Crafty Kim

San Francisco, Part 2: The Food

I was prepared to have amazing food in San Francisco, I just wasn't prepared to have every meal be excellent. (Well, truthfully, not all the meals were excellent - there was a run in with a burrito near Artfibers that was merely "okay", although probably still better than a comparable Nashville burrito.)

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The food yummy-goodness started in Palo Alto. The conference food was (shockingly) quite good, but even better were afternoon snacks and breakfast from Satura Cakes in downtown Palo Alto. Satura Cakes is a small chain of cake shops. They also have free wi-fi. When you add cake + free internet access, you've more or less achieved my ideal work environment.

My friend Judith and I hung out at the cake shop one afternoon (Judith: Satura Cake with spongecake and strawberries, Me: Green tea panna cotta). Tim & I also went there for breakfast. Those two linked photos apparently prove that I'm a creature of habit - I sat in the same chair regardless of who I was at the cake shop with.

Check out the fine looking mocha that Tim got:

(ps The only bad news is that the Palo Alto location is temporarily closed due to a fire in a nearby building on July 2nd. Hopefully they'll be able to re-open soon!)

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We had an amazing dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. I thought that all of the positive comments about Chez Panisse couldn't possibly be true, but I'm glad that I was wrong. It's nice to go to a restaurant that actually lives up to its reputation. The four course prix fixe meal included North African vegetable salads, halibut, quail with couscous, and a fig tart.

It was fairly dark out when we got there for our 9:15 reservation, but here's a picture of the restaurant entry:

The dinner ranks as my #3 all time meal, following closely behind our anniversary dinner in Carcassone, France last year and the night during our honeymoon on Vahine Island where I had a tuna steak for the first time. The only negative thing I can say about Chez Panisse is that it was a bit of a pain to get there. Because we needed to buy some clothes for Tim before dinner, we were pressed for time and really needed more time than we had to take public transit. We ended up taking a cab both ways, a fairly pricey ride. If we had more time, I'm sure we could have worked the subway/bus schedule out.

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The only downside of going to such an amazing restaurant our first night in San Francisco was that any other restaurants were bound to feel a little boring afterwards. The good news is that dinner at Zuni Cafe the next night turned out to be quite good, although a bit more hectic than Chez Panisse. I had what was basically a big plate o' lamb (several different cuts of lamb, with various seasonings). Our waiter almost convinced me to try a fresh oyster, but Tim talked me out of it. Overall, a good restaurant that I highly recommend and quite close to public transit, so it's easy to get there.

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We fell back on a standard Kim-Tim travel approach for some of our other meals - gather a picnic. On Friday (on the way to Noe Knits) we stopped off at Bi-Rite Market. We were lucky we happened to be walking right past it, we never would have discovered it otherwise. They had an amazing collection of cheeses, plus fruit and vegetables. Their slogan (at least, on the sign outside the building) is "Buy Fresh Buy Local", which fits pretty well with us. We asked someone working in the cheese area for recommendations for local cheeses and ended with an amazing hand pressed marinated goat cheese. Toss in a few white nectarines, some other local cheeses, a small loaf of bread, and even local salami, and you've got a fairly hearty picnic.

Here's a picture of the picnic we assembled:

And here's the view from our picnic spot, in Mission Dolores Park - an amazing picnic spot literally just a few steps from public transit:

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This probably makes us food geeks, but we were both incredibly enthusiastic about going to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. We took the cable car to get there (best time of day to ride the cable cars - ridiculously early in the morning!), and I got a good vibe as we were walking up. It was funny - I thought that the entire market were the 20 or so stands in front of the Ferry Building. We needed breakfast, so we picked up some fresh squeezed orange juice and a blackberry hand pie to munch on while checking out the stands. Once we got to the end of the building (right before we realized the main part of the market was actually on the other side of the building!), we found a stand selling this - the most delicious breakfast egg/bacon sandwich and fried potatoes I've ever had:

From there, we just started wandering around all the booths - lots of beautiful flowers, plenty of fresh veggies, tons of fresh fruit, all kinds of artisanal cheeses, and my personal favorite - jams from June Taylor.

