Evolve Cuisine (San Diego) – “Explore your Senses” Tasting Menu

Trends in the food world are no different than trends in other parts of life. Some of them evolve over time and become part of the mainstream food world like “farm-to-table”. Today hardly any restaurant doesn’t use some kind of play on the theme of farm-to table to describe their approach towards ingredients and dishes. And even though the concept gets overused by now it also describes a pleasant development of a stronger consciousness of restaurants and customers alike towards a more thoughtful approach regarding sourcing of ingredients. Some other trends get so overhyped that they become more of a stigma than description so that they slowly fade away and only might reappear under a completely different premise as it happened with molecular gastronomy. One of the big buzzwords of the restaurant world in the 90s with pioneers like Ferran Adria, it became more and more a cuss word for restaurants who didn’t understand the original intend but forgot that the quality of the final dish is key to a successful restaurant not the abundant use of new fancy techniques. Over time many of the techniques and tools used during the molecular gastronomy heydays became standard tools of many advanced kitchens like, sous-vide, vacuum sealer, different stabilizers and enzymes and are used today without much reluctance. Chefs using these modern tools understand by now that these are just tools to achieve a better dish and not their main focus. This new attitude was also captured by the seminal work of Nathan Myhrvold and his team who wrote the book which labeled this field – Modernist Cuisine.

We have seen quite a few restaurants in San Diego using tools from the modernist cuisine arsenal and incorporating it in very impressive ways, like at Blanca, Georges and Kitchen 1540 by using for example sous-vide, liquid nitrogen or transglutaminase to name a few. But at the same time none of these restaurants strongly advertised their use of these tools as they were just aids to achieve their final dishes. And so it was just a matter of time until the first chef in San Diego would use a more “direct” way to clearly advertise his work as part of the Modernist Cuisine movement – Evolve Cuisine.

Evolve Cuisine is the brainchild of Chef Daniel Barron. We first heard about Chef Barron when we read about his work at Anqi in Costa Mesa which is an Asian Fusion restaurant that also offered special molecular gastronomy tasting menus at their chefs table. He got his start into the culinary world through the American Culinary Federation Apprenticeship Program at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan before he worked successfulyl in a number of restaurants in Nashville (Mad Platter), New York (Cesca) and Atlantic City (Donald Trump’s Premier Casino Restaurant). More recently he moved to San Diego to take a position as Executive Chef at Blue Point Costal Cuisine where, similar to Anqi, a special molecular gastronomy tasting menu was offered on request beside the regular standard menu. Finally beginning of this year he decided to be able to create dishes without any restrictions in a conventional restaurant setting and started Evolve Cuisine to focus on the “culinary intersection of modernist cuisine and fresh, organic fare”. Chef Barron is working at Evolve cuisine together with Pastry Chef Jeff Bonilla, who is best known in San Diego for his work with Cups and as Executive Pastry Chef at Kitchen 1540, and Mike Yen, mixologist who worked at Nine-Ten, Avenue 5 and Kitchen 1540.

Evolve Cuisine is at this point not planned as a restaurant but as a catering service which uses the currently highly popular pop-up concept to promote its ideas, dishes and philosophy. The most recent incarnation of the Evolve pop-up was focused on “exploring the senses” with a 7-course tasting menu at Fixtures Living.

Fixtures Living is during the day an interesting place to buy furniture for kitchen, bath and outdoor but not the first place you think about for a pop-up restaurant. As it turns out the space is very well suited for such an event with its few communal tables, several small booths and bar. It’s a beautiful open space which allowed a lot of interaction between the guests.

The open kitchen gave everybody the chance to see the chef and his team preparing and plating the different courses.

Amuse Bouche 1: Duck confit ravioli

The night started with a reception and three amuse bouches prepared by the three cooks helping Chef Barron throughout the night. The first one was a deep-fried ravioli filled with duck confit. The ample duck confit had a good but delicate flavor which was easily overshadowed by the fried pasta dough. The amuse bouche would have been more successful if the pasta wouldn’t have been deep-fried to let the duck confit shine. So the dish had mainly the ubiquitous flavor of deep fried food.

