sweet life bakery, eugene, or

It was a craving for diner food that made my friend and I pull off the I-5 in Eugene OR. First the iPhone sent us to a creepy town across the river from Eugene, the kind of town that can only be the setting for that old fiction topic The Stranger Comes To Town. Well, we were the strangers and we rode out.

In Eugene we found a newfangled diner and purchased elaborate burger sandwiches and fried goods. Tempted by the sign on the door that read Pie Happy Hour 3:30-5 we asked out server to explain, which is how we found out about the Sweet Life Patisserie, who supplied Happy Hour pies.

thanks gina pina
It would be open till ten or eleven. We would fine a line outside the door, she assured us. And it was not to be missed! So we paid, crossed town to the bakery, and waited in a very long line. Maybe you've never been to Oregon or maybe you are one of those people who only goes to Portland, so it bears explaining here: the majority of rural Oregon has a problem with the gays. Sure, Eugene is a college town, but we'd seen neither hide nor hair of queer culture and a whole lot of fundamentalist bigot radiom and the only gay bar in Eugene had closed down 2-3 years earlier.

Once we made it into the Sweet Life we tried to decide between the gelato, chocolates, cookies, cakes, creme brulee, pies and other items. When bakeries have a lot of items I tend to get nervous, because you can't reasonably expect one chef to excel in all those areas.

I went with the mixed berry pie (blueberry, blackberry, ollalie and marion, which prompted a discussion on Marion Berry...my friend thought it was a joke) and he got the chocolate strawberry cake, basically a chocolate version of strawberry shortcake (whipped cream frosting, ganache, strawberry compote). Coffee drinks to go.

My pie was great. They heated it up for me and gave me a generous slab (for $4, I'd hope so), although they didn't offer whipped cream or anything I guess you could buy ice cream to get it a la mode. The cake was moist, the berries flavorful.

Here's what was so exciting about the Sweet Life: it offered a place for the smart kids, the geeky kids, the gay kids to go and hang out in a town that didn't seem like it had much cultural escape to offer. The cashier at the sweet life was totes gay. And the day before our visit, the Sweet Life bakery had participated in Bites for Rights, a fundraising program that donated 15% of the day's sales to Basic Rights Oregon, an equality organization.

As if being progressive on the issue of equality isn't enough of a reason to love Sweet Life, here's another:

the bakery is super conscientious of those with food allergies and dietary restrictions. Vegans and gluten-free girls, little signs in the case will tell you which products you can eat, so you don't have to hold up the line asking.

stuff that's keeping me happy lately

I've been so busy traveling. There's a lot that I want to tell you about but it's going to take a while. In the meantime here's a teaser of stuff that I've been into lately:

• pilot books, seattle
• amazing apricots
• breaking news: harvard lays off 275 employees --> THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I LIKE
  
• molly moon's, seattle
• finding a gay friendly bakery in eugene or
  
• inner sunset farmers market, sf
  
• modesto jr. college egg farmers
• being so close to the end of chapter 3, phew!

photo by James Callahan

the three strikes bakery rule

When trying out a new bakery, I almost always follow the three strikes rule: no matter how I feel about something on the first visit, I'm not allowed to rule it out until I've made two more visits. There are so many variables that could affect the initial impression, ranging from my mood or the weather to an overly salty batch of dough the kitchen made or a slightly stale cookie.* I might visit with a friend and try a few items; in that case, I'll relax the rule a bit.

Last night in the Castro, I told my friend something vaguely upsetting as we were walking back from dinner. Surprising, no. Upsetting, yes. He clutched my arm and, rather than respond to what I'd been saying, demanded cake at that very moment. Let's Go Into Cafe Flore, he said, pointing at the Castro landmark.

image from aweigend.

I've been to Cafe Flore many times, and quite enjoy it for a lingering coffee with friends on a rare sunny-AND-warm San Francisco day, or for late-morning brunches. The eggs are always good, and I respect a tiny postage-stamp of a kitchen that can stay on top of their game. Over the years I've had a couple of their desserts and been lukewarm, most notably for the chocolate violet souffle cake that tastes nothing like violets. Chocolate cake does not need violets, no, not at all. So if you are going to create a violet-chocolate cake, please make sure it actually tastes like something? ok?

We skipped the cheesecake, considered the chocolate cake, and decided to share a slice of the banana foster pie.

