Patisserie Philippe (San Francisco)

I spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco´s SOMA last year. One of the things I discovered there was this little patisserie, Patisserie Philippe. The macarons were in primary display atop their marble counters and the posted sign invoked Ladurée, the inventor of macaron and purportedly the best macaron shop in the whole world.

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San Francisco Bay Area

SF:
Bar Tartine
Bissap Baobab (Mission)
Blue Bottle Cafe
Butler and the Chef Bistro (SOMA)
Coi (North Beach) **
Four Barrel Coffee
Masa's Restaurant (Nob Hill) *
Patisserie Philippe (SOMA)
Pizzeria Delfina (Mission)
San Tung (Inner Sunset)
Slanted Door



Berkeley:
Chez Panisse Cafe


Napa Valley:
Ad Hoc (Yountville, CA)
The French Laundry (Yountville) ***


South Bay (San Mateo/San Jose):
Falafel Drive-In (San Jose)
Wakuriya (San Mateo)

Butler and the Chef (SF): a Parisian Brunch in SOMA?

After driving up to SF with Kat's 9 Lives and LAist's Sam Kim, we figured we'd have one quick brunch before going our separate ways in the city. Kat recommended Butler and the Chef in SOMA since it was close to where we were and it has good reviews.

The bistro is located right in front of South Park, adding to its charm.
In contrast to the entrance which seemed small, the dining room extends far back. The furnitures gave it a cozy Parisian feel. We were seated in a narrow section next to the kitchen.

Fresh squeezed OJ: my personal brunch staple.
Kat said the eggs benedicts are popular here so I ordered eggs benedict with Niman Ranch ham (Served on toasted olive bread with house-made Hollandaise sauce and a side of baby spinach salad. $14)
I really enjoyed the fatty and flavorful ham. The toasted bread was a little hard to cut easily with a knife but other than that this was a good dish.

Someone else (probably Sam Kim) ordered La Parisienne crêpe (buckwheat crêpe, egg, ham, and emmenthal. $14)
I only had a bite of this but I liked the earthy flavor from the buckwheat.

Kat got the Belgian waffle with Nutella ($9)
The waffle was a little soggier than I would've liked but I liked the moistness inside.

I never expected to get mignardise following a brunch at a bistro, but these chocolate truffles were delectable.
While it wasn't an extraordinary brunch, Butler and the Chef is a cute place with good food. When I'm in the SOMA area again, this would certainly be on my list of brunch places to consider.

Butler & the Chef Bistro
155a S Park St
San Francisco, CA 94107
(415) 896-2075
www.butlerandthechef.com

Little Senegalese at Bissap Baobab (San Francisco)

Senegal (French: le Sénégal), officially the Republic of Senegal ... is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa.

--from Wikipedia

Besides the fact that it was in Africa, everything I knew about Senegal (for example, their official language is French) right before my dinner at Bissap Baobab I owe to a quick read of the Wikipedia article. We were greeted by a tall well-built guy speaking French.

The place was hopping and we had to wait a few minutes for a table. I decided to have a drink and tried the Tusker, a Kenyan pale lager ($4)

My friends went instead with the Coconut-infused rum. Be careful with these, they are as easy to drink as a Calpico soda and you can get drunk in no time (plus they're reasonably priced, making getting drunk even easier).

While we were waiting at a bar for a table, the bartender gave us some piping hot plantains for free!

Aloko (fried plantains, tamarind sauce - $4.75)

Well, it's hard to mess up fried plantains, and the tamarind sauce was an unusual but delicious accompaniment.

Though I was wary having African cuisine given my first experience involving mango pits (Nigerian), the appetizers we tried all had familar flavor profiles. The somone was similar to a potato croquette, a bit sweetened by corn and served with a creamy avocado sauce instead of aioli.

Somone (mashed potatoes mixed with corn, parsley, garlic, flour, and milk. Served with avocado sauce - $6.25)

The menu explained where many of the dishes came from, and I had no choice but to order the Tiep Dien since it was supposed to be the official dish of Senegal.

