Worst

Hammarby, Stockholm, January 9, 2016—

I WRITE THIS in Stockholm, but much of my heart is still in Amsterdam, where yesterday noon we had our last Dutch meal for the time being at Worst.

I haven't given Worst credit here, partly because I rarely write about lunches: dinner has a way of shouldering other items aside. (I've been remiss, for example, at not mentioning bakeries, and cafés, and poffertjeskramen.)

Worst — the word is Dutch for "sausage," and was applied to this restaurant with a deliberate sense of humor, intending it to be the Worst restaurant in Amsterdam — Worst is the sidekick to Marius, the restaurant we've dined at twice in the last few days. The owner-chef was greatly influenced by Chez Panisse in Berkeley, where he worked a couple of years; Worst is in a sense to the Café Chez Panisse what Marius is to the downstairs restaurant.

But only in a sense, for Worst is not a café, or a bistro, or a brasserie; Worst is a wine bar. I'm never sure exactly what a wine bar is, for I never go to them. Wine to me is something to have with dinner (or, now and then, lunch); it's a food; and it's not to be sampled with three or four other wines, unless in fact a tasting is going on, which is a very different matter, having nothing to do with Eating.

One of the things that makes it a Wine Bar, I guess, is the seating: very casual, on stools, at tables big enough to require sitting with strangers when it's busy. Another is the menu, which is quite restricted and, I think, fairly unchanging. A third, of course, is the very extensive wine list.

But we've taken lunch here two or three times in the last few days, partly because it's close to our apartment, partly because we do love Kees, partly or mostly because it's really good.

Today I had baccalà. Steady readers know my fondness for salt cod. This was an excellent baccalà, with a beautiful smooth texture, a perfect balance of cod, potato, and cream (if I'm not mistaken), and it was piled to just the right thickness on its toasted bread.

The three pieces lay on a very nice piperade; I couldn't have made a better one. It was all so good it made me doubly, triply sad to be leaving Amsterdam once again.

Saumur Champigny, Château de Villeneuve, 2001: light but substantial and rewarding, fruity, still fresh

•Worst, Barentszstraat 171, Amsterdam; +31 20 625 6167
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Back to Marius

Prinseneiland, Amsterdam, January 6, 2016—

ONE WAY TO PARSE the world: there are Rembrandts, or Hemingways, or Beethovens, or Rodins; and then there are Vermeers, or Fitzgeralds, or Mozarts, or Degases. The restaurant Marius is, as can perhaps be guessed from the photo I took, a Vermeer. Light falls into the room from many sources, bringing physical details into clarity and order. Beautifully composed still lifes emerge: a row of bottles recalls Morandi, a pair of tureens on a shelf, Vermeer. The candle in its glass; the water carafe; the tall plain cylindrical vase with its tulips — the rhythm of orderly progression

Same goes for the menu, always handwritten, usually quickly; always describing a three- or four-course table d'hôte Marktmenu, with a few alternatives on the margin. Tonight,

voorgerecht: Gebakkren rode poon met prei, aardappel en lavassaus
tussengerecht: Zacht gegaarde koolvis met knolselderij dulse en speklookkingbouillon
hoofdgerecht: Gebraden varkensnek en gestoofde wang met kool, meiraap en grijze cantharellen
dessert: Gepocheerde kweepeer met pistache cake en vanille ijs

which I'll translate for you course by course.

My companions chose the voorgerecht to begin with — after the unlisted amuse-gueles of course. Rode poon (Chelidonichthys lucerna) is an Atlantic fish I'm unfamiliar with, a gurnard; it was poached, I'd say, and served with leek, potato, and lovage-flavored jus, and reportedly delicious.

I chose the tussengerecht ("between-course") for my first course. Koolvis (Pollachius virens) is pollock, itself a type of Atlantic cod. (Marius does not make a fetish of carefully distinguishing the various types of fish on its menu; this is simply expected by Dutch diners, who are after all descended from generations of fish-eaters, and like to know what's on the plate.) The fish was slowly cooked, as the menu describes, and served with celeriac and dulse — an edible red seaweed — cooked in a bacon broth.

Now it's no secret that Kees, the chef-owner of Marius, is an old friend, my "Dutch son" in fact, and he'd heard about our dinner New Year's Eve at the home of another chef friend. I'd described the liver-based broth Sander had cooked his mussels in, and the delighted cry Umami! that he'd greeted it with. I don't know if tonight's bacon-based broth on seaweed was a deliberate response or not; probably not — probably coincidental. They have similar tastes, but one's a Rembrandt, the other a Vermeer. One's a free-jazz improviser; the other's an elegant string quartet, part Haydn, part Webern.

