Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar is officially expanding to Petaluma. The popular Santa Rosa eatery has just inked a deal to move into the downtown Theater District just off Petaluma Blvd South.
According to co-owner and GM Kevin Cronin, the second outpost of Rosso will seat about 50 inside and 20 outside. The format will be similar to the Santa Rosa restaurant — wood-fired pizzas, piadini, fresh cheeses, house made salumi and plenty of by-the-glass wines — but the Petaluma location will also include a freshly made pasta special each day.
“It’s a little smaller than Santa Rosa and it will look a little different, but Petaluma is a lot like Santa Rosa in that there are so many incredible farmers nearby,” said Cronin. He and chef/owner John Franchetti plan to take advantage of local produce, meats and dairy at the southern location.
Freshly made mozzarella has become a signature of the Rosso operation in Santa Rosa and at local farmer’s markets, but with the abundance of dairy in Petaluma, Cronin said, “we may start experimenting with some different types of cheeses.”
The Petaluma space, which has never been occupied, will be built out over the coming months. Look for an opening between June and August of 2011.
Think of it as GPS for your Thin Mints. With the click of a few buttons on your smart phone, you can now instantly track down the closest box of available Girl Scout cookies in your area, be it Samoa, Trefoil, Tagalong or Lemon Chalet. It’s as easy as Click. Search. Eat.
Beginning February 24, the free Cookie Locator app for iPhone and Android will alert you to waiting gaggles of girls just waiting to sell you a box (or ten) of cookies from various booths, stands and gatherings of local scouts. Just type in your zip code, or let your phone geo-locate the nearest cookie commissary. Don’t have apps? Those clever Northern California Girl Scouts are also using Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about their tasty treats.
But don’t worry, technophobes. The scouts will also be pulling their cookie-loaded wagons through local neighborhoods on February 19 and 20 and selling to friends and family in the coming days.
What’s In The Box: This year, there are no new cookies in the NorCal lineup. On the menu are Thin Mints, Trefoils, Samoas, Tagalongs, Dulce de Leche, Do-Di-Dos, Lemon Chalet Cremes and the newish Thank U Berry Munch.
In case you’re wondering where that $4 per box you’re spending goes, you can rest assured that the calories you just ingested go toward camps, service projects, uniforms, membership fees and a variety of other good social deeds. Not pink ponies, candy and silly bands, as my own little Brownie had hoped.
I may have seen a cloud this week, but if I did, I don’t remember it.
Really, our weather has been impossibly nice. And really, it ought to worry me – the lack of rain, the risk of budbreak before a frost – but it’s hard not to simply soak in it, the whole of our little wine country valley like some great, tickly bubble bath of pea shoots and sunlight. As you can plainly see, my magnolia tree remains entirely convinced that winter’s gone packing, despite the certainty of our path along the earth’s elliptic, and I suspect my grapes and roses are taking notes.
Whether it’s the unseasonable warmth or some other circuit breaker in the soil, my oranges have never been sweeter and are staging a revolt: Pick us now! Or we’ll jump to our deaths! The challenge with even the smallest of orange trees, of course, is how to use all that fruit, the byproduct of the tree’s profligate attempts at procreation: I’m not above using them for decoration, for starters. A pitcher of juice, which I’ll first strain, with Sunday brunch. And come our turn for snack, a teeming orange kindergarten, chubby little faces full of silly smiling wedges.
But the greatest number, like uncountable generations before them, will meet their maker on the glass steeple of my great-grandmother-in-law’s juicer. At least, I think that’s where it came from, the Alabama kitchen of my wife’s mother’s youth, a vaguely Confederate past I try not to hold against the thing itself. Regardless, it’s a wonderfully dated piece of kitchenware, profoundly lo-tech and familiar in that way that only things first used by other, older hands can be, the sort of tool you never really own but merely take care of until it’s no longer your turn. It’s chipped, of course, somewhere along the base, but I’m not giving it up until it draws blood, and maybe not even then…
In any case, I’m not really a juice person, and I prefer my food more salty than sweet, so my first inclination was to cook all that fruit into something savory. This presented a minor technical challenge because of all that natural sugar, but that’s why some god with a palate gave us vinegar, and why I decided to try my hand at a gastrique, a simple sauce consisting of little more than sugar, fruit, and some sort of acid to balance it out. For the unrepentant sauce slut, particularly the non-professional, the gastrique is a wonderful thing: Requiring as few as three ingredients, one pot, and maybe 10 minutes of marginally active cooking time, the basic formula allows for virtually infinite variation, and is remarkably hard to screw up. This particular version reminds me of that sticky, neon glaze you’d get from the steam tray of a strip-mall Chinese, except that it tastes really good.
