Tartine Bakery, San Francisco

I am going out on a limb and pronouncing Tartine Bakery the finest bakery in the Western world. I freely admit that I base this opinion on only a few sampled items and on two visits that were separated by one year. I understand that Tartine only opened in 2002, lacks charm and comfortable seating and has long lines of insufferable San Franciscans. But I am also basing this opinion on visits to such celebrated establishments as Maison Kayser and the ever precious Gérard Mulot, as well as the inferior quality of bakeries in Los Angeles and New York. (When Bread Bar, the local branch of Maison Kayser, is properly managed--and it is a rare occurrence--it is the best bakery in L.A.)

I became hooked on Tartine in 2006 when its lusty croque monsieur ended a painful hangover. Not surprisingly, Tartine served its croque as a tartine, i.e., open faced. The bread was thick and crusty, the ham smoked, and the béchamel and gruyere in perfect, if slightly indulgent, proportions with thyme and pepper. Tartine’s accomplishment was that it made a sandwich that clearly benefited from its originators’ technique, experience and access to impeccable ingredients, but would not be out of place at a Philly cheesesteak tasting or on a taco tour of central Los Angeles. The sandwich is ultimately about pork and cheese and should cure a hangover, which it did.

In our recent trip to San Francisco, we had an hour to kill between having coffee at Ritual in the Mission and going to lunch at Zuni for my birthday, and so we wandered over to Tartine. As the line was not yet Soviet in scale though still out the door, we thought we'd try a few items, which restraint quickly dissipated under the pretext of birthday exuberance. We loved the ham and cheese croissant, which Tartine served warm, and also bridged (and negated) the false gap between food’s supposedly high and low bandwidths. The gougere with gruyere and fresh herbs was a revelation because of its ineffably addictive texture and peppery kick. On the sweet side of things, a thin and crunchy hazelnut biscotto with anise was a perfect complement to Tartine’s near perfect, restrained espresso that was not hyper-concentrated or over extracted, like at Intelligentsia. We could not resist the fresh “morning bun,” practically the Platonic form of a cinnamon roll. It was both light and substantial and had a thin layer of orange sugar to provide sweetness and balance.

We ended with the finest chocolate chip cookie this side of my mother’s. The thin and tasty cookie and had an undertone of saltiness and masterfully worked the classic salty/sweet combination. The cookie was like a cohesive, well-practiced quartet: the chocolate had the freedom to solo, but used its discretion to collaborate smartly with the dough’s tight rhythm section.

The upshot of eating before Zuni is that we were forced to order their venerable roasted chicken and bread salad and wait the hour, a period for which I otherwise would not had patience.

Tartine Bakery
600 Guerrero Street
San Francisco
(415) 487-2600
http://tartinebakery.com/

Spago, Beverly Hills

As much as I try to believe my adopted hometown is burgeoning with sophistication, Los Angeles sometimes just fails me. Or perhaps the whole process of burgeoning has failed to take root west of Doheny.

There is no other way to justify the continued existence and popularity of the self-caricature known as Spago. Wolfgang Puck was once lauded (along with Alice Waters) as a being a “seminal influence” in an “entire cuisine . . . a still-evolving culinary style that can sampled from one of [California] to the other.” (I’m skeptical that an entire cuisine can be founded on a menu whose principle innovations include smoked salmon on baked, flattened dough and the intermixture of Shun Lee-style “Chinese” food and French technique, but I’ll indulge the fantasy for a few minutes. Of course, the logical conclusion of such madness is CPK, the smooth jazz of cuisine.)

Despite Puck's contributions and skill, he is now content to meander around the large dining room and prattle on with patrons for hours on end. Accordingly, the Puck evolution has come to a halt. With its staid and virtually unchanging menu, Spago has morphed into a Cheesecake Factory in a suburb that is inexorably morphing into an ersatz Caruso lifestyle center. Bizarrely, it is the original Cheesecake Factory, established in 1978, that appears to be the anachronistic holdout in the Beverly Hills retail corridor. To exacerbate matters, Puck’s sole recent contribution to the culinary world, or perhaps it was Barbara Lazaroff’s investors’, is the $160 steak.

