Dario Cecchini, the Tuscan Butcher

We left Rome in the late morning and headed up north on the A1 autostrada, to Panzano in Chianti - to Dario Cecchini's famous butcher shop.  In case you missed it, Dario is the opera-singing, Dante-quoting butcher immortalized in Bill Buford's book Heat, and also in a great little episode of "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain.

It took a little over 3 hours to get there from Rome, and we entered the Dario+ restaurant for lunch.  The menu consisted of two items - either a fancy burger patty or a selection of meats.  The selection was interesting with Chianti sushi (steak tartare), porchetta (my favorite!), meatloaf (just ok) and Chianti tuna (essentially a shredded pork).  Sean enjoyed Dario's special beer (pictured alongside Dario's special olive oil).

We went downstairs to the butcher shop and met Dario, who seemed very jovial (and not singing or quoting Dante that particular day).  We bought his special beer, plus a few jars of the special fennel pollen that all the foodies are raving about.  Not sure what I'm doing to do with the latter as yet, but apparently, it makes everything taste better.

High Design vs Good Food...

For dinner one night in Shanghai, we headed into Xintiandi, a lovely warren of little streets that have been rebuilt in a Disneyfied vision of old Shanghai.  Since I'm a big Disney fan, I have no objection to that!

The restaurant I had originally wanted to go to was booked that evening, so our concierge sent us to the Shanghai Tang Cafe.  Funnily enough, I didn't quite associate it with the Shanghai Tang fashion empire, of which I'm a big fan.  Of course, it turned out to be the cafe owned by the same firm, just around the corner from the main boutique.

Upon first glance, everything looked very promising.  The dining room was outfitted with Shanghai Tang accessories and was extremely dramatic in the fashion line's familiar color scheme.  I fell in love with the placesettings and wondered if I could pocket the beautiful chopstick stand and napkin ring without being noticed.  Alas, while I was contemplated my descent into crime, the waitress came by and quickly removed all temptations.

We ordered a big selection of food including a number of dim sum items.  Everything was just gorgeous when it arrived BUT to my deep disappointment, it all looked much better than it tasted.

The dumplings with different color wrappers were a nice touch.

The taro pastry swans reminded me of a similar dish at the fancy hotel at HK Disneyland, but there, it tasted divine.  Here... meh.

Why couldn't we have had high design AND good food in a single fabulous package?!

More Xiao Long Bao

After having our first xiao long bao with the teeming masses, we retreated to a lovely air-conditioned restaurant about a block away to have a more enjoyable lunch.  We found Din Tai Fung to be an oasis of calm in comparison.

We had a great order of xiao long bao.

Followed by an order of something that turned out to be very similar to shiu mai.

And a fabulous dessert of shaved ice, covered with fresh mango pieces and condensed milk.  Yum!

Making Noodles and Dumplings

 We checked into the Sofitel Xian and the most exciting thing I found in our suite was a washer/dryer unit.  I know all you moms out there will understand - I literally clapped with joy.  I had been faced with the possibility of sending little t-shirts, undies and socks out to the hotel laundry - now, I could do a couple of loads during our stay!  Ah, the simple pleasures...  Oh, the rest of the suite was very nice as well!

Dinner that night was at Le Chinois, the hotel's Chinese restaurant.  We had been really looking forward to this because we were slated to learn how to make dumplings and noodles.  We had been thinking we'd actually eat the product of our work, but we were served a beautiful meal to start. In retrospect, it was a good thing we didn't eat what we made... ;)

Here are the various kinds of dumplings we ate - aren't they beautiful?!

We then watched Ms Yan hand pull lo mein noodles for our noodle soup, which was wonderful.

After we were sated, we started off with Ms Yan trying to pull lo mein noodles ourselves.  I don't have a photo of this because my hands were covered with flour and I was too busy being frustrated.  Suffice to say, I would not have eaten anything we made - my big learning:  it's really, really hard to hand pull noodles.

We then moved on to dumplings.  A couple of them were quite easy to make.  One was very, very hard.  We made and remade multiple versions.  Our dough got a little messy.  Here's our final set of dumplings - the really nice ones were made by our teacher, although I thought some of mine were quite credible!

And finally, we made another kind of noodle that was a lot easier so the kids loved doing this..

We had a great time - this was a fabulous experience that we had access to by booking with a great tour company.  It was not something usually offered by the hotel and we wouldn't have been able to set it up on our own.

The Best Breakfast Buffet Ever

We all awoke early on Day 2 in Chengdu, still vaguely jet lagged and headed down our to hotel restaurant for breakfast.  The restaurant was set up as a wide series of stations (or theatres, as they called them).

 There was an amazing choice of food - the usually boring egg/omelette bar and standard western breakfast stuff, but also lots of Asian selections.  The Japanese station had sushi and cold soba noodles with tofu (Mei had this).  The dim sum station was enormous, with very good cha siu bao (roasted pork buns - the kids had 3-4 each every morning!).