There was so much astonishing, tasty-looking produce and other goods that we were both overwhelmed. Every direction you turned, there was something amazing. Sort of like a food version of Artfibers :) We actually wandered around the market (in a daze) for so long that we ended up getting lunch there too. We picked up this delicious chicken tostada from a stand called Primavera, as well as a tasty zucchini tamale:

On top of the great food, we also had a great view of the Bay Bridge during lunch.

At some point during the morning, we also wandered into the Ferry Building Marketplace which has a number of cute shops and restaurants. We picked up some French macarons at a bakery called Miette:

If I remember the flavors correctly, they were chocolate lavendar, strawberry, and hazelnut with chocolate filling. Yum. Our other purchases in the building were a bottle of California wine (for a dinner in-room picnic) and some Michael Recchiuti chocolates.

Since we had a mini-bar fridge in our hotel room, we picked up cheese, bread, fruit, and yogurt for dinner that night and breakfast Sunday morning. We picked up some delicious lemon quark cheese to eat with strawberries too. Overall, we had a great time at the market!

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I hope I've covered all the amazing food experiences we had in San Francisco. We were hoping to have a dim sum lunch in Chinatown (on our first day in town, when we went to Artfibers), but all of the dim sum restaurants we found were closed between lunch and dinner. We setlled for some bubble tea instead:

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San Francisco really is a food-lover's dream city. So much fresh local produce, so many great restaurants. Just for the food, I totally want to go back to visit again!

A mini restaurant review: Chappy's on Church

I was going back and forth over whether I should do a little review of Chappy's or not. I'm sure that there are people who love Chappy's. I'm not one of them.

When Chappy's first opened, I was thrilled. I drive past the restaurant every day on my way to and from school so I watched as they renovated the building and got ready to open. I was pretty irritated when they painted the exterior of the building a funky mustard color, because I really thought the original dark weathered brick exterior was quite pretty. Despite my dislike of some of their design choices (there's a backup on Church almost at exactly that spot every evening - I had a lot of time to think about it), I was enthusiastic - New Orlean's style food in Nashville! Inspiring starting over after the hurricane story! Seafood in our landlocked city! Then a few of our friends went on separate occasions and their responses were not just tepid, but actually really negative, including one friend who travels to New Orleans frequently for fun and is a huge fan of that style of food. That put us off trying Chappy's for a quite a while***.

When a group of my friends decided to go out to lunch and suggested Chappy's, I was hesitant but decided that surely the concerns others expressed earlier would have been addressed by this point. I'm not going to do a fully, minute by minute review but here are a couple of key points about my Chappy's experience:

• The butters they brought out to our table along with warm bread were yummy. Unfortunately, the bread wasn't. You know how bread can be all nice and crusty? This bread was basically limp. It was nice that they warmed it up, but it really reminded me of Wonder Bread.
  
• Our waiter? Bizarre. A strange man. Slow, incredibly slow. We were there for a late lunch and the place was almost empty, but there were these incredible long stretches when we were just sitting at our table waiting. And it wasn't slow service in the nice European leisurely meal style, it was unpleasantly slow. Fortunately, we were a chatty group so it wasn't a huge deal, but I still wasn't happy about taking a 2+ hour lunch.
  
• One person in our group is a vegetarian, so it was a little disturbing to see they didn't have a single vegetarian item on their menu. When she asked our (bizarre) waiter for advice, he suggested the fish. And then the chicken. And then we finally got the message across that vegetarian means "no meat" not "no beef" but he was still completely stumped for suggestions. She ended up ordering one of their salads with no meat and it was quite nice, but still... no vegetarian options on the menu? Waitstaff unable to make recommendations for vegetarian modifications? Waitstaff who don't even understand what a vegetarian is?!? Nashville's not exactly vegetarian central but come on!
  
• When I ordered grilled shrimp, I wasn't expecting it to come to the table swimming in butter. I chose the grilled because I thought it might be a healthier option than fried shrimp. They were quite tasty but then again anything literally drenched in butter tends to be, no?
  