Teeming on a recent Monday night with businessmen , tourists and cougars, Spago is much more of a banquet hall than a quality restaurant. For a wedding or, better yet, a rehearsal dinner, the food would have been solid. Other than that, I saw an expensive menu littered with “fusion” items and a few Austrian standards, e.g., wiener schnitzel, that while tasty and fun, were of middling quality and would not be served by a Kurt Gutenbrunner kitchen.

My veal sweetbreads had that off-putting texture of soft chewiness that originally soured me on this offal. (I have been craving sweetbreads ever since savoring the rustic brilliance of Ali El-Sayed's version at his Kabab Café in Astoria.) The pan-roasted duck breast, served in slices, simply lacked flavor. I can’t point to anything that was objectively wrong with it, but I also can’t cite any quality that distinguished it, aside from forgettableness.

A dessert of unwieldy fried dough and out-of-season strawberries lacked sweetness and would not have passed muster at the Geauga County Fair.

A few comments from the wife:

First of all, I had to change the stupid title of this entry, which was in no way reflective of my otherwise adorable husband's brilliance and wit. When Steve writes about Beverly Hills, he immediately gets his panties in a bunch -- which is absolutely hilarious because we'll probably end up living there someday. (Ha, ha! Suck it, Steve! You know it's true!) Anyway. Steve's perspective on things is skewed by an existing bias against anything west of Doheny, which makes him a total fraud because he's fancier than H-bomb in Marc Jacobs at Blue Hill. While I am happy with a big salad or a burger or a spicy tuna handroll at the local sushi bar, Steve actually has to fly to San Francisco to eat at Gary Danko on his birthday or he whines like a little girl. Clearly, his vitriol is completely misplaced. Don't we seem to despise most in others what we unconsciously recognize in ourselves?

But I digress. Enough about Steve's hypocrisy and back to Spago, which is, admittedly, as The Trusted Arbiter of Style once decreed, over. The decor is straight out of Cleveland, the menu never changes, and the crowd is just a shade younger and hipper than the pre-dead patrons of the Hillcrest Country Club Grill Room. But I will give Spago this: It is consistent. You can count on a number of things at Spago: It will take hours. A nip-tucked Wolfgang Puck will work the room like a pro, shaking hands, kissing babies, acting like he knows who you are, and pretending that he cares. And the food will be good. It won't change your life or even challenge your assumptions about cuisine (that was 25 years ago), but it will be totally serviceable and often terrific.

For my appetizer, I ordered lemon-herb blini topped with creme fraiche, red onion, and, alternately, smoked sturgeon with black caviar or smoked salmon with red caviar. The pillowy blini were light and delicious, while the smoked fish and caviar combo delighted me to no end. Was it innovative? Not a lick. But it was exactly what I wanted, and the dish was absolutely delicious. For my main course, I ordered the striped bass with lobster and roasted root vegetables. It was great; just really well-cooked with balanced flavors. Moreover, in deference to my irrational and paralyzing fear of fish skin/scales, the kitchen removed any trace of the dreaded stuff -- how awesome is that?

I will concede that the desserts were uncharacteristically lame on our recent visit. My mother, whose birthday we were celebrating, was psyched to throw dietary caution to the wind and get down on her birthday -- especially since she'd just run into Sherry Yard at the Beverly Hills Sunday Farmers' Market stocking up for the week. The fact that Ms. Yard was purchasing grapes should have been a serious red flag as none of the selections really floated the birthday girl's boat. So we opted for two desserts to share as a table: a mediocre strudel and the doughy thing to which Steve referred. The doughy thing -- not fried, more of a pancake-souffle hybrid -- was actually somewhat addictive, reminding me a bit of a poor man's Bistro Jeanty clafoutis. Sprinkled with powdered sugar and studded with sweet strawberries and grapes, it was kind of awesome in an inelegant, dude-have-you-got-the-munchies-too? sort of way.

Overall, we did have fun at the dreaded Spago, which seemed to please everyone at the table --except for the grumpy, implacable Wolverines, who groused after dinner that they needed to go to In-n-Out, even though they both cleaned their plates.

