Love Letter to Hayes Valley

Fair Hayes Valley,

I loved you first for the green leafy globes atop the trees that line your main street, like a boulevard in Provence. They lend shade but you’re also filled with sun, bright happy sun on the grass of Patricia's Green where little buggers waddle around the jungle gym and quirky neighbors walk small dogs and sip from white coffee cups with black lids.

Then I found my place on the alleyway where the rusty white Cadillac is parked mid-block all day every day and revolution types drift lazily out the screen door from the café on the corner. I love the way the wind rattles the old single pane windows of my old Edwardian place and how I'll always like the people who live below me and next to me because they chose Hayes Valley too.

Incredible that you are also home to the best dive bar in the city, where I go to sip a beer next to scruffy mutts on couches with the stuffing bursting out. I haven’t found another neighborhood where we wierdos who love salty black licorice are treated to an entire wall lined with jars of the stuff.

I loved taking pictures of your Learning Wall on an Easter morning last year whose brilliance made the pinks and turquoise and mauve pop. And I love seeing white haired couples holding hands as they walk the two blocks from a simple meal at the trusty neighborhood grill with the white tablecloths to a night at the opera.

But most of all I love standing in my kitchen with the door open to the back porch, then walking out to look at the sun setting on the buildings of downtown and, further out, the mist that hovers over the bay.

New Beginnings

It is officially springtime, as evidenced by the wind tormenting the streets of SF (are those two supposed to go hand in hand?). I was lucky enough to celebrate the season with an afternoon of pea soup. Thanks to my little sister Dana who tried it on mom as part of Mother's Day dinner, I got my hands on a great recipe from Ina. Mom had bragged about its simplicity, and aside from the regular hangups associated with readying my cuisinart, it went off without a hitch.


So much green, with the silky leeks and plump peas! This is pre-puree, of course.

I actually used plain yogurt and a little sour cream that was taking up space in the fridge instead of the craime fraiche that ina so preciously asked for.

You may notice that this post is looking more like a Le Creuset ad than an homage to spring veggies. Today was my virgin voyage with my new dutch oven. This is another New Beginning, to a long relationship with my flame colored beauty.

Rolling with the punches: market research in the big apple

I came to New York to do Mediterranean food market research and every hummus place I went to was closed. You might say this could happen to anyone, but as a birthright alumnus I find it a bit ironic that I didn't put two and two together when I found the first, second, third and fourth spot on my list closed for the day. The New York times recently chronicled the new crop of hummusiot that have popped up around manhattan and the other boroughs, so with my two oldest girlfriends willingly following for the ride, I trudged to the East Village, then to the West Village, and would have kept going if it weren't for my "aha" moment upon spotting this sign in the window at Taim:

Passover! Thank you to Taim's owners for spelling this out. Taim is actually a small West Village falafel hole-in-the wall that I frequented when I lived a 5 minute walk up 6th avenue from it. They are infallible in the three kinds of falafels they make from scratch, one the original, one green with parsley, and the third....well, I didn't have the chance to refresh my memory, unfortunately. They also rock the smoothie scene, which would have been good to investigate with fresh eyes given my yogurt bar aspirations.


Time to draw my inspiration from other sources. Luckily, although the hummus and falafel shops of Jewish ownership were closed that Friday, two other mediterranean restaurants that have opened locations in manhattan were open for me to stop in. Maoz, an Amsterdam-based chain with locations across Europe and Asia, now has two stores in NY. I used to visit the one in Union Square for big bowls that I could pile to the brim with cabbage, coleslaw, pickles, eggplant, falafel balls, and a drizzle (or deluge) of tahini. Ahhh, happy memories with my bottomless Maoz bowl in Union Square park. Here is a picture inside Maoz's other NY location:


In several ways, they're doing this the way I would- piles of salads that make the customer want to dig in the moment they walk through the door, with a definite clean vibe. However, the graphics and color scheme carried through their decor, signage, and collateral is way too neon and futuristic for my tastes.

It's funny to break down the food service approach to its bare bones of a cold bar with stainless steel canisters- I could almost be at the Indian street food cafe where I work as a server if the canisters were filled with tikka masala and lamb curry instead of.... well let's see, what do we have here? I see coleslaw, pickled cucumbers, beets, cauliflower, carrots, olives, chickpeas....all great contenders as yogurt or falafel toppings.

Take these salads and put them in a coffee shop/wine bar setting and you see where I'm going.