But back to the menu: Our hoofdgerecht — chief course — was a delightful winter dish (and it has been cold here): roast pork neck with braised pork cheek, with cabbage, turnips and gray chanterelles. The two meats had been cooked separately, of course, each to exactly the right point. Ditto the vegetables, no one of which prevailed over others — each item in this ragout was as independent, but mindful of its place in the whole, as any bottle in a Morandi still life.

The vanilla ice cream was perfect. Lindsey said so, and she knows ice cream. The pistachio cake tasted exactly like hers, and that's high praise. It was a perfect meal.

Blanc sec: Mouthes Le Bihan, "la pic Colette" (Côtes de Duras, 2013: a delicious, complex, mouth-filling Sauvignon-Semillon blend that made me think of the Y Grec — dry Yquem — that we used to drink fifty years ago
Saumur Champigny, Château de Villeneuve, 2001: rich, deep, smooth, substantial, generous

•Marius, Barentszstraat 173, Amsterdam; 020 422 7880
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Restaurant As

Prinseneiland, January 5, 2016—

TO BEGIN WITH, for you anglophone readers, as is Dutch for "axis," and the restaurant's name has two referents: it's in a part of outer Amsterdam, toward the south, called the Axis for some reason I don't recall (and having nothing to do with World War II, I promise you); and the restaurant occupies a curious large room in the shape of a circle, with tables radiating out from a central bar, like spokes on a wheel.

The kitchen, curiously, is outside the building, in a little pavilion of its own. And there Sander Overeinder (who I must mention worked a term at Chez Panisse, many years ago) whips up some truly distinctive and memorable meals.

At table we decided, our two Dutch friends and we, that there are many kinds of chefs: some are like architects, some like painters… Sander is a free-jazz musician, improvising absolutely new things, often with improbable sources and juxtapositions, but on a very solid understanding of the basic principles of coherence and purpose. But let's get to the menu.

The menu here is simple enough: you can have three, four, five, or six courses. The dishes are not described on the menu, which changes daily; the very skilfull waitress explains it for you. As is apparently usual, the fore-course provided two dishes:

First, salsify sticks with nagelhout, Dutch for "nailboard," which Wikipedia tells me refers to the nail-studded plank these thin slices of beef are stuck to in order to air-dry. A sort of carpaccio jerky, I suppose; very tasty. Under it, chestnut purée, with cream and olive oil; on it, a spray of mâche and a scatter of dark finely crumbed don't-recall-what.

Then raw mackerel filets with roe and pomegranate seeds and onion cups on a bed of kale, with a drizzle of balsamic. Marvelous.

We're in the Netherlands — Holland, in fact — so beets are inevitable, and our light between-course involved cooked herring with beets and watercress. Steady visitors here will know beets are not to my taste; they always taste like aluminum. But this beet did not; I don't know why. Perhaps it was the proximity of the cooked fish, rich and a little oily. Whatever the case, it was an inspired juxtaposition.

The main course is the hardest of all to describe. Beef, of course, and a piece that cared more about taste and texture than about tenderness. Puntarella, yes, brought in from Italy, and cooked just to soften it a bit — except for the core, normally thrown away, but kept in Sander's frugal kitchen, sliced, steamed until just the right texture. (That's it in the cente, cut side facing up.)

Then too there was a scatter of tiny lentils, because Sander seems always to have beans handy in some form, and uses them as condiments in his complex composed dishes. You don't eat a course like this by deconstructing it; you go at it with knife and fork, taking the whole mix to your palate at once. Some forkfuls will have more meat, or lentils, or puntarella than others; each bite brings out different preponderances, revealing new aspects… oh what a rhapsody…

Desserts, of course. First, poached pear, with a scatter of… wait, what, are these toasted bread crumbs, powdered fine? Not amaretto crumbs? Yes, why not?

And then two delicious sorbets, one a soft caramel, the other — pear and parsnip! Inspired. Chocolate bark to garnish. A stunning end to a magical dinner.

Vermentinu, Terra Nostra (Corsica), 2014: golden, fruity, rich, nice finish
Chablis, Domaine Vincent Dampt, 2014: slow to open, typical, nicely balanced
Cabernet sauvignon, Domaine Richeaume (Provence), "Tradition", 2012: rich and deep, very fine, like Bordeaux used to taste

•Restaurant As, Pr. Irenestraat 19, Amsterdam; 020 644 0100
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Toscanini

Prinseneiland, January 4, 2016—

THIS IS A FAVORITE restaurant of ours. I'd forgotten how much I like this room, which — with a smaller adjacent room — seats maybe a hundred diners comfortably in what must have been formerly an auto garage in Amsterdam's Jordaan district.

