A couple of weeks ago, I met up with my oldest friend in the world to mind her three-year-old while she had her hair cut and dyed. As a reward, she said, she would buy me chocolate. Fine, I thought. I’m not a chocolate freak, so she’d be getting off rather cheaply, in terms of childcare.

Of course, I had no idea what I was in for, chocolate-wise. She took me to Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates, at 401 Hayes Street. This woman has always out-cooled me. Even living in Redwood City with three small children pulling her in as many directions, she manages to know what’s going on right under my nose before I can sniff it out. Damn her and bless her, too.

To me, Christopher Elbow sounds like the title character of a children’s book. He is either a misunderstood little boy in possession of either highly specialized super powers or, at the very least, a rich and imaginative inner life. As a chocolatier, I have tasted evidence of the latter, but will not entirely rule out the former. I selected only one chocolate to taste, since I wasn’t really in the mood for sweets. Port Wine Caramel. I took one bite and a remarkable sensation overtook me for a moment. Talk about a rich inner life…

There is a scene in the the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which Violet Beauregarde, the shapeless, gum-chewing champ, starts in on an Everlasting Gobstopper and says, describing her experience, “It’s tomato soup! It’s hot and creamy– I can actually feel it running down my throat!”

That is very much what happened to me when I bit into the caramel. Except I could feel port wine running down my throat instead of tomato soup. And, of course, there was no dramatic change to my organic composition which necessitated my immediate juicing. But I tumesced, just a little.

Squid bought herself a box of nine chocolates ($20.00), which would last her nine nights. One before bedtime, like some sort of luxury sugar pill. I knew I’d be back to do the same. I hope she’s not placing them on her pillow in this heat.

Upon my return, I chatted a bit with a nice young woman behind the counter and asked her to pick out some of her favorite chocolates. I added a couple of my own to the mix and had them wrapped to take home so that I might taste them in private, since my prior experience and reaction suggested I proceed with caution.

Before leaving, I needed to sample a bit of drinking chocolate. The young lady suggested her favorite– the Ginger Caramel Milk Chocolate. I obeyed.

I took my chocolate into the drinking lounge and contemplated my impending sugar coma.

Though I was the sole human in the lounge at the time, it certainly didn’t feel, well, loungy. The upright seatbacks and hard surfaces of the armrest/places to put one’s beverage seemed to underscore the necessity of bracing myself for the sugar rush that was about to overtake me. The glowing tables unsettled me, reminding me as they did of the Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. I find the fact that this place has brought to mind two classic films from 1971 fascinating. Had a high-priced call girl in hot pants and a terrible shag cut sat down to join me, I might have drunk my chocolate faster.

As it happened, I did drink my chocolate too quickly. I ended up inhaling a bit of ground ginger, which provoked an unfortunate little coughing fit. I knew the ginger was there, but I thought it looked pretty and therefore refused to stir it in. It was my fault entirely. I snapped some more photos and left, following someone I can only describe as a crazy, even more childlike Butterfly McQueen down Gough Street. She was exceedingly friendly, stopping to say hello not only to every person she met along the way, but a pair of shutters, and, finally, a hibiscus bush. Selfishly, I did not offer her any chocolate.

When I arrived home with my chocolates, I realized I had neither the time nor the appetite to consume them then and there as I had planned. These were special chocolates– the kind one might savor while bathing in asses’ milk or worry over in a monkey fur bed jacket while digesting the latest gossip from one’s maid. They are luxurious and complex. They cry out for a momentary focus of one’s attention. They are an expensive mouthful, to be sure, but they are worth every penny, I promise.

Cross my heart and kiss my elbow. Go check it out.

Here are some tasting notes on the one’s I’ve sampled:

Bourbon Pecan– one might never know there is marzipan lurking inside if one isn’t paying attention. Made with Maker’s Mark bourbon.

Passion Fruit — I don’t naturally gravitate towards white chocolate, but it serves as a subtle carrier for a caramel so tangy with passion fruit that, if I were slightly more obsessive, I would become obese and diabetic from doing nothing all day but collecting hundreds of these confections, scooping out the caramel, and licking it off a giant antique wooden spoon.

Cabernet– Chocolate, caramel, and Cabernet Sauvignon. I am not certain which winery supplies the wine for this confection, but I was assured it is a California Cabernet. As with the (sadly missing today) Port Wine chocolate I sampled a couple of weeks ago, I experienced another Miss Beauregarde moment. Happy-making.

Bananas Foster– Enjoyable, but didn’t exactly scream Bananas Foster to me. Perhaps I should have set it on fire.

Banana Curry– Hot damn. This one is really excellent. Refreshing trickle of heat.

Rosemary– For some reason, sweets flavored with rosemary often have a subtle and mildly disturbing moldy flavor. This narrowly manages to avoid that sort of unpleasantness. Nice little salt kick at the end.

