Prime rib

Eastside Road, March 9, 2013—

THE ROADHOUSE RAMBLERS are back in business, I'm happy to report. Lindsey and I and a couple of dear old friends, two comfortable couples, spending Saturday night following the rules: an old-fashioned place, preferably unchanged in fifty years, by the side of the road in the country or a small town, with beef and a Martini at the head of the menu.

The snapshot above will give you an idea. This dining room is essentially unchanged since 1945, though I suppose that shiny chrome espresso machine to the right of the upright piano is a fairly recent addition.

Dinner began with a bowl of good hot hearty soup and a small plate of antipasto whose heart wasn't really in it: three slices of salami for the four of us, a couple of juicy pickled peppers, a small bowl of beans and ceci, one strip of raw carrot, another of celery.

Next came a small bowl of torn lettuces and thinly sliced red onion. Most of us opted for the oil and vinegar in cruets on the table, and I must say the olive oil was pretty darn good.

But we were there for the Saturday special, prime rib of beef. My piece was enormous and, as you see, as rare as I like it. It came with a small cup of what's called awjuss, spelled au jus; and another of blistering horseradish cream. And, of course, a baked potato, which I took nature, no sour cream or butter or chives, just another splash of that nice olive oil and a shake or two of salt.

Dessert? What could be more appropriate to a retro meal like this than spumoni?

Pinot noir, Castle Rock (California), 2010

• Dinucci's Italian Restaurant, 14485 Valley Ford Road, Valley Ford, California; 707-876-3260.

Fire!

The front porch dining room photo: Lindsey Shere

Berkeley, March 8, 2013—

ANOTHER TRIP SOUTH to Berkeley today on business — unexpectedly.

I learned of the fire while drinking my second cup of coffee at breakfast, looking at e-mail on the iPhone. Hmmm: something from my brother Jim: Subject: Chez Panisse; body:

I just learned about the loss— I'm so sorry.

Well, that caught me up in a hurry. I phoned Alice, got her friend Marcia on her cell phone: yes, there'd been a fire.

We drove right down, of course. Lots of people standing around watching the firemen going about their meticulous work. We sat in on a meeting of department heads: chefs, floor managers, grounds people, office people — maybe twelve or fifteen people altogether. Alice, of course, and our general manager Jennifer, who's rock-solid, a real blessing.

So many things to deal with, so quickly. Inventory. Save what we can; dump what we can't. Reservations: call people back, apologize, cancel reservations. Insurance: our fine agent was already there, of course, assuring us we were in good shape. I am impressed with the calm and professionalism of everyone I see.

I stepped into the kitchen, through the back door, and was immediately assailed by the smell of smoke — a very unpleasant smoke, not at all nice. But the kitchen looks completely normal, other than being empty of people and work. Spic and span.

The downstairs dining room looks normal except for the porch, which is a bit of a disaster. Its windows are all broken out, the banquettes partially torn out, and a couple of rectangular holes have been cut right through the floor: you can look through them to the charred posts and joists below the porch.

The fire had started there in the crawl space below the front porch, immediately underneath the sprinkler concealed in the copper chandelier that hung in the center of the porch ceiling. When you replace all this, a fireman said to me, you should keep that sprinkler, and bronze it or gold-plate it, and keep it on a desk somewhere; it probably saved the building.

I go upstairs: the café looks completely normal, but of course smells just as smoky as the downstairs, even though all the doors and windows are wide open. A professional cleaning crew is already assessing the damage, and tell me it's not as bad as it seems, they can eradicate all traces of the smell relatively quickly.

Outside, crews from three or four television stations are patiently waiting to interview anyone they find. I talk to a nice young woman from ABC, who asks if I'd be comfortable being interviewed on camera. Well, actually, no, I wouldn't, I say, but thanks for asking. Don't mention it, she says; I'm sorry for the loss.

We hope we can have the café up and running by the end of next week, but it'll be nip and tuck. Downstairs will undoubtedly take a little longer, though it should be possible to be serving downstairs while reconstruction is going on.

Nothing I write here is official, of course, simply my view of things. The office will undoubtedly have a notice on the restaurant website when they can get to it.

---

Oh well: time for lunch. We troop down to Picante for some rajas — potatoes and chili peppers, a favorite of mine, with a side of pinto beans and some guacamole and, why not, a Margarita. Everything smells of smoke. We think about all the people: our insurance agent, the firemen and the police, the bystanders, the folks at the Cheese Board who rushed pizzas over for the restaurant staff. The wonderful people who work at Chez Panisse, our family, who are so dedicated, and such fine men and women.