It is also a local favorite of a chef friend, who was with us; I cannot be certain there weren't a few extra slices of garnish on my primo. Probably not, though. This is a generous restaurant.

We ordered from the daily specials listed on the blackboard you may be able to make out on the wall to the left, the second lit object on the wall. (The photo was taken close to midnight; the dining room had been full.)

Our amuse-geule had been baccalà vicentino, salt cod in the Vicenza style, sweet with beautifully reduced onion soffrito taming the cod; and it was delicious. Kees and I went on to the tajarin al tartufo nero: the pasta smooth, liscio — the word is untranslatable, but perfectly appropriate. Yellow with egg, and buttery. And the garnish — well, frankly we prefer white truffles on pasta, my Contessa and I, black truffles need more cooking than the steaming pasta gives them, especially piled this high: but I am not complaining.

On, then, to the secondo: Costata di maiale per due.This turned out to be generously thick slices of smooth-textured, sweet-flavored pork roast, served with a mêlée of leek, clery, onion, and other aromatics in a beautifully semi-reduced glaze.

Dessert: I couldn't resist the offer of panforte: after all, we're still within the Christmas season. I was glad I chose it: figgy, nutty, nicely textured, soft and pleasant.

The flavor, technique, and authenticity of the entire meal — and others remembered from previous visits over the years — puts this firmly among the Hundred Restaurants.

Timorasso, Terra "Petit Derthona", Vigneti Massa, 2013;
Nebbiolo, Langhe, Elio Altare, 2014:
Again, authentic wines, nicely balanced, fruity, rich, very well made

•Toscanini, Lindengracht 75, Amsterdam; 020 623 2813

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Road Trip: Pasadena and back

Croissant and cappuccino, The French Press, Santa Barbara

Arroyo Grande, California, October 22, 2015—

WHAT A GREAT PLEASURE to find a perfect restaurant in an unlikely place. A friend had told us about it, a few months ago; then, a month or two afterward, there was a write-up about it in the San Francisco Chronicle. We'd wanted to stop in the last time we were this way, but it was a Monday, and it was closed. This week we made a point of stopping by. Sleep cheap, I always say, and eat well; and this is what we're doing. (Maybe I should start another blog: Sleeping Every Night. No: I won't. Hard enough keeping up with this one.)

Stepping into the place I thought of the Café Chez Panisse: beer-wine bar on one side; open kitchen with hearth and pizza oven on the other; dining room with two seating areas. And the chef-owner, presiding over that kitchen, greeted me by name as I walked in, unannounced and without a reservation (they don't take reservations), because he worked the line in the Café for six years.

The menu is interesting, divided into appetizers, tapas-like share courses, and a few main courses; and the wine list is both interesting and thoughtful though almost entirely restricted to local wines: Central Coast; Santa Ynez Valley; Paso Robles. (What I've come to think of as "Sideways" wines, many of which are very good indeed, and getting better by the year.)

Brian sources his menu from local farmers, ranchers, and winemakers. There was a lot to choose from, and much of it quite enterprising: but it had been a long day, and I was in the mood for comfort food. I began with a cup of soup: chicken broth, cannellini beans, and mirepoix, with some red pepper very discreetly added; and thickened with farro. I thought of pasta e fagioli: this was a California version, but something about the textures and flavors, and the depth of the stock, took me right to Italy.

I was hungry and went on to a beautifully grilled rib-eye, served with Italian-style broccoli and scalloped potatoes — a difficult dish but irresistible when prepared this well. Everything about the dinner was exciting and deeply satisfying. We will certainly return: this is an important place. It is one of my Hundred Restaurants.

Pinot noir

•Ember, 1200 East Grand Avenue, Arroyo Grande, California; (805) 474-7700

Farro and bean soup…	…and rib-eye at Ember

Next morning we went first thing to the bakery right next door to Ember. Here we had our usual road breakfast: croissant and caffelatte. The croissant was lightly buttery, nicely flaky, and substantial: I’d prefer a bit more salt and a bit darker bake, but that’s my taste. The coffee was excellent.

