I came across a recipe by Michael Chiarello for white bean waffles a while ago and was very intrigued. So much so that I completely changed the recipe to be black bean waffles. Recently I had some time, a can of black beans and a waffle maker. Here’s what happened…

Black Bean Waffles
For the beans:
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 dash tabasco
1 handful fresh cilantro
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the waffles:
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 eggs
1 cups milk
3 tbsp olive oil

Preheat your waffle device of choice. In a small pot combine the beans, chili powder, cumin, tabasco, and chicken stock. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a simmer for about 5 minutes over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Meanwhile in a large mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and teaspoon salt.

Add the beans, their cooking liquid and the cilantro to a food processor and pulse to puree. Add the eggs, milk, and olive oil to the bean mixture and puree until smooth. Whisk the wet mixture into the dry slowly to avoid any lumps. Let the batter rest briefly and griddle the waffles according manufacturer’s instructions.

Now, what can you do with these little snacks? Well, the first night we had a couple of wedges on the side with some grilled turkey breast tenders. Very good.

The next day (a Saturday), two waffle wedges each were re-toasted, stacked with spinach leaves, avocado, poached eggs, cheddar cheese and salsa and served as a kind of faux, mexican eggs benedict. I completely recommend this option.

To poach an egg quite easily –

1. Fill a large skillet with a few inches of water. Add about a teaspoon of vinegar and some salt. Put on a lid and bring to a boil.

2. Crack your eggs into ramekins.

3. When the water is boiling, gently pour each egg from the ramekin into the water.

4. Turn off the heat, replace the lid and poach for 2.5 - 4 minutes, depending if you like runny yolks or not. I did about 2.5 - 3 minutes for medium runny yolks.

5. Scoop eggs out with a slotted spoon, briefly draining on a towel-covered saucer if you want. This can get tricky, though, as you still have to lift the poached eggs from the towel to the plate.

Stack everything together and you have a wonderful morning treat. Top with chopped cilantro and green onions if you have any.

Keep the rest of the waffles in the fridge and heat up in a toaster for a quick snack.

At work last Friday, there was a stack of seaweed packages for people to take home if they wanted to and do something seaweed-y with. Grabbing a package, I thought it might be fun for jwa and I to attempt to make sushi. After some contemplation, we decided to start simply, with just rice, cucumber, avocado and crab — a little like California Rolls.

We already had a day planned — breakfast at the Detour Cafe, a walk to OMSI and then I figured we’d hit New Seasons on the walk back home for rice and crab. Everything went perfectly to plan, except New Seasons was out of crab and we had to get that at Zupans. Bastards!

jwa outside omsi

Once at home and rice, veggies and crab prepped, we timidly began. The sushi mats were a little challenging to get the hang of and these were not the most attractive sushi rolls ever but they were good. I think we will be practicing our mad sushi rolling skillz this Fall and Winter and will, come Spring, make beautiful and lovely sushi together. Oh, just you wait….

Avocado and Crab-meat Sushi (for the timid but hoppeful)
This recipe is from Epicurius.com.
For the rice:
1 cup white short-grain rice*
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp dry Sherry
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 avocado
fresh lemon juice for rubbing the avocado
3 pieces of toasted nori
1/2 cucumber, peeled and cut lengthwise into 8- by 1/4-inch strips
1/4 pound fresh King crab meat picked over and drained well
wasabi paste to taste for the sushi plus additional as an accompaniment if desired
soy sauce as an accompaniment
pickled ginger as an accompaniment if desired

Rice:
In a large fine sieve rinse the rice under running cold water until the water runs clear with no milky residue and drain it well. In a large heavy saucepan combine the rice with 1 1/4 cups water, bring the water to a boil, and simmer the rice, covered tightly, for 15 minutes, or until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender.

Remove the pan from the heat, let the rice stand, covered tightly, for 10 minutes, and transfer it to a jelly-roll pan, spreading it in an even layer. Keep the rice warm, covered.