Strawberry Balsamic– Fun. And interesting– the balsamic acidity of the piece is an interesting contrast to the chocolate but, rather than accentuate the strawberry, it obscures it.

Orange Blossom Honey– Oh my Blossom Dearie. This one totally delivers. Salty caramel that allows the subtle orange blossom notes of the honey to peek through and say hello. I like you, you’re nice.

Persian– Get over any loathing you might have of marzipan. This is a wonderfully complex piece of chocolate. Cardamom? Is that sumac? Do you even have any idea what sumac tastes like? Wonderfully nutty– blame the marzipan.

Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolates
Location: 401 Hayes Street (at Gough) in San Francisco
Telephone: 415-355-1105
Store Hours:

Visit the website for more information:
www.elbowchocolates.com

Next Monday May 5th you can join the Cinco de Mayo crush at local Mexican restaurants, or you can meet the authors of celebrated Italian and French book on food, instead. We suggest the latter, besides, the best community celebrations will take place on the weekend, such as San Francisco Cinco de Mayo San Francisco in Dolores Park on Saturday May 3rd from 10-5 or Cinco de Mayo Oakland on Sunday, May 4th in Fruitvale.

First up–Italy

Join Mario Batali, celebrity chef, and television personality at Il Fornaio for lunch to celebrate the release of Italian Grill, which combines his passion for Italian cuisine and tasty grilled food. No ordinary backyard bbq book, it includes appetizers, flatbreads, meats, seafood and vegetables along with his signature olive oil, citrus, wine, herbs, and garlic rubs. This luncheon is at Il Fornaio Restaurant in San Francisco, with food selections from the restaurant’s own excellent menu).

What: Lunch with Mario Batali

Cost: Tickets are $125 and include lunch and a signed copy of the book Italian Grill
When: Monday, May 05, 2008, 12:00 PM
Where: Il Fornaio Restaurant, 1265 Battery Street (inside Levi Plaza), San Francisco
How: Purchase tickets online

Next up–France

Clotilde Dusoulier the blogger behind the popular Chocolate & Zucchini blog returns to the Bay Area for a book signing. Her latest book, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris is in stores now.

In her own words, “Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris is a window onto my Paris, this delicious stomping ground for the food enthusiast. It is the companion I wish I had for every city I visit, pointing me to the edible highlights and giving me the lowdown on the dining scene, the best food shopping haunts, and the locals’ favorites.”

What: Clotilde Dusoulier At Books Inc. in Opera Plaza
Cost: Free
When: Monday, May 5, 2008, 7 pm
Where: Books Inc. 601 Van Ness San Francisco
Why: Get a chance to meet Clotilde in person.

As we inch towards the ledge that is 2008 I am taking a lot of time for reflection. I’m thinking about transition and change and how we never know exactly where we’ll land and how we’ll feel about arriving there, even though we think, with all our planning and list-making and contriving, we can control everything.

This last year brought me back into the fold of an industry I wasn’t sure I’d ever fully join again. Almost five years ago someone very close to me was given less than three years to live and I exited Restaurant Kitchens to take care of her, help her die, and then grieve fully. In this grieving period it’s been impossible to tell whether I was done with my industry out of default, choice or exhaustion. And I had no idea if I’d ever go back, or if I wanted to.

Restaurant work is not part time work. It takes all of you and then some. It’s intimate and physical the way sex and relationships are. It engulfs, and tars and feathers you. It’s like your family of origin, cults, gangs and religion. We say you’re either on the train or not and after working the line for a period of time it’s easy to see why the military and kitchen work are so often compared.

For years I worked morning, noon and night and missed anything and everything important in anyone’s life I knew or the world at large. To walk away from My Industry when my friend became terminally ill was no small feat. But I knew. I knew that I could only do this immense piece of life’s work once. And then, without any warning, it changed me forever. It changed the cook I was to return to being, if I was to return.

In March my blog Eggbeater will be three years old, and I will be 40. I name the numbers because, in the time-line of this story it means that I began writing in a public forum while my friend was dying. I began writing about myself, being a pastry chef, fruit, teaching and local agriculture when I was not in A Kitchen per se. I was away for a long time, and yet I stayed close by keeping up with professional friendships and writing about the branches of my work. I worked hard to reconcile calling myself a chef and not having anyone’s name on my jacket but my own.

In professional cook-speak, if you are not {actively} in a kitchen you are not a cook, or a chef. If there are stoves without your name and sweat on them, you have no business wearing whites or calling yourself a cook. And in turn you have no right writing like you’re on the inside if you aren’t. We’re like punk rockers or OG’s— if you’re not in the game, you’re posing, full stop. It makes feelings more black & white than grey, and opinions about who deserves what title when are not hidden from audible view.

