Delfina and Tartine

There’s something about the block of 18th Street in San Francisco between Guerrero and Oakwood. Maybe it’s the ancient spirit of the Mission, maybe it’s something in the water, maybe Jimmy Hoffa’s body is under Bi Rite, I’m not quite sure what it is, but some of the best things to eat in the city are right there.

On the corner of 18th is **Tartine**, which is a bakery and café in a big space, yet the tables and chairs are jammed inexplicably into a New York corner. Thanks to California’s progressive ideas about the sale of booze, it’s a proper café, where you can get anything from OJ to a bottle of wine to enjoy with your goodies, savory or sweet. In fact, the kids at the next table over came for a bottle of wine and three glasses to while away the afternoon discussing Marxism. It was so undergrad.

Huge, unsubtle but delicious *croissants* come in plain; (Niman Ranch) ham and gruyere; chocolate and other permutations (though be warned; they cook them dark). Tarts, cakes, cookies, quiches, quick and yeast breads all make appearances, and I have to say they range from pretty good to underwear-changing good. Lemon lovers look out for the lemon meringue cake; a baked Alaska filled with lemon curd. Cute hipster kids swarm both in front of and behind the counters from which they make excellent coffee (though SF has some of the oldest hipsters I’ve ever seen).

The Bay Area, I must say, has the most consistently good coffee from the greatest number of independents than any city I have ever been (calm down, Seattle, I haven’t been there- yet).

Speaking of places I hadn’t been, I took a suggestion and went to dinner at **Delfina**, almost next door. It looks like your typical urban hip place, easily transported to New York, LA, Philly, Chicago or Boston, with distressed metal this and marble that. I didn’t take note of too much of the décor since I was flying solo and ate at the bar, but I did have a nice view of the open kitchen and the very young, mostly cute crew behind the line.

It was an absolute madhouse when I got there at 9, but being a party of one, I snagged the end seat at the bar, next to two completely odious 20-something women that were there to see, be seen and eat expensive food they don’t deserve before going home to vomit it up. The advantage to eating so late (and planning to eat everything in the place) is that you get to watch the place slow down and see how the machine contracts to its slower pace. I have always been fascinated by the operation of restaurants, and this process is perhaps the most interesting bit of theater.

At any rate, I sat down and was brought some dense-crumbed, crusty, but noticeably cold bread, and remarkably good butter, anointed with one of the new salts that all the cool kids have. This was soon followed by mint tagliatelle with porcini. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, so does string theory, but it’s not. This pasta was the kind of pasta that grandmothers make, but flecked with fresh mint, in a butter sauce light enough to keep you hungry, inundated with paper thin shavings of *boletus edulis* that kicked you in the teeth when you bit into them. The whole thing was earth, sex and light-colored sin in my mouth, and I regretted getting the half portion one bite in. Since, however, details haunt me, I have to note that I scratched down ‘tagliatelle’ in my notebook, and the website confirms that’s what the menu had written on it, and it is a free country, but in reality what I was served is tagliarini. No harm no foul.

With this, I drank a Gavi from Villa Sparini, one of a few half bottles available on the short but functional wine list. I was struggling between it and a colline they had by the glass, and the bartender’s rec was right-on. It had just the right amount of citrus to lighten it up.

Next I had quail stuffed with sausage and fennel, a little polenta and a brown, nectarous sauce made of stock and *vin santo*. It was one of those dishes which is merely excellent, that is to say, I wasn’t annoyed by the lengthy list of ingredients or put off by dubious combinations. I had a red wine with this that was being served by the glass after much discussion with the bartender, but I was having much too good a time by then to write anything down.

Delfina is one of those places where everybody loves food. Everyone who works there wants to talk about the wine list and the ingredients and they genuinely want you to have a good time. Unlike the clientele, I observed no posturing. I started talking to the bartender, a mysteriously beautiful young woman who lit up to chat about the minutiae of Gavi. And I got to hear her story since, like New York, nobody is from San Francisco, so everybody has a story.