What looked like a simple custardy confection ended up being a four-layer pie that, if slightly too sweet, was rich and creamy and perfect for sharing. Deep cookie-crumb crust got a layer of caramel, and another one of rum-vanilla custard. The pie finished with a banana cream and a caramel drizzle. The pie was one of those occasions something tastes better than it looks, the flavors rising above the ho-hum prissy bakery presentation that we all groan over. Lucky for Cafe Flore, this was my third visit.

I'm often considered a snob about food and other things, and I am, sure. That said, there's a place for the ok, the humble, the merely good. The pie was as good as some items I've had from places like Tartine and Citizen Cake. Sometimes we don't want to think that way. It helps, when paying Tartine prices, to believe you are getting the absolute best there can be. There are days when all you want is a sweet and uncomplicated piece of pie, a little sunshine, an outdoor table, and a dose of queers.


*Note to cooks and kitchenworkers: it's actually really important to taste everything you sell every day (sauces and such, maybe every 2 days, unless they're fruit-based). I've seen anglaise go bad in the squeeze bottle during a service. I've also worked at restaurants that serve, day in and out, horribly stale versions of Claudia Fleming's brownie cookies, which is not only gross but completely disrespectful.

Sunset Bakery morning buns

One of the good things about living in my little Asian neighborhood is stopping by the sunset bakery for cocktail buns and coffee.

While I've tried some of the muffins, palmiers and tarts, the buns are my favorite. Ethereal, fluffy, not too sweet, and served warm. I was given the cocktail bun one day when they were out of black bean buns, and this one contains a mixture if sesame and coconut.

Sesame paste? Seeds? Almond paste with sesame and coconut mixed in? I've had this bun several times and still can't decide how the filling is prepared.I know that it makes me happy in the morning, and I'm going to eat the one in my bag very soon.

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.

snow falling on zebras

I made these really fun doughnuts today.

Vanilla doughnut/ coconut glaze/ dark cocoa drizzle/ coconut flakes.

They did indeed look like snowy zebras.

The Internet is out again and I'm protesting by working on a story. Someone should unplug me more often.

I'm going to sausalito for the first time ever on Monday. I really should get out more

i heart david chang

scoping out places to go in new york, and i see chang now has a bakery in his momofuku empire. cakes, shakes, cookes, pretty normal things, but his list of ice cream toppings?

brown butter solids

he's also got a cookie called compost cookie and a pie called crack pie...

anyone out there been to his bakery?

also, aside from old favorites doughnut plant (which is so close to il laboratorio del gelato i might as well show my mom), dean and deluca, broadway panhandler, and birdbath, where to go?

new york, day two

Thank you to all New Yorkers and ex-New Yorkers for your wonderful suggestions.






So I said the pretzel croissant was all right. I forgot to mention the part where on day two I woke up and I had a breakfast destintion all planned out but really...I just kinda wanted another pretzel croissant. It's like how I felt about zaatar the morning after. Sometimes things just take a day to be brilliant to you. I *almost* bought another more than once that day...but I ended up with something even more instructionally interesting.

From the beginning, however: I woke up in my friend's dorm room at a too-early hour and due to my not having coffee hopped on a Brooklyn bound train. Figured out somewhere around Schermerhorn Street things were not quite right. My farmer was waiting for me, all dolled up in a pretty dress, by the time I got to West 4th, and we got the last available table in Patisserie Claude. Croissant for me, roll of cake for my friend. My croissant is buttery and flaky, and the coffee is good although I am initially skeptical, and we sit in the too-hot bakery amidst the other people who have no work obligations, maybe because it is Rosh Hashanah and the whole city seems to be free, and we tell each other the big news. I haven't seen her since February. She's one of those people I love so fiercely that we can't stop hugging, we find little excuses to touch one another, and as we walk down Christopher Street afterward I stop and take her hands in mind. I Have To Tell You Something. I tell her all about how I Love New York Again.

We both know what this means, and we get there, as I take a look at my notebook full of pastry suggestions and decide that if we walk down Spring Street we will hit three of my selections. The Hudson Valley House, one day...in whatever town I can afford. I've been making calculations based upon this house for years now. Maybe I'll Be Bi-Coastal, I say, a sigh, San Francisco a kink in all my well laid plans. But not even San Francisco can take that upstate house from me. It's in my blood, or something {and I do have relatives buried in the cemetery in Wappingers Falls}.

