An Al Pastor Goodbye

Said farewell to San Francisco, for this week at least, with a delicious al pastor flavored send off at El Castellito, which serves up some of the best spicy slow-cooked marinated pork in town. Pictured below.
Off to New York for a week of tasting new releases from Piedmont for Wine & Spirits. Maybe [...]

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Pizza on Wheels

All this talk about new style street food carts and taco trucks modified into gourmet street food destinations has me hungry. Also, I’m thinking of these totally bad-ass variations on the mobile wood-burning pizza oven I saw last weekend in Paso Robles.
Check it:

This first pizza trailer is owned by Full of Life Flatbread, and they [...]

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Super Bowls and Birthdays

Busy with multiple deadlines at the moment so this one’s quick…

Above: Football? What football? Super Bowl Sunday at the Hog Island oyster farm in Tomales Bay. Taken as things were winding down. FYI – If you fancy oysters in January or February — both ‘r’ months — then skip out on the Super Bowl and [...]

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Be the Ham and the Ham Will Be Yours

Holiday madness in San Francisco, or my own insanity. Home from a week of tasting Tuscan wines at the W&S New York office; somehow my flight left Newark on Friday following a daylong storm of snow and icy rain. Once 6 hours had passed on the tarmac I began to wonder what people were thinking [...]

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Delicious Things

“I’m going where there’s no depression…”
Despite the (rather painful) extraction of a wisdom tooth last week, I did manage to drink a few delicious bevvies over the course of these last days. Maybe it’s the hint of desperation and talk of Long Depressions in the air, or perhaps I just couldn’t stomach any more days [...]

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BBQ Quest: Lockhart, Texas

Our first stop for barbeque this morning was Lockhart, where we hit both Smitty’s Market and Kreuze for brisket, shoulder and ribs. And circle sausage, too, which totally kicked ass.
Below, a shot of the smoke pits at Smitty’s which resembled an ironworks more than anything else, and then our feast. Yum!

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Coffee Wars and Locavores

(Above: Lemon-pistachio donuts and coffee at Four Barrel)
Three’s a war, right?
It seems that the coffee wars have officially come to San Francisco. The last few years have seen the arrival of Blue Bottle, Ritual and now, Four Barrel (no website yet; tel: 415-252-0800). Blue Bottle began as a roaster based in the East Bay, with [...]

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Julia Child – The Spy!

Wow, this news from the AP totally made my day: It seems that Julia Child was a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the World War II era precursor to the CIA. That’s right, the grande dame of American cooking was a spy!
From the article:
Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret [...]

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Midsummer Hedonism

Like many people in the wine biz, I’m part of a tasting group that meets regularly to sniff, sip, ‘n spit wines. I’m also part of another subgroup – with some of the same people from the main group – where instead of getting together and writing tasting notes that we’ll probably never read again, [...]

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Greatest Food & Wine Pairing Ever (or I *Heart* Seattle)

(Above: Champagne grapes are indeed very cute)
I was in Seattle last week for the Wine & Spirits Hot Picks tasting event, which was held at the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown. Like I did for a similar W&S event held in LA, I participated in a radio show in the days before the tasting (although [...]

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