Sure it’s a music festival if epic proportions–but here food is just as much the star. Hundreds of eating opportunities, a GastroMagic performance stage pairing entertainment acts with local chefs (Big Freedia and beignets was the standout) plus craft beers, wine and just about anything else u can cram in your maw.
Best foods of outside lands
(Stay tuned for more updates)
1. Guittard liquid chocolate bars: warm milk chocolate spooned up with chocolate chips. CHocolands
2. Bacon flight on a stick: 5 strips if heirloom bacon (all different producers) crispy and delicious. Baconlands
3. Rich Table: Porcini donuts with raclette: not what u expect. Fried donut chunks with a warm cheese dipping sauce. Near cheese lands
4 wise sons deli, pastrami 19 sandwich: may have missed the boat not getting the pastrami sandwich fries. But no dissapointment with one of the best Sammies in memory. Ecolands
5. Pacific catch: Ahi tuna poke: perfect nosh for days end. Polo fields
6. Nombe ramen burger: fried ramen noodles replace the bun. Inside: a pork belly and beef burger with blue cheese and mushrooms. Agggghhhhh as Homer Simpson would say. Polo fields
7. Crispy Brussels sprouts with sweet Maple sauce, American grilled cheese kitchen. Polo fields
Rumors that longtime Healdsburg restaurant Bistro Ralph was, gasp, closing have turned out to be, as author Mark Twain would say, “greatly exaggerated”.
What is true: The restaurant has ended its Sunday brunch from 10a.m. to 3p.m. as of July 27 (and are closed all day Sunday). The good news: Your chicken paillard and chicken livers are are still being served all day long, from 11:30a.m. to close. Phew. 109 Plaza St., Healdsburg.
This weekend’s Outside Lands music, food and art festival(aka BiteClub’s favorite two days of non-stop noshing) is upping its foodie game this year. Not that it really needed to.
This incubator of fun, funky and insanely creative ideas in gastronomy hosts nearly 75 restaurant pop-ups, 9 food trucks, dessert-centric Chocolands and the new “Cheeselands”.
What we’re especially stoked for, however, is GastroMagic, a ridonculous lineup of amazing chefs (Chris Cosentino of Incanto, Boccalone, Brandon Jew of Bar Agricole, Kim Alter of Plum, Christopher Kostow of Meadowood, etc.) paired with acts like twerk-diva Big Freediathrowing beignets to the crowd, competing butchers breaking down a pig while dancers break dance on stage, a discussion of Mezcal with a troupe of limbo-ing mambo dancers, restaurateurs from Rich Table doing a Medieval-themed round table, and some of the Bay Area’s best chefs reading their worst restaurant reviews. Kinda perfect if you ask us.
Other highlights of the eating weekend ahead: 4505 Meats’ chicarrones; Gilroy garlic mac and cheese (Homeroom), braised collard greens from Southpaw BBQ and Southern Cooking, spun cotton candy bouquets from Sugar and Spun, pastrami cheese fries from Wise Sons Deli, Ramen Burgers (Nambe), Dried Porcini donuts at Rich Table, along with Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream and sleeping on the lawn with a glass of Claypool Cellars rose in one hand and a Sonoma Cider in the other.SFOutsidelands.com. Stay tuned for updated photos, live updates and my foodie quest throughout the weekend at BiteClubEats.com.
CLOSED
There are only a handful of meals that I can describe as life-changing—so perfectly executed at exactly the right moment in time that they forever stand out in memory as best-in-class. Fatty tuna belly nigiri at Hana Japanese, chocolate pot de creme at Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Rustic, chilled pea soup with Dungeness crab at Chalkboard, beef bourguignon at Chloe’s, foie gras at Cyrus.
This week, I’ve added another: Fire-roasted heirloom carrots with eggplant and buffalo mozzarella ($10) at the recently-opened Vignette. Oh.my.god. A stack of perfectly yielding, caramelized baby carrots stacked atop bits of roasted eggplant and green onion with two spoonfuls of Ramini buffalo mozzarella (not easy to find), made even more decadent with olive oil and black pepper. Just one of a frequently changing line-up of daily roasted vegetables from Chef Mark Hopper (former executive chef for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group).