Use it as a glaze, a sauce proper, or a dip; serve it with grilled chicken, shellfish, or with pork chops and rice, as we did last night. Take the basic principle and make up your own: Maybe black cherries, with pheasant or game; a blackberry gastrique with fois gras; or a sweeter, raspberry-tinged version with bitter chocolate cake…
Fresh Naval Orange Gastrique
0.5c Water
0.5c Sugar
2c Freshly Squeezed OJ (or any juice you like, preferably strained)
0.5c Rice Wine Vinegar (or Sherry, White Wine, or whatever you have to hand)
Pinch of salt and fresh white pepper, to taste (optional)
Easy Way (and entirely adequate): Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive sauce pan, bring to the boil, and reduce to about a 0.5C. Strain and let cool.
Slightly Less Easy Way (the classic): Combine sugar and water in non-reactive sauce pan, bring to the boil, and cook until it reaches a golden color and starts to caramelize, stirring carefully. (Don’t let this stuff touch you! Molten sugar is a wicked, malicious thing.) Add the OJ and vinegar. The caramel will seize up and make you think that it’s all gone horribly wrong – don’t freak out, it’s fine, it will melt back in as soon as you bring it all back up to boiling. Stir the caramel in and cook down to 0.5C. Strain and let cool.
The Dalai Lama eats meat because his doctors tell him to. My wife was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for many years, until she got pregnant and we went to Paris for lunch; now, she’ll eat meat, but only from animals that she would kill with her own hands. My father’s wife will taste meat, but only very rarely, and even then with a whispered apology and a tear. And I’ve already told you how I made my eldest daughter cry over the young goat whose shanks I braised for dinner, but did I tell you that the same child gleefully clamors “Wilbur tastes good!”, whenever I serve bacon with her eggs?
"Disembodied" frog steak
It all makes me wonder what we mean when we say, “I’m a vegetarian”, or “I don’t eat meat”. Such statements are logically and morally complex, and force us to ask uncomfortable questions about the where and why of the lines we draw, about who and what we’re willing to watch die for our dinner. But what has been niggling me, ever since I read this post, is that I’m no longer sure what the word “vegetarian” even means, now that we have the technology to grow what amounts, at the cellular level, to meat without a body.
That may sound bizarre, and it is, but it is not an abstraction, nor is it particularly new: A former resident at the Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory at Harvard Medical School produced, in 2003, a disturbing work of technology and art dubbed the “victimless steak”, a hunk of animal protein grown in the lab and external to other living creatures. I’m not a biologist, and I can’t tell you that I fully understand the project – the authors refer to it by the very creepy and cryptic-sounding “disembodied cuisine” – but I do get the gist of it: The artists are asking us what it means to eat meat, what it means to be a victim of the food chain, perhaps no less than what it means to be “alive”.
A few days ago, prior to reading that post on Envo, I’d have sided with my Shorter OED, Volume 2:
Vegetarian, noun. A person who on principle abstains from animal food.
Because, etymologically speaking, that seems clear enough. But now these characters at the Tissue Culture and Art Project at the University of Western Australia have gone and seriously messed with my head, and I’m really not sure what to think.
Not to be confused with Rohnert Park’s Tasty Tuesday food truck lineup,Willi’s Winebaris offering Tasting Tuesdays from 4-5pm. It’s a stellar deal: Top notch local winemakers pour several tastes of their wine and the kitchen whips up small bites from the menu for just $10. Plus, you get first dibs on the coveted outdoor patio. So, there’s that.
Reservations are a good idea, since word is getting out fast…
February 15: Ehren Jordan, Turley Wine Cellars and Failla Wines
February 22: Nik Stez, Woodenhead Vintners
March 1: Phil Staehle, Enkidu Wines
March 8: Aaron & Jesse Inman, Romililly
March 15: Cameron Frey, Ramey Wine Cellars
March 22: Mike Sullivan, Benovia Winery
March 29: Jesse Wurtzel, Jus Soli
Reservations or additional information:
Phone: 707.526.3096
Like much of the produce and meat he serves at his restaurant,Peter Lowell’s, 30 year-old Lowell Sheldon is a homegrown product of West Sonoma County. Raised on two self-sustaining acres of land in Sebastopol, a graduate of the Waldorf school, sometimes farmer and untiring proponent of ecological and organic ideals, Sheldon is the kind of dreamy-eyed idealist you might expect.
