melkor

I'm not saying her food doesn't taste good. If you had to pick between coconut noodles and semolina pasta and only eat one of them for say five years, would you honestly pick the coconut noodles? If Trotter decided to serve only boiled food for some completely random reason, people would think he went off the deep end. You wouldn't change your eating habits to only eat the same type of food Roxanne serves, so what makes it anything other than a novelty? Cotton candy and funnel cakes taste good too, but they aren't haute cuisine. Is there a single dish at Roxanne's that would compare favorably to a signature dish from another restaurant in the same price range? $250 for a deuce is the same ball park as Gary Danko and Chez Panisse, that's tough company for them to be keeping when the best praise they get is that it's different.

I thought it'd be interesting to keep a blog of our thanksgiving prep this time around. We (ms melkor and I) are having thanksgiving at our place again this year. Since we moved to California a few years ago, my relatives have been flying out to have thanksgiving with us here. The original plan for this year was to fly east and visit ms melkor's family, but my 87 year old grandmother has agreed to come out, so here we are - putting together another feast. At the moment we've got our menu most of the way planned out, we've done a little bit of prep work. The duck confit is resting under a layer of fat in the fridge and there is some beef stock on the stove at the moment. Otherwise all things are left to do. The plan is to start off with a few a bottle of prosecco or champagne and some canapes while people are showing up and we are finishing up in the kitchen. The only canape we've decided on so far is a puff pastry cup filled with smoked salmon mouse, we'll top them with a little creme fresh and some fresh chives. We still need to sort out other finger foods, some goat cheese something or other - I'm thinking maybe small squares of phillo folded like a cannoli with an herb and goat cheese mixture piped in, I'm not sure if the phillo cannoli thing will work so if we decide to try it I'll do a test batch sometime this week. After the canapes we'll serve a salad with greens and shredded duck confit, we need to sort out what greens and what dressing we'll use. We'll drink more champagne with the salad. Soup will follow - small crocks of onion soup. An acme bread crouton, and some melted cheese. Wine hasn't been determined yet. For our main course, a willybird turkey, brined, briefly hickory smoked, then roasted. Potatoes roasted in duck fat, stuffing, creamed spinach, glazed carrots, a sweet potato casserole, cranberry compote, gravy, and some foccacia. We'll serve a riesling and an as yet unknown red. With two glasses per person we can avoid the sweet/savory conflict for wine pairings by having a wine for each half of the plate. It's not ideal, but it's better than the complaints we'd get for skipping the sweet potatoes. Dessert always starts out being a reasonable list, but as we always add to it at the last minute. So far it's a pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and a linzer torte. A bottle of 95 phelps eisrebe to drink with it. We'll finish up with coffee, biscotti, and some assorted chocolates. The beef stock is almost done and we ordered our turkey today. In the next few days I need to go pick up a few more bottles of the riesling we are serving. I'll update this as we go.

Chris Kimball is creepy.

It's because cows taste good. People would be happy to believe that eating nothing but cheesecake would cause weight loss, because cheesecake tastes better than the diet alternatives. If raw food actually tasted better than cooked food, there would be more than a couple of places offering it. If say nuts made better tasting cheese than milk does, or coconuts made better noodles than semolina, people would be discussing how great their pasta tastes now that they are using coconuts instead of wheat, but they aren't - because it doesn't.

Chocolate would have to be an exception since it can't be made without roasting the nibs. As far as sweeteners go I suppose you could make your own maple syrup by leaving a vat of sap out to evaporate in the sun, but somehow I suspect that's not the case here. I'd imagine that she's using the syrup from sugar canes or something similar.

If your going to prager, ya might as well go across the street to heitz as well. They are one of the few places left on highway 29 with good wine that still have a free tasting.

