From Kristen: Soup for You

When Anthony and I embarked on a pork and pink-bean soup with corn-muffin croutons this weekend, I had modest expectations. I have long lacked kitchen confidence, a side effect of my general laziness toward cooking and a chronic lack of imagination in front of a full refrigerator. But with the changing of the seasons has come a roaring appetite -- not just for food but for the making of it.

I found the recipe in this month's Food and Wine magazine, and pretty soon I  was mixing batter for the ultra-easy Johnny cake that would provide the croutons. Then I chopped onion and garlic while A got started with the bacon strips. We softened up the basics and threw in a little green and orange bell pepper before adding the maple syrup, which pleased my East Coast sensibilities.

Soon came the beans, browned bacon and chicken stock. Anthony went off recipe and tossed in some boneless chicken. A garnish of chopped red onions topped it off. I'm delighted to report the end result bore a close resemblance to the picture on the page! [An example is at right. -- Ed.] We lapped up several bowls' worth as if we were famished farmers working the plow all day. Ah, the nostalgia of harvest.

Only thing I would change next time is I'd cut the amount of bacon in half -- less of the strong taste and animal fat go a long way.

Breakfast Butt-rito

"We don't try to hide what these are," Haley said. "When consumers go to other fast-food places they feel like they've got to buy two of their breakfast sandwiches or burritos to fill up. This is really designed to fill you up."

Pizza My Heart

Everyone's noticed that this town has gone pizza-crazy recently. When I moved here 7 years ago, there was nary a good pie to be had (perhaps Pauline's was the pinnacle at the time).

Today there's a great diversity of dough, sauce and cheese on offer, and a much higher threshold to cross to enter the city's competitive pizza joint landscape.

It's not surprising that Michael Bauer has jumped on the bandwagon, starting a weekly blog entry about pizza around the Bay Area. So far, he did a good job nailing Gialina in Glen Park. But we'll have to wait and see what else he uncovers. One place we haven't tried that has been amped up in the press lately is the Pizza Place on Noriega, supposedly an East Coast-style dough thrower. When we do get around to sampling their pies, we'll share the verdict here first.

Kid Stuff

New link to some old colleagues: Gastrokid, a blog by ex-Standardites Hugh Garvey and Matthew Yeomans. A quick spin through their material yields this interesting tip: only buy meat that's on sale. Read on to find out why.

Try Waxing

> Mrs. Useloff, 36, was once a picky eater herself. Although she drank gallons of milk, she couldn’t abide raw fruits or vegetables. New foods with strange textures literally frightened her. The aversion lasted until her 20s, when she worked to overcome her fears. Even today, she refuses to buy cucumbers.

Probably because she already has one up her butt:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/dining/10pick.html

I'm having a fine day otherwise, but while suddenly irritating, let me ask this: If you have kids but don't blog about them, are they really there?

Shouldering the Burden

Anyone know what to do with those boneless, skinless strips of pork shoulder from TJ's? They cook (and overcook) in mere minutes in a skillet. Are they supposed to be coarsely chopped and simmered low and slow in a sauce, like a mole or chile verde? Thrown into a pho soup with noodles? Also, please tell me what to do once I've already browned them whole.

Review: From Blue Jay to Nopa

The Blue Jay Cafe and Nopa are two ends of a spectrum, two ends of a new destination corridor that for better or for worse the out-of-towners have marked on their maps, still a bit titillated by the "random shootings" the neighborhood was "once mostly known for."

This past week I ate at both and, not entirely putting thoughts on class and gentrification aside, enjoyed both thoroughly. A quick summary of each:

- The Blue Jay is a soul-food place, a nod to the neighborhood's decades as African-American but staffed by young white ladies upfront and Latino guys in the kitchen. I'd eaten there once before with uninspired results. Unable to get into Little Star Pizza without waiting an hour, Tony and I walked into Blue Jay on the late side Tuesday to the sound of Ozzy Osbourne on the house speakers. Two tables over, a patron complained to his tablemates that his beans were thoroughly uncooked. The waitresses seemed barely interested. Uh-oh.

My fears were unfounded. The large salad we split was excellent and lightly dressed, which in itself was stunning. I pegged it as the type of place that ruins a salad by slathering it. The side cornbread was scrumptious. Same for the entrees -- mine the red beans 'n' rice with andouille, Tony's the burger with a fried egg atop. The music remained rock 'n' roll but the volume receded to a suitable volume (suitable to two guys in their late 30s, at least), and the service was friendly and attentive. I was impressed, and I said so with a derisive snort aimed at the trendier spots down the street.