I was also inspired by Pita Joe, especially their cheeky headline: "HAVE YOU HAD YOUR SCHNITZEL TODAY?" I like that it sounds aggressive although their food is delicate and inviting and their friendly server gave me a free falafel ball to sample (nice crunch and flavor).

In another vein of market research my trio decided it was time for a pub sit down, so we stopped into Blind Tiger, on 7th ave. South and Bleecker. This is one of the worthy spots that have arrived on the downtown streets in the "post-kiko" era, since my move to SF; I find myself a little defensive about anything worthwhile being here now that wasn't when I was here to enjoy it (Gottino wine bar is another in this group). Blind Tiger is inspirational in terms of its vibe.

In Sydney pub spirit we ordered our food and drinks at the bar and then sat down to wait happily and patiently until our name was called to pick them up. Granted I accidentally ordered the most buttery grilled cheese of my life which didn't exactly hit the spot, but that's beside the point. This is the kind of place you want to go and spend your sunday afternoon, again and again.

Finally, in the spirit of food trend-watching, we were lucky enough to pass the Mud dessert truck, one of many that have popped up in the city recently. The New York times has run articles about this explosion of high end dessert trucks parking all over town, like they have in philadelphia or portland prior.

I think this could be a good one for san francisco....

Like sleeping on a bed of ricotta

With her trustee cooking t-shirt hanging comfortably off one shoulder, Sally outdid herself again at the second salmon stand dinner I attended at her house. These are always held on a weeknight, making them particularly exciting for a girl who wouldn't have been able to go in months past, when I worked a 9-5 corporate job. But this time again I was able to join the other sandwich kids for a night of ooohing and aahing over sally's springtime spread.

Here's a slightly more foreboding sign than the one I shot last time, which we passed upon entering Sally and Captain Mike's driveway for this dinner:

The color of Sally's homemade borscht is electric, the taste is sweet and shockingly refreshing, and I'm so excited that she might sell it at our salmon stand soon; It seems authentic to offer people borscht with their smoked fish. I like to picture people enjoying this combo often in Eastern Europe or Russia.

Hands continued to fly toward her crudite until it was gone, but I didn't hear anyone dare to ask how she makes her roasted asparagus, baby carrots and radishes so crazily succulent (soak them in salt before roasting? Douse them in more olive oil than other people do? Roast at a certain magic temperature?) I could drink her green garlic aioli like a soup; this woman really is a master of dips, sauces and all things creamy.

Only a couple who runs a successful smoked fish business and who are unusually generous like Mike and Sally are capable of offering their guests such a generous bowl of smoked trout dip, just flakes of fish, and the finest diced onions. The cool smokiness of the trout paired perfectly with crunchy little sea salt potato chips for dipping.

It's hard to picture Sally standing at the cowgirl creamery counter selecting cheeses like the rest of us, but she sure does it well. I loved that she gave us a Vermont blue cheese, sweet and grassy, to contrast with the Pt. Reyes blue we might be more familiar with (I think she probably felt a little pride, as I did, when the East Coast version was even tastier than its more sour, acidic California counterpart.) But the star of the cheese plate was a bowl of Cowgirl's fresh ricotta- I ate it on crackers, i scooped it with potato chips, I dotted it onto my smoked oyster pasta later....so clean and pillowy that I dreamed of getting in a bed of it.

While this baguette slice with Sally's homemade sockeye salmon butter, radish slice and parsley leaf might look simple, she knows that not everyone is gifted in the skills of hors d'ouevres assembly, and therefore made this "model" so her guests would know how to correctly assemble their appetizers. Years of managing her business have taught her the value of showing by example.

The one dish I failed to capture on film was a first course of smoked oyster on angel hair, speckled with parsley picked and chopped with care from her garden. For dinner, little spring chickens, rubbed with one of sally's many herb salts, sat ready to roast on a bed of green garlic (you can't see the bay leaf that sally asked me to pick off her tree and then placed strategically inside of each one).

In the purest ode to spring Sal paired this chicken with a creamy dish of fava beans and peas.

The pavlova dessert that Sally finished our meal with was declared by veteran dinner guests as "the best dessert she's ever made". She topped two homemade meringue rounds with her own maple custard, hand whipped cream and little strawberries that still tasted like the sun. What a carnival for a texture eater like myself, between the dry crunch of the base and the chewiness of the custard.

Even Jordan, the newest of the fish stand crew who admits his own naivete when it comes to appreciating beautiful food, knew this was one for the books; he wisely observed each bite to be "like eating fresh strawberries on french toast".

Stuffed with these dazzling gifts from Sally and Mike we drove home through the moon-lit fields of Sonoma and Marin to return to our beds in the city.