In a saucepan whisk together the vinegar, the sugar, the sherry, and the salt. Simmer the mixture until the sugar is dissolved, and let it cool. Sprinkle the rice with as much of the vinegar mixture as necessary to moisten it lightly, tossing it carefully, and cover it with a dampened cloth. (Do not chill the rice.) The rice may be made 3 hours in advance and kept, covered with the dampened cloth, at room temperature.

Now for the rest…
Peel and pit the avocado, rubbing it with the lemon juice, and cut it into 1/4-inch-thick strips.

Working with one sheet of nori at a time and with a long side facing you, spread about 3/4 cup of the rice in an even layer on each sheet, leaving a 1/2-inch border on the long sides. Arrange some of the avocado strips horizontally across the middle of the rice and arrange some of the cucumber strips and the crab meat on top of the avocado.

Dab the crab meat with the wasabi and beginning with a long side roll up the nori tightly jelly-roll fashion. This is a lot easier if you have a sushi rolling mat. Very inexpensive and a good kitchen investment.

Cut each roll with a sharp knife into 3/4-inch-thick slices and serve the rolls with the soy sauce, the additional wasabi, and the ginger.

Divy up, eat and enjoy!

A Few Unrelated Words on Shoes…
I have been thinking about shoes lately. Although I have a fond place in my heart for most footwear, I’ve been thinking about wedding shoes specifically. I called a bridal place by work to ask if they had shoes. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Hi. I was wondering about your bridal shoe collection.

Her: Silence.

Me: Uh, I mean, you have shoes, right?

Her: Yes.

Me: Is there a large selection? Or at least, are there different sizes available?

Her: Well, we have sizes between 6-8 and then you have to special order everything.

Me: Huh. Um, how does that work if you don’t wear a 6, 7 or 8? How do I know if the shoe fits?

Her: Pause. Well, I guess you don’t for sure. You just have to order it.

Me: Okay. Thanks.

WTF? Seriously? A dress I understand. You try on what they have and then order one in the closest size based on your measurements and then you have alterations as needed. But hello? They don’t alter a shoe. Would it kill them to just have like a variety of sizes available to at least see how different brands fit?

I was so irritated that I decided to just order shoes online. Free shipping and I can return them for free if they don’t fit. Take that, bridal shop industry.

Possibility #1 — on sale for $49.00 — matches the wedding colors of green and brown — bonus points for not being white or ivory. Ha!

Possibility #2 — $54 — white but dyeable. I’ll probably dye it with green tea, going for an off-white, pale, pale green color.

We’ll see which fits best and which is the cutest. Hopefully it’ll be the same shoe. In either case, I have to guess at sizing but at least I get free shipping, better pricing, free returns and less stupidity.

Sugar High Friday, hosted by Cream Puffs in Venice is all about figs this month. Awesome. I really like figs. For this SHF I turned towards perhaps the perfect cookbook for this event — The Girl and the Fig cookbook, one that I really like. In fact, I’m trying to finagle my way into lunch or dinner there next time we’re near Sonoma. But, back to SHF, I’m going to guess I’m not the only one who makes something out of this book given the theme. We’ll see…

Anyway, this was wonderful! A lot of steps, but it makes a great Saturday afternoon project. I did halve the recipe (I used a square 8 inch X 8 inch baking pan) and still ended up freezing about half of it for later snacking — it’s very rich.

Warm Fig & Thyme Crisp with Fig Syrup
Pastry:
2 cups walnut halves
6 tbsp + 3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
4 1/2 cups AP flour
3/4 lb (3 sticks) unsalted butter, thinly sliced
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg yolks

Jam:
2 1/2 pounds dried figs (I used about half dried figs and half fresh figs, which, for my halved recipe turned out to be 1 8-oz bag of dried figs and 1 pint of fresh figs)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
zest of 3 lemons
1 bunch thyme, tied with twine
3 tbsp lemon juice

Port-Fig Syrup:
2 cups Port
5 dried Black Mission figs, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 clove
1/2 cup sugar

Pastry
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, grind the walnuts (until medium-fine) with the tablespoons of sugar and set aside. Don’t worry, you’ll come back to them, but not until you’re ready to assemble the crisp. Next, mix the 3/4 cup granulated sugar, the brown sugar, salt, baking powder and flour until well combined. Add the butter and mix until the mixture clumps, about 2 minutes.