•Sweet Pea Bakery, 1200 East Grand Avenue, Arroyo Grande, California; (805)440-3456

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Pasadena, California, Oct. 23—

WE WERE IN TOWN to see plays with a couple of old friends whose mobility is now sadly somewhat compromised. Where to have a quick pre-show supper? We settled on a place easily accessible and reliable on previous trips (Dec. 18, 2011; April 12, 2014). The menu offered pasta e fagioli, so — in a mischievous mood — I thought I’d order it, to compare it to Ember’s version. Night and day! This was simply a thin-broth vegetable soup, heavy on the overcooked white beans. Saltimbocca came in a gloppy sauce with traditional broccoli on the side.

Dessert, though, was rather nice: Spumoni ice cream, sliced, revealing chestnuts, pistachios, mild chocolate, and garnished with a pleasant amount of sweetened whipped cream and an irrelevant raspberry.

Pinot grigio

•Il Fornaio, 24 W Union Street, Pasadena, (626) 6683-9797

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Pasadena, California, Oct. 24—

CHIEFLY BECAUSE it was on Green Street, where there used to be a favorite restaurant of ours, now long closed, and because its name suggested our friend could get his customary gin, we wandered into the Green Street Tavern for lunch. It turned out to have only beer and wine, but we made do: for me, wild boar meatloaf hash with peppers, onion, potato, fried eggs on top, and chimichurri sauce drizzled over. It was a nice dish, I thought; I’d return here.

Bloody Mary (hmmm…)

•Green Street Tavern, 69 West Green Street, Pasadena; (626) 229-9981

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Pasadena, California, Oct. 25—

ON THE FINAL DAY of our trip we stopped in at another convenient place, near our friends’ hotel, quiet enough for conversation, with a pleasant French-bistro feel enhanced by a stately waiter native to Marseille, of all places. Here I could not resist a bowl of mussels, in a white wine-and-saffron sauce, with a green salad before and a very nice crème brûlée afterward.

Pinot grigio

•Cafe Bizou, 91 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena; (626) 792-9923 I’d be remiss to fail noting our Pasadena breakfasts. We take them at Intelligentsia, where the Black Cat espresso is very good indeed, the cappuccinos and lattes are made with Straus organic milk, the croissants reasonably good, and the wi-fi quick and simple.

•Intelligentsia Coffee, 55 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena; (626) 578-1270 and after the play we drove north.

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Santa Barbara, California, Oct. 25—

SUCH A CURIOUS place, Santa Barbara, especially the Montecito end, where — as in the neighborhood of this restaurant — everyone seems white, wealthy, complacent. I know it’s just me: but I always feel uncomfortable here, just as I do in Palo Alto. It didn’t help that the two men at the next table, clearly businessmen, were conversing in Russian.

Still it was pleasant enough after the drive from Pasadena. I settled for a spinach salad with lamb sausage, olives, tomatoes, feta, and red peppers; it seemed vaguely Greek, and was just what I wanted.

Pinot grigio

•Montecito Cafe, 1295 Coast Village Road, Santa Barbara; (805) 969-3392

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On the road, October 26, 2015—

NEXT MORNING we did a little research to find our best chance of a good breakfast. The answer lay only half a mile down the street from our motel; the croissant was quite good; the latte (and, before it, a cappuccino) also very good indeed — from their own roastery, Castle Coffee.

•The French Press, 1101 State Street, Santa Barbara; (805) 963-2721

We then set out north on Highway 101, headed for Gavilan College in (or near) Gilroy, there to check out an arboretum we’d heard about. The campus is very pretty, nicely gardened, but the arboretum seemed more a project than an achievement. Hungry, we stepped into the Student Union where I found a nice burrito loaded with beef, black beans, cilantro, tomato, onion, and lettuce, in a decent wheat-flour tortilla. Once home, all we wanted was a bowl of soup, buttered toasted walnut levain from Acme Bakery, and a salad and a glass or two of rosé…

Berry time

Eastside Road, June 29, 2015—

BERRIES — FRUIT in general — have been a recurring theme the last few weeks. What a fine lunch they make! Here, strawberries from Preston of Dry Creek, mulberries from our tree, apricots ditto. It's the first time our apricot tree has fruited, though we set it out a good three years ago. And you see most of the crop here. But how delicate and floral they are, how fresh.

The mulberry tree went in much longer ago, and has taken on good size in spite of lack of water and fertilizer. It's now too tall to harvest completely, even from my tallest orchard ladder, so we just leave lots of berries at the top for the birds, who then — so runs theory — leave the lower fruit, more hidden within the foliage, to us. Of course these birds are messy eaters, and I suppose contribute fertilizer of their own production to the tree.

We discovered, by chance, the one important rule about buying a young mulberry tree: buy one with fruit on it, so you can verify the quality. This is (as you see) a purple Persian mulberry tree, and the fruit is indescribably good, perfumed, rich, deep, suggestive.

