Randy Jackson with Sophie Gayot

by Sophie Gayot

I was not the only one dining at über-chef Wolfgang Puck’s new restaurant at Hotel Bel-Air on a recent visit (luckily for the restaurant). The multi-talented Randy Jackson, who has been a judge on American Idol since 2002 — longer than anyone else — was sitting next to me. I had dined with him before, and know he is a gourmet, so I was not surprised to see him there. As we know, he is a tough judge — nice and fair, but tough…

My judging of the dinner: very good California cuisine, with precise execution, that grants the restaurant a GAYOT.com rating of 16 out 20. Here is the explanation of the GAYOT.com rating system.

For more about Hotel Bel-Air, read my October blog post, which I wrote after touring the hotel a few days before it opened.

Grilled rainbow trout

by Tiffany Maleshefski

Though Grand Café continues to be a stalwart French restaurant that’s been around since 1995, consistency hasn’t really been one of its strong points. Located inside the Hotel Monaco San Francisco, the eatery has seen an impressive roster of venerable chefs lead its kitchen, including Victor Scargle, Mauro Pando, Denis Soriano and Paul Arenstam. Despite their efforts, the restaurant has experienced a steady pattern of highs and lows.

Its newest chef, Alicia Jenish, who worked under Loretta Keller at Bizou and opened LarkCreekSteak, is the latest to throw her toque into the ring, with the stated goal of taking the Grand Café’s menu and “transforming it into something [that] is lighter, healthier, and distinctly San Franciscan.”

Now before anyone gets excited that the Grand Café can be a dieting girl’s best friend, what Jenish means is that she’s using sauces that are less rich and rustic and, therefore, lighter in texture and color.

A great example are the Mussels Trifecta: locally-sourced mussels that are steamed three different ways. Her winter version of this dish includes a broth of hard cider and cream, vegetable jus and aioli, and cilantro and chorizo. The standout in this bunch is definitely the mussels steamed in hard cider. The opposing flavors of tart and creamy are incredible. Jenish changes up the trifecta dish regularly, and is just about to make the broths more citrus-based.

Grilled rainbow trout, sourced from a nearby farm that keeps the fish on a strictly vegan diet, is phenomenal. It’s not oily, just moist and delicate. There’s a subtle sweetness that is no doubt partly due to the brown butter vinaigrette. The only thing that feels out of place in this dish is the awkward bouquet of crisped Serrano ham. It just doesn’t blend well and it’s hard to figure out what it’s supposed to add.

Jenish has also finessed one of the menu’s longtime staples, the cassoulet, adding quail confit stuffed with Toulouse sausage and pork belly confit. The beans she has chosen are also larger than what’s found in most cassoulets. This is an entrée that can be tough to make a dent in. It’s not only heavy, but the starchiness of the beans can get overwhelming and make the dish somewhat monochromatic. The first few bites are delightful, but it quickly becomes too much.

And that last bit is especially important when you have profiteroles filled with ice cream and caramel and chocolate sauce to finish off the meal. Miraculously, even the most overfed diner will find room for these.

Jenish has made a strong start at a restaurant that has needed a refresh for quite some time. Items like the black kale salad (brined overnight to reduce some of the braising green’s bitterness) with apples, toasted walnuts and bleu cheese are subtly innovative and very memorable in spite of their simplicity.

So far, the young chef is managing to make a mark on a restaurant that has been handled by major industry heavyweights. This might be the kind of change Grand Café needs to pull itself back onto the city’s A-list.

Keep coming back to GAYOT.com San Francisco Restaurant News, Restaurant Reviews, Culinary Events and San Francisco Wine Dinners.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from the Grand Café restaurant menu.

Buick Discovery Tour

The General’s Art

by Alain Gayot

The automobile is not only a favored mode of transportation but also an objet d’art. Cars are designed not just to be driven, but to be looked at and admired. They often come in flashy, eye-catching colors, adorned with shiny chrome and festooned with insignia, spoilers and racing stripes. Some are even displayed in museums and art galleries.

In the right hands, food and wine can be art as well. Emphasizing the artful connection between gourmet food and wine and fine automobiles, Buick has hired top chefs to help them market their line of cars. Together with sponsor Food & Wine magazine, Buick is taking its Discovery Tour around the country. We had the pleasure of playing “art critic” when the tour pulled into the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills this past weekend.

