eating: bad for you

It's a dangerous world out there these days. After receiving a series of complaints from diners feeling "unwell" Heston Blumenthal has temporarily closed the Fat Duck (via diners journal).

And, last week, Payard failed health inspections and was shut down for a couple days.

For a bit of good restaurant news via SF Eater, my favorite local restaurant Aziza was re-reviewed by the Bauer and given a 3.5 star rating. Mourad's food is so special, and the cocktail menu is always an exercise in interesting pairings. I find it interesting that MB comments on the white plates because, for me (unless it's changed recently) it's the beautiful Heath plates that I recall.

While there are some things I'd love to see updated, like the pastry bag squeeze-piles of dips for the flatbread mezze, the flatbread itself is pillowy and perfect, and my main courses have always been interesting, flavorful and complex.

MB's review was less flowery than usual, but leaves such nuggets as the following: "a neat pile of berries and a smear of purple sauce resembling the tail of a comet. " Oy.

edge city: revisionist strategies

Saturday night I took my bike down Folsom to Embarcadero, then down all the way past the Fisherman's Wharf crowd and out to Aquatic Park, then home via Polk to Van Ness with a stop for doughnut sampling at Bob's {I'm serious bout these doughnuts, man}. I meant to stop at Aquatic Park and walk out along the pier but it was blocked off for Flight Week. Some time ago I wrote a story and a pivotal scene ended up happening on that pier (only I didn't know it then, and the logistics of coordinating a story three thousand miles away that I didn't know was messy at best, but it was the only way to try to be here). It's a great place to see the city because you've got the tackiness of Ghirardelli Square at your back, Alcatraz Island lurking in the depths in front of you, and you can look toward the Golden Gate and open ocean beyond. I had some questions I needed to work out, and I needed to put myself in my characters' frame of mind for the stories that get edited once this carousel story is finished. Back to the chef cycle: the line cook, and the sous chef.

All of these pieces and the carousel too are so similar in sentiment. A professor I had once said that there are two plots for stories: A Stranger Comes To Town, and the other one whose name I forget. And all of these pieces are variations on that theme. Sometimes you meet someone so wonderful and you know that the sum of all you have isn't enough for that person but it's all you can give so you stand before them with your hands outstretched, knowing it's futile, knowing you have to. Because you are lovesick, or your mother is ill. Because you love another (you do, right?) but you are compelled. Because you are not enough alone. Because you want to believe in love. Because you are young. Because of her smile. His stutter, his red cheeks. The Stranger Comes To Town, and you are not so ill-prepared.

I needed to feel that painful emptiness and how the city melts around you as you move through it. How the water laps at the shore. How small it makes you feel. How you try to find messages in the street lamps and shards of conversation you overhear. Because at present there is no one that I can act so recklessly for.

I think for one I understand the line cook's story better now (though it is far from being good and will inevitably pose its own problems as I continue), and the carousel story will be easy to complete, but it's the sous chef's story that stumps me because its potential for betrayal is so total.

There is another short piece in the works about the inability to accept love when it's given.

These thoughts all beg another question: how do you know when it's right? How can you take it on faith that you will love something?

When I first found Claudia Fleming's cookbook in the library I loved it. I read it hushed and awed on the T, wanting to understand the ideas behind each choice, looking to decode its clues. I wouldn't return it to the library. I kept renewing it. When it had to go back, I'd wait and then check it out again. It was one of the last items I returned before I moved to Oakland and I'm pretty sure at the time it had late fines. But I only made one recipe from it during all that time. Having recently made a couple others I was confused and saddened when one resulted in an overly sweet confection. And I'm down with sweet things, but this was just wrong.

I don't *love* things frequently, least of all food, my own or anyone's. But I just missed my chance at the Saturday market to tell Mourad Lahlou how exquisitely perfect everything we ate at Aziza was, and how for two full days after every pause in conversation was a return to shared sighs. I made a list of the food I can say I've loved and it came down to six Bay Area chefs and three in Boston (three!) Recently I told someone I loved her food...or, rather I knew I'd love your food before I tasted any of it, and I do. How do you know when it's right when it's just an idea? How can you take it on faith? Why have I only had roast chicken that is PERFECT twice in my life?