On the bakery tour, I fall in love with Balthazar, which is so adorably European and otherwordly, but we're too stuffed from breakfast so instead we muscle past the hostess and stare at the pastries and I decide to save it for next time. Just a little further down the street is button-cute Ceci Cela, with the most luscious looking glazed puff pastry and pear tartlets I have seen Ever. Jewelboxes glinting in the sun. But I'm still too full for something so large, so settle for a financier, which is smaller in size. Almondy and brown buttery and fine, but as we walk around the corner arguing about which way is uptown I'm longing for the puff pastry.

My farmer demands real food and she kind of wants French, so when we stumble upon Cafe Gitane it's great. I'm wearing my Harlem shirt and when the cute server comments I mumble about how I used to live in Brooklyn. My farmer orders a lentil-cranberry-walnut and smoked trout salad, which she succeeds in making me try. And like, despite my mistrust of cold foods and suspicion of smoked fish. Seriously good. I was more than happy with my cucumber mint yogurt salad dusted with rose petals, topped with a mound of hummus and perfectly toasted warm pita points that were faint echoes of Aziza's wonderfulness. I *did* kind of want a lil sumac on my salad, and a dash more rose, but it seemed outside the lit of reasonable requests.
Sometimes you can sit in silence with people and it's better than talking. Sometimes it's okay that someone is three thousand miles from you because they love what they're doing and they worked so hard to get there, and since you love them you know it's for the best, even if your heart is jealous.

After lunch we walk to one more bakery, the Build A Green Bakery/Birdhouse endeavor. I almost buy another pretzel croissant, which, it's worth noting, is fifty cents cheaper at the 1st Ave./13th St. Green outpost than the actual City Bakery. I also almost buy a giant cookie, but instead go for the miso plum cake and stash it in my bag for the long bus ride home. My farmer catches a cab uptown and we try to say goodbye. Too many hugs. Kisses. Promises. I shuffle off to my old place of employment to use the Zagat guide and get directions.


I walked up to Kalustyan's and almost bought so many things. Reminisced about my friends' old Murray Hill apartment and nights spent wanting so many things. I'd walked so far that I was trying to remember the quickest way back to a subway without walking the ten or so more blocks uptown to Grand Central but couldn't recall and ended up in Herald Square catching the F to Canal, where it was just two exactly and I was going to have to wait an hour for the bus.

But at Canal you can catch the JMZ, and if you go one or two stops you're back on the Lower East Side which is not all that far from Doughnut Plant and though I've already got a pastry in my bag for the bus I think some sugar and caffeine will get me out of the so-tired-I'm-going-to-pass-out and back into happy. Doughnut Plant is smaller than I expected, at least the retail side. I inspect the doughnuts and ask the man: peach or blueberry jelly? There's a note that explains they've started making their own jams and jellies. Blueberry, he says, then grabs a fresh rack from the back room and turns out he's been a baker, too, so we discuss the life. Kitchens. I take a bunch of photos and leave, tearing into my doughnut on the walk toward Chinatown. Square doughnut. Blueberry Jelly. Vanilla Bean Glaze. I'm not expecting the way the glaze flakes apart onto my hands as I eat. I've never actually *liked* a jelly doughnut before, certainly not the Dunkies version, but the blueberry jelly is wonderful and falling all over my hands. I've got no napkin so I'm licking it up and continuing to eat and stumbling closer to Chinatown. I'm revived. I'm in love again. I can't wait to come back.

Lest you forget I still had the miso plum cake to eat. If there had been more plums...mountains of plums! As it was, the cake alone was kind of crumbly-dry and hard to eat, but when eaten with the juicy plums it was heaven. I sort of resisted eating it for a few hours because I had that doughnut aftertaste in my mouth and didn't want to ruin it. But the cake was so intriguing, and the whole time I kept eating it I couldn't stop thinking about my upside down cake dilemma. What else was the miso cake but another form of that (well, I'm sure it wasn't baked upside down, but what is the seed behind the idea? what shape does the form take?)? I didn't have to make something I didn't like. Even if it was Chez Panisse. Even if it always sold well.
After all that, I went home and ate BBQ and was then convinced into going for ice cream to JP Licks. I got my favorite choice from there: oatmeal cookie yogurt with caramel sauce. But I also asked to try a new flavor: noodle kugel. It was amazing. I'm going to have to figure out how they did it from the tiny tasting spoon bite I had. Milky, cinnamony, tiny shards of noodles.

