Mitch Rosenthal. Photo credit: Paige Green © 2011

Mitch Rosenthal is the chef and owner of three of San Francisco's most beloved restaurants, Town Hall, Salt House, and Anchor & Hope, as well as Irving Street Kitchen in Portland, Oregon. Mitch hails from Edison, New Jersey, and was a chef at the Four Seasons in New York City, Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio in San Francisco, and Paul Prudhomme’s K-Paul’s in New Orleans. Through the years and through many kitchens, Mitch developed an adventurous philosophy not bound to a single cuisine, blending Jewish deli roots with Southern-inspired comfort food, updated regional favorites and urban sophistication.

The recipes for many of his favorite dishes appear in his newly published cookbook, Cooking My Way Back Home (2011, Ten Speed Press), and reflect the Southern exuberance of Town Hall, the contemporary approach of Salt House, and the focus on fresh seafood of Anchor & Hope. The book draws upon Mitch’s 35 years of restaurant experience but is geared toward the home chef—he tested every single recipe in his own home kitchen. Readers can cook up one of the book’s recipes, the Cheesy Rosti Potato Cake, at the end of this piece. Mitch lives in Mill Valley with his wife, Mary, and two children, Eli and Athena.

What do you have planned for Thanksgiving?

We’re having 30 people over at our house, and the menu will probably be a little different this year. We’re thinking of doing the turkey porchetta style: boneless, rolled up with lots of traditional spices, and roasted. This way, we’ll have more time to do other things -- maybe a seafood paella. Both are untraditional for us, we’ve never done this before. Since we’re having a lot of people over and have a pretty small house, we can cook the paella outside over the grill and just roast the porchetta. The porchetta will take less time to cook and be much easier to carve than a traditional turkey. We’re still discussing sides, as the flavors from the fennel and other spices used on the porchetta will change what will go with it. For example, we’ll probably skip the cranberry sauce and use something like Italian mustard fruits instead. But my wife Mary will still make her apple-sausage stuffing, as she does every year.

Please tell the story of closing Salt House and using it for a special Thanksgiving...

It was a disaster. Fun, but a disaster. Originally it was supposed to be a dinner for close friends and family, but then we had people inviting others and suddenly there were about 70 people at dinner. We had to put all of our tables in the restaurant together to fit everyone. The menu was very traditional: roast turkey with all the trimmings, Mary’s apple-sausage stuffing, and cranberry sauce. We did have jambalaya, though, and my brother Steve made his chopped liver, which he does every year. We had a lot of wine. It was fun, but there’s a point when you’re cooking for a group where you start to feel like the hired help instead of the host. I never got to sit down. We had a good time, but it was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Any dishes that have special meaning?

The chopped chicken liver that my brother makes every year is our grandmother’s recipe. It’s in the cookbook. And Mary cooks a lot of recipes that were handed down -- her apple-sausage stuffing is from her mother. We also serve latkes with smoked salmon at Thanksgiving as an hors d’oeuvre, which I learned from Tom Plajanis, the chef at the Jewish deli I worked at in New Jersey. The latke recipe is in the cookbook as well.

How is the book tour going?

The book tour really just started, but I’m always surprised by how many people show up. The biggest surprise so far was probably earlier this month at Powell’s Books in Portland, which was my first big talk during a book signing. I was really nervous, but it was great -- I was able to go on for over an hour talking and had to cut myself off. It’s so easy to talk about food and the stories around it. The other big surprise has been all of the emails I’m getting from long-lost friends, lots from the East Coast. Ever since the cookbook was published, I’m hearing from some great old friends that I haven’t talked to in years.

How did your cookbook come about?

Honestly, I was pushed into writing a cookbook. Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine pushed me into it -- they’ve been bugging me for years. The funny thing is that’s how I got into the restaurant business: my mother pushed me into it.

One of the biggest surprises to me while writing the cookbook was how little it affected my marriage. With Mary being a chef, we got into very few fights while testing recipes at home -- basically I just let her be the boss. The big thing about testing recipes at home was that it brought me closer to the overall experience of cooking at home, which was a first. I’ve spent my life cooking in restaurant kitchens, and cooking out of my house brought me closer to the home cook. But I’m hoping that the book will do the opposite for the home chef, giving people the skills for more restaurant-level cooking.

What are you favorite off-night food & drink spots?

The reality is that I don’t go out that often, but when I do, I love R&G Lounge for their salt and pepper fried crab. Or the original Shalimar restaurant in the Tenderloin, for their lamb and spinach stew.

Favorite date night spots?

We like to visit Redd, a friend’s restaurant, in Yountville for special occasions, and have actually been to Aziza a few times in the last couple of months. They have these great vegetable spreads made with charred eggplant and yogurt dill. I had calamari with a saffron sauce that was amazing.

What is your favorite meal to have with friends and/or family?

