Camino, Oakland California

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of dining with my good friend The Corkdork at one of the best new restaurants in the Bay Area. The name is Camino, the location Oakland. Oakland is the Bay Area's version of Brooklyn, where cheaper rents, a young, hip, and appreciative audience, have spurred the opening of excellent food establishments over the last 10 years.

Camino is owned and operated by husband and wife team chef Russel Moore and general manager Allison Hopelain. They present a small menu which changes daily, is concise and extremely locavore centric. Rustic Mediterranean cooking at its best, all done in an open wood burning hearth, it is a sight to see, smell and taste. There were six appetizer choices including several composed salads and a soup, three mains including one vegetarian option of wood oven-roasted chanterelles with belgian endive gratin and green beans, four desserts, and a fiscalini cheddar cheese on that Sunday's dinner menu. We started with fresh local ling cod fritters. Crisp and crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, they were accompanied by a lively chervil and radish salad dressed lightly with lemon and high quality fleur de sel (french sea salt). The fritters were the perfect hors d'oeuvres to begin the festivities, and gave us a chance to get into our first wine of the evening, the stunning 1998 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne courtesy of The Corkdork. This organic wine from high on the Hill of Corton was really in a sweet spot. Incredibly complex, with great verve, minerality, toasty bread (yeast) and flowery fruit. You should be able to find this wine for around $90 retail, and while expensive, it is one of the few white burgundies worth searching for, especially for a special dinner.

We moved on to wild nettle soup, and the pork and greens crepinette with arugula salad. The puree of nettles was a vibrant green, fresh and bracing with a dollop of creme fraiche to offset the acidity. A crepinette is a loose sausage patty, in this case of pork and a few greens for color, wrapped in caul fat and sauteed or grilled. This version could not have been more flavorful and moist. The richness of the pork was perfectly offset by the super fresh peppery arugula salad, again dressed with lemon and fleur de sel.

Although we had ordered a bar snack of locally foraged porcini mushroom toasts early on, a misfire on the server's part only brought them to table after the appetizers. Making up for the mistake, we were served two orders! A nice gesture and a most welcome touch. The superb mushrooms were simply served on toasted baguette with a little persillade (parsley and garlic chopped together). My only complaint here was that the mushrooms had been cooked previously and were served a bit cold. Having said that, they were still very tasty indeed.

Since upon walking in to the restaurant we could see the open wood burning hearth and the lamb leg rotating in front of the embers, we could not resist the lamb lamb leg a la ficelle, grilled loin chop and braised shoulder with peppers and polenta. The roasted peppers added the correct acidity, the lamb was cooked perfectly in all three of its guises and the long, slow cooked polenta rustica was creamy and earthy. This polenta from Anson Mills is made from Otto File organic heirloom corn and is absolutely the best quality. To accompany the lamb The Corkdork was kind enough to bring another stunning wine. This time we ventured to the Northern Rhone for a 100% Syrah. Located high on the hills to the west of the Rhone river, around the small city of Tournon and directly across from the famous Hermitage Hill, this 2006 Saint Joseph from Stephane Otheguy was an extremely good match for the lamb. Very earthy, full of minerals, black pepper and purple fruits it is, along with Domaine Gonon and Domaine de Miquettes, one of the finest Saint Josephs I have had the pleasure of drinking recently.

For dessert I had the chocolate pudding which was a rich and thick classic, made from a high quality dark chocolate from Tcho chocolates in San Francisco.

The organic/bio dynamic wine list features eleven whites and ten reds, all fairly priced and well suited to the cooking. Corkage is a very fair $15 per bottle.

Camino
3917 Grand Ave
Oakland, CA 94610
510 547 5035
Dinner: Friday and Saturday 5:30pm - 10:30pm, Sunday 5pm - 10pm
Monday, Wednesday, & Thursday 5:30 - 10pm (closed Tuesday)
Brunch: Saturday and Sunday 10am - 2pm

Nopalito

I will admit straight away that the Bay Area is my favorite place to eat in the USA! I know, I know, I am a new yorker, so what about New York!? Of course New York has some great places to eat, but the Bay Area has a much longer growing season, a greater emphasis on incredible fresh, local ingredients, and the cooking is lighter and cleaner, allowing the flavors of the ingredients to really shine. I like to make the comparison of Bruckner (New York) and Mozart (San Francisco/Bay Area). Bruckner, while exciting, can be loud and bombastic, where Mozart is clean, elegant, and light on its feet.

On a recent trip I went straight from SFO to Nopalito for lunch. This is the second restaurant from the folks who own the very popular Nopa. While Nopa is firmly rooted in the Chez Panisse camp, specializing in organic wood fired "american" cuisine, Nopalito is Mexican with an emphasis on rustic, earthy and bold flavors, cooked by two Mexican chefs from Nopa. Both restaurants use organic, local and sustainable ingredients in their cooking.

