Go back to Arts & Features pageSAN FRANCISCO -- What's this about a new wine bar going in on Hayes Street across from former Chron restaurant critic Patricia Unterman's Hayes Street Grill? The new place will have some 250 kinds of wine; it will also have a name to be announced.
Bill Staggs, for years a mainstay at Chez Panisse, is changing careers. He won fame as the person who took the phone call from Air Force One asking if Chez Panisse could find room for a surprise visit from President Bill Clinton (a delighted Alice Waters could and did). Staggs has switched to UC-Berkeley's excellent journalism program and is training at the New York Times office in San Francisco. No, he's not concentrating on food writing, at least not yet.
New York is a-twitter over a new service being offered by McDonald's. You can call for a Big Mac or the like from a downtown skyscraper and it will be delivered. San Francisco has similar services (Dine One One is probably best known) but not, as far as I know, at McDonald's. The chain, which has more than 10,000 restaurants, offers one service that's little publicized. McDonald's is the one restaurant in every major Asian city where you can always find a glass of milk. That's a real boon for seniors taking belly-burning medicines.
A just-released Zinfandel from Neibaum-Coppola Estate Winery is definitely worth checking out. The 1992 Edizione Pennino bears a drawing of Francis Ford Coppola's maternal grandfather Francesco Pennino, who left Naples for America in 1905. He founded a music publishing company that used the Bay of Naples and the Statue of Liberty in its logo. So does the Zinfandel. It has a lovely, Italian-looking label, a nice legend and great taste. Suggested California retail is $15.
One of the nicest things about living in the Bay Area, the Dungeness crab season, brings its yearly good cheer this week. Prices will vary, a little over $4.50 a pound to start, in most places, dropping to under $4 when the season gets moving. Dungeness, of course, is one of the world's great fast foods: cracked crab, a little sourdough bread, a bit of salad and some chilled Chardonnay. The whole dinner takes 5 minutes to prepare. Fabulous.
Food writer Richard Sax, so frequent a San Francisco visitor that he seems like home folk, although he's really from New York, has just written yet another book, Classic Home Desserts. Predictably, it's a superb job. Distinguished baker Flo Braker chimes in from the Palo Alto area with a thumbnail review: "Worth its weight in gold."
According to my Williams-Sonoma kitchen scale, "Classic Home Desserts " weighs exactly 4 pounds, That makes the $29.95 book one of the world's best values.
Go back to Arts & Features page