What's Kugel? my friends all asked.
It's A Jewish Food...I said.

new york: day one

Day 1: Momofuku Ssam, Greenmarket, City Bakery, Il Laboratorio del Gelato, Gravy, White Horse Tavern.

Momofuku Ssam: Very polished and quiet. Hard to imagine the place bustling with foodie types and chefs, but then they do a lot more at dinner than they seem to do at lunch. I really wanted to go here because of all the foodie buzz, the Beard nomination, etc etc...and because of all the places I wanted to check out in New York it was the only slightly affordable one. I got a ssam with chicken, white kimchi, pickled shitakes, edamame and whatever else it came with. My friend got the pork rice bowl. My ssam was super messy. and kind of huge. and fairly fun. The shitakes were really good. The kimchi kind of made me nervous. The Tablehopper has a way better review of Momofuku Ssam, but then she had a giant pork feast.

We walked over to Union Square where I demanded we see the Greenmarket even though Dale, my adventure buddy for the afternoon, was quick to point out the SF farm markets were probably better. Apples and pears, same as here, but better apples and adorable Seckel pears. He got apple cider, which was a lil tangy and not very complex. Then he declared me an Honorary Jew, even though I met only half of his criteria, it being Rosh Hashana and all.

How is it that I never went to the City Bakery while I worked in Union Square? Was it not there? Or was I just too busy selling books? Either way I suppose it's a good thing, because the place would have been dangerous to my wallet. Not really feeling all that hungry after the ssam I went for the classic: pretzel croissant. A slightly pretzel-shaped croissant with toasty sesame seeds and a liberal sprinkling of salt on top...born to confuse the eater (is it breakfast or snack?) and infuriate the french. My friend snitched a piece and pronounced it all right. The general consensus was good croissant, curious about all the hype. I think I might have even passed the judgment of "it's all right" before we slid back onto 18th and took a lil walk upon my insistence to someplace I really wanted to go.

Yes, we went and just looked at Gramercy Tavern. Mostly so I could see if they were open for lunch and how costly such a thing might be, but...yeah...it was fairly geeky and I'll be the first to admit it.

From there we hopped a train to Delancey Street for some gelato. I'm quite glad I went to Il Laboratorio del Gelato, but the counter help was a dick! They had some kind of ice cream made with mastic, and I wanted to know what was in it. It's all gone, we just sold the last of it, was his response, even though that wasn't my question. I tried to explain again how I was just curious, but when he still appeared to be functioning not quite up to speed I figured it was either give up or reach across the counter and shake him by his dishwasher's coat. I mean, how many people know what mastic is in the first place? Sheesh.

Ice cream weirdness aside, we shared a cup of honeydew sorbet, strawberry gelato and honey-lavender gelato. The strawberry was surprisingly good. Likewise on the taste factor of the sorbet, though it was a lil icy and needed a fresh spin. I always feel totally awkward in that situation...I want to tell them, and it is true, but I know I'd be rolling my eyes if it were me behind the counter. Anyway...the honey lavender was decent. I'm just really picky about the flavor. The entire experience was revolutionary in that, here in SF, I've had gelato a couple times recently and been very disappointed...and those times aside I don't think I've had it since Italy maybe years ago. So it's not that I don't like gelato, per se...it's just I haven't had the right kind.

While meandering toward the subway we even saw a cake tag! {yes, I've got pictures} Stuffed to the gills we retired to Carroll Gardens for some sitting around the giant kitchen, talking about crushes, and watching my friend's grad school videos. Brooklyn felt low and small, familiar enough with its landscape and people. My friend tried to convince me that if I'd lived in South Brooklyn rather than North, I would have stayed.

Perhaps this is the point in the post where I explain briefly that my entire life I wanted nothing more to live in New York and be a famous writer. I wanted to be the Diane Keaton character in Manhattan; I wanted to be Dorothy Parker and co. at the Algonquin; I wanted to be Allen Ginsberg. I grew up going to New York a couple times a year for shopping and whatnot, saw all the major art shows all through college. When my New Yorky Vassar friends would tell me I didn't really know New York I'd get all confused...

