The multi-course dinner is slated to include Hedgehog mushroom and caramelized onion tart, “Poor Man’s” truffle risotto, juniper and maple glazed Sonoma County duck breast and butternut squash and candy cap mushroom creme brulee along with wine pairings from master sommelier Geoff Kruth.
If there’s a crystal ball for the year’s upcoming food trends its the annual winter Fancy Food Show held in San Francisco in mid-January. Eager start-ups go shoulder to shoulder with international conglomerates to get the attention of food buyers who will stock their products in the coming year.
Some of my favorites of 2013 and trends we’ll be seeing on store shelves in the coming months (if not already):
Smoked Chocolate Chips at the Fancy Food Show 2013
– Smoke is the new bacon: The woody, campfire flavor is making a huge inroad into non-tradition foods like olive oil and chocolate. Hot Cakes alderwood smoked chocolate chips ($15) have a ton of potential for cooking.
– Foraged Food: Wild mushrooms and greens are all the rage, and Napa Forager Connie Green’s Wine Forest Foods includes packaged mushroom risottos, candy cap mushroom sugar and mushroom alchemy powder at thewildtable.net.
– Prepared sauces and relishes: Opening a jar of homemade-tasting goodness and calling it your own beats hours over the stove. Artisan sauces (curries, tomato sauces, skillet sauces and other ethnic sauces) are hot. Sonoma’s Tomato Smash features a chunky new-school tomato relish that beats the pants off ketchup. I also loved Dave’s Gourmet masala marinara.
– Microgreens and shoots: Move over sprouts. Shoots, or very young plants, come in every flavor under the rainbow — think sweet corn, radish, wasabi or cucumber — to add big taste to everyday foods. Microgreens, or baby lettuces and leaves, are also popular with the gourmet-set. Fresh Origins has some of the wildest selections of microgreens and edible flowers we’ve ever seen.
– Prunes: I’m predicting prunes to be the next cranberry. High in fiber and other health benefits, we’re seeing them pickled, pureed and mixed in as a sweetner. No longer are these sweet treats just for granny. Boat Street’s pickled French plums were insanely good.
– Wacky Ice Cream: The ice cream stampeded continues with sweet and savory flavors, mix-ins and surprises around every corner. Three Twins’ out of Petaluma makes a spicy cardamom and Jeni’s Ice Cream has come out with “influenza sorbet” with Cayenne pepper, ginger, bourbon, honey, lemon and orange to help ward off whatever bug is going around the office this week.
– Oil and Vinegar 2.0: Move over plain jane acids and oils. Vinegar is getting infused with everything from lemongrass to pear to kick up salads and add zip to pan sauces. Meanwhile, verjus has become our go-to instead of wine for adding a tart nip to recipes as well as drinking straight from the bottle. We love Terra Sonoma’s new 3L box (mostly made for restaurants, but great for sipping as well).
Of course, there were a million other ideas, trends and takes on the show…which you should check out as well.
Among the big winners in the 2013 Good Food Awards were a handful of North Bay food and beverage producers making noteworthy beer, cheese, coffee and spirits. Tapped for their commitments to flavor as well as a respect for their environment and connections to communities and cultural traditions, a panel of noteworthy judges tapped the following 114 winners from among 1,366 entries from 49 states.
Congrats to all of this year’s winners. I’ve included two quotes from our Healdsburg winners, who were pleased as punch about their selection.
BEER
Ballast Point Brewing Company, Winter San Salvador Black Lager, California
Bear Republic Brewing Company, Tartare, California (Healdsburg) “Tartare was awarded a medal in the Adventurous, Barreled, Big, Bawdy, & Belgian beer category. Tartare, a dry and tart Berliner-style wheat beer spontaneously fermented in a 2500 gallon oak vessel, is Bear Republic’s interpretation of the classic sour beer style dubbed as “The Champagne of the North.”
