Romancing The Strawberry

After a long hiatus, I would like to return. Hopefully for real this time.

Now let me be frank with you about my food blogging habits and history. Back when I started this site, I was making twice as much – if not more – than I am right now. For much of 2009, I was also unemployed and not because I wanted to be. As you might imagine, 5 star restaurants aren’t the natural haunts for a woman whose nick name might as well be Queen of the Overdraft Fee. But, despite all this I’ve managed to have my moments of debauchery no matter how economically dismal the world is for someone in their early mid twenties (I was told by a potential employer that ‘it’s just a terrible time to be 24′. Never mind that I’m 25).

Anyway, that being said, this thing called alcohol really has been a saint during these difficult times, and if there is one thing I’ve grow to love more and more throughout this past year it’s wine. Yes, I love wine. I love it, I lurve it, and if it were a human being I’d tie it to my bed and make it cuddle me till the early hours of the morning. I love wine.

That being said, it is Natural Wine Week here in San Francisco. What is natural wine? Natural wine is wine that is either organic, biodynamic, or sustainable. Yes that’s right, you can get tipsy and righteously call yourself the Rachel Carson of Booze — just make sure people don’t see that gas guzzling car you hid two blocks down the street.  Ok, but what does it really mean? For more details on the differences between organic, biodynamic, and sustainable wines,Yield Wine Bar in the Dogpatch provides a thorough explanation here. Surpsingly, Yield is not one of the bars hosting the events, but I suggest you go there in celebration of this glorious week anyway.

Now where to go for Natural Wine Week. I would advise any wine-drinking citizen to post haste it to Terroir, which serves natural wine every night of the week.  Of course, I would prefer you not come here every night of the week because I don’t want to share the table space with you, nor do I want you taking up those cozy quirky seats upstairs. Ok, I’ll stop being a jerk. Terroir is my favorite wine bar in the city, with a chalkboard list of wines by the glass and an extensive list of bottles available to purchase on the spot or to take home – you save a lot of money if you do take out. They also feature a cheese plate that pairs excellently with the wines. I have yet to be able to resist it, and I think it’s completely reasonable to define heaven as a glass of Gamay with a bite of Mount Tam and quince paste.

But, Nopa is also a fabulous place to celebrate this week, with an awesome selection of natural wines. Check out their wine blog for more details on what they have to offer this week.

Tomorrow night, the event goes on at Arlequin, click here to see the drinks of the eve.

Until then, make sure to hit up as many of these events as you can. And make sure to catch me at the Symposium on Sunday at Terroir.

Sometimes, for what seems like no apparent reason, we gorge on baked goods. As far as I am concerned baked goods could stop wars. After all, a croissant done right can really spread harmony throughout the room. Okay, maybe I’m wrong. I can say that people have been using baked goods to assuage feelings of emptiness forever. You know you’ve gone through your pantry at 2am, or swiped a bear claw from a baby. Okay, maybe I’m wrong. In any case, this young lady, plagued by the doldrums of continual job searching, found herself at Arizmendi Bakery gorging on baked goods. Then she found herself at Tartine the next day..also gorging on baked goods.

In case none of you knew, these are two of the most popular bakeries in the US. Arizmendi Bakery is in the sunset district of San Francisco near Golden Gate Park. 

Usually I get the pizza at Arizmendi’s. Like the Cheeseboard in Berkeley, Arizmendi features a different pizza everyday. They are delicious, thin, and topped with uber fresh ingredients. Each pizza of the day features different and unique combinations of vegetables. The shiitake, portobello and button mushrooms, sesame-ginger-garlic vinaigrette pizza is one such example and gives you that old pizza feel with a little bit of something new. You can check out the daily pizza menu before you head over to Arizmendi here. 