Tiep Dien (Red Snapper cooked with red Jolof rice - $18)

This somewhat reminded me of a seafood paella + jambalaya. The snapper is meaty and while it could be a little more moist, it was plenty flavorful and so was the rice. A rustic, comfort food dish. The Brazilians have their feijoada and the Senegalese have their tiep dien.

Bissap Baobab was a much better African food experience than my first, with more familiar flavors (I'm not trying to say the restaurant I went to before was bad, perhaps I'm just not used to it). It was a good, hearty meal with tasty and reasonably priced drinks and a fun vibe. Service was pretty slow though, so don't come here when you're in a hurry.

Bissap Baobab
2323 Mission St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 826-9287
http://www.bissapbaobab.com/

Four Barrel Coffee, SF: The Cappuccino and Dynamo Donut Routine

When there's great coffee 4 blocks away from a BART stop, you STOP.
When the free UCSF shuttle goes from campus to that BART stop, well .. you take an extended coffee break every day around 4 and get a cappuccino and maybe one of the Dynamo donuts they also happen to be selling there.
Ever since Sam Kim from LAist told me about this place, that's pretty much what I've been doing ...

Four Barrel was started by the co-founder and co-owner of Ritual Coffee, Jeremy Tooker.
I had a hard time deciding between the free wi-fi at Ritual (there's no wi-fi at Four Barrel) or the dynamo donuts at Four Barrel, but Four Barrel's proximity to the 16th/Mission BART stop won after all.

The seats and tables are arranged like desks and you can see people working on their laptops but don't be fooled, like I said, no wi-fi, so just get your coffee and enjoy it.
Freshly roasted beans are always available for purchase, of course, from Sumatra beans to Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Burundi.
A strong and dark cappuccino that's smooth and without the bitterness.

The apricot cardamom donut from Dynamo was moist and held the fruit inside. Nicely spiced and the glaze wasn't overwhelmingly sweet. I was very happy with this.
The passionfruit donut was covered in chocolate chunks. A nice tartness and passionfruit flavor here. My friend passed on my invite to get donuts at Four Barrel but I brought her this anyway and she changed her mind and went to get her hubby a dozen Dynamo donuts the week after.

(On another note, the chocolate spice one in the first picture didn't fare as well with me. It had nice flavors but the donut itself wasn't as moist as these other two).

I'm not enough of a coffee connoisseur to tell you if the coffee here is better Intelligentsia, Ritual, or Blue Bottle (well I do think it's better than Blue Bottle ... ). All I know is that the coffee here is darn good and they sell Dynamo donuts. 'Nuff for me.

Four Barrel Coffee
375 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 252-0800
www.fourbarrelcoffee.com


Dynamo Donuts
2760 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 920-1978
www.dynamodonut.com

SF: A Mini Degustation at Masa's

It was an unplanned visit to a one-Michelin-star, James Beard award-winning restaurant.
Road tripping to SF to run experiments, I didn't plan on doing any fine dining and was only armed with jeans and tennis shoes. But scrambling to a "really good place to eat" that's kinda nearby and is vegetarian friendly somehow led us to Masa's Restaurant's website.

It looked good.
I mean, it looked really good.

And then my friend said she doesn't mind the $$$ splurge. Oh man. So in a sweater, jeans, and beat-up tennis shoes I went (she was more dressed up than me). The only thing I had going for me was my purse I think. Oh and we had no reservation.

We went by Muni to a JBF-winning restaurant and walked in at 7 PM on a Saturday night. The restaurant was about 70% full. Can you take 2 for dinner?

Yes.
No fuss about my tennis shoes in a white tablecloth place either.

Executive chef Greg Short trained for a long time under Thomas Keller at the French Laundry, and he even sent him to stage at Taillevant.

While the menu listed a 5 course menu and a 9-course tasting menu, it also stated that they can do just 3 courses upon request.
I already knew I'd be late for another friend's party so we asked for the 3 course menu.

To start off, warm gougeres with 6-month-aged cheese.

For the bread I asked for a cheese-coated focaccia.