- Nopa would be a far easier target for anti-gentrification sentiment if it weren't so damn good. The Fanch and I had a belated mutual birthday/anniversary splurge Thursday and used a gift certificate we'd been saving. We reserved a week in advance for 6pm, the first seating of the evening, and even then had to wait til 6.10. (At least they didn't pull the abhorrent Slanted Door routine of forcing their reservees to wait an hour just to build a line and buzz.)

Soon we sat. I'm not sure why, but I was a bit put off by the tiny amuse-bouche placed before us: two slivers of apple each with a dab of almond butter. Perhaps the precious size, barely a whisper of food, but hey, it was free.

We started with a marinated squid salad and roasted sardines, and both delivered what I always look for in a restaurant that charges a premium: something I've never had before. In the squid salad, it was spicy roasted chickpeas, a delightful nutty counterpoint to the chewy tang of the squid. With the sardines it was the tarragon-infused broth -- the sardine filets perched above the broth on bruschetta-like bread rounds that sopped up the liquid.

Our third appetizer, the flatbread with fennel sausage, could have passed as an entree. Unlike the other apps, it was both more familiar and more generous a portion, something a skilled home chef might bring out to feed friends in front of the TV. It was upscale comfort food at its finest, with gruyere, caramelized onions and radicchio rounding out the toppings.

Our entrees were the vegetarian tagine and lamb shank, and after gorging on the flatbread we figured we'd have to take one of the entrees home. We took home less than we expected, mainly because the tagine was an irresistible example of simple food done exquisitely. The jumble of veg -- potato, turnip, red pepper, eggplant, chickpea -- tasted so fresh it made me suspect the restaurant had a roof garden. The turnips in particular were fabulous, slightly nutty and spicy but without the whiff of ammonia that makes kids, and many others the world over, hate turnips. Sprinkled throughout were toasted almonds and generous spoonfuls of lemon yogurt.

The turnips also showed up with the lamb shank, much to my delight.

As for service, the waitress recommended two glasses of red and each time nailed the description and the pairing I hoped for. (The Grenache-Cinsault '06 Cotes du Rhone with the appetizers, followed by the Corvina Valpolicella with the tagine.)

All this excellence wasn't cheap: $140 for two including tip. It's a bit unclear how the restaurant wants to be a neighborhood hangout where locals go two or three times a week -- something the chef once told our own intrepid restaurant reporter. I don't think he means the same locals who also make Popeye's Fried Chicken a neighborhood hangout. (Or even the Bean Bag Cafe.) I guess you could pop in on your way home from work and sit at the bar with a $12 burger or a $16 tagine, but like so many things in our little island town, the perspective has gotten a bit skewed.

Review: Bistro 9

Bistro 9 opened a month or so ago on 9^th Avenue, a casual Moroccan-Greek joint run by the folks behind Kan Zaman and the Citrus Club. I imagine it hopes to capitalize on its proximity to Park Chow a few doors down, picking up the usual evening overflow, and so far it seems to be working

Alex, my mom and I ate there Saturday and were cautiously impressed with the whole package--food, service and ambiance.

We all ordered the kabob platter plus, which includes three meat skewers, two sides and rice pilaf, but made sure not to duplicate choices to sample a wide range of dishes.

The place excels at grilled meat. My chicken skewers in a mint-cumin-yogurt marinade were tender and flavorful as were Alex’s lamb and salmon and my mom’s tangy kefte beef ones.

The sides, however, were uneven; my grilled vegetables a bit underdone and my pearl couscous too mushy, but the beet salad satisfied and the wonderful grilled eggplant slathered in tomato sauce melted in your mouth. Unfortunately, the white bean Provencal was flat. Still, the rice was fantastic and the portions were huge.

Overall, the restaurant had a cheerful hum. There’s a lovely patio out front, a warm, candle-lit main dining room with an exposed brick wall that runs along one side and an L-shaped patio out back with heat lamps, where we sat since it was a fine September evening. The service was speedy and courteous, and the check very, very reasonable.

We also eyed our neighbors’ roasted chickens and Greek salads, which looked great. All in all, I’d say it’s definitely worth returning to as a neighborhood staple, but I don’t think it merits a special trip from other parts of town.

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.

Only in New York

Haven't found the time to squeeze in reports from my recent trip yet, but I had to chime in with a Bruni Alert: sidewalk dining, which of course we understand as disgusting and do it anyway. Kind of like that show with Pat O'Brien as well as the Drudge Report.

FB liked his own piece so much that he followed up on his blog with something from the mailbag:

> “I am reminded,” the reader wrote, “of one of my favorite vintage New Yorker cartoons, where a mother is sitting with her young son at a Manhattan outdoor cafe and urging him to ‘hurry up and eat before your food gets dirty, dear.’”

