→ July 24, 2017
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Oakland & San Francisco eats.

I’ll have my annual re-ranking of the top five farm systems up this week, most likely Tuesday, for Insiders.

I only had two meals on my own during my trip to the Bay Area last week to speak at Google and sign books at Books Inc. in Berkeley (which should still have signed copies available), but both were memorable additions to my ongoing U.S. pizzeria tour. Oakland’s Pizzaiolo is on that list from Food and Wine from a few years ago that continues to inform some of my travels – it’s not a perfect list but I’ve done well by it overall – but the pizza wasn’t even the best thing I ate there.

Pizzaiolo is more than a pizzeria, although those are obviously the star attraction on the menu. It’s really a locavore restaurant that also does pastas, mains, salads, and vegetable-focused sides (contorni), with outstanding, largely local ingredients the common thread among all of them. I met a friend for dinner there and we split two pizzas, a margherita with housemade Italian sausage and a pizza of sweet & hot peppers, black olives, and ricotta salata. The sausage was probably the best element of all of this; the dough itself was good, maybe a grade 55 when comparing it to other Neapolitan pizzerias I’ve tried around the country (a list that has to number around fifty now). The pepper and olive pizza was surprisingly good, less spicy than I feared it would be, more briny and salty from the combination of the olives and the ricotta salata, a pressed, salted, lightly aged cheese made from the whey of sheep’s milk left over from other cheesemaking. But the best thing I ate was actually a salad of mixed chicory leaves (especially radicchio) with figs and hazelnuts; I love radicchio in spite of its bitterness (or perhaps because of it), but this had some of the least bitter chicory leaves I’ve ever tasted, and the sweetness of the black mission figs gave the perfect contrast to just that hint of a bitter note. The menu changes daily, however, and I can see it’s not on the Pizzaiolo menu today.

Una Pizza Napoletana isn’t on that F&W list of the country’s best pizzerias, which is kind of a joke because it’s probably a top five spot for me because of the dough. I’ve never had a pizza with a crust like this – it has the texture of naan, which is an enriched dough from India (usually containing yogurt or other dairy), whereas pizza dough is typically enriched with nothing but maybe a little olive oil. The menu is very short: five different pizza options, no alterations or substitutions allowed, with a few drinks, and one extra pizza (with fresh eggs) on Saturdays. Most of the pizzas use buffalo-milk mozzarella, and only the margherita has tomato sauce. I went with the filetti, which has no sauce but uses fresh cherry tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, garlic, and fresh basil. It’s really the dough that makes this pizza – it’s a traditional, naturally-leavened dough that takes three days to make, resulting in that incomparable texture. The pizzas are on the expensive side at $25 apiece, although I think given the quality of inputs and the time required to make doughs like this, it’s a reasonable price point. You’re buying someone’s skill and time for something you’re never going to make at home.

Una Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco. To die for.

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My new friends at Google also sent me home with a few gifts, including a bag of coffee from Philz, which a few of you have been telling me to try for years now. I haven’t opened the bag yet (I am a bit obsessive about finishing one bag before opening the next) but will report back when I try it.

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→ March 11, 2012
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Fresno eats.

Hunan, located in the courtyard of a strip mall at Cedar and Herndon, boasts a chef, Zhongli Liu, who served as executive chef at a major Beijing hotel for over a decade before emigrating to the U.S.,  once representing China at the Bocuse d’Or competition. The restaurant looks like the typical Chinese restaurant you might find in any decent-sized city, but the food was something else entirely. 

I haggled with the waiter to try to get him to recommend something he really liked, but I didn’t get fair until I dropped the word ”authentic,” after which he didn’t hesitate to recommend the house special lamb. Lamb is my least favorite protein, but the man did not lie – the dish was outstanding. The lamb is sliced thinly and stir-fried with green peppers, onions, and a cumin sauce with lots of depth, including a little heat (not as much as you’d expect from all the dried Thai chilies on the plate), a little sweetness, and the right amount of salt. The hot and sour soup included in the meal was also phenomenal in texture and flavor, although I got one piece of bamboo that was too tough to chew. Apparently there’s a second menu you can request with more authentic dishes like the one I ate, although I still would have asked for a recommendation.

Cracked Pepper Bistro appears to be the clear leader for the ”best restaurant in Fresno” title, although that may not be the stiffest competition going. The food was very strong, maybe one grade below what you’d get at a good fine-dining establishment in a larger city, with larger portions and comparable service.

The server emphatically recommended the ”mala-insana” Napoleon, fried slices of eggplant with layers of goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and pesto, covered with a drizzle of balsamic reduction (according to the server – the menu says it’s aged balsamic). I don’t really love eggplant because it tends to take on a weird, meaty-but-not-quite texture no matter how it’s cooked, but this was the best eggplant dish I’ve ever had. The slices, crusted in panko and crushed pumpkin seeds, held their shape, weren’t soggy or fibrous, and were as crunchy as a piece of fried chicken. I would have eaten them plain.

For the entree, I couldn’t pass up the short rib with German potato salad, and the ribs were tender enough to pull apart with your fingers. (I used a fork, as this appeared to be a respectable restaurant.) The potato salad wasn’t a salad at all – it’s new red potatoes, parcooked, then quickly fried to brown and crisp the exteriors, served with a dressing of minced bacon, sugar, cider vinegar, and Dijon mustard. The texture and sweetness of the caramelized sugars in the potatoes were great, but the sweet/sour dressing was too assertive and even bled into the sauce over the short ribs.

The restaurant’s main problem, at least in the two dishes I tried, was a lack of editing. The eggplant stacks were overpowered by the tartness of the goat cheese and the sweetness of the balsamic reduction. The potatoes that came with the short rib were similarly undone by the inclusion of sugar in the dressing, which, on top of the sugars created by quickly frying the potatoes and browning their exteriors, made the whole thing too sweet. I’m holding Cracked Pepper to a higher standard than I would most restaurants because they are aspiring to that higher standard (and are priced at that higher standard too); this is very good food done with a great deal of skill, but pulling back one step on each dish would have earned them the top grade.

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