Spago
176 North Canon Dr.
Beverly Hills
(310) 385-0880

Brunch at Jar

After an evening of fancified sushi, I needed a Sunday morning of serious fressing. So we went to Jar, which has a reputation as a foodie’s steakhouse despite this description’s oxymoronic implications. As a rule, I avoid steakhouses because I’d rather go to Soot Bull Jeep or Fatburger than drop a bill on an overcooked steak in a stuffy room filled with the usual assortment of country clubbers, white-collar criminals, yachtsmen, syndicators, and corporate drones. But Jar’s executive chef, Suzanne Tracht, comes from that royal Waters-begets-Silverton/Peel/Goin lineage, and with the lovable and genetically hungry Artie in town, I had a good opportunity to return to another quality restaurant in the neighborhood.

Jar began the brunch with a large wedge of coffee cake for the table. The cake was denser than I expected, topped with nuts and very good. Artie thought it needed more cinnamon, perhaps because the familiar swirl didn’t traverse the wedge, or maybe it just needed more cinnamon. Regardless, I liked the cake’s moist consistency.

We had a tacit agreement with the affable waiter: he would recommend the better dishes, and we would tolerate his confusing us for Georgianne Walken. So Artie and I split the corn pancakes, chilaquiles, and pot roast hash, while Marisa got the lobster benedict.

I have asked my wife to share her thoughts on her brunch:

In an effort to balance the scales of kashrut and make up for other nice neighborhood Jewish girls who, unlike me, don’t have the presence of mind or fortitude of spirit to enjoy a little traif, I ordered the lobster benedict, sans the lobster béarnaise. (I maintain that béarnaise is an utterly repulsive concept, though excellent fodder for Mel Brooks jokes). The lobster benedict came in its usual form atop an English muffin with a poached egg. But where most restaurants use Canadian bacon (or what I call “ham”), Jar uses Cantonese-inspired Char Sui pork as well as some “pea tendrils,” or soggy greens. Sweet and smoky, the Char Sui has a flavor preferable to the favored meat of Saskatoon; but unfortunately, it dominated the dish’s other, milder flavors. I ended up taking the dish apart, forsaking the desiccated English muffin and grazing on the eggs, Char Sui, lobster, and pea tendrils. I could barely muster more than a few bites. Despite the glorious self-righteousness that comes along with a low-carb breakfast, I felt somewhat cheated by the whole experience. Thankfully, Stevie and Artie were happy to share their bounty, leading me off the path of virtue and down the road of excess, right to the palace of wisdom where there are platters of absolutely delicious corn pancakes waiting for the hung-over glutton in all of us. I do loves me some Jar. You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Girl – ahem, I mean, Marisa

The pancakes were not only the first serving of such that I’ve found edible in years; they were actually very good. Owing to their excellent batter, the pancakes were light and had a fresh baker’s quality. The kernels of corn were inside the pancakes and added an element of sweetness which obviated the need for maple syrup. These pancakes bore no gustatory resemblance to the thin starchy bricks served in homes and diners that had previously soured me on the Sunday staple.

The chilaquiles, essentially Latino matzoh brie, were infinitely better than the Jewish version. Serving a dressed up version of the classic dish, Jar fried and then layered strips of tortillas with eggs, salsa, shredded roasted pork, and crème fraiche. Why Jews have excluded roasted pork from the Passover standard (and then served it only once a year) is an enduring mystery. Suffice it to say, once roasted pork and salsa are added to the recipe and matzah is replaced with tortillas, the outcome is bound to be good. And it was.

The star of the brunch was the pot roast hash, a jumble of brisket, eggs, potatoes, onions, mushrooms and served with superfluous coffee gravy in a gravy boat. Jar annoyingly anointed its pot roast a “signature” dish, a conceit that I would expect only from eateries listed on the NYSE like Morton’s. Hash is leftover meat sautéed with vegetables, potatoes--whatever is around really--and in the hands of Suzanne Tracht, it was delicious. The brisket was most flavorful, much more so than the pork in the chilaquiles, and there was no sense that it was sautéed. It was soft and tender as opposed to the traditional crispy, and thus retained its essence as a pot roast. The eggs were intermixed into the center of the large portion, and it all blended together messily, which is to say seamlessly. The dish was a hash after all, not an omelet, and it impelled our enjoyable visit to Jar the next week for dinner to try the actual pot roast.