Add the vanilla and egg yolks to the mixture and mix for 40 seconds. Pack two-thirds of the dough into the bottom of a 9 X 12 inch ungreased pan and bake until it’s lightly golden — about 25-30 minutes.

Jam
To make the Jam, combine the figs, sugar, lemon zest thyme and lemon juice and pour in enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Don’t be shy with the water. I was kinda skimpy and had to add more water half way through cooking. Go ahead and really cover everything from the beginning.

Reduce the heat and simmer until the figs are tender, about 30 minutes. Remove the thyme. Puree the mixture in a food processor.

Syrup
Heat the figs, port, cinnamon and clove in a pan over medium heat and reduce to about 1/2 cup. Strain the sauce, pushing on the figs to get as much juice out as possible. Whisk in the sugar and serve.

Assembley
Spread the jam evenly over the baked dough.

In a bowl, crumble together the remaining third of the dough with the walnut and sugar mixture. Sprinkle this mixture over the jam and bake for about 50 minutes. (If you make a half recipe in a smaller pan, give it about 35 minutes).

Cut into pieces and serve warm with vanilla ice cream (or frozen yogurt) and drizzle with the port sauce. So amazingly decadent! And delicious!

Thanks again to Ivonne for hosting and coming up with a tasty theme! I can’t wait to see all of the fig recipes.

Flea Street Cafe
3607 Alameda de las Pulgas
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-854-1226

I have very fond memories of Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park. You see, I used to live in an apartment above the restaurant. I would walk up the backstairs and smell all the amazing smells from the open kitchen door. In the summer, there was even a mini-farmer’s market in the parking lot. As if that all wasn’t enough — my studio apartment also had hardwood floors. All in all, it was a pretty great place to live.

When jwa & I ate dinner there, if we didn’t finish our wine — no problem, they would let us take it upstairs. Awesome. (This happened once — I think when we had 2 bottles, it’s not like jwa and I can’t drink a bottle of wine with dinner. Oh — we can).

This last trip to California, we scheduled it so that we could spend a night in Menlo Park (this actually turned into two nights, as he wanted to go to the Maker Faire — another post, perhaps). As we were there for a couple of nights, we couldn’t stay in Menlo Park without having dinner at Flea Street!

The meal started with a a basket of bread and buttery biscuits. Oh, how I remember the biscuits. I love the little biscuits. What a nice way to begin the evening.

We struggled and went back and forth a bit — first course choices included a lemon and vegetable friso misto, grilled diver scallops with escarole and green garlic and Thai curry mussels and clams with ginger shrimp toast. All tempting but ultimately I got a trout and crab cake and jwa decided on an Heirloom Farms sweet lettuces salad. Mine came with micro greens and roasted red pepper sauce and the salad was accompanied by Point Reyes Blue Cheese. They were both very good and left us looking forward to more.

Oh, there’s more…
Main course decisions were very difficult to make as well. There were a number of things that caught my eye — the asparagus, chevre, olives, spring garlic and whole wheat pasta, the portobella mushroom, spinach, and goat cheese Wellington and the Niman Ranch pork osso bucco all sounded wonderful. Eventually, I couldn’t pass up the “Which Came First?” pan roasted organic chicken.

The which came first-ness of it was because it was a roasted chicken with a poached egg (wacky!), caramelized leeks, roasted cauliflower, apricot mustarda and toasted pine nuts and it was delicious! I wouldn’t have thought to put a poached egg on chicken, but the yolk kind of blended with the mustard sauce and made it extra creamy!

jwa’s choice was the “Niman Ranch Lamb Two Ways” — a grilled loin chop and braised riblets. He seemed very pleased with his entree. It came with tomato pear chutney, wild rice pilaf with chanterelle mushrooms and spring vegetables. I snapped a quick picture before he devoured it all.

