WHEN PEOPLE OUTSIDE California imagine summertime on the Central Coast, they’re probably thinking of blue skies and ocean breezes grooming perfect surfing waves. In fact, it’s usually about 60 degrees here and the ocean is gnarly, the clouds like dark stubble on an unkempt sky. Ever the optimist, though, I keep a surfboard in my truck. Not that I have much time for surfing: Thursday through Sunday at Dad’s Luncheonette, my restaurant in Half Moon Bay, my team and I are cranking out hen of the woods sandwiches—topping the griddled mushrooms with pickled onions and a gooey fried egg—or we’re snipping herbs into seasonal salads. We’re frying potato chips by the gazillion and slamming them with so much umami-packed nutritional yeast that they taste almost meaty. We’re doing it all in…
If Money Were No Object… Is there any logic capable of justifying $255 for a single soup ladle? Of course not. But that’s the problem with logic—it’s logical. Desire, on the other hand, burns far brighter. And do I ever desire this functional masterpiece from Erica Moody of Waldoboro, Maine (ericamoody.com). That burnished patina. That forged-steel handle. And then when you hear the craftswoman talk—about sculpting the spun-copper dipper with a ball-peen hammer, or tapping those delicate rivets into place—well, this splurge seems a worthy one. —Kat Craddock…
“The point,” Thai-Thanh Dang says, “is that I want to make sorbets that look like me.” MAKES ABOUT 1 QUART Active: 45 min. Total: 5 hr. 45 min. Stone fruits that are extra-ripe lend much more flavor and fragrance to a sorbet and are easier to reduce to a smooth puree. While Thai-Thanh’s peach sorbet calls for lemon verbena, using fresh or dried thyme or lemon balm would work as well. ⅔ cups (160 g) raw cane sugar2 cups (20 g) dried or fresh lemon verbena3 large yellow peaches, unpeeled, pitted, and coarsely chopped (4 cups)1 Tbsp. plus 1. tsp. (20 g) fresh lemon juice3 Tbsp. (40 g) heavy cream 1 In a small pot over medium heat, whisk 1⅓ cups (300 grams) cold water and the sugar. Bring to…
OREGON • GREECE • HAWAII • TUSCANY • SPAIN • MUMBAI TWELVE YEARS AGO, FOLLOWING a short but eye-opening stint in prison, Mary Stallworth needed a new career. Floating around Detroit kitchens as a line cook between gambling binges wasn’t going to cut it anymore. But because the restaurant business was all she knew, Stallworth worked to advance past the line. Half Japanese and half African-American, she found a unique niche as the liaison between the sushi bar and the rest of the kitchen at Chen Chow Brasserie in Birmingham, Michigan. She picked up skills, first making rolls for family meals, then training to help put out large orders. Just as she began to feel she had found her calling in the world of rice, fish, and seaweed, the sushi…
IT’S L ATE AFTERNOON in the Chehalem Mountains, and the winery crush pad is filled with the juicy scent of fermenting chardonnay mingling with steaming shrimp, black peppercorn, and celery. Assistant winemaker Aaron Fox sprays down a folding table that, moments earlier, held winemaking equipment; now, it will anchor a shared feast. “What was the final tonnage we brought in yesterday?” he asks as I pour him a glass of recently disgorged sparkling pinot gouges blanc from the cellar. For 20 years I’ve worked as a winemaker in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and fall is always intense. A winery crew can often double in size during harvest season, when interns and seasonal fieldworkers roll in from all over the world to help craft the year’s vintage. The weeks-long harvest is tough, and…
It was two years ago that Christopher Hirsheimer first noticed a for sale sign on the vacant old train station in Milford, New Jersey. She immediately asked Melissa Hamilton, her business partner, to come see the place. “This building—this building—told us it wanted to be a restaurant,” Hirsheimer recalls. “We said, ‘No, no…,’ and the building said, ‘Yes. I want to be a restaurant.’” Hamilton nods in agreement. “We have a thing,” she explains. “We go on saying ‘no’ until something makes us say ‘yes.’” Both women live nearby, in the Delaware River Valley, where they met shortly before Hirsheimer co-founded Saveur in 1994. Twenty-five years into their friendship, the two communicate intuitively, conserving words and finishing each other’s sentences as they talk about how food should be cooked, seen,…
EVERY REFRIGERATOR IN HAWAI‘I HAS AT least one batch of chile pepper water in it. When I was a kid, in the town of Hilo, on Hawai‘i’s Big Island, my dad and I would save old glass jars or cool-looking whiskey bottles for making and storing our own. Around the dinner table, my father and uncles would take little gulps of it from a shot glass, or else sip it from a ramen spoon in between bites of the meal. Somewhere between a condiment and a chaser, chile pepper water can be drizzled over food like hot sauce, but most people prefer to sip it alongside rich dishes, like local-style beef stew or lau lau—a steamed roll of pork or fish wrapped in taro leaves. Chile pepper water originates from…
The Clan Hotel in Singapore: I gobbled up the poached eggs on a split English muffin smothered in creamy laksa broth. —Megan Zhang Hotel Pacai in Vilnius, Lithuania: Ribbons of salty ham and traditional smoked sausages, redolent of black pepper and alder wood. —Benjamin Kemper Paradero in Todos Santos, Mexico: Literally the best French toast I’ve ever had. —Thomas Payne The Post House Inn in Mount Pleasant, S.C.: Meats, cheeses, croissants, fruit, and a hard-boiled egg, delivered to the room in a red gingham-lined basket. —Ellen Fort…
I’D BEEN IN ELKO, NEVADA, for less than an hour, and I’d already broken a rule. I had come to the Star Hotel, a century-old restaurant and former boarding house for cattle ranchers, in search of the Picon punch. There it was, advertised on a chalkboard menu. you only need one, promise was written underneath. I was on my second. I forged ahead, given that I’d driven to northeastern Nevada to chase this elusive cocktail, a boozy punch traditionally made with an obscure French bitter called Amer Picon. It’s the local drink of choice for ranchers in Elko and Reno, brought there, it’s surmised, by waves of Basque immigrants in the Gold Rush era, when many migrant shepherds by trade found work in Nevada as cattle ranchers. In the classic…
Down six winding flights of stairs, across the street, and onto rue Faidherbe, the quartier’s main thoroughfare—with its poppy-themed florist, organic and biodynamic market, local post office, and neighborhood record shop—I take a quick left on the narrow, cobblestoned rue du Dahomey and another onto rue Saint-Bernard. I could do the four-minute walk in this far east section of the 11th arrondissement—my home for the past two years—with my eyes closed and still land precisely on the chocolate-meets-caramelizing-onions-scented doorstop of 5 rue Saint-Bernard. It’s 8:30 a.m., and the gate in front of the seafoam green facade of Mokonuts is only halfway lifted, but that doesn’t stop passersby from ducking under it to see about some coffee or a cookie. This 24-seat local favorite calls itself a “café and bakery” on…