Not that the rest of the menu isn’t nearly as stunning. We can’t help but hope that the Kale Cocio e Pepe ($10) is as healthy as it sounds. A heaping pile of chopped kale, sweet Peppadew peppers, smoked mozzarella, toasted walnuts and Greek yogurt makes other salads wilt with shame.
The brief menu orbits around Hopper’s painstakingly-researched Neapolitan pizzas. Having traveled to some of the best pizzerias in the country, he honed both the dough and the wood-fired cooking method (very hot, very fast) that results in a chewy crust with crispy bubbles throughout.
What to order, however, depends on your familiarity—and perspective—on Neapolitan pizzas.
A quick public service announcement about this style of pizza. Neapolitan pizza isn’t like American pizza. They’re usually small enough for one person, minimally topped, slightly wet in the middle (you’re unlikely to be able to pick up a piece without everything sliding off) and authentically served uncut. The “char” can range from light brown to charcoal-like, with the ideal pizza ending up somewhere win the middle.
With that said, Hopper keeps things authentic with San Marzano tomato-topped Margherita (mozzarella, Grana Padino cheese, basil and olive oil, $16), to heartier “meatball parm ($19) with house made meatballs, Parmigiano Reggiano, mozzarella and garlic, the Manhattan ($18) with chopped clams and our favorite, the **Red Eye ($17)** with Calabrian chili pesto, eggs, buffalo mozzarella, charred mortadella and Grana Padano cheese. We left the Mushroom Alfredo ($18) with garlic cream, roasted mushrooms, stracciatella cheese, grilled tomatoes and herbs for next time.
Dessert is an authentically Italian affogato. Steaming espresso is poured over buffalo milk gelato.
On a warm summer night, the glass walls roll up for a cool breeze, and a small patio is perfect for afternoon lunching.
Life is short, so its worth finding those life-changing meals. Or at the very least, life-affirming. Vignette does that with aplomb.
Vignette, 6750 McKinley St., Sebastopol (at the Barlow). Open noon to 10p.m. daily.
There’s a reason you’re not going to see “America’s Top Caterer” anytime soon on the Food Network. Not because catering chefs aren’t as talented as the blustery toques waving chef’s knives and pork tattoos for the cameras. It’s because hard-working caterers—the amazing culinary wizards who can somehow make dinner for 400 inside a pop-up tent, with two broken burners and a crying bride —aren’t in it for the glory. They’re in it to make the food that make the event.
And that’s why I have a special place in my heart for folks like Chef Christopher Ludwick, a longtime caterer (Grapevine Catering) who recently opened Earth’s Bounty Kitchen and Wine Bar in the former Fresh by Lisa Hemenway (5755 Mountain Hawk Way, Santa Rosa, 827-9700). Yeah, the name’s a bit of a mouthful, but so’s the food. Meaning there’s plenty to stuff your face with—and then some.
First off, the massive interior has been radically transformed. Where Hemenway’s combined restaurant/market/coffeeshop space felt a bit, well, confusing, Ludwick has created distinct spaces: A deli and retail shop in front, the cozy wine bar/restaurant to the right and an enviable catering kitchen taking up much of the back.
But the food is really the star here. BiteClub fell to pieces over nearly everything on the compact and well-curated menu. A charcuterie board ($13) with a changing lineup of salamis, fight-over-the-last-bite pate, pickled veggies and Cabernet mustard (ours also featured duck rillettes and head cheese); a tiny iron skillet with pork cheeks, charred tomatoes and Vella Dry Jack ($10) cooked the wood oven; the Earth’s Bounty Burger with violet mustard, Cabernet onion jam and Vella cheddar on a Village Bakery English muffin ($13); “Mac and Cheese” ($12) which is less like Kraft and more like a creamy, dreamy dish of orecchiette, mushrooms, shallots, melty cheese and buttered crumbs; chicken and waffles ($18) with rosemary-bacon waffles, country gravy and collard greens (we could eat the collard greens for weeks); and most especially the ever-changing desserts, which include a homemade “Ding Dong” (Devil’s food cake, ganache, marshmallow cream and other wickedness) or a warm fruit crumble with mascarpone.