Jar has an impeccably designed dining room and bar which captures its modern steak house raison d’être. (Even when I was a just barely more pretentious undergrad studying philosophy with a bad habit of mining the depths of the thesaurus, I was self-conscious about using such an obviously heinous term like “raison d’être” in a paper. Not anymore, especially since I am Heinous. Just try to confute my views on Jar.) Jar’s designer, Brett Witke, raided one of those retro-modern furniture galleries along Beverly and imposed a great clean look on the place. The room’s walls consist of polished brown wood paneling which give the room a sense of tradition. They link Jar to proud, if mediocre anachronisms such as Taylor’s Steakhouse, and forewarn that creamed spinach will be served. But the wood paneling’s lighter tone and variations, the modern decorative artwork affixed thereto and the dark and wide hanging convex lamps splayed throughout the ceiling signify an updating of the whole steakhouse concept. While the muted light and lack of windows can induce mild claustrophobia during the dinner hours, the natural light at brunch was quite pleasant.

Jar
8225 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles
(323) 655-6566
www.thejar.com

Little Next Door

On Saturday afternoon, we walked over to the Little Next Door, a busy French café which tends to be overlooked by the herd of trendsters who graze at Toast across the way. Little Next Door has a large attractive patio where it serves an array of omelets, savory tarts, charcuterie plates, salads and French sandwiches such as a croque madame and ham on a buttered baguette. But since the café saw it fit to turn on the hot lamps despite weather supporting wildfires, we sat inside in the colorful room with the its high, cobalt blue ceiling and plentiful copper accessories, including a stunning Elektra espresso machine which lords over the entire room. The staff spoke French to one another, and in the quest to preserve some Gallic authenticity, the waiters carried around circular trays like an extra appendage, just as they do in Paris. I am naturally taken by all of this, as I suffer from such an acute case of naïve Francophila that Sarko jokes irk me, at least when uttered by known Republicans.

We enjoyed a leek and gruyere tart which was rich and balanced and had a tasty, buttery crust. The tart was small enough to fit on a salad plate, though quite filling, and the accompanying salad was fresh and not over dressed, a rarity. The croque madame, if not quite on the level of Campanile’s Thursday night version, was very good. A large bottle of Badoit washed it all down nicely. In keeping with the season, we also enjoyed a spicy pumpkin tart though such was the quantity of pumpkin filling that management could have sold it as a cookie. The crust had that subdued buttery flavor that I really love.

The barista drew a solid shot from the Elektra, and we were then on our way.

Little Next Door

8142 West 3rd Street

Los Angeles

(323) 951-1010

Sapp Coffee Shop: The Vampire Lunch

Eating at Sapp Coffee Shop in Thai Town has loomed as a requirement for the aspiring foodie ever since Anthony Bourdain dined there on No Reservations. So on a Saturday afternoon, I dragged Marisa to the Thai lunchroom, though I forgot to inform her why Sapp has such a forbidding reputation. To wit: Sapp Coffee Shop, which must inhabit the sallowest dining room in any building not serving a penal function, is best known to food geekdom for offering a blood-thickened broth of Thai boat noodles with beef tendon, tripe, liver and testicle, which the menu dubiously translates as “meat ball.” We stayed clear of the offal and ordered the version with beef brisket, which was topped with cilantro and chicharrones. The savory brown broth was thick, moderately spicy and had an undercurrent of sweetness. Another blogger claimed to smell “soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, cilantro and green onions” in the broth, and I’ll just take this person’s word for it. The blood-and-testes option notwithstanding, the soup’s flavors were straightforward, i.e., much less exotic than expected, and could be easily bowdlerized by the Campbell’s Soup Company. The otherwise hospitable staff was remiss in not forewarning us that bovine cruor is a soporific, as a coffee on the drive home would have been useful.