To begin, every table receives a little cup of fried and spiced chickpeas. They are addictive and disappear before you know it. We shared several dishes from the lunch menu including the delicious moist tamals, served traditionally in a corn husk. The tamals are made with house made masa from stone ground organic corn. This is a time consuming process, but the results are well worth it. The stewed pork, queso fresco (fresh cheese), chile ancho, chile cascabel and guacamole tamal was packed with flavorful meat. The chiles provided an earthy, deep, ever so slightly spicy accent which balanced well with the moderately salty cheese and cool fresh guacamole.The second tamal was listed as dulce (sweet) and while it was certainly sweeter than the pork tamal, it was not overly sweet. It was made with kabocha and butternut squash, pecans, currants, piloncillo (an unrefined mexican brown sugar) and crema. The nuts added crunch and the buttery squash melded well with the luxurious, soft corn. Both were some the best tamales I have eaten.

Next we shared the Huevos de Caja, poached eggs on corn tortillas with refried beans and a salsa of cilantro and jack cheese. This was a simple but well prepared dish. The house made tortillas added an earthy corn flavor, the eggs were beautifully poached and the delicious beans from Rancho Gordo were smokey and flavorful. The last dish was the blue corn quesadilla with braised greens, poblanos, jack cheese, queso fresco and salsa poblana mulata (salsa of poblano and mulato chile). It was beautifully earthy, and rustic, mostly owing to the hand ground blue corn tortilla.

All the meals here end here with complimentary mexican wedding cookies. These small traditional cookies are made with ground almonds and are in the shape of a dome. The most enticing beverages are the refreshing aguas frescas made with fresh fruit, and the organic almond horchta, a traditional drink made from crushed almonds and rice which are steeped in water, along with sugar and cinnamon. If you prefer to cool the heat with alcohol, several mexican and domestic beers are available on tap and in bottle.

Nopalito
306 Broderick St
San Francisco, CA 94117
415-437-0303
info@nopalitosf.com
Hours: 11:30 am to 10 pm, seven days a week
No reservations

A Profound Wine

The police could be on their way to throw me in the hoosegow! I admit that last night I committed infanticide. In wine speak, infanticide is when one drinks a wine that is too young, or not fully mature. Strangely enough the wine in question was not young at all, but from the 1996 vintage! How could a wine old enough for bar mitzvah be too young!!??

This lovely liquidity in red was the 1996 Giacomo Conterno Cascina Francia Barolo, provided thanks to wine director Rachel from the cellar at the now closed Etas Unis restaurant on New York's upper east side. The wine was brought to table directly from the cellar and was decanted. In a word, it was profound. It is fascinating to follow a wine over several hours as it warms up from cellar temperature to room temperature, when all the wine has to offer is released over time. In this case though, all was not revealed, even after three hours, because the wine has only reached an early stage of what will eventually be an incredible evolution.

The house of Giacomo Conterno which is located in Monforte is one of the legends of the Barolo zone in the Piedmont region of Italy. Now run by Roberto Conterno, the wines continue to be made in the style that is known as traditional. There are only 2 Barolo (Cascina Francia and Monfortino) made at this estate, both from the Cascina Francia vineyard in the commune of Serralunga. The wines from Serralunga tend to be brawny and masculine, full of tannins and great acid backbones which allow the wines to be very long lived.

The 1996 Cascina Francia had an exotic spice box nose right off the bat, but it was more like bunting than swinging for the fences. After thirty minutes of air the wine starting teasing with its many facets, which will no doubt be revealed in another 10 years. Rose, violet, road tar, forest floor, truffle (somewhere between white and black), mineral and a beautiful earthiness were all present. The aromas weaved in and out and made you want to come back for another sniff. The palate was full and at the same time light as a cotton candy. The acidity was mouthwatering, and the wine made an excellent pairing with my venison. This was clearly one of those rare, three dimensional wines, that wine makers strive for but only rarely achieve. A wine of meditation to be sure.

The Bent Spoon artisan ice cream and good ingredient bakery

Ice Cream has always been an important part of my life. Of course I consume more in the warm summer months, but I would never say no to a good ice cream no matter the weather. A sighting of The Bent Spoon at the October New Amsterdam Market at the old Fulton Fish Market site prompted a visit to Princeton. In the time it takes to fly to Miami all I got was a lousy ice cream cone you say? On the contrary, I got to see my younger sister and one of my beautiful nephews, and also had the great pleasure of delicious artisan ice cream!

Although I have been to The Bent Spoon on many occasions, this time I was on the hunt for the pumpkin mascarpone ice cream with cacao nibs which I had sadly missed at the market. All the ice cream, which is a hybrid of french custard (eggs yolks are used) and gelato, is made from mostly organic ingredients and all hormone free dairy which is procured at local farms.

I had a cup of the above mentioned pumpkin mascarpone (served this day without the cacao nibs), double dark chocolate, and NJ honey. The ice cream has a very smooth consistency and leaves a pleasant feel in your mouth. Many ice creams are over churned, and can leave an unpleasant residue in your mouth, but not so here. The ice creams were all very creamy with bold flavors. The honey was pronounced but not too sweet. the chocolate was dark and intense, and the pumpkin had flavors of pumpkin pie spices which played well together like a good string quartet, each spice balancing its partner in intensity.

Well worth the trip to Princeton! The Bent Spoon will be back at the New Amsterdam Market this Sunday, November 22, 2009!

The Bent Spoon
35 Palmer Sq W
Princeton, NJ 08542-3711
(609) 924-2368
thebentspoon@verizon.net
Email for questions and hours of operation