Perhaps we should mention the pizzas. The wood-fired oven has been moved into the restaurant, with its incredible heat doing double duty as pizza cooker and meat and vegetable roaster. Neopolitan-style, thin crust with just a hint of bubbly burnt bits, the pizzaiolo spins everyday nibblers like the margherita or mushroom (with chevre and olive oil, natch) as well as pepperoni and specials like maitake mushroom, truffle oil, prosciutto and Toma cheese ($13-$16)
Don’t call Ludwick’s restaurant farm-to-table, though, he says with an eye roll. “We’re Sonoma Farm Country Cuisine,” says Ludwick, which turns out to be 53 local farms and producers bringing of-the-moment ingredients to his doorstep. And your mouth.
Earth’s Bounty Kitchen, open for dinner from 5 to 9p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Sunday 11a.m. to 4p.m. 5755 Mountain Hawk Way, Santa Rosa, 827-9700
Fair fare is, well, usually fair. But at this year’s Sonoma County Fair, there’s crawfish etouffee, fried alligator and (noms) crab fries with Old Bay aioli at Southern Comfort Kitchen (Magnolia Avenue inside the fairgrounds).
The Brill brothers are tried and true New Orleans natives with roux in their veins, serving up some tasty twists on the usual fair food. Worth a special trip, but if you miss them this time, they’ll be at Art & Soul in Oakland and various other public and private (they’re headed to Google in the coming weeks) events.
For a former Mexican highway patrol officer and soccer player who landed his first American job washing dishes, Mateo Granados has come a long way.
Working his way up from the soap and suds at Julie’s Supper Club in San Francisco to more refined kitchen gigs at Bay Area institutions including Masa’s, Manka’s and Dry Creek Kitchen, Granados now runs Mateo’s Cocina Latina in Healdsburg, with its summer-popular patio. Signature dishes range from bistec Yucateco with local potatoes to slow-roasted chochinita pibil and whole fish of the day over pumpkin-seed pepper sauce.
Just don’t ask him for generic “Mexican food.” Sworn to sustainability and local farms, Granados describes his “new Latin cuisine” as a culinary Pangaea: “I’m putting the continents together. I can take from Argentina or from Chile or a part of Portugal where they speak Spanish. If you read about the history of Yucatecan cuisine, it’s Lebanese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Jewish crossed with Mayan.”
When he’s not in the kitchen, Granados is busy driving one around, bringing street food to the people through his Tendejon de la Calle catering business, or bottling hot sauces, or catching a Mexican national team soccer game.
Then: Born and lived in Oxkutzcab on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, with two sisters, his butcher father and high school teacher mother
Now: Lives in Healdsburg with his girlfriend of 10 years, Circe Sher
On love and life: “I said to her, ‘If I were a woman, I would never marry a chef.’ She just laughs. She is my muse. She keeps me inspired.”
Age: 49
Age he first learned to butcher a cow: 8
Time spent as highway patrol officer in Mexico City: Three months
Favorite hobby: Mushroom hunting
Favorite breed of pig: Mangalitsa
On carrying giant salmon through the restaurant: “Food is not something you want to hear about. You need to see it to believe it. I show them the eyes, how clear they are, how fresh it is.”
Position in soccer: Right wing
What he loves about soccer and cooking: “You have to play as a team, just like in the kitchen. You may hate someone in the kitchen, but it can never show in the food. And on the field, you still pass them the ball because you all have the same goal.”
Fredric and Brucye Frye built their pole house on their
La Primavera farm in southern Mendocino County. (photography by Chris Hardy)
They appear to sail like boats on an ocean of air. Yet traditional Japanese pole houses are so firmly anchored in the ground that they have withstood centuries of floods, earthquakes and savage winds and multiple generations of use.
These rustic, open-timbered homes, whose architecture dates to the high culture of 16th-century feudal Japan, have a practical and timeless appeal that makes them a fit for the casual Northern California lifestyle that celebrates the outdoors and natural materials.
“Our only regret is that we didn’t do this 15 or 20 years earlier,” said Fredric Frye, who lives with his wife, Brucye, in a pole house they built a dozen years ago on a farm between Cloverdale and Yorkville, near the border of Sonoma and Mendocino counties.