Review: The Brickhouse

This comes a bit late, as baseball season just ended, but I have a new contender for favorite pre-game pub. I'm a big fan of the 21st Amendment, which I've never reviewed but will someday, and you can't beat their homegrown, but the Brickhouse offers a different atmosphere. It's quiet, it's airy, and the slightly punky, slightly granola wait-staff and high wooden rafters give it more the feel of a farmhouse collective than a sports pub. (And no, it's not a brew pub, but with Anchor Steam on tap, it's close enough.)

Like the 21st, the Brickhouse pares down (and prices up?) the menu on game days -- burgers, sandwiches, salads, and the like. (Non-game days feature more variety.) I had the veggie chili (pretty good) and a large spinach salad (very good). Too small a sample size to say anything definitive about the food. Consider it a developing situation.

Review: EOS Fails to Excite

Alex’s dad and step-mom took us out for a lovely b-day fete a week ago at EOS in Cole Valley. We chose it because it’s new to us, it’s close (I was still on bed-rest) and it’s always busy, surely a good sign.

The restaurant has a good layout, with tables nicely spaced apart and a very tolerable noise level, but there’s a coldness to it. Sleek black tables with very uncomfortable chairs, which might as well be made of cement and give little back support, simply weren’t very inviting. I prefer a chair that feels good and a table setting with a cloth, flowers or candles to liven it up.

Then there’s the service: indifferent. Our waitress disappeared for long stretches, making it difficult to order a second glass of wine, and the small plates came out staggered at odd times, with long yawns between them. I certainly didn’t feel rushed out of the restaurant, but I did feel quite hungry by the time the final dishes were laid to rest.

Then there’s the food: uneven.

The first “small plate” to arrive was the spicy pan-fried long beans, nice, but no better than your typical green beans at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Still, the portion was generous.

Our salads, which arrived next, were a mixed bag (no pun intended). Mine, with cabbage, radicchio, green papaya and mango was colorful, flavorful and crisp, and not too sweet as I’d feared. The classic Caesar, however, was bland, unmemorable.

The other appetizer, grilled baby octopus with fennel and cress salad, had potential. The charred meat was satisfying and nicely offset by the lightness of the salad, but was marred by so much salt that it was as if the cook had forgotten to wash the ocean water off the ingredient.

Our “entrees” likewise were puzzling. The tea-smoked Peking duck breast, with gingered plum compote, was cooked perfectly, very flavorful and not greasy as duck tends to be. But the duck was warm and the compote cold, making for an unfortunate clash of temperatures in the pairing.

Also, for $16 bucks, this should have come with some kind of side vegetable or grain, rather than just four pieces of lonely duck meat.

The grilled New Zealand rack of lamb with summer squash and gremolata was juicy and zingy, but so salty it overpowered the dish -- just as the oversalting had nearly ruined the octopus.

Perhaps the best dish was the hazelnut-crusted Halibut. A terrific, crunchy shell coated the meaty, tender slab of fish beneath. It snoozed on a bed of pea shoots and bok choy, a delicious combo.

Sorry to say we won’t be going back to EOS. To be fair, I hate small plates and the restaurant does not indicate anywhere on its web site that it’s guilty of this sin.

So I felt irked immediately after sitting down and learning I would probably leave hungry. But I tried to be open-minded. Unfortunately, the food and service didn't overcome my misgivings about this evil genre of restaurant.

Pizza My Combo, Take 2

Best pizza combo ever?

* Sliced pesto-chicken sausage
* Kalamata olives, chopped
* Arugula, slightly sauteed first with garlic (and added to the pizza half-way through the 10-minute bake so to avoid over-crisping)

Bargain Bites Riposte: Lime Tree

The Chron has published this year's Bargain Bites list. I'd like everyone to weigh in on the picks. Feel free to span more than one per post. I'll go first:

Lime Tree, 6th and Irving. Cheap, sure, but not even worth the bargain price the several times I've stopped in. My heart breaks to write this, as the owner is the sweetest man in the Inner Sunset. Perhaps he's finally gotten it together, but I visited at least four times in its early days, each time coming away disappointed with the eternal wait for fairly straightforward food (even with no other customers in sight), and with the middling quality. With the Chron's blessing now bestowed, maybe I'll give it one more shot.

Fight Club Sandwiches

Grain of truth alert. Paul Levy writes:

> The food writing that's in vogue today consists chiefly of a bellow of bravado. It's a guy thing, sure, but (with a few honorably hungry exceptions) these scribblers mostly ignore what's on the plate. They view themselves as boy hunters and despise sissy gatherers, thrive on the undertow of violence they detect in the professional kitchen, and like to linger on the unappetizing aspects of food preparation.