Life for me in New York most closely resembled The 6ths song "I've Got New York." At first it was intense and hard and exciting and then it slowly ground down at absolutely everything I thought I wanted was slowly taken from me. For a couple of years I went back, barely, through grit teeth and tensed muscles. My friends were still there. Every neighborhood held bad memories or false hopes. Then finally I went back (in October of last year and February of this year) and it was neutral. How nice to be free of all those experiences...that said, I still won't go to Times Square...

Finally {and is it being 3000 miles away, or having a whole other career, or growing older, or being unable to take it for granted} it's over. It's official. I Love New York (Again). All of my memories are open now. The horrible, hard times are there but so are the times from my youth, from college, from when I lived there. So many of the people I love most are New York people and I knew they'd be happy to hear this.

When I took her hand the next morning and looked into her eyes, told her I had big news she needed to hear, my farmer did something special: Now You Can Love It Like A Real New Yorker, she said. You Know What It Means. You've Seen The Best And The Worst.


Oodles of awesome food, sweet and savory. Key epiphanies about my life. Becoming an Honorary Jew and a Real New Yorker...could it get any better? Well, I only walk myself into blood sugar oblivion and am saved Simpsons-style by doughnuts, but that's the next day...

bakery list/local chocolates

My list of New York options is growing out of bounds of what one girl can possibly eat, but here it is, as the Chowhouds add and amend. Any comments? Anything I should see or do in the city I love to hate, other that the trip to my favorites the Strand + Dean and Deluca?


Balthazar Bakery
Buttercup
Chelsea Market/Amy's Bread
City Bakery
Doughnut Plant
Il Laboratorio del Gelato
Kee's Chocolates
Kyotofu
Madeleine Patisserie
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery (LES)
Birdbath/Build a Green Bakery (West Village, East Village)
Black Hound (East Village)
Ceci-Cela (Soho)
Levain (UWS)
Bouchon Bakery (UWS)


Dinner hopefully at either p*ong or Momofuku Ssam.

And would I pass up the chance to visit a Somerville chocolatier in his chocolate workshop and stalk the elusive orchid root here?

The Beehive is tonight. I have been waiting at least nine months for this restaurant to open and I'm so very glad I get to go. !!

nuts and bolts, and yeast

(I used to live on a farm).
I say that I don't like fruit, but this is not the case. For years I've naturally gravitated toward a locally-grown fruit policy: I don't eat much fruit because most fruit, when you live in the Northeast, tastes like crap most of the time. I have always adored a few things: cherries, Maine blueberries, raspberries and apples. Apples I'm very particular about. They're more of a memory-fruit, a ritual. My mother always made apple pie (and she still does, but she does not make her crust). Every year we'd go picking, which when you're little is an excuse to climb apple trees and when you're big is an excuse to act little. It was only in college when I worked at an orchard that I really got to figure out what kind of apples I prefer, and now I'm loyal to a fault. I'll make do with Cortlands for eating or baking but it's Northern Spy that I prefer, both for the poetics of its name and for the reserved beauty of its delicate colors. Pale pink meets spring green. Winesaps are a different breed, small and dark and painful to the teeth on first crunch.

The other thing my fruit farmers taught me well were plums. They'd been a confusing fruit, sometimes bitter and sometimes sweet, and I think I feel about the plum how most people feel about the peach. There's something deliciously sexy about its juiciness, its softness and its earnest nature. I tried long ones and skinny ones, small ones and red ones and blue ones, and I never learned the name of the plum I liked best, but they're small, blue-ish and matte.

While plucking peach leaves at work this weekend I made a resolution to go deep with stone fruit this summer. I'm going to try everything Farmer Al puts out until I understand peaches, nectarines and pears the way I understand apples. I'm going to go slow, and I'm going to be thorough. It may require lots more trips to the Berkeley Bowl (currently I've got Santa Rosa plums and Blenheim apricots in house). I'm going to take fruit apart. Give me a hammer and I'll crack open pits, make noyau ice cream. The peach leaves are frozen, cooked down into simple syrup, infused for custard, but what else? What next?

