The chef's counter at Haven.Jonathan Kauffman files the first review of Haven in Oakland, where chef Kim Alter has been turning out some solid food since December in the newest restaurant in the Daniel Patterson empire. Like us, Kauffman is stirre...
Jonathan KauffmanHaven's baked California with avocado fluff.I've been a restaurant critic for more than a decade now, and I can't say I've ever had the chance to review the same chef twice in one ye
There are few dishes in this world as polarizing as liver and onions. It's love or hate, with little wiggle room. I belong to the former category. It's a dish that I grew up with. As a child, my mom would fry up strips...
It's nearly time to say goodbye to Mission District heavyweight Medjool (2522 Mission St.). Owner Gus Murad has come to terms with Adriano Paganini (Beretta, Delarosa, Super Duper, et al.), and will hand over the 8,000-square-foot restaurant and b...
I wrote an article for the San Francisco Chronicle about wine blogs and their effect on the market. I had hoped to make that announcement the new post on the WordPress version of this site, but the conversion looks like it will take a while.
Eating with the hands is more than just a way to maneuver food to the mouth. It embodies cultural values including, a sensuous connection to the food, the feeling of sharing and community, practicality avoiding waste, even prolonging a delicious m...
Here is the recipe for the famous pie seen in the film “The Help” …minus the special ingredient! This was super simple to make and really delicious with just the right amount of chocolate. Make it for your Oscar party this weeken...
Hope everyone had a great three-day weekend! Mike and I are throwing an intimate party in a few weeks, and I decided not to hire a caterer, but to prepare and make all of my own food. I plan on serving canapes and hor d’oeuvres during meal h...
I’m just a sucker for anything that remotely tastes like ice cream but doesn’t have the same fat content. (I’m also just a sucker for ice cream.) Over the years, I’ve developed a taste for frozen yogurt. Initially, it st...
4238 Park Blvd, Oakland, CA | 510.336.1180 | online reservations | website Hey there! I had to drop out for a short interval… it’s been a tough transition for me. I’ve really missed my kitty Shiso, who always lik...
Shenzhen Citizen Center Restaurant is a restaurant located underneath the ultra modern Shenzhen Citizen Center. This restaurant caters to Government officials and may not be open to the public. We were lucky enough to be invited by a friend and di...
Who: Rachael Ray, host of 30-Minute Meals on The Food Network What: Her Everything Jambalaya recipe Why: For solo cooks that don’t have time to cook from scratch every evening, but still want more control over what goes into their meals. The...
[rating: 4.2] Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.....That's me, breathing a sigh of relief. After many months of somewhat lackluster meals, meals which led me to depend on my all-time favorite restaurants to get me through the holidays, I finally stumbled into ...
You tried 100 things, ate in all 38 restaurants and checked in on every one of the top places Michael Bauer inked on the page. So here it is, the second installment of Best of No Salad (a.k.a. just another San Francisco restaurant list). Go ahead,...
Every restaurant has a rhythm. Any restaurant that manages to keep its doors open, doesn’t have a lot of down time, but there’s varying types of intensity—planning, innovation, tedium, stress, exhaustion…celebration. For us, after just finishin...
“Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea.” - Pythagoras
So this past weekend I went back to Chicago to visit bf. We had a lovely time with our families and even had time for date night and a lovely dinner at Arami for Valentine's day (pics to follow). After dinner we had an impromptu cocktail at the Vi...
Last week I ordered 12 cans of ackee for $99.99 from a site I discovered. Their contact information is at the end of this article. Shipping and handling is free, and it arrived in only 3 days via USPS. The company is based in Florida, so I suspect...
Ever since Robin and I developed our Five-Spice Roast Pork dish for The Lazy Gourmet (p.126) I’ve been a little bit obsessed with Chinese five-spice powder, an intriguing and hard-to-describe spice blend made of (most commonly) cinnamon, clo...