Those who write about my industry, and are not in it, are barely taken seriously. Sure there’s hand shaking and schmoozing and photo shoots in cushy houses, but those people are considered Outsiders and are treated thusly. (We need them to “Become Known,” they know it, and so the snake swallows its tail.)

But what does it mean to both hold the title of chef and writer? What does it mean to be both critic and critiqued? What does it mean to be the underdog cook and the despised? Who is allowed to write about the inside? And who can do it justice?

My industry has enjoyed it’s day in the sun concerning major media outlets in recent years. We have dozens of cooking slots, reality chef shows, superstar chef darlings, and certain restaurants getting press week after week, month after month, in every magazine– because they are so well known on TV.

But that’s not my reality. And TV, no matter how “real,” is edited beyond recognition: airbrushed, liposucked, botoxed, and teeth-whitened to a point of Hollywood psychosis, cannibalistically feeding on itself to survive.

The truth is that the truth still isn’t out there. And my industry, like the insider’s trade that they are, doesn’t mind keeping it that way.

Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

We will happily feed you lies if it sells dinners, or we have no say in the matter because TV has historically been entertainment and we suppose you’ll be smart enough to figure that out. Or we will happily let Them feed you lies because the dirty truth of the matter is that the restaurant industry is plagued by contradictions so entrenched, class and gender and racial disparities so vast, environmental crimes so grossly overlooked and gaping holes so wide, we look like a corrupt government with erased histories and disappearing leaders.

Am I allowed to report on the good, the bad and the ugly or should I keep our dirty laundry close? Should I stand back and smile cynically when person after person signs their life away to culinary schools and shiny happy media “chefs” tell them to follow the bouncing red ball as they join in one big sing-along to the tune of the Big Lie about how wonderful and easy being a chef is? Or maybe I should just stand by, keep my head down and shut up when a female cook gets passed by for a promotion or salary raise because of her sex?

Can I make a difference as a chef-writer? When my voice is so small compared to the big stars? What does it mean to straddle a fence separating two historically enemied roles? Can I stay true to both crafts?

I don’t have answers to my questions. I can blame the new media-ness of it all. For we are all a part of the Internet’s Great Experiment. “Every one’s” on the w.w.w. looking, eating, slurping, voraciously consuming, arguing, posing, learning, dishing, mud-slinging, opining, mis-informing and dawdling. The concept is that everyone can have a voice in a forum, and now those historically critiqued can talk back.

I might be naive to think that hearing from real chefs in real kitchens matters but I do. It’s a very different experience now working in a restaurant, and then writing about it. Blogging buoys me– writing down my life is my way of telling you, the you who read and listen and converse, what one real life in a kitchen among kitchens, a cook among cooks, is like. Writing from my heart, and being part of a small community of other chef and cook bloggers, is important because we can be a small movement educating those who want to know the true life of professional cooking, not the made-for-TV version.

You? Do you care where you get your truth from? Does it matter to you if said source has fact-checked, painted a pretty and easy-to-digest picture or done their time on the front lines? Do you think chef-writers are a good or dreadful thing? Do you appreciate a transparent restaurant industry or do you wish it would all stay behind closed doors like it always has?

Opening a restaurant in San Francisco is not easy, especially right now, but not for the reasons why it was so difficult in the 90’s or five years ago. It can be said, opening a restaurant at all, in any city, is difficult. But because I have cooked professionally in other American cities, have seen a number of my colleagues open restaurants, and have recently begun working for a soon-to-open San Francisco restaurant, I can say that opening a restaurant here is a difficult proposition, even if you have a lot of factors on your side.

Labor: In SF Magazine last month, food editor Jan Newberry spoke to new local labor laws San Francisco is imposing, in an inciting article titled, Is San Francisco Killing Its Restaurants? Although the new labor laws sounds fantastic on paper, they have the capacity to hurt many restaurant employees, mainly back of house employees. For full transparency I will state here that I am, and have maintained, a pro-union status for most of my adult life. The issues are confusing, in part because restaurants are not a necessary establishment the way, let’s say, hospitals are. And because I worked for minimum wage for much of my career, I do agree that it should be a living wage.

Culture: It could be said that although restaurants are a luxury business, they do play a major part in distinguishing the landscape of one city from another. As a person who loves to eat out, I can easily name five restaurants in each city I love and they make visiting there far more appealing.

A16 Restaurant. The Line.

Risks: The restaurant business, and the business of opening a restaurant is only for the crazy and the passionate. Who else would open an establishment considered to have the highest risk factor by banks? Who else would pour their life savings into a business that may or may not be liked by the public, or be sunk by one review in the local newspaper? Who else would open a business even if the glass ceiling on profits is less that 7% yearly? {The margins are extremely slim in the restaurant business.}

It can be said that a restaurant owner is a rebel with a cause; opening a business against all odds. Attempting the impossible, confident in the face of harsh realities. A dreamer, in short. Like many other gambles, a restaurant’s statistics change city to city, and after New York City, San Francisco has the highest fail-rate in the shortest span of time, than any other city in the United States. What makes a restaurant stick is as much about the fickle public, concerned with hipness above all else, as it is about the actual food being served and by whom, or what neighborhood it’s located in and what month of the year it swung open its doors.

