Some grocers offer recipes and coupons. Others offer recipes for a socioeconomic-savvy food system and a mean pear skillet cake.

For the food shopper who thinks, the positively indispensable Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking, and Creating Community Through Food by Sam Mogannam and Dabney Gough (Ten Speed Press) released this month is the holy reference guide/blue book that clues consumers in to the real value of what’s on the grocery shelf. At a time when so much is being written about atrocities in our broken food system, consumers looking for sound, actionable advice on making grocery store purchasing decisions will appreciate this neatly compiled background check on everything from canned tuna to flour, fresh meat, fish and milk, and every manner of produce under the sun.

And note that this cannot be dismissed as a mere starter’s guide. As a veteran food nerd for decades, I thought that I knew a something about eating mindfully, ecologically, locally, and sustainably. But a primer on avoiding genetically modified organisms, and a full list of foods that are most commonly GMO? I am edified (sugar, milk and dairy, oils, corn and soybeans -- page 12). The pleasures of the texture of bronze die-cut pasta? I had no idea how this aspect of artisan pasta production can be essential for clinging sauce (page 37). And a list of all of the product acronyms on European foods that signify it is a product of protected origin (such as true, regionally-specific Champagne as opposed to methode champenoise) -- AO, DO, AOC, DOC, DOP, PDO, and IGT, page 47. And that’s just chapter one, people.

Just as one pushes the cart down the grocery aisle, the uber-brainiac education rolls through every department, well-captured in France Ruffenach’s bright, busy photography that conveys what it feels like to shop in Bi-Rite on a sunny Saturday afternoon or at the 5pm dinner rush. Mogannam and Gough give faces to food throughout the book as well, introducing readers to the likes of his brother Raphael, grocery buyer; farmer for the store’s self-grown produce and produce buyer, Simon Richard; and a smattering of farmers that are enmeshed in Bi-Rite’s business and mission -- some, like Drakes Bay Family Farms, purely as retail partner; others, like Soul Food Farm, pet investments to help propel local and sustainable agriculture.

The Eat Good Food shopping information stands alone as a necessity for any kitchen bookshelf. But the tome is also comprised of recipes from the Bi-Rite deli and beyond which, while well written to induce drool and craving, they feel awkwardly placed and difficult to find plunked at the end of each chapter. As a frequent Bi-Rite shopper, I was excited to finally crack the code on their addictive Mujadareh (see recipe below), and their heavenly and rich deli counter summer staple, Sergio’s Gazpacho. Even Delfina’s spaghetti makes a cameo, simple and delicious and part of the book’s neighborhood charm. And thumbing through I quickly found a new favorite, Mom’s Pear Skillet Cake from, you guessed it, Sam’s mother, which yields results that far outshine the effort, and is the perfect thing to be doing with pears right now.

Another challenge of the book is that it’s so much information, it’s nearly impossible to remember the essentials when you’re actually cruising down aisle six. Seafood shoppers striving to do the right thing really benefited from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s wallet card guides to sustainable seafood and then later, their mobile apps. But when pondering the entire grocery store of everything from coffee to celeriac, tri-tip to crème fraiche out in the trenches -- well, we could really use an app for that.

In my favorite cookbooks, encyclopedias, or reference books, I turn down page corners and make notations freely, and my copy of Eat Good Food is already remarkably dog-eared. Essential as a shopping list, I’ve no doubt that it will continue to serve as reference and advisor. And that’s far more valuable than a coupon.

Serves: 4 to 6 as a main course, 
or 6 to 8 as a side

Ingredients:
1 cup uncooked black or green lentils
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 medium or 2 large onions, diced (about 41/2 cups)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice, such as jasmine 
or basmati
2 tablespoons mild curry powder

Instructions:
Rinse the lentils and pick out any stones or foreign objects. Put in a bowl, add water to cover by 1 inch, and soak for at least 2 hours or up to 6 hours. Drain the lentils and set aside.

In a Dutch oven or soup pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat. Add half the onions and a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent and golden on the edges, about 4 minutes. Add the lentils, rice, curry powder, 
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add 3 cups water, increase the heat to high, and bring the liquid to a boil. Then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cover the pot. Cook until the rice and lentils are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. At this point, it’s okay if there’s still a tiny bit of bite to the lentils; they will continue to absorb water. Remove from the heat and let rest with the lid on for 10 to 
15 minutes.

While the rice mixture is cooking, caramelize the remaining onions: heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the remaining onions and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally at first and more frequently as you go, until the onions are soft and almost at the brink of burning, 9 to 11 minutes (lower the heat if the browning seems to be progressing more rapidly than the softening).

Set aside.

To serve, fluff the rice mixture with a fork and transfer to a serving platter.

Top with the caramelized onions.

Serve hot or at room temperature. You can make this up to 2 days ahead. If desired, reheat in a covered, shallow ovenproof dish in a 350°F oven for about 
30 minutes.