And my favorites, the noodle bar (where I was completely unable to order what I really wanted) and the congee bar (where I had yummy shrimp congee every day). Congee is a savory Chinese rice porridge and a wonderful warming breakfast - especially when eaten with fried Chinese donuts (you tiao).

I finished off with a handful of sweet lychees and some nice local melon, while the kids had waffles with an insane dollop of whipped cream (we are on vacation after all!).

Teppan and Cupcakes

These are the lovely cupcakes that Sibby's Cupcakery made for me this weekend - for my daughter's 10th birthday.  The theme was the color blue, and I think they looked lovely!  The ones in the middle were especially yummy - the special flavor for June - lemon meringue.  In a vanilla cake with a dab of lemon curd in the middle.  I wish they were on the regular flavor rotation!

We had them after an epic meal at Benihana.  Now, why is it that kids love Benihana so much?!

Secret Sea Cove Dinner

Last year, a girlfriend and I had discussed going to one of the Outstanding in the Field farm dinners.  But we were a little late and most of the ones we were interested in were already sold out.  So when the tickets were released for this year, we were determined to get our top choice.  So were a lot of other people.  So much so that the website went down upon ticket release!

A week later, with an upgraded server infrastructure on the back end, everything worked fine and we got our tickets to the Secret Sea Cove dinner with guest chef Mourad Lahlou, Iron Chef winner and chef at Aziza in San Francisco (recipient of one Michelin star).  Apparently, we were lucky - the event sold out in 7 minutes.

We were not given directions nor the location of the event until about a week prior, and it involved finding a small road about 7 miles south of Half Moon Bay.  As you can see from the photo above, the site was truly magnificent!

We arrived around 3 pm and were handed glasses of rose (or in my case, a lovely cool water).  They were passing appetizers of moroccan flatbread with dill yogurt and roe (yum), crispy fried chickpeas with harissa (very yum) and pickled sardines on toast (meh).

Around 4 pm, the founder of Outstanding in the Field, Jim Denevan, spoke about the farm to table connection.  Or in our case, the ocean to table connection, with Hans Haveman as our speaker - he sourced all the fish and has been fishing off the Northern CA coast all his life.

Then there was a mad rush for seats at the big long table - we were outrun and were finally seated almost all the way at the far end.  Where the waves got dangerously close to us as the tide rose - it was all part of the fun!

Our first course was roasted and marinated yellow beets with wild arugula and pumpkin seeds.  It was a beautiful salad and the arugula was particularly nutty, just the way I liked it.

Next we had grilled mini meatballs with grapes over a jicama salad in a green herb dressing (Green Goddess!).  Yes, those green things that look like pasta were julienned sticks of jicama.  This was excellent but a little skimpy on those meatballs.  The dishes are served family-style to a table of 8, and not everyone got a second stick.

Then we were served a mound of slow roasted black cod with some marinated carrots, chard and mushrooms and roasted meyer lemons.  Plus the best couscous I have ever tasted!  It was brown butter couscous made by hand (as they apparently do in Aziza) - they make the dough fresh, then press it through a sieve, into a steamer.  Freshly made couscous!  It was divine.

Our dessert was fresh strawberries served with a wonderful lemon verbena cream - and a rhubarb crostata (which I didn't get a picture of, because we descended upon it like locusts).

There was wine with all the courses - which I mostly ignored except I did like the 2008 Bridesmaid White (or at least the one sip I had of it).  And the fisherman, Jim the founder, the sommelier and all sorts of people circulated to chat with everyone.  There was a very convivial atmosphere.

Alas the weather was pretty foggy and then started misting then drizzling lightly by the time we got to dessert.  We wrapped up just before 8 am and gratefully got into the warm car to head home.

A Weekend in Napa

We went up to Napa recently and stayed at Meadowood.  It's been about 11 years since I last stayed there and I had forgotten how family-friendly everything was.  We had a nice relaxing time, with good meals at Press in St. Helena (wonderful outdoor seating area and a bacon sampler appetizer that we thoroughly enjoyed) and Tra Vigne for Sunday Brunch (a reliable standby).  But the whole reason we went was to dine at Meadowood's signature restaurant, The Dining Room, with Christopher Kostow's cuisine having been graced with two Michelin stars this year.  Plus 4 stars from the normally stingy Michael Bauer at the SF Chronicle.

We had first experienced Chris' cooking when he led the kitchen at Chez TJ in Mountain View - and had earned them two stars as well (one of which they have lost since his departure).

We left the kids to order themselves room service and walked down to the main building.  As we were seated, our waiter indicated that the chef wanted to "cook for us" - which we gladly agreed to.  Because of that, we never really looked at the menu and the names of the various dishes we had are pretty hazy in my memory.