Amuse Bouche 2:  Smoked duck breast

If there is one kind of utensil which symbolizes best what went wrong with molecular gastronomy it is any kind of syringe – unwieldy, awkward to use in a restaurant setting, doesn’t add anything to any dish and should simply be forbidden to be used by any chef. This amuse bouche proved the point as the idea of combining smoked duck breast, bing cherries and coconut milk was interesting but the execution lacked and it was hard to get a good taste of all the components.

Amuse Bouche 3: Seared Yellowfin tuna

For us clearly the most successful amuse bouche of the night – Conceptually a simple dish with some seared tuna and a yuzu based aioli but the flavors of the fish and the aioli nicely came together to form a very tasty bite which we would have liked to have as a larger portion.

Cocktail 1: Tequila shooter

Mike Yen also prepared two excellent small cocktails to go with the amuse-bouches during the reception. The tequila shooter resembled visually a hefeweizen beer but also the flavors reminded us of this class of beers with its slight fruitiness and subdued tartness.

Cocktail 2: Cranberry-lime Cosmopolitan

The Cosmopolitan was slightly on the sweet side but nicely balanced by the encapsulated cranberry and lime juice. A good play on this classical cocktail and we couldn’t resist to ask for seconds.

1^st Course: Smell – Crab consommé, sweet pea, truffle

For this dish we were instructed to pour the broth over the peas and pea shots and stir everything. By this, one created a kind of chowder with a wonderful mix of truffle and crab aroma. The flavor of the liquid resembled the heady aroma with a very delectable taste of the crustaceans which was never overwhelmed by the truffle flavor. The balance between both flavors was impressive. The peas delivered a welcomed textural counterpoint and made this dish to one of the highlights of the tasting menu.

2^nd Course: Sight – Sculpin, honeysuckle, red chile

Sculpins, also known as scorpion fish, are very unusual looking creatures and even though we weren’t served a whole one this dish was a good example for mildly flavor fish. This piece of fish was lightly coated but the crust didn’t interfere with the flavor of the sculpin. Both sauces, one of them characterized from Chef Barron as an Asian-inspired pesto, accompanying the fish had some Asian influences and the red chile added some heat to the dish. The dish would have benefited from another component, like a vegetable, otherwise it was too protein heavy and felt one-dimensional.

3^rd Course: Sound – Lavender, pork jowl, mustard

Some grassfed beef, smoked, sous-vided and then seared, was the foundation of the dish. It was combined with pork jowl, starting point of guanciale, mustard green and a lavender based vinaigrette to yield an impressive salad which only had the “mistake” of being too small. The pop rock made from mustard were a nice gimmick but didn’t add much to the dish.

4^th Course: Touch – Chicken liver, ahi, pumpernickel, peach

With the controversy around foie gras in California and a few protesters somewhere outside Chef Barron decided to rename all foie gras into “chicken liver” for the evening. Here the foie gras was incorporated into a panna cotta which still had the characteristic taste of the foie gras but at the same time made it particular light. Pairing foie gras with ahi is quite unusual but due to the lightness of the foie gras panna cotta this combination worked really well as the foie gras didn’t overwhelm the fish. The pieces of peach brought some burst of fruitiness and sweetness and completed the dish.

Cocktail Intermezzo: Acid rain

Mixologist Mike Yen introduced another one of his creations midway through the tasting menu. In addition to having a nice flavor profile with strong notes on lemongrass and some sweetness from the pink cotton candy rose which slowly dissolved in the cocktail the visual aspect of the cocktail was also entertaining – once you poured the cocktail over the small rocks in the glass you created some “fog” from the dry ice.

5^th Course: Taste – Beef cheek, uni, fava beans

This course showed again the advantages of sous-vide cooking. Instead of braising the beef cheeks which would result in tender meat with a more fibrous texture cooking it sous-vide gave an equally tender meat but with a much more satisfying texture resembling a steak. The beef checks were paired nicely with some grits made out of hominy and pumpernickel and a sauce created from uni and eel as two main components -a strong dish and one of the highlights of the night.

6^th Course: Sensory overload – Duck confit, spot prawn, blackberry, horseradish

Chef Barron described this dish as using every part of the duck – the spot prawn was filled with duck confit accompanied by some seared foie gras, dried duck sausage and a blackberry sauce. Even though the different components were executed well this dish also showed what happens if you are using too many techniques just for the sake of it. The dried duck sausage didn’t add anything to the flavor and had a distracting texture but would have been much more enjoyable if it wouldn’t have been unnecessarily dried. This dish also was again too protein-heavy and felt unbalanced, some non-protein components would have helped the dish.