Reprinted with permission from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam & Dabney Gough, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Photo credit: France Ruffenach © 2011

Halloween isn’t always easy when you’re an adult who longs to go trick-or-treating, especially if you don’t have a child who you can live vicariously through or enough chutzpah to don your best little piggie costume and knock on doors yourself.

I left the costume in the car as I scoured the city of San Francisco for clever Halloween treats that adults can claim as their own. After wading through what seemed like dozens of boring pumpkin cookies and ratcheting my blood sugar up several notches, I came away with three stops serving grown-ups the kind of treats that keep us feeling like big kids. They’re all much better than snarfling some stale Dots from a kid.

DeLise Dessert Café’s pumpkin cupcake and bloody berry bar. Photo courtesy of DeLise Dessert Café)

DeLise Dessert Café falls below the radar of many San Franciscans due to its proximity to Fisherman’s Wharf, but is well worth a stop at any time of year for homemade ice cream, cookies, cakes, and other sweets, all presented in small portions so as not to induce guilt. Proprietors Dennis and Eloise Leung are having fun this season with three items inspired by All Hallows’ Eve. Their triple pumpkin ice cream is made with Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale, candied pumpkin seed, and pumpkin puree. A “bloody berry bar” has a chocolate pine nut crust and a raspberry lemon custard on top. And there’s also a pumpkin cupcake for the 21 and over set, garnished with a maple bourbon frosting and candied bacon bits.

Fillmore Bakeshop’s psychedelic pumpkin Photo: Tamara Palmer)

When we stopped by Fillmore Bakeshop, Elena Basagio-Carpenter (who runs the place with her father Doug Basagio) was still figuring out a number of Halloween-themed items, her experiments in chocolate slowed due to our stretch of Indian Summer. Offerings include a pumpkin macaron, a crisped rice pumpkin with a caramel stem, dried fruit bark, and some incredibly psychedelic hollow chocolate pumpkins filled with fresh chocolate truffles.

Humphry Slocombe’s Bad-Ass Pumpkin Pie Sundae. Photo courtesy of Humphry Slocombe

Fans of Humphry Slocombe would probably not be surprised to learn that Jake Godby’s ice cream shop takes Halloween very seriously, with flavors firmly geared to adults both in their ingredient combinations and the pop culture references that some of them make. Spiders from Mars, for example, has a milk chocolate ice cream base that’s sprinkled with “spider webs” made from meringue. Rosemary’s Baby gets a boost from fresh rosemary and a pine nut swirl. The bloody red Hibiscus sorbet is known for the moment as O-Negative. Meanwhile, there’s a Candy Apple flavor (apple ice cream with caramel swirl), the Devil’s Deal (house made red velvet cake in a cream cheese ice cream base), and pumpkin ice cream, which gets a sophisticated twist with the inclusions of Chinese five spice: Star anise, fennel seed, Szechuan peppercorn, cinnamon, and clove. The latter also goes into their Bad-Ass Pumpkin Pie Sundae, crowned with hot butterscotch sauce, cinnamon whipped cream, and house made pie crumble.

The best part of all? You don’t need to wait until Halloween to get your fill of the holiday.

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco taping episode 612 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 12 airs Thursday October 27 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The twelfth and final episode of the season features these restaurants: Izzy's Steaks and Chops (San Francisco), El Huarache Loco (San Francisco) and Helmand Palace (San Francisco).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Opening Champagne Using a Saber

Sunday was my birthday! Were she still baking among us, my grandmother, Fae Rosenbaum, would have celebrated the day by showing up with no less than three proudly Saran-wrapped plates of cookies: her perfectly plain, perfectly perfect chocolate chips; her crunchy, nutty sesame rounds; and best of all, the towering achievement of any bubbe, her flaky, tender, cinnamon-sugary rugelach, chubby golden-brown pastries filled with jam, raisins, and nuts.

Sad to say, for all the New Yorkers among us, rugelach haven’t made the jump from East Coast to West. You can find them, good, bad, and indifferent, in just about every deli and bakery with a somewhat Jewish clientele, right next to the black-and-white cookies, the hamantaschen, and the garishly bright rainbow cakes (these last also known as 7-layer cookies, and more Italian-American than Jewish, but happily co-opted).

Here, though, the few bakery-and-deli versions available are rarely worth eating. More often than not, they’re stale and wan, with the texture of soggy papier-mâché, lumpen and underbaked. In my experience, the only ones worth eating around here are those from from San Francisco's Noe Valley Bakery, where the cherry-chocolate and pecan-raisin versions are little delights of tender, sweet, and crunch.

Which means, of course, that if you, like me, crave a plateful of good rugelach on your birthday, you’re going to have to roll your own. Like all filled-and-rolled cookies, they take a little time and one-by-one effort, but I wouldn’t call them fussy. They don’t have to look perfect; in fact, being a little homey and misshapen here and there just makes them more authentic, in my opinion. (Professional kitchen experience has made me a neater cook than I would be, left to my own familial inclinations. The women of my family have always cooked with a kind of exuberant, love-crammed zeal that shrugged at a few lumps and crumbles, as long as the end result was delicious.)