We also split an order of the braised brussel sprouts with shaved Sonoma Mezzo Secco cheese. These were amazingly tasty as well and disappeared quickly.

As we finished our wine and ate the last morsels from our plates, we contemplated desserts. It didn’t take long because we both agreed that, yes, dessert was a great idea! A few minutes after our plates were removed, dessert menus made their way into our hands. How convenient!

I briefly contemplated the vanilla custard tart with blood orange compote. Oh! And then there was the double chocolate pecan pie. Ultimately, however, I ended up with the sour cherries poached in port with olive oil and sea salt over vanilla gelato. I liked this so much, I recently attempted something similar at home.

jwa, liking lemons like he does, got the lemon semifreddo, consisting of sponge cake, lemon mousse and pomegranate reduction sauce. All of this and then Jesse Ziff Cool, the owner, stopped by our table to see how our meal was. Okay, I think she was stopping by everyone’s table but still…

We finished off the evening by taking a long walk, across Las Alameda las Pulgas up by all the Sharon Heights condos, by the Safeway and back down to Flea Street. It was a walk we would do almost every Sunday night when I was living in Menlo Park, usually right after the X-Files — (insert X-files reference here).

It seemed a bit longer this time.

Flea Street Cafe gets four cherry bunches out of four.

Farallon
450 Post St.
San Francisco, CA 94102

One very good meal that we did have recently was with jwa’s parents at Farallon, in San Francisco. I loved the decor and the whole underwater theme, especially these very funky paintings they had throughout the restaurant. They had lights hanging from the ceilings that looked like jellyfish and other sorts of the life aquatic. In case you hadn’t figured it out — Farallon is mainly a seafood restautrant.

The evening started in the bar (as all fun evenings should) with cocktails such as a mandarin cosmopolitan for me and an appletini for jwa — shout-out to Scrubs! We moved to our table and after ordering, were treated to lobster bisque, served in little cups. I typically prefer to have my soups in bowls and not mugs but it was so delicious that I didn’t really mind.

The menu the evening that we were there was really hard to pick from, in that I wanted a number of different things. I’m going to keep each dish’s title in capital letters so that it doesn’t all run together in one big, tasty culinary text-mess. (I got rid of the caps because they were bugging me).

Here’s a rundown of the “Raw Bar”:
“Ahi” Tuna Tartare with basil crème fraîche, lemon, crostini.
1/2 Cracked Dungeness Crab with drawn butter, green goddess dressing.
Jumbo Gulf Prawn Cocktail with cocktail sauce, lemon.
Lobster Boudin with avocado, watercress, champagne vinaigrette.
Oysters & Clams, on the half shell, sold by the piece.

Oh, there is more.

The appetizers included:
Butter Lettuce Salad with crispy onions, piquillo peppers, buttermilk vinaigrette.
Maine Lobster “Roll” with brioche and drawn butter.
Local Dungeness Crab with braised artichoke hearts, watermelon radish, Meyer lemon.
Balsamic Roasted Bone Marrow with tempura fava beans, grilled levain, sea salt.
Seared Diver Sea Scallops with sweet fennel, sugar snap peas and black truffle.
Local Asparagus Salad with roasted golden beets, Meyer lemon, parmesan.
Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras with avocado, garam masala, pain de mie, verjus.
Asparagus Veloute with Dungeness crab, fava beans, chives.

The images of the appetizers that I snapped turned out a bit dark but I had the Diver Scallops and the jwa had the asparagus veloute, which was a soup they served right at the table. My scallops were really, really good. I almost want to try and make them at home again now (yes, I have a scallop mishap story).

But back to this meal, as I haven’t mentioned the entrees yet. There’s also dessert coming — so hang in there. I can also supply pictures for this part of the meal, as you can see below.