7^th Course: Dessert – Watermelon, prosciutto, basil, love & break dancing

Pastry Chef Bonilla mentioned that he wanted to capture different parts of summer and the dish indeed included variations on ingredients which are associated with summer and its grilling season – grilled corncake, candy prosciutto, caramelized goat cheese, lemon air and watermelon semifreddo. All components of this dessert came nicely together and created a great finale of the tasting menu. Especially the watermelon semifreddo was exceptional and so it was no surprise that an extra portion of it was successfully requested at our table.

We went to this tasting menu from Evolve Cuisine with little expectations and were even a little bit skeptical if we would witness an evening where technique trumps flavor and creativity. But we came away quite impressed from this night and enjoyed the whole experience a lot. Starting from the location with its communal tables which created a nice setting for interesting conversations to the professional but yet pleasant service to the good pacing of the menu. But most importantly the food presented throughout the night turned out to be creative, well executed and used all kinds of techniques just trying to achieve the best flavors for any dish. It was good to see another new chef in San Diego who could bring new creativity and culinary momentum to this city which recently lost some of its best chefs. If there could have been perhaps one improvement to this tasting menu it would be that Chef Barron tended to cook quite protein-focused but those dishes which had more vegetables and other components, like the consommé, mustard green salad and beef cheeks, were the highlights of the night and hopefully he can extend this to all of his dishes. Evolve Cuisine positions itself as focusing on modernist cuisine and even though they use, like many other chefs, modern techniques advertising themselves in this direction might limit their customer base. Buzzwords like modernist cuisine might attract a few foodies but still discourage many other potential guests and it also doesn’t do dishes of Evolve Cuisine justice enough. They should instead describe themselves as what they are – a team of very talented chefs focusing on developing creative, well executed dishes exploring new flavor combinations. Even though Evolve Cuisine won’t have any pop-up events until fall we are already looking forward to visit them again in the future and take part in their culinary journey.

Evolve Cuisine

(239) 287-5463

Pork and Tomatillo Stew – Cooking with “Green Tomatoes”

If you read a tourist guide of San Diego or just walk through the streets of some of the more popular neighborhoods like North Park or Hillcrest you get the impression that the culinary scene of this city covers a wide variety of restaurants. There are many variations of “Western” influenced restaurants, like Italian or French but also many “Asian“ restaurants ranging from Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese to Thai. You will also find many unique restaurants using the outstanding produce of this region and showcasing the world class beer scene of San Diego but one cuisine is strangely at the same time under- as well as overrepresented in San Diego – Mexican. San Diego is in a unique location as it forms a large bi-national/transborder community with Tijuana and one would expect that this would also have a significant impact on the variety of the Mexican cuisine in San Diego. You can find some kind of taco shop at nearly every street or shopping mall in San Diego but otherwise one would get the impression that the Mexican diet only consists of tacos and burritos and hardly anything else. There are a few unique Mexican restaurants throughout San Diego representing less Americanized versions of Mexican food but it took us quite some time to realize it before we slowly started to explore it. The books from Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless were very helpful guides to get a better understanding of the vast variety of regional culinary differences in Mexico and its unique use of unusual ingredients and flavors not often found in Western and Asian cuisines.

If you visit one of the ubiquitous taco shops in San Diego you will always find a salsa bar to dress up your tacos or burritos and part of it will be some kind of salsa verde. Salsa verde has often a very interesting and complex flavor including some tartness with floral undertones. One of the key ingredients for salsa verde are tomatillos, one of these unusual ingredients associated with Mexico and not found as much in other cuisines. Tomatillos might look like green unripe tomatoes and both plants belong to the nightshade family but tomatillos are actually related to cape gooseberries.

Tomatillos with their unusual papery husk were domesticated by the Aztecs more than three thousand years ago and remained all the time an important food staple in this region. The culinary use of tomatillos is quite broad ranging from raw as a salad ingredient to jams and marmelades to cooked in stews and sauces for meats. For our first own use of tomatillos we decided to cook them appropriately in a Mexican inspired Pork and Tomatillo Stew.