Anyway, I'm not doing a full review because last week Carrington Fox of the Nashville Scene said pretty much everything I could say in this review. I could take the easy analysis and say that, based on his review, I must be some kind of food snob but, honestly, I'm not. I'm just a graduate student with limited funds, and it really ticks me off when I spend my limited (heh, call it "non-existant") eating out budget on bad food and bad restaurant experiences.

***Okay, truthfully, it was a combo of the bad word of mouth combined with the fact that Tim keeps misreading the Chappy's sign as "Crappy's", probably the worst font choice ever.

Unofficial restaurant review: Margot Cafe, Nashville

Tim & I went to Margot Cafe to celebrate my birthday last night. If you're not familiar with it, Margot is in East Nashville in the Five Points area. We've actually been there several times, just never for a regular dinner. They have a wonderful Sunday brunch (although more expensive than the Germantown Cafe, so we haven't been there too often) and they also hosted the Nashville Slow Food dinners for the past couple of years. If you ever have a chance to go, the Slow Food dinners are amazing. The next one is coming up on June 26th and if you're interested, you should call for a reservation ASAP. I think we've been to four Slow Food dinners at Margot and each one has been worth every penny. Information is on their website here.

For dinner last night, Tim had the mixed greens salad and the chicken with polenta (OMG, deeeeelish) while I had the corn soup and the sirloin steak with crispy potatoes. If you ask anyone who knows me, you'd know that I almost never clean my plate but I did last night. It was super tasty. For dessert, Tim had the lemon and coconut cake and I had the goat cheese cheesecake. Yes, you read that correctly - goat cheese cheesecake! Must. Find. Recipe. Immediately. It was amazing and delicious. Tim's simple-sounding lemon and coconut cake made me smile when I tasted it, as it had surprising crunchy bits of coconut. It was one of those desserts that would make even the grumpiest person happy to eat. I also had a blood orange martini (not really to my taste, although Tim liked it) and Tim had a glass of red wine. You can read more about the chef-owner (actually, I think co-owner) who produces this great food here.

On top of consistently having the best food in Nashville, Margot also has the most professional waitstaff of any place in town. Last night was no exception to what we've seen on previous visits. The waiters there are uniformly courteous, efficient, full of information, and friendly. I definitely get the feel that the waiters there actually enjoy working at Margot and aren't just stopping off there as part of a music career :)

If you go, while Margot doesn't have much parking, there's a super convenient FREE public parking lot right behind the restaurant. I would absolutely recommend reservations, especially on weekends (including for brunch) and if you want to sit on the patio. The patio at Margot isn't large, but it is a really pleasant place to eat a great meal.

Pluses:
*Consistently great food
*Efficient waitstaff
*Seasonal, local
*Location
*Patio

Minuses:
*Embarassingly, I can't think of any
ETA: WAIT, I thought of one - it's in East Nashville rather than in Germantown :)

Poor Grad Student Cost Assessment:
Margot is outside our normal grad student influenced budget. It's one of those restaurants that I like too much not to bend the rules sometimes. The Sunday brunch is lower priced, so that's always a good option. The owners of Margot also opened a smaller more-cafe style place called Marche Artisan Foods (The one time we stopped there, it was so insanely busy we ended up leaving, so I can't really comment on the food there.) I can't say enough good things about the Slow Foods dinners as well. They can be a bit of a splurge (although the June 26th one looks inexpensive) but are absolutely worthwhile. It's also a great special event restaurant and I think it can be quite romantic, too.

Overall comments:
I think that Margot Cafe is one of the best restaurants in Nashville, and I'm always surprised when someone says they've never heard of it or haven't been there. Seriously: GO! The main words I would use to describe Margot are local and seasonal. They frequently use locally sourced ingredients and the menu changes quite a bit from season to season. One thing we learned last night is that the majority of their menu actually changes every night.

ps Thanks for the birthday wishes! It was a good day, even if it wasn't Paris :)

A couple of Nashville restaurant tidbits

I've had a bunch of little restaurant-related things hanging about in my head, but I've never found a way to work them into other posts so I'm lumping them all together in this post.