And maybe that is what the story is missing. The faith that to heal the structure we first need to break it. Break it down. The guts to go all the way to the problem. Which is probably why I love that first piece so much {the one that takes place on the pier, in part}. It's a devastating scream from someone who has always been in utter control. It's the bid to keep the Stranger even as she's skipping town. It's the recognition that you are not enough, in all your failed grace, that you will not change, that your promises will not be kept.

it's midnight and my. stomach. hurts

Tonight I found out a piece of my food writing is going to be published online in a few weeks. The journal had been really interested back in April or thereabouts and dropped the ball. While there are a lot of things I like within the piece it's sort of a negative piece in a lot of ways--definitely not a favorite with the writing group--if an important piece for me. It's strange to publish something I don't feel like I LOVE...although I do feel it's important, at least personally (though that is not a great reason)...it speaks to a lot of things I feel about this industry, and it's very of a certain time in my life, and it's perhaps challenging to think of it out of that time.

Nervousness and listmaking. My vacation is almost half over and there is so much left to do. It's so wonderful to see each person I get to see, but it's also an obligation:

do not leave anyone out.

So people want to see me again or have coffee or go driving but there's no time.

To go to New York or not. I will want to have gone by the time I'm back in California. It's just a lot to plan. Right now I'm researching bakeries and whatnot I want to hit up and I still don't really have dinner plans {which I should just make, right} and it's like...this is my vacation...like, relax already. The list so far:


il laboratorio del gelato
buttercup cakery
city bakery
doughnut plant
kee's chocolates
amy's bread/chelsea market
balthazar
kyotofu


Boys night out on the town Saturday to check out the new club, but it was all posturing and bored girls, me included. Been spending lots of time lately with people who remind me of myself too much and it's strange to see my reaction mirrored in someone else's face.

You can accuse me of being too intense, and you'd probably be right

I went to Oleana tonight. There are a lot of things I want to say about Oleana...and Aziza as well while we're discussing Turkish-North African cuisine...

{and I've tried to write already about Aziza a couple of times but it doesn't come out in a way that satisfies me as being accurate, and then there's sort of a lil rant I'm not sure if I should get into even though it really bothered me and it still bothers me a week later}

so for now there is only the things we ate at Oleana:

padron peppers with fleur de sel, yogurt
warm buttered humus with basturma, olives
zaatar focaccia
fideos with chickpeas and chard
spinach falafel with greens, beets, tahini
crispy zaatar-lemon chicken with turkish cheese pancake, greens
swordfish with eggplant-macaroni timbale
goat's milk ice cream (made with sahleb!!) with blueberry jellies, blueberry sauce, rose petal jam
umm ali with peaches and peach jam, honey pot de creme


and Aziza:

grilled flatbreads with mediterannean spreads
giant lima beans with roasted tomatoes, feta, fresh zaatar
chicken basteeya


There were so many familiar taste memories in those desserts. Not surprising-many of the components I'd tasted before, or at least variations on a theme.


I'm nervous about everything that happens when I get back to San Francisco, but that is another list to be made. It's easy to be here and it's easy to slip into things.Being back here is so emotional. Every street corner in Somerville is the scene of secrets, fights, attraction, breakups, longing. It's so marked in so many ways that diminish the abstractions I seek in SF. I moved away for food? I start to think...and it all seems so trite.

frolicking

Running around the town. Chez Panisse last night, Aziza tonight followed by an Ocean Beach bonfire and home to peach crisp that's currently baking. Frog Hollow Summerset peaches with some Woodleaf Blue Diamond plums tossed in for good measure. Running through the streets of Berkeley with a battered takeout box carrying the rest of my perfect eggplant pizza from CP, getting hit on by drunken boys (boys!) on BART, falling asleep standing up with my head resting on burned-up arms, trying to make it to Ici twice in one day, not being able to get there, eating gelato instead which just isn't the same as ice cream, even if it's violet flavored, cuddling the cutie pie, making BBQ plans for next week, having brunch and hanging out with normal people because it's the weekend and I'm not working for once, getting an open invitation to play with an ice cream machine(!!), spying on someone else's new ice cream machine(?!?), staying up until mid morning and being very un-bakerly, and of course, gossiping, for the last time perhaps, with the cupcake makers, about why the boss was surprised to hear I was leaving...I mean, really, surprised...and what I'm going to do next.