This time I visited Arizmendi I got the pizza of the day (house-made tomato sauce, smoked mozzarella, rosemary oil, p&p – the sauce was rich with flavor, so much so I wondered if there was bacon in it. There was not.) but I did not stop there. I also got a poppy studded loaf of sour dough, a scrumptious chocolate chip cookie (they do them right here) and a pecan roll. The pecan roll set me off edge and though I walked all through the Golden Gate Park Botanical Gardens after my binge, I still felt like the human equivalent of a pinata. 

The next day, after a long hiatus, I went to what is New York Times food critic Mark Bittman’s favorite bakery in the US: Tartine. (If you don’t believe me, read the article here.) Tartine is located in the Mission district. I love the ham and cheese croissants at Tartine. I think they are one of the best things to graze this planet and I couldn’t care less if they clog my arteries and make me die a premature death. Life would not be living without them – and when I say them, I still mean the ham and cheese croissants specifically, I am just assuming you’ll be eating more than one of them. 

On my most recent visit, however, they were out of ham and cheese croissants. I was very upset about this. I had done my hair, showered, the whole works just to strap into this place and order what I believed would be the lunch to make my day. Had I not ordered the quiche I may have been very disappointed.

Soon I learned that the quiche could also bring me to my knees. Like the Tartine croissant the outer layer is extremely flakey and buttery, making ones finger a bit of a disaster after the meal. Fortunately for you the food is so good you won’t care. The quiche is no exception. Its inner layer is unnaturally yet naturally creamy and there is not one healthy thing about it (well the ingredients are great but….). This particular quiche was made with herbs and ham. It was the perfect thing to curb my addiction for well….maybe a few days.

Dear All,

Life’s been full of rough patches, new career changes, horrible relationships and now it’s a new year. Several months ago I decided that I would start a new food website that would focus more on reviews and those reviews would be less serious – basically I want a blog where I can write reviews that are as ridiculous as the ones found on my yelp page:

See here.

I figured that to do this I should change the site’s name and start all over. With a new career change, though, I didn’t seem to find time to do this. I did know, however, that I didn’t want to feel pressured to keep inventing startling new recipes anymore. I love food, but for so reason I sometimes go on enormous cooking dry spells. I want to cook everyday than POOF I can’t stand the thought of it. During this time I never tire of going to restaurants, though, and I certainly know a lot about what’s going on in my local San Francisco. For this reason I feel that I should re-situation my focus for this site, and give you the honest truth: I love writing about restaurants and that is what I’m going to do. 

Not only do I want to write restaurant reviews, but I want to write ones that are funny sometimes even embarrassing. This is what I want to do, and I realized that Romancing the Strawberry doesn’t really have to be all that serious of a title now does it? So poof! I made a decision. I’ll keep this site and just change the concept. It’s not like I’m going to find another person who wants to freely devote their time to designing my new site, so I may as well just stick this one. Plus, I still like strawberries.

You would never think that someone would want to get brunch at a place called Absinthe and not order Absinthe, but sometimes things don’t always work out as you think they will. While its big green sign written in cursive letters might make it seem pretty self explanatory, there is a reason brasserie is part of the restaurant’s name. Enter and you will be hit with the site of the long bar to your left, with its plethora of different colored bottles and busy bartenders. There are two dining rooms, the front being more casual and the back more intimate with its distance from the bustling bar. More importantly there is the smell of French food swarming through the air. This is not just a bar.

Absinthe is known for serving a terrific brunch, and my friends and I were able to get a table without a reservation. Had we gotten there later than 11 o’clock though we would not have been so lucky.

The bar was full of opera goers so we had to sit at a small table in the front dining room where we could easily see the bar. I ordered a Mexican Coffee with brandy. Its rim was covered with carmelized sugar and cinnamon making it special amongst the other Mexican Coffees I have tried. Our friendly server instructed us to watch the bartender caramelize the sugar and cinnamon at the bar. He pulled out a torch and a gigantic flame burst out of his hands followed by the intoxicating smell of burnt cinnamon that seemed to would travel throughout the restaurant.