So, where to start? A rugelach, if you've been so sadly deprived as to never yet to see one, is a fat little pastry, traditionally crescent-shaped (although my grandmother's were always squarish), made from a rich but not sweet butter-and-cream-cheese dough, wrapped around a filling of jam, raisins, nuts, or chocolate chips. Cinnamon and brown sugar usually found their way into the filling; the jam was usually apricot or raspberry. A good rugelach barely contains the abundance of its filling, and the dough hits a irresistible sweet spot between tender and flaky. They are best small, maybe two bites each, and most delicious when just an hour or two out of the oven.

The dough is a rich one, sticky and tricky to work with unless you keep it very cold. As much as I support instant gratification in home baking, rugelach dough, like pie dough, is much better for a few hours' rest in the fridge. This will re-harden the fats and keep the pastry flaky when baked. To make life even easier, throw together the dough in the evening, wrap it and pop it in the fridge, and take it out for filling and rolling the next day. It also freezes well.

What you fill it with depends on your mood, and most importantly, what your own grandmother put in them when she showed up at your house with her own Saran-wrapped plate. I'm always a little suspicious of chocolate-chip rugelach; much as I adore chocolate in every other guise, its richness here seems like overkill against the buttery pastry. Nuts, raisins, and jam, that's the ticket, or even just nuts and raisins over a swipe of melted butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar and cinnamon. Pecans are best, walnuts second, and both should be toasted and chopped to chunky crumbles. Currants make a neater pastry, but raisins are fine, and can be chopped if you want a slightly more uniform filling. Just don't be stingy. No one wants a skimpy rugelach! And bake until they're a fine golden brown, top and bottom. A little more browned is better than too pale. Don't use flavored or low-fat cream cheese, while you're at it, check the label to make sure it doesn't have a lot of weird and unnecessary ingredients in it. You'd be surprised what kind of stuff ends up in what should be an unadulterated dairy product these days.

These are a lovely thing to have on the table when you're laying out a table of bagels and lox, with lots of coffee and the New York Times crossword at the ready. You're already stocking up on cream cheese and butter for the bagels, make a few rugelach while you're at it. What could it hurt?

Grandma's Rugelach
I never saw my grandmother cook from a printed recipe. Flour was measured in a coffee cup, and things like cinnamon and sugar went in by eye. I'm still trying to make rugelach as good as hers; here is my approximation of her recipe.

Yield: 36 rugelach
Prep Time: 45 minutes, plus 3 hours' resting time
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Ingredients:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature, cubed
8 oz. butter (1 cup, 2 sticks), cubed
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream

Filling:
3/4 cup apricot jam
1/2 cup currants or raisins
1 cup pecans or walnuts, toasted and chopped
3 tbsp sugar mixed with 1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp milk or half-and-half, for glazing

Instructions:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, stir together the flour, sugar, and salt. Using the paddle on a slow speed, beat in the cream cheese and butter until a soft dough forms. Beat in the vanilla and sour cream.

2. Divide the dough into three rounds. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours or overnight.

3. Preheat oven to 375°F. Leaving remaining rounds in the fridge, unwrap and roll one round into a circle approximately 10 inches across. Spread a thin layer of jam across the round, then sprinkle with currants, nuts, and a little cinnamon sugar. Cut the round into 12 equal triangles. Roll up each triangle from base to tip, bending the two points inward to form a crescent. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. (You can also roll dough into a rectangle, cover with jam, nuts, raisins, and sugar, and roll up lengthwise to make a long roll. Slice into 1-inch sections.)

4. Place pastries on a parchment or Slipat-lined baking sheet. Brush with milk and sprinkle with remaining cinnamon sugar. Bake 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

The warm days of summer might be over but it’s the middle of grape harvest and for wine lovers that means the chance to go back to camp. Some local wineries offer harvest immersions also known as “Crush Camps” which are half day stints to several day excursions offering hands on winemaking. The serious wine camper might start very early in the morning to pick grapes alongside day laborers who have been working since 2 am. If you are not that committed, you can start the process, as I did, once the fruit has arrived at the winery. I went to "day camp" at Crushpad in Sonoma, a custom crush facility where I have been making wine for nearly a year. My first task was to remove leaves, rocks and bad grapes from freshly picked Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir clusters. A conveyer belt then dropped the grapes into a giant destemmer. I am afraid I let a few unwanted items go by in my effort to learn the task.

Nearby the destemmer, red grapes were fermenting in open plastic bins. I had heard the term, "punch down," but never knew exactly what it meant. Well, nothing like actually doing a task to get a first hand understanding. A punch down is where you punch the cap of a fermenting batch of grapes to pull the color and flavors out, move yeasts back down into the wine must, and prevent potential bacteria from growing on the exposed top layer. These grapes had already sat in a cold soak for four to five days, a process where winemakers gauge sugar and future alcohol levels. After the cold room, the white grapes head to a big press and are crushed into juice before fermentation. Red grapes are a little more complicated. To put it simply, they are first fermented with the skins on then pressed and the juice goes through a secondary fermentation before going into barrels to age.

