Category — Restaurant

The venerable restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley turns 40 years old in August. Their founder, Alice Waters, started the famous Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley which became a nationwide model for educating children the importance of food. According to their site:

This fall, the Chez Panisse Foundation will become
The Edible Schoolyard organization.
Together we will build a national curriculum for
Edible Education in the school system.

Pretty cool! They’ve got a lot of great events: speakers, fairs, and of course, food! The free event on  on 8/27 at the UC Berkeley Art museum looks like fun for all ages. Check out their website for more information.

Last week, I stopped by in Berkeley to check out a restaurant called Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food. Started by a passion entrepreneur, Amanda West,  her restaurant is a bright, energetic fast food joint serving healthy  food at great prices. Her food includes natural meats, local and organic food where possible, with all items compostable. My favorite items were the homemade sodas (try the ginger ale!), yam fries and the organic Napa salad. Since I am vegetarian, (I had the homemade veggie burger) I didn’t try the meat burgers, but my friend Barak loved the special California burger (a chicken burger with avocado). Most items were $7 or under.  Check out this restaurant! It’s located right next to the  downtown Berkeley BART station near the corner of Center and Shattuck (2122 Shattuck Avenue,Berkeley).

What an excellent idea! A festival benefiting local food co-ops and farmers in the Bay Area serving great, local food. I see some of the best restaurants, beer and ice cream vendors all on carts.

This event has even been highlighted in the New York Times!

Highlighting some great gastronomic pleasures:

• The Creme Brulee Cart
• Roli Roti
• Tim Luym From Poleng Lounge
• Straus Family Creamery
• Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food
• Kara’s Cupcakes
• Ici Ice Cream
• Fentons Creamery
• Bi-Rite Creamery

Located at Jack London Square in Oakland this weekend 8/28-8/30. See their comprehensive schedule.

I was fortunate to see a sneak preview of Food Inc a couple weeks ago at a special Yelp event in San Francisco. After the viewing, there was a Q&A session live with Michael Pollan and Robert Kenner. I was so excited to see the movie and listen to the panel. Here are some reactions from Yelp Elites.

In a nutshell, you will feel inspired to be careful what you buy and eat. I became vegetarian almost 20 years ago after watching a movie like Food Inc after watching the meat processing scenes. Those with quesy stomachs may want to not watch, but those with a foodie and green interest will want to see this film.

Famous foodies Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) are featured along with forward thinking social
entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms’ Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms’ Joe Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Here’s an interesting fact among many found in the film (and in Omnivore’s Dilemma if you’ve read the book)–Corn products include: ketchup, cheese, Twinkies, batteries, peanut butter, Cheez-Its, salad dressings, Coke, jelly, Sweet & Low, syrup, juice, Kool-Aid, charcoal, diapers, Motrin, meat and fast food.

Hmm, you’ve gotta wonder what’s in your food sometimes before you eat it. Many thumbs up for this movie!

Calafia Cafe and Market recently opened in Palo Alto’s Town & Country center. I was able to eat there on Sunday night, where the tables were actually all full and busy. The ambiance had a nice zen feel with thought through details of design using green materials. The waitstaff was amazing and very attentive (perhaps because we had an adorable newborn baby dining with us). Charlie Ayers, the head chef, was the executive chef for Google for many years.

For vegetarians, I thought the food was excellent. I had their special “hearts” salad, made of hearts of palm, beets (get it? heartbeat), and greens. My main course was a tofu lentil loaf with mashed potatoes and fresh herbs, with swiss chard. My friends shared a pizza, and a turkey burger with fresh cut fries made from scratch.

I would totally recommend this place; this is the kind of restaurant we need more of –fast, easy, healthy and organic. Charlie Ayers, their head chef definitely understands the need after cooking at Google for many years.

The quaint seaside Peninsula town of Half Moon Bay has a brand new organic and natural food supermarket called New Leaf Community Market near the intersection of 92 and highway 1. It’s a local version of a large scale natural food market, like a Whole Foods for Half Moon Bay. This recently opened a couple months ago.