Based on this logic, I'd be eating all my meals at Cucina del Salvador which is in the SRO hotel a block away. Danko, FL and (I'm guessing) Chez Panisse are all more similar to each other than Roxanne's. It may be a little farther away (although if you go down 101 I'm pretty sure Roxanne's is closer than SF) but it's a much different experience. I'm sure that Roxanne's is a completely different experience, but I'm still not convinced that I'd enjoy it. My point was that there are so many places I haven't had enough meals that it's hard to add someplace I'm not sure of to the list. A meal at a place with a price tag like Roxanne's has is only in the budget once a month and I just don't see getting Roxanne's on the schedule in the near future. I'm also certain that I'm arguing an indefensible position, but that hasn't stopped me in the past, so why should I let it get in the way now.

For me, it's hard to justify the trip out to larkspur to eat at Roxannes. It's a shorter trip to Chez Panisse, Gary Danko, or the French Laundry. It's not that I think Roxanne's is serving bad food or that I've got a problem with the veg menu, it just doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. I'm sure I'll eat there at some point but it's unlikely to be my idea to do so.

Living up here is nice, but it's a royal pain in the ass to get anywhere, there is no reasonable fish monger nor is there a reasonable butcher anywhere in the valley. We do have an endless supply of places to eat, but most of them are serving unremarkable food to clueless tourists and everything is expensive. The good news is everyone I do business with is excited to come up to meet with me, so I rarely have to travel. When I do have to go meet with someone it's been at the ferry building in SF recently as the wine bar there is my new second office.

The shops inside the ferry building are reasonably high priced. I would agree with you that the vendors at the saturday market are charging a bit more than the other local farmers markets, but it's not significantly more. The market here in Napa is maybe 10% cheaper, but it's only open Tuesday mornings from May until November. Besides, it's nice to take the boat in to go grocery shopping on a Saturday morning, so I'm happy to go a few times a month.

It's hardly an impressive meal, but using the acme ciabatta to make a pizza is a seriously good snack.

I've only got chicken fat, smoked chicken fat, turkey fat, smoked turkey fat, duck fat, and beef fat in my freezer. Clearly I need to work on my collection

The two pound tubs I've purchased are one quart plastic containers. They usualy cost between $3.50 and $4.00/lb.

Here is a site selling duck fat for $5/lb, I've never ordered from them but the tub they are selling is the same kind I've used in the past for confit.

I can't believe you managed to get all this recorded during the zoo that the ferry market is in the morning. I'm impressed.

It's a sauce spoon, ya use it to shovel the leftover sauce into your face after you've run out of food to mop it up with. I wonder if the upcoming sabbatical is affecting the morale of the staff... Every time I've been there we've been seated down stairs. In fact it's always been in the same small room to the right as you walk in. Is it reasonable to expect that the French Laundry should ever have an off night, given the effort involved in getting a table and the expense once you get that table? I've never had an off dish there nevermind an off meal but have at just about every other restaurant I've been to more than a couple of times. Where else did you end up eating while you were up this way?

Not only is their ciabatta seriously good, but it's also $2 for a loaf.

Kona and JBM are expensive because of the labor costs and clueless people buying based on price rather than taste, a good chocolatey yemeni moka is a far better cup to my tastes. That said, there is no reason not to expect good coffee at good restaurants, it's rarely the case that you find it, but you should be able to. The French Laundry has outstanding espresso, the Martini House also has good coffee but it's the exception rather than the rule.

The key is using an ample amount of butter. But I happen to like dark toast, you get more caramelization. more caramelization? on toast? ya sure you don't mean more burned?

Caffe Trieste in north beach is where I get espresso in the city.

Clearly you need to get out more, travel the world, learn what good food is all about.

I completely agree with you, the point I was trying to make was that we don't have enough information to draw any definitive conclusions. Was the service up to par? How about the food? If not was it because of their age? We simply don't have enough information to start accusing Adam of being an ill informed buffoon who is incapable of identifying good food. Though to be fair, I'd likely take your position from the start were his post about a restaurant I very much enjoy.

Does that mean they shouldn't be used for reheating soups?

And his love for pasta?

Can you make french toast in the bags? How about a hamburger? Hotdogs?