The Discovery Tour showcases Buick’s current lineup – the Enclave, Lacrosse, Regal and Verano – with a series of test drives as well as culinary offerings from top food and wine experts. At the Los Angeles event, chef Josiah Citrin of Melisse in Santa Monica (which has been a GAYOT.com Top 40 restaurant since 2006) produced a dish of Hokkaido scallop, cauliflower, lime, basil and prawn salt. There was also a Greek dish, fried pork and beef meatballs, created by Michael Psilakis of Kefi and FishTag in New York. To top it all off, pastry chef Ben Roche of Moto in Chicago crafted a delicious S’Mores Bomb.

After all this wining and dining, we hope that the General (GM) has acquired enough new car buyers to retain his top ranking as the largest auto manufacturer in the world.

Related Content:

Food & Wine magazine
Buick website
Buick car reviews

You can click on each photo to enlarge.

by Sophie Gayot

My assistant has typed up hundreds of photo captions of menu items. But after typing the captions for the gallery below, he couldn’t help but comment for the first time, “That menu seems very interesting.” He is right. And more than that, the wild game menu created by Chris Crary, chef de cuisine at Whist at the Viceroy Santa Monica, was creative, intelligent and sexy; pretty much what we look for when we go out for a fine dining experience.

By chance, the evening of the dinner was right after Chris Crary was voted off season 9 of the TV show Top Chef, where he was competing. Trust me, the dinner I enjoyed was created by a chef who is at the top of his game. I foresee a great future for Crary!

Watch my exclusive video with him to discover Crary’s passion for cuisine.

For special dinners in Los Angeles, visit our LA culinary event listings. For other cities, check out GAYOT.com’s notable culinary events.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from Whist restaurant at the Viceroy Santa Monica Wild Game Tasting Menu. All photos by Sophie Gayot.

Jehangir Mehta

by Meryl Pearlstein

With New York City Restaurant Week (January 16-February 10) already underway, foodies have hundreds of great restaurants from which to choose. But there are other food events and celebrations well worth checking out in the next few days, including the Kids Food Festival and the start of Mehtaphor’s Global New Year dinner series.

At this weekend’s Kids Food Festival at Citi Pond in Bryant Park, chef Jehangir Mehta continues his mission to educate children about the role of nutrition in combating obesity. Chef Mehta will be joining food personalities and chefs such as David Burke (David Burke Townhouse, Fishtail by David Burke, David Burke Kitchen), Ben Pollinger (Oceana) and Jackie Newgent, RD, to present culinary demonstrations and offer healthy samples. The festival provides plenty of fun activities, including the “Balanced Plate Scavenger Hunt,” a puppet show and the “Silly Workout,” but also aims to educate parents and kids about the importance of making balanced food choices. General admission is free from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on January 21 and 22; tickets are required for cooking demos and other chef events. Festival partners are the James Beard Foundation and Share Our Strength. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.kidsfoodfestival.com.

On Monday, the busy chef will be launching a global New Year dinner series at his restaurant Mehtaphor. Chef Mehta and his culinary team will be creating menus influenced by New Year celebrations of various cultures worldwide. The series kicks off with a celebration of the “Year of the Dragon” with a Chinese-inspired New Year feast on Monday, January 23. The six-course dinner with wine pairings is as eclectic as the dishes found in Mehta’s Graffiti and Mehtaphor restaurants, including cucumber ginger slaw with lychee granita, sesame scallion shrimp with chickpea bitter gould, a crab almond roll with chili reduction, garlic tomato pork dumplings, persimmon green chili duck with bok choi and a chocolate steamed bun with red bean ice cream. In addition to providing detailed descriptions of each sweet and savory dish, Mehta will share the pairing rationale for each of the evening’s six wines, which include selections from Italy, France, Austria and Spain. The prix-fixe menu is available for $75 per person. Seatings are from 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m.

Keep coming back to GAYOT.com for more New York City Restaurant News, Restaurant Reviews, Culinary Events and NYC Wine Dinners.

You can click on each photo to enlarge.

by Sophie Gayot

Our team of writers and editors are working hard to compile the 2012 edition of the GAYOT.com Restaurant Issue, which includes GAYOT.com’s Top 40 Restaurants in the US, to be published soon. Subscribe now to be among the first to learn about the latest culinary trends, rising chefs, the restaurateur of the year, and much more.