My fiance and I took a nice tour of the store-sparking new floors, clean and brightly lit, with tons of fresh organic produce. The ready made food in the deli and hot foods, soup and salad bar were a lot better than I expected for a local market. We picked up some organic raspberries, an organic fennel and pinenut salad as well as a tofu salad to go. I would definitely come back here!

Our real stop was for dinner at a restaurant in Half Moon Bay called Chez Shea. This was my second time eating at this downtown restaurant on Main Street. Almost all of the food is sourced locally and organically. The taste is extremely fresh and clean with global flavors. The first time I ate here, I tried their Indian curry and rice. In my most recent visit, I tried their chile renno with an organic beet salad to start. All of the food was fantastic! My fiance Vivek and I feel that this restaurant is a total find in the area–rated up there with some of the best organic restaurants in San Francisco. Come check it out!

Over the last week, I had frozen yogurt cravings. I went to Harmony Frozen Yogurt located in San Carlos last Thursday, and Fraiche in Palo Alto on Saturday night. They are both great local organic frozen yogurt shops; I would go here over Pinkberry or Red Mango any day.

Here’s my head to head comparison:

Flavor: Harmony frozen yogurt wins. They offer Straus organic yogurt, with flavors like plain, mango and raspberry. Fraiche is good too, but Harmony wins by a slight edge with more unique flavors of yogurt.

Variety: Fraiche wins. They offer fresh real yogurt as well as frozen frozen yogurt. Their sauces include creative options like ollalieberry and varieties of granola and even handmade mochi.

Organic: both win! Both are organic and believe in investing in green and healthy food.

I love Ubuntu. After being vegetarian for 20 years, this is one of the superstar vegetarian restaurants to have launched in a long time. Located in Napa, this is an upscale, Zen like environment without a lot of pretense. Food is prepared with the best local ingredients.

This is my favorite salad. Beets with avocado and grapefruit. Recently its recipe was featured in this month’s Sunset Magazine.

Zen like, relaxing atmosphere. Upstairs is a yoga studio.

Above is their signature dish, a rich cauliflower dish in a cast iron pot. Very creative and rich. However it was a little too creamy for my taste.

Although this doesn’t look the prettiest, this fresh farm egg was to die for. Similar to the type of egg yolk described by Michael Pollan’s Omnivore Dilemma, this yolk was a bright orange yellow and very rich.

All in all, this is an excellent find in downtown Napa. Creative vegetarian food, with great service and a relaxing feel. I’m definitely coming again.

Ubuntu is located on 1140 Main Street in downtown Napa.

In the midst of my own wedding planning, I checked out some interesting organic and green wedding ideas in the Bay Area. One place that I really liked was a restaurant called Barndiva in the beautiful town of Healdsburg.

The owner, Lukka Feldman, gave us a nice tour of the city and offered to host an all inclusive wedding with organic, local food and drinks. The restaurant is a beautiful restored barn with an outdoor garden. It is one of the few restaurants featured in Michelin from the Bay Area. Don’t miss this place for drinks at night if you are in Sonoma wine country.

Ono Gelato Company in Paia. Fresh, local organic gelato. I had a Kula country strawberry gelato. Choose from local fruits like coconut, persimmons, mango, kiwi and more.

So I finally made it to Citrine last weekend. Located in Redwood City, it’s Safeway’s venture into a new, fast, healthy friendly restaurant. Once I walked in, it felt like a cross between IKEA and Whole Foods. Even though you order at the counter, and it’s self service, the wait staff was very accommodating and asked us if we needed anything. The decor was bright, clean, modern and inviting.
Food is clearly international, with a focus on Safeway’s O Organics private food line, along with its beef and Italian private labels. What was confusing for me is that there is no mention of Safeway in the restaurant, but customers aren’t going to understand what the brand O Organics means unless they’ve shopped in Safeway. It might be better for Citrine to label things like “certified organic” or made with organic ingredients instead, because the branding is confusing.