                                                                                       

Instead of using only tomatillos in the braising liquid as the main flavor component we decided to go for a more complex flavor profile supporting and at the same time balancing out the tartness and fruitiness of the tomatillos by incorporating tomatoes, orange juice and beer into the stew. The pork turned out to be as fork tender as expected in such a stew but initially the stew overall had a stronger tartness than expected and the desired counterbalancing fruitiness was subdued and hardly noticeable. One of the golden rules of braising is to rest stews overnight so that the flavors can blend together but we hardly ever do it with our stews as we don’t think that the overall flavor improves significantly. But the exception proves the rule as with this stew it was critical to rest it overnight. Eaten on the same day the stew was good but nothing exceptional. Once we reheated it the next day all the flavors came together and we had a wonderful balanced stew without any overwhelming tartness. It made for a very satisfying Mexican influenced dinner when served together with rice and lime-spiked sour cream.

Combine tomatillos, tomatoes, beer and orange juice in a pot bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat.

Heat oil in pot over medium high heat, add garlic and cook for two minutes until garlic is golden brown.

Add pork in batches and cook for 8 minutes, turning occasionally, until brown, remove to bowl.

Add onions to pot over medium heat and cook for 8 minutes.

Add tomatillo mixture, pork, cilantro, jalapeno, 1 tsp salt and ½ tsp black pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer partially covered for two hours.

Season stew with salt and pepper. Add kidney beans and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Mix lime juice with sour cream and serve stew with white rice and sour cream.

Recipe adapted from “Gourmet Today”

Serves 6

900 g (2 lbs) boneless pork should, cut into 1.5 inch cubes

4 tbsp canola oil

8 garlic cloves, peeled

350 ml (12 ounces) Chimay Red

450 g (1 lb) tomatillos, husked, washed and quartered

1 can (28 oz) whole tomatoes, drained, juice reserved and chopped

2 large onions, coarsely chopped

1 bunch cilantro, leaves and stems chopped

1 jalapeno, chopped

1 can (16 oz) kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 tbsp lime juice

225 g (8 oz) sour cream

Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton (San Francisco) – Belated Farewell with a 9-Course Tasting Menu

Travel time – the best time to indulge in one of our favorite hobbies. There is hardly any day when we don’t talk about our next potential trip, and for us arranging and planning a journey is already part of the fun. First we will have long discussions where we should go next going back and forth between new destinations we haven’t visited before and revisiting places we liked a lot but never feel we have visited extensively enough. Once we decide on a place the next question circles around how we will get there – driving/flying directly or should we travel slowly with several stopovers to get to know even more locations. But the most extensive planning is always around the time at the destination itself. Starting with finding the best hotels and reading many travel review pages the most time is spent on finding the most unique points of interest and best places to eat.

There are many different ways to explore the culinary scene of any city – starting from discussion boards as Chowhound and eGullet, local newspapers to the numerous food blogs every part of the world seems to have by now. And so it is rather easy to come up with a very long list of interesting restaurants covering a wide range of cuisines for every city, but the hard part is to decide how to prioritize this list to make a final decision on the restaurants. As much as we like to explore new places there are a few cities we visit quite regularly – Los Angeles and Las Vegas are fairly close to San Diego and we go to them, especially Los Angeles, many times every year. One city which isn’t as close by but we really started to enjoy the moment we visited it for the first time several years ago is San Francisco. Over the years we kind of lost our heart to San Francisco and hope to live there at one time but until then we try to visit the city at least once a year. There are many attractive features about San Francisco far beyond just food but the vast culinary scene of the city has always attracted us and makes the selection of the restaurants for each visit fun and painful at the same time. We always try to find the right balance between the many different ethnic restaurants often with unique regional places, e.g. diverse Italian restaurants from different regions, old-established places, like Chez Panisse and high-end places with unique tasting menus. On one of our last trips we were contemplating a number of places with more conventional tasting menus to add to our mix of restaurants for that particular trip. Some of the restaurants we were considering were Gary Danko, Campton Place or Murray Circle but in the end we decided to go for the 9-course tasting menu at the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton.