We tried three other dishes, most disappointing of which was the som tom or papaya salad. At its best, a salad of grated fresh green papaya with lime and dried shrimp can be refreshing and spicy, but at Sapp the papaya was foul and depressing, the lime absent, and the dish inedible. A plate of fish balls in a green curry sauce and spirals of languid noodles wasn’t bad, even if the sauce had the consistency of mud.

The most interesting dish of the day was the crab fried rice with crab paste, Chinese broccoli, and scrambled egg. A burly crab flavor dominated the dish, and the freshly scrambled eggs' richness stood up to and complemented the crab. However, the rice itself was served at too high a temperature and thus had little taste and insubstantial texture. The kitchen bizarrely served the fried rice alone and last, like a main course, an unwelcome way to conclude a misfire of a lunch.

Sapp Coffee Shop
5183 Hollywood Blvd.
East Hollywood
(323) 665-1035

A.O.C.: The $100 Blog

A.O.C. is a frustrating restaurant, one that we primarily visit with out-of-town guests. Its popularity makes it difficult to get a table on short notice during prime hours, and the bar always appears at least two-deep on the many occasions that we have driven by. On top of that, the food can be inconsistent when the dining room is full. Nevertheless, the wine list is solid, the small “Cal-Med” dishes tend to be thoughtful and vibrant, and ultimately, we're always up for a plate of prosciutto and cheese. And in all of our visits dating back to New Year's Eve 2002, we've had several outstanding dishes from A.O.C., including, among many others, seasonal offerings and specials such as the lobster salad, soft-shelled crab, and sheep's milk cheesecake.

So over the past few years, our occasional visits by ourselves have been spontaneous -- and on the early side, in order to avoid the crowds and an overly taxed kitchen. Last Thursday, after a late afternoon appointment in Century City in which we suffered the indignity of sharing an elevator with Michael Bolton of all people (whom Marisa had to recognize), and spared by geography from another Ashkenazi-driven Rosh Hashana assault on my gustatory sensibilities, we sidled up to the wine bar at A.O.C. for an early dinner.

We began with a regular item on the A.O.C. menu, the roasted dates with parmesan wrapped in bacon, a stalwart dish for us in our date-obsessed household. While delicious as usual, the roasted dates betrayed Suzanne Goin’s “farmer’s market” philosophy to such a degree that she rendered the cover of her cookbook, Sunday Suppers at Lucques pure puffery. The artful cover has a photograph of a cluster of fresh yellow barhi dates, a paradigmatic farmer’s market item, since they are available for a few weeks toward the end of summer (i.e., now). Last week, the barhi dates at the Bautista family’s date stand at the Hollywood Market were at their finest: the golden clusters were fresh and plump, just like on the cookbook’s cover, but lush with a sweetness that no photo can convey.

So at the height of barhi season and with the promise of the cookbook cover and Goin’s fancy James Beard award, what does A.O.C. have to offer? Niente. Zero. Just the standard roasted date with bacon and cheese that they always have (and we always order). There would be no thoughtfulness on display at this assembly line. It’s a good thing Yom Kippur is around the corner, because deception and complacency warrant serious atonement.

We also had the fried tetilla, a soft Galician cow’s milk cheese and, like the dates, another standard appetizer for us. The tetilla is served thinly and in portions not much larger than a silver dollar along with a smidgen of quince paste and the spicy romesco sauce However, this time, the fried tetilla was a greasy mess. While it looked crispy and brown, the nasty taste reminded me of the fried mozzarella sticks I used to get in my fifth grade bowling league.

The next disappointment was a salad of eggplant, essentially baba ghanoush, served on a piece of thick toast and accompanied by a sizable cube of smoked ricotta, roasted peppers, and soppressata. The dish exemplified incoherence as the four ingredients bore no ascertainable relationship to one another, and I was uncertain about whether I should put any of the accompanying items on top of the baba ghanoush. I can speculate that there are two reasons why these ingredients were served: there is no way to justify the $11.00 price tag on a miserly portion of otherwise unaccompanied baba, and the kitchen knew it was bland and had to compensate. It would be unthinkable for Marouch to serve its brilliant smoky version with all of this clutter. Even the eggplant bhartha at nearby Electric Karma is better -- and that's just when it's delivered.