My fellow campers, about half a dozen, and I were constantly washing our hands. Turns out the inside of a winery needs to be about as sterile as a hospital. Pesky yeasts will attach to your hands, clothes and other instruments and you don’t want those yeasts getting into a different wine batch with a different formula.

Before I could even break into a sweat, Crushpad’s Stu Ake, who was a great camp counselor, took us on a tour of the rest of the wine making process. This included several levels of fermentation, aging and barrel tasting. We tasted a Napa Valley Zinfandel from Howell Mountain that, I was told, needed six more months of aging. It was bursting with tannins.

I did a half day crush camp but if you want to check out one for yourself, consider that many wineries offer their wine club members harvest experiences. Meantime, here are a few suggestions from day camps to expensive, fantasy crush camps. If you have a recommendation, let us know!

• Sterling Vineyards
• Crushpad
• St Supery Harvest Experience
• Schramsberg -- A multi-day, hands on, sparkling wine immersion.
• Sonoma County Grape Camp -- A fantasy grape camp. Several wineries get together and participate in a three day, high end, harvest immersion.

And I leave you with this, what I thought of the entire day at crush camp:

Taro Mochi Cake from Hanalei Roadside Truck

Taro. Isn’t that some kind of sweet potato that’s made into expensive chips? Or a purplish goop, called poi, served at Hawaiian luaus that no one really eats?

I admit those were my assumptions until a recent trip to Kauai where I stumbled upon a divine sweet: a moist, spongy taro mochi cake made with coconut milk and rice flour that I bought from a roadside truck in Hanalei.

So enamored was I with this enchanting taro treat, that I signed on for a tour of the nearby family-run taro farm which produced the purple-flecked delicacy.

Following our guide through lush, windswept green fields among waving heart-shaped taro fronds, I learned that Hawaiian taro farmers face a host of challenges, including hurricanes, flash floods, hungry wild boar and an infestation of apple snails. But they persevere because taro has been a revered food in the islands for over a thousand years.

In fact, Hawaiian folklore considers taro to be “the elder brother” of all Hawaiians and since it is disrespectful to fight in front of an elder, when a bowl of poi is uncovered, all argument must stop.

Taro also happens to be one of the world’s earliest cultivated plants. Easily digestible, a good source of fiber, Vitamin C, E, B6, calcium, potassium and iron, it is featured in the cuisines of more than two-dozen countries from Brazil to China. Every part of the plant is cooked and consumed: leaves are stir-fried, steamed or made into soup; stems sautéed, boiled or ground; and the roots (technically termed corms) are steamed, fried, mashed, and appear in everything from appetizers to desserts.

When I said a tearful goodbye to my sweet little Hawaiian taro mochi cake and returned stateside, I set myself a quest -- I love quests -- to unearth (pardon the pun) a range of international dishes made from this worldwide staple. Shouldn’t be too hard in the mini-United Nations we call the East Bay.

Fried Taro Roll

First stop: Berkeley’s Green Papaya Thai Vegetarian Cuisine, a pleasant café with a long menu, for their fried taro appetizer, a generous plate of warm sliced taro roll made with tapioca and rice flours and red beans. Deep-fried in a paper-thin sheet of bean curd, its crispy golden skin contrasts nicely with the creamy filling, in a typical lavender-taro-hue.

Taro plays a starring role in many Chinese dishes, including a taro cake traditionally eaten for Chinese New Years. Even McDonald’s has caught on; their restaurants in China sell taro pies.

Two dim sum classics highlight the taro root. Squat squares of pan-fried taro cake are made from rice flour and dried scallops, shrimp, mushrooms and Chinese bacon or sausage. But the more eye-catching morsels are taro dumplings. These pork-filled balls have a wispy, lacy shell that results from deep-frying the thick coating of boiled mashed taro.

I recently sampled some yummy dumplings at Peony in Oakland Chinatown; with their fluffy, crunchy coating, it was like biting into a crispy cloud. (Hint: for the best experience, ask for them to be brought piping hot).

Vietnamese cuisine includes taro in spring rolls, soups, and desserts. Piedmont Avenue’s stylish Xyclo offers appetizers in which taro plays a supporting role; in their Xyclo roll, it’s tucked inside crispy, cigar shaped tubes along with finely chopped chicken, shrimp, carrots, mushrooms and glass noodles.

Besides poi, the sacred mixture of pounded taro root and water, the taro plant is an essential part of another Hawaiian culinary tradition: laulau, which utilizes its leaves. Pork or chicken and salted butterfish are wrapped in taro leaves and then enfolded in inedible ti leaves. The chunky green packages are steamed for several hours, turning the taro leaves to a soft, smoky (and vitamin rich) mush.

Berkeley’s Wiki Wiki Hawaiian BBQ serves up hefty portions of island favorites to the starving-student crowd. My pork laulau actually wasn’t too bad. When I inquired how they prepare it, I was told that frozen pre-made laulaus are shipped from Hawaii. Have with scoop of rice and macaroni salad for the full island experience.