When I go out to eat we usually go out with my family. We love Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. I always get the Jersey Original, and we always order the meatballs -- they’re amazing. Our new favorite place to eat out as a family is Super Duper burgers. I get the Double. We also love Yank Sing for any of their dumplings -- my kids go crazy there.

Mitch Rosenthal. Photo: Paige Green

Guiltiest food pleasure?

I love it and it’s gross: a Jersey Taylor pork roll. The way they’re made is very specific. It’s pork on a Kaiser roll, topped with fried egg, ketchup and American cheese. You only ever see them in Jersey. They’re so bad for you that I rarely eat them anymore, but last time I was in Jersey I had one.

How did you and your wife meet?

Mary worked for me in the kitchen at Postrio. The longer story is that she went on to become chef at the Liberty Café, but we had a mutual friend, Robin, who cooked with us and stayed on in the kitchen after Mary left. Robin thought that Mary and I would make a great couple and told Mary that I kept asking about her, all the while telling me that Mary was asking about me. None of this was true, but she ended up setting us up on a date. True story.

Tell us about your kids? Do they have favorite foods?

My son Eli is 12 and my daughter Athena is 8. Eli’s favorite food is pizza. Athena is a big fan of any soup, especially brothy soup. When they come to Town Hall, Eli has the BBQ shrimp. Athena has a broader palate, and loves ribs, fried chicken and meatballs.

Any advice for cooks during the holidays?

Test dishes you’ve never made before. Like with the Thanksgiving turkey porchetta, which is something we’ve never done, I’m not going to wait until the day-of to figure out the details. Look through what you’re planning to cook and see what you can prepare a day or two early so you’re not cooking everything all at once. Start early, and have a cocktail. Or a beer. And invite people that you like.

Recipe: Cheesy Rösti Potato Cake with Roasted Garlic and Thyme

Serves 6 to 8

2 heads garlic
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
3 large russet potatoes
4 ounces fontina cheese, grated
1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350°F.
to roast the garlic, cut the top off of each head of garlic, about 1/8 of an inch to expose the cloves. Put in a shallow pan and drizzle a tablespoon of the olive oil over each, season with salt and pepper. Cover the pan with foil and roast in the oven until cloves are soft and creamy, about 45 minutes to an hour. When done, and cool enough to handle, squeeze the cloves from their papery skin and set aside.

to steam the potatoes, place a collapsible metal vegetable steamer basket in a large heavy-bottomed pot with an inch of water. Bring the water to a boil, add the whole, unpeeled potatoes and steam for 16 minutes. Set the potatoes aside to cool.

It is important that the potatoes are completely cool before continuing. When they are, peel the potatoes and grate on the largest hole of a box grater and season with salt and pepper.

In a bowl, toss together the grated fontina and Parmesan and set aside.

to make the rösti, heat one-half of the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium heat. Add half of the grated potatoes and distribute them evenly, pushing them down with the spatula and shaping them to the form of the pan. Next layer the roasted garlic cloves evenly on top of the potatoes. Then, layer the grated cheese over the garlic and potatoes in an even circle, leaving about 1/4 inch from the edge of the pan. Pack the cheese down with the spatula, and then sprinkle with the chopped thyme, and cover with the remaining half of the grated potatoes, making sure to cover the garlic and cheese completely and evenly. Pack it down and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the potatoes are crispy and golden brown. When ready, turn the rösti over. This can be accomplished using either a spatula, a quick flick of the wrist, or by turning it out onto a plate, and then back into the pan. After it has been flipped, cook for 5 more minutes, then slip the pan into the oven for another 5 minutes. Slice and serve immediately.

“Reprinted with permission from Cooking My Way Back Home: Recipes from San Francisco’s Town Hall, Anchor & Hope, and Salt House by Mitchell Rosenthal, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.”

Chris Pastena drawing a glass at Chop Bar

Americans are so darn rigid about wine. For instance, we used to know that good wine was French or Italian, but California made nothing but schlock.

Then we warmed to California wine, but knew that wine poured out of a tap at a bar was nothing but schlock. (Anheuser Busch used to sell wine on tap in the 1970s, and it wasn't very good.)

Think again.

Wine on tap is sweeping into restaurants and bars around the Bay Area because... well, let Gus Vahlkamp explain it. He's the wine director for Out the Door in San Francisco (Charles Phan's new mini-chain).

"There are really three reasons. It's better to reuse than recycle, our recycling has been reduced by at least half. Also it's cost effective, because the producers aren't adding on the cost of the bottle, the cork, the carton and the transportation it comes in. I'm able to buy these wines at 25 percent off the wholesale bottle cost. And third, because these wines have not been bottled, I can go to the winery, create my own custom blend, and pour a wine that no one else in the country is going to have."

