Pasta for Lunch, Atkins for Dinner

After making more than enough gemelli for a nice couple of lunches, it was time to cut the carbs. Good thing the city still has outstanding, reasonably priced eateries to go along with those fortunate to have no-questions-asked expense accounts. (Thanks go to the gang of Jomo, and also to The Prisoner.)

With folks in tow, it was time to make another restaurant selection and reservation, and given that their palates lean mostly Italian, it was time to visit Jackson Fillmore Trattoria again. I ate there once, ages ago, and remembered it as a good place to take parents. I actually made this patronizing observation to my old man at another local Italian place, and he took more than slight offense, especially since he was paying. But not only is he over it now, he's also onto something about how unique places like Jackson Fillmore are in San Francisco.

Jackson Fillmore's unique because it's near the corner of Jackson and Fillmore in a somewhat nondescript storefront, yes, and because the food is drop-dead dynamite at a midrange price. All of our entrees were less than $20 and most of the starters peaked at less than half that and everybody got knocked out. Chicken king Phil (the dad) had half a roast bird in what was described as a Sicilian style, and it was no ordinary poulet roti -- this was moist and succulent even in the breast. My big score was getting the pan-fried pork chops with fried herbs, served on greens. Great texture with pork and the herbs, and no starch!

As good as our main courses were, we couldn't stop talking about the starter the waiter recommended, carpaccio di zucchini, julienned zuch with pecorino and toasted almonds. Nobody ever had anything like it and probably won't find it anywhere else. Our guy also tipped me to a fine glass of tempranillo. We hope to be back soon, while it's still catering to schnooks and their parents.

Recipe: Italian Egg Rolls

This is adapted from, um, Dom DeLuise:

Slice up a couple of eggplants, lengthwise, into thin slices, no more than 1/4 inch thick. (Save the odds and ends. See below.) Put them down on cutting boards or something and sweat them out with salt for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, prep your station: Beat a couple of eggs, and get your bread crumbs on a plate. Grease a couple of cookie sheets. Preheat the oven to 350.

Dab the moisture off the eggplants with a paper towel, and then take the slices one by one and dredge them in egg and then in bread crumbs and lay them on the cookie sheets. Once they're all done, pop them in the oven for 15 minutes so they get tender.

Take what's left of your setup and bread the odds and ends; you'll fry these as a appetizer for later or save them for sandwiches.

Mix 15 ounces or so of ricotta in a bowl with some fresh-cut parsley. I also added a chopped garlic clove and cracked in some fresh pepper. Slice up a half-pound ball of mozzarella, again in thin slices. I used fresh mozz, since that's what they had at 22nd and Irving.

Now that you've gone through the prep, you're ready to assemble. Put a bit of cheese on a slice of baked eggplant, and top with a spoonful of ricotta. Roll it up and place it seam side down in a baking pan. When you've got them all rolled up and nestled, ladle some marinara sauce on top. (You have some of that marinara you made last time, don't you?) Grate a little Parmesan or whatnot on top and pop the pan or pans back in the hot oven for 30 minutes.

At the end of the evening, you won't exactly look like Dom, but you'll be well sated so you can do all the dishes.

Bistro East, Part 2: Otto

No way we could spend a week in New York and read Heat (full review later) without darkening one of Mario Batali's doors. So with Da Fanch's gourmand cousins in town from Norwich, all seven of us walked over to Otto, his pizza place.

In Heat, Buford reports that Batali took many weeks, maybe months to get the pizzas, cooked on a flattop griddle, not in an oven, to the point where customers stopped sending them back. ("There were complaints. They were too spongy. They were undercooked. They weren't crispy. You couldn't cut them with a knife. Joe wasn't sleeping: 'Everyone is suddenly a fucking pizza expert.'" - p.160)

We didn't send ours back, though we didn't think they were oh so molto. I had the bottarga and fennel; Fanch had the mushroom. We liked the crust; we liked the sauce; but both toppings were too salty, the mushrooms unpleasantly so. I fretted: perhaps they're supposed to be salty, and we're not eating them with the right appetizers, or something. Perhaps we're not good enough.

This was crazy talk, of course. Someone in the kitchen had a heavy hand with the salt. Period.

Everything else was top-notch. The apps came in large ramekins and several went around the table. All delicious, especially the cold lentils, the octopus, and the eggplant caponatina, all redolent of late-night outdoor Mediterranean dinners eaten ad hoc, dish by dish at the proprietor's whim.

