that's not what I'm getting at here. I still want a pizzeria. A real deal pizzeria, old-school pizzeria. Like you find in NY, New Haven, Rome, and Naples. Must I go to the east coast every time I want this experience? Fly to Italy?

Oh no. As I discovered last weekend, you can remain on this coast and still find fantastic NY-style pizza perfection. Unfortunately, it is not in the Bay Area. Nor is it in California. No, my friend, you do have to get on a plane and fly to Portland. I know, I had my serious doubts too, but when my brother's girlfriend Amy (sister pizza hunter) started raving about this place, and became a weekly regular, I knew I had to try it.

Apizza Scholls started life in a small town outside of Portland as Scholls Public House. Recently (in January), due to a variety of reasons, the pizzeria relocated to SE Portland. The owners and pizzaiolos of Apizza Scholls take their pizza very seriously, as it should be. They strive to make the best pizza, using the best-quality freshest ingredients, and make only as many pizzas as they have dough. They even have rules: only 3 ingredients on one pie, and only 1 meat per pie. No meat-lovers pizza here. I love this place. And when this much love and determination goes into a pizza, everybody wins.

We ordered one of their amazing Caesar salads, 2 Margherita pies, and 1 sausage. Both pies had the ideal balance of crisp-chewy, thin-but-not-too-thin crust; fresh tomato sauce; and a blend of high-quality cheese, all topped with basil or housemade sausage. The pies come directly from the blistering 650F-900F oven and are so hot you will hurt yourself if you try to eat it immediately. Not that that stopped us. It was so amazing that it was hard to get the picture of it (above) before everyone was digging in.

So, I've found my gold standard. I wish it was in the Bay Area. But until a pizzeria of this caliber comes to my town, I'll just have to start building up my frequent flyer miles.

Oddly, this is a post I've been meaning to make for a while, but now it fits with Matthew in New Zealand. A few months ago I went allllll the way across the Bay to Alameda -- not to see the "nuclear wessels," as some out there might think -- but to go to a pub called The New Zealander.

A Kiwi friend of mine has been missing the food of her country of late, so another friend dug up this pub as a place to sup on authentic New Zealand meat pies. It's also a place to get something called an "Aucklander 3 AM White Lady Special," which is drunk food at its best. It's a huge burger topped with -- let's see if I can remember -- fried egg, pineapple, garlic, cheese, tomato, onion, and possibly ham. Since I wasn't stumbling up to a food van after a night of drinking, I didn't order that. However, when one of my companions did, I suddenly realized that maybe my one sip of stout was more powerful than I thought. That burger looked damn good. Then again, even without alcoholic aids, I happen to like peanut butter and jelly on toast topped with bacon, so, you know, maybe I'm not the best judge of normal food.

I settled for a steak and cheese pie. Well, at least for starters.

It was everything a meaty pie should be: a crispy pie crust bottom with pouffy, flaky puff pastry top and sides, stuffed with meltingly tender steak. Even though the gravy inside was rich and delicious, I still went wild for Watties, the Kiwi answer to ketchup. Its clove-y sweet goodness made a perfect pair with everything I ate, including their special rosemary roasted potatoes that I simply couldn't resist.

After the meat pie and the potatoes and the two pints of stout you'd think I'd be pretty well full, huh? But see, then you'd be wrong.

My Kiwi friend loved the pies so much, she dared me to order a second one with her. Now, what I mean here is not that we ordered a pie to split between us. No, no, dear eater, we EACH ordered a second pie. She opted for chicken and I went for the lamb curry. I've never made a better decision in my life.

It was so good, I had to bring a THIRD pie home for my hardworking husband, who was stuck grading midterms all afternoon. I selected the lamb curry for him, and our waitress brought me the frozen parcel with written instructions on how to cook it. A few hours later, my husband agreed with me: Damn. That's good pie.

Check them out:

The New Zealander
1200 Webster St. (at Central Ave.)
Alameda, CA

And if you're a displaced Kiwi or just like the accents, the American New Zealand club meets there weekly.