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Duck breast at Zuni

Zuni's Wedding Cake

SUPPER QUITE LATE at Zuni, after hearing Terry Riley's long and eventful string quartet Salome Dances for Peace played by Kronos. I had a duck breast salad, a fine confection of perfectly cooked duck sliced and served cold with roasted apricots, mustard greens, mustard-seed gremolata, and bee pollen; and, afterward, this little individual "wedding cake," a white cake with buttercream and raspberries, surprisingly filled, beautifully prepared in honor of marriage finally available to all. (Well, all but the already married.)

My companion had another marvelous plate: warm purple tomatoes with green beans, spring onions, bagna cauda, orange zest, and fried bread. The bread turned out to be more like sopaipillas, bringing Zuni closer to Zuni than I've known it to be since its very early days…

Merlot-Tannat, Domaine Chiroulet "Grande Reserve" (Gascony), 2010: deeply flavored but long in the tooth

• Zuni Café, 1658 Market Street, San Francisco; 415.552.2522
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Shell pasta with peas

Eastside Road, June 17, 2015—

YES, WELL, TIME to catch up again. Sunday we had Jeff's delicious shell pasta in cream sauce with fresh peas and Parmesan, and you can't do much better than that. Monday, sorry, I forget. It's been that kind of week: too much work to do, too much of it outside in the heat, too many things on my mind.

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YESTERDAY'S DINING WAS odd because of schedules. Lunch was a quick nettle-and-pecorino pizza from the Café Chez Panisse, and it was tasty — I do like nettles, once they're cooked. And then, at four o'clock, a hamburger at Zuni, because we were on our way to an opera at six. (Les Troyens; fabulous opera; well sung; disconcertingly produced.) Zuni's hamburgers are big, juicy, made of decent beef, and accompanied by terrific pickled onions. The fries are shoestring and very good. We'd begun with anchovies with Pecorino, a marvelous appetizer, and for dessert… what a surprise! A meringue a foot across, loaded with subtle peach-leaf ice cream and pieces of raw peach, for Lindsey's birthday! What a treat!

Champagne: thanks, Gilbert!

• Zuni Café, 1658 Market Street, San Francisco; 415.552.2522
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Saving the best for last

Malanghero di San Maurizio Canavese, June 3—

EVERY NOW AND THEN it seems we just completely luck out. (Well, pretty consistently, this last month.) We had decided to spend our last night here in Italy near our airport. I looked at the Osterie d'Italia iPhone app for a good restaurant nearby, and was especially interested in one — the only one near Torino's airport in the listing, I believe.

We booked a nearby hotel, spent a couple of hours packing and decompressing, and then drove out in search of its small town — having forgotten a lesson learned many times over: telephone first. No listing service is perfect. What you need to confirm is whether the place is indeed open, whether you can get a table, and precisely where the place is.

I'd booked the table, of course, a couple of days ago. But I relied on Osteria's description of the address, and drove three or four miles out of our way. In fact I drove right past the place, eyes glued forward, missing its very clear sign. The taverna is in Malanghero, not San Maurizio Canavese.

Oh well. We entered what proved to be a really pleasant, old-fashioned, homey taverna — in the characteristically subtle Italian nomenclature, rather simpler than an osteria and certainly less restaurant-like than a trattoria. Three small dining rooms, of which ours seated a dozen, no more. Many paintings and photographs on the walls. One waitress, who knew her stuff. One cook, I'd be willing to bet, with maybe one helper.

The menu is quite restricted, perhaps three pastas and two secondi; but the wine list was very impressive indeed, though hardly venturing away from Piemonte. (Why would you?) We were very quickly given our amuses-bouches : a demitasse-spoon-sized sphere of firm soft white cheese, a soft tomme as I believe, with a dollop of herbal tapenade and a generous amount of delicious olive oil.

Next came a series of antipasti, beginning with five sausages served simply on a board with a sharp knife; slice off what you want. The first one we tried — the farthest away in the photo — was a magnificent thing: pork, potato, and beet, hardly cooked, lasting only a few days we were told, made on a farm up in the Val d'Aosta. Next came a piquant sausage, then one made with a very discreet addition of finely ground walnuts; then two more ordinary ones at different degrees of maturity. Altogether, a splendid tasting. 

There followed a splendid carne cruda , nothing but very thinly sliced and then pounded beef under a coating of olive oil, very subtly salted and, I believe, treated to the faint aroma of anchovy. Regular visitors to this blog will know I've been sampling raw beef at every opportunity, whether in a tartare style, chopped or scraped, or as here in a manner closer to carpaccio. I have yet to be disappointed, but this was certainly near the top of the range.