Press: In July I spoke on a panel of food bloggers in Chicago as part of BlogHer 07. As the sole professional cook-blogger I had the difficult honor of answering a question from the audience concerning Mario Batali’s latest vitrolic comments concerning food bloggers. The funny thing was that, as yet, I had not read his comments on our kind. As Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic has recently pointed out in her site Grub Report, food bloggers are made out to be the villians by my profession.

What, or who, Mario Batali is railing against, is those writing for the Internet with no concern for the business they are admiring or panning. Many food bloggers want to have their slice of the famous pie without taking responsibility for the power of their words– or taking the first slice. And, something many web-savvy people know, their power to have their words found first is all to often used to threaten and destroy restaurants, chefs and owners. Google is an interesting animal indeed, and being a blogger means catching a ride on its gigantic sweeping monster tail, if even for 15 minutes of fame.

In Chicago I asked everyone to please know and remember that their words were far more powerful than many food and restaurant bloggers have been willing to take responsibility for until recently. I reminded the audience that there are few professions skewered by non-colleague critics publicly.

Chefs and chef-owners pour everything they have into new businesses. They know dozens, if not hundreds, of people’s lives are being supported, or not, based on the thousands of decisions they make about opening a restaurant. So when a food blogger, whose credentials they know nothing of, representing an individually promoted news source, like a single-authored blog (as opposed to a newspaper or magazine), comes in on the very first night, or within the first few weeks (a time period we know that newspaper critics are going to, yes, visit, but not base their official review on that sole meal) and reports on the experience, good or awful, the restaurant owner is cornered. She/he knows that, (or maybe they don’t because few restaurant people are Internet-smart), those blogger’s words are going to be the ones their other prospective diners are going to find first.

Issues: Why is this relevant and/or important to why opening a restaurant in San Francisco is so difficult? Because blogging and the Internet’s speed, as an opinion gatherer and reporter, has leveled and expanded a press playing-field, giving chefs and owners one more thing to reckon with in an already seemingly futile battle of pushing a boulder uphill.

I realize I straddle a fence now, and my perspective as a chef and also a blogger has been inexorably altered by having five toes in each grassy knoll. I have made, as I’ve dubbed it, my Sinead O’Connor mistakes concerning words and quotes and media, self made and not. I know that now I am an easier target for both good and awful press as a pastry chef, becuase I am a presence on the web.

I, like many people before me, am learning the hard way how to open a restaurant in San Francisco, and I am far from being the owner. This piece, as well as the series I’m doing on Eggbeater, is an attempt at reporting the process from the inside. The issues are multi-faceted, dichotomous and oftentimes confusing. While writing I am attempting to sort some of them out, and also speak from and to a perspective rarely found in major press sources.

And, as this is a blog, where comments are welcome and part of creating a place for discussion and public opinion, what are your thoughts on these matters?

————————

Other pertinent links speaking to these political and personal issues on the subject of opening and operating restaurants in San Francisco:

Brett Emerson, local chef and food blogger, whose site is the much loved In Praise of Sardines, has been extremely candid in reporting the process of opening his own restaurant, Ollalie.

Michael Bauer, restaurant critic for the SF Chronicle, on his blog, Between Meals, reported on the cost of doing business in San Francisco called, Is San Francisco Killing Restaurants?
{And Brett’s commentary on this important article.}

At the end of the year in, “Is The Public Ready For A Transparent Restaurant Industry?” here on Bay Area Bites, I asked difficult questions after a horrific accident took the life of a young waiter and put the sous chef of Bar Crudo in the hospital.

Last November SF Business Times reported on an enigmatic lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed against San Francisco about the newly imposed labor laws.

As I’ve said before, to have me in your friend circle means I am your go-to for all edible recommendations. Most of the time this means that, after contacting me, people walk away with new eating and adventuring possibilities. But sometimes I tell people where to go for selfish reasons.

At weddings, for example. The food and cake can be notoriously awful at large functions. (In a recent talk at The Commonwealth Club, Charles Phan, chef/owner of The Slanted Door, reminded us that if we wanted to see restaurants buying, for example, sustainable seafood, we should think about speaking up at the next banquet dinner or luncheon we eat at or have at a hotel. “Because you can eat more Chilean Sea Bass in one day in a hotel than I could buy/sell at my restaurant in a year.”)

When people come to me asking for wedding cake making expertise or the option to cater their wedding, I send them to people and companies who do a much better job than I ever could. People who make a living in said fields. I give them the cards of those who have never let me and my recommendation down. I give out the names of companies who have fed me well at the very same parties I could have catered myself, but thankfully chose not to.

