À la française

San Francisco, November 9, 2013—

FOUND A NEW bistro, thanks to our friend Eliane, who led us down an alley transformed, Sunday evening, into something reminding me of vicoli in Rome, or a backs street in the vielle cité in Nice.

And there I saw, scrawled on the slate hanging next to the doorway, Lamb Shanks. Just what I wanted.

We sat on the terrasse, in fact chairs and tables set up out on the street pavement, and finished our Martinis, and were served this quite nice and very French Brandade de morue, and a basket of Acme baguettes, and a good house lettuce salad, and then I had my shanks. In my opinion they were very much in the spirit of Richard Olney's fine recipe, which simply involves lamb shanks, garlic, salt, thyme as I recall, white wine, a heavy lidded pot, and a fair amount of slow cooking. It was served, as you see, in the heavy black iron pan in which it had presumably been finished, on a bed of greens, and it was good; ditto the tarte aux pommes I finished up with.

Marsanne, Domaine Habrard, Crozes Hermitage, 2011; Charbono, Nebuchadnezzar (Napa Valley), 2009

• Café Claude, 7 Claude Lane, San Francisco; (415) 392-3515

Fusilli

Eastside Road, November 8, 2013—

BRING A POT of water to a boil; throw in some salt; add the fusilli; cook for eight or nine minutes. (Depends on the pasta: this was hard wheat.)

Meanwhile, chop up a lemon with a clove of garlic and a little salt, and open a can of tuna, squeezing out all the superfluous oil.

When the pasta's cooked al dente, drain it in a colander and add the lemon-garlic and the tuna, tossing them in.

Serve, grinding fresh black pepper on top. Here you see some nice green beans on the side.

Green salad afterward; then pears and a couple of chocolates.

Picpoul de Pinet, Mas de Daumas Gassac, 2011

Guacamole

Eastside Road, November 7, 2013—

A LITTLE OF THIS, a little of that today. For lunch, this guacamole, which I made in my usual way: roast a couple of habañera peppers, skin, core, and seed them, and chop them finely along with a good-sized shallot or two, half a bunch of cilantro, and half a small Mexican lime. I chop sea-salt right into this, using a mezzaluna Lindsey's father made for us. Then I mash this with a couple of avocados, adding a sprinkling of tequila. With it, tortilla chips of course; then a couple of pieces of garlic-and-olive-oil toast. Yum!

Then we hit the road, first to see a marvelous little exhibit of Richard Dienbenkorn works on paper, then to have an affogato (Lindsey) and a macchiato (me) at a café we like en route to San Francisco where we were going to a short concert-discussion. Emporio Rulli seems very fancy inside: sparkling glass and mirrors, polished wood panelling, marble: but if you've travelled in Piemonte you know this is just how any reasonably upscale cafe is supposed to look. We like it. We feel comfortable here, and the coffee is just fine, ditto the vanilla gelato.

In the car, on the way home, a slice of focaccia from Downtown Bakery & Creamery; then before bed a nightcap: a glass of Mandarine, because we need our fruit, you know…

• Emporio Rulli, 464 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur, California; (415) 924-7478

Show Dogs; A16

San Francisco and Oakland, November 6, 2013, —

LUNCH IN THE CITY, and this is what I Facebooked:

Good dog, decent red, nice part of town. Pick two. Just kidding.

We'd walked a couple of blocks of the Tenderloin from our car, parked on the street, and that's not the pleasantest stretch of urbanity. Show Dogs is at the corner of Market and Taylor, mid-Market, and that's not the pleasantest stretch of urbanity either. But, hey, we all gotta live however we can, and Show Dogs is making it a whole lot more pleasant. I had the boar sausage in a good bun with mustard and a catsup of poached cherries and a scattering of arugula; Lindsey had the Italian pork, with truffle aïoli, mustard, tomato, and arugula. All this stuff — mustard, catsup, and sausage — is made in house.

The place is run, I believe, by the folks from Foreign Cinema, and it shows: the food is delicious, the vibe casual buy somehow both indulgent and smart, the politics right. Show Dogs reminds me of Kees Elfring's Worst, in Amsterdam, and it's a lot closer, and we're glad it's there.

good Merlot, hefty glass

• Show Dogs, 1020 Market Street, San Francisco; 415.558.9560

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DINNER ACROSS THE BAY with a couple of old friends in the second-noisiest restaurant we've suffered this year: the dB meter hovered at 90 much of the time. But we suffered it gladly, because the food was amazingly delicious, the service friendly and attentive. I began with a plate of Swiss chard, sautéed with garlic and little chunks of preserved lemon — what a fine idea! — and a goodsized double handful of house-made taralli, half flavored with fennel, the other with black pepper.

Next, roast chicken — a half pullet, I'd say — roasted with pancetta and served on a bed of broccoli di ciccio, pleasantly bitter and rich. The chicken was robust, perhaps a tad underdone but succulent, the skin very nicely flavored — they use good salt in this place, I think.

A16 is a new Eastbay outpost of the well-known restaurant of the same name in San Francisco, also noisy as I recall — we haven't been there in years; you can only get to so many places, fondly as you recall them. The cuisine concentrates on southern Italy and the wine list is outstanding. This is a great addition to the Rockridge scene; judging by last night — only a Wednesday, after all — it's already a big favorite.

Falanghina, crisp and delicate, then perfect with the chard and its lemon; Cannonau from Sardegna, both wines by the (inexpensive!) glass, don't know the details (couldn't photograph the wine list: too dark)

• A16, 5356 College Ave, Oakland,(510) 768-8003

Faemina

Eastside Road, November 5, 2013—

YOU ASKED ABOUT our coffee. Well, it's Fast Day here today, nothing else to write about, so here's our coffee setup.