1. You might not have noticed this - Scott Sears (one of the co-owners of Flyte) responded to some of my comments in my review of Flyte. Click here to see what he had to say. Nice of him to respond.

2. I wanted to mention that I'm never going to review the two restaurants in my neighborhood, The Germantown Cafe and The Mad Platter. That's not because I don't like them. It's actually the opposite. I love both restaurants and would recommend them to anyone. I'm just far too biased to give any kind of realistic review because I want both restaurants to do well (um, it's nice having two excellent restaurants within walking distance!) and we're friends and neighbors with people at both restaurants. I just didn't want anyone to think I wasn't mentioning them for other reasons.

3. If you're looking for good restaurants in the Nashville area, check out the Nashville Originals. The Nashville Originals is a group of local restaurants working together to raise awareness of local restaurants (as opposed to chains). The group doesn't include all local restaurants in Nashville by any means, but it is a nice selection. Another big advantage is a few times a year, they have a sale on gift certificates to the restaurants. For example, we got a $50 certificate to one of the restaurants that only cost $33. You can sign up on their mailing list to be notified of the gift certificate sales - word to the wise, the gift certificates sell out really quickly once they do go on sale. There are also other "originals" restaurant groups around the country. You can see the whole list of groups here.

4. Nashville Dining Out for Life, which benefits Nashville Cares (an organization that provides services to people with AIDS), is coming up on April 24th. Participating restaurants donate a percent of their profits on the day to Nashville Cares. The list of restaurants that are participating is huge this year! There are Dining Out for Life events on different days throughout the country, check here for more information.

5. I'm super excited to mention that Lazzaroli Pasta is opening a store in Germantown. They've been selling their fresh pasta at the Nashville Farmer's Market on Saturdays for a while and now they're expanding into an actual storefront. They're going to add sauces, take & bake pastas, bread, and other specialties. Their pasta is seriously delicious, and they're friendly people. They're probably going to be opening sometime in May.

Unofficial restaurant review: Flyte, Nashville

Tim is up in PA this weekend visiting his family and my sister Karen came down from Lexington to visit me. After a day of checking out the Nashville Lawn & Garden Show, Home Depot, and other practical things, we went to dinner at Flyte, which is located at 8th & Division just south of downtown Nashville. (It's also across from Frugal MacDoogal's liquor store and a p0rn shop but I digress...)

This was my second time at Flyte, but first time on the weekend. Reservations are absolutely needed on the weekend. I made our Saturday reservation on Thursday and the best time I could get was 8:30 pm. When we arrived the bar area was totally packed, so we ended up hanging out on the side until our table was ready (at almost 9 pm). From bar observations, I think people are a bit unsure of what type of restaurant this is (and the restaurant doesn't seem so sure of it either...). There was a range from people wearing jeans to nice khaki like pants (Karen & I) to people actually dressed in tuxes and long gowns (HUH? What's that about???).

When we were finally seated, our waiter was there right away to greet us and see if we were familiar with their concept. There are a couple of unique (and cool) things about this place. They have an antipasti menu so you can "build your own" appetizer platter. Everything on the list is easy for them to put together, so you end up getting it right away - particularly handy when you're sitting down to dinner at 9 pm! We picked two cheeses (fresh mozzarella, smoked gouda), marinated portobello mushroom, tuscan white bean dip, and foccacia (which isn't really foccacia, but actually just grilled slices of bread). Everything was yummy, although I should have ordered some prosciutto or something to go with the plain fresh mozzarella.

Since it was a chilly night, we were both in the mood for soup. Karen ordered the heirloom tomato soup, while I got the soup "flyte". The "flyte" had small cups of each of the three different soups - tomato, corn, and onion. They were all great soups, but the onion soup was amazing. It was like french onion soup but with more of a roasted flavor, with cream added, and then pureed. Really hard to describe, but delicious.