Take it from me when I say not all catering companies are created equally. I’ve worked for many who make food I myself am scared to eat at the very functions I’m preparing or plating the food for! When I’ve worked for these places, I eat big meals beforehand and carry snacks for the moment I’m caught hungrily off guard.

And then there are the places where I show up to work hungry. Hungry to learn and to eat. Paula Le Duc, for example. PLD is the exclusive caterer for The Ferry Building Events. They are incredibly organized, smart, efficient, and serve some of the best food in the Bay Area, no matter if the party is for 5000 or 50. They are professional and friendly and emply hundreds of people, many of them loyal for years on end. I loved working for them and have sent a number of cooks their way. It’s always a good sign when a catering company hires aggressively and competitively from within the restaurant industry.

Which brings me to Living Room Events, a company made up of almost exclusively restaurant people. They are a catering company dedicated to cooking food on par with signature Cal-Med restaurants such as Zuni, Chez Panisse and Oliveto. Their chefs shop at the same farmers’ markets and produce companies that the famously local-seasonal restaurants do. So when my friends Victoria and Phil came to me for caterer advice, selfishly knowing I would be a guest at their gorgeous wedding, I strongly suggested LRE. As with all food businesses you can often be served something extraordinarily delicious in the “tasting,” but then at the actual event, the food is sub-par. I only recommend companies where their follow through is as good, if not better, than how they sell it.

This past Sunday was the third time where I have been a happy guest of their services. The food and service were so good, people at the party were telling the waiters they wished the catering company would turn into a restaurant! And rumor has it that Living Room Events is, in fact, going to open a restaurant. I would have eaten three plates of savoury food had I not known how good the cake was going to be.

Wedding cakes are made first to dazzle us with our eyes. What’s hiding under the 5 inches of buttercream, fondant or marzipan could be a cake made 6 months ago and stored in a deep freezer. You can get a raspberry cake in January, and much of the decorations could be edible ingredients whose digestibility is questionable, but that wedding cake could cost you tens of thousands of dollars and no one would wonder why a frosted dessert can sit in the heat of July’s busy wedding month for the 6 or 7 hours it takes for the ceremony to start.

Having worked with Rachel Leising at Citizen Cake, owner of wedding cake business and now retail bakery Petite Patisserie in Potrero Hill, I can say that this woman’s cakes taste as good as they look. Rachel is dedicated to seasonal, local, sustainable and Organic ingredients because they taste better. I have been at many a wedding and birthday party where I saved room for dessert and my only disappointment was there weren’t more than two slices to eat!

I don’t get paid to make these recommendations. I no longer work for any of these companies or people. But believe me when I say that it is better to pay the same or a little more for food and the work of food artisans whose product is far and above the quality of most of their competitors.

I know there are many more outstanding companies out there. Who do you love? Who do you recommend?

When you work in the restaurant business everyone you know, everyone you know’s friends, in-laws and children, and everyone you’ve not met yet, comes to you for restaurant recommendations.

Needless to say I am extremely grateful that Chowhound also exists. For it gets quite tiresome to be absolutely everyone’s go to for breakfast, lunch, brunch and dinner suggestions. Especially when you consider I grew up in New York City, have lived in London and Napa Valley and the Bay Area is my permanent home.

All this being said, when I plan a trip to my old home, I very much look forward to what I will eat when I’m there. Will I visit the places where I know the chefs and pastry chefs? Will I haunt my old workplaces? Will I eat all my favorite foods? Will I shop and cook in my host’s kitchen? Will I eat at brand name places so that I have something to talk about when I get back or will I just eat in the places no one but real New Yorkers go? Will I eat solely for memory or will I want to try all the new things I’ve read about since I was there last?

The truth is that I eat foods in my old home that I can’t find in my new one. I’m fiercely loyal to old haunts, places whose menus I can trust no matter what the current trend and flash-in-the-pan hip happening thang is. I bring my money to the people I love and have the most respect for. Chefs and pastry chefs whose work is something that inspires me, fills me with hope that one day my California home town will embrace these innovations.

My upcoming trip to New York will look different from ones I’ve taken in more recent years. Because I met and be-friended some spectacularly talented people at the Pastry Chef Conference in May, I will spend some time eating and working with some of these folks. I’ll go to Daniel just for dessert and then with their pastry chef, Dominique Ansel, we will eat at Devi, pastry chef Surbhi Sahnhi’s post.

In the sweet theme, I’ll make it into Chikalicious at least once. And if I have time, Pichet Ong’s new place, P’ong. And then there’s always a detour to Il Laboratorio del Gelato on Orchard Street in the heart of the real Lower East Side. Maybe I’ll get a kasha K’nish at Yonah Schimmels beforehand so I can convince myself I’ve eaten dinner.