Bam! See for yourself: http://www.slate.com/id/2174218/

Mark to Market Bar

The Bistro Hugo's Mysterious Jomo brought me to the Ferry Building, to the Market Bar at 1 Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, and the first and last time I stopped in there last the place was clean out of beer. Tragic.

So here's the rundown: Plenty to drink this time. After wetting my whistle with a Guinness and then a Meteor Pils (from Alsace?), I ordered up half a carafe of dry rosé for the table, along with the prix fixe menu ($35) for myself. My first dish was the rabbit ravioli with chanterelles, an absolute knockout. Then I had the pepper beef filet, pole beans and a little chipotle, perfectly paired with a Grenache blend from the Chateau de Montmiral, Gigondas in the Rhone region ($38), picked kinda randomly and rubber-stamped by the patient and gracious staffer. The dish was perhaps a little overspiced, but perfectly cooked. I also got to tell my favorite cognac story.

My companions noted how the place filled up, and that was a surprise for me for a Wednesday, but hey, it's boom times. Thanks, Jomo!

Here's Looking at Louis

Now catching up with my notes from my last trip, as I prepare for our week in New York. (Any suggestions out there for me?)

Better late than never to commend the fine Bar Louis in the adorable Milford, Pa., hotel where we vegged like royals, in part because it rained. But the place is a great room and has a refreshingly reasonable wine list and desserts that are rich and yet inhaled. It's the kind of place that's stimulating even for just a nightcap while gazing upon Warhol and Lennon gazing back at you, and informal to the extent that somebody will be hanging out nursing Foster's in a glass with ice. Ice in beer, it must be an East Coast thing. Saw this a couple of times.

Kristen and I shared a great bottle of Champagne with some amazing cheeses, the real splurge of the night. Being summer, the roasted corn chowder was dynamite. My Caesar and her salmon with asparagus and balsamic reduction were as good if not better than any others we've had to date. My entree, unforgettable, was the sushi pizza -- a sort of okonomiyaki, a base of sushi rice and rice flour with ahi tuna, a little wasabi cream (I think) and fish roe. It's become a bit famous, very savory and not overpriced at $15.

The upstairs dining room is only open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and is prix fixe at $60-$80. I'd love to try it someday. Nevertheless, Bar Louis has made a stamp on this former timber town on the Delaware River. I think about it all the time myself.

June Swoon

A couple years ago fellow Bistrovian BrO turned me on to the marmalade of June Taylor. Best marmalade I've ever had, and better yet I had it all to myself, as The Fanch can't stand the stuff.

Our old friends at Chow have a video interview with June here.

Review: Le P'tit Laurent

This corner bistro at the Glen Park crossroads of Chenery and Diamond is so French I was shocked when one of the unfailingly young and friendly waitresses was American, not French. Given its Francophilia, perhaps I should have been more shocked the waitresses were friendly.

But there they were, young and chatty and not unpleasant on the 37-year-old eyes, approaching each time with a "Messieurs, alors..." (OK, gentlemen...) to see if my tablemates and I, all late 30-something husbands having a brief boys night out, were ready to order. The answer was mainly no, as we were catching up on not having seen each other for many years, and our particular young and easy-on-the-eyes mademoiselle remained, yes, friendly, even a little jokey.

One of my friends' wives, whom we visited after our boys-only dinner, remarked that she found the service a little rude, but I thought it more off-handed. A slightly larger problem was that the service was a little forgetful. With a smile and wee Gallic shrug our waitress, and one or two others, apologized for not bringing this or that (water, our bottle of wine, a second helping of bread). It didn't matter because we had already set the unhurried pace of the evening. The service simply met us halfway.

I prattle on about the service for another reason: there isn't much to report regarding the food. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't distinguished. Decent bistro food, I guess you could call it. I had the rabbit prepared Normandy style, if I remember correctly, my mates each chose a fish -- monkfish in lobster-bacon sauce and the night's special swordfish. Each of us reported the same reaction: decent enough. Not particularly delicate or subtle, somewhat meager proportions, and less than maximum presentation effort. You could generously call it "unpretentious," and for lower prices, sure, why not.

But main courses were in the $16-$20 range, perhaps even a bit more, apps up to $10. What with rents and labor and fuel prices and foie gras backlash, perhaps that's the going rate these days for a decent-enough neighborhood bistro meal served by good-naturedly insouciant French women (do they bring them in on H1-B visas?) in a cozy neighborhood spot. If so, you could be far more disappointed, but on the whole, c'est dommage.

In this city we're up to our stamped-tin ceilings in wannabe authentic bistros, so you should have no problem finding one closer to home at the same or even better prices without having to wander over to Glen Park.

Sustainable Tuna

Look for the American Albacore Fishing Association label in finer sushi parlors everywhere.