Then I had cheese, which I will quote right from [their website](http://www.delfinasf.com/index.html):
>Wrinkled pagliarina with marcona almonds
Piemonte- cow, sheep, and goat milks
Moliterno tartufato with housemade quince paste
Sardegna- sheep’s milk
Parmigiano Reggiano with saba
Blu del Moncensio with brachetto gelatina
Piemonte – cow’s milk
Tumin rutulin with wildflower honey
Piemonte- goat’s milk

They were mostly fantastic, and the braccheto gelatina kind of haunts me still. By this point I had fallen completely in love with the bartender, and was overwhelmed emotionally and gastronomically by a big pedestal-dish of strawberry ice cream she put in front of me. It was rich and cold and ambrosial and frankly almost surreal. It was like sitting at the bar chatting with a giant strawberry breathing strawberry breath on you, inundating you with his strawberry presence. It was smooth and subtle, yet frosty and poignant. It was perhaps the best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life.

Delfina. Go there. Fall in love.

Delfina Restaurant
3621 18th Street
San Francisco, CA
415.552.4055

The Badass As Ubermensch

Someone recently told me about a person who at the tender age of 25 is the *chef de cuisine* of a somewhat known restaurant in a major american city. I responded in my usual pensive way and said something like “Get the f___ out of here.” Why? Can’t this person cook? Can’t this person taste? Can’t this person be creative? Of course this person can, but my question becomes, ‘Is this person a badass?’

Well, you might wonder, what is a badass? The easiest way for me to describe this phenomenon, for those of you who know him, is to say that my dad is a badass. For those of you who don’t, let me explain. **A badass is someone whose technical acumen is beyond question** and whose reflexes are unerring to any situation in their chosen field. He or she is alert, calm and his or her analysis on the subject is without reproach. The badass may not be the most popular person in the room, but he (ok, dropping the ‘or she’ now, get over it) commands the notice of his superiors, the respect of his peers and the admiration of his subordinates.

[Jacques Pepin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Pepin), [Norm Abram](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Abram) and [Obi-Wan Kenobi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obi_Wan_Kenobi) are all Badasses.

Well, can’t this person be a badass at 25? Well, it is possible to be a badass at 25. I would never dub myself worthy of the title, but there are people who consider me a badass at my job at a mere 28. However, I started when I was 14. I’m not exaggerating. 14. This person did not start at 14.

Why does it matter, you might be tempted to ask. Well, for one thing, the chef of a kitchen, like the captain of a ship, must exert some control over the kitchen, whether through respect, fear, admiration or awe, usually more of the former, and most succesfully a combination of all four. This person’s standards and taste (literal and figurative) dictate the ethic of the kitchen. Any decent cook can do a tasting, but one man does not cook 300 covers by himself. The [*chefs de partie*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_de_partie) will only ever be as good as the man that leads them, so he must be a Badass.

A great example of motivational rebuke comes in a story I recently heard about an internationally acclaimed restaurant on the West Coast. If the person who told me the story thinks it’s appropriate to name names, please comment so. I’ll leave them out. We’ve all heard of this place, and anyone who hasn’t eaten there whishes they could, even if they won’t admit it.

One evening during service, the *Sous-Chef* kicked all the cooks off the line and cooked a large table’s meals by himself. Every station, from the bottom up had to stand and watch him bust out the entire order better than any of them could have done individually at their own stations. This person, although not necessarily voted Miss Congeniality, is a Badass.

I’m at a crossroads in my life, and, as many of you know, I am considering switching careers- again. But I’ll tell you, stagehand, engineer, cook, baker, writer, whatever, the one thing I strive to attain, the one thing I long to be, whatever the job: a Badass.

Listening: “Hocus Pocus” Lee Morgan The Sidewinder

Cooking Without a Sledgehammer

Someone asked me, the other day, if I wanted to go to a famous New York City restaurant, famous for its food, certainly, but as famous for its produce and relationship to the farm. You know what? I didn’t.

I’m sure the food is very good. I’m sure most of the dishes challenge the eater and make excellent use of the raw materials, maybe even highlighting them in a way we’re not used to, featuring celery or Jerusalem artichokes as dominant flavors. I haven’t eaten there, but I know some of the players involved, and I know how they operate, and I know they wouldn’t have it any other way.

But you know what? The food is just too damn busy.

What? Too busy? They’re making art on the plate! They’re pushing boundaries! They’re using innovative combinations of flavors to create new tastes in our mouths! We are indebted to them!