It is a house, he said, that is exceptionally smart in its simplicity, with soaring 24-foot spruce ceilings under a hipped roof and a floor plan so open that only the guest bathroom is completely enclosed. That means that everywhere you go within the house, you can look up in awe at those golden timbers.
The center of the home is the great room, an open expanse unobstructed by load-bearing walls. Perhaps the best feature, however, is the grand engawa — sliding pocket doors that open completely to a covered wraparound veranda where the samurai of the house — in this case Fred Frye — can regard the vast sweep of the landscape and declare it all good.
Although early 20th-century California architects Green & Green and Frank Lloyd Wright were inspired by ancient Japanese architecture, it was the late Gordon Steen of Southern California who brought pole houses to the U.S. in a more commercially visible way, starting in the 1970s. Several of his “Japanese folk homes” are tucked away in Mendocino County, including the Fryes’ home and one built for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker.
The Fryes’ pole- house compound is nestled in a wooded landscape.
Now the man who milled the lumber and provided the timbers for some of those homes, including the Frye compound, is carrying on Steen’s vision, but with his own designs and ethos.
Gordon Martin’s Sonoma Pole Houses are completely milled in Healdsburg and shipped in kits complete with hardware, roofing and windows. Instructions for assembly also are included, although all but the most skilled do-it-yourselfers are advised to hire a contractor to set them up properly.
Martin was inspired by Bay Area architect Michelle Kaufmann, who 10 years ago pioneered a new era of high-quality, factory-built homes.
The elegant post-and-beam joinery of his pole houses is stronger than conventional stick framing, said Martin, whose company for years has milled the materials for industrial cooling towers around the world. His Sonoma Millworks in Healdsburg also does re-milling of fine salvaged wood. Among his projects was salvaging and re-milling some 25,000 board feet of old-growth redwood that became part of the new Boudin SF bakery in Santa Rosa’s Montgomery Village shopping center.
Pole houses like the Fryes’ typically are built on heavy poles inserted into the ground. While some people choose not to bury the poles out of concern for rot, Martin maintains that by pressure-treating and encasing the formidable Douglas fir poles in concrete, they can remain safe and sturdy for generations.
With the structural framework anchored so deep in the ground, the building is able to move separately, Martin said, and absorb tremors without breaking. With the living level set so high off the ground, the homes are protected from floods, rot and vermin.
The style felt natural for the Fryes, who made several trips to Japan and were enchanted by Kyoto, a jewel of ancient Japanese architecture. The couple for a number of years lived in a Japanese-style home in Davis, where Fred, a former cancer researcher and comparative pathologist who is regarded as an international expert in reptiles, served on the faculty of the University of California.
He admits his affinity for Asian culture began simply out of necessity.
“When I first got married, Brucye and I didn’t have much money,” he said. “I was going to school on the GI bill. One of the least expensive ways to survive was an Asian diet.”
As they moved up, they began collecting Japanese and Chinese art, a lifetime of treasures that grace the 1,200-square-foot home, a mirror image of their son Erik’s larger, 2,000-square-foot pole house set within what amounts to a family compound.
Together, the Fryes work a farm they call La Primavera, raising chickens and maintaining orchards of antique apples, pears, apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines.
Sonoma Millworks’ Martin has worked on pole houses in Calistoga and Hawaii. But the acquisition of a German-made, computer-operated joinery machine called a Hundegger, which takes up an entire warehouse, now allows him to produce easily and with extreme precision the components for pole-house kits.
The house can be designed in the traditional architect’s CAD software. The Hundegger reads the plans from a flash drive and makes all the adjustments to automatically cut large pieces of wood robotically. The pole houses are available in three sizes: 12 by 12 feet for use as a bonus room or guest quarters, 16 by 16 feet, and 32 by 32 feet. They can be used modularly to make a larger residential cluster and start at about $80,000 for the smallest, most basic kit. That doesn’t include construction or interior finish work.
Ilene Paul describes the home’s interior as akin to a temple, a place of “deep peace and calm.”
Ilene Paul first laid eyes on a Japanese country-style building at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County. She was so taken by it, with its big overhanging roof and wraparound decks, that she began searching for a way to build one as her own personal retreat.
