April 14th, 2010 | Author: hugorila |  Every once in a while I crave Portuguese food but I feel too lazy to cook it myself, so I go online and try to find something that can fulfill my appetite. Needless to say, the search usually returns one or two results, most of the times not that tempting. If my lazy side wins I end up eating something else, and if my craving wins I end up cooking. I was in New York last time I had this Portuguese food craving. As usual, I went online looking for something tempting and I bumped into Aldea. The concept sounded interesting – a chef who’s a first-generation American born to Portuguese parents, Portuguese cuisine with a modern seasonal approach, and a wine list full of Portuguese references. Booked.
The restaurant, close to Union Square, has an open kitchen and a few stools surrounding it where you can watch the chefs bustling about preparing your food. The food itself was all I could dream of. If I could define Aldea’s cuisine in a word that would be lightness. I’m not talking about the light food mania that assaulted our eating habits in recent years. This lightness is about matter. Food is flavor and texture. A steak is only good if it’s tender and well seasoned. An unsalted tender steak is just as bad as a perfectly seasoned shoe sole. Chef George Mendes is probably someone who dedicates a good amount of time studying ingredients and finding the most suitable preparation to extract the best of out of them. The lightness of the sea-salted Chatham cod is, believe me, unbearable. The perfectly salted white filet melts in your mouth as if it was made of air. It was the best cod I’ve ever had and that, coming from a Portuguese, means a lot. Insisting on cod, the salt cod croquetas were delicious, light and soft, perfectly seasoned, delicious alioli on the side. To satisfy my most traditional Portuguese food craving we had arroz de pato, great duck confit and cracklings, simply delicious.
We hardly looked at the long wine list. We stuck to the Portuguese wine one-pager where you can find good deals, including the Esporao Reserva Private Selection, a great white reasonably priced that I highly recommend.
Aldea
31 W 17th St, New York, NY
Final check: $55 (excluding tip)
November 24th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | Group dinners are like baseball games. You don’t go to a baseball to watch the game, there’s just so many other things more interesting than that. You have hot dogs, pretzels, beer, the hot blonde in front of you, you name it. Plus, you always promise that’s the last time you’re doing it, what a waste of money. But then again, you end up there again and again. The same happens with group dinners, you know the food will be cold by the time you eat it, you know you’re going to overpay, and you know that you’ll only talk to the 3 or 4 people that sit around you. So every time the check comes to the table, you promise next time you’ll show up for desert. But you never really do it and you end up overpaying all the time.
That being said, if there’s such thing as group dining restaurants, then Roy’s on SoMA is one of them. Starting with the venue – high ceilings, clean decor very raw but elegant with a beautiful wine cellar, and plenty of room for big tables. To my surprise, there were several couples on romantic dinners, maybe fooled by the dim light and fancy menu. But Roy’s is no place for dates, it’s too loud and too improper for that.
Talking about the food itself, they say it’s Hawaiian fusion. Every time I hear the word fusion I ask the same question: fusion with what? And very rarely people can answer. Roy’s cuisine is a big mess, meaning it’s fusion with everything – Japanese on the sushi, Southwestern on the barbeque ribs, Northeastern on crab cakes, Mediterranean on calamari, French on the duck. You get it. Although the style may be fuzzy, the food is generally good. The rolls are decent, the ribs could be better, the lobster potstickers are tasty but a little unbalanced on the combination. The duck was overcooked, but the osso buco was cooked to the point and well seasoned. The fish was fresh and well cooked. More important, the service and kitchen are efficient enough to make the wait short and the food come warm to the table, which is actually not that easy when you’re serving 15 people.
A side note for the huge wine list that has a vast selection of wines for all pockets. Fortunately, the waiters are knowledgeable enough to give you recommendations. But again, do we really care about the food or wine when we go to group dinners? I have to say that, if you do, you should consider Roy’s.
August 30th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | There are some things that annoy me when I go to a restaurant, the main one being bad waiters. And it’s even worse when the waiter looks like he’s doing me a favor. Do you have a recommendation? No. Popular dishes? All. Is this spicy? I don’t know. It just makes me cross, the good humor vanishes, and the rest of the meal is ruined. Which means that I won’t likely go back. Every time this happens I try to rationalize. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal. How can a bad waiter make the food taste worse? But I actually think it is a big deal. It’s a service business and if your service sucks then your business sucks. Just like a good service can make very simple food taste great, a bad waiter poisons it. That’s what happened at Fresca on Fillmore. 45 minutes waiting and finally we got a table. We sat down and the menus are tossed to the table. The wine temperature is on the 70s (maybe 75?). What’s the waiter answer? ‘What can I do?’ Maybe take the bottle back or at least bring some ice. What about the food? The appetizers are mediocre, the entrées not bad. But does that really matter? Not to me.