The best dish of the meal was the salad of corn and shrimp with green harissa and lime for $12. The lime and green harissa were a great complement to the market fresh corn, and the type of dish I come to A.O.C. to eat. But the portion was not large and the shrimp were not especially flavorful. The corn would have been fine sans shrimp, but then $12 for a small bowl of corn would not be appealing to diners. But neither is bland shrimp and corn for $12, which felt like petty larceny.

The menu advertised a tantalizing sounding market fish with "yellow tomato, pancetta, and opal basil." What arrived was a downright Dali-esque serving of sea bass over two slices of red tomatoes, a salsa of small Gerberesque roasted stone fruit, and flavorless pancetta resembling red dental tape, all under a glop of creamy sauce that Marisa surmised was yogurt-based. Like the baba before it, the dish was a mess and I was unsure how the ingredients corresponded to one another. The kitchen did prove that bass can be overcooked.

The final dish was a small bowl of clams with garlic and amontillado sherry. For $15, I expected an outsized portion, but there were less than a dozen clams. The broth was inert and the garlic undetectable. The sheep's milk cheesecake was very good, and a whole other animal from the standard "New York" cheesecake that my arteries and tongue dread. If it weren’t for the cake and the outstanding braised veal cheeks with risotto carbonara that I had at Lucques a month ago, I’d write off the whole Goin franchise. I am still a Frida Kahlo fan, though.

A.O.C.

8022 West Third Street
Los Angeles
(323) 653-6359
http://www.aocwinebar.com/

Discovering the West Village: Bleecker Street Pizza

Beside espresso, the other serious flaw in New York’s Italian food is its corner pizza shop. There is plenty of quality gourmet pizza to be found in New York, and no other American city can boast a pizzeria like Una Pizza Napoletana. (From my perspective, the widely lauded Pizzeria Bianco is not a meaningful alternative because it is in Phoenix, and even if I deigned to visit, I refuse to queue for several hours in the searing heat behind the legions of retirees who, by virtue of living in such a wasteland, have become impervious to the elements.) But the corner shop selling slices has lapsed into mediocrity with its industrialized ingredients and its audience of tourists and inebriates.

When I complained to Justin, he brought up the relatively new Bleecker Street Pizza as a good alternative to the various permutations of Famous Original Ray's, et al. As the proprietor recounted to Justin, he was searching New York for a location to open his shop and found a storefront at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street. Skeptics advised him to look elsewhere because of the stiff competition offered by the nearby venerable pizzerias, John’s and Joe’s. But the proprietor, after trying -- and dismissing -- their wares, knew his enterprise would be successful. Incidentally, I’ve long thought that John’s and Joe’s are as much an affront to pizza as Pink’s is to hot dogs. It comes as no shock that Joe’s is opening a location for the formaggio at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

We ordered two slices and had a few bites each as an appetizer to our upcoming Bar Pitti lunch and a dessert to the sandwich we'd just shared at Sant’ Ambroeus. We tried what I believe was the “Grandma,” a square-shaped slice with a delicious homemade sauce made with actual tomatoes, as well as mozzarella, parmesan, olive oil, and fresh garlic. The chewy crust was moderately thick, but the sweet tomato sauce really made it.

The second slice was the “nonna maria,” and it had a thin crust and came in the traditional wedge-of-a-pie shape. The pizza had a patina of fresh mozzarella along with parmesan and basil, but with less sauce than the other nonna. The flavorful mozzarella was the dominant and winning ingredient in the nonna maria.

Unlike every other pizza slice shop that I’ve tried in recent memory, Bleecker Street emphasized ingredients and preparation and deserves a description of “artisanal” even if it is just a guy selling pizza to passersby and locals with no evident pretensions. Since the West Village has not been immune from the City’s metamorphosis into an overpriced version of the Grove, it is heartening to see quality mom & pop pizza shops open and succeed in what may still be Manhattan’s most charming neighborhood.

Bleecker Street Pizza
69 Seventh Ave. South
New York
(212) 924-4466
http://bleeckerstreetpizza.com/