Whatever. *Chatham Cod In a Crust of Cacciatorini Castelluccio Lentils, Roasted Broccoli Ribbons and Sauteed Cauliflower Lingonberry-Red Wine jus*.

No thanks. I am not so bored with the flavor of every dish ever created that I need that kind of excitement. Union Square Café took their first reservation in the age of the dinosaurs, and it’s still impossible to get a reservation. Why? The food is great. Le Bernardin? Yuzu, okey dokey, whatever floats your boat. I’d prefer if it was New York State grown yuzu, but, hey, far be it from me to cast the first coconut.

Country, Felidia, Wallse or Prune, can anyone deny them? Seriously, what bad can you say about the food at these places? None of the menus are boring; in fact, I would say they are all innovative. I mean, [lobster with cherries](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/17)? WTF? But the beauty of the dish is just that: lobster, cherries, butter, *fin*. In lesser hands, the lobster might have cherries, crones and raisins, in pastry. These restaurants, that is, these chefs, understand innovation with a hand of restraint: we needn’t be hit over the head.

When I was sperm, I had the good fortune to apprentice to a brilliant old-school chef for a very brief period of time. Like everyone at that age, I was convinced that I knew everything and had the most advanced sense of taste to grace the planet. It took a while, but Chef handed me my balls in a little velveteen bag, reducing me to a quivering lump of check-pants-clad goo in his presence.

I would make things, easy things- so I thought- like omelets or crepes for his approval. In the aftermath, I maintained a stiff upper lip until I could get to the bathroom and cry. Little did I know everything that could be wrong with a crepe. You might think that this would discourage me, and make me hate him. Well, you’re wrong on both counts. Armed with the knowledge that a decent-tasting crepe can be offensive to those who cared enough about food to notice, I made them over and over and over again, at the restaurant, at home, at friends’ houses, at the pizzeria where I had a part time job: I ate more crepes at age 17 than most people will eat in a lifetime. And I loved him for it. Today, I can make crepes without a recipe, four pans at a time, without missing a stroke.

You might think that vomiting between projects is a bad way to learn how to cook, but I assure you it is the only way.

When I was a kid, I looked at the menu from that place, and I thought it was old and stodgy. I said ‘Duck with cherries? Lame. Rack of lamb? Lame. Assiette des terrines? BOR-ing.’ Little did I know the quality of the home-dried griotte cherries and the complexity that the Armagnac gave to the sauce. Little did I get the prosciutto skin that cooked with the white beans that made people order the lamb to begin with. Little did I understand the sexual desire of the black truffle in Sauce Perigord. Those three dishes are still on the menu, and with good reason. The duck has other incarnations, but the lamb is unchanged, right from Julia Child, right from Escoffier, right from Careme.

Those white beans, on the other hand? Scandal. Prosciutto skin, you say? From Italy? *Incroyable!* The armagnac with cherries? *Sacre bleu!* Zeez are not prunes! And don’t even mention all the Austrian doo-dads that snuck onto the menu.

I guess my point is, innovation isn’t renovation. You don’t need a sledgehammer to do something original.

Prune

I’m going to say something scandalous:

Prune is probably the best restaurant in New York City.

Wow. I said it.

Prune is as close as it gets to what I would cook for myself, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. That, and everything I have ever eaten there has made me emote audibly. It’s truly a wonderful restaurant.

It’s teeny tiny, but rather than make you feel like fish in a can who should thank them for letting you in, the staff smiles and somehow makes more room, although I am sure how they do it involves witchcraft. The staff is mostly young and, if not pretty, perky. They all seem to be excited about food and wine, and many realize what an extraordinary thing they are part of. It’s kind of fun to watch them know how good the food they’re bringing you is.

All this, and it’s somewhat affordable, with an intrepid if not impressive wine list. It’s organized “Sparkling, White, Red,” but what’s there is worth taking a look through, especially given the very democratic prices (although markup is no less than standard).

So I guess what I’m saying is, go there.

Prune

54 E 1st St, New York 10003
Btwn 1st & 2nd Ave

Phone: 212-677-6221

Listening: NPR. Fair Game is on. She’s funny.