Canape: Grilled aji, cucumber, paprika.

For my friend they prepared a vegetarian Canape: Potato blinis, banana


Asparagus- Green-Purple
easter egg radishes, pea sprouts, perigord truffles, asparagus jus
Texturally the crisp radishes stood out, but what I was inhaling was the delightfully strong aroma of the Perigord truffles. The earthiness was not something I would think about combining with the clean and crispness of this vegetable-based dish but it turned out to be quite lovely.

For my vegetarian friend:
Composition of Early Spring Vegetables
roasted purple and white cauliflower, fava beans, brussels sprouts, baby spring leeks, rapini, maitake mushroom "cream", pine nut "dust"


My main entree:
Pan Roasted Paine Farms Squab Breast
braised swiss chard, pickled field rhubarb, "confit" leg, grenadine gastrique
Discounting my Alinea meal (since Masa's actually happened before), this stood out to me as one of the best squab dishes I've had in a while. The breast is very tender and full of flavor. The meat is a little gamey and just overall amazing. The leg confit had a nice crispy skin but the breast is the star here.

The main entree for my vegetarian friend:
Baby Artichokes
russet potato gnocchi, fermented black garlic, roasted vegetable stock, reggiano parmesan

For desserts we just got the two that our server suggested:
Strawberry Hazelnut Shortcake
Chantilly, black pepper ice cream.
This was a nice and light dessert with a soft and crumbly shortcake. The black pepper ice cream worked quite nicely here, adding depth to the sweetness of the strawberries and the chantilly. A delicious pacer before I hit our second dessert:
Chocolate Macadamia Nut Tart
Cafe au lait ice cream.

We're not done of course. Upon entering the restaurant I had already noticed the mignardise cart sitting on the side.
I didn't want to seem greedy so we only got lychee pate de fruit, fleur de sel caramel truffle, chocolate covered canele, etc.
It was a leisurely meal and of course I was late to my friend's party, but I had a great dinner with great food and gracious service, so no complaints or regrets on my part. The three courses were enough food, but I also can't wait to come back and do a more extensive tasting, hoping that most of his dishes would be as strong as what I had this night.
My friend also really enjoyed her vegetarian menu (fyi: non-meat-eaters).

Oh, we left by taxi instead of Muni. That's classier, right?

Masa's Restaurant
648 Bush St
San Francisco, CA 94108
(415) 989-7154
www.masasrestaurant.com

SF: San Tung Takes on Wings

The end of last year I visited San Francisco to take my aunt from Indonesia around. We were staying my a good friend of my cousin's and on my first night she took us to San Tung, a popular Chinese restaurant in the Inner Sunset district.

She said San Tung is supposed to have really good chicken wings and my aunt likes chicken.
Chinese=cheap. Chicken wings=sound good to me. I hesitated a bit because the friend is actually a vegetarian, so she wouldn't really know if the place was good. It had a good Yelp rating, so I wondered if it would be up to snuff.

A really spicy pickled cabbage that's served at every table.
My aunt and friend both liked it a lot. I didn't try it at all (didn't I just say it was supposedly really spicy?).

Because the friend is vegetarian, we also ordered some eggplant in garlic sauce ($7.50)
Generous portion and it packs a punch of flavor. The eggplants were sweet and tender and the sauce was a little spicy and very flavorful.

What we came for: The Original Dry Fried Chicken Wing ($9)
For my sake, we didn't get the hot ones that night. The wings had a nicely crispy skin, and a sticky sweet sauce. I preferred it to Bonchon/Kyochon in LA since it's not as sweet, the skin is crunchier than Kyochon (tho maybe not Bonchon), but mostly because it is CHEAPER. For $9 we get a whole plate of big chicken wings, not a small basket of tiny wings for $10. The value proposition is much higher.

Noodles in Black Bean Sauce ($8): SKIP.
Seems like a lot of Yelpers liked this dish, but I didn't. I usually really like the Korean-Chinese black bean noodle, jjangmyun, but here the homemade noodles were doughy and mushy, the black bean sauce was bland. The list of beef, shrimp, and calamari on the dish was tempting but I don't think it worked particularly well. It was a big bowl of bland starch to me.