1000 Faces Coffee, Ethiopia – Shakiso Mora Mora, Georgia Case Coffee Roasters, Kenya – Nyeri Gaturiri Co-Op-Peaberry, Oregon Cuvee Coffee, El Salvador – El Molino Witness Project, Texas Evans Brothers Coffee, Ethiopia – Yirgacheffe Birhanu, Idaho
Flying Goat Coffee, Ethiopia – Wottuna Boltuma, California Healdsburg)
“Our aim, from the first day we started roasting coffee in Healdsburg, has been to find the best coffees in the world, grown by people who care not only for the crop they grow, but also for the people, animals and land around them. This commitment needs to be more than just a certification on paper; it needs to be a way of life. That’s why we spend so much time meeting with coffee farmers, walking with them on their farms, and exploring new and better ways to improve coffee quality and environmental health on and around their farms. To us, coffee quality and sustainability are mutually reinforcing. The Good Food Award, along with the special Golden Seal designation, is proof positive that this is a winning approach to creating the world’s best coffee. We owe a big thank you to the farmers and managers at the Wottuna Boltuma cooperative in Ethiopia. This winning coffee was the result of a special member-organized project that dedicated extra time to sorting ripe cherries and staffing the drying beds in exchange for a healthy per-pound premium if the targeted quality was achieved (Boy was it!). FGC green buyer, Phil Anacker, just returned from a 3 week trip to Southern and Western Ethiopia and visited with all the farms we work with, including the Wottuna Boltuma co-op. He came away quietly confident that the upcoming 2013 crop may be even better than last year’s.” -Phil Anacker of Flying Goat
Bill Foley will open Chalkboard at the Les Mars Hotel. Photo: Kent Porter, PD
Bill Foley will open Chalk Board at the Les Mars Hotel. Photo: Kent Porter, PD
Investor Bill Foley plans to open Chalkboard Bistro & Wine Bar this spring in the former Cyrus space at the Les Mars Hotel in Healdsburg.
He’s hired Shane McAnelly, the former executive chef of Va de Vi, a critically-acclaimed tapas-style bistro and wine bar in Walnut Creek. McAnelly left Va de Vi in December, according to Inside Scoop.
The concept will be an “upscale casual” fun atmosphere where visitors can share small plates and wine tasting flights, Foley said. “It should be a lot of fun,” he said, adding that restaurant will take full advantage of his kitchen gardens at Chalk Hill Winery.
Sources in the restaurant biz close to Foley said he was looking for a more “approachable” restaurant to replace the Michelin-starred Cyrus.
Cyrus closed in Oct. 2012 after years of disputes and lawsuits between Foley and Chef Douglas Keane, who leased the space. Foley is the owner of Chalk Hill Winery, Sebastiani Vineyard and Winery in Sonoma; Merus, Altvus, Kuleto Estate in Napa as well as numerous wineries throughout California and Washington and New Zealand.
Chef Tyler Florence prepares ravioli with Smoked Olive olive oil. Photo courtesy of Tolan Florence.
When you can count Chefs Tyler Florence, Michael Chiarello, Emeril Lagasse, John Ash, Ming Tsai, and a certain President of the United States among your culinary fan-base, you know you’re onto something. But the owners of The Smoked Olive in Petaluma still say they often have to get people to stop and taste their pungent olive oils before they fully understand — and appreciate — the unique flavor.
Sitting in the smoke-scented warehouse where she and partner Al Hartman produce and bottle their oils, co-owner Brenda Chatelain explains their unusual smoke-infused extra-virgin olive oil as “a marriage of two primal things: Smoke and oil. It just creates a taste that’s a combination that I think strikes something from our cave days.”
The couple make three different oils, the most popular of which is the Sonoma Smoked Olive Oil using premium California extra-virgin olive oils. Unlike imitation “smoke” flavors that can turn acrid or have a fake barbecue flavor (or worse make you feel like you just licked an ashtray), the proprietary process of smoking gives Hartman’s oils an intense, focused wood and smoke flavor that plays with both your tastebuds and your sense memory — for me campfires and burning autumn leaves. The mellow mix of olive oils blankets the tongue for a creamy, buttery finish.
Al Hartman and Brenda Chatelain of The Smoked Olive in Petaluma.
Chef Florence, an early fan of The Smoked Olive, describes their product more succinctly as, “the sexiest new flavor I’ve tasted in years.” He’s included their olive oil in his recent cookbook and served it at a $20,000 per plate fundraising dinner for the President. Reportedly, when Barack Obama got a drizzle of it on Florence’s squash and quail egg ravioli he didn’t just ask for seconds. He asked for thirds. The couple said they were also were asked to Fedex a shipment to Washington for the Inauguration. “But that’s about all we can tell you,” said Chatelain.