It’s not a trip to New York without one surprising dinner at the diminutive Prune on First Street. Whether chef/owner Gabrielle Hamilton is there or not, I like to bring her a California gift. This week I’ll be stocking up on jars of jam from newcomer Rachel Saunders so that I can present unique gifts to the people I love. Prune is my favorite restaurant in NYC.

But for the food I grew up with, there will be frequent visits to Veselka for pierogi, cabbage soup and a chat with my father and stepmother over blintzes. I always have to have one steamed lobster dinner at Pearl Oyster Bar on the tiny slanted street of Cornelia. When you grow up with steamers dipped in drawn butter and tasting of the chewy clammy sea, no nouveau California preparation of clams will satisfy.

It will be important for me to get sticky with coco helado on a street corner if it’s hot, and of course I’ll be noshing on my old stand by in Coney Island, ridged french fries at Nathan’s and a cone of pastel green pistachio soft serve with colored sprinkles on Neptune Avenue!

For a post Coney Island Mermaid Day Parade de-tox I might head over to my favorite macrobiotic restaurant Angelica’s. I have to get my fix of their kooky “cornbread,” carrot spread and one small Dragon Bowl. And if I make it to Harlem I’ll be going directly to M&G’s for fried chicken. And if I want to roll out of my bed the next day to stand in line, I might head to Danal for brunch.

Saving the best for last, I am over-the-top excited that this will be the first time I’m going to Gerry Hayden and Claudia Fleming’s restaurant The North Fork Table & Inn on Long Island. I used to work for Claudia Fleming at Gramercy Tavern in the Flatiron District. This will be my first time seeing her since I threw a party at Citizen Cake for her incredible book The Last Course, a must have for anyone who loves to bake seasonal desserts. The day I made the reservation to eat and stay at the Inn I could not sleep.

So, you can see, I will be eating well in my old hometown. Like most people, I tend to eat the familiar when I’m home. I have plans with friends and family, old lovers and new, bloggers, chefs and pastry chefs. I have adventures planned and I will be taking my feet to places they’ll go without direction.

If you’re looking for NYC restaurant recommendations, I still give them. But only if you’re willing to try what a real New Yorker eats…

This Sunday June 10th I will be teaching my second Seasonal Fruit Dessert class in North Berkeley from 1 - 3:30 pm. Might you wish to join me as I conjure a number of sweets simple and complex, whose main focus is fruits at the peak of their early summer season’s best? Those who took the first class were lucky enough to eat: Verbena & Meyer Lemon ice cream, Redwood Hill Goat Yogurt Pannacotta with rhubarb miroir, Roasted Lucero Strawberries, Rhubarb-Cornmeal Cake, Crunchy Poached Rhubarb Dice, Strawberry Coulis, Pavlova with whipped cream and strawberries, and Rhubarb-Walnut Crisp.

But now, there’s so much more in season!

The possibilities are endless…

Shall we conjure a sublime cherry clafouti? Roast apriums in black pepper and Banyuls vinegar? Concoct a clear peach leaf consomme? Try our hand at whole almond frangipane with noyau and pluots? Layer light vanilla cake with brown butter pastry cream and fresh peaches? Finesse a batch of fresh cherry granite? Whip up some biscuits for cobbler? Fill the kitchen with the heady scent of warmed blackberry compote? Whip up an easy fresh fruit and cornmeal cake? Tremble with joy at the lightness of pannacotta? Learn what to do with a cherry pits’ inner secret? Sneak some herbs from the garden and see what goes with what best?

I’ve lost count of how many classes I’ve taught now. And I’m happy to report many of us independent cooking instructors in the Bay Area were recently featured and reviewed in this months issue of San Francisco Magazine, click here to see the whole spread. I always have a lot of fun, but moreover, I love getting reports back about how people are less afraid to tackle homemade pie dough, ice cream and caramel or were excited to learn the secrets of how to make egg whites do what they want them to do, use their knives better or allowed my class and instruction to break down the last wall between them and their pot de creme molds.

This Sunday’s Seasonal Fruit Dessert class will be my last Bay Area culinary class until August. On June 21 I’ll be teaching my popular Knife Skills Class in NYC and come July I will teach 4 (!!) Pie Dough & Seasonal Fruit Dessert classes in Portland, Oregon. A good friend of mine said I should buy a silver Airstream trailer and take my show on the road! Hey, where the students want to learn, that’s where I’ll go, I say.

This Sunday’s class is filling up quickly. Although the 2 spots I offer at almost 1/2 the price are still empty. I keep these spots open for those who love to bake but might not be able to afford the full cost. Those two folks come a wee bit early and stay a little later, to help me clean up.