San Tung for the most part serves a solid Chinese meal, but it's really the dry fried wings people come for and it isn't all just hype. The crispy wings were quite good and I'll pay for these over Kyochon any day. But then, would I otherwise drive so far and wait for a table for wings?

San Tung Chinese Restaurant
1031 Irving St
San Francisco, CA 94122
(415) 242-0828
www.santungrestaurant.com/menu.html

SF: Tasting Menu at Coi

A while back I dined at the bar at Coi when I was in SF. The two-star Michelin restaurant came recommended by KevinEats. Reserving a table in the dining room restricts you to the tasting menu while dining at the bar you can do either tasting or a la carte. Not knowing what my companion would want, I reserved a table at the bar, but we ended up going with the tasting menu after all.

Both the bar and the dining room areas are small, so do make a reservation if you plan to go.

The tasting menu started with a light granita-like creation:
#1: "Summer, frozen in time" (plum, frozen meringue, yogurt)
With a slight saltiness, it was less sweet than your typical palate cleanser.

Half of the second dish bore a resemblance to the first:
#2: Melon and cucumber (mint)
These were again slightly salty, unexpectedly so upon hearing "melon and cucumber". For me the saltiness took away from both fruits' refreshing quality.

The meal took a major turn for the better for my tastes as we moved to the savory dishes.
#3: California Caviar, farm egg, creme fraiche, brioche, chive.
Chicken egg+fish egg=win. Having mixed the runny egg with the creme fraiche, I simply could not resits cleaning the plate completely using my crisp, toasted brioche.

#4: Inverted cherry tomato tart (black olive, basil)
Yet another great dish. The beautiful fresh cherry tomatoes are sandwiched between the black olive "crackers". A winner both in flavor and texture combination.

#5: Chilled eggplant soup (fresh and shelling beans, preserved lemon, summer savory)
This was a very well prepared soup albeit it is overshadowed by the other great dishes that night.

#6: Monterey bay abalone grilled on the plancha (nettle dandelion salsa verde, spicy breadcrumbs, lemon zest)
This was an excellent savory dish, and probably one of the best dish I've had in SF to date. The fresh and chewy abalone had a hint of smokiness. And the nettle dandelion salsa verde? Uncannily good.

#7: "Earth and Sea" (steamed tofu mousseline, yuba, fresh seaweeds, mushroom dashi)
Yuba is dried bean curd skin and Coi uses the one from Hodo Soy Beanery. A light soup that provided a lovely semi-rest period before our main "entree".

#8: Slow-roasted lamb (chard leaves and stems, garum, rosemary)
The tender pink meat was encased in a layer of fat, keeping all the juices in.

#9: Cheese course. Cavatina goat cheese with mission figs, arugula.
The Cavatina is a goat's milk cheese aged 3 weeks with ash rind, made by cheesemaker Soyoung Scanlan (chef Patterson seems to use this cheesemaker's products often) from Adante Dairy. I really loved this cheese. Smooth and firm, it went perfectly with the figs.

#10: Blackberry Bramble (peach, toasted saffron cake, wild fennel, sorrel)
While the individual components of this dessert were excellent, the overall taste was reminiscent of the amuse and the first appetizer - lightly fruity yet a bit salty. At this point I felt that this fruity/salty combination is too overwhelming for the meal as a whole. It had, in other words, became boring.

#11: Milk Chocolate and Salted Caramel
This was more like it. Although the salted caramel made for yet another sweet/salty dish, it was balanced by the richness of the rest of the dish and made for a dessert more compatible to my tastes.

The sweet/salty theme did get us a bit bogged down by the end, but as this did not seem to be an issue in other meals I've read about, I wondered if it was an experimental phase ... Nonetheless, the savory dishes at Coi are undeniably good and stand strong on their own. Some of these dishes remained the most memorable out of all my meals in San Francisco.


Coi
373 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 393-9000
www.coirestaurant.com