Kiss Your Gourmet Dinner Goodbye

As with any great meal, certain connections come to an end and do not deserve to be renewed, not even through a thinly veiled friendship that doesn't really amount to much.  I think being on friendly terms work best for couples who have heavily invested together on something - like kids, or property, or even a dog.  Like a great meal,  an ended great love is something you remember with fondness and with good memories, long after you have digested and dumped it in the toilet.

It will be a while before I hit the kitchen again with passion.  For it is with pleasure and heart that certain meals came about, inspired by the energy of love one experiences at that time.  And it was an inspired period - starting with beef borguignone and sole meuniere, progressed into tarte tatin, that inspired a foray into Julia Child, which in turn brought me to the doorsteps of San Francisco's La Boulangerie for french baking because George Mulot and Laduree were continents away.  Those were the evenings dedicated solely to the tactile maneuvering of butter and dough to make puff pastry, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini rustic apple tarts, eclairs and french fruit tartes.  Trios of duck confit, filet mignon and seared ahi tuna were capped with creamy pots de creme.  Never was pork so ignored to adjust to someone's taste.  And I can barely remember how many rib eye steaks I have composed and served on a rickety table covered with a Middle Eastern headscarf until I finally whipped it off in disgust and replaced it with a more civil and matching linen.  Seared chilean sea bass or black cod took turns with poached salmon and tuna steaks on the odd Sunday night. The last dinner I served him was now inspired by Spain, perhaps a sign of the changing times and forked roads. 

Cornish game hen roasted with garlic and rosemary from Adrian Feria's discussion on the new Spanish gastronomy.  It was good.  No, it was perfect.

Le Pain Quotidien–Your Friendly and Packed China Tea House

It is time that we debunk the claim and popular belief perpetrated that China bistros, tea houses, restaurants and other Asian eating places are noisy. That Asian people are noisy. In that respect, yes we are, when we are with friends and family and conversation is flowing. And so is true for other peoples. As I was the only Asian in this packed and small (not cosy, if you have to hear the next table’s conversation in full decibel) franchise café along Ventura Boulevard on a Sunday morning, I’d say white people are just as enthusiastic about their tete a tete’s, and just as merrily careless with the continuous clinking of utensils that are being used, and gathered by the harried busboy.

Le Pain Quotidien at Ventura Blvd.

Sherman Oaks, CA

Like all busy restaurants, service tends to go a grade lower given the attention each table needs. But I’ll give kudos to the waitresses whose smiles have not faltered a bit, perhaps because of years of having to wait tables while waiting for that movie or tv part that has not come through the years. There seems to be a height requirement for service people in this branch.

He hates it – he says the place suffers from the same trendiness and artsyness that plagues most up and coming restaurants – no solid offerings, sacrificing substance for form in order to charge more. In a sense he is right. If a simple tomato omelette with a slice of avocado on the side will set you back by 10 dollars just because you threw in a slice of artisan bread and a heaping of mesclun greens that will not be eaten anyway, then yes, it is a shame. But that is exactly what I ordered. Sans the mesclun, I have had a better omellette in a remote shack in Puerto Galera with authentic artisan bread taught to the locals by a German who missed his pumpernickle bread and other stuff back home. Oh, and the bratwursts were to die for.

Nonetheless, the locals suck it up, so I guess that puts Kevin Mcnaughty’s opinion to the test that French food (or something that approximates it the US way) is passe. I would say Le Pain Quotidien is not entirely french – it is fusion – drinking coffee from bowls is reminiscent of china bistros. The restaurant façade and walls is mainly Italian, with its stucco roughsanded walls and minimal interiors in earthy tones. The atmosphere noisy, and communal, as it claims. Like an Asian restaurant.

What rises above the commercial is its bread, as it claims to be first and foremost, a bakery. And he was honest enough to admit that yes, everything he ate was good – from the bread to the coffee to the jams. I feel bereft that the Pain Au Chocolat is single barreled but it is moist and fluffy as it should be, the artisan breads, with their french names intact and displayed haughtily, are tasty, and there is a smattering of specialites pastries but not savory ones. French bakeries are not entirely best or better than what we have in the US. What makes them special is the idea of a place, an atmosphere of strangeness and new sensations, and tastes and sounds so foreign.

Alas, we cannot import that so we frenchify our San Francisco sourdough bread and call it Pain de Ble Levain.