For an easy DIY luau, head to Berkeley’s Tokyo Fish Market. They carry frozen Hawaiian pork or chicken laulau with no added chemicals or preservatives. You steam them at home.

On the sweet side, taro turns up in a myriad of mauve incarnations:
The ubiquitous taro bubble tea drink originated in Taiwan. Taro powder provides a thickener, a nutty taste and the light purple color. I’m partial to the bubble tea at Albany’s Tay Tah Café on Solano Avenue.

A warming Chinese dessert for a cold evening: chunks of cooked taro in a bowl of hot sago (think tapioca) pudding. My go-to unassuming Chinese dessert spot: Oakland’s Yummy Guide.

My teen-age daughter turned me on to my favorite taro treat: Yogurtland’s taro frozen yogurt. One of the regular flavors in their two Berkeley locations, its tartness forms the perfect base for fruit and topping creations.

I am not done trekking the taro trail; there are many ethnic taro specialties yet to taste:

Toranguk, a Korean soup traditionally served at Chuseok, the harvest holiday.

Sinigang, the tamarind-based national stew of the Philippines.

And a range of Indian regional dishes including leaf pancake, stem saag and a spicy taro curry with prawn.

Anyone know a good Maldivian restaurant? I hear natives of the Maldives (stunning islands in the Indian Ocean) eat their cooked taro with grated coconut, chili paste and fish soup.

Gabrielle Hamilton. Photo: Melissa Hamilton

Gabrielle Hamilton can write, there's no doubt about that. Craft infuses her recent bestseller, peppered as it is with references to both body and kitchen fluids.

Still, this writer was reluctant to read the memoir of this reluctant chef. When a book like Blood, Bones & Butter gets so much advance praise it's hard to believe it can live up to the hype.

Let's review, shall we? There was the excerpt in The New Yorker, a New York Times profile and laudatory reviews from the paper of record by Michiko Kakutani and Frank Bruni, along with glowing accounts in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Of course, the womens' glossies weighed in with pleasure, as did the blogosphere, including the Times (again), 5 Second Rule, and Bay Area Bites.

Top chefs chimed in too: Her book boasts bubbly blurbs from Bourdain, Batali, and Boulud.

Curious to find out what all the fuss was about, this reporter went to hear Hamilton speak at Omnivore Books in March, when she swung through town on book tour, and again last Thursday, when she appeared on stage in conversation with Kim Severson as part of the City Arts & Lecture series. Oh, and in between this reporter devoured her almost 300-page coming-of-age story.

The book is an indisputable page turner, but let's dispose of one major beef up front: The last section -- "Butter" -- feels rushed and not ready for prime time, in large part because the central concern -- the unraveling of her lonely marriage -- was not resolved in real time. No matter, the publisher wanted that memoir hitting the shelves pronto and mass marketing waits for no one. (Hamilton said Thursday that she's since addressed the marriage matter -- in life and on the page in an epilogue for the paperback edition, available in January.)

Clearly, the woman has a talent with pots and pens. The owner of Prune, a wildly popular little bistro in Manhattan's East Village, (the restaurant's title comes from a childhood nickname), Hamilton recently won a James Beard Award for best New York City chef after receiving nominations for the coveted title three years running. (Though some grumbled that the gal who serves Triscuits and canned sardines at the bar won more for what she represents than what she cooks.) She's written about the chef's life for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Saveur, where her sister Melissa Hamilton was an editor, and appeared in six volumes of Best Food Writing.

Hamilton has worked hard and overcome obstacles to get to the top of her game, in two creative fields no less. She survived a largely feral childhood followed by a drug-fueled, unsupervised adolescence, turned to cooking to find family, home, hope, structure, and salvation and wound up, on a whim, running a restaurant of her own.

She's not interested in glamorizing either pursuit. If anything she has a tendency to martyrdom: Hamilton recounts cleaning human excrement off the restaurant stoop and deposing of a dead rat riddled with maggots found on the back steps. She turns hundreds of eggs on the breakfast line, while major-league pregnant and, later, with babies clinging to her breast. Her autobiography, a decade in the making, is scribbled on brown paper between services, on subway rides, and while putting those babes to bed. There is never enough time or sleep.

Professionally, Hamilton is a big talent and a huge success. Her personal life, as she reveals in her book, is a bit messier. Estranged from her mother for decades, she identifies as lesbian but ditched the sisterhood for a clandestine affair with an Italian man she ends up marrying. He is the father of her two boys, though from the beginning of their coupling trouble is brewing. For starters, Hamilton seems more in love with his mother and summer visits to the Italian clan's compound than her actual husband.

These personal revelations would seem meaty subjects for seasoned interviewer Kim Severson in her City Arts & Lectures discussion with Hamilton. But Severson -- now the New York Times' Atlanta bureau chief who appears to keep her hand in the food beat and her heart in San Francisco -- was in a tricky situation. Just days before Hamilton landed in town the New York Post had dropped a bombshell about the celebrity chef's love life.