After talking with our server for some time (I am the queen of indecision, especially when it comes to ordering food) we decided on several starters and three entrees. Absinthe has a gigantic menu even at brunch. Fortunately we knew what we wanted as far as the appetizers went, and the server seemed to agree with our choices. To start we ordered the Pommes frites ($6), the French Onion Soup Gratinee ($8.25), four random oysters on the half shell ($3 a piece), and a salad that came with greens, toasted hazelnuts, sliced strawberries and blue cheese($?).

It seems a crime to give away the best feature of a restaurant so early in a review, but I cannot help myself. It was the oysters. My friend, a vegetarian, had ordered the oysters for myself and the woman for whom this occasion was organized around; a collegue from the Chinese sector of her company who she was to entertain during her stay in San Francisco. The young woman, whose name was so foreign sounding that she laughed when I asked her what it was had no idea that the oysters were also meant for her. I bit into one and immedietly wished that we could continue with this understanding. The last of the two I bit into, a fat loose little thing, almost seemed to have an extra bit of meat tucked into itself as it expanded in my mouth. It melted on my tongue like buratta with a soothing juiciness that tasted like it had been dining on upscale sea salt all its life. The look on my face must have given me away as the woman giggled and picked up the last two remaining oysters.

Least impressive were the pommes frites, they came with elaborate dipping sauces but that didn’t make them any more interesting. The fries were skimpy and looked like stumps once they’d been mangled through a few times. I am surprised these are thought to be one of the restaurant’s specialties.

The salad was tasty, the greens fresh, and the hazelnuts were plentiful, easily discernable in a given bite. The blue cheese made what could have been just any salad into something more worthy of addiction. I found myself almost picking it off the plate with my fingers. Fortunately my table manners were restored to me, and I continued my attacking the salad with a fork. The French Onion Soup Gratinee was also delicious, but its broth was somewhat anti-climatic with the taste of beef stock taking full reign over the other flavors.

Things got more complicated when we picked out our entrees. I wanted to order the omelet with morels, spring onions, gruyere cheese and fresh herbs provided ($13) but somehow doubted that an omelet would really be able to bring out the morel’s unique flavor. Considering how expensive morels were this year, it seemed a shame to hide them in an omelet where they could risk being over cooked and under seasoned. I decided to go with the Fried Green Tomato Florentine that came with the usual poached egg but was also topped with a ’smoky’ hollandaise sauce ($15). The young lady ordered the omelet and my friend ordered the Banana-blueberry soufflé pancakes coated with syrup and whipped cream ($11).

As I suspected the omelet did nothing for the morels. Upon a bite of the omelet I got a punch from the gruyere which had become so soft within the hot dry egg that it had liquefied. The soft texture of the mushrooms matched well with the cheese, but they suffered from a lack of proper seasoning that could have more readily brought out their unique flavor and hollow texture. Instead they ended up tasting like any other mushroom.

I preferred my poached eggs, though the smoky hollandaise had a sweet taste that was far less enchanting than the creamy yellow hollandaise one usually finds. The egg tasted especially good on top of the buttery bread it was served with especially when mixed with the fried green tomato. I was told the tomato was cooked in cornmeal but I did not notice this. I then tried my friend’s pancakes, but found them disappointingly dry. I later watched her order more syrup. Maybe she felt the same?

Then came the cheese. Oh thank god for the cheese. We ordered the Pierre Robert ($8) a triple crème with a ‘mild buttery flavor’ served with strawberries. Creamy it was, almost melting on the plate. But I would debate about it being mild. While it was texturally quite soft, its taste was rather pungent leaving a sting in the back of my throat. I liked it anyway, but I would probably order something else next time.

Fortunately Absinthe’s menu is huge, with plenty of things to try. For these prices I was quite happy with our experience and look forward to visiting again. Hello dinner here I come, oh and let’s not forget about the oysters.