The waiter showed great patience as we maneuvered the Schnoodle's stroller through a maze of tables, and again as certain members of our party took interminable amounts of time to decide what to order. We also had internal disagreements about the wine selection -- what seemed like hundreds of Italian wines to choose from, none less than $35 a bottle, and none of us knew a thing about them. The waiter was unflappable. He recommended a bottle, not cheap, and damn if he didn't match it to our criteria. We ordered a second bottle.

Stuffed to the gills, we ordered a couple desserts anyway: the olive oil and ricotta coppettas (coppette?). Olive oil gelato at first sounds like a candidate for a Yuck?, but it was sublime. Gotta get the A-Ron to put it on his menu at the next Page Street party.

One complaint, other than the pizza, was the noise level. I was sitting under a speaker, and the music, a mix of guitar rock and Brit-pop that might well have been streaming right from Mario's iPod, kept changing volume level with songs getting cut off in the middle. I know it's a pizzeria, but at these prices, the kids in the kitchen shouldn't be fighting over the stereo.

Coming soon, part 3 (mistakenly advertised in the last post as Part 2): Revenge of the Beefeater, a Venezuelan hideaway, and Oh! Deer.

Fork New York

Setting aside the daily lunch grabs at the DJ cafeteria (you'll never meet nicer guys behind a counter, anywhere), not out of anything negative but out of expediency, I loved everything I ate in the city last week.

A few things popped out; there were some oddities, like that ice in beer I saw in Pennsylvania the last time I went east. Speaking of, every single beer at the Kerbs Boathouse concession in the park is $7, bottle or draft, domestic or imported. I had a Hebrew National for $5 and found a bench in the sun. Oh yes.

Why are scrambled eggs cooked to order at most Greek diners, upscale or not, too dry? Do you have to ask for them wet? Does every single place to eat buy cannellini beans from the same supplier? Probably.

The two worthy meals of note: In reverse order, Uskudar is a tiny Turkish place in the Upper East's avenues that we popped into because it got blurbed in a copy of New York magazine we lugged around. Starters were not auspicious or impressive at all, and a little pricey. A side serving of same-old cannellini, and not many of them, sautéed with a little onion and tomato paste or something shouldn't be $7 or $8. (A similar-size portion of fava beans with tomatoes and French feta at Aziza, by contrast, comes piping hot out of the oven and is worth whatever the market will bear. Which at Aziza is a lot.)

For main course I winged it and was won over by the manti (one version at right) which are Turkish dumplings in a tangy yogurt sauce. A single one of these morsels of meat-stuffed dough can sit on a nickel, and I had me a bowl with about five bucks' worth of nickels. The highlight, however, was inviting an older couple to sit at an adjacent table and having very casual, nonintrusive chatter at comfortable intervals among the four of us.

Turns out they've been coming to Uskudar every Monday for 25 years. Turns out they have actually been to my hometown of Mayagüez a few times to visit a friend. It blew me away. I got so giddy I didn't catch the gent's name. I wish my mom woulda been there; she knows everybody.

Then there was the delightful Da Andrea on Hudson, where we met Amy, a former colleague of Kristen's, along with Amy's husband Paul and a strapping almost 3-year-old Max. A&P used to live in the Village and in the same building as the couple that runs Da Andrea. Naturally they love Max. They also know what Max loves best.

Neither Michael Eisner nor Michael Ovitz in his heyday could have gotten bottled water faster than Max gets his Parmesan, sliced fresh at the table, chop chop. The host and co-owner (whose name I forget, again giddy on my way out after the Italian double kiss) was patient, listening and recommended a few dishes for us even as the place was about to pop with people. Of course, she goes and orders up most of the things on the menu and some specials off it to go with them.

The first flotilla of plates was dizzying -- grapefruit-red prosciutto with soft, flat buns to make mini sandwiches, soft polenta that warmed you all over, the octopus salad, I can't recall them all. Complete knockout. No idea why I passed up the veal sweetbreads for the lamb shank with the same damn cannellini, but that's the way it goes. There was plenty of meats and pastas to share anyway, and they were very good.

After a round of desserts, check comes and it's $99. I pick it up and Amy and Paul leave a $25 tip. Max takes his penne to go.

My thoughts: It's a beautiful thing about the city that you meet all sorts of people, some of whom beam when they see good friends coming into their restaurant with other soon friends. But sitting there taking it all in, I had to ask Paul: How do New Yorkers pick a favorite restaurant, particularly an Italian one, in a neighborhood drowning in red sauce? Word of mouth, he says. Thoughts? I know I've done my part for Da Andrea.