Of course, who Hamilton sleeps with is really nobody else's business, except that her memoir includes revelations about her adventures in the sack as well as an apron. And Hamilton talks a lot about the value of being honest and authentic in the kitchen and on the page. To top it off, the New York Post item on Hamilton was recycled in the local food media the day before her appearance.

Severson gave a nod to the matter early on in the chat: "I'm going to ask you the question on everyone's minds, [theatrical pause] How do you keep your skin so dewy?" That set the tone for an evening of mostly softballs from Severson, who made a running gag about not being "bitter" that Hamilton's memoir was a better read than her own, Spoon Fed.

The Times staffer did try some shock value, noting the book's unusual intimacy, which a friend described to Severson this way: "I feel like I know every fold in her vagina." But she quickly found herself in the role of comforting colleague, after an earthquake literally shook the subdued Hamilton, who looked like she wanted to bolt from the stage when things started rocking.

A few sips of wine later, however, Hamilton regained her composure and temporarily shut down Severson, as she meandered through her self-described cliched questions. Case in point: "What's the last taste you would want in your mouth before you die?" Surely not the first time Hamilton's fielded that query.

"I thought we were going to have an intelligent conversation about writing and you want to know if I keep lube in my bedside table," Hamilton scolded at one point. Note to Linda Hunt: Not all KQED subscribers may be amused by the repartee between these two, who wondered if any couple, regardless of orientation, can keep sex alive in a long-term relationship -- though, it must be said, the crowd at Herbst Theater ate it up.

During the audience Q&A fans gushed about how much they loved Hamilton's book, even if they hadn't finished it, and her restaurant, even if they hadn't eaten there yet. In such an environment, this reporter felt it would have been a hostile act to ask the writer-chef if she cared to comment about the recent allegations in the press. Instead, she opted for the more discreet email follow up to both Hamilton and Severson, neither of whom jumped at the opportunity to explain why the subject wasn't broached on stage.

Hardly surprising. Hamilton made it clear at her book signing at Omnivore that she's selective about what aspects of her private life the public get to know about through her writing. Her mantra: If it's not in there, it's not tellable -- readers don't get all of her. Fair enough.

It's this kind of contradiction -- the tell-all that keeps secrets -- that makes Hamilton such a fascinating creature. She's full of inconsistencies -- aren't we all? -- only hers are on display for all the world to see and hear. Hamilton often says she loathes being called "a female chef" and yet when TV came calling looking for just such a demographic, she jumped at the chance to take one for the team.

Similarly she thinks the term "food writer" is demeaning; she's simply a chef who is also a scribe and cooking is what allowed her to come to the party. Yet, when asked what readers can expect next from the literary writer she responds: A cookbook.

During the talk Hamilton mentions the moms at her sons' school, who she says look at her disdainfully as she drops off her kids. Her children eat poorly and often in the car on the way to school, she confesses. And yet, one can't help but get the impression that the 45-year-old looks down her nose at them. Severson counters that perhaps the other moms are intimidated or awed by the successful chef with the best-selling memoir but Hamilton dismisses this notion out of hand.

And the Beard Award is silly, Hamilton says, until she wins it, and then it's the most important culinary honor a chef can earn. Thankfully she has a sense of humor about all this flip-flopping.

One gets the sense that Hamilton doesn't give a hoot if you like her, agree with her opinions, or want to read her book. It's what makes her intriguing and may well be an essential part of why she's so talented on the page and in the kitchen. She's just doing her own thing and not seeking anyone else's praise or approval.

During the course of the 90-minute City Arts & Lectures dialogue she laments the fetishization of food (the cult of farmers' markets, home cooks with sous vide machines), discussions of gender issues in restaurant kitchens (snoozeville), and the plethora of social media around food culture. Reading about food online, she says, is like eating at McDonalds. "You end up feeling hungry, undernourished, tired, and full of self loathing."

She's also down on the rise of reality TV cooking shows, even though she's had her own turn in front of the camera. (She slayed Bobby Flay on "Iron Chef"). "It's starting to suck for all of us, since TV isn't about cooking it's about entertaining," says Hamilton. "It's impossible to be quiet or subtle with food on television because actual cooking is really quite dull and repetitive."

Plans for a movie based on the memoir are already in the works, Hamilton told fans Thursday. She jokes she'd like to see Robert Downey Jr. play her.

That seems about right. Hamilton has balls. And a muscularity to her convictions and craft that the actor could convey handsomely. Audiences with a taste for Hamilton's contrarian ways might just go for such gender-bending casting. Stay tuned.

Listen to the conversation between Gabrielle Hamilton and Kim Severson broadcast on KQED Sunday, November 27 at 1 p.m.

Cuisinett interior

French food tends to have the stereotype of being pretentious, formal, and expensive. But the owner of the newly opened Cuisinett in San Carlos, Geofforey Raby, and former Executive Chef of Menlo Park’s shuttered Marche, Guillaume Bienaime, want you to believe otherwise.