And up until recently, Peter Lowell’s was, in many ways, the restaurant you might expect.
“We’ve always fit in Sebastopol,” says Sheldon. With macro bowls as a top seller and a printed credo on each menu stating that, “people, animals and the environment come before profits, where organic is a way of life, and where the highest quality cuisine is a top priority — is in keeping with our community standards,” there’s no mistaking the restaurant’s point of view. On the walls are photos of local farmers’ collectives and bee-keepers who supply the restaurant. Producers wander in with boxes of mushrooms or lettuce or whatever they’ve picked that day.
But Peter Lowell’s is evolving. Since opening three years ago with an almost meatless menu, the restaurant has undergone a fairly radical re-thinking of its mission. “The menu today reflects my own evolution,” said Sheldon. “I was vegan for quite a while and was really thinking about what I was eating. But my reality changed and needed to expand. This is a menu for everyone,” he said.
Duck Egg Raviolo
And while the seitan, macro bowls, brown rice, beans, seasonal greens and tofu, remain some of the restaurant’s most popular items, the recent addition of the talented and unapologetically omnivorousChef Daniel Kedan brings serious culinary cred to a restaurant that’s always been good, but fell just short of great.
The Ad Hoc and Cantinetta Piero alum has a deft hand with rustic, full-flavored Italian dishes culled from seasonal ingredients. Focusing the ever-changing menu on whatever local farmers bring to the back door and with plans to source the majority of their spring and summer produce from a Green Valley Farm they’ll work themselves, Kedan and Sheldon’s visions seem to dovetail nicely.
“Yountville never felt like, home says Kedan. “I wanted to be around people I’m comfortable with. There was so much pressure and intensity. Here farmers are coming in all the time, and it’s much more casual and relaxed. I mean, if your vegetables aren’t perfect here, we can still highlight them,” he said.
Along with veggies, they’ll be trying their hands at goat’s milk cheese and offering up cuts of local lamb, beef, pig and chicken. Oh, and Chef Seamus Guevara, one of their most talented former chefs (now at Cotogna in SF), has left instructions on how to make his amazing lasagna.
Broccoli Romanesco with Panisse at Peter Lowell's
And so Peter Lowell’s continues to evolve, finding a comfy spot somewhere between idealistic and delicious.
The Vibe: Housed in a bright, welcoming LEED-certified space, Peter Lowell’s small outdoor patio has a bubbling fountain that’s as welcoming for morning coffee as evening wine and wood-fired pizzas.
The Menu: Look for dishes like Pizza Bianco (with shaved Bosc pears, bacon and blue cheese); Lamb burgers with aoili on a house made bun; veggie-friendly dishes like Romanesco broccoli with panisse; Gleason Ranch pork belly, delicate raviolo filled with duck eggs, ricotta and seasonal produce and homemade pasta.
Drinks: Lots of small production, locally produced wines that share in the PL philosophy.
Peter Lowell’s, 7385 Healdsburg Avenue Ste. 101, Sebastopol, 829-1077
WINNERS HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED. IF you’re not a winner this time, please don’t feel sad. There were so many great entries and I really wish I could have included a lot more of you. Thanks for playing!
Tell me why you’d like to be one of five lucky winners to sit at a reserved table and sample through the entire menu at the newly opened Five Guys Burgers and Fries on Tuesday, February 15.
Okay, so maybe it isn’t The French Laundry, but I want your opinion! And hey, I can’t eat all that food alone. We’ll start the chowing at 5:30pm on the dot and your thoughts and opinions may be featured in the BiteClub roundup.
So why should you be there? Let me know in the comments section below. I’ll pick my favorite answers.
Note: Please be able to come at 5:30pm on Tuesday and please be willing to be an enthusiastic eater. If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, that’s great, but this might not be the event for you…I’m just sayin’.
Winners announced on Monday, Feb 14. Must confirm by 3pm Feb. 14. Full rules…
I just got back from job-hunting in New York and, in case you haven’t read a paper in the last two years, the labor market blows. On the other hand, I ate well and cheap, because Manhattan without street food would be like the movies without popcorn, the Internet without porn. Plus or minus the thrill of wondering if you’ll wake up with intestinal parasites.