So it's greener than bottles, and cheaper. And Vahlkamp and other restaurateurs are passing the savings on to customers. Out The Door sells a crisp, fresh 2009 Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc for $4.50 a glass. At Chop Bar in Oakland near Jack London Square, co-owner Chris Pastena (formerly of Coda) sells a Frogs Leap 2008 Zinfandel on tap for $12 a glass, when it might go for $16 or $18 out of a bottle.

The tap setup at Chop Bar

And the wine always tastes fresh. Most restaurants pour their wine-by-the-glass selections out of bottles that sit for days, often long after the contents inside have staled. But restaurants with tap systems use an inert gas like argon or nitrogen to push the wine through the lines. That gas also protects the wine for weeks against oxidation. (Wineries blanket their wines with the same gases for the same reason when they store their wines in tanks.)

"What's funny about keg wine is it's an old idea made new again," says Matt Licklider, co-owner of Lioco Wine in Santa Rosa, one of Out The Door's chief suppliers.

"My partners and I were inspired in creating our wine by our experience in Europe," Licklider says. "We loved this idea that there was no ceremony about wine in Europe. You can take an empty jug to lots of regional coops in France and fill it up for pennies an ounce. So even when we wrote the business plan, we had always talked about alternative packaging."

There's also a big locavore angle to this tap wine boom. Vahlkamp picks his wine up in a van every few weeks from wineries in Carneros and Sonoma. At Chop Bar, Pastena buys a few kegs of wine, once a month, from JC Cellars, a winery just down the block really, from the restaurant. "I can promise you, Pastena says, "there's no carbon emissions when we truck those kegs over here on a hand cart." The wine in those kegs is JC Cellars Daily Ration, a rich California red blend for just $6 a glass that goes well with The Chop Bar's Niman Ranch Burger.

Michael Ouellette with a sample

There are a few big technical questions left to resolve before this boom in tap wine goes global. Different restaurants and different wineries use different keg systems, and often have their kegs custom built, and only a few wineries own equipment to efficiently fill the kegs. Michael Ouellette of Vintap, the former wine director for Mustards in St. Helena, now drives all over the North Coast, basically hand bottling kegs at choice wineries like Steltzner in Stags Leap and Oakville Ranch Vineyards. Ouellette says he's designing a bottling truck to automate the process. Rudy Von Strasser at Von Strasser Winery sells Ouellette a dynamite Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon for sale on tap, but he says he hates the hassle factor. And when I talked to Vahlkamp at the Out The Door on Bush Street, he was exhausted and grubby from his keg road trip. He washes the kegs himself by hand. And you thought being a sommelier was a glamour job.

"That's one of the challenges we're facing," says Licklider. We need a keg wine summit, to work out all the complexities in it."

Michael Ouellette's Vintap samples

Still one of the first and most successful restaurants to serve wine on tap, Two Urban Licks, makes it work all way across the country in Atlanta, with 42 wines, half white, half red.

And imagine a day when it's as easy to get a great local wine on tap for cheap, as it is to get a great local beer. Who says the future's not all it's cracked up to be.

A few more Bay Area restaurants serving wine on tap:
Salt House
Delfina
Frances
Ironside
Coda
Annabelle's Bar & Bistro
Tavern at Lark Creek
Residual Sugar Wine Bar

Cy Musiker will be discussing "green" trends in wine on Food & Wine This Week with Leslie Sbrocco, wine expert and host of Check, Please! Bay Area and Jean-Charles Boisset, wine innovator and President of Boisset Family Estates.
Watch Friday 6/25 at 8pm on KQED 9HD.

Alemany Farm tomatoes

It's been a busy time at my house this week. Between working full time and preparing for this year's Eat Local Challenge*, I haven't had much time to catch up on my favorite blogs. Perusing the sites this morning, I found several compelling posts from some of our Bay Area bloggers.

In the last couple of weeks, Chowhounds have been hunting for an elusive Korean catering truck that travels around SOMA and the Embarcadero during lunchtime. The Bunrabs have found it and reported on it. I think it might be worth tracking down! The photo of the charred chicken bowl that they posted has set my stomach grumbling.

When I went to Vancouver for the first time this past May, I had tried the Canadian snack called poutine. It's an artery-clogging dish and when it's made correctly it can be addictive -- french fries topped with a peppery brown gravy and cheese curds. Food Hoe reports that Salt House is serving a delicious rendition made with Vermont cheddar, short rib gravy, and fresh herbs.

I am not a baker. I rarely make desserts, and when I do they tend to lean toward the simple and minimalist. However, Dessert First's gorgeous desserts often tempt me into wanting to try something a little more fancy. I think at my next dinner party, I'll have to try my hand at her gorgeous Hazelnut Cake with Roasted Glazed Peaches. Wow.

Oh, and join me at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market this Saturday at 10.30 am when I interview James Freeman from Blue Bottle Coffee Company. I'm doing it as a volunteer for CUESA's "Meet the Producer" program.

* Keep an eye on the Eat Local Challenge blog this week to find out how you can participate, or check this blog next Tuesday for a summary of the September challenge.