Came next a couple of mountain tommes, discs a couple of inches in diameter, stagionata  to perhaps a couple of months, flavored with thyme, and again in olive oil; and then a fine soft frittata of zucchini set off with a couple of squiggles of peperoni-infused mayonnaise.

We were given a choice from two pastas, and we all opted for the risotto — perhaps we've just been having too much spaghetti, tagliatelle, and ravioli lately; perhaps it was because we'd been driving through rice-growing country. Most likely it was because we were intrigued by its treatment: flavored with aglio orsino , described as the leaf of a plant that grows wild.

When I pressed the pleasant and patient young woman serving us further she simply returned with a leaf, the shape of a spear-blade, about as long as my hand, apple-green, soft and velvety to the touch. True enough it smelled very subtly of garlic, but it clearly was not common garlic. Whatever, it gave our risotto a beautiful apple-green cast, recalling the zucchini frittata, and a discreet but definite and, to me, quite new flavor, a bit like garlic, a bit like nettle, but neither.

We were far too well-fed to take a secondo. The ladies at the table took dessert; the men, seeing this was their last night in Piemonte for the foreseeable future, opted to share a glass of Barolo, not having yet had any. It's easy to be content with Dolcetto, Grignolino, and Barbera in Piemonte, especially in Monferrato where we've been the last week. But Hans was curious to taste a Barolo, which of course wants a heavy meat course alongside — or no food at all, sipped thoughtfully as a vino da meditazione. It was a fine moment.

Arneis, Cecu D'la Biunda, Monchiero Carbone, 2013: suave.

• La Taverna dei tre gufi, Via Devietti Goggia, 71 Malanghero di San Maurizio Canavese (TO) 10077; 3312840743.

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Rome! Perilli!

Viale Villa Pamphily, Rome, May 21, 2015—

ARRIVED HERE about ten, unloaded rental car, and returned it — that's a story, but not for an eating blog — and found ourselves at the improbable Piramide, a little bit of Luxor at the gates of Rome. Well, since we're walking into Testaccio, why not lunch at Perilli? It's one of my favorite restaurants in the (by me) known world, so why not?

We opened the place, but other tables began filling up soon enough — many local businessmen, some eating alone, others in twos, threes, and fours; a few tourists; a few young couples. The waiters are imperturbable and professional. The menu — well, I doubt it ever changes much, nor does there seem any reason it should.

I had one of the dishes that defines Rome, for me: fettuccine cacio e pepe , dressed simply with grated pecorino and black pepper. The combination of semolina, really good cheese, and pepper was bracing and substantial, and I was very happy. Afterward, a simple lettuce salad, dressed with oil and juice from the lemon accompanying my companion's dish of green beans. A perfect lunch.

Frascati in carafe

•Perilli a Testaccio, Via Marmorata, 39, Roma; 06 575 5100
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Bruckner 'n' burger

San Francisco, March 26, 2015—

YUP : WE'RE BACK at Zuni, on a musical afternoon and evening. Bruckner's Eighth Symphony in Davies Hall ; Bob Carrau at the piano at Zuni. I enjoy them just about equally, and I enjoy them a lot.

We left the concert hall a little hungry, so stopped off first at another favorite locale, where I had a knish and a bacon scone and my companion had that fabulous Russian Honey Cake — and we both had a glass of that wonderful Croatian Terzolo Malvasia I told you about a while back.

• 20th Century Cafe, 198 Gough Street, San Francisco; 415-621-2380


Then we hit Zuni, still in time for the hamburger, served only until six o'clock; with a very nice salad of arugula and thinly sliced Belgian endive, shallots, and chopped almonds, in a supple vinaigrette. And a Martini.

And Bob played the piano. What more do you want?

• Zuni Café, 1658 Market Street, San Francisco; 415-552-2522
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Hamburger and salad

San Francisco, March 6, 2015—

LATE LUNCH OR EARLY supper: Caesar salad and a hamburger. These have been old standbys at this restaurant, each perfect to its type: but on this visit the salad didn’t seem up to snuff — the Romaine crowded on its plate, the dressing a little too sour of lemon juice, the anchovy and garlic components too retiring. The hamburger was on the mark, though — but, damn! I forgot to ask for French fries!