Entrees, anyone?
Grilled Hawaiian Ono with Dijon mustard soubise, haricots verts, sieved egg.
Roasted Local White Sturgeon with chiogga beet relish, sugar snap peas, black caviar.
Milk Poached Alaskan Halibut with green garlic, baby artichokes, hazelnuts.
Serrano Ham Wrapped Maryland Striped Bass with local asparagus, roasted hen of the woods mushrooms, sauce hollandaise.
Seared Local Petrale Sole with braised short ribs, baby carrots, English pea coulis.
Roasted Mediterranean Branzion with king trumpet mushrooms, pea tendrils, truffled Madeira gastrique.
Grilled Leg of Lambwith Italian butter beans, broccoli rabe, sauce Bordeaux.
Grilled Ridgefield Farms Fillet of Beef with Robuchon potatoes, Bleu d’Auvergne, spring onion vinaigrette.

I had the sea bass which was quite tasty and the mushrooms were incredible. Plus, I am inclined to order entrees if they have Hollandaise sauce. Call me kooky.

jwa had the halibut — he seemed to enjoy it very much. I snuck a little taste and it was indeed quite good, very mild and I liked the micro greens on top. His parnets both had the sturgeon and both seemed pleased with their choice too.

For me, the meal ended with an awesome malt chocolate creme brulee and a peanut butter cookie. Wow, so good. It tasted like Whoppers. Excellent! jwa ordered fresh mangoes and strawberries because he was too full to be truly decadent at the meal’s end. Amateur.

Farallon gets four jellyfish out of four.

***

Completely unrelated but worth mentioning — Thank you Stephen! Truthiness, ahoy!

Hotel del Sol
3100 Webster
San Francisco

We liked this place a lot. And, more importantly, the price was right and it smelled of cookies while we were checking in. Try finding a reasonably priced hotel within walking distance of Fisherman’s Wharf that smells like freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies! Then, try to find one with some character and free parking. It takes a while and an excel spreadsheet for all the comparison and calculations, I tell you.

Our second choice was the Cornell Hotel de France mainly because of the price, the cuteness and the free restaurant meal the price included (which is supposed to be amazing). Alas, the restaurant was going to be closed while we were there so we decided against it. As this is, at heart, a food blog, I felt compelled to mention the Jeanne d’Arc restaurant and what would have probably been a delicious and memorable meal.

But…back to where we did stay. The Hotel del Sol is a remodeled 1950’s motor lodge type place with all neon, beachy, bright colors and mosaic designs all about. It’s touted as a “family-friendly” hotel so it’s not overly luxurious or romantic but it was a little funky and completely comfortable and nice.

The king room we had overlooked Webster street and had screened windows that opened up for a nice breeze. The good-sized room was uncluttered with a table and chairs, sitting chair, bed, tv, walk-in closet and a small bathroom stocked with Aveda products .

The area is called Cow Hollow and it’s a few blocks just north (downhill) of Pacific Heights. It was a 25-30 minute (flat) walk to the Wharf, through Fort Mason and past Ghirardelli Square.

We stayed here two nights and would be happy to stay there again. We paid $129/night (with free parking), booking directly through the hotel, about 2 months before our trip. They also had a pool, courtyard bistro tables, a free continental breakfast in the morning and cookies in the evening.

Menlo Park Inn
1315 El Camino Real
Menlo Park

Moving on. Sigh. This place had really good reviews on tripadvisor so I booked it even though it turned out that we would need to stay in Menlo Park an additional night when this place was full. In hindsight, this was a good thing. The Menlo Park Inn wasn’t horrible by any means but it really wasn’t as nice as all the reviews made it out to be, nor, was it as nice as the pictures on their Web site make it appear.

From the outside, it looks like a Motel 6 or something (sitting right on El Camino Real) and the rooms (at least ours) seemed a bit cramped. It was decorated interestingly though, with Klimt prints and a vase with fresh flowers, but it really didn’t seem worth the $114/night price.

