Peas. Pasta. Salad.

Eastside Road, August 31, 2010—

THE PEAS WERE WARMED — "cooked" seems too strong a word — with butter, salt, and pepper. English peas from the Marin Farmers Market, still tasting remarkably fresh two days after purchase.

The pasta was Lindsey's favorite whole-wheat penne. I made pesto, picking the basil leaves from our garden this afternoon, pounding up the leaves with good red garlic, sea salt, and pine nuts. Alas, we're out of Parmesan: make a note to pick some up soon.

The usual green salad, but afterward a couple of fat slices of yellow heirloom tomato, also from Marin county. I hear that our local newspaper tells us today that fall is two months early, after a summer that arrived at least two weeks late: not much of a tomato season. Still, we're grateful for what we get.

Cheap Nero d'Avola

Catchup

Eastside Road, August 30, 2010—

A BUSY WEEKEND, on the road, in general without Internet connectivity, but hardly a fast. Saturday (August 28) we drove down to Los Gatos, 120 miles south, there to help install some material in an art museum. Lunch was at the macaronically named Fleur de Cocoa, where — recalling my wish for Nizzese food on seeing Cezanne paintings a couple of days earlier — we took advantage of a pan bagnat that was really quite nice — tuna, hardboiled egg, tomato, washed down with peachleaf-flavored iced tea. Afterward, rather nice ice cream, also made on premises: Tahitian vanilla, pistachio (beautifully flavored, lots of nuts), salt-caramel.

Fleur de Cocoa, 39 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos; tel. (408) 354-3574

Farmer's omelet

Eastside Road, August 27, 2010—

I DON'T KNOW WHY this isn't one of the Hundred Plates; it just isn't. In spite of the many variations, not the least the Spanish tortilla I mentioned a month ago. Tonight's version was heavy on the potatoes, light on the eggs, and distinguished by its pungent, evocative bacon — Mangalitsa, the last of it I'm sure, from the back corner of the freezer. With it, a few of those delicious Padron peppers; afterward, green salad.

Cheap Pinot grigio

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I forgot to mention, day before yesterday, the superb little appetizer we had at Locanda de Eva: Lardo not quite Colonnata, because made in the restaurant kitchen rather than imported from Italy. It too was from Mangalitsa pork, raised nearby — the rancher, in fact, was dining at the restaurant that night. This lardo was a little looser in texture than those I've had in Italy, and rather heavily flavored with juniper — but it was very good indeed, a fine first course to accompany a good Martini.

Dinner at the museum

San Francisco, August 26, 2010 —

TO THE CITY, as all Berkeleyans used to call San Francisco, to see the vaunted Impressionist show of paintings on loan from the Musée d'Orsay, and to have the special three-course prix-fixe dinner offered in a Parisian spirit, I suppose, by the cafeteria at the De Young Museum. I won't discuss the paintings, other than to note that it was a pleasure to see so many old friends in a nicely hung, decently lit, evocatively presented installation.
What interested me nearly as much was the prospect of dinner. The cafeteria must serve nearly a thousand of these dinners each Thursday night during the run of the exhibition, which closes September 6. First and third courses were fixed on this menu, but we had a choice of three plats principaux: L. and our guest Linda had salmon, I had beef. (We passed on the tortellini, whose description was however attractive.)

This was billed as a Paris Bistro menu, and while both salmon and tortellini seem a little foreign to that theme, my own supper wasn't far off the mark. First course was a small salad with frisée among the greens, a bowl of mushroom soup ornamented with a drizzle of good green olive oil, and a tiny but very nice grilled mushroom sandwich — a fine balance of textures, colors, and flavors.

The beef was cut off the short ribs, I think, nicely braised, and served in its sauce, flavored with tomato, carrot, onion, celery, thyme, and beef stock, garnished with gently cooked peas — not your tiny petits poix, but good big honest English peas. And dessert was a small square of strawberry mousse on a thin pastry base, garnished with pistachios, and accompanied by a puff-paste cookie.

