Aaronp

For a nice dinner for a large group by the Palace hotel, I would recommend Prospect that was recommended above on this thread. My favorite meal there was the duck. It was prepared 3 ways and very good. The menu is different every time I go back and always tasty.

If you're in North Beach, I will second the recommendation for the Comstock. The bartenders are all fantastic there. I suggest trying a "barkeep's whimsy" and see what magic they make for you. Two other places in North Beach I really like are Park Tavern (the Brussels sprout chips are fantastic) and Don Pisto's (fantastic tacos in a pretty much unmarked store front).

I've found the most useful things in the freezer are home-made stocks (usually chicken and beef) and various proteins. Since I get a CSA basket every week, I don't tend to keep many veggies in there (peas and corn are the two exceptions right now). For the proteins, individually flash-frozen prawns are great. I just started seasoning and vacuum sealing steaks, chicken, and pork for the freezer. You can throw them still frozen into the sous-vide bath and have the start of a great meal with very little effort.

It's been a few years since I've been there but I always loved Memphis in Costa Mesa. The Catfish Po-boy was great. I used to eat there at least once a week but have since moved away from Orange County.

I tried the modernist pho broth today. This involves 5 lbs. of bones, 2 lbs. of oxtails, and various aromatics with 5L of water, cooked in a pressure cooker. It was very expensive compared to going out to a restaurant and probably only landed in the middle of the pack as far as tastyness. I somehow thought with that much meat and bones, it would end up richer and better than what you would typically find in the restaurant. I have made both modernist pressure cooker beef stock and chicken stock and they turned out great but they are rarely the sole focus of the dish like the Pho broth is. As an experiment, given how much meat was used, I tried running a second batch. I refilled the pressure cooker with water and cooked it for another 1.5 hours under pressure. That broth was completely insipid and had almost no flavor -- it went right down the drain. This indicates to me the pressure cooking method is pretty effective at extracting flavor -- there was none left to extract for the second round.

We just went to Napa last weekend and visited Smith Madrone. It was awesome. They were only pouring two wines, the Chardonnay and the Cabernet and they were both excellent. They also gave us a taste of the Riesling that hadn't been bottled yet, also tasty. What was better was that Charles spent two hours with us. We talked about growing grapes and making the wine, of course. We also talked about history of Napa, Bottle Shock, science, history of science, psychology of pricing, etc. This is a man that loves what he does and it shows. It was a ton of fun and very interesting. I can't recommend this place enough. I'll be back. Another place we really enjoyed at the other end of the valley was Silenus. This isn't a winery per-se but rather a collective of very vintners. They had a tremendous variety of wines from a dozen different vintners all made in that facility. It was really interesting to see how different all the wines were. Jim was pouring the wine and was extremely knowledgeable and helpful. We found several that we really liked.

Commonwealth is fantastic. We ate there a week or so after it opened and everything seemed to be running very smoothly. I loved the liquid nitrogen sabayon and I normally don't like desert. The whole meal was fantastic. We sat at the bar (wine and beer only) which was great because you get to watch all the dishes being made in the kitchen. Bar Agricole is also good. The food was good but what stood out to me was the bartenders and the drinks (we also sat at the bar here). They focus more on the skill and creativity of the bartenders rather than the variety of available spirits. I suggest getting an Old Fashioned with a hand carved single piece of ice. The one downside for me was that it was very crowded when I was there. In sticking to the bar theme, I heartily recommend the Comstock Saloon in North Beach and Absinthe in Hayes Valley. They have exceptionally skilled bartenders. At either place you can challenge them to make up a drink for you and it's always fantastic. The food is better at Absinthe, though. One final recommendation is for Sebo sushi in Hayes Valley. The fish is amazingly fresh and perfectly prepared. They are purists which I can appreciate -- they refuse to offer a California Roll.