Mélisse in Santa Monica has been on our Top 40 list since 2006. Take a look at the video interview above with chef/owner Josiah Citrin to see what it takes to rank consistently as one of the best restaurants in the country. Then join our community and post your ideas for what restaurants you believe should be on this select list.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from the Melisse restaurant menu. All photos by Sophie Gayot.

Arctic char

by Tiffany Maleshefski

Michael Mina moved his eponymous restaurant out of the Westin St. Francis more than a year ago and into the building that formerly housed Aqua, the very restaurant where the chef started to develop his culinary cred. The move “home” had a lot of benefits, the biggest one probably being that it gave Mina a chance to tinker with the restaurant’s formerly stuffy atmosphere. Because while the space at the St. Francis was indeed stunning, there was no getting around the fact that one felt like they needed white gloves and tails to set foot in it. No matter how hard the restaurant tried to create a less opulent environment, with fun happy hour specials and a short-lived bar menu, diners weren’t buying it.

But now Mina is deeper into the Financial District, with a hipper, more vibrant and funky space that’s meant to make the restaurant feel less “special occasion” and more “this won’t completely deplete our bank account by eating here.” The introduction of a a prix-fixe lunch menu is one more step to making the restaurant more accessible. At $49 for three courses and $59 for four, the lunch menu is a great way to try out one of the Bay Area’s most decorated restaurants for half the price — but not at half the experience.

If you’re going to do it, you might as well start with one of the signature cocktails. The bar program that’s been set up here is not to be overlooked. Creative concoctions include the Morning Fog: Smoked vodka (cold-smoked vodka that’s aged in oak in the restaurant’s basement), homemade fig liqueur, and bubbly.

Starters include a fantastic spread of oysters foraged from both coasts with traditional mignonette, and cocktail sauces. Or go with prettily cubed heirloom beets, giant fans of butter leaf lettuce, dainty piles of candied pecans and grilled radicchio, with smooth, creamy pools of burrata on top.

Middle courses are restricted to pasta. Hand-rolled cavatelli with tender rabbit confit and mushroom cream is dreamy. The cavatelli is thick and hearty, with each individual bite a luscious experience.

Potentially the superstar of the entire meal, however, is a beautiful and dramatically presented squash risotto. This is a dish that makes Michael Mina such a force. Beautiful bold colors, lovely textures, and a groovy parmesan foam. But it’s the rich, comforting flavors that make it otherworldly.

Entrees are as sophisticated as their evening counterparts. Arctic char touts a yummy crust and is served with an interesting and diverse array of platemates: a sturdy mound of lentils, celery root remoulade and a whipped purée of Granny Smith apples.

Flat iron steak with a horseradish crust is exquisite. Mina serves it in a shallow-pool beef and dashi consommé and scatters roasted root vegetables on top, with a side of bone marrow. The careful intersection of flavors in this dish is extremely well thought out and as delicate as a house of cards.

Desserts are works of art. Not the structured, architecturally-sound arty desserts that made Elizabeth Falkner so famous. At Michael Mina, desserts are more texture and color than structure. Green apple sorbet is accompanied by teeny green apple pate de fruits, micro cylinders of marshmallow, dollops of elderflower pavlova, and an almond crumble reminiscent of a traditional pie crust. Bananas Foster gets a redo in the form of what the menu calls “brown butter cake,” fluffy tufts of cake mingled with rum compressed bananas and flan ice cream. And the result, while a more sophisticated version of the famed New Orleans dessert, evokes that same boozy, looseness as the original.

While the lunch experience at Michael Mina has been marketed as a way to enjoy the restaurant on the quick, especially if you go with the four-course menu, it’s still a two-hour or more experience. That’s not a complaint. I would’ve stayed all day if I could. It’s just that the real advantage here to most diners will be the chance to experience luxury at a fraction of the usual price.

Keep coming back to GAYOT.com San Francisco Restaurant News, Restaurant Reviews, Culinary Events and San Francisco Wine Dinners.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from the Michael Mina prix-fixe restaurant menu.

by Sophie Gayot

Have you ever wondered: “What exactly is molecular gastronomy?” Read GAYOT.com’s guide to this avant-garde cuisine or taste it for yourself by dining at one of GAYOT.com’s Top 10 Molecular Gastronomy Restaurants in the U.S.