I asked the cashier if the food were trucked in from some huge commercial kitchen in South San Francisco, and was met with surprise. No: we've been working all day on this right here in our kitchen, the young woman assured me. I asked a waiter — yes, we were served at table — how such a huge operation was managed. Waiters, bussers, runners, floor managers, he said, knowledgeably and with a smile. Everyone knew what he was doing; everyone seemed competent and enthusiastic. The crowd was lively and in a good mood.

I don't think our standards have slipped, Lindsey's and mine I mean; I think we're still pretty discerning. But I've been delighted in the past few years by the improvements we've seen in public dining, whether on the road or in venues like this. Things used to be much worse. And lest you think there's something elitist about eating at an Impressionist exhibition, dinner was fifteen bucks, plus seven for a 25cl carafe of decent

Pinot noir, 2008 (France)

Strozzapreti

Berkeley, August 25, 2010—

Martini, Locanda da Eva

DINNER WITH A FRIEND in a restaurant open for barely a month, hence quite new to us — a trattoria, I'd say, with an exceptionally interesting wine list and a good bar, sourcing its ingredients with an eye to local and sustainable items, and preparing its offerings knowingly and modestly. What I mean by "modestly" is with more concern for the tradition of the item, its provenance and history and innate qualites, than its possibility as an expression of the cook. It's like the difference between playing the Brahms violin concerto, say, for its intrinsic qualities, those the composer put there, rather than for its usefulness as a display of the performer's possibly too flashy technique.

I started with a Martini, nicely balanced, cold, not watery, garnished with Castelvetrano olives; the others had Mojitos. Two of us went on to strozzapreti with tomatoes, roasted eggplant, chiles, lamb sausage, herbs, and ricotta salata, that last cut into strips and laid over the dish. I was perfectly satisfied with this dish. It didn't knock me out; it didn't intend to. It was like something eaten in a perfectly ordinary but very very good neighborhood trattoria in Sicily or Calabria.
   
Dessert was polenta torte with nectarines, blackberries, and citrus mascarpone. The cake had been sprinkled — baptized, you might say, irreverently — with chamomile-infused grappa. This was a complex affair and a delicious one, with mutually complementary textures and flavors all put to the service of the fresh fruit. L. had a plate of cookies, three squares of shortbread glazed with a thin layer of caramel and chopped nuts. To isolate them from the cool plate they came on a "doily," a small rectangle of clean paper cut from one of the daily menus. Sustainable, recyclable, ingenious. It's that kind of place, I think.

Grillo, Concilio Feudo d'Elimi (Sicily)

Locanda da Eva, 2826 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley; tel. (510) 665-9601

Ribs

Eastside Road, August 24, 2010—

DINNER CHEZ FRIENDS tonight; they'd asked us to dinner to meet their son, who has a coffee roasting company up in Washington State. (It looks interesting; I have to look into it.) This isn't just any friend, it's Mac, who walked across the Alps with me two summers ago. When you spend five weeks in intimate contact with someone, every waking hour, day after day, you develop a special relationship. In so many ways our backgrounds are so different, yet there's that bond.

One of the differences: He's basically midwestern (Iowa); I'm completely West Coast (Bay Area). This gets reflected in our meals, of course; I'd never have thought of preparing the spread set before me tonight — but I was happy to confront it. He'd grilled marinated pork ribs on his patio; a dozen or so ears of corn had been boiled. After canapés — olives, crackers, and three cheeses — that and Peach Melba was enough for a warm summer evening.

It was 104° when we turned onto his street, at 6:30 in the evening. Shoot, I said to myself, I brought a wine completely wrong for this weather — but in fact it was delicious:

Barbera, Louis Preston Vineyards (Dry Creek Valley), 2005

Pasta, tomato sauce

Eastside Road, August 23, 2010—

ONE OF THE OLD STAND-BYS tonight: whole-wheat penne. Lindsey chopped up a few fresh tomatoes to soften in olive oil with garlic and anchovies, then tossed the penne in the sauce. Afterward, the usual green salad.

Cheap Pinot grigio