The page that always has the current calendar of my classes can be found by clicking on this link. Register by going to the Paypal link in Eggbeater’s right hand column and if you want to send a check, email me and I will send you a snail mail address. I also have a private mailing list for those of you who like the info to land on your email-doorstep.

See you soon?

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!

Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious.com, and chefs Mark Franz, Jan Birnbaum, and Parke Ulrich invite you to San Francisco’s Farallon for a dinner to benefit America’s Second Harvest. The evening’s special menu will feature dishes personally created by each chef, including diver scallop carpaccio, crispy maple pork belly, and roasted strawberry turnovers.
Click here to purchase tickets. Dates for this event in Chicago and New York have already sold out!

I talked to Mark Franz recently about the dinner and what’s new:

For those who haven’t dined at Farallon before, how would you describe it?
It’s fine dining, sophisticated and elegant. We keep our approach pretty simple in that it’s all seasonal, our menu changes weekly and sometimes daily. We give people the whole package–great food and service and almost over the top design, it’s whimsical but we take it seriously. It’s not a stuffy restaurant people feel at home. Upscale but not pretentious.

What’s your philosophy for putting a dish together?
This really feels like one of the best times of the year right now–I’m not particularly religious but it seems like God has a plan, anything that’s in season works together. Pick what’s in season and it will work together that’s my philosophy.

How did you choose what to feature for the Wine. Dine. Donate. menu?
I’m using diver scallops–they are perfect, big and luscious and they aren’t dipped, we get them fresh every day so there are no additives no extra water in them, they are extremely fresh and just magnificent. Three quarters of what I find in the supermarket I would send away. I picked something seasonal with fava beans and artichokes to go with the scallop carpaccio. Those two ingredients are a real marriage and I try to turn people on to them. All of that gets served with a gribiche which is an eggy sauce with capers and tarragon.

You’ve been working on the opening of Water Bar on the Embarcadero, what will that be like?
The food will be clean and simple. It will be more provincial in the sense that the food will be grilled, roasted, less rich ingredients. In general, more simple, more straight ahead, everyday meals that are more mediterranean in approach less of the classic French approach you find at Farallon. What I’m doing at Water Bar is what I wanted to do at Farallon, more everyday than special occasion dining.

Farallon has been around for 10 years, what’s new?
The raw bar is new. When you come into the bar there is more excitement because the oysters are in the front not in the kitchen. We sell thousands of oysters but we were never listed as a raw bar so now we moved them into the bar. It’s kind of like reinventing yourself but realistically the seafood is the same. If you haven’t been in for a while you should check it out.

What’s it like working with Jan Birnbaum at Farallon?
Jan worked here for the last year and a half—we’ve known each other for 30 years. We both try to utilize what’s seasonal and make sense of it. There are no egos involved–Jan’s influence shows up in that we do more charcuterie, he’s known for braising meats and New Orleans style cooking of course. But we each choose dishes and see what works together. Seafood and pork work especially well together. There isn’t a lot of fat on seafood so the pork belly adds a nice velvety layer.

I lined up plates in the order they appeared on the menu. This trick helps cooks plate food with speed and efficiency during a busy service.

Last week many of you participated in having a bit of fun with your food. You played The Plated Dessert Menu Game! Although it began as a lark, I must admit I might make this a regular thing if I get another pastry chef job in a restaurant. Many of you created a menu the likes of which I would not have thought of myself! Thank you! (I hope, of course, that it means you are adventurous eaters as well, supporting dedicated pastry chefs wherever you eat…)

Every day since the dessert tasting/job interview, my phone voicemail and email inbox has been full of one question, “So, how did it go?” But I don’t know what to say. They sat, I plated, we ate, we talked, I left. There were 6 of them and one of me. The chef I’ve been discussing this position with for the last 4 months asked me to speak about what was on the table, another chef asked a lot of questions, a few comments were made and now it’s all about the waiting game.

I did get to be really nerdy when it came to talking about the history of butterscotch, and why a graham cracker is called that, and why one need understand osmotic reciprocity when attempting to cook rhubarb. That was extremely fun and satisfying!

And it was amazing to see desserts that had been living in my head, as ideas or a dizzying array of free-floating components, come together on a plate, be set forth in front of humans, and eaten as if they were finished sentences, cohesive concrete visions. Like digital photography, plated dessert making can produce immediate results, an on-the-spot culmination of the conceptual and the actual.

Of course one hopes that one’s desserts will also be delicious.