We think about the last time something like this happened, nearly thirty years ago — a much more serious fire: but we were up and running before too long, better than ever. About the many events since, so many so pleasurable, and the few that were terribly sad. Why not: I have another Margarita, and we drive back home, and look at the news, and the e-mail and the Facebook messages. And I answer them here, apologizing for the departure from the Eatingday routine, but I know you'll understand.

• Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
• Picante, 1328 6th Street, Berkeley; (510) 525-3121

Duck

Eastside Road, March 7, 2013—

I LEARN TODAY that in Australia a duck les is called a "maryland," small "m," I suppose because its outline resembles that of the state. Very strange: but so be it.

It's been quite a while since we've cooked any, here on Eastside Road. I used to cook them fairly often in the old days, when I was chief cook as well as bottle washer, before Lindsey retired and took on culinary responsibilities at home. I always browned the duck legs in a sauté pan, then braised them.

Tonight, though, L. roasted them in the oven, flavoring them with nothing but salt, and roasting them slowly. It's an entirely different thing so cooked, truer to its own self and less beholden to pan juices, and very nicely accompanied by an excellent purée of leeks, celery root, potatoes, with a little butter.

The duck itself came from a farm out west of here, a place we have to visit one of these days — excellent ducks; and we asked them to provide a Christmas goose for us this year. Now that's thinking ahead!

cheap Nero d'Avola

Soup

Eastside Road, March 6, 2013—

IT'S JUST SO GOOD, a bowl of hot hearty soup. Especially on a cold late-winter night. This is a minestrone, and we didn't make it; we got it in town at the Downtown Bakery and Creamery, which a while back added soups and sandwiches and even more elaborate dishes to the operation, becoming in fact a real lunch joint. Why haven't we lunched there? Beats me.

We dropped in for a loaf of bread, and Joe was carrying a few take-out containers of soup to the shelf, and one thing led to another. Went fine with grilled Parmesan sandwiches, of course.

Chicken, broth, garbanzos, carrot, celery, peppers I think, barley, salt of course, probably more. Very nicely done.

Cheap Pinot grigio as an apéritif; cheap Nero d'Avolo with dinner

Saltimbocca

Eastside Road, March 5, 2013—

TODAY WE FAST; yesterday we feasted. Well. We dined very well, but moderately.

We'd made yet another round trip to Oakland and Berkeley performing various errands, and met friends for a drink and a nibble in mid-afternoon, in lieu of lunch. There I had a plate of delicious jamón with a glass or two of fino, warming up for a looming trip to Iberia. Spanish ham and Spanish sherry: now there's an example of elective affinities.

• César, 1515 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.883.0222

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A DRINK AND A NIBBLE do not constitute dinner, though, so we moved next door, joining a granddaughter and her other grandparents. Here I was happy to see chicories with anchovy dressing and a soft-cooked egg, a fine take on the classic Caesar salad; many other restaurants would simply call it that, probably.

From there I went to saltimbocca, a favorite of mine and one of the Hundred Plates, I hereby declare (reminding myself it's high time to update that list). But here I had indeed met a revisionist: this was chicken saltimbocca, as the menu had promised: a flattened breast of chicken, layered with a veil of prosciutto, flavored with sage, and grilled, finished I would bet in a pan.

I'd been thinking about Roman saltimbocca, of course; veal with prosciutto and sage, rolled up, sliced into bites, and quickly sautéed. To me what arrived was closer to what I have always called chicken valdostana, except that that dish involves a thin layer of cheese as well as the prosciutto. (Hmmm: have to dust that recipe off one of these days…)

In any case, a fine main course, arriving with sautéed broccoli di ciccio and a purée involving root vegetables, chthonic and grounded.

I ordered a glass of Arneis, one of my favorite wines, a white one from Piemonte. The waiter asked if he might bring me a taste of it to see if I really wanted it. Interesting. On tasting it I saw his reason: very uncharacteristic. Rather nice, but not at all what I expected. I made do with the bottle of rosé the rest of the table were having; then had a glass of the Arneis after all, with the saltimbocca.

The sommelier pointed out that Arneis, like any grape, grows in a number of soils, is finished in a number of ways. This one was from Piemonte, all right, in the Roero, between Bra and Asti; but finished in a rather richer, thicker style than the grape has traditionally been given. On reflection it seems closer to a white Rhone than to a white Savoie. It makes me stretch my expectations. I'm glad it's here; I like it very much — but I hope the Arneis I'm used to continues to be made as well.

