After a satisfying breakfast at the Brown Sugar Kitchen in West Oakland last week, I drove up to Black Oak Books on San Pablo, a place where I can always kill a couple hours by browsing their used cookbook section. I have a penchant for kooky old books that are long out-of-print, and when I had discovered an old copy of 1962′s “An Illustrated History of French Cuisine” by Christian Guy, I was hoping that the book would be filled with lots of great vintage illustrations, as the title seems to suggest. Unfortunately, this wasn’t really the case, at [... read more ...]
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I've been rediscovering Berkeley lately, and will report on lots of great local restaurants. Do stay tuned.
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As a blogger, I feel as though I have the journalistic privilege of running with any rumor I please, so long as I remain completely upfront about it. Sometimes these rumors prove true, sometimes not. But I did wish to mention that the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which had been officially delaying its new development in Napa’s Oxbow District (ever since the U.S. economy tanked last year), has now allegedly pulled the plug on its planned Napa location. The Ritz-Carlton launched the project over three years ago, when construction of the Ritz-Carlton Napa was first announced back in April 2007, after [... read more ...] The 10-hour pork shoulder looks and tastes like pork belly, although this California-sized portion might not pass muster in the South. With everything else on the menu, however, it was plenty of swine, and the rich sauce certainly added some weight to this particular dish. The baked cranberry beans, which provide the bed underneath, were perfectly cooked. I have friends who live in Marin County who are mighty quick to dismiss the culinary options north of the Golden Gate. It is puzzling, in my mind, that such an affluent community has so few top-notch dining options in the [... read more ...] I thought this was an interesting snippet from one of Jonathan Gold’s latest columns in the LA Weekly, regarding the prevention of culinary espionage among some of Koreatown’s most venerable cold noodle joints: “As generations of K-town denizens have discovered, it may be easier to steal gold from Fort Knox than it is to smuggle naengmyon out of the Corner Place: Nobody is going to reverse-engineer the broth on Corner’s watch. Chil Bo Myun Ok, the other famous Koreatown naengmyon specialist, also forbids takeout orders of the noodles — the last time a friend tried, I was sure that [... read more ...] Organic Orange Blossom Tomatoes: So Fresh and So Clean I started a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription from Riverdog Farm this week, which I’m splitting with a friend. In this age of factory farming, it’s interesting to place oneself at the mercy of strict seasonality. However, summer is definitely a great time of year to eat seasonally. Tomatoes, corn, peaches, cherries and apples are just a few of the highlights. It’s been uncommonly cool here in the Napa Valley this summer, and I know that the growing season is way off schedule for Napa Cabernet. I suspect that [... read more ...] |
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© 2010 The Accidental Wino |
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