One of my issues was the coffee and cups. Yes, that’s what I said. Perhaps silly, but a $100+ a night hotel, imho, should have good coffee and mugs –just a pet peeve of mine, I guess. But seriously. If you’re going to have an in-room coffee maker, for god’s sake, have coffee packets of something I either haven’t heard of before or coffee that I know is good. The Menlo Park Inn had packets of Maxwell House and weird 70’s plastic mugs — not ironically, mind you. That’s just plain wrong.

For around $85 a night, this place would have been a good deal but it just seemed over-priced for the amenities and environment offered. The service was very nice and they made an effort with decorating the room and all, but really, I was just expecting more and ended up being way underwhelmed.

The MP Inn staff had booked us into a Best Western that they also managed farther down on El Camino, past Redwood City for the second night. We did a drive by after checking out. It looked a little sketchy and was right next to a liquor store, so I canceled that reservation, hoping to find something better (which I did).

I spent a few minutes with a phone book at Ann’s Coffeehouse and over a very diner-esque ham and cheese omelet, I got the very last room at the Red Cottage Inn for our last night before heading back to Portland. Whew!

Red Cottage Inn
1704 El Camino Real
Menlo Park

When I was first making reservations for this trip, I was torn between the Menlo Park Inn and the Red Cottage Inn. Tripadvisor had more positive reviews of MP Inn, with some posters saying that the Red Cottage Inn was a little rundown. Wow — was my impression of these two places ever the opposite!

Red Cottage Inn sits a ways back off of El Camino, surrounded by flowers, landscaping and assorted greenery. The staff was very nice and with our AAA discount, our room (with 4 hours advance reservation of check-in) was $104 a night. Cheaper than the Menlo Park Inn and so much nicer.

We had a queen room, with a private balcony over looking the pool and good coffee for the in room coffee maker, as well as glass mugs. The ceiling was high, white and slanted and gave the room a lot of character.

Although I appreciated the darker colors and patterns of the previous room, there’s something to be said for light, airy colors. The hotel is about 5 blocks from downtown Menlo Park, so it’s certainly still walkable. I’d also add that nothing I saw looked rundown and that everything was very clean.

It was very nice and quiet and we would definitely stay here again!

So, to recap:

Hotel del Sol: Smells like cookies, is bright and funky and a very affordable place to stay in San Francisco.
Menlo Park Inn: Not as nice as it should be for the price, bad in-room coffee but friendly staff.
Red Cottage Inn: Very pleasant looking, balconies, relaxing and nice landscaping.

We got back last night and I really wish I had a day to do laundry, unpack and sleep in our own bed for much, much longer. But no — off to work.

I’ll get a new post up tonight — either about hotels in the Bay Area, one of the meals we ate there, books I bought there or the much-anticipated Mexican Macaroni and Cheese recipe. Which will it be? Ohhhh…suspense.

Mendo Bistro
301 North Main St
Fort Bragg, CA
707-964-4974 (Reservations for parties of 6 or more only)

My original plan, when I thought we would be back the Friday before New Year’s Eve, was to cook a meal at home, have some wine, then perhaps some champagne and be in bed by 12:15 AM. All but one of those things happened and Mendo Bistro turned into our New Year’s Eve Plan B.

The Mendo Bistro is in an old building (The Company Store) in downtown Fort Bragg. It’s super cute looking and despite the circumstances, I was excited to eat there for our impromptu New Year’s Feast. The windows look out over the street and it’s a very nice view, as you can see below.

They have a number of appetizers including: an artisan cheese plate, “award winning” crab cakes, mussels with kaffir lime, ginger, garlic and chile flakes (which really sounded interesting to me — except for the mussel part), a bistro salad and a warm spinach salad. They also have a Caesar salad, featuring polenta croutons (I love polenta!) and horseradish dressing. It was all tempting, but jwa and I finally decided to split some crab cakes and we each got a Bistro Salad.

Unfortunately, it was kind of dark in the restaurant, which is a shame, as I set up an artful shot with some cabbage slaw, a lemon wedge and my “award winning” crab cake-scape.