Rosé, "Ameztoi," Getariako Txakolina (Spain), 2011 (light and pleasant though not really "amazing"); Arneis, Cascina Val de Prete (Roero), 2010 (see above)

• Café Chez Panisse, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley; 510.548.5525

Salmon Sunday

Eastside Road, March 3, 2013—

OUR BELOVED MARKET in Healdsburg runs only May through November (roughly), but we make do this time of year with the Sebastopol market, held on Sunday mornings. There we find our familiars: Nancy Skall for unique produce; Franco Dunn for his amazing sausages; Dave the fish guy for salmon. King salmon these days.

Today Lindsey basted it, or marinated it, with the dressing she'd made for our blood-orange salad: olive oil, shallot, blood-orange juice. (We have our Oakland sister-in-law — is that what you call your grandchild's other grandmother? — to thank for these blood oranges; she has a big tree in her back yard, and it bears dependably and copiously.)

With the fish, potatoes: diced, cooked in water with garlic and a little olive oil. Delicious.

Green salad, check. Fruit, check. Oh! some pan pepato from Christmas! How nice!

Cheap Pinot grigio

Feasts and leftovers

Eastside Road, March 2, 2013—

JUST LOOK AT THIS fabulous last bit of my blood-orange salad! Lindsey peels them with a knife, slices them fairly thin, and tosses them with sliced white onion, adding a few drops of olive oil to the mixture. That, and a few grains of salt, is all there is to it, and it's one of the glories of the table, one of the Hundred Plates.

That was dinner Thursday night, otherwise a dinner of leftovers — both the main dish, macaroni and cheese, and the wines, little bottle-ends of white, rosé, and red. A day of gustatory repose, you might say; and today will be another; we may well even fast, so well did we eat yesterday.

Too well, perhaps, and certainly too much. Lunch in San Francisco with a couple of friends, one on the mend from a recent indisposition, and looking much better than we'd expected. A celebratory meal, then, at the pleasant communal table where you feel you're in the bosom of family even though your neighbors are in fact perfect strangers.

(Perfectly sociable, though; the solitary woman on my left conversing pleasantly about shared menu orders; the fellow at the end apologizing, as he leaves the table, for not having had an opportunity to converse at length. I'd never seen him before.)

Here I lunched on a complex, nicely integrated, very interesting dish: trofie in a chicken ragù with pancetta, cabbage, very faint hints of caraway and paprika, crème fraîche, overstrewn with parsley. Eastern European, as the menu had promised; more specifically, Austro-Hungarian, and delicious. Before it, a cup of bracing beef-based soup; afterward, a slice of this magnificent blood-orange cara cara (thanks, Kathi) tart with two bands of streusel.

Côtes du Rhône, Dauvergne Ranvier, 2010 (well balanced though Viognier-dominated, very attractive); Brouilly, Domaine Ruet, 2007 (forthcoming, mature)

• Boulette's Larder, 1 Ferry Building Marketplace, San Francisco; (415) 399-1155

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DINNER WAS AT another friend's restaurant, a new one, opened only six weeks ago, previously unvisited by us. It was full of energy, dark, vivacious, boldly and beautifully decorated, the walls, furnishings, menu, service, and above all cuisine grounded in total authenticity, everything as appealing, attractive, and engaging as anyone could ask.

Here we fairly feasted: pickled sardines with artichokes, fava leaves, and pea sprouts; patatas bravas; baby octopus with pork belly, black truffles, and butternut squash; duck liver paté with wild arugula and toast; sweet house-made botifarra sausage with gigante beans and braised greens, and, perhaps my favorite, sweet Piemontese beef tartare, beautifully mixed with egg, capers, and onion, and served with shoestring pimenton potatoes.

Dessert? But of course! I had a fine rich soft chocolate torte, with mocha-flavored crème anglaise and "candied coffee" ice cream; Lindsey had apple-huckleberry crumble with fried almond streusel; Grace made do with a fine, authentic "flan tradicional." Everything here seems authentically tradicional, but equally in the moment, our moment.

I can't overemphasize the pleasures of this table, this restaurant. Here at last our friend Paul Canales, formerly chef at Oliveto, has found the perfect expression of his many enthusiasms. The food is fun, nourishing, vital; and so is everything about the setting in which it's served.

Gamay, Andrew Lane, 2011 (friendly and unassertive)

• Duende, 468 19th Street, Oakland; 510-893-0174