One of the aspects which attracted us to the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton was its chef Ron Siegel. He has a quite interesting and impressive background with many diverse influences throughout his career covering several well known and influential mentors. Born in New York he moved as a child to San Francisco and started to work as a butcher at John’s Town and Country Market in Palo Alto when he was 16. During the next several years he worked at several different jobs outside of the culinary world like construction and maintenance but finally decided to focus on his culinary passion and enrolled at the California Culinary Academy. In 1991 he found his first mentor with George Morrone, opening chef of Aqua, and worked under him for two years as a line cook. Morrone was also responsible for helping Siegel to find a position at Daniel in New York under the guidance Chef Daniel Boulud. It was here that he met one of his key mentors with Thomas Keller who was in the process of opening the French Laundry and hired Chef Siegel as the opening sous chef. The successful start of the French Laundry facilitated his first position as executive chef at Charles Nob Hill focusing on the fusion of French and California cuisine. After five years he moved to Masa’s in San Francisco as the executive chef before in 2004 he took over the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton. Throughout his career Chef Siegel had a strong foundation from French cuisine which he combined with different other influences. Perhaps the most unusual one, Japanese, came through the one event which made him famous far beyond the close circle of foodies – becoming the first US chef in 1998 winning Iron Chef Japan in a battle using lobster against Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai. All these features combined let us hope to be in for an exciting and unusual tasting menu at the Dining Room.

The restaurant is located inside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco which opened 20 years ago but is located in a more than a century old building. The hallways inside the hotel towards the restaurant are fittingly decorated to match the history of the landmark building.

The interior of the restaurant continues the theme from outside and looks very much like a restaurant from the 50s or 60s with very old fashioned décor. Once we entered the restaurant we significantly lowered the average age of the guests...

Even our seats had covers which we had last seen in one of the old movies. Overall we weren’t expecting that the Ritz-Carlton and its restaurant would be outfitted overly modern but were still surprised how old fashioned and partly also worn everything looked.

Pomegranate Martini and Old Fashioned

As always we wanted to start the night with some cocktails but that caught the restaurant a bit by surprise as they didn’t even have a cocktail menu/list but were willing to mix us something. The pomegranate juice gave the martini a good balance between sweetness and some sourness. The old fashioned was one of the better versions we had in quite some time. This cocktail often tends to be unbalanced either focusing too much on the interplay of sugar and bitters or the bourbon. In this version all three components could easily be tasted but at the same time worked perfectly together to be a true cocktail where the sum is greater than its parts.

Amuse Bouche 1: Pastry, white bean paste

Somehow this amuse bouche appeared like a reminiscence to the famed Gougères at French Laundry but with a nod to Asian influence due to the white bean paste - a simple but nice start to the tasting menu.

Amuse Bouche 2: Nantucket scallops, shaved fennel

Good interplay between the raw anise-flavored fennel and the sweetness of the scallops. The fennel also had a nice textural contrast to the soft scallops.

Amuse Bouche 3: Poached quail egg, prosciutto, white truffle, brioche

Classical breakfast pairing of runny egg with some prosciutto and white truffle shavings. Lightly toasted brioche sticks to soak up the white truffle infused egg yolk – unfortunately the egg yolk was completely set and not runny so that a key component of the dish was missing. It was quite disappointing that a kitchen on that level had problems to serve a poached egg.

1^st Course: Sashimi of Kampachi, yuzu gelee, asian pear marinade

This dish clearly showed the Japanese influences from Chef Siegel. Flawless Hawaiian yellowtail with its mild flavor and buttery, tender texture was paired with the delicate sweetness of the Asian pear and the unmistakable complex citrus and floral flavor of yuzu. A dish you could also find in a better sushi place.

2^nd Course: Abalone, shiitake mushrooms, chard, dashi broth

Abalone harvest season in California has very tight regulations due to the dwindling population over a long time and so you don’t see it often on restaurant menus. Abalone had a mild slightly sweet flavor with a not overly rubbery texture. The dashi broth enhanced the maritime flavor of the dish whereas we hoped to get some bitterness from the chard but it was hardly noticeable and didn’t add much to the dish which appeared a bit one-dimensional.

3^rd Course: Black cod, elephant garlic, shortrib ravioli, watermelon radish

Pairing braised meats with fish is getting more and more common in recent times and to avoid that the braised shortribs overpower the delicate black cod Chef Siegel tamed the braised meat by using it as a filling for the ravioli. The pasta acts as a buffer between the flavors of the meat and fish and allows both of them to shine. The elephant garlic added a very mild garlic flavor to the dish whereas the braised watermelon radish just offered some texture to the dish.