Review: Oliveto

Like Chez Panisse, Oliveto has two floors, two menus and two price ranges, the social stratification made visceral by a staircase. Is this what John Edwards is talking about? While a privileged few in America are upstairs eating stuffed Jones Ranch rabbit, the rest of us are downstairs scraping by on pizza con pancetta, fennel and dandelion? No justice, no peace!

We opted for the lower realm, mainly because we didn't have a reservation but also because of our sneaker-ish footwear, which the hostess assessed with an obvious glance as we stepped inside.

Let's get this out of the way first: it still wasn't cheap. Nearly $90 for two people, and it teetered on the edge of "worth it." Here's why:

I started with a negroni to slake my summertime thirst. It was too sweet, and the waitress spilled a few splashes as she set it down. At $10 a cocktail, that's no small loss.

We ordered three apps, two of which were spectacular, a summer squash carpaccio and a wild-greens soup. The salumi plate was uninspiring, with two of the salumis very similar in taste and texture (what's the point of doing a sampler?) and the third, a pate on crostini, basically pure fat and salt. Which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it was far from sublime. So 2-for-3, and high hopes for the entrees...

The Fanch had lamb shoulder daube, I had the grilled squid piled on a large crostino and drizzled with aioli. Both were flavorful; both were salty. Again, salty's not necessarily bad, but when you're paying $15 for mini-entrees in a house of excellent repute, you hope for a bit more subtlety, a few more well-played notes. With a bit of the grill's char riffing off the deep-sea brine, my squid worked better toward that goal than Fanch's lamb.

We skipped dessert.

Sometimes I sound like a broken record. It's just not worth it. I won't go quite that far this time; in fact, the upstairs menu, which changes frequently, was adventuresome enough to lure me back for a big splurge, but it would have to be a very special occasion.

As for downstairs, which is more along the lines of a trattoria with pastas and pizzas and salads, I would do it again, especially if it were a choice between that and the Pasta Pomodoro down the block.

Adesso, Perbacco

As readers of this space know, I've had a thing for the spendy place downtown. As Jomo knows all too well, I finally was able to sit at table and partake. I report, you decide if it's a mash note.

During a hectic work week, I had planned on just after-work drinks with the lovely Kristen, before she headed off to the dining room beyond the bar with her fellow personal-finance staffers. (We bumped into da Fanch on the way in, and I'm proud to say that she has now seen the mysterious Jomo in person. Not to be confused with Mysterious Jomo.) But the pretty ornery personal-finance editor wouldn't have any of it: No way I was leaving.

At least three times I excused myself. He insisted he was buying me dinner. Actually, the company was buying, and interestingly, there was an extra spot. I'm still writing him a thank-you note.

There were nine of us in total, and we were at the far end upstairs, but we were not alone the whole night. The waiter pointed our evening's host to the super Tuscans on the wine list, and suggested several appetizers. I counted two waiters in shirts and ties, a woman who walks the floor and helps with wine and assorted runners pouring, clearing, checking.


We began with hamachi crudo, large serving plates of house salumi with pork paté (SFGate photo here), fritto misto, salt cod in a brandade style with crostini and the absolutely dynamite burata, which is folded soft cheeses that make a sort of pillow. I must be missing something, but I did note how divine the homemade rolls were -- warm, toothsome, a little sour and dusted with a touch of flour. I can't remember the last time I ate a dinner roll.

Then for our second courses, I had the salad of so-called little gems, which are like baby Romaine leaves. Burton, sitting across from me, insisted I have some of his octopus, which was bore a slight char from the grill. I'm having that when I go back.

My main dish was the Berkshire pork chop with borlotti beans, braised red chard and roasted tomatoes. It was a plump piece of pig patterned with a crosshatch from the grill, and it was perhaps the best-prepared chop I've ever had. The color within was similar to that of a flatiron steak ordered medium, and other than a little fat trimming, all of it was delectable.

For dessert, I paired homemade hazelnut cookies with a Vino Santo, and the cookies blew everyone away. Their looks were deceiving, because they seemed so rich but were so light to the touch.

On the way out later, I ask Umberto, the omniscient force on the floor at Perbacco, about the dish. "We start with a superior product," he said, and then comes the brining. As I said, Umberto knows.