The idea for smoking olive oil came to Hartman in a dream, he said. The grandson of a chef, Hartman said he’s been fascinated since his teens with smoking meats and fish, building his own smoking contraptions that aren’t as much about fire (“That’s barbecuing,” he insists) but a slow, sustained infusion of wood and smoke into foods. His passion earned him the moniker “Smoke Whisperer” among his friends. So, after years of working in the real estate business, one day he just knew that smoking olive oil was his destiny. Chatelain, however, wasn’t so sure.
“Some of those first batches? Yuck.” she laughs.
Over several years of testing he got the flavors right, making sure that the oils weren’t exposed to extreme heat and light during the smoking process. “We were standing in the kitchen,” said Chatelain. “I just remember we both looked at each other and said, ‘Yes. This is it!’”. The couple began selling it at the Santa Rosa farmers’ market at the Veteran’s Hall, and found they were regularly selling out. A stint at San Francisco’s Fancy Food Show drew buyers like Michael Chiarello’s Napa Style, Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table, who all carry the oil.
Like many small business owners, Chatelain and Hartman have put in 14-plus hour days over the last five years to get their new company off the ground. But they don’t plan on letting the recent national attention go to their head. “It’s been timing, luck and hard work. We keep thinking all this is going to stop and then someone else writes about us,” Chatelain said, pointing to a stack of magazines and even a Washington Post article that gush about the oils as the “It” food product of the moment and a “new pantry essential”.
Why? Chatelain and Hartman think its a combination of a trend in food for smoked flavors, and the product being a simple luxury in a struggling economy. “There’s a curiosity factor, but then they taste it,” said Chatelain. “They are hooked.”
Another local fan, Chef John Ash, like many, were skeptical about the oil at first, but soon became a believer. “The two great enemies of fine oils are heat and light and I couldn’t imagine that one or both of those hadn’t been used. When I tasted the oils I was amazed. Lovely olive oil flavor with an interesting smokiness that those of us who like to grill are always searching for,” he said. Ash added that he recommends the oil to students of his healthy cooking classes as a way to add a grilled flavor without adding carbon to your food.
Smoked Olive olive oils
Hartman, who jumps up during the interview to check on his smoking operation, keeps a tight lid on his proprietary process and research and development. Suffice to say his smoking lab is as unconventional as his oils and there are a number of other smoked foods in the works (his smoked brown sugar is currently available). Saying anything else, well, might end us up in a whole lot of heat.
Currently the oils, which also include a stronger Napa Smoked Olive Oil and a spicy version, Santa Fe Smoked Chili Olive Oil are in approximately 600 stores nationwide and has begun shipping to far-flung places like Dubai and Australia. Locally you can find them at the Saturday Veteran’s Hall market, Sur La Table, The Olive Press, Big John’s Market and the Oakville Grocery in Healdsburg and online at thesmokedolive.com.
Sonoma County is awash with great regional Mexican dishes. From Oaxacan moles and Jaliscan birria to the street foods of Mexico City, fish tacos of the Baja peninsula and ancient flavors of Yucatan we’re a caldera of Latin flavors.
So BiteClub asks: Where is the best Mexican food in Sonoma County Restaurants?
I’ll pick the best 10 comments below and see if I agree…
Here are some of my favorites…
Moles: I’m pretty convinced that no one can beat Agave (Healdsburg) and their sister restaurant Casa De Mole.
Tlayuda: I absolutely loved this version of a Mexican pizza in Windsor.
Chilaquiles: I recently went on a hunt, and was blow away by a version at Viola Pastry Boutique and Jeffrey’s Hillside
Fresh Tortillas: Freshly made, these are by far the best corn tortillas.
Tamales: El Molino Central are the tamales to beat. Tacos Dorados: I’m a die-hard fan of Chelino’s.
Carnitas: Lola’s is pretty rock solid.
Chiles Rellenos: Las Palmas Fish Tacos: Las Palmas Burritos: La Texanita Guacamole: El Michoacana
Interior construction at Belly Left Coast Kitchen and Tap Room in Santa Rosa
Belly Left Coast Kitchen in Santa Rosa
A rock star chef is heading up Belly Left Coast Kitchen and Tap Room in downtown Santa Rosa. But not thatrock star chef.
Slated for a spring 2013, owner Chef Gray Rollin, who’s been Tour Chef for the likes of Motley Crue, KISS, the Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry and most recently Linkin Park, is rehabbing the former Checkers restaurant (523 Fourth Street) to showcase a hearty menu of locally-inspired comfort foods from throughout the Pacific.