We started with a cute little amuse of a small pastry filled with goat cheese.  Delicious but I could have easily eaten a dozen of them!

OK - it's already starting to get hazy.  The lovely little crudite selection on the right had little carrots and radishes, with a wasabi ice and some other delicate sauce.  But for the life of me, I really just can't remember what the little morsels on the left were.  By the way, if I had actually blogged right after the meal as originally intended, this would be a lot easier...

We next had a lovely vichyssoise soup in a petite portion.  This is why I love tasting menus.  Little plates of delicious food that keeps you wanting more, followed by course after petite course!

Next came wagyu beef cured with pine from the Meadowood property with little bits of hamachi, served with a little bun that was just like a chinese bao but with rye or pumpernickel.  I really liked this dish!

This was also yummy - poured tableside.  But honestly, I have no idea what it was.  Except to recall there was some cauliflower involved.  And maybe beans.  What a useless food blogger I am!

Next we had a small dish of frog's legs with I believe some ravioli filled with cremini mushrooms.  I honestly only like frog's legs prepared in a Thai or Chinese style (fried with garlic).  Frog's legs in French or other cuisine has never done it for me.

I think this was goat.  It was yummy.

I began wondering if this meal would ever end.  And just then, we were brought the cheese course, which was a mild cheese that was deep fried.  Reminded me of a highly refined version of the cheese sticks I used to love at Chili's when I was in college!

There was also the most delicious lemon sorbet palate cleanser that I just loved.  More than the actual dessert pictured below.  There were too many elements and they didn't tie in very cohesively.  I had the little chocolate fudge square and handed the rest to Sean for him to finish up, which he gladly did.

In between, the kids came down to visit and got a kitchen tour and some candied raspberries.  And a photo with our favorite chef!

We're already making plans to return soon...

2.5 hrs in Paris

We were not fully confident of our previously booked BA flight from Bordeaux to Gatwick, despite all the resumption of flights, so we ended up driving back up to Paris and taking the Eurostar over to London.  The drive back was infinitely better than the drive down, and we made good time - arriving in Paris with a few hours to spare.

As we drove into the city, I was almost absurdly happy to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  I do love this city so much!

We returned the car at Gare du Nord and started walking south towards the heart of the city.  Specifically we headed for the Marais, where we first stopped at Dominique Picquier, a favorite stop of mine for fabric bags.  Nothing really inspired me, but then we noticed a lovely shop next door with a rainbow of brightly hued bags in the window - Stephane Verdino.

The gentleman who assisted us was charming and a great salesman, but the closer of the deal was the designer Stephane himself, with whom we had a nice conversation.  So I bought this bag, in beige - totally didn't need it but it's a lovely bag.  BTW it cost a lot less in France...

After that, it was time for my ice cream of the day, which I had at Amorino, a great little stop right across from the apartment we rented 2 years ago.  Their speciality is fashioning the ice cream into a flower on your cone or cup.  I had salted caramel, chocolate and straciatella.  It was excellent!

Then we rounded the corner to Mariage Frères, and stopped off at their tea salon.  Where the cheapest pot of tea was €9 and there were a number of much more expensive teas.  After one of my last trips there, I am always careful about noticing the price now!

I had a nice little tea plate with a scone and a madeleine.  The scone paled in comparison to the real thing in the U.K. but the madeleine was light and delicious.  And a pot of one of the more obscure kinds of Earl Grey tea.

And finally, a short stop at the store to purchase some tea and have a spirited discussion (in French, no less!) with the tea man (pictured below) about what new kinds to try and buy.  Just so you know, Mariage is available in the U.S. but just a few kinds.  When you are in Paris, you will see that they have 14 kinds of Earl Grey tea alone!

And that was the end of our brief, costly but very rewarding sojourn in Paris.  Then it was off on the Eurostar back to London for one night, then back to the U.S. the next day.

Our last meal in the Dordogne

On our last evening, we decided to walk down to the village for dinner.  The walk down is quite steep but yields some very pretty views of the valley, not to mention all the lovely limestone houses along the way.

We had dinner at La Petite Tonnelle, which was named as the best restaurant in the village in our handy-dandy house book.  We sat outside and enjoyed the evening air as the sky darkened.

I started with a plate of roasted asparagus with slices of smoked duck breast.  It was a lovely starter.

My main course was a couple of carved slices of leg of lamb, served with some excellent couscous (it's in the pastry tower) and a terrine of some sort that was just ok.

For dessert, I had the canaille de citron, some lemon mousse in a light filo shell, served with raspberry sauce and some raspberry ice cream.  Alas, it looked better than it tasted.  Although I still finished it ;)

 All in all, a very nice meal. Next time I'm in Beynac, I'm gladly stopping by here again!

A nice ending to a busy day.  Now, I must go pack...