Fancy Food Show 2012

When the Fancy Food Show rolls around, my husband inevitably starts humming It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. This year, the three-day foodie extravaganza was bigger than ever, with the exhibit halls of Moscone overflowing with 80,000 specialty products from food artisans and importers from around the world. Imagine an avalanche of chocolates, cheeses, olive oils, spices, jams, sauces, teas, snacks…that’s pretty much what the Fancy Food Show was like.

Happy Birthday Humboldt Fog!

It is always nice to reconnect with old friends at the show, like Cypress Grove’s Humboldt Fog (which turns 20 this year — Happy Birthday!) or the insanely delicious Whole-Milk Ricotta from Bellwether Farms (which I just want to bathe in), but my favorite part of the Fancy Food Show is discovering new treasures.

Here are the Top 10 Sweet Treats that blew me away:

» Continue Reading “Best of the Fancy Food Show 2012: Sweet”…

Healthy Butternut Squash Soup

There are times for luxurious butternut squash soup laced with brown butter…and then there are times for a more austere version that doesn’t involve homemade stock, a gaggle of aromatics, bouquet garni, and tedious straining. This isn’t a knock on the former – she’s an elegant special occasion soup, and you can taste the extra fuss that goes into her. Sometimes though, you just want an everyday soup – a practical gal that’s into healthiness, nourishment, and minimum effort.

For times like these, I turn to my Healthy Butternut Squash Soup. Comforting, satisfying, zero-guilt goodness, step right up. Did I mention, it only requires 3 main ingredients? Butternut squash, onion, chicken broth. How wholesome.

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Bar Masa, Las Vegas (ARIA Resort & Casino)

When I first moved to New York as a fresh grad, all bright-eyed and dirt poor, I saved my pennies for pretty shoes and sushi takeout. I would read through my Zagat as religiously as my Vogue and Glamour, and file away dream meals at Per Se and Masa alongside dream shoes by Louboutin and Manolo.

Chef Masa Takayama

I never would have thought that one day I’d be eating a meal personally prepared and handed to me by Masa himself. (I’m still waiting for Monsieur Louboutin to call me about those custom heels, but you know, one dream at a time).

The 150-seat Las Vegas outpost of Bar Masa, inside the ARIA Resort & Casino, is much larger than the Bar Masa in New York. And it is, of course, done up in high Vegas fashion with soaring, 36-foot, airplane hangar-esque ceilings and curvy red leather banquets. The food? Extravagant to be sure, but not in a haphazard hedonistic way. No, this meal at Bar Masa was elegant and poised and gracious, possessing a poetic lightness of being to it.

» Continue Reading “Bar Masa {Las Vegas}”…

RoliRoti’s Porchetta Sandwich

RoliRoti is a gourmet rotisserie truck that travels around to different farmers markets in the Bay Area every day of the week. They make a fine Roast Chicken (free range from Fulton Valley Farms), Rosemary Roasted Potatoes which are brilliantly cooked beneath the rotating spit, catching all the flavorful drippings from roasting meats above, and even Roasted Pork Knuckles on occasion. But the pièce de résistance is the Porchetta.

Perfect, juicy, tender, fatty slices of slow roasted porchetta layered with crispy crackling, piled high on a Ciabatta roll with spicy greens, sweet onion marmalade and a sprinkle of black pepper and coarse sea salt, to be exact.

Porchetta Line Up

RoliRoti’s Porchetta Sandwich is legendary. It is perhaps the #1 dish we craved while we were away from San Francisco. It definitely was in the “reasons to move back” column when we were discussing our return to SF.

» Continue Reading “Porchetta Sandwich + Q&A with RoliRoti’s Thomas Odermatt”…