Already booked for several weeks of touring, however, Gray has tapped partner and co-exec chef Reino Cruz and GM Pablo Scurto to get the restaurant ready for a mid-March opening. All three have worked at Tres Hombres, with Cruz’ most recent stint at Lark Creek restaurant Yankee Pier in Mill Valley.
Look for dishes like Three Hog Mac and Cheese with chorizo, smoked bacon and pancetta; pulled pork sliders and beer-braised sausages; tuna poke, Crab Louie and Dungeness Crab Cakes, the “Belly Burger”, crispy braised pork belly, barbecue ribs, chorizo Brussels Sprouts and churro fondue along with 20 beers on tap.
Stay tuned for more details.
Interior construction at Belly Left Coast Kitchen and Tap Room in Santa Rosa
SHED under construction in Healdsburg, January 2013. Click for a larger version.
CONSTRUCTION REPORT: BiteClub caught up with Healdsburg Shedowners Cindy Daniel and Dough Lipton, along with General Manger Kenny Rochford (previously of Medlock Ames) for a quick hard-hat look at the “modern grange” under construction just off the Healdsburg plaza.
SHED under construction in Healdsburg, January 2013. Click for a larger version.
Though there’s still plenty of work to do before its March 2013 opening, Daniel has already carved out spaces for local produce, a grain mill, larder, cafe, fermentation “bar” and event space upstairs (with a kitchen any chef would covet). In a breathless discussion of what’s to come at the 9,700 square-foot project, Daniel, Lipton and Rochford are clearly working from an evolving wish of ideas that encompasses everything from SHEDtalks, and worm-composting kits to bee-keeping and salumi classes, churning ice cream and generally embracing the homesteading and farm to table movement.
SHED construction in Healdsburg
Former Chez Panisser, Niki Ford will be overseeing the facility’s culinary program and the trio have consulted with many local farmers, winemakers, historians, makers, keepers and producers to make the experience of SHED as interactive and authentic as possible. “We want to connect into the community and support the people growing our food,” said Daniel.
Here’s a quick list of some of the things to come from SHED in the coming months…
– Grain salads inspired by Middle Eastern and Indian cuisines
– Homemade yogurt and slow cooked porridge
– A flower market
– Indoor, outdoor seating
– A specially-blended SHED espresso from Flying Goat
– Pastry Bar
– Locally sourced grains, milled onsite
– Kombucha on tap
– Classes on canning or bee-keeping, among other “granny arts” programs, nutritional programs
– A housewares department with tagines, canning supplies and cast iron cookware
– “Persian” breakfast, molasses donuts
– Smoked meats
– Worm bins and compost teas
A Chipotle Mexican Grill is slated for Coddingtown in 2013.
A Chipotle Mexican Grill is slated for Coddingtown in 2013.
Chipotle Mexican Grill is confirmed plans to open at Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa, according to a company spokesman.
Rumors have been swirling for months, especially after the socially-conscious fast food eatery announced plans to open in Petaluma and Rohnert Park last year. With the restaurant’s march northward, Coddingtown Mall seemed a natural fit, with ongoing renovations attracting large-scale national chains including Target, Whole Foods and BJ’s Restaurant.
The Coddingtown restaurant is slated to open this summer. Simon spokesperson Kim Hall was unable elaborate, stating that the mall did not yet have a signed lease.
Chipotle Mexican Grill has about 1,200 restaurants nationwide and has won over many fast-food critics with its dedication to organic, sustainable foods and eco-conscious attitude. “With more than a third of America currently obese, a healthier eating movement is under way and Chipotle is seizing the reins. This is exactly why revenue jumped by 26% in the first quarter and comparable-store sales were up almost 13%,” said Motley Fool in its analysis of the growing company.
The 10-week pop-up restaurant at Omelette Express (112 Fourth St., Santa Rosa) run by local butcheress, Berry Salinas, is adding Friday night festivities with a $15 prix fixe dinner (recent meals included pork belly with creamy grits, hand pies with Meyer Lemon Cheesecake), wine and beer by the glass and rockin’ tunes from the North Bay Hootenany.
Check out The Crux on Jan. 18 and Marty O’Reilly and Sean Carscadden on the 25th from 7-9pm.
They’ll still have Sunday fried chicken pick-up dinners from 5-7p.m. at 555 Sebastopol Rd., Santa Rosa. More details at butcherandcook.com.