4^th Course: Lobster, marina di chiogga squash puree, sunchoke chips, red wine shallots

The tender lobster and the squash puree paired nicely but both ingredients have naturally a sweet component which rendered this dish on the overly sweet side. The shallots brought some welcomed slight bitterness but overall the dish was missing some balance.

5^th Course: Hot foie gras, huckleberries, brioche, rome apple juice with longpepper

A large piece of foie gras with the wonderful buttery and livery flavor one expects, expertly prepared with a slight smokey, crunchy exterior. The sides covered the well known spectrum of sweet ingredients to counteract the richness of foie gras but stayed only within established culinary boundaries. More and more chefs try, especially in tasting menus, to present unusual pairings of ingredients to explore new culinary areas. We wished that Chef Siegel would have tried something more unusual here otherwise this dish felt like a foie gras dish we had in many tasting menus before.

6^th Course: Quail, salsify, pomegranate, matsutake, Madera sauce

One of the dishes were we saw some attempts to bridge French and Japanese flavors. Quail and salsify with the Madera sauce were classical French cuisine whereas the matsutake mushroom, even though often picked at the US West coast, is strongly associated with Japanese cooking. The strong, meaty matsutake flavor went well with the quail and the pomegranate seeds added a nice tartness and some texture. Overall one of the stronger dishes of the night.

7^th Course: Beef ribeye, celery root, porcini mushrooms, sancho pepper reduction

Another dish which was very well executed on a technical level with perfectly medium rare and tender ribeye but paired, here with porcini mushrooms, celery root, potatoes, as we have seen it many times before. The sancho pepper reduction didn’t really add much to the dish and so it felt like a déjà vu with prior tasting menus.

8^th Course: Cheese selection, bread, condiments

Normally we expect in such high-end restaurants that it is possible to select a few cheeses from a cheese cart. Unfortunately here at the Dining Room no cheese cart was to be seen and the selection was made for us. The bread was just regular baguette with the condiments just a few slices of apple and some almonds – one of the more disappointing cheese courses.

Intermezzo: Persimmon sorbet, carrot granite

Refreshing and unusual combination between persimmon and carrot with the vegetable providing the sweet component whereas the fruit added some tartness. A surprising palate cleanser which we wished to be much larger.

9^th Course: Chocolate-layered cake, vanilla ice cream, pineapple puree, gingerbread cake, pear sorbet, caramel sauce

Dessert came with two variations of cake - both of them moist and not too heavy but also not too far from the expected norm. The dessert was lightened up by some fruit sorbet and puree but overall followed the theme of the savory courses – well made on a technical level but it felt like we had the same course in many tasting menus before.

We finished the tasting menu with an espresso

Mignardises:

As much as we had hoped for a cheese cart we were surprised about the large selection on the mignardises cart and were able to taste a large selection of their very good sweets.

Ritz-Carlton hotels are not really known as edgy, modern places but once we entered the hotel we were surprised how old-fashioned everything looked and started wondering how much the Dining Room would fit in. Part of the fascination of every great restaurant is not only the cuisine and service but also the ambience which should form a coherent unit with the philosophy of the chef. Chef Siegel’s reputation was letting us to expect a tasting menu anchored in French cuisine but with modern interpretations, often including Japanese influences, and brimming with creativity. The technical execution of many dishes revealed indeed the strong French cuisine background of Chef Siegel and was mostly on a high level, perhaps with the major exception of the failed poached egg. But what we were completely missing were the creativity and surprises one expects from tasting menus at this level. There were sometimes sprinkles of Japanese influences by the use of some Japanese ingredients but mostly the dishes had either a clear French or Japanese background without many efforts to create any new directions. But even the many dishes with French influences were staying very close to the expected norm without any surprises. There was hardly any dish throughout the tasting menu were we didn’t comment how they reminded us of dishes we had eaten at other occasions before, everything felt like repeats. It speaks volume that the two things we remember most from this dinner were the intermezzo, with its unusual and successful combination of persimmon and carrot, and the huge mignardises cart – both are normally only a side notes of a tasting menu.

Besides the uninspired dishes the service at the Dining Room was far from its very good reputation. Prior to our visit we often read about the flawless and polished service at the restaurant but that was different from our experience. Starting from a very rushed service at the beginning which slowed down after we asked for a more reasonable pace to servers which didn’t really know what they were serving (and had to help each other to get together all components of a dish which they were serving) the service was simply not very professional. But worst was when the maitre’d started to bad-mouthing restaurants when talking with other guests. He compared other one star Michelin restaurants in San Francisco to the Dining Room and in particular slandered about One Market and its “horrible food and service” which was quite ironic as we just ate there a few days before and had a much better experience than at the Dining Room.