“The kind of food we serve here is the kind my Mom would make,” says Raby. “I’ve been working in restaurants since I was 15 in Lille, France. I've learned that there's importance to making people happy. But there's a fine line between being attentive and being annoying. I wanted to create a casual, family-friendly restaurant with beautiful, simple design and great quality French food at a good price.”

Coq au Vin with Buttery Peas, Carrots and Pearl Onions

They call it “French Comfort Food,” and their main focus is to change the common perception that French cuisine is stuffy and complex. Think Pasta Pomodoro or Crepevine. “We wanted things to be understandable and uncomplicated. We’re not doing extravagant plating here. We want you to have the food you order from cashier to table in 10 minutes without compromising quality and taste.”

Enter Chef Bienaime. The two met in May through a mutual contact in the restaurant industry. Chef Bienaime spent over seven years at the acclaimed Marche, two of those years heading up the kitchen before it closed earlier this year. So why would his next project involve a casual restaurant that doesn’t even have waiters?

“For me, it’s an opportunity to do something new. There are some very old school menu items like Coq Au Vin that are very difficult to cook quickly. So it was a challenge for me to do something more contemporary with these dishes while maintaining their classic quality. The more I got into it, the more I believed in the concept,” recalls the Chef.

“Marche went through a bunch of phases. It started as a casual concept and got more and more complicated through the years. So when it closed, I had the desire to approach more people with my food,” says Chef Bienaime. “What I love about cooking is how it makes people happy. I’d rather make more people happy than less.”

Despite being open for a relatively short amount of time, the Chef’s confidence in his dishes shows. They’re solidly delicious and are expertly, albeit simply, prepared.

Diners can chose from a variety of side dishes like french fries, sautéed spinach, or buttery peas and carrots. The specialty of the house is their Roasted Chicken, which you can have with a mushroom or mustard cream sauce, or in the style of Coq au Vin. It doesn’t disappoint with its moist meat and buttery flavor. The sauces are rich, distinct, and tasty without overpowering the chicken’s flavor.

Moules Frites w/White Wine, Shallots and Herbs

The most popular dish on my multiple visits, however, seemed to be the Moules Frites (Mussels with Fries) with shallots, white wine and herbs. The Chef uses Mediterranean mussels which are bigger, plumper, juicier and sweeter, and were cooked to perfection. There wasn’t a rubbery mussel in the bunch. And the accompanying french fries were perfectly golden crisp and tender inside. This was a straightforward yet wonderfully executed dish.

Ratatouille

For vegetarians, their Ratatouille is quite good and is served with a simple salad of mixed greens. The buttery Parmesan breadcrumbs on top contrast nicely with the nutty, toasty flavor and the mix of yellow and red bell peppers, various squash and eggplant make for a hearty dish.

“French food isn’t just centered in Paris bistros, so we’ve divided France up into 6 regions. Now people can see the different varieties of food there are in France,” says Raby.

With the restaurant now open and the menu developed, Chef Bienaime doesn’t plan on being in the kitchen on a daily basis. However he’s constantly adjusting the existing menu and plans to add more items for children. In the future, he will serve as culinary consultant and head of operations.

It’s their hope to create multiple locations over the next few years. And in the shorter term, Chef Bienaime is hoping to entertain the idea of having some special 6-course reservation only dinners for about $100 per person on Sundays, since they’re not usually open that day. They’ll also be offering a Family Meal for four people that’ll include a whole roasted chicken, choice of sauce, two sides and a baguette for under $30 that people can take to go.

“Guillaume is about serving fantastic food, I’m about helping to creating the experience,” says Raby. “It’s like Starbucks. There have always been coffeehouses, but Starbucks they worked on the experience. To a certain extent, that’s what I want to do with French food and make it and experience that’s accessible.”

And Chef Bienaime agrees. “I believe more and more in the concept every day.”

Cuisinett
1105 San Carlos Ave., San Carlos
(650) 453-3390
Mon-Sun, 11am-9pm, Lunch & Dinner Service
Dine-in or Takeout available
Facebook: Cuisinett
Twitter: @cuisinett

Guests and host Leslie Sbrocco taping episode 611 of Check, Please! Bay Area at KQED. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Check, Please! Bay Area Season 6: episode 11 airs Thursday October 20 at 7:30pm on KQED TV 9. View other airtimes and channels.

You can watch individual restaurant segments as well as view the entire episode online. The website also provides restaurant information not specified on the show, written reviews from the guests and restaurant recipes. If you have opinions on the restaurants featured please feel free to share your thoughts. This season, Leslie Sbrocco will be sharing wine tips with each episode.

The eleventh episode of the season features these restaurants: Café Aquarius (Emeryville), Tanguito Argentinean Grill & Empanadas (San Francisco) and VEGA (San Francisco).