From Germany, with love
In point of fact, for all the years I’ve been eating street-meat, I’ve suffered no ill consequence more serious than the occasional if ill-timed fart, and I’ve come to see the City’s most accomplished cart warriors as ballast to all those celeb chefs and their menus requiring mortgages, proof that the People’s Food can be cheap and good, and as offering a profound perspective on what it takes, and what it doesn’t, to produce good food. I mean, these guys are cooking on the sidewalk. I don’t know about you, but I rank the act of consistently whipping up massive quantities of super tasty vittles for 12 hours straight on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan, without giving your customers food poisoning, as one of the great culinary feats of our times.
Gyro plate as crack pipe
In an attempt to recognize this heroism, and never to be confused with stale pretzels and three-day-old boiled hot dogs, we have the finalists for the Vendy, the biggest award in the street food hierarchy, the moral equivalent of a third Michelin star or a food-tops rating in Zagat’s. While deserving of the hype, the Vendy event can be a bit of a circus, so I highly recommend working off of NY Mag’s list of the Concrete Elite instead. I find it fascinating, hopeful, and to the undying credit of the City and its sidewalk sous that these lists, even when dated, remain virtually unchanged in either name, location, or quality.
An essential part of the street-meat experience is, of course, its sheer proximity, a few dollars and a couple of city blocks the only things between you and a great meal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly above the “food pilgrimage”, but when it comes to street food, you sort of want to just walk to it, at least in my book; so, when I’m in Midtown, I set my table at the corner of 6th and 52nd, or 5th and 53rd… Herewith, and I mean no disrespect to the many great alternatives further afield, my Midtown Manhattan Trifecta:
Security or Freedom?
Facing temporal or gastrointestinal constraints, triage would inexorably lead me to Rolf’s Hallo Berlin sausage cart at 54th and 5th. He’ll even let you choose between the Democracy (was Churchill, now Obama) and the Dictator (Stalin or Mao) Special?
The Halal Guys on the SW corner of 53rd St and 6th Ave are legend. There are dozens of impostors, many within a one-block radius, so if you go, be sure to check the corner; you’ll know when you’re there, because the line is longer than the competition by a thoroughly justifiable order of magnitude. What other gyro-style stand has its own Wikipedia page? Who else make lamb-on-rice so good that you can get knifed for cutting in line (yes, it really happened). Where else do the customers refer to the white sauce as “crack sauce”?
run by the only street chef I know who trained at the Russian Tea Room and marinates cubes of lamb – not pressed into gyros, fresh cubes – in his own concoction of papaya juice to tenderize it. Be sure to try it with a side of his freakishly hot, not-quite-Middle-Eastern, neon-green jalapeno chili sauce. Craaaaazeeeeee hot, but Oh. So. Good.
From the rumor mill: Big news from one of Santa Rosa’s favorite chefs: Josh Silvers says that after twelve years, it’s time for big changes at his destination-restaurant, Syrah Bistro.
Now don’t panic, because the Syrah you love isn’t totally going away. Think of it as a sort of restaurant Botox.
Come spring, the Railroad Square eatery is set to be transformed with a new look, new small plates menu and new name — Petite Syrah. Silvers and his staff are currently working on the new menu and working with a designer on the interior concept for the restaurant. Fans shouldn’t worry much, however, because Silvers plans to make the turnaround quickly, with only a week or so of down time at the restaurant.
We all have Food To Do List. Some are ambitiously long, others unmanageably brief, but any eater worth their pink Himalayan sea salt has an ever-changing list of Sonoma County restaurants they’ve been meaning to check out.
Eaters rejoice! Here’s your chance to try something on BiteClub. I’m giving away $200 worth of Sonoma County restaurant gift certificates ($50 each) to four lucky winners who convince us that they need a fork lift in honor of Sonoma County Restaurant Week, February 21-27.
Just tell me in the comments below which of the 100-plus Sonoma County Restaurant Week participants you’re most excited to try this month. Skip the sob stories, and wow me with your passion for local foods, chefs and dining.
I’ll pick my four favorite comments and hand over these tasty gift certificates randomly (who knows which of the four you’ll receive, but enthusiastic eaters never turn down a free meal). And stay tuned for more details on Restaurant Week, including some of my top picks.
Full rules here. Contest ends Wednesday, February 16, 2011. Enter today!
I may have seen a cloud this week, but if I did, I don’t remember it.