It didn’t came as a surprise when some time after our visit to the Dining Room we read that Chef Siegel was closing the restaurant to renovate and reopen it under a different name and different, more casual, concept. On one side we particularly enjoy restaurants which offer tasting menus and so seeing another one closing or changing its direction wasn’t encouraging. But at the same we felt that the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton was clearly past its prime and was in need of a readjustment. Perhaps this new concept will give Chef Siegel the opportunity to go back to his roots of creative cooking.

Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton

600 Stockton Street

San Francisco, CA 94108

(415) 296-7465

Cocktail 101: Tom Collins

One interesting discussion about critics, might it be for food, music, art, one often can find in blogs or newspapers circles around the question how much in depth knowledge do they need to be respected critics. There is little doubt that nearly everybody can recognize and enjoy a great meal, painting or piece of music but does it also encompass a deeper understanding of it ? Is it necessary to play an instrument to truly appreciate a musical composition or have an interest in cooking to really enjoy great dinners ? For us the interest in cooking and restaurants always went hand in hand and both benefited from each other. Cooking all the time at home really gives us a good understanding about techniques, flavors, ingredients and how they work together in any kind of dish whereas restaurant visits show us what is possible in the professional culinary world which again also influences how we cook at home. Over the years it also pushed us to try new things at home like charcuterie and cheese making as we wanted to replicate those creations we enjoyed at many places.

If somebody reads this blog on a regular basis it will be quite obvious that we often enjoy to start our dinners with a cocktail before we even start to look on the menu. And we also often end up winding down the night after a relaxed dinner with a late night cocktail at a nearby bar. But over time we also realized that different than when we read a regular restaurant menu where just glancing over the ingredient list gives us a good idea about the flavors of the final dish, reading a cocktail menu was quite different and that we lacked the knowledge about many of the spirits. So what better way to learn about and diving into the world of cocktails than by starting to build up our own cocktail bar and start making our own cocktails at home. One of the very first cocktails we tried was a Tom Collins.

The Tom Collins cocktail has a long history as it was first mentioned by Jerry Thomas, “the father of American mixology”, in 1876 and is a drink similar to the Gin Fizz with the difference of a larger amount of lemon juice, essentially making the Tom Collins a gin with sparkling lemonade. Originally a Tom Collins was made with Holland gin but by the end of the 19th century Old Tom gin (which some believe also accounts for the name of the cocktail), a lightly sweetened version of gin was used, whereas today a dry gin is preferred. Tom Collins is an ideal drink to get used to the floral, herbaceous flavor of gin as the inclusion of sugar and lemon tends to smooth out those flavor components. The Tom Collins with its proximity to lemonade is predestinated as a refreshing summer drink.

Add gin to tall glass, three-quarters filled with ice cubes

Add freshly squeezed lemon juice

Add sugar syrup

Top glass of with soda water, stir and decorate the glass with a slice of lemon

Recipe adapted from “500 Cocktails”

Serves 1

60 ml (2 fl oz) Gin

30 ml (1 fl oz) freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 tbsp sugar syrup

Ice cubes

Soda water

Lemon slice

Braised Turkey Legs with Onions & Butternut Squash – Thanksgiving Dinner for the Small Family

Thanksgiving is normally for us a good reason to take time off and travel around. The last few years we went to extended trips to San Francisco and Las Vegas and so didn’t really have to worry about what to cook for Thanksgiving. This year with a new baby we didn’t feel she was old enough yet to travel for a longer time and decided for the first time in six years to stay at home during the holidays, which also meant we had to think about what we wanted to cook for that special day. Even though Thanksgiving isn’t really known and celebrated in Germany and so isn’t associated with a special dish or ingredient we felt that we should try to capture the spirit of this holiday in the US with our dish. At the same time the idea to cook a large turkey and having turkey leftovers for the next several weeks wasn’t appealing to us as normally we try to avoid eating the same thing again and again as it gets boring very fast. We thought about using some other poultry or just braising some beef for this occasion but somehow it didn’t feel right for Thanksgiving.