We buy our coffee beans from Sweet Maria's, in Oakland. Currently we're drinking their Taller del Taller. (Nothing to do with Alice's mushrooms: taller is Spanish for "workshop.") This is a marvelous blend; I fully agree with Sweet Maria's description.

The Neighbor Down the Hill turned me on to roasting coffee at home a couple of years ago, when she gave me a popcorn roaster and a pound of beans. I soon burned out that roaster, and a replacement or two, and realized I'd be money ahead buying a dedicated piece of equipment. This FreshRoast roaster does about three or four days' supply at a time, since we only have coffee at breakfast. And while the purchase price is three or four times that of a popcorn popper, it's far outlasted that many of the cheaper things, and is easier to use: I just put the green beans in the glass container and plug the machine in.

You have to shake the popcorn popper, or take its lid off and stir the coffee beans; the Fresh Roast machine has a forced-air blower that takes care of that problem, and it continues to stir the coffee after the heating element goes off, cooling the beans. It's pre-set to 5.9 seconds of roasting, but I increase the time to 6.2 for these beans. (Other blends seem to have other optimum times.)

Home-roasted coffee is best after three or four days. I just leave it in the roaster glass to age, as you see; when the grinder's empty, the roasted coffee goes into its container, and it's time to roast the next batch.

(That Caffé del Doge can is full of green beans; the big plastic bag is there only to give you an idea of Sweet Maria's packaging. But I must say Caffé del Doge remains my favorite commercial coffee, with Tazza d'Oro a close second. Their only drawback: you have to be in Italy, the Veneto or Rome, to get them. There is or was a Doge outlet in Palo Alto, but it just isn't the same as being in Venice.)

I grind the coffee just before making it, of course, in a period Faema "Contessa" grinder I got used at Mr. Espresso, in Oakland. For years we drank Mr. Espresso's coffee, too, and I'm still partial to it, partly because Carlo's such a serious and loyal man, partly because, let's face it, his coffee continues to be sound and tasty. I suppose it's been supplanted by the new generation of roasters: Blue Bottle, Sightglass, Four Barrel and the like. But there's always room for the tried-and-true.

I make our breakfast coffee in our Faemina, which I know I've written about before. Lindsey found it in a second-hand shop on Grove Street in Berkeley, back in the middle 1960s. I borrowed $25 from my mother to buy it. It was brand new, I'm sure, still with its European power plug. It's designed for twice the voltage I have, so it takes a while to heat up — just enough time for me to get the coffee bowls out, slice the bread for toast, set the table, and step out onto the patio to verify the morning sky.

I imagine this reduced voltage has also prolonged the life of the heating elements, but it's been hard on the Faemina's two switches: one on-off, the other high-low. I've sent this Faemina to the shop more than once, sometimes with unpleasant results. Once, in New York where I'd shipped it for repair (it needed gaskets), various parts were stripped from it, and I've had to find their replacements. Last time, a local repairman rewired it incorrectly, putting each element on its own on-off switch, complicating things more than necessary.

We have our morning coffee with milk, foamed at the Faemina. Occasionally I'll have a black espresso in the early afternoon, and the Faemina does a good job of that, and this Taller de Taller, with a spoonful of sugar, is a delicious thing. (That's a photo of such a cup, hanging next to the stove-sparker, at the top center of the photo.)

If you don't want to roast your own coffee, well, I can understand your reticence, it sounds like a lot of work. But it really isn't, and the green beans go for less than ten dollars a pound, considerably less than good pre-roasted coffee, even supermarket-available brands like Lavazza (not bad) and Starbuck's (no comment).

I've seen Faeminas like ours listed on Ebay in the neighborhood of $700, but of course you can't be sure of their condition. I don't know what I'd replace it with. I hope I never have to.

Hash

Eastside Road, November 4, 2013—

NEITHER OF US really have any idea what to call it; I've just decided to call it hash. And I have only a rough idea of how Lindsey made it. Clearly she raided the icebox, and came up with a zucchini, a pepper or two, some mushrooms, a bit of Franco's breakfast sausage.

From the pantry: a head of garlic, separated into its cloves; a potato or two; maybe an onion. Yes, I'm sure an onion's involved.

All this got sliced and diced and scattered on a baking sheet, where I'm sure it also got sprinkled with olive oil and salt and pepper. Bake in a moderate oven, I'd guess, until done, I'm sure. It was really good, and smelled marvelous.

Pinot noir, Siebert Ranch (Russian River Valley), 2009: the last of the bottle, as good as the day it was opened.

Sunday brunch

Eastside Road, November 3, 2013—

YES, IT'S TRUE, I've said before that "brunch" is not my favorite meal, but today's an exceptional day; we have to drive down to the city for an event which will obviate dinner, so let's make breakfast the Principal Meal of the Day. Here you see (or can perhaps barely make out) Franco Dunn's breakfast sausage, which comes uncased. I formed two patties, each a little bigger than a baseball, then flattened a bit and cooked not too fast in a black iron skillet.

I was going to fry the eggs in the sausage drippings, but there were none. This has to be the leanest sausage on record: there was no fat at all in that skillet; the patties kept everything to themselves. Oh well: a little butter and olive oil in the small egg-frying skillet, an old enamel one I use for nothing else, did the trick perfectly. Salt and pepper, of course.

The toast is the whole-wheat bread from Downtown Bakery & Creamery, in Healdsburg, lightly buttered. Afterward, caffelattes (thanks for your loyalty, Faemina!). What? No green salad? Well, maybe later…