The food came out quickly; my group tried the margherita pizza, the garlic lover’s pizza, the California date blue cheese salad, the Mediterranean hummus salad, Santa Fe chicken breast panini and the thai lemongrass. I think pricing is usually around $12/entree, with salads a little less expensive. My only gripe is that the vegetarian hot entrees are not worth it–stir fried veggies for $11 seemed unreasonably high. The veggie entrees lack a protein like tofu. Other than that, we really enjoyed the surprisingly fresh and tasty blue cheese salad, and the pizzas were well cooked. The wait staff came back to refill our drinks and offer us water. I would come back here again, but I really wish they could improve the hot entree selection of vegetarian food with more substantial options (like pad thai with tofu for example instead of just stir fried veggies).

Whole Foods and Trader Joes shoppers rejoice! There are some new stores in the horizon that will soon provide more options for shoppers:
Tesco, one of the biggest markets worldwide, is coming to the US, first in the Los Angeles area. Tesco is opening convenient stores with healthy, already made fresh meals to go. They are trying to brand themselves as a cross between Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Having tried some of their food when I was in London, I was very impressed. Tesco is going for upscale, organic food, but at a price that is reasonable.

Another competitor, Safeway is entering the organic market with a new chain of restaurants called “Citrine Bistro”. It’s interesting that on the Citrine website, it doesn’t tell you that Safeway is behind the fast, healthy, world fusion food idea. This past weekend, I drove by its first location in downtown Redwood City, where I saw a brightly lit and inviting restaurant, modern and clean. I first heard about this through a coupon that was mailed to my home, $10 off Citrine. The menu includes organic ingrendients from Safeway’s organic products for entrees that are Asian, Italian, American and Mexican. I think this will be a threat to Whole Foods given their pricing.

This morning, I had the pleasure of checking out one of the Google cafeterias in Building 45 with my friend, Charles, who works there. I was delighted to see such a huge selection of organic food. Before I entered the building, I saw fresh crates of organic fruits and vegetable from Greenleaf (an organic distributor in the Bay Area) entering the kitchen. In the cafeteria, I chose some oatmeal with fresh blueberries and raspberries, and farmed organic, scrambled eggs with Morningstar veggie sausage patties. There was a lot more food displayed than what I have listed, but I have to commend Google for trying to source local, organic foods in the kitchen and providing food for free to employees.

For second and third place when it comes to corporate cafeterias, I’d have to say Genentech and Pixar are very good. They also both source organic fruits and veggies, and I’ve seen Niman Ranch meat at Genentech.

Few people seem to know about this place, but a wonderful little shop called Mission Pie, has been open in the Mission in San Francisco since January. Mission Pie sells pies made from an organic nonprofit farm (Pie Ranch) that are made by local Mission High school students. It’s a great double bottom line company that exposes sustainable agriculture and urban youth empowerment. I believe they have some great reviews from Yelp and Chowhound. Mission Pie is located at 25th and Mission St. in San Francisco.

It’s wedding/birthday season and my last weekend was packed with trips to both Sonoma and Napa. A big group of my high school friends celebrated two birthdays in Sonoma wine country. I couldn’t make it until the dinner which was held at El Dorado Kitchen. The drinks were very fresh and relaxing (see the mint mojito and pomegranate cocktail above).
To start, I had a Caesar salad with local, organic romaine lettuce, with cucumbers. The salad was also very fresh, but I think it had a little too much dressing for my taste.
Although we sat outside near the pool and patio, the interior (see above) of the restaurant was decorated in a relaxed, but modern California style.
For my main course, I tried a mushroom, pea, tomato bow tie pasta. This was a fantastic pasta dish. As a vegetarian, I often don’t expect much from pasta, but the mushrooms in this dish were unbelievably tasty.
At the end, I tried a rhubarb tart with ice cream served on the side. This was better than the other choice that the table had which was a chocolate brownie. I recommend trying this rhubarb tart, it wasn’t too sour nor was it too sweet. El Dorado’s service was prompt and courteous and all of our food came out at the same time piping hot. I’d definitely recommend stopping here if you are in Sonoma tasting wine. El Dorado is located in central Sonoma right on the square, 405 1st St W. There is also a hotel as part of the building which is nicely decorated.