Fresca
2114 Fillmore St, San Francisco
Final check: $50 (excluding tip)
August 29th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | Have you ever had an accidental dinner? I mean, you know you have to eat, you start making plans, you pick an area, maybe a place, and then nothing happens as planned. That’s how we ended up going to Betelnut. We were supposed to have early dinner but we sat at the table at 10pm, we were supposed to go to Nob Hill but we ended up in the Marina, we were supposed to be two and we ended up being three. And we never planned to eat asian but that’s what we ended up having. Even when we tried to go to Betelnut we first gave up because there was no valet, but someone decided to leave an empty spot right at that moment, right in front of the restaurant. Call it whatever but this was a great accidental experience. As I said on a previous post, I like good expectation management, and that’s exactly what they did at Betelnut – 45 minutes waitlist became 15 minutes. Precious 15 minutes I have to say. Time to get an liquid amouse bouche at the bar, and time to talk to the bar tender to recommended ‘The Beggars Chicken’, a ‘unique piece of cooking art that is not on the menu’. It sounded like something we had to try and that’s what we told to the waiter once we got our table. He rushed to the kitchen as they only serve 3 every day and someone could steal ours. While we waited for the piece of art we ordered firecracker shrimp, 5-spiced with sambal dip, and “Shui jiao” pork dumplings and szechuan-peppercorn broth. Very good the shrimp, just ok the dumplings. The Crios Torrontes 2008 we ordered is a good wine but not the most suitable for this type of food. And finally came our chicken. The looks are odd – a block of clay and a hammer. When you hammer the clay it reveals a nest of wine leaves, and the chicken is lying inside. The result of the slow cooking inside the clay and the leaves, coupled with the pork belly, mushrooms and corn stuffing is simply delicious. Rich, balanced, perfect texture. I wish every accidents tasted like this. The service is very pleasant and price surprisingly inexpensive.
Betelnut
2030 Union St, San Francisco
Final check: $30 (excluding tip)
August 29th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | There are so many reasons to choose a restaurant to go. Food is usually the main one but not necessarily all the time and this time it was ambiance. Foreign Cinema, the restaurant and the genre, has personality. Now, if you say that of a girl it’s a bad thing, but it’s not the case and the personality of Foreign Cinema is a praise rather than a criticism. It’s located in the Mission, on Mission Street between the 21st and the 22nd, and from the outside is just another door. When you pass the long corridor you get to a patio where a big screen is playing foreign movies. The movie is part of the ambiance of course and you shouldn’t expect to go watch movies in a restaurant – as apparently some Zagat reviewers did. With so much talk about the ambiance, it might sound like the food was bad. But it wasn’t, and that’s the great thing about Foreign Cinema. It’s just not personality, it’s also a great place to eat. We started with oysters, fresh and flavorful. I didn’t like the sauce, I rather have just a splash of lemon or the traditional shallot and vinegar. Appetizers were an amazing grilled calamari with bread crumbs and a normal beef carpaccio on horseradish sauce. The mains were also perfectly cooked with interesting combinations and well balanced flavors. Fresh and simple mahi-mahi, interesting lamb skewers, and solid duck breast. The wine list is not great, not enough wine by the glass and limited low-end choices. The service was effective and knowledgeable. I definitely recommend Foreign Cinema’s food and personality.
Foreign Cinema
2534 Mission St, San Francisco
Final check: $58 (excluding tip)
August 26th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | The tasting of this Fortuna Merlot 2005 was an opportunity to try the Venturi aerator, an instrument that I became fan of instantly. They served us the same one with and without the assistance of the aerator. Without the aerator this is a great wine, good structure, ripe fruit, blackberry and blueberry, good complexity, coffee and spice aromas, and strong tannins for a good persistent finish. A wine that I would keep for a few years before drinking. But then came the aerator, and all of the sudden this was a great wine to drink right away. Same complexity, same full body and good structure, but a lot softer in the mouth, just perfect. $50 the bottle.
August 26th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | First real dinner in Napa. Beautiful setting, the terrace by the vineyard invites to a walk on the garden, which we did. After a few pictures we finally sat down for the dinner. The menu is not too long, which I appreciate, and has an original organization. Salads and soups, share, wood oven, charcoal grill, and range. The bread, good but not great, came to the table with creamy butter. We ordered crispy fried green beans on hot mustard sauce to share. Tempura flour wrapping the green beans with the right texture but not much taste. As main courses we ordered beef filet with green peppercorn pesto, grilled zucchini and cherry tomatoes, prosciutto wrapped halibut with creamed broccoli rabe, and sonoma duck breast, creamy farro, fava beans and morel mushrooms. Again, all good but not great, the duck was cooked to perfection but richness and the fillet was not very flavorful. The service was mediocre, slow and not attentive.
Brix
St. Helena Highway, Napa, CA
Final check: $50
August 25th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | This was a long tasting but a great one. We spent more than 1 hour at the Turnbull tasting room talking about wine and art and tasting of course. This Turnbull Viognier was simply delicious. Great bouquet, fruit and floral notes, and perfectly balanced oak, that adds to the complexity of this wine. Full body and good persistence. Excellent wine. Not cheap ($30).
August 25th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | This was the welcoming wine when we went visit the Porter Family Vineyards. A great summer wine, light and refreshing, plenty of fruit. This rosé is 100% Syrah and, unlike most rosés that are made through saignée method, this one is made through whole bunch pressing. This method, along with the fact that the grapes are intended for rosé and thus picked earlier when sugar and acidity levels are more suitable for rosé, makes the fruit very vivid on the nose. Strawberry, pineapple, raspberry in a really fresh and crisp wine. Delicious!
August 25th, 2009 | Author: hugorila | Mini vertical tasting of the Rombauer Chardonnay at the winery. Japi loves creamy, butter chardonnays and according to our friends, Rombauer’s is heaven for oaky chardonnays lovers. Expectations were high then and even more when we got there and Rosa told us that 2008 had been just released and was better than the super class 2007. He was not wrong. Although the 2007 is a great wine, abundant fruit, pear and pineapple, and a delicious creamy texture with the toast flavors a little bit too strong for my taste. Overall a great wine. And then came the 2008 and it was excellent. The fruit is still there, still abundant, but it’s a more balanced wine, with the oak better integrated, pulling the fruit out while giving the same creamy texture and leaving a buttery flavor. $30 is not cheap for a chardonnay but it’s definitely worth it.
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grades 5/5 – Outstanding
4/5 – Excellent
3/5 – Good
2/5 – Average
1/5 – Bad
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