Without further ado, I give you The Menu presented as my dessert tasting on Monday May 14, 2007, 12 noon, at an undisclosed downtown San Francisco restaurant for the purpose of trying out for a pastry chef job:

Butterscotch Pot de creme with Pecan Shortbread
– Extra component: chantilly.
Cherries & Cream, a Napoleon with Poetic License
– Double vanilla shortbread, carnaroli rice pudding infused with California Bay Laurel, cherries reduced in cherry vinegar and pitted cherries au natural.
Ricotta Cheesecake with Crunchy Poached Rhubarb
– Served with rhubarb-rose geranium sauce.
Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream
– El Rey milk chocolate veloute baked atop Devil’s Food Cake lifted by cocoa meringue, warmed by hot fudge sauce and garnished with malt ice cream sitting on candied cacao nibs.
Hot Doughnuts with Blushing Sugar and An Egg Cream Chaser
– Pate a choux doughnuts rolled in sugar made with mesquite flour, fleur de sel and ground cacao nibs served with vanilla bean egg cream.
Bright Lemon Baked Alaska, Brown Butter and Shuna’s Famous Graham Crackers
– Shuna’s famous graham crackers sitting against lemon sherbet and brown butter ice cream hiding under torched Swiss meringue.

The cherry Napoleon.

Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream.

I’ve written about a number of plated dessert tastings I’ve done in the past few years. Interested in knowing more? Click here.

Thank you, all of you, for playing last week’s game, reading, imagining, and coming along for the ride!

Anthony Bourdain hit the nail on the head in his iconic book Kitchen Confidential, when he said, “pastry chefs are the neurologists of the kitchen.” We like things just so, and will stop only at premeditated murder, to make sure it stays this way. We are organized to the point of scary, and we guard our (often tiny) stations like junkyard dogs.

Pastry chefs like things clean, orderly, in excellent working order, and labeled. When I worked at Bolo in NYC, I would lock our station’s chinois (fine mesh strainer) in my locker and would refuse the chef’s request for it, even when he begged. I knew our pristine chinois would be introduced to garlic, or worse: a 4 oz. ladle. (If you must force something through this expensive, delicate piece of equipment, use the smallest ladle: 1-2 oz.)

As some of you know, I’ve spent the last seven days baking up a storm for a major plated dessert tasting I have today at noon. I’m working primarily out of restaurant kitchen in San Francisco, which is great because, in my one bedroom flat in Berkeley, I don’t have a walk-in refrigerator. Nor do I have a row of burners and any number of ovens for various sensitive custards and buttery shortbread.

But working out the details has been a logistical challenge. Lists and lists and lists get made, sometimes twice a day. I’m arranging time sensitive batters, freezing times, a fight for space in an extremely busy establishment, and I want the seven people eating my desserts today to taste the freshest of flavors! I’ve only been able to be in said kitchen from @ 6:30-9/10 AM a few days, and the rest of the time I’m testing components in my home. I’ve also wanted to build in time for testing, tasting and re-making if needed. Disasters always take more time than we think they will.

The trick to plated desserts is to create a menu that is all things to all people. Desserts need to be:
Both comforting and innovative, cold and hot, soft and crunchy, smooth and toothsome, sweet and a little salty, a balance of acid and fat, pretty to look at, right-sized and worth the price (don’t get me started on this), eaten only with one utensil, have a pronounce-able name on the menu, sweets the waiters like, something you want to eat after that which came before, have a plating style which matches the aesthetic of the dining room/savory food/the diner’s outfits, seasonal or mostly chocolate, flavorful or too sweet, dumbed down or esoteric and conceptual.

As you can see, it’s a tall order.

Pastry chefs are responsible for feeding you your last morsel. We can help you to leave happy or discouraged. We can save a mediocre meal or confuse a good one with awfulness. We can give you more of what you’ve been eating since the 80’s: creme brulee, warm molten chocolate cake, apple tart, lemon bars, hot fudge sundaes and mint leaf garnishes. Or we can introduce you to fruits at their peak of flavor, subtle herb infused ice creams and pot de cremes, seemingly savory ingredients infiltrating the last course, and allow your imaginations to soar as we push the envelope for you.

If you trust the pastry chef, you can take virtual trips to sights unseen and explored! Beyond your wildest imaginings…

The pastry chef’s prep lists at Coi.

To this end, I bring you a game. The Plated Dessert Menu Game.

I give you 6 mains, and a list of possible components. Each main needs at least 3 components to comprise one cohesive plated dessert. You can take creative license with one dessert and add a component that’s not on the list, but you have to say why you chose to do so.

Mains:

1. Butterscotch pot de creme 2. Carnaroli rice pudding 3. Warm milk chocolate veloute 4. Ricotta cheesecake (this has no crust) 5. Pate a choux doughnuts 6. Lemon Sherbet

Components:

Crunchy poached rhubarb dice, Vanilla Egg Cream, Chantilly, Malt ice cream, Cherries, Brown Butter ice cream, Candied Citrus Zests, Mesquite flour, Rose geranium, Pecan shortbread, Warm chocolate sauce, Cherry vinegar, Double Vanilla Shortbread, Cocoa nibs, Fleur de Sel, Dacquoise, California Bay Laurel gelee, Shuna’s Famous Graham Crackers, and Swiss meringue.

GO!