She and her husband, Don, a contractor, had the perfect piece of land waiting, spectacularly situated above Jenner, looking out at the ocean and some 5,600 protected acres of the Jenner Headlands.
“It’s a world-class location,” Ilene said. “We decided it deserved a world-class house.”
She found a company in Oregon that at the time was selling pole-house kits. Hauling 15 giant poles up the dirt road to their property was so precarious that one trucker refused to go up. Don wound up pulling the big rig up the hill with his little tractor.
It took five weeks to get the foundation in. The couple chose to set the poles deep — three rows of five poles, set 16 feet apart. In process, it looked, Ilene said, a little like Stonehenge.
When finished, the house was 2,800 square feet of living space beneath 22-foot ceilings held up by rough-hewn poles so large that the Pauls can barely put their arms around them. A dramatic open bridge with copper-tube railings leads from a master suite to a second bedroom to Ilene’s
artist’s studio on the “second floor.” Materials are warm and earthy, from the hickory floors to the clay walls.
The Pauls’ deck offers a sweeping ocean view.
“There is a Japanese term, wabi-sabi, and it means rustic elegance. The house is not glitzy and shiny, but we consider it has rustic elegance,” explained Ilene, who added Japanese elements such as a stained-glass door she made, inspired by Japanese brush strokes, Asian art and shoji screens.
She described the interior as akin to a temple, a place of “deep peace and calm.”
To Martin, there is something both protective and primal about being in one of these serene homes anchored into the earth and with roofs reaching to the skies.
“It feels like leaving the earth,” he explained. “You are out on the veranda, yet feel protected by the overhang. But when you step inside and look up, you feel exalted.”
At the Weinsteins’ Sonoma home, a table in the poolside arbor is set for a twilight dinner. (photography by Rebecca Chotkowski)
The Weinstein family has a stately home on a picturesque property in Sonoma that’s not at all about being posh. It’s a place with a purpose:
solar-powered, pesticide-free and food-producing, allowing the Weinsteins to donate 2,000 pounds of produce to Valley of the Moon seniors last year.
They keep chickens, tend bees and have 52 fruit trees and 65 raised beds of Biodynamically farmed vegetables, everything from asparagus to zucchini and carrots in three different colors. Everyone who visits leaves with a basket of the land’s bounty.
Hailey, left, Kathleen, Paul and Jack pose for a casual family portrait.
Paul and Kathleen Weinstein built this haven in 2005, not long after learning that their young son, Jack, had a rare eye disease, juvenile retinoschisis, which threatened his vision. Their action plan was to get him cutting-edge medical care and provide him with a nurturing environment and excellent education. High-energy entrepreneurs who once worked on Wall Street, the couple were living in San Francisco and thought home schooling in a country setting might be best for the family. The Weinsteins purchased 5 acres and began building what they then called “Jack’s house.”
They found Stanford University ophthalmologist Deborah Alcorn, who was able to save 25 percent of Jack’s waning vision. She’s now his godmother. The family lives primarily in Ross in Marin County, so that Jack, 16, and his sister, Hailey, 13, could attend private schools that made home schooling unnecessary. But the Weinsteins return to their hillside Sonoma house, which they consider their true home, on weekends and for much of the summer.
“We try to spend 50 percent of our time in Sonoma,” Kathleen said. “That defines a good year for us.”
From the very beginning, they designed their home with an emphasis on having only what they needed, using materials and building methods that were environmentally sound. The U-shaped house is 4,000 square feet and has exterior walls that are 14 inches thick for maximum insulation. There’s a huge, high-ceilinged great room that reaches to 23 feet at its peak.
One wing holds the family bedrooms and bathrooms. The baths’ floor tiles are from Paris Ceramics, which had a once-in-a-lifetime shipment of stone excavated from the streets of Jerusalem. The stone had been laid around 2,000 years ago and may have been walked on by Jesus.
“To us, it celebrates the children’s Christian and Jewish heritage, and the miracles of faith,” Kathleen said.
The other wing has a guest suite, an office for Paul (a partner in a venture capital firm) and a TV room with an extra-large screen and comfy seats up close so Jack can see.