If you are in the Los Angeles area this month, you can try chef Ryan Carson’s molecular creations during four pop-up dinners at Tiato in Santa Monica on January 18, 19, 25 & 26.

To see what you might expect, watch my exclusive video interview with chef Carson, filmed at Tiato during a December pop-up dinner. You can reserve seats for the upcoming events by calling Tiato at 310-866-5228. The dinners get booked very fast, so if you are not able to join this series there will be more in February and March, with some in Orange County. For more information, go to http://chefryancarson.com/.

Tiato is part of the An family’s House of An restaurant group, which also operates Crustacean in San Francisco and Beverly Hills, and AnQi Gourmet Bistro at Orange County’s South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, Calif. And before leaving Tiato, be sure to order Helene An’s famous garlic noodles to take home for the next day.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from the Molecular Pop-up Kitchen menu by Ryan Carson at Tiato restaurant. All photos by Sophie Gayot.

Live Maine lobster

by Ben Narasin

While a trip to Montauk or Maine can create the ultimate lobster memory, if you don’t have one planned, you can create a small part of that Eastern elegance anywhere a FEDEX box can fly. GetMaineLobster.com will ship crustaceans overnight, chilled and wrapped in seaweed, alive and comatose, for you to drop fresh into your pot.

We tried the Maine Lobster “Feast for Two.” Two one-and-a-half-pound, just caught, live Maine lobsters, two pounds of mussels and two whoopie pies. Delivered from the Eastern shore to our Western coastline, the small feast costs $115.

The lobsters arrived alive and slow-moving, the mussels tight-lipped and clean, and the whoopie pies cool and sweet. Preparation is as simple as boiling water and dunking, but be sure you have claw crackers, picks and drawn butter on hand to eat the feast while it’s hot. Newspaper tablecloths are advised.

The lobsters cooked up sweet and soft (we steamed them) and the mussels were tasty and tight; not an open-lipped one in the batch. The whoopie pies were a surprise treat, delicately cakey with a pleasant hit of sugar-grained center. Not something we realized Maine was famous for.

GetMaineLobster.com offers other assortments, for bigger feasts, or as distinct gifts. Lobsters come direct from the icy and deep Atlantic waters of Maine. Packages are shipped just at the cutoff for the day’s shipments to ensure the minimum transit time.

They have crab cakes, lobster cakes, lobster pie, mussels, clams, clam chowder, seafood chowder, and even beef to create Surf & Turf packages, big feasts and custom orders. They also offer customizable gift certificates for overnight fresh lobster deliveries.

Keep coming back to GAYOT.com for the latest gourmet foods and the best seafood restaurants near you.

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You can click on each photo to enlarge.

by Sophie Gayot

For whatever reason, Celestino Drago is closing his restaurant Drago in Santa Monica at the end of January. We are sad to see it go, but we are happy because Celestino is working on some new projects.

His Angeleno story started when he arrived in Southern California from Sicily at the age of 22. His restaurant Drago rapidly became a success, and has been Celestino’s flagship for twenty-one years! He later went on to open Enoteca Drago and Il Pastaio, both in Beverly Hills, and DRAGO Centro in a gorgeous space downtown LA.

To celebrate Drago’s last month, the restaurant is offering several dishes from the original 1991 menu. These “throwbacks” include “Fegato D’Anatra, Aceto Balsamico, Indivia” (sautéed duck liver with aged balsamic glaze and grilled Belgium endive), “Spaghetti con Bottarga” (spaghetti with pressed dried tuna caviar), and “Quaglie Arrosto, Ripiene, Polenta Alla Griglia” (sausage-filled quail with grilled polenta and saltimbocca sauce).

Hopefully you will have time to visit before the end of the month; if not, watch my exclusive video interview with Celestino Drago and executive chef Evan Gotanda, recently filmed at the restaurant.

As far as other ventures, Celestino will be happy to cater for you in the comfort of your own home, or at his catering venue Casa Bianca in Culver City (310-453-9107). You may also buy the Drago family’s baked goods, pastries, fresh breads, pasta and gelato at Dolce Forno Bakery, also located in Culver City at 3828 Willat Avenue, 90232, 310-280-6004, www.dolcefornobakery.com.

For more Los Angeles culinary news, go to GAYOT’s LA Restaurant News page.

You can click on each photo to enlarge to see dishes from Drago restaurant menu. All photos by Sophie Gayot.