Karen ordered the chicken entree, which came with saurkraut (fresh! we both thought it was probably made in-house) and potato salad (made with a mix of potatoes, including some blues). The dish was supposed to have a horseradish cheese fondue sauce, but Karen's not a horseradish fan and she skipped that part. I ordered the porkchop, served with lentils, some fresh veg, and pear chutney. I'm sure that sounds quite ordinary, but it was really amazing tasting - just a great blend of flavors and textures, cooked perfectly.

For dessert, I ordered the bread pudding "flyte" and Karen had a couple of bites of it. I also got some coffee (French Press! I love it when restaurants do this.). The bread puddings were sublime, just amazing tasting. The three bread puddings were: bourbon, blue cheese and walnut, and cherry chocolate. The bourbon was quite subtle, tasted best with a bit of fruit. The cherry chocolate bread pudding was a bit burnt on top, which detracted from the flavor. The blue cheese-walnut bread pudding was (SHOCK!) my favorite. It had a very subtle tangyness from the blue cheese, but was overall sweet due to the honey they used in flavoring it. Yum!

Pluses:
*Antipasti menu to give you a bite to eat while waiting
*Soup and salad "flytes" so you can taste all of the different options
*Flavoring of everything was amazing - the only other place in Nashville that I've been to that has this level of complexity in their food is Margot's Cafe in East Nashville, BIG improvements in their entrees and desserts
*Wait staff - HUGE improvements here since our first visit, they seem to be working really smoothly now

Minuses:
*INCREDIBLY noisy when busy - they really should think about some noise abatement tiles or something because it's basically a big, tall, open room and it was actually hard to hear Karen at points!
*Wait time for our table - not happy to wait almost 30 minutes past my reservation, especially since there was no place to wait comfortably (since the bar area was full)

Poor Grad Student Cost Assessment:
This place is too expensive to, say, drop into for a random meal. But it's great for a special night out or when you want to go out for a fine meal. Wine-by-the-glass seemed overpriced compared to the bottle prices - the wine we picked was $11 for a glass, but $30 for the bottle. I also skipped the wine "flytes" this time because I didn't feel that they were a good value last time. The soup and salad "flytes" are totally worth the cost, however. The antipasti options were nice, but cost added up quickly with them and it was really difficult to judge how much of any given item you were going to get. For example, the marinated portobello mushroom was actually 3-4 slices of a mushroom not a whole (or even half!) mushroom. I have a better idea now of what you get with the antipasti servings, but it was hard to judge this time. Overall, I would say that the place is a fine value considering the quality of the food.

Overall comments:
I'm really impressed by the improvements in this restaurant since the first time we went, in December. We were there with a group and everyone thought their entrees and desserts were "okay" but not excellent. I think that they've made a marked improvement in the quality of the entrees and have also significantly improved their dessert menu. The quality of the service also dramatically improved. I never felt rushed at any point, but I also didn't feel like I was waiting excessive amounts of time (except for while we were waiting for our table!) which I definitely felt last time. I would totally go back again, and would recommend it to others. I'm glad that I gave Flyte a second chance.

Total aside on etiquette:
I'd like to give a brief shout out to the couple sitting at the table next to us. I think it's great that you got engaged during your dinner on Saturday night at Flyte! Although, honestly, I personally wouldn't rate the place high for romantic ambience. But DUDE, it was ridiculous to feed your fiancee a line about how diamonds that were "too large" were "like costume jewelry". There's nothing wrong with small diamonds, but your excuses (and OMG why did you even bring it up???) were Grade-A lame. Also (and here's the etiquette bit) I do really think it's nice that you wanted to tell every single person in your family and all of your friends about your engagement but it really pissed me off when you pulled out both your cell phone and your crackberry and started calling and emailing everyone in your lives while I was trying to eat my dinner. I know it was a special time for you (trust me, even as an old married lady, I remember) but after the 7th, 8th, and 9th phone calls, it really started to get on my nerves. I would have really appreciated it if you could have waited until after dinner.