The Weinsteins cook and eat together in their well-equipped kitchen, pulling up leather stools around the stone peninsula where conversation is a vital part of every meal.
Paul and Kathleen team-cook on a six-burner Wolf cooktop, with a pantry, Sub-Zero refrigerator and sink in easy reach. The family eats together on leather stools pulled up around a stone peninsula, where conversation is paramount. The dark, swirly stone is from Sweden and looks almost like lava. They chose it because on the hill behind their kitchen there is evidence of a long-ago volcano, and the stone symbolizes lava flowing on, through their home. There’s also a guest house for visiting East Coast relatives, built over a garage that houses an eco-friendly electric Tesla car.
Outside is where the Weinsteins’ true selves are revealed. There’s a loggia made of Montana fieldstone with a built-in fireplace where they love to relax. Phantom screens enclose it if they so choose. There is a Sunbrella-fabric-covered arbor that hovers over weatherproof wicker furniture, with trucked-in sand underfoot. The lounge chairs and 54-inch dining table are by Positano. Redwood picnic tables under the arbor can seat up to 20 for large get-togethers. The arbor’s 10-foot support columns anchor a retractable sunshade that shields the 20-by-45-foot, solar-heated pool.
“The sun was too strong for Jack and we needed to figure out a way to shade the pool,” Kathleen explained. “Arbor Fence (in Sonoma) tackled the project and the owner was so committed to helping get Jack back outside to play. It was a real heartfelt mission. Now we string hammocks between the columns and have sand in our toes. It’s where most of our family talking happens.”
The arbor is a favorite setting for poolside dining and conversation, with a sandbox floor made for wiggling toes.
Kathleen, Jack and Hailey each swim 11/2 miles every day in the summer. Jack trained in this pool for the swim he made from Alcatraz to San Francisco in 2013. He raised $44,250 for No Barriers, a nonprofit with the motto, “What’s within you is stronger than what’s in your way,” a concept that Jack personifies. Paul and Hailey were alongside him in a Zodiac inflatable boat when Jack jumped into the 59-degree bay waters. Kathleen, who once completed the swim herself, guided his way in a kayak.
Hailey and Jack are key players in caring for the garden.
The Weinsteins’ orchard and gardens have grown into a philanthropic enterprise. The first thing they planted was tomatoes, “As an homage to my grandfather, who loves tomatoes,” Jack said. In 2005, they had 13 beds and 10 fruit trees. When they found themselves faced with 100 pounds of plums, they started thinking about a sharing plan that went beyond friends and neighbors.
The family started delivering produce to Vintage House senior center in Sonoma, both for use at the center and for people to take home. The seniors loved seeing the kids arrive with bushels of kale, garlic, radishes, peaches and pears — healthy and fabulously fresh.
Kathleen is teaching Hailey about beekeeping as a way to increase the productivity of their garden.
Jack and Hailey have spent many early summer mornings pulling weeds. They respect water, striving to never waste it. With this year’s drought, they will not plant the usual flower beds.
“It needs to produce something for us to water it,” Hailey said. “Flowers we don’t need, and they will stay dormant until next year.”
Gardening, she said, has shown her how she can give back to her community. Jack shares his sister’s sentiment. “This garden has given me a feeling of connectivity, both to my family and the people we help. When I was younger, I didn’t realize the full extent of what we were doing, but it always felt good and right. I understood the importance of being kind.”
The 5-acre property had plenty of space for a sand volleyball court next to the produce garden’s raised beds.
They’ve added Sonoma Hills Retirement Community to their donation list. On a regular basis, the kids supply enough produce to serve 80 meals there. They studied the property and devised a planting plan, so that fruits and vegetables can be grown on-site.
“I get goose bumps when I think about what those kids did,” Sonoma Hills executive director Mark Nilsson said. “They drew up a very professional schematic plan, and then gave me a check for $750, which was a gift from their grandmother, to buy trees.” Raised beds for vegetables have also been added.
The Weinsteins don’t call it “Jack’s house” anymore, because it is such a part of each of them. It’s where Jack and Hailey learned perhaps their greatest life lessons thus far: Love the land. Provide for your elders. Pursue your passions.