Sciaccarello-Nielluccio, Domaine Comte Abbatucci “Cuvée Faustine,” 2011: solid, fruity, very pleasant

• Zuni Café, 1658 Market Street, San Francisco; 415-552-2522
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Salade Lyonnaise

Eugene, Oregon, January 11, 2015—

THIS IS TRULY one of the Hundred Plates, an elastic but irreducible repertory of dishes without which I would find life much less pleasurable: the salade Lyonnaise, or, as it's called here, "bistro salad": frisée (no other lettuce will do), lardons, croûtons, a poached egg, vinaigrette. The vinaigrette should be cider vinegar, I think, and hot fat from the lardons.

We both enjoyed the dish, and I remarked that it's hard to mess it up, and my companion remarked No, not at all, it's frequently messed up. And in truth you can mess it up if you go out of your way to do so. You can use some other lettuce; you can use bacon instead of lardons, you can overcooke the egg (or even fry it if you're that perverse); you can use an egg that is less than satisfactory. I suppose you could use Balsamic vinegar, or "balsamic": I hope I don't run into that.

But. Not only is this one of the Hundred Plates; we are eating it in one of the Hundred Restaurants, those restaurants we always return to with anticipation, then pleasure, than fond memory. We don't dine here often enough, because Eugene has not often been a logical evening stopover for us. Now we have a grandson living here, so perhaps we'll be visiting more often. I hope so. This is truly a reliable, interesting, immensely comfortable place, with a good wine list, an excellent bar, first-rate service, knowledgeable sourcing, and a fine, professional kitchen.

A Negroni, with Citadelle gin, which I very much appreciate

•Marché, 296 East 5th Avenue #226, Eugene, Oregon; (541) 342-3612

Union, Pasadena

East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, November 20, 2014—

WE DINED AT A TABLE under this mural, only the center part shown here — and other quotes from Alice Waters were to be found on the walls in other strategic locations. This restaurant is serious about the specificity of its provender, which confirms to the Good, Clean, Fair maxim of Slow Food. But you have the feeling that, ethical and correct as the operation is and intends to be, it is Deliciousness that drives it.

It drives it down an Italian country road, I would say, certainly on the basis of tonight's visit. (Not our first, by the way.) I was eager to sample this place again so soon after a couple of weeks in Italy, while the authentic tastes were still in my mouth, so to speak; and I was certainly not disappointed: this is one of the great Italian restaurants not in Italy.



We began with this plate of bread, butter, and giardinera: good sound bread, delicious butter, pickled vegetables that were unusually piquant but crisp and tasty, setting us alert for what was to follow.

That was a plate of sautéed wild mushrooms served with the softest, subtlest polenta I've had outside Venice — "Grist and Toil" polenta the menu called it, and I'm sure a lot of work went into its production, both in the field and in the kitchen: but the result was anything but effortful or labored, merely soft, delicate, complex, utterly satisfying. The mushrooms gained from a sherry vinaigrette, surprising on this menu, but quite explicable: perhaps we were in Venice, where ships occasionally call from Jerez…

I went on to this porchetta, with potatoes roasted in the fat, and salsa verde on the side. Porchetta correctly done involves shreds and slices, fat and crackling, and plenty of dense lean meat as well. This was excellent. If we'd begun somewhere in Puglia, and gone on to Venice, I was now in Testaccio, and no mistake about it. The pork had that slight taste of tripe that roast suckling pig has to have; this pork was young, I'm sure of it, but complex, again, and long in the finish. The potatoes had a fine creamy texture, and the salsa verde was a Piemontese type, heavy on the parseley, very nice with the pork.

How could I resist the gianduia budino on the dessert menu, after my recent researches into bonet, the classic Piemontese chocolate-hazelnut dolce? This was not bonet, as it lacked any reference to amaretti; instead the little jar of silky pudding wore a chocolate cookie dusted with powdered sugar as its lid. But it recalled Piemonte, perhaps because I'd gone on to a marvelous red wine…

Soave classico, Balestri Valda (Garganega, Veneto), 2012 (truly suave, a little innocuous, very pleasant);
Nebbiolo, Francesco Borgogno (Langhe), 2013 (too young, but a beautiful wine quite willing to be dealt with now)

•Union, 37 E Union St, Pasadena, California; (626) 795-5841

Camino

Oakland, May 12, 2014 (but written May 18)—

ALREADY NEARLY A WEEK since we assembled, last Monday, in this fine Oakland restaurant! I plead three excuses: first, I've been unusually preoccupied with other matters. Next, the dinner didn't seem to me to come quite together, and it's difficult to discuss this, as I really like and admire the restaurant and its chef, and don't want to suggest it's anything but a destination of merit.

