Blogs : CHOW Pick
CHOW Pick Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
CUESA's Sunday Supper
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is an embarrassment of local food events you could attend. And many of them are billed as sustainability this and eating local that. Here’s one that is worth the ticket price: CUESA’s Sunday Supper. CUESA is the organization that runs the SF Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, without which our collective pantry would be a lot less bountiful. On Tuesdays and Saturdays the Ferry Plaza heaves with seasonal produce and products brought to you by knowledgeable farmers and artisans (June Taylor’s jams and Chris Cosentino’s salumi alone are well worth the trip).
It takes a lot of work from a very small, very dedicated staff to pull the markets and sustainability-focused events together week after week, and the Sunday Supper both celebrates what CUESA does all year and fuels funding for the year to come. More than 50 Bay Area chefs—too many to call out, but you know their names—come together to serve a five-course meal in the Ferry Plaza: hors d’oeuvres and cocktails downstairs first, then a family-style meal upstairs in the Grand Hall. Each table gets a dedicated team of three chefs to create the meal, and what your table is served will be different from what the adjacent tables will eat. Necks will crane, bites may be shared between tables. The grass is not necessarily greener.
Tickets are still available for CUESA’s Sunday Supper, taking place October 5, 2008. The reception starts at 6 p.m. in the Ferry Building Marketplace, supper at 7:30 p.m. in the Ferry Building Grand Hall. Tickets for the reception only are $60; tickets for the reception and supper are $200.
Posted by
| 0 comments
Tagged with: cuesa, sunday supper, june taylor, san francisco, ferry plaza farmers market, chris cosentino
Get Behind the Wheel
This thing is genius. As soon as I saw it, I wanted it on my wall. It’s the San Francisco Bay Area Local Foods Wheel, a beautifully designed paper wheel that spins, showing you exactly what’s in season. And it’s cleverly edited too, including items like clams, anchovies, dandelion greens, and bee pollen, as well as everyday produce. Jessica Prentice, one of the masterminds behind the wheel, says that for now, SF is the only city they’ve done. But they’re planning on doing more, and I fully intend to send a wheel to everyone I know.
Local Foods Wheel, $11.95
Posted by
| 3 comments
Tagged with: local foods wheel, san francisco, produce, seasonality, gadget, product, products
CocoaBella, Hella Good
Could this be the world’s greatest box of chocolates? Quite possibly. The owner of San Francisco chocolate shop CocoaBella travels the world looking for the best chocolatiers, whose products he brings back and sells. This box includes 18 chocolates from Switzerland, France, Belgium, Italy, and the United States (for now—contents are subject to change). It’s a wide range of flavors, all amazing, but our favorites are the beautifully decorated, sweet-sour strawberry balsamic caramel from Kansas City’s Christopher Elbow and a mushroom-shaped caramel and almond-praline piece from France’s Michel Cluizel that has to be seen and tasted to be believed.
CocoaBella Assorted Chocolate Collection, $25
Posted by
| 2 comments
Tagged with: cocoabella, chocolate, san francisco, chocolatiers, food, product, products
Take Your Medicine
Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation, the recently updated San Francisco restaurant, has retained its New Age-y air (the “loving-kindness to your body” motto; dishes with names like “clarity”), but the revised Japanese-inspired menu now includes prawns and fish (the only “animal ingredients” available). We scarfed down our soboro tofu rice bowl (ginger-chile-simmered tofu, seasonal veggies, shiitake mushrooms, and nine-grain rice) on our first visit, and our curry tofu rice bowl (fried tofu, steamed greens and seasonal veggies, curry sauce, nine-grain rice) on our second. But the pickled vegetables pickled our pucker. The restaurant’s a short walk from CHOW HQ, so next time, we’re gonna pounce on the spicy peanut ramen, the tempura jumbo prawns, and the sweet bean mochi. Chowhounds ding Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation for its relatively high prices, but, pre-makeover, they were advocating it for something different, a good place for mushroom-seekers and vegetarians. It looks like they haven’t had much of a chance to test the new waters (understandable since Medicine only reopened in March), but here’s what they have to say so far.
Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation
161 Sutter Street, San Francisco
415-677-4405
Posted by
| 2 comments
Tagged with: san francisco, zen, vegetarian, medicine new shojin eatstation, restaurant, product, products, restaurants and bars
Long Live Delfina
San Francisco’s Delfina hasn’t lost its touch nine years down the road (or its popularity—two weeks ahead the only reservations available on a Saturday night were 5:30 and 10 p.m.). A recent late-night supper included heavenly asparagus with Parmesan, spicy cauliflower and pasta, and halibut in Meyer lemon–caper butter, plus a baked-to-order Scharffen Berger chocolate cake to finish. (Chocolate: still hot.) And despite the full house, service was friendly and attentive, without ever giving the impression the table needed to be cleared for another party. Chowhounds seem to agree. Long live Delfina!
Posted by
| 0 comments
Tagged with: delfina, scharffen berger, san francisco, restaurant, product, products, restaurants and bars