Entrees include pastas, sautéed ling cod with kalamata olive vinaigrette and rock shrimp risotto, seared rare albacore tuna and pumpkin-chile tamale. All of these things sounded quite tasty and were each a contender as I perused the choices.

One very interesting thing that they do at Mendo Bistro is a “Choose Your Ingredient/Cooking/Sauce” kind of thing where you pick one from the following: free range chicken, pork loin, fish of the evening, portobello mushroom, tofu or hanger steak. Then, you specify a cooking process: roasted, grilled, sautéed, fried or braised. Next, comes the sauce: Marsala, barbecue, roasted garlic gravy, Dijon-tarragon cream, lemon/garlic butter, ginger soy Bistro steak sauce.

What a fun idea — plus it’s entertaining to come up with odd combinations (deep fried hangar steak with lemon/garlic butter! ) while trying to decide on your entree. I almost got the roasted chicken with roasted garlic gravy but I was swayed by a New Year’s special — squab stuffed with black trumpet and hedgehog mushrooms, morel jus and a crispy potato cake. As for jwa, he finally decided on the rigatoni with Italian sausage, capers and roasted peppers. That jwa, he likes the pasta.

I was pretty happy with my meal choice and jwa seemed to like his too. I think I would have rather stuck to the original plan and made dinner at home but this was a very good and memorable meal. One of my favorite tastes of the night, however, was the dessert: Meyer lemon meringue tart with blood orange sorbet. Mmm!

The crust was baked meringue, followed by a a thin, cookie type layer, lemon filling, more meringue on top and a dollop of sorbet, all sitting on a honey-swirled plate. It was both attractive and delicious. I might try and make something like this at home one day, for it was very tasty and a perfect end to the last meal of 2005.

The Recap
I liked our meal quite a bit and really liked the atmosphere. The restaurant space is on the second floor of a large building, with an open, u-shaped floor plan that looks down over the first floor and all the small shops down there. The food was quite good and there was a variety of menu items to choose from. I would definitey like to go back sometime and maybe try the free-range chicken, roasted with the roasted garlic gravy. Ohhh or maybe the pork loin with Dijon-tarragon cream. Hmmm…

Mendo Bistro gets 3 lemons out of four.

Pangaea
39165 S. Highway 1
Gualala, CA 95445
Reservations: 707-884-9669

As promised — the first of the Northern California restaurant reviews. While staying in Gualala, we went to Pangaea for dinner last Wednesday night. We’d never been there before and I was pretty excited to try it. I had seen a sample menu at our hotel (conveniently right across the street) and well, that was that. We needed to go there for our splurgey-spendy meal.

First thing after stepping in the door, I loved the decor — it was very bright and colorful. Each room was painted a different hue — yellow, blue, red, purple. It made me want to come home and paint different areas of the house different colors. Maps and geography (duh!) seemed to be a theme and there were many paintings decorating the walls.

The menu from December 28, 2005 (half-remembered and half pieced together from a rain-spotted photo I took from outside the restaurant the next day) was as follows:

First Courses
Two bitter greens salads, one with olives and croutons, the other with pancetta, beets and blue cheese $8-$9
Butter lettuce salad with fennel, red wine vinaigrette and croutons $9
Braised artichokes, grilled onions, mâche, goat cheese and parsley oil $9
House-cured duck prosciutto, watercress, pickled red onions, blood orange oil and Parmigiano Reggiano $9
House made pappardelle, local mushrooms, spinach and Parmigiano Reggiano $10

Second Courses
Duck Confit, soy, ginger, bok choy, jasmine rice, winter squash and peanuts $21
Cumin lamb kebab, couscous, cauliflower, roasted peppers and pomegranate yogurt $23
Grilled juniper pork loin, fingerling potatoes, Oz Farm apples and Dijon cream $24
Seared wild striped sea bass, local mushrooms, leeks, mashed potatoes and watercress $24
Rosemary flat iron steak, artichokes, fingerling potatoes, oil-cured olives and spinach $24

Where to start
We began the meal by ordering a bottle of Zinfandel and munching on a plate of olives and bread. Then it was time to pick some food. I have been on a duck kick lately and I love blood oranges, so my first course was pretty easy to decide. jwa went for the pasta starter (which he has been known to do). Both dishes were quite pleasing. His was a huge steaming bowl of fresh pasta, while mine was more delicate in size, with a few pieces of duck, a few sprigs of watercress, a small pile of onion and shaved Parmesan strewn about. It was very good, but honestly, I was worried. It seemed…well, a bit small. I was concerned that the main courses, although probably artfully arranged, might be rather diminutive in portion-size for $20+. Yeah…I was wrong about that.