We also had a little chat about the china cups for the servings of gelato, molded to have a slight dent to look and feel like Dixie cups. Umberto said that when they saw them, they thought they were the coolest.

Perbacco has staked out something people like -- upscale Italian -- and brings it with both barrels but none of the haute attitude. Burton did mention that the reservation was quite difficult to negotiate. Note for next time: Sample the five-hour pork sugo and/or roasted veal ragout. Maybe I can talk the parents into it, now that summer's coming. Also, study the wine list, since it's likely I'll be buying, as soon as the raise or Uncle Rupert comes through. I promise, Umberto.

Review: Ciao, Bella

Skipping here a bit away from my report from the Caribbean to report from a busy corner of Geary, the one in the Inner Richmond just down from Nizario's with a Burger King on one corner, a Toyota dealer on another and a Kragen across the street. Kristen and I were going to eat downtown but didn't want to wander to North Beach and deal. We had settled on Italian, and I'll admit that I obsessed about where to go closer to the western neighborhoods. Bella was the best I could come up with, and K had even hit it before. Worth an official visit.

Maybe my skepticism was healthy, but it wasn't on the mark. Readers will recall that I go easy on the starches, but we each had fresh ravioli that knocked our socks off.

We sat sidesaddle on a banquette and watched traffic roll westward in the late light with something sparkling, as is our wont. The prosecco rosé was of a grapefruit color like the Handley I used to get shipped over from Mendo County, like the flower floating in a glass goblet on the table next to the tea light in the brandy snifter. The location is interesting, to say the least, and the Chron makes note of this in its two reviews. How many times have I staggered in two doors up the block for a slice but never checked out the corner? What of the parking gods, gracious or hellacious? If we weren't on public transit, it's likely we wouldn't have landed here.

Anyway, the small antipasto plate was good for two, with roasted eggplant, zucchini, cured salumi, a little fresh mozzarella and some dark olives, and for $3 more I bet the large would be a nice nosh for four.

I leaned toward the specials, which are listed on a separate page. Should I have the veal lasagna or the Vin Santo-braised short ribs? Looking for something lighter, I tried the lobster ravioli with tomato-cream sauce. K had the chicken ravioli in tomatoes and basil, off the regular menu (both $15).

The entrees were light, perfectly seasoned, very well paired with the prosecco, without the heaviness of butter or anything else. The tomato-cream sauce, sometimes known as the rossini, lets you have the best of both worlds, but instead of pinkish my plate showed some of the robustness of the beverage and the flower on the table, but not as much intensity as the tomatoes on Kristen's dish, which distinctly was made with chicken but also not dry or bland or overdone. Two versions of ravioli, both flawless, soft as pillows and handing the flavor to the fillings.

We had the hostess and a waiter checking in on us, fetching us fresh drinks and also comping us zabaglione with berries, mint, cinnamon and demi spoons. That was very nice. Without tip, the tab was $75.

For those who say that I'm fastidious and find fault with everything, even a nearly perfect dining experience, I know you're waiting so I won't disappoint: The table needed shimming.

Next post: latitude and longitude.

A Hint of Mint

Welcome back to the occasional series, Sugo on Hugo. It's been at least a year since returning to the cozy, rainy-night basics of a sugo sauce ladeled over a toothsome pasta. The idea behind sugo is just minced meat. No veggies, no music, no veggies, no veggies, except for the onion and garlic chopped extremely fine. Tonight we chose lean ground beef, 5% fat, with the longer threads of the grind broken up with a wooden spoon as it was sauteeing. Don't give me no lumpy sugo, pal.

A large handful of red pepper flakes and a generous pinch of brown sugar later, it still needed something. Ah-ha: dried mint leaves, pulled from the stalks, ripped into small pieces but not pulverized. The more the better: I didn't really measure.

Fabulous. Beef and mint and dried red pepper, just what the doctor ordered as the hailstorms pinged the kitchen window and the thunder shook the fusilli.

Al's Cioppino

I've learned many things in the kitchen of Roz, but perhaps my favorite is cioppino, the San Franciscan seafood stew. There really is no recipe, per se, but as a shortcut you can start with this one and adjust liberally. Here are my tweaks:

* Dice carrots, celery and potato, each equal to about 1 cup. Add them when you add the bell pepper and saute.

* Salmon works nicely instead of the snapper or halibut. Avoid farmed salmon if possible.

* If you can't find fresh clams, use a can of minced clams.

* Seafood stock is better than bottled clam juice.

* Substitute white wine for the red.