The knowledge I want may not come this summer, and that is okay. But it's going to start and it's an education that's long overdue. I don't really know fruit. While I follow the incorrect crisp recipes at work and come out with watery, weird cherry crisp, the guys eyeball tapioca flour by the handful and get rock-hard crisp. It's all ratios, baking. AP or cornstarch or tapioca. I asked my boss what to read, because she'd know. She makes jams and crisps and puff-pastry-filled concoctions, and she was vague. How do you transfer a lifetime of knowledge? How do you give someone what your hands have learned? How can you teach them to go by sight, instinct, educated guess? She suggested I read the pie bible. So yes, we'll hit up the library this week and take a walk around Lake Merritt (hit up bakesale betty's or ici or cafe fanny while we're running around, perhaps).

There are cultures and yeasty concoctions brewing around the cupcakery this week. Lavash ferment for crackers I'm baking tomorrow. I started the ferment Friday with some bread flour and water, today we added honey and prepared the dough, and after a long slow rise in the walk-in tonight she should be good to bake tomorrow with some malden salt and pepper. There's also a sourdough starter we're working on with raisin water, and cake flour (for now, till we get something with more gluten).
Michael Ruhlman has some great things to say about bread in "The Making of a Chef." I miss bread. Most of my fellow bakers at the cupcakery are disinterested. They'd rather decorate cake. Bread is so calming. Reliable. Sexy, if you know what you're doing. Bread responds to the weather, the air, the hiss of steam or water in a hot oven. Bread is about controlling your variables and adjusting for time. I love the ritual of kneading, waiting for first rise, shaping. Patience. I miss the sour smell of yeast and the feel of risen dough, the way it turns under your hands as you ball it. I love how the dough responds to my bread knife (I love that knife) when it's scored. I may be in the pleasure business but bread's practical, economic, never expensive.

I wrote a story about bread as ritual. It's in need of a redraft, but as it stands:

Eleven o’clock that night Leti banged on the door to my room. She showed me her bread, which was lumpy, misshapen and rock hard. I rapped it with my finger, and the crust tore into my skin. "Um, nice," I said. "I’ve got to get up early, though, just make sure you clean the kitchen before you go to bed, si?"
"It’s awful," Leti said. "I followed everything Henry told me. This looks like shit." Leti’s eyes threatened to overflow with tears. She wanted my friends to like her, she said.
"I want to have something for the party, you know, something nice. Everything’s so nice up here." She gestured with her hands at the air around us. "Your apartment, she added, your job, your friends, you have such a nice life, Junior," she continued. "Dios mio, be happy with it!"
"I see how you look at him," she said. "Your Will. I know how you feel, baby, I’m sorry."
I told her I’d need to take some of her sourdough starter. Will was not fair game for conversation. "I’ll take it to Stephanie." Stephanie was Abeille’s patissier and her breads were legendary. "Let me take the bread, too. I’ll help you fix it."
I didn’t want to help Leti, not at all. I wanted my house back and I wanted my friend back and I wanted a man in my bed.
"There’s something I want to tell you, about Ramon," Leti said. The no-good.
My capacity for compassion was exhausted, and I told Leti to save it. I shut the door on Leti and tossed her ugly bread on my dresser.

bacar

Staged tonight at bacar, in SOMA. apparently the old chef left there, new chef (from Jardiniere) been in place 8 days. the pastry chef there is leaving in 2ish weeks, getting married, going on honeymoon. i got a little more info from her and she says the ex-chef is her mentor and she doesn't want to work there without him, etc. which i understand. i'm jealous of that also--wish i had a mentor. but at least i have a new city to explore.

Plating was easy-we did maybe five or six desserts. I would need to do more quenelles. But that's the only the she didn't like about me, and that's easy enough to practice a lot. I liked the presentation a lot. It's funny; when I was staging at Range I was talking to the assistant about how I didn't like my boss's presentations...how they just didn't make sense to me. And he was talking to me about it, trying to figure out was it a rustic versus polished thing or what? Not so much per se-because Range's things were a lot more rustic than bacar's and I was fine with the polished restaurant-ness of it. But more the aesthetic of design, the way the white space is left on the plate.

I asked the chef if she had a favorite dessert on the menu. Not really, she said. Mostly she was just sick of her stuff, she said. As if everyone has an aesthetic or a flavor profile. She said she didn't wanna do restaurant stuff any more. She just wanted to go work in a bakery.

Almost been here two weeks. I wonder when it'll stop feeling so new. I'm learning my way around the town though and around Oakland and I've started giving people advice/directions when they ask. I figure if I talk California I might as well fake it, you know?