When we started to look into the history of what was served for Thanksgiving in the US it became very fast clear that turkey was now for centuries the preferred main dish for Thanksgiving. There are several different theories why turkey is the preferred meat for Thanksgiving including one with Queen Elizabeth who celebrated during a harvest fest the news of the destruction of the Spanish Armada on its way to England with a roasted goose which later became a turkey when the pilgrims arrived in America. But the most likely explanation might be also the most unexciting one – cows and chickens were too valuable, pork not fit for a special occasion, venison would require hunting and geese were more difficult to raise so that turkeys remained as a best choice – cheap, plentiful and easy to raise.

And so it was clear for us that we would have to have turkey for Thanksgiving but instead of cooking up a whole one we decided to pick up one of the tastier parts - legs. Since one of the main problems with roasting a turkey is often that they end up dry we thought that braising would resolve this issue and yield a moist piece of turkey. And what better to capture the fall season with a Thanksgiving dish than also to include squash so that in the end we settled on Braised Turkey Legs with Onions & Butternut Squash.

The turkey legs turned out to be as moist as we hoped for and had the right consistency of being very tender without being too soft. We prefer the dark meat flavor which can stand up against stronger tasting side dishes compared to the often rather flavorless white meat. Braising of course has the disadvantage that even though it will not provide you a dried out piece of meat it can’t give you the crispy skin which is often a very nice feature of poultry. But the major drawback for us was that the turkey legs had still some tough tendon/connective tissue that didn’t soften enough even after braising and which required some knife work to still enjoy the turkey. As much as we enjoyed the meat the real star of the dish for us were the vegetables and the sauce made of out the braising liquid and pancetta. Both butternut squash and sweet onions provided a wonderful foundation for the whole dish with a combination of sweetness and certain earthiness characteristic for especially winter squash. The vegetables were also briefly braised in the braising liquid of the turkey legs which helped to permeate the vegetables with the herbs and the crumbled pancetta completed this dish. Next time we will try to braise the legs for a longer time at a lower temperature to remove all connective tissue and it should make this dish perfect as great meal for a festive day.

Heat butter in skillet over medium-high heat and sauté pancetta for eight minutes until crisp and brown. Transfer pancetta to plate lined with paper towels to drain and remove half of the pancetta fat to a jar. Preheat oven to 150 °C/300 °F.

Season turkey legs with salt and pepper and sear thighs on both sides for six minutes per side. If skillet is too small do this in two batches to avoid overcrowding the skillet. Transfer legs to plate.

Add onion, carrots, celery and garlic to skillet and season lightly with salt and pepper. Saute vegetables for five minutes until they start to brown. Add thyme, sage, bay leaf and orange juice and deglaze skillet by bringing the orange juice to a strong simmer and scraping bottom of the pan. Simmer orange juice for one minute until reduced by half.

Add the turkey legs and stock to vegetable mixture and bring to simmer. Place skillet in oven and braise for 70 minutes with turning the legs once after 30 minutes.

While the legs are braising heat reserved pancetta fat in another skillet over medium-high heat, add onions and garlic and some salt and pepper and sauté the vegetables for 12 minutes until browned. Transfer vegetables to plate. Add butter to skillet and sauté squash for ten minutes with frequent stirring until browned. Remove from heat and set aside until legs are done.

Once turkey legs are finished braising remove them from skillet and cover them with foil on a plate to keep warm. Strain the braising liquid and discard the vegetables.

Return squash to medium-high heat, add the onion garlic mixture and sauté for two minutes. Add the braising liquid with the sage and parsley, cover the pot and braise the squash over low heat for 15 minutes until tender. Crumble the reserved pancetta and add to the squash mixture. Increase the heat to high and cook for two minutes to thicken the sauce. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve with turkey legs.

Recipe adapted from “All about Braising”

Serves 4

1 tbsp butter

120 g (1/4 lb) pancetta, diced

4 bone-in, skin-on turkey legs

1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped

1 carrot, coarsely chopped

1 celery stalk, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 thyme sprigs

2 sage sprigs

1 bay leaf

120 ml (1/2 cup) freshly squeezed orange juice

240 ml (1 cup) chicken stock

450 g (1 lb) sweet onions, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp butter

950 g (2 lb) butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch chuncks

¼ cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped

2 tbsp sage, chopped