Leslie Sbrocco: Wine Tips -- Pairing Dessert Wines

When it's a beautiful, summer-like Friday night in October, it's probably one of the most challenging times to try and get a table anywhere in the Marina without a reservation. But while some folks are willing to stand in line and wait for hours for the new iPhone 4S, I was committed to getting into the new location of Umami Burger, the famed mini-empire from Los Angeles. As I'd never had the opportunity to try one of their much-ballyhooed burgers down in SoCal, I was looking forward to finally sampling their fare. They had opened their doors on October 7, much to the delight of the Bay Area foodie crowd which has already packed Yelp with their reviews with its first week.

I rounded up some fellow colleagues from KQED (one who jokingly refers to herself as a "meatoutatarian," which means she'll only eat red meat when out dining) to join me in line. I'm glad I had the company of my colleagues as the wait was long: over an hour and a half long. Granted, as mentioned before, it was Friday night and the hype factor was in full effect, but some seating snafus at the front of the house had our party of three overlooked and not called when we were next in line. The hostesses were cheerful for the most part -- as cheerful as they could be while wrangling the horde milling about the front door -- and we were finally seated in the back of the restaurant. (If you're a lucky duo, you'll get one of the sidewalk tables that's out front while this lovely weather lasts.)

The Union Street location of Umami Burger is housed in the former location of Jovino. (According to one of my KQED colleagues who lives in the neighborhood and had dined their regularly, they were also known for their excellent burgers during its run.) The interior space itself has a spare, Asian aesthetic with wood accents and muted colors. The noise isn't overpowering, even when packed to full capacity was it was tonight.

After we settled in, our server asked if this was our first time dining at the restaurant, then gave us an explanation of the meaning of "umami" and their mission statement. We ordered an array of burgers to share: the Greenbird ($12), the Umami Burger ($11), and their priciest, most decadent item, the Bacon-Wrapped Scallop Burger ($15, topped with crispy pork belly and only available at this location). I was curious about their Cali Burger and its "house-made American cheese," and apparently there's some cheese alchemy involved as they create their own special blend of cheeses in the kitchen (which are not made from scratch). Sides are ordered separately, and during our wait I had spotted other diners eating tater tots. Our server explained that these "cheesy tater tots" were now a secret menu item since they often sold out but were available for the asking. We ordered those along with a side of truffled cheese fries.

The fried items arrived first, and we dipped them into the Asian soup spoon filled with their house-made Umami ketchup. They were both delicious, especially the tater tots, which were crispy on the outside and the texture and flavor of creamy mashed potatoes on the inside. Later on we also asked for their complimentary jalapeño ranch sauce (which wasn't really appealing to any of us as it was reminiscent of cheap nacho chips) and the garlic aioli (fantastic).

Then the burgers came shortly thereafter, and they were impressively plated on large white dishes with a "U" stamped on top of their brioche-like buns. The medium-rare, juicy Umami Burger was definitely our favorite, as the shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onions, roasted tomato, parmesan crisp, and umami ketchup toppings delivered a wonderfully savory combination as promised.

Bacon-Wrapped Scallop Burger on the left, Umami Burger on the right.

I was partial to the Greenbird next; the Shelton Farms turkey had been seasoned with a blend of spices that made it taste unlike any other I'd ever had. It was truly original and delicious, and accompanied with avocado, green cheese (more house-made cheese magic from the kitchen), butter lettuce, green goddess dressing and sprouts. My colleague was curious about these sprouts as they had had black seeds; our server had assumed they were alfalfa sprouts, but after some inquiries were made to the kitchen it was determined they were onion sprouts.

Sadly, I wasn't as impressed with the Bacon-Wrapped Scallop Burger, which had two lean slices of somewhat tough pork belly dressed with a sweet chili sauce and yuzu-garlic aioli on top of the scallop patty (which reminded me more of a fried egg than scallops). The blend of flavors just didn't match up to the Umami Burger and I was disappointed with the quality of the pork belly; I'll have to try it again in the future to see if it holds up on another occasion.

Although we were stuffed, we ended our meal with one of their house-made ice cream sandwiches as the peanut-butter cookie made with salt-and-pepper ice cream (the flavor of that day which are rotated regularly) piqued our curiosity. The cookies were quite crisp and thus made it difficult to share (I think it's better as a solo dessert) and the ice cream had a vinegar tang to it instead of a peppery quality we were expecting. Not outstanding, but definitely not the main draw of the restaurant, either.

So did I find it to be worth the wait? Yes, although I probably won't head back anytime soon unless it's during the presumably quieter hours of the weekday. And our bill ended up at $34 each (we'd also ordered one drink apiece), so it's not like a cheap run to In-N-Out. But I'd love to try some of their other items off the menu, especially the Cali and Veggie Burgers, which are only available at the Union Street location. If you don't have the stomach to wait for too long, walk up to the bar and order to-go. We saw one lucky resident who lived right next door walk in, pick up his order and slipped right back upstairs for private dining in his apartment.

Umami Burger
2184 Union St at Fillmore map
415-440-UMAMI
Twitter: @UmamiBurgerSF
Facebook: Umami Burger
Hours:
Sun-Thurs: 11AM-10PM
Fri and Sat: 11AM-10PM