Food for Thought: The Tops of 2009

Recently, my friend and Twitter sister (aka "Twister") Diane Denmark challenged me to come up with my five culinary highlights of 2009. This required a bit of thought and contemplation. I suppose that one good thing about having a blog is that in 2010 I'll be writing these things down so I don't forget them. Since I didn't start this until 2009 was almost over, I had to do some reaching back into the data banks of my brain, which can be a bit of a dicey proposition as I get older and head toward the cliff of  senility. I did remember a few more than five and whittled them down. These are in no particular order because choosing a favorite food moment for someone who loves to eat as much I do (and also happens to be a Libra) is difficult. Almost as difficult Sophie's choice (except without the Nazis, death and lifelong guilt.)

Probably the easiest way to start off is the last meal I had in 2009: eVe in Berkeley. You can (and probably already have) read my entire rave on it in my last blog post, so I won't go into too much more detail here. The food is unique, the presentation is gorgeous, the chef-owners are truly passionate about what they're doing. I wish them all the best as they gain footing here in the intensely competitive Bay Area dining scene.

As eVe is a totally 'avant garde' dining experience, Ike's Place in San Francisco is totally the opposite. It's a sandwich shop, and a very tiny one at that. But the sandwiches are AMAZING. Actually, I can only speak about one sandwich - the Super Wario - because I love it so much I can't bear to order anything else, even though there are many other things on the menu that sound delish.  So what is a Super Wario and what makes it so darn spectacular? It's a meatball sandwich with marinara sauce. Right now, you're probably thinking, "yawn, what's so special about that?" Well, for starters, it comes with fried mozzarella sticks INSIDE the sandwich.  Yes, you heard me correctly. Give that a moment to sink in. Fried Mozzarella Sticks INSIDE the sandwich. Freakin' YUM. Secondly, the meatballs are vegan. And you're probably going, "wait -vegan meatballs? How can that be good?" Trust me, it is. Because they don't taste like vegan meatballs. This is the most realistic tasting fake meat I've ever had, and believe me: I've eaten a lot of fake meat. (Thanks, vegetarian boyfriend!) So here you have all of the yumminess of the Super Mario (which is what the real meat version of this sandwich is called) without all the guilt. It's a win-win situation! Granted, the sandwiches at Ike's are not cheap and they do take awhile to make, but you get what you pay for.  They take so long to make because they don't bake the bread until after you order your sandwich. You can't get much more fresh than that. Plus they are pretty damn huge. I can only half a sandwich in one sitting, so for my $9.99 I also get lunch for the next day. Which makes it not too bad of a deal after all. Also, they give you a free lollipop with every order, and you know how I like my lagniappes.

Of course, as a pizzaphile, I have to have at least one pizza moment in my top five for the year. But which one? There were so many.  There was the first time at Flour + Water, where the fried peppers were completely addicting and the chocolate budino blew us out of the water.  There was our first pizza from Emilia's in Berkeley, which you can read about here. And there was the goat cheese and fresh strawberry pizza at Pauline's that solidified it as my favorite pizza place in the city. In the end, I decided that the honor should go to our first visit to Pizzeria Picco in Larkspur. In 2007, I had read a little blurb on Picco in the AAA Magazine, of all places.  The article quoted Mario Batali as saying that Picco had the best pizza in the country, and when Molto Mario speaks, I listen.  The thing that initially intrigued me the most about Picco, though, wasn't the pizza. It was the ice cream. Picco chef/owner Bruce Hill was the first person (at least around here, anyway) to pair vanilla soft serve with olive oil and sea salt. Nowadays, it's a pretty common dessert for the upscale pizzerias, but this AAA story was the first time I'd heard of such a thing. They even ran a photo of it -which I clipped out and posted on my refrigerator for the next two years until I actually got to go to the place. It wasn't until this past April that we finally made the pilgrimage to Picco, on our way home from wine tasting in the Russian River area. I wished that I had made the effort to get there sooner. Dinner at Pizzeria Picco pretty much embodies the ideal pizza dining experience to me and Mark: a nice salad made with organic greens, a perfectly made wood-fired oven pizza and Straus Family Creamery soft serve for dessert. The pizza here is just how we like it; thin crust with a some blistering and a bit of chewiness to it, and quality toppings that go well together. Both the red sauce and white pizzas are excellent. And dessert, simple as it may be, is a must have. Sometimes if we are truly undecided, we get it with olive oil on one half and caramel on the other. Even though it took us two years to get there for the first time, we've been back twice since and it's never disappointed.