And finally, the occasion itself was bittersweet, emotional, and dispiriting to a degree — which no doubt affected my response to the food, and affects my thinking and writing about it.

We were gathered, a dozen or so of us, at a farewell dinner for a very dear friend, a Berkeley woman we've known for many years, who is leaving her beloved home for Seattle, where she'll be living in a setting better adjusted to her present needs — but devoid of the comforts and surroundings that have been at the center of her life these last fifty years.

It's a thing many of us face, and I take some solace with Cicero:

…life comes to its best end when, with mind unimpaired and senses intact, nature herself breaks up the fabric to which she first gave form and order. Now in every case, things freshly put together are hard to pull apart; things that have gotten old come to pieces with ease.

—Cicero, On Old Age, tr. Frank O. Copley

It is of course not easy to give full rein to the sensual delights of dinner while thinking such thoughts, the more so when that first subsidiary clause of Cicero's is, well, not completely pertinent in the present case. So it's a tribute to Russ and his restaurant that the meal was as delightful and interesting as it was.

It began — we needed a drink — with a Hanky Panky, a favorite of ours (I write here for Cook as well as myself): equal parts gin and bittersweet Italian vermouth; a healthy slug of Fernet Branca; shake with ice and strain. And then at table I had the plate you see here, of whose details I now recall only the lightest possible brandade croquettes and a fine aïoli. Stupid me, not to have kept the menu at hand, or to have written about this earlier!

It was "Kebab Monday," a feature of the month of May, and I went on — indeed most of us did — to this Tunisian-inspired lamb entrée: kebabs of cubed lamb and lamb not-merguez-sausage, made in house of course, with peas and parsley and flatbread and plenty of flavor.

I had in fact not ordered well: the two courses did not complement one another, nor were they intended to. But each was delicious on its own terms, and Lindsey's panna cotta was smooth and rich and fragrant. It's not extravagant to say the same of the conversation: it was rather an overwhelming night.


• Camino, 3917 Grand Avenue, Oakland, California; 510-547-5035

Duende

Oakland, April 28, 2014 —

¡AY CARAMBA QUE BUENO comer con amigos aqui! Another trip to the East Bay, and a far too belated return to a restaurant we really like. Of course it doesn't hurt that it was opened, a little over a year ago, by a friend, a cook whose passion and enthusiasm and optimism are second to none.

His restaurant, in downtown Oakland, is big, popular, a little noisy when full, and dramatic, with bold décor tending to reds and blacks. There's jazz in the air: Paul is a man of serious musical tastes. The bar is well stocked. And the cuisine — forgive the phony Spanish at the top of this notice — is assertively, imaginatively, resourcefully Catalan. Ai caram que bo menjar amb amics aquí!

Since there were four of us at table, we began with several pintxos, servings a little more generous than tapas, less overwhelming than raciones, beginning with asparagus, smoked beets, and blood oranges, with a scatter of chopped black moroccan olives and pine nuts.

We simply asked Paul to send out what he wanted us to have, barring arthropods of course, and we continued with beautiful little glasses of ajo blanco y erizo de mar, a sort of gazpacho made of almond milk, garlic, the roe of local herring, and chives — inspired and delicious.



There was green salad with green almonds and goat cheese; and ensalada de col with Savoy cabbage, Mahon cheese, green olives, and pistachios; and a fabulous butifarra dulce: sweet house-made (of course) Catalunyan rum sausage (a sort of loose boudin blanc, flavored with currants, sultanas, and dried cherries) with perfectly cooked garbanzos and topped with roasted rapini.
Then we got down to business with a fine paella: Bomba rice, Manila clams, chorizo, rich sweet pork belly, English peas and rosemary. Remarkably, the flavor of each of these six ingredients was present, individually identifiable, in every bite; yet the whole was beautifully integrated and balanced. It was deep and smoky, but even though I grabbed every morsel of the pork belly it was not overly rich, cloying, or deadening. It was a superb dish, making you realize a truly fine paella is the equivalent of a perfect risotto or cassoulet — perhaps even a combination (or at least a mediation) of the two.

We shared two desserts, pretending we'd eaten too much to order four: a gateau basquaise with vanilla ice cream, apricot purée, and candied kumquat; and a chocolate cake with coffee-and-orange-flavored whipped cream. They were quite up to the rest of the meal.

What else can I say? Oh, the service: it was friendly, intelligent, and informed — and marvelously attractive. I thought now and then we might have been in an Aldomovar movie except that there was nothing creepy or surreal, just grace and beauty and pure pleasure.

A Fino to start; then sangría

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