Mmmmm….rosemary
After much going back and forth, I finally decided on the Flat Iron steak, mainly due to my rosemary fetish.

The steak had small pieces of grilled rosemary about the plate and the meat was perfectly medium-rare. It was very tender, with tasty grill marks. In addition, we both got very generous portions — I should not have been at all worried, as I ended up taking about three slices of steak, a potato wedge and some spinach back to the hotel room. This was seriously more meat than I’ve ever seen on a plate before — which either means I need to get out more or that the portions were H-U-G-E. And the potatoes…ah, they were creamy on the inside and crisp outside and there were these mushrooms that just defy adequate description. Crunchy, creamy, succulent. Oh! So, good!

jwa chose the pork loin, which he seemed to like quite a bit. I got a bite of his and it was pretty yummy — especially the sauce. It was creamy and had little mustard seeds in it. If I hadn’t been so involved in my rosemary steak, I would have tried to steal some of his meal.

What to do when you’re too full to finish your meal…
When it came to be dessert time, at first, I was very sad. They had an orange cinnamon creme brulée on the menu. I ordered it, only to be told a few minutes later that they were out. I cried a little inside and then recovered enough to order the molten chocolate cake with ice cream and caramel sauce.

Actually, this was a little funny. The table next to use was ordering desserts and the server remembered to inform the table that the creme brulée was unavailable. There was a collective “Ohhhhh…” People like the creme brulée, I tell you! jwa ordered the grilled apples and ice cream. He ate it all. I ‘m guessing it was good — I attempted to try some but he hit my hand with a spoon. No, I’m kidding. Much like the main meal, I was actually way too involved in my chocolate cake to even attempt a sneaky dessert invasion. It was really, really good.

The (New & Shorter) Recap:
All in all, this was a wonderful meal. I’m really glad this restaurant opened up in Gualala, as there previously weren’t a lot of choices in town for “fine” dining. The atmosphere is bright, colorful and a little funky. The food was quite delicious, with lots of different flavors and ingredients that went well together and came together creatively on the plate. I want to go back already (okay, not really, mainly because I am never leaving the house again). But one day, I’m sure we’ll head back down to California and when we do, they better have the creme brulée when we get there.

Pangaea gets 3.5 wineglasses out of four!

Finally, three days late, we have returned to Oregon. Stupid mud/land slides and flooding. Tuesday AM we drove from San Francisco to Gualala, CA (on the north Sonoma Coast) and planned on leaving Friday — which was, essentially, when everything went to hell in Northern California. We got as far as Fort Bragg, (Mendocino County) as Highway 101 (eight miles North of Highway 1) got hit by a landslide. Yeah, not just mud, but actual land according to Cal trans. State Road 20 to the east (connecting the coast to Interstate 5) also was closed due to a mud/land slide. Oh, and Sonoma County to the South? Flooded.

We were stuck. Completely trapped in Northern California — from Friday to Monday AM. Sure, it’s a nice place to be stuck but damn, after a day or so we both just really wanted to come home. We tried to make the best of it with an impromptu New Year’s Eve feast at Mendo Bistro and a cute room with a 50%-off flood discount. Details and reviews of three (or more) Northern California restaurants coming this week (and I may actually cook food if I can get to the grocery store tomorrow)! But tonight, sleep. Tomorrow, back at work. A new, longer post coming tomorrow night or Wednesday morning.

I am just so so SO glad to be back.

::snore::