One of the things I will always remember about 2009 is the emergence of street food as a cultural and culinary phenomenon in the Bay Area. Of course, street food is nothing new. I have a lasting memory of incredibly tasty kebab I got from a street cart on my first-ever trip to New York City, and one of my favorite things about Thailand was that you could get a totally satisfying plate of Pad Thai for about 25 cents on just about any street corner. But here anything other than a hot dog & pretzel cart or a taco truck was very difficult to find...until 2009, when street carts exploded. By most accounts, the catalyst for the San Francisco street cart movement was Brian Kimball (aka The Magic Curry Man), a 34-year old therapist who worked with kids in the Tenderloin. He was looking for a way to make some extra money. He had taken a cooking class in Thailand and came up with the idea of selling curry for $5 a pop on the street. On his first trip out (on March 6, 2009) he invited 10 friends. It went well, so the following week he invited his Facebook friends. Twenty people showed up, one person tweeted about it. More people showed up, more tweets ensued and a phenomenon was born. Brian was later joined in the business by his brother Curtis, who serves up creme brulee in his cart, and several others who picked up on the idea, including Adobo Hobo, Wholesome Bakery, Pizza Hacker, Bike Basket Pies and Sexy Soup Cart. The one problem with all this street food action (at least for me, anyway) was that it was taking place in San Francisco and I live in Oakland. There was a street food festival that took place over the summer in the Mission which we tried to go to, but it was kind of a disaster.  The lines were ridiculously long and most of the vendors had sold out of food by the time we got there. So I was really pretty excited to hear about the Eat Real Festival, which would be bringing street food to my side of the bay. Some of the people involved in organizing Eat Real had worked on Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco last year. While the $65 price tag had prevented us form taking part in most of Slow Food Nation, Mark and I did at least get to experience the Victory Garden they planted in front of City Hall and the farmer's market they held there (which were both free). We were a bit worried that it might turn out to be a clusterf*%& like the one in the city, but it turns out that worry was for naught. Eat Real was infinitely better organized and run. For starters, it was a three-day event instead of just one afternoon. We ended up going twice: on Friday for Beer and Ice Cream Night and Saturday for everything else. Since I don't drink alcohol the beer held no attraction for me, but I am all about ice cream. And pretty much all of the great ice cream shops/brands were there: Fenton's, Bi-Rite, Ici, Straus Family Creamery, Laloo's, Gelateria Naia and probably a few that I'm forgetting. I really wished I could have tried them all. But I am glad I had the one I did because it was amazing and unique:  the lemon shiso sorbet from Scream.  For the uninitiated, shiso (also known as perilla or beefsteak plant) is an herb (related to mint and basil) which is a staple in Japanese cooking. It's what gives umeboshi its pink color and is sometimes used in sushi restaurants as garnish. It's a flavor I've grown up with my whole life, but you don't really see it used outside of Japanese cuisine. I wish I could describe exactly what it tastes like but all I can come up with is it tastes like shiso, which is entirely unhelpful. Go get some umeboshi and you'll know for yourself. Anyway, it worked wonderfully with the tartness of the lemon. We returned early the following day and pretty much gorged ourselves. I finally had the opportunity to try the Creme Brulee Cart after following him on Twitter and being sad because I was never anywhere near to where he was going to be. (It was pretty good but not as impressive as I'd hoped.) The main find of Saturday was Jon's Street Eats, who's become my favorite street food vendor on this side of the bay. Jon is Jon Kosorek, formerly of Spoon in San Anselmo, who went mobile after financing for a brick-and-mortar restaurant fell through. That day, Jon was serving up BLATs (bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato) made with house-cured bacon and freshly pulled mozzarella and heirloom tomato salads. Everything Jon makes is top-notch and so restaurant-quality that it's hard to believe he operates out of a truck. Then again, his set-up is a lot fancier than just a simple push cart; he's got a full-on brand new mobile kitchen. Fortunately for me, Jon sets up in Emeryville on Tuesdays and Thursdays not too far from my house - so when I'm fortunate enough to have one of those days off, I like to head down there and get lunch. Jon makes killer duck tacos with pomegranate and a fabulous patty melt. Everything he makes is seasonal and the menu changes weekly so I just keep having to go back and try the new items.

Well, it wouldn't be right to have a top five food moment list and not include something I made. There were several worthy candidates, but in the end I decided I was most proud of the Italian buttercream frosting I made. My BFF from high school, Ann, is a serious baker. She would literally bake thousands of cookies every Christmas to give out to friends and co-workers. This year, she got interested in cupcakes and brought me a few to sample. The cake part was good, but the frosting was the best I'd ever tasted. It seemed so light and airy, you could almost believe that it wasn't bad for you. Then I found out that there was a pound and a half of butter in the recipe. No wonder it tasted good, but how did it get so light and fluffy? The secret: egg whites. You make a meringue out of egg whites and add sugar and water that's been heated to 250 degrees, then add cold butter.  It sounds simple enough, but it's a process that requires a lot of precision and a strong attention to detail. If you over beat the egg whites by even just a few seconds or let any of the sugar crystallize on the side of the saucepan, you could ruin the whole thing. For my birthday this year, Ann gave me a frosting lesson (complete with my very own pastry bag and tips). She ran through the recipe one time with me watching, then I got to do it myself with her supervising.  The results were outstanding.  Since then I've become quite the frosting snob. I would honestly put my frosting up with any of the cupcake bakeries around here. Does Cupkates or Kara's want to go toe-to-toe with me? Didn't think so. :)  An added coolness factor to the Italian Buttercream story: a couple months back celebrity chef Rick Bayless (one of my favorites)  tweeted about how he was really loving Italian meringue right now. I felt pretty proud of myself that a) I knew what he was talking about and b) that I had made it before myself. I even tweeted him about a difference in our techniques and he actually direct messaged me back. So Italian meringue is entirely responsible for my one brief electronic encounter with a famous chef. That alone should be reason enough to make my top five best food moments of the year.

I'm sure 2010 will bring many more memorable food moments, and I look forward to sharing them with you here as they unfold.