The Culinary Timeline is a side-project that I've been working on since October. I'm hoping to have most of it complete by the end of January, with any luck. Until then, updates around here will be weekly, rather than twice weekly. Do stay tuned.
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 Set adrift on butter, brown sugar, and rum bliss.
Although Bananas Foster is widely known as a New Orleans recipe, I never had any experience with this particular dish while I was cooking in the Crescent City. I dealt with plenty of bread pudding recipes, and I had an occasional hand in the hyper-decadent sweet potato-and-pecan pies at K-Paul’s, but Bananas Foster was never part of my repertoire. However, when I was attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park NY, I did have the opportunity to whip up several batches of Bananas Foster while I was [... read more ...]
Look closely. It's all there.
If you live in the United States and you ever decide to visit the Napa Valley, then I probably wouldn’t recommend the Soscol Cafe as a breakfast destination. For lack of a better term, it’s your classic hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, and you probably know of a similar-style place somewhere in your own home town. However, for those who might be visiting the U.S. from abroad (and therefore, who may have never dined at a classic greasy spoon), then the Soscol Cafe could represent a venerable culinary landmark, something that’s authentic to its very [... read more ...]
Almost famous.
Only in New Orleans could a sandwich as glorious as the muffaletta take a backseat to the po-boy. In just about any other city in the United States, the muffaletta would certainly rank as a culinary claim-to-fame, earning a mention alongside the cheesesteaks of Philly or the towering deli pastramis of New York City. But even in the shadow of the more famous po-boy, the muffaletta of New Orleans boasts a loyal legion of followers (after all, one cannot exist on po-boys alone). With its roots at the Central Grocery in the French Quarter, the [... read more ...]
Blah, blah, blah — here we go again: Although I’ve long gone on record against the idea of rating a wine by points, the sad fact is, when an influential wine critic bestows a “perfect” score on a particular bottle, it’s difficult not to take notice and wonder what all the fuss could be about. It also raises the question: What does a 100-point score really mean? On one hand, we may tend to assume that a 100-point wine is somehow a “flawless” wine, meaning that it’s technically sound, full-flavored and balanced, with no shortcomings. But on the [... read more ...]
There’s no possible way that I could ever review Terra in St. Helena without heavy bias: I know too many people in that restaurant — from the kitchen, to the GM, to the waitstaff — to maintain any semblance of impartiality. For similar reasons, I can’t really offer my unbiased opinions about Martini House, Auberge du Soleil, or Etoile at Domain Chandon, either. Of the people whom I know socially in the Napa Valley, most of them work at either of these three restaurants. But despite these personal connections, I don’t think there’s much harm in showing some pictures [... read more ...]
Southern style.
There’s not much of a breakfast culture here in the Napa Valley, at least compared to the dinner scene. I think that mornings tend to be reserved for sleeping it off from the night before, or else having a little “hair of the dog” at a Napa Valley tasting room at 10am. Bouchon Bakery does a brisk morning business, of course, but I don’t consider that breakfast. For one, there’s no bacon at Bouchon Bakery, and eggs are merely an ingredient, not a main course. But there is breakfast out there, and I’m going to cover [... read more ...]
In New Orleans, po-boys are very serious business, and while I was cooking professionally in the Crescent City a few years back, I had the envious opportunity of sampling sandwiches from all of the city’s most legendary spots, from Mandina’s down on Canal Street to Gene’s over on Elysian Fields Avenue. I tasted them all, and then I revisited these restaurants many times over, especially as out-of-town guests would stop through to visit. As most New Orleans locals will tell you, the foundation of any authentic po-boy is a signature Leidenheimer Baking Company roll. Founded in 1896, the Leidenheimer [... read more ...]
Although the “language” of cooking is essentially universal, the “vocabulary” itself can be very different. As a born-and-raised Westerner, some of the fundamental ingredients of Asian cuisine remain exotic to me, although cooking professionally and living in California have certainly both helped to foster my assimilation. Even so, I didn’t grow up in a household where shrimp chips and salty plum candy were the norm — it was more like Cheetos and chocolate chip cookies for us. I may have mentioned this anecdote here before, but my very recent appreciation for red miso paste actually began with a lemon-miso [... read more ...]
While killing some time between meals the other day, I finally turned up a copy of “The Natural Cuisine of Georges Blanc” at a used bookstore in Berkeley. It was a nice find, and one of the best discoveries that I’ve recently made “in the field” (as opposed to trolling eBay for such an item). Originally published in 1987 — just six years after the eponymous author earned his third Michelin star — “Natural Cuisine” earns its stripes for its lavish photography, with the pictures outnumbering the recipes by almost three to one. Although long out of print, the [... read more ...]
Don't get me wrong, I'll take a little more.
Ever since the San Francisco Giants found a new home outside of Candlestick Park, I haven’t had much reason to journey down to Hunters Point anymore. But chicken and waffles is motivation enough to make the trek, and I was interested to follow up on a tip that I had heard about Auntie April’s Chicken n’ Waffles on 3rd Street. The waffle, compared to the one I most recently tasted at the Brown Sugar Kitchen, didn